England

So far my campaign is:
1. Take York and que up a ballista maker in London.

2. Once the ballista is ready take it and some troops for Nottingham to York,
from there proceed to Scotland. Normally the Scottish army is out side of the
I by-pass them and take the city in 1 turn, poof no more Scots-no pope
warning. This by turn 10 at the latest.

3. Take care of the rebels who where the Scottish army. Then retrain re-equipt
and on to Wales.

4. Next block the land bridge to Oslo-Stockholm, If lucky a crusade will have
been called by then and I use that army to take both of them. I use that
to train my merchants since no other merchants can get to them. I have
seen as many as 5 trying to get across at one time.

From there it is on to Dublin and then Northern Europe. The French were my
allies, but betrayed me early and went for Caen. I fought them off and that
is where I am at.

One little hint-et on English Unit roster:

Artillery and Sieges

Mortars are not really much good in field battles, but are fantastic in defending wall assaults. Stick a couple of units behind the wall section being assaulted and target either the engines or the units - once in range they are suprisingly accurate and will blast big chunks out of the enemy. As attacking armies will retreat once you've destroyed their means of attacking, you may want to just target the men, and let them keep coming (as long as you are confident you can defend the walls). Obviously, i'd suggest blatting any rams as soon as they get in range, as you probably don't want the enemy taking route one into your settlement/fortress.

dont get it?been playing english now on h/h, i mean i never had a problem on conquering the french, they attack me in the first place, and well if and when the pope say i should stop i stop and just wait untill the time expires and on i go again...
all this talk about strategy... well for me it simple:
strategically:
1. sure you can make allies, especially the pope... but hell sooner or later you'll be at war with your own allies anyway so why bother? pope? its simple to play with the pope, stop when he tells you to, and resume your blood lust when the time expires, anyway it gives you time to regroup and restore your strength
2. go for the rebels? ha... those rebels are a mile away from my armies ....people!! attack the most usefull faction you know you would benefit the most, denmark or france to gain foothold on europe(maybe?)
3. wait wait wait.....

sorry guys, just finish fighting the poles here with heroic victory, had killed all there western armies and cut off 2 provinces with enveloping tactics...
well 'till later

oh... one more thing, about the cavalry.... well i just charge a full stack spearmen, should it really do some damage on them i mean should my charge halves there unit strenght?if the game works that way, as you say, well might as well have all your armies be all cavalry...

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Originally Posted by Redz " Preatorian Knights"

oh... one more thing, about the cavalry.... well i just charge a full stack spearmen, should it really do some damage on them i mean should my charge halves there unit strength?if the game works that way, as you say, well might as well have all your armies be all cavalry...

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Charging cavalry into spearmen, especially if they have their spears set, will just get your cav killed. You might get some of them, especially if yo have lances down, but after the initial charge you'll just be massacred.

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Originally Posted by Redz " Preatorian Knights"

oh... one more thing, about the cavalry.... well i just charge a full stack spearmen, should it really do some damage on them i mean should my charge halves there unit strenght?if the game works that way, as you say, well might as well have all your armies be all cavalry...

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That is a terrible move, best way to get your cav wiped out.

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Originally Posted by kitbogha

That is a terrible move, best way to get your cav wiped out.

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Yeah we're basically talking about the modern day equivalent of the following: Fire Team on the streets begins taking sniper fire from (it seems) building structure approximately 400 yards due north. Instead of finding cover, identifying the shots and attempting to flank the position...you just scream "charge" and send your entire unit running towards the assumed enemy position firing...running down the middle of the street on full auto fire. Naturally, several of your men will be swatted like flies immediately...but hey- One of them might get a pot shot off and kill the sniper right?

It's just...insanity :wall:

hmm cav into spears.. no thanks

Well, I'm a little over halfway through my first MTW2 campaign and I have had a really easy time with the English. I have only skimmed through the first few pages of this but I have found that I used a more unique strategy.

Since I am approaching my victory conditions already and have already vanquished or crippled all of the Western Euro factions, I must be doing something right, so here is my strategy (it was influenced highly by numerous RTW campaigns):

England is in a poor monetary state and would require years of effort and an inordinate amount of cash you don't have to develop into a trading superpower like Venice, however, you do have access to some powerful early game units such as longbows and mailed nights almost immediately and the council is more than happy to grant you decent military units for obeying their missions.

Basically, your first objective should be basic infrastructure development and rapid militarization (I became the most powerful nation within a few turns without even trying, I was just using my old RTW strat). Avoid war at all costs, but be sure to deny France control of the Atlantic and channel coasts as quickly as possible by capturing all available rebel settlements. (To prevent immediate war with France, I married my faction heir off to their princess which should buy you some time, but they still betrayed me eventually) Since your goal is to expand without ruffling other factions, or the pope's feathers, avoid war with Scotland as no matter how powerful they get, you can usually crush them in one turn when the time is ready (and its best to let them spend their own money developing Edinburgh before you take it from them).

YOUR ECONOMY WILL STAGNATE. Mine did for close to 20 turns, but your immense military power will be your crutch. Keep cranking out those feudal nights and longbowmen , sacking every settlement you capture to keep your head above water.

Eventually, what ends up happening once you become so powerful is that alliances start forming all around you and it becomes inevitable that the war will begin: Let it. Let them damage their own reputation with the pope and for every offense they deal you, take one of their cities to counterbalance. The pope will not view you as the aggressor. Obey the pope's every wish as it is critical to remain in his favor when using this strategy. Risking excommunication is risking death, even when everyone is already against you.

On the topic of war, France should be the first to betray you, and the HRE soon after that. Portugal, Spain, Denmark, and Milan soon dogpiled onto the *charlie foxtrot* within just a few turns, but as you are in the pope's favor (you remembered to do this right?), laugh as the pope excommunicates the hapless bastards and proudly declare open season on the enemies homefront. As you are a military behemoth at this point, a poor one but an immense one at that, you can use the money you gained from the conquests to begin developing your own homefront. It takes a little while to get it kick started, but once you do, you will become a trading superpower.

Focus your efforts not on defeating the enemy outright, but on reducing your fronts. Pushing France into the Mediterranean reduces your fronts to a manageable two, and from there you can isolate and annihilate your enemies with impunity.

Since the pope will start to hate you if you continue your pillage and burn strategy across Western Europe, focusing your new found economic wealth on the construction of Cathedrals and tributing the pope will keep him forever on your good side.

And one more thing, kill, kill, kill the enemies family members. There is no penalty from attacking French/Spanish/German/Danish/Portuguese/Milanese settlements that have suddenly gone rebel from lack of leadership. I have never had much luck with assassins, but knowing where to send your army to cause the most damage is a definite advantage.

Hope that helps somebody.

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all this talk about strategy... well for me it simple:
strategically:
1. sure you can make allies, especially the pope... but hell sooner or later you'll be at war with your own allies anyway so why bother? pope? its simple to play with the pope, stop when he tells you to, and resume your blood lust when the time expires, anyway it gives you time to regroup and restore your strength
2. go for the rebels? ha... those rebels are a mile away from my armies ....people!! attack the most usefull faction you know you would benefit the most, denmark or france to gain foothold on europe(maybe?)
3. wait wait wait.....

sorry guys, just finish fighting the poles here with heroic victory, had killed all there western armies and cut off 2 provinces with enveloping tactics...
well 'till later

oh... one more thing, about the cavalry.... well i just charge a full stack spearmen, should it really do some damage on them i mean should my charge halves there unit strenght?if the game works that way, as you say, well might as well have all your armies be all cavalry...

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Most of us dream about being Alexander the Great. You seem to be trying to emulate Joe Stalin! :dizzy2:

I won my first campaign in 180 turns as the English. I never attacked a Catholic faction that didn't attack me first, never sacked a Catholic city, stayed at 70% or better with the Pope the whole time, with provinces that very rarely showed anything but a green icon, and in all measures was the greatest faction through most of the game.

I suppose I could have cut a swath across the map and sacked and exterminated all before me...but why play a strategy game unless you intend to use...ummm...strategy? :clown:

Random Generic

Ha, ha!!! :laugh4:

But Stalin was far less astute. Exterminating all his own officers and causing starvation in main farming regions by forced collectives. Dismantling of buffer states in order to extend area controlled (Poland/Finland) at cost of huge losses, and giving the most dangerous enemy a free hand in west to avoid economic difficulties due to it's military buildup. Then trying forward defense, when even the Tsar's were bright enough to retreat and use time & space, stretching invaders supply lines.

So actually, re-reading it again, a certain Austrian Corporal who fought for the Kaiser in WWI seems a better fit; "hell sooner or later you'll be at war with your own allies" and "just finish fighting the poles here with heroic victory, had killed all there western armies and cut off 2 provinces with enveloping tactics..."

finally got my hands on the game (after a long while without a usable computer arragh)

Here's something i realize, when defending a seige. have a group of longbow man lay down stakes at the gate. that's just plain evil and completely eliminates the chances of the enemy bursting through your gates via a calvary charge (which they often likes to do. and they'll just impale their general on the stakes) and it also breaks up infantry formation and charge. leaving them easy prey for your own infantry.

also it's kinda silly that your own cavs charging through the stakes will be equally painful. are they THAT dumb?

anyway some basic thoughts on the English so far. it's pretty easy :P (granted I played all the series quiet extensively)

the paths are pretty obvious, your first stage is obviously to take the British isles while stalling the French. send your diplomate towards Rome ASAP. marry your daughter (or vice versa) to the Spanish / Portugal / Danes / HRE / which ever comes first.

take York immediately, seige Walsh if you don't have ballista and/or enough infantry at that stage. if they try to break out just steam roll over them with a massive calvary chage.

I sailed to Dublin and took it before the Scotts, I waited till I allied with the Pope and was somewhat builtup before I launched a surprised attack on them and finished them quickly before the Pope could intervene.

on the Continent I build up Caen a little and seiged Renne fairly early. in the early going it is worth while to wait out seiges if your not confident. with stone walls you could defend against most attacks with a decent mix of infantry and even the most vinilla archers as long as they don't bring along a significant amount of heavy infantry. take Burges if the French don't come knocking, they'll come soon enough. so might as well have 3 settlements where you could play hit and run with them.

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After securing the Isles with 3 settlements on the Continent your second stage is to expand into Europe . I noticed that Oslo and Arthurs were still rebel towns so I sailed two army over and took them. but I didn't attack any other Christian faction (the Danes still had Stockholm) ignor missions that ask you to attack settlements owned by neutral or ally factions. (unless you can fashion together some sort of diplomatic deal, unlikely though) my war with the French saw me taking seige after seige in the early stages while I was still trying to finish up the Isles and build up . but the French repeated tried to assault and repeated go slaughtered. as long as you can stake up the gates there's really not much to worry unless you got massively out numbered AND outclassed. I find that even a bunch of militas with a few Long bow sprinkled in is usually more than enough. the only thing you might need to worry is if they bring in heavy infantries on seige towers.


after reinforcement from the Isles arrived the war turned quickly and I scored a massive victory after taking Angers. the French then stalled me for awhile though VIA massive assasination waves. that was painful as I had just about every family member on the continent stabbed to death. OUCH. after a massive assasin / spy buildup of my own to counter that I finally made more progress, as the French were left with only 2 settlement it was me and Milan running the show. then Milan allied with the French and attacked me ... soon after they attacked the pope and got excommuicated ... helping me out big time as they got swarmed by Venice and Spain and Poland. they made a even dumber move by taking Rome. promptly having a crusade declared on it and my army is now crusading toward Rome, (one via land one via sea) and blowing away most towns before me)


I left the French one last town (Borduex) and called a cease fire with them after they broke up with Milan. I think it helps to have a buffer between me and Spain at this point. I figure to take as much of Milan as I could now and then build up for another Crusade to the Holy land to finish this campaign.


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a few quesiton though.

a. does having a lot of Priests in a region help against Inquistors?

b. does having Spies in your army / towns help against assasins' chances of killing your general like MTW and Shogun? or are they only good for spotting Assasins to send your own assasins against?

c. how do you get more cardinals promoted? just keep killing Heretics and Witches?

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Originally Posted by RollingWave

c. how do you get more cardinals promoted? just keep killing Heretics and Witches?

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Train a bunch of priests and send them to provinces with low amounts of Catholicism. This is harder for the English because there are no such provinces nearby. Your best bet is to ship your priests to either the Iberian peninsula and convert the Muslims, or to Stettin and start converting pagans.

Spies do help against assassins, and wen a cardinal dies, the pope apoinst the priest or bishop (these come from cathedrals) with highest piety for cardinal. Regardless of his nation(as long as it is catolick afcorse).

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Originally Posted by RollingWave

After securing the Isles with 3 settlements on the Continent your second stage is to expand into Europe .

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I might disagree. I leave the Scots be and follow the rest of your plan, taking Bruges for the final conquest of stage one on about turn 12 or 13. It seems to me that about this time a Crusade comes into being, I think the second stage is to conquer and secure the Holy Lands. It takes awhile to make it pay, but an aggressive campaign can reap huge rewards.

Not only is there some real economic advantages, the favor gained from the Pope can have real consequences. If you have 100% favor with the pope, and can maintain it, you can often goad one of the countries on the Continent to attack you and they will be excommunicated for a few turns. This is when having a few ballistas and heavy garrisons hanging about bear big fruit...In a few turns not only can Paris and Rheims be English soil but those recalicitrant Scots can be put out of their misery too, all while keeping your reputation sterling.

The added advantage of taking the Holy Lands early also come clear when the Mongols invade. Although I must admit, I usually abandon the Holy Lands if they are serious about taking them and invade the Byzantine provinces with the armies.

Random Generic

well I'm running into some challange now...

after taking Rome and taking much of Milan's land in a crusade. I gave Rome back to the Pope like he asked and I traded Milan back to .. well Milan and had them become a Vessal.. but then I screwed up and accidently tried to assinate one of their agents and the vassel broke (DOH)

then I asked for a Crusade. that wasn't hard as I sailed a elite army with my heir and took Jerusalem easily as there was no one defending. and then I realize i'm stuck in the middle of the enemy lands with no allies anywhere near and only 1 town and 1 army. (the Mongols overran Egypt at this point). I sallied out of Jerusalem and took Gaza (Which was citidal) in the hopes of retraining my troops, only to get the Mongols seiging it every single turn (immediately following it after i beat back one wave) and during one of the many assaulst i lost my heir... DOH!. (weird, i had all sorts of bonus on him for HP and he died in a melee against archer units... zzzzz ) after that i give up on this futile attempt and demolished what i could in Gaza (as i had in Jerusalem) and disbanded everyone.

Another reason is because that while doing this I did some Island hopping and took all the Islands west of Italy in hopes of buidling a launching pad to reinforce the middle east and perhaps strike into North Africa . Sicily was at war with the Pope and a lot of other Catholics (and was amazingly not excommunicated) so I figure i wasn't going to be a problem. but then Spain and Milan BOTH back stabbed me... great. ah well now I cut the losses in Middle east I can focus on re-establishing my authroity in Europe and wait till the next time I can call a Crusade.

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Originally Posted by RollingWave

a few quesiton though.

a. does having a lot of Priests in a region help against Inquistors?

b. does having Spies in your army / towns help against assasins' chances of killing your general like MTW and Shogun? or are they only good for spotting Assasins to send your own assasins against?

c. how do you get more cardinals promoted? just keep killing Heretics and Witches?

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a. No. The only hope against The Inquisition is to have high piety levels. These can be achieved through the old "burning squinty eyed old women as witches" route or converting the heathen in Orthodox/Muslim areas. Of course, the Inquisitors are maybe less likely to visit areas where the population has a high level of Catholics. It seems a fairly arbitrary thing, often Inquisition are launched when you p*** off the Pope, by not doing as he tells you.

b. Yes, I think so.

c. Yes, and of course the converting heathen thing always helps. A sneaky ploy I have used is to kill off opposition factions' Cardinals to make room for yours in the College of Cardinals.

I'll post a few thoughts about England and my early strategy.

- I only build roads before Henry comes of age (with the King in London as seems to help the traits he gets). I also build 1 or 2 levels of farms in Nottingham and Caen so I can get Longbowmen and Billmen for the expected France betrayal.

- I marry the Princess of France to my Hier as she's a 5 or 6 heart Princess. My heir then gets the stay at home trait (improves chances of children) which seems to give me the 4 children quite quickly which I want to keep the bloodlines going and arrive around the time i'm looking to expand past the UK isles.

- After York I go for the Scots extremely early looking to get all there male family involved, basically doing an assasination job on there family to turn Edinbrough into rebel if I can't take it. This removes the chance of the Pope giving you the Excommunication mission.

- I'm quite slow to build up early, prefering to run more units to capture the Isles. Spending 1200+ on Archery range for pesant archers (I don't like them with Longbowmen at the next level) or the same in Caen for Billmen isn't worth it for me early. Save the money for the town's you take.

- I tend to just Occupy most of the Isles and sometimes sack Edinbrough depending how I need money (have France attacked yet?).

- Once isles are secure i'll build up longbowmen, levy spearmen and a few Billmen and cavalry and look to go on the offensive in France (rebel prov's first). I'll save money using longbowmen and not training for above for a long time and go for Armoured Swordsmen in Caen as a priority.

- Roads -> Farms -> Port are priority for my Isle cities to aid movement and get pop+taxes up and trade. I leave markets for a long time.

- I tend to not storm a city directly unless its garrison is lacking, prefering to let them sally although I can't use the longbowmens ground pikes.




Some comments on early units and stacks:
- Levy Spearmen, I find I don't use them as much as Militia as you can leave militia for free in towns. I'm not if Levy Spearmen don't have the penalty that the Spear Militia have (didn't know till I read about it here) against infantry. I suspect they have the lower penalty of Town Militia but then have the vs cav bonus to be better than the militias.

- Longbowmen last me aggeesssss. They're a huge improvement over other archers and I find the following improvements are much smaller for the cost increase (of building and unit), longbowmen will dominate for a long time. With building Woodsman Guild (in Nottingham for me) they can be made even better. This allows me to build up my economy more and concentrate on going for Armoured Swordsmen in Caen.

- Billmen. I read a few posts here about them being poor, but the units they compare them against come at the following level. They're cheap and while die a lot compared to the spear units are useful early, especially with there charge. When used with longbowmen I like them because I hate micromanaging cavalry to make sure they don't spear themselves on pikes when attacking the rear of the enemy line.

- I used to use loads of cavalry (mainly because the missions gave me loads as reward) but have started to slim down to a max of 4 + general. The early cavalry is good enough for me so stables arn't a priority, fance usually have stables to use once captured. I prefer to load up on more archers and sword, with a few archers sacrificed for seige (catas or trebs) for city assaults.

- Spear units are lacking so I prefer to play quite defensive to use the Longbowmens ground pikes and sword units. I hire a lot of the spearmen from France once my economy is up and running.

My typical europe stack (not sure if good for crusades yet) is:
1x General
4x Cav
6x Longbowmen
9x Infantry.

Where Infantry early is mostly militia/spearmen with a couple of Billmen and once Armoured Swordsmen come along only 2 or 3 spearmen.

My basic battle plan is like Agincourt but with spearmen to protect the flanks and cavalry to harrass enemy archers and attempt flanking (beware of your own longbowmen pikes). With the longbowmen I try to force the enemy to attack me since with 6 of them i'll decimate there units before attacking if they sit there waiting for me but it seems to depend on the AI's attitude (seems like scots always attack while others sit back and wait). I like a couple of high attack AP units even if billmen to flank safely near the longbowmen pikes where cav would risk spearing themselves.

I like this stack as it works for seige battles where I will lose 3 units (archers/cav/inf depending on garrison of target) for art/trebs. Previously I loaded up on Cav and between them and archers it made seiges hard or a lot of unit changes rather than just 3 unit changes.



The main point I think that helps me is longbowmen and saving money not training up above them. Longbowmen are a big step up and the later versions are more like a small upgrade. Get longbowmen then concentrate on swords even if Nottingham (or whereever else you aim to get woodsmans guild) grows to next level.

Fairly standard I think but hope this helps someone.

on Mortar: I think it's probably the best well rounded artilery in the game, able to do everything fairly effectively. while they're not quiet as devastating as Culverins on the battlefield they are a little more reliable in

a. not shooting your own men to shreads

b. reliable regardless of angle / terrain

c. usable behind your men

as for Billman, the main gripe most people have is that they simply die like flies to too many things to be effective in most circustances. if they get shot at... they're dead... if they get charged. they're dead. if they fight most other infantries head on, they're dead. they only shine when the can fight without being seriously retaliated. (on walls, flanks .. engaged horsemans... etc..) unless you get several levels of armors on them they're just a very risky unit to rely on. the English roster weakness is usually against heavy horse armies, but the normal billman tends to die like flies if they recieved a charge even by lesser horsemans.

They're not completely useless of course, but given the relative situation I'd take a sergent spearman over them in that particular spot on the roster.

England is by far my favorite faction. It fits my campaign style (safe homelands with ability to get 'colonies') and battle style (archers.)

I've played the first 10 turns an absurd amount of times. I think I have finally hammered out a good early game strategy to set England up to do what ever you want in the middle game. There is a way to get the island fast (~10 turns) and keep your economy building.

Turn 1. Move diplomat towards Rome. Move merchant towards wine in Angers. Move Princess by east ship to Caen. Move west ship to the direct west sea spot from Caen. Move outside Caen stack, minus peasants, to ship. Move peasants to Caen. Move Caen castle stack, minus Robert, to ship. Move Robert next to ship, buy crossbow mercs, move Robert and mercs into ship. Move peasants in London towards Nottingham. Move King as far north as possible. Move town militia from London towards York. Move Nottingham troops towards York. Move spy up to Scotland to spot. Do whatever you want with cardinal (I put him in London). Move Rufus to York, buy crossbow mercs, take York, move as far north of York as possible. Buy basic economic buildings. Ports, roads, farms, ect...

Turn 2. Refuse offer from French Princess because you want your own Princess to get credit for the deal you will make. Accept offer from Scotland just for the heck of it. Move merchant to wine. Keep moving diplomat to Rome. Move Princess to French Princess and go for trade rights and map exchange first. Then go for marrying the French Princess to Rufus. Caen is now quite secure for decades. Move Princess on a diplomatic tour (I send her to Italy because there are 5 factions there). Move west ship towards Ireland. Move east ship towards York. Move peasants to Nottingham. Move town militia towards York. Move stack that came from Nottingham to Rufus. Move King to Rufus. Get Rufus as far north as possible. Use spy on cardinal or Scottish stack. Laugh as Iverness thrown 2nd Scottish stack back. Keep building economic and don't bother recruiting.

Turn 3. Move diplomat towards Rome and keep Princess on tour. Move west ship to Dublin port. Move Robert to Dublin and siege it. Move troops from ship to Robert. (the men tend not to have the MP to siege the village so I have Robert do it first.) Recruit crossbow merc and kern. Take Dublin. Move west ship next to Dublin. Move east ship next to Edinburgh/York border. Move King stack next to the ship. Move town militia into York. Keep the taxes high and economic buildings flowing. Don't recruit. Keep spy spying if he isn't dead yet.

Turn 4. Same moves with diplomat and Princess. (it's a long walk...) The Scottish situation should be as such: They should still have just Edinburgh, 1 stack on the English border, and men in their city. By now, they usually have moved men from the city into their one ship. This is good for you. Move King by east ship to Edinburgh. Take now empty east ship, and try to sink the Scottish ship full of troops. Move King to siege Edinburgh and build all the siege you can in one turn. Edinburgh should just have Scottish King and one spear. Keep spy spying if he isn't dead yet. You now have 2 choices with Robert. If Scotland is more powerful than what I mentioned, you can sent Robert to the west coast of Edinburgh. But if Scotland is in the situation I described, just sent Robert to Wales and build a ram and siegetowers for a couple turns. Have Robert buy a welsh spearman too.

Turn 5. Same moves with diplomat and Princess. (it's a really long walk...) Assault Edinburgh. Scotland is gone. The Scottish stack on the English border will go rebel. Move Rufus and most troops towards Iverness. Keep building siege towers for Caernorvon. Move ships back south to shuttle things to Caen later.

In 5 turns, you've just knocked Scotland out of the game. In a couple turns you'll have the last 2 provinces on the Isles. This is where you have choices. You can go full turtle and disband your whole army. Once the diplomat gets to Rome, you can bribe the Pope into giving you a Crusade. (Give him 1000 a turn until the Pope-o-meter is up to at least 8) That way you can send Robert and troops to Antioch with free upkeep. Disband your mercs. You can take the rebel settlements in France if you want. Go to North Africa. Go to rebel Scandinavia. The sky is the limit. In 10 turns or less you've taken all of the British Isles and have 8 provinces. I turn Iverness and Caernorvon to towns. You only need the 2 castles. You can easily fund a full stack of troops while keeping building steady in all provinces. Use that stack however you want.

Hope this guide helps. ~:cheers:

I don't know if this epic post go up but here it is.


Ok I breezed through England on M/M and H/H and now I am breezing through on VH/VH.

Here's my strat thats worked wonders.

Conquer Early Rebel Settlements: Rennes, York and Caernforn

On first few turns take rebel settlements Rennes, York and Caernaforn. Recruit men if you need to...no need to wait for ballistas at that early stage siege building will do just fine.

As far a Bruges and Antwerp - I leave them alone...Why? because the amount of armies there are too big and will result in a costly battle. Plus you get into it with the Danes or HRE early on as a result. Let someone else waste the armies and you'll take it from them after they build it up for you.

Diploamts: Alliances and Trade Rights with as many nations as possible
Money is the key to this game so you need to acquire as many trade rights and alliances as possible. Sure eventually they'll break down but get the trade money while you can.

Thus,on the first turn send a diplomat to the Scots - make an alliance. You'll betraying it soon enough but no need for a fight and it gives you trade income. Send a diplomat to the French...preferably your princess and get another alliance.

It is also important to build about 3 other diplomats. One is sent to the Ibeiran pennisula to forge at best an alliance...at worst trade rights with the Spanish, Portugese and Moors.

Send the second Diplomat to the Pope in Italy in order to forge at best alliances at worst trade rights with Milan, Venice Sicily and the Pope. Ultimately leave the Diplomat next to the Pope - use the diplomat to gift money (400-500 every so often) and map info to please him for your indescretions vs. other Catholics.

The third Diplomat goes east to forge at best an alliance and at worst trade rights with the HRE, Denmark, Russia, Polish, Bzyantines...you get the drift.

After taking Early Rebel Settlements: Eliminate the Scots - and the UK is yours.

Seriously the Scots should be out of the game by turn 10. After you take out Carnaforn and York you should have a big army sitting in York. The Scots if they are lucky will have taken Inverness, but in all likelihood will still have only Edinburgh. Send your army there and take it out. Any free standing Scot army will turn to rebels after its only territory falls. Now all you have you deal with is rebel settlements in Inverness and Dublin. **Note convert everything to cities but Nottingham for the cash.***

Now Onto Mainland Europe: Step 1 -The Key to defeating the French - Bordeux and Toulouse.

If you are moving aggresively under this strategy you should have a large army in Rennes and Caen should be building up inexpensive units - Levy Spearmen, Hobilars and Archers. ***Build Archery buildings in Caen and Nottingham ASAP - u want to get Longbowmen - a very effective unit.***

With the Units in Caen and Rennes send a big army down to Bordeux a fortress- it should be a Rebel settlement. Once you do that focus on Toulouse which is another fortress. If you get to Bordeux around this time the French in all likelihood will attack you. But if you take Toulouse...you will essentially cut off the french's ability to make military units. I think only Angers remains as a fortress for the French and with Caen, Bordeux and Toulouse at your disposal Angers will fall fairly easily. Once Angers is taken the French are only left with Cities and ERGO they are toast. Pick up the remain cash cows like Paris at your leisure.

The other advantage to Bordeux and Toulouse is it gives you control of the two militay outposts along to protect you against Portugal or Spain - whichever decides to turn. Hopefully they wont even bother to attack- but that unlikely. Those two fortresses gives you the military might to repell them.

Building a Financial Empire: Low Taxes, Build Trade Buildings, Ports and Ignore Merchants

Okay while you are slowly acquiring Fortresses in France. You should be building up you finincial centers. Markets, Ports and Roads are must for each city. Also set you taxes to low and only raise them if you know for a turn or two you need extra capitals to fund an army. Low taxes will get the cities to expand as soon as possible. Ignore buildings that worry about public order or happiness (except for the basic church) you can build them later and the low taxes is more than enough to keep people happy. The sooner you have good water trade...the more effective all your alliances and trade rights are.

A note on Merchants--- a total waste at 550 a pop the value is not worth trust me do land clearance for 600gs. It will serve you better in the end.

Spies - Are a wonderful resource build them and use them.

Talk about a good investment. This is the best early specialty unit in the game. They are essentially mobile watchtowers. I build a bunch and send them all over my bordering enemy's land because they will do two things. Act as watchtowers - you will see who is marching towards your cities many turns in advance in order to prepare for a counter attack. Second - once you decide to take out a enemy's city I flood several in before the attack in order to open the gates. Third you once you can build assassins te embedding spies dramatically increase the ability of an assassin to destroy their buildings like Ballista towers!

Strategery - How to take out the rest of Europe and ultimately the world.

The key is taking out the other countries fortresses and cutting off they're ability to develop military units. Like I described above with France..every country can be taken out the same way. For example the HRE in Bern and Stauffen. Once they can not attack you, you are more than prepred to go in and SACK their cities. (you get mad gold that way) Also don't ransom back prisoners...execute them. It gets rid of of their much needed armies and forces them to spend even more to recruit new soldiers. Also once you have cleared out a geographic area...like say the whole of france... feel free to convert those fortresses that are not along an enemies borders into cities. You wont need them to make soldiers anymore might as well convert them into cash cows.

Battle Strategy - My preferred battle stack

I am a huge advocate of artillery, archers basic infantry and light calvary.

My battlefield lineup would be

Cannon-Cannon -Cannon -Cannon
Arch -Arch-Arch-Arch-Arch-Arch
Spear-Spear-Spear-Spear-Spear
Calv.Calv Calv. Calv.

On a Battlefield I lead with my artillery and hammer down the opposing force followed closely behind by archers and then levy spearmen. If the enemy seeks to charge my archers are set to fire at will and will mow down their forces and ultimately caused them to hold their position and force them to be cannon fodder. If they continue to attack I send my infantry to take them out and pull back my artillery. More often then not, the enemy just chickens out and allows me to pepper them.

As for my cannons in order of preference I have them destroy 1) opposing artillery 2) enemy general/king 3) heavy infantry/spearmen and then artillery.

Once the cannons are done. I let the archers dump their remaining arrows on the enemy. Once their quivers are empty I send in the spearmen full assault with horses on 1 enemy unit at a time. The overwhelming force causes a quick rout. Once they rout the horses quickly capture them and I move onto the next enemy force.

***Note it is a great attack strat for the dreaded Mongols and Tims as well. Cannons and Archers are the key along with fast horsemen to track down routed armies.

I use mostly spearmen with a sprinkling of dismounted knights because of the high numbers ability agaisnt enemy calvary and low cost.

Defending a city

I use essetially the same lineup. With that many archers you place them along your walls and bring out your cannons and place them right along side the outside walls. Once again use you cannons to destroy them armies in the order I just suggested. Once again the archers will take out any charging armies. Once the artillery and archers are expended. Send in the infantry and horses...the enemy should be so decimated that they wont stand a chance.


Attacking a city.

Again same lineup. If you have at least 4 artillery you not only can easily pummel the front gate but also take out towers and a few walls. Unless it is a fortress I use up all the artillery to take out any forces standing in front of destroyed walls as a stop gap. I then send archers to take out the stragglers. If youve taken out the towers there should be no opposing fire for the archers to worry about. Then once again send in infantry and horses to clean up the rest of the mess.

***Note I do enjoy sieging a city until it falls. If I am not in any great need of money I'll use this tactics to slowly whittle down their army while preserving mine. Be mindful of other armies marching towards you to help their besieged city.****


Attacking the Milanese (i.e. Archer laded armies)

My aforementioned battleformula is perfect for them. Crossbowmen, while good, are no match for artilerry and will be shredded by a artillery/archer combo. Finally the best troops to rout them are calvary and if you send a pack of 4 calv after pounding with arrows and artillery the crossbowmen are no match. Honestly, they are my favorite/easiest types of stacks to fight against.

Giving them the Old' Jihad - How to destroy the Muslim world

Once you take over the whole of Europe they game is for all intents and purposes is over. You will control the majority of the wealthiest countries and you'll have money coming out the wazooo. So where do you go from here.

Step 1: Control the seas.

Build armadas (we're talking Carracks here) to destroy every Muslim factions ship and blockade their ports. (Obviously don't take them all out at once...try a faction at a time) But honestly the goal is to prevent them from doing any trade.

Step 2: Shock and awe

Once you control all their ports...you mobilize all of your bored military units who have no one to fight in Europe and load them on the extra armada ships you aren't using to blockade...Bring them over enmass (we're talk 4-5 stacks per city) to totally wipe out each coastal city.

***Note since one victory condition is Jerusalem...that is the city I focus on first. I control that sea area and then drop 4 stacks of guys right on the shore....GAME OVER***

Remember at this point it my be best to exterminate those cities rather than sack. Too many muslim inhabitants leads to mass revolts.

Step 3: Priest and Catherdrals lead to a Happy Christian World.

Dont underestimate preist and catherdrals and other public happiness buidlings in the Middle East and Africa. You'll need them because of the crazyt ideological difference. Have enough of them and there should not be any revolts.


Other issues: Taking out Timurid Elephants
Cannons - if you follow my formula you will have those things running amok in no time. All cannons should focus on the elephants first when battling the Timurids.


Survivng the Plague

When the Black Death hits whether its in one country or in the world wide event later in the game remember 4 things.

1. Stop Moving All Units - this just spreading the disease and making it worse

2. Put everyone into the cities - this is the best way to combat the spread and keep people healthy

3. Lower all the tax rates - it keeps people at max happiness

4. WAIT IT OUT - As the saying goes...this too shall pass...and it will. Usually when the black death hits I put everyone in the nearby castles/cities, clear all queues and keep hitting the end turn button until it passes. Once it end you will have lost lots of people (BUT so has everyone else) you will be in debt but after a few more end turns with NO building you'll be back in the black and making mad cash (since you wont have very much army upkeep costs) in no time.


Ok that should be my little manifesto...Happy Hunting Viva La England :2thumbsup:

Nice, but what about the Pope? Seriosly you will have to take verry good care of him if you want to go anywhare. I supoase that the only way to conguer all of western Europe before turn 60 is to make everybody enemys of the holly father and crusade them to oblivion. Been there, done that. I no longer find it funni, or chalenging. I like to conguer without crusades, it is way more fun. But seriosly if like to blitz that much why don't you join the blitzmaster chalenge. If you dare.

I've finally decided to start up and finish a campaign as England. I started off with your basic first moves. I sent my starting garrison and King in London plus a couple units from Nottingham to go and lay seige to Caernavon, sent my Prince and his army to take York and finally sent my last family member in Caen to go take Rennes. All fell with relatively little trouble by the time turn 5 rolled around.

By that time Scotland managed to nab Dublin so I decided it was time to eliminate the Scots before they became a thorn on my side. I sent my King from Caernavon by boat to Dublin and my Prince from York laid seige to Edinburgh. The remnants of the Scottish army attempted to lift the seige on Edinburgh but were defeated in a triumphant victory for Prince Rufus. The last Scottish stronghold in Dublin fell two turns later. The scots were now a matter of history and I had all but secured my new island stronghold. However by taking Dublin I had become excommunicated by the Pope. Oh well he shall be dead soon enough and I can use this to at least cripple the French before I go into turtle mode.

Henry has come of age and looks to be a very promising commander, so I decide to let him handle Inverness with a token force and send Prince Rufus down to the mainland to assist Robert in the destruction of the French. My king is getting old so I assign him to build watchtowers in the wild areas of my newly acquired lands. I have also teched up to longbows/billmen in Caen (turned Nottingham into a city after the Scots were defeated). I have prepared two seperate armies for the conquering of France.

These armies consist of 3 units of levy spears, 3 units of Hobilars, 3 units of Longbows and a general. My basic battle strategy is to use my Hobilars to harrass any French archers on the field, then let my Longbows have a field day with any French infantry on the field. The levy spears are there just a meat sheild for my Longbows and I use my Hobilars/General to swing around and decimate the enemy infantry from behind. My cavalry mops up and catches and routing enemies. I always execute any prisoners (get some dread for my Royal family).

Rufus and Robert are put at the head of these armies. Rufus heads south to Bourdaux via boat and Robert sits outside Angers waiting anxiously for word of Rufus' arrival outside Bourdaux. Rufus arrives and lays seige to Bourdaux and Robert also lay seige to Angers. Bourdaux falls with almost no resistance, Angers sallies but is trumped with minimal loses. Rufus moves on to Toulouse and slaughters Frances prince and one other family member. Robert Moves on to Paris and lays seige The new Frnech prince attempts to lift the siege but gets himself killed and the French king captured (King was in Paris). I execute the King and France is no more.

It's turn 21 and I have been excommunicated and also managed to eliminate the French and Scots. Henry has proven himself in northern England is now on his way to the mainland to command a proper army of his own. Rufus is now a 10 star general and Robert is 5 stars. My King is amazingly still alive, but who knows for how long. There are many rebels in what used to be France, but I will take them at my leisure. I have neglected all infrastucture in my cities and will turtle for a bit while I build up my cities. All settlements in England have been converted to towns, but I will keep Caen, Toulouse, Bourdaux and Angers all as castles for now.

There are only to forseeable things which may cripple me. I'm still excommunicated so there will undoubtedly be some people gunning for me soon (HRE, Spain, Milan) and they will have to be dealt with. Also, I guess since my royal family has been busy from the outset and hardly in a town they all have not gotten married yet. Henry is still young so I'm not worried about dying out, but my other two generals are approaching 40 and they have developed some traits I hope to pass on to offspring. Guess since I'm turtling now would be a good time to plop them in a city and hope they pop out a kid or two before they go sterile.

Hi. I'm at the early 14th C. now, playing England on VH/VH and hold British Isles, Scandnavia (inc. Denmark), Northern France (inc. Paris and Rheims) and the (nicely built up by the other factions') citadels of Bordeaux, Bern, Metz, Stettin, Hamburg and Nicosia. I'm at war soley with the Mongols, allied with Milan and Poland, have marriage links with France, Denmark, Poland, Russia and Hungary and have just had my fourth English pope elected in a row and have never been excommunicated. The only factions totally destroyed are the Scots and Portugese and I did everything I could to prevent that happening; I like playing against different styles of opponents (that's why I'm at war with the Mongols - to maintain the balance of power).

I play a combined form of turtling and blitzkrieg, using the turtle times to set up the right situation for successful blitzing that leaves me looking (and smelling) like the Good Guy. Duplicitousness seems to have been the key to English success historically, a means to punch well above one's weight.

Suggestions:

1. Ignore Caernarvon. The combination of walls, longbows and (to a lesser extent) mailed knights is one that, at best, will leave your island forces bogged down in a seige for some years, unable to respond to other situations that may develop, and at worst, leave your one proper army annihilated, along with your faction heir, Rufus. Take York on your first go and bring two cogs round Cornwall, to pick up your victorious York army off the coast of Lancashire to take Dublin! No walls and immediate access to those superb early war-winning flankers - Irish Kerns and Galloglaich.

2. Ignore Antwerp. This city is a poisoned chalice. In all my games so far the Scots make a beeline with their Big Stack for Antwerp. They're welcome to it. Everyone in Northern Europe wants Antwerp and will attempt to 'liberate' it for themselves turn, after turn, after turn. This ties up the Scots in a protracted war with the HRE and Danes, possibly also the French. Excommunications all round for them, trebles all round for you! Besides, Antwerp is just slightly more than a single turn's journey from Rouen (also known in the game as Caen) where most of your forces will be stationed for most of the turtling period and therefore just tantalisingly outside of the area you can dominate with a single army.

3. Bruges and Rennes are ideal additions to the glory of your throne, being within one turn distance of Rouen and trading well with London and York.

4. Get Rufus married to the French princess and get your own princess over to Denmark, married to their faction heir. You have to be quick with Denmark but a successful early alliance with Denmark will further isolate the Scots, threaten the HRE and encourage friendly relations with Poland. You can also expect some few thousand florins on tribute, maps and trade rights for these marriages. Denmark will now usually start a war within a few turns with the HRE and Scotland. :laugh4: An alliance with Milan is a Very Good Thing too as it will make the French think twice about kicking you off the continent.

5. Tech for Bows in Nottingham, Swords in Rouen, Trade in London, York, Rennes, Bruges and Dublin but only after building the first two levels of churches everywhere and spawning priests. This pleases the Holy Father no end and the sooner you can get to 100% Catholic the less likely you'll suffer at the hands of the Really Very Annoying Inquisition.

6. Now its time to take Caernarvon, protracted seige using Henry while Rufus collects together all those Peasant Archers and Priests and goes to cleanse his soul of sin using the most popular method historically, that is, with blood. To Jerusalem with you and the devil take the hindmost! I find that straight down eastern France, with spies checking for blocking units, to Marseille, picking up 4-6 of those fine Crusader Sergeants and a couple of units of Crusader Knights, buy all the boats you can, then off to Corsica, buy more boats, then Rome, more boats and a Great Cross, and down to Sicily, more boats should leave you with about 6 galleys and 2 cogs. Not a huge fleet but then, almost no-one has a huge fleet at this time. Leave enough room in your crusade for 2 Turkopoles, 2 Dismounted Knights and as many fanatics as you can get.

7. Build up nice little army of Nottingham trained Longbows (say 6-8), 2 Galloglaich and 3 Kerns stationed in Rouen. Save money by combining a strong fleet with Merchant Cavalry Militia stationed in London and stationing all your spears in your cities as free garrison units. This really is the key to salvaging your wretched early economy. Resist the temptation to train Mailed Knights.

I fought and a battle using 6 units of MCM against 6 units of Flemish Pikemen, no general on either side and won without any really losses. Breaking up their line by repeated pretend charges until one or two units start to plod slowly after you, then swarming each unit with 4 units of MCM does the trick. An attack of 6 is no worse than your own mighty spear militia, while 14 defence is miles better. Combine that with the mobilty of just being on horseback at all and that the units are pretty much FREE and you've got a fine fire-and-forget cavalry unit. I fired them at pike and lost 32 men total. On VH. That's a lesson I won't forget. Probably won't ever use them against real knights though.

3 units of Mailed Knights will gobble up nearly a grand a turn for doing exactly the same hanging around on street corners looking like a tough guy that Militia Cavalry will do for nothing. That's the same 900 florins that you could be spending on those longbows who really will do a good job of deterence.

8. While you are on crusade it is vital to build up your economy as much as possible. While on crusade you'll have that free army revenue bonus but the good times won't last and I've found myself limping home from the Holy Land, broke, bankrupt and with a huge fleet full of amazing but totally useless (at sea) Crusader Knights, Sergeants, Dismounteds and Turkopoles too many times, unable to buld anything at home. So, trade links with everyone. No offensive wars. If someone parks an army on your land, let them (except for rebels), if they seige a settlement, annihalate them, then sue for peace, seeking regular tribute and trade links. I prefer regular tribute to big cash settlements. It helps me to not spend big wads of cash all at once, on unnessesary stuff and it also gives you a clue how long before they'll be back.

9. Take Jerusalem. If there's a big Egyptian army nearby, crush it first. Sack Jerusalem and bask in the Pope's glory. Sell everything. Build a chapel, spawn a priest and then leave town immediately never to retrun. Move on to Tripoli. Repeat. You're a Grand Crusader and Christendom will turn a big blind eye to your youthful and over-exuberant shenanigans. Onwards to Ghaza. Repeat. Use the fanatics for all wall-based action. They want the Kingdom of God NOW? Their wish should be granted! If you've got enough time before a proper Egyptian army and navy turn up do the same to Damascus and Aleppo. Avoid getting entangled with the Turks. I behaved like a proper bad boy and ended up being known as Rufus the Honourable with a chivalry of 8. :laugh4:

10. By now the Egyptians will be very very upset and will be chasing you up and down the coast. Buy all the mercenary ships you can and go home, satisified at a bad job well done. I must have looted about 100,000 florins doing this, which pretty much enabled me to tech up to Yeomen and Armoureds, with Abbeys, City Halls and all that lovely trade stuff. Needless to say, all those priests, about 10 became cardinals, helped Bruge eventually become Theology Guild headquarters and led to the total domination of the Papacy thereafter

12. Take Cyprus or Rhodes on the way home. I took Cyprus; the Egyptians had invaded and taken it from the Byzantines and I heard the wine and climate are nice.

13. Nevertheless the Byzantines just ATTACKED me on the way home; for no real reason. I sought shelter on Crete and then, lo! the Scots had inneffectually attempted to take Brugesone time too many and been excommunicated at just the right moment to launch a second crusade.

14. Declared Rufus and the old crusade army for the new crusade against Edinburgh and skimmed past all enemy fleets like a fox in the night, zipping back to Corsica in record time and landing at Marseille just in time for the Pope to die and the Scots to be reconciled. I had taken Inverness in the meantime. Darn it! But at least this got me back home super quick.

15. Then the French to declared war on me, turning up in Bruges/Rouen with three full stacks and also sunk my fleet with the Great Cross on it (couldn't get it on-shore in time). Oh I was very very cross now. I had had plans to install that cross in the new Westminister Abbey as a Permanent Sign of Heaven's Favour to the Eternal Glory of my Throne, etc, etc. The French would pay. And with a 37 year old Englishman on the Papal Throne and an angry Grand Crusader as the new king, eager to avenge the loss of this Most Holy Relic which we had carried, Blessed by the Bishop of Rome himself, all the way to the Holy Land to liberate Jerusalem from the unbeliever, only to be lost forever in the Watery Deep thanks to the Vile and Treacherous French who Never Even Went On Crusade... ... You get the picture.

16. Took and sacked Marseille. My chivalry went up to ten. Trained two units of catapults and a diplomat and then gifted the city to Milan. Two of the three full stacks headed south. I demolished the other with purely missile fire. Rufus' Army of Divine Retribution headed full-speed for a full stack heading for Marseille, demolishing it and then the next and ha, ha, no big stacks left in France. So it was a logisiticly satisfying sweep to Toulouse, Bordeaux, Angers, Paris, Rheims, Metz and finally Dijon where Rufus personally killed the Demon King himself before offering terms to the new King of France (Bern only) which returned all of those territories in return for 4000 florins a turn, for twenty turns and trade rights. Needless to say I demilitarised all those settlements.

17. This left me, home, dry, with a massive load of ill-gotten gold, tribute, a fine army of battle-hardened crusader sergeants and knights and with the French impoverished and at least a generation behind me in military technology. A glass of good wine was called for.

Great story :2thumbsup:

Thanks! ~:cheers: I'll write an AAR .... one day. In the meantime, how did you do it - this awesome sounding Ten Thousand Horseman battle?

My approach as England to the problem that is the Mongols has been an army consisting of 16 units of Retinue Longbowmen, formed in to a very very early version of an English square with a general, two turkopoles and the great cross in the centre. I find that 3 longbow to a side, with a fourth augmenting the corner, set stakes and then withdraw the cornermen in to a second inner square does the trick against these wily nomad types.

Whether I'm on attack or defence I'll always set stakes. The Mongols will almost never attack outright, until I gently move the army outside of the stakes. Then it's a case of "And they're off..." and the hardest part of the battle is getting my square back inside the stakes very very slowly while the wild hordsemen gallop full tilt towards me.

Taking the bows off fire at will until the Mongols are to just beyond point blank range is always a bit of a laugh too.

I can usually count on losing 1/6th of my force for 5/6ths of theirs, which I find ... acceptable. With the great cross present I've never seen my bows anything less than eager. The Turkopoles are there to take out artillery and chase routers.

Interestingly, I've gotten better results from setting the square on the low ground. This may be because, given the amazing reach of retinues, almost all shots are straight.

For beginners and people on Easy/Easy:whip:
starting guide for FIRST TURN (Because I hate Easy):whip:
By now you should know you Start with London,Caen and Nottingham
Get Rufus to stay where he is on the first go (because the council give you a mission to take it on
the next couple of goes,and you get money or units.):yes:!!
Now you build roads in Nottingham and Caen to get trade:2thumbsup:
That's always good.
The 2 fleets with cogs need to combine together (ALWAYS TO THE ONE CLOSEST TO NORFOLK) or you kinda:skull::wall::furious3: So be careful,move Aston and Cecile your bishop and princess
onto the fleet and mover fleet to disembark them next to Bruges:yes:
Near Rennes you should have a Captain get him to lay siege to Rennes:hmg: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/image...s/misc/hmg.gif
:hmg:
Get Robert in Caen to join the captainhttps://forums.totalwar.org/vb/images/smilies/misc/brakelamp.gif
:brakelamp:
End your go and you have a good start

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by gNostic Heretic

Thanks! ~:cheers: I'll write an AAR .... one day. In the meantime, how did you do it - this awesome sounding Ten Thousand Horseman battle?

---

The Mongols always stick together when on the march. I Simply set up my stacks (I actually had four but the last one was too far away) so that three of my stacks were fighting against three of them. There was a lot of lag and I had only one goal and that was to kill the Mongol generals. I actually never expected to win that easy. It was a lot of fun.

Hello, first post on these forums. Have played a few of the total war series over the years but never really played 'seriously'. Have dabbled in the campaign mode but mainly just messed about with all the different units in custom battles.

Reinstalled Medieval II yesterday and am trying to have a proper go at the English Campaign... Have had a little read of various tips but am mainly winging it and hoping for the best.. Will give you a run down of what I'm doing and hopefully some of you can tell me if I'm doing ok or have gone horribly wrong and perhaps offer advice to set me on the path to glory.

First of all I should say my campaign is set up as follows...English Campaign. Medium/Medium difficulty... perhaps should've tried easy first but I feel like if i'm not playing any game on at least normal/medium or equivalent then am not playing the game as intended thus spoiling it for me. Other campaign options are set as... Long Campaign rules, Tell Me everything for the help option, Manage All Cities, Show AI turns and No Battle Time limit (this was unchecked but I can't imagine an hour of battle passing or whatever and the generals saying ok full time, we enjoyed killing you today, time to go home.. doesn't really sit well does it?) Oh and am patched up to v1.3 if that makes any difference. /shrug

I'm onto turn 5 at the moment and this is how I've gone about the business of world domination...

I have trade rights with france and scotland, am allied with france and just married princess cecilia to the french faction heir pushing our relations up to very good.

Prince Rufus has successfully besieged and taken York without venturing to the battle map, the rebels gave up without issue after 2 turns. Have set York to low taxes to encourage population growth and to aid this have built land clearance, income from here is 665. Yorks army is Prince Rufus, x2 Peasant Archers, x2 Spear Militia, x1 Mercenary Crossbowmen and x2 Welsh Spearmen (Mercenaries.) The scots have disembarked a sizeable military force just off the coast near York, sabre rattling I guess.


Down in Nottingham I have constructed Land Clearance, Dirt Roads and am currently building a bowyer and training up a unit of Hobilars to add to the tiny miltary presence there. Only have x1 Peasant Archers, x2 Spear Militia and x1 Hobilars there right now. Nottingham currently has an income of 824.


Moving further down to the capital London, I've built a market and am midway constructing Mines to add to the 973 income. Guarding the capital is a force comprising of King William, x1 Peasants, x1 Town Militia and x2 Spear Militia.


Across the channel in Normandy, Caen has x2 Spear Militia and x1 Peasants defending it... not the ideal defensive force. Caen has an income of 735 and have so far built Land Clearance and Roads. A small 2 unit french army is hovering outside Caen, we're allied so I'm not too threatened... I have the option

Finally, the army that should be back protecting our castle at Caen is over to the west, manning a siege of Rennes. Robert is in command here, his troops are... x1 Hobilars, x2 Peasant Archers, x3 Spear Militia, x1 Levy Spearman and x1 Peasants.

My empires coffers are fairly low, 1449 gold with a projected 2215 gold next turn.

...and thats the lay of the land as of turn 5 or the summer of 1088.


So what do you think? Things going ok? Or am I leaving places such as Caen far too vulnerable? Any advice, suggestions, comments, anything welcome... Really trying to get a decent grasp of campaign gameplay this time round... can tell theres a good game in here if I can just get used to playing more strategically. Thanks for reading, I know I went on a bit.

Welcome to the Org, Rocksaw! :2thumbsup: Good steady start there. No, you didn't go on too much. May I suggest Dublin for your Yorkist army. Bring your fleet round to the north of Wales (where Liverpool would be now) and board the York army. Meanwhile bring your troops up from Nottingham to secure York. Dublin has no walls, however it does have Galloglaich and Kerns aplenty. The key to this day's battle will be your archers.

If you can bring your whole army round to the other side of the town where there is an entrance flanked on the left by a small hill and farmstead and set your archers up on that to shoot through the gaps in the buildings and put your spear across the entrance backed up by your cavalry you'll be able to pull one unit out of the town at a time.

If you're feeling adventurous repeatedly charge your general into the kerns from the original entrance point for extra valour points and bravery traits while bringing your army round the town.

Dublin's a fine money-spinner and the local mercenaries are my favourites. If you put a unit each of kerns and galloglaich on your flanks and use them in combination like flanking legionaries you'll soon see the benefit: kerns sling javelins into the back of the main enemy line while it is engaged with your spear wall, then in come the galloglaich! Prefer this combination to cavalry. Robin Hoods (Sherwood Foresters) and DEK's make an execellent high period replacement for this flanking style.

Avoid the temptation to take Antwerp. There is no easier way to make enemies of all your immediate neighbours than to take this town.

One of the great things about England is that it is an island. :wall: Dur, obviously! One of the annoying things about merchants is that they cost 550 florins to recruit, you send 'em off to get some of that fine wine or iron on the continent and next turn or so they get aquired by enemy merchants. Not much return for your investment. The tin mines of Cornwall, the silver mines of Ireland and Northumbria and the wool of Mercia are great training locales for your merchants, giving them the experience points necessary to survive the cut and thrust of European business.

Hope this was of some good use. Here's strength to your sword-arm!:duel:

Yes, it will be very helpful! I've since restarted, and now plan on restarting again. Each time I'm learning a little more about what and what not to do. I like the fact you've given me some military tactics and units to recruit, thanks.

My main issue is mustering effective armies, they somehow end up being ragtag useless forces of basic militia and freebie knights. Really struggle with that and what buildings to add to my settlements and castles. I read about building economic buildings first, but even still I always seem to have low funds to build up armies.

Have been looking for a step by step hand holding guide but can't seem to find one.. oh well, hopefully third time lucky. Shall run a pretty much carbon copy of what I was doing up to my post above and employ the tactics you gave and see how I get on.

Welcome Rocksaw,
I think you're doing ok the way you're going. The key seems to be periods of expansion tempered by periods of consolidation-the trick is knowing when to do which one!
Unit composition choices are always personal so you need to find out what works best for you (you could try out a few custom battles to do this).
I find that a forward line of archers/skirmishers backed by spearmen/heavy infantry and flanked by heavy cavalry and backed up by light cavalry (they can be sent in to round up routing units) works best for me. The english longbowmen unit is one of the best in the game and has the great advantage of being able to plant a line of stakes in front of them to deter enemy cavalry charges. I remember dispatching almost a whole army of Mongols by this method once. Tech up the archery buildings in Nottingham to get them. A sneaky trick is to set them up with their stakes where you feel you might be outflanked then on starting the battle move your archers to where you really want them, leaving their stakes behind as added defenses (if being sieged you can even set up the stakes directly behind your main gate (or wherever you feel the wall will be breached)and watch the enemy cavalry rip themselves to shreds as they storm in!).
Also, some of your basic units (levy spearmen, mailed knights etc) will retain their usefulness even when better (and more expensive) troops become available so don't feel the need to replace everything when you get the chance.
Use your militia troops to garrison your settlements and your best troops for the main battles.
Try to keep a good balance of castles to cities, I find a 1:5 ratio works well. Once you command the whole British Isles you can even do away with all the castles there-cities are your money makers.
Another small point:alliances. Get one with the Pope and play him for all you're worth. Cosy in nice and be popular with him (keep giving him map info and if need be small gifts of money) and you get to call the shots on where crusades happen-i.e. against your enemies! If you are crusading you get access to lots of good troops which stick around even after the crusade finishes. In a game, playing as Sicily I managed to call all of the crusades for the enitire game. It's a self reinforcing thing as well, when you successfully crusade, your popularity with the Pope goes up making it easier to call the next one.
Having played as all the factions I think that England is the most fun, so good luck, go and stick it to them!!!

Greetings.

Playing as England, I took some sage advice from previous posters and turned Carnaevon & Inverness into cities for trade purposes (and also because they're a bit out of the way to ferry troops when quick action is needed). I kept Nottingham as my bowman center, which worked out extremely well. I used Caen as my infantry factory, which was similarly successful.

Now, the rub: After turn 50 or so, when diplomacy began to turn to insanity on some other nations' parts, I felt a bit lacking in cavalry. After early crusading I had gained a Hospitalier Major Guild House in Caen, but with that also being for infantry, the castle is in a bit of a crunch when I need lots of troops for a new army.

I'd appreciate some advice about what to change; I did not turn any cities (Bruges, Rennes, etc.) into castles. Should I try to entice France to swap me Angers, or would that only make them angry? Is there a continental city that would be ideal for castle-izing?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and comments.

When you need another castle, you always want to convert the province that will result in the smallest income loss. Thus you want to look for a province that is a) poor for farming and b) inland. Most of the french provinces are fairly fertile IIRC, so you will want to find one that has no port so you won't lose out on sea trade. asngers would do nicely if you can get it.

I've played three England campaigns. In every one of them I've wound up at war with the French, and never by my own aggression. So, I've always made Angers into a castle after I captured it, and switched Caen to a city.

Honestly I hate having nottingham as a castle. It makes way too much money to keep it as a castle.

Same for Caen. I hate keeping Caen a castle. Well, what castles do I have?

Here is my opening moves for the isles:

1) Take York and Caernarvon. Move a ship towards the landbridge that connects Ireland with the rest of the island. Wait for the single scottish stack to cross it then block it with your ship.

2) With the majority of their forces doomed in Ireland, wipe out the scottish. When that's done, use a navy to ferry your troops to Dublin and capture it. At this point the scottish shuld be wiped out due to having no castles/generals, or even if they captured doublin they should have suffered losses and should pose no trouble.

^ All of the above should be done in 6~10 turns, depending on scottish movement.
While the scots are being mopped up, a diplomat/princess should:

1) Ask for Angers while giving trade rights, alliance, map info and maybe some florins.
They should budge after some negotiations.

2) The other should run to Rome to pay the pope.

If the French are allies, where shuld we expand?

Go Scandinavia. Secure Florence, Bruges, and skip hamburg (this will be buffer for HRE and you if the Danish took it), and take Oslo, Arhus, and Stockholm. Blockcade the land bridge from denmark to Scandinavia to avoid nasty surprises.

Now you control all of the northern seas from British Isles to the Balic. This should bring you enough cash to simply overrun everything with spammed armoured swords/longbows/mailed knights.

Sooner or later the Spanish/Portugese will siege either Rennes/Dublin/Caernarvon. Have a stack or 2 around to repel them. If the French are at heavy war with HRE and lacks the military power to backstab, you can forget the French and actually go to Iberia.

Basically, my strategy involves following a costal trade path. The trade from costal cities more than make up for garrison and tax losses due to having a stretched-out empire. B

I started a new campaign today and did a few things differently than previously.

I'm with the Nottingham should be a city crowd. Basically I go to secure the uk isles ASAP, typically Scotland is gone well before turn 10 (turn 6,7 or 8). Once they're gone its just seiges which archers and cavalry don't help a great deal with so what is the point in a castle instead of just a city and using militia and mercs.... no point in my eyes. I get what I can in the first couple of turns (cavalry) then switch it to a city.

My understanding on how to train generals/governers is better. After the starting king died around turn 25 I have 3 generals. The current king and hier are high chivalry through occupying the scotland+ireland cities with one general and the other through pumping out church+priests thats also gave him good piety, this should hopefully make for good governor sons. They also have 6+ stars since they've been fighting lots but they'll get retired when the sons come of age. My 3rd general is Henry, the youngest and already a high dread+command leader who's razed a rebel cities and 3 of Frances cities. I've avoided many of the bad traiting i've picked up in previous games through understanding the tax levels+happyness combinations and such.

Previously my diplomacy was limited to trade rights and map trades, plus the obvious money gifts to the pope to keep him sweet. I've decided to put more effort into keeping allies happy, previously i've just thought "why pay them when they're going to double cross me, put the money towards an army and :smash: them" but i've only got 3 generals currently spread thin with France being such a big landmass and I hate armies going rebel so won't move armies without a general. Currently i've been keeping Denmark sweet since sending my first princess to form a marrage alliance. By the time they came to Antwerp (i think, near bruges) I had secured the uk isles and had my economy going so I trained a diplomat to send specifically to them so I can bung them the occational 1k or 2k when our relationship drops. I've kept it above So-So and they haven't double crossed me yet allowing me to concentrate on finishing France and keep another to cover HRE and the Milanesse.


The best tip I can give is ignore the pope while your first king is alive. I got excommunicated for keeping attacking France, I was able to take 4 French cities before my king died and I got re-communicated (I think thats what its called) and bunged the pope a few k and was well in his good books. I've taken another french city before getting that "pope wants you to stop attacking so and so" leaving them with 2 cities until I can attack again. The turn he typically dies is the mid 20's so starting a war or if they betray you in the late teen's, take as much as you can get. :smash: I think i'll take advantage of getting re-communicated when the king dies more, when my prince is ready to lead, keep attacking then when done with that offensive suicide the king into something and get recommunicated :2thumbsup:.

Playing M/M campaign on 1.0 vanilla, 2 years per turn.

My experience with the English indicates that southward expansion will be your primary game. Your secondary game will be against to the east, against the Danes. This is geared toward a North Sea trade triangle (the North Sea is the water between the British Isles, Denmark/Jutland, Scandinavia, and the Flemish provinces), which should prove incredibly lucrative, probably almost as much as the Italian trade triangles in the Mediterranean. Key settlements to aim for should be Edinburgh, Antwerp, Bruges, Oslo, and Arhus, all port cities on the North Sea. Key castles for me would be Tolouse for southern units production against the Italians and Iberians, Caen for the Woodsman's guild and the initial fight against the French (later the Milanese and the HRE), Hamburg for the HRE and defense of Denmark and the Flemish provinces, and Nottingham for the initial attack on Denmark (and maybe a cavalry factory later on).

Like most people, I first unified the British Isles. It is possible to defeat Scotland with assassins, since they have all of about 3 generals, none of which are very concerned with personal security. However, this way is risky as you need all the money you can get in the beginning. Take York quickly for the mission bonuses and upgrade to a town, in the meantime going for Edinburgh. If you do so fairly quickly the Scots will not even get to Inverness. A problem with this plan is that (at least in 1.0) the Scots have a fairly large starting stack of archers and infantry that probably outnumber you. So use that spy! It is essential to take Edinburgh the moment you siege it, otherwise you'll be facing a stack of infantry that will rip your militia apart. Your only choices to defeat these infantry are your cavalry, which are few are far between and will take heavy damages from those Scottish spears. Taking Edinburgh will force the Scottish stacks to become rebels for you to deal with at your leisure (I tend to use the rebel generals to train my best assassins). After Edinburgh, you can go for Caernavon and Inverness, both of which should become cities (even Nottingham is way more than enough for the Isles). Try not to use up too many men against the Scots and the rebels, as Dublin tends to be a nasty battle for me (those Galloglaichs are definitely one of the most annoying units to fight against in towns - they massacre your units with their superior attack, AP, and ability to overwhelm your units in tight areas). Ireland tends to be a good place to train up your Cardinal, plus there's a heretic to get you an extra piety point. Once your conquest of the British Isles is over, build up those towns quickly. Edinburgh and London tend to get problems with overpopulation and squalor since your funds are often too low to recruit and build walls at the same time, but for now you have an excellent economic base. Build up Nottingham to produce better units, both for against the rebels and for your future conquest of the Danes.

In the south, you have Caen. Caen is an excellently positioned castle, between several rebel settlements and upgraded quite well when you start. Your immediate priority is to recruit longbows. Remember that longbows are an excellent defensive unit during sieges - leaving about 3 or 4 in Caen, plus maybe a few spears, will render it invincible to French attack. I tried going for Bruges and Antwerp, but the superior Flemish units easily repelled me (those Flemish pikes especially - the Netherlands would have made an amazingly powerful faction had they been a contending faction in the era, just like the Swiss with their pikes). So don't go for the Flemish provinces yet, instead, go for Rennes. It's a fairly small town and easy to take, take it mostly for extra cash and maybe a ballista production center. Bordeaux should be your next target if the French don't have it. Keep it a castle only long enough to retrain your cavalry, then change it to a town. By now the French have attacked you, unless you got an alliance in early, in which case they will do so in a few turns. I believe Angers begins as a rebel settlement - take it after Bordeaux if it is, after the French declare war if they've taken it. Use it with Caen to produce longbows for now, turn it into a city later on. Don't bother with military upgrades for Angers, go with economic and religious buildings.

Here I went for a blitz against France. Since Milan was occupying their attention to the east, I had a bit of time to build up. I made 4 10 or more stack armies of longbows/yeomen, mailed knights (I had no proper stables upgrades for feudals in Caen), and maybe some levy spears or billmen (only for siege or river crossing purposes). I also trained some 4 or 5 spies and set them loose in Northern France, putting them into Dijon and Paris. I sent my ballistae and catapults also to Dijon and Rheims and down south to Tolouse. I gathered the stacks within walking distance of each settlement, and when the moment was ripe, I struck. Clear victories for every battle, 3 new cities and a castle, and the French were pretty much done for (the Pope threatened excommunication so I didn't go for Marseille, which had a full garrison anyway). Tolouse I kept as a castle to protect my Pyrenees frontier and to produce cavalry for a Horse Breeder's guild. I could probably go attack the Danes now, or secure Antwerp and Bruges (they might still be French, maybe Milanese). Antwerp and Bruges is probably a very good idea for the massive trade boost, plus the Danes tend to be extremely weak without those cities (with them, or even with just Antwerp, the Danes tend to be a very strong faction - it happens in some campaigns I play). Hamburg will be my first target, to pretty much destroy the Danes' military potential, gain a very well upgraded castle/fortress (I might be able to train English Knights, or the dismounted version), and threaten the Poles and the HRE. Use the force from the assault on Dublin and your units from Nottingham.

As things stand, the French are pretty much out of the game and don't require much consideration (they'll probably die out to Milan in the end). I am bordering Milan and the Portuguese. The Portuguese tend not to be a problem - the Iberian map is pretty much the same as the beginning of the game, with the Portuguese moving around a few settlements and losing them to the Spanish. I could easily attack now, but I prefer to spend my florins on eastward expansion (the Iberian Peninsula, in my opinion, just isn't worth the investment and will only be good for training cardinals). Milan will likely be a strong opponent. However, the Genoese crossbows and their militia counterparts are nowhere near as flexible as my longbows, yeomen, retinues, and sherwoods - none of them can deploy stakes, so they're vulnerable to cavalry, they run slower, making them less effective skirmishers, and they can't fire flaming arrows (which I believe are more deadly, but fire slower). They may have a stronger missile attack, but they reload a lot slower (I think half as fast), and in melee combat the longbows (especially the higher level ones) will prevail. Their strong militia may be a problem, but they will fall to the passive ai bug and my missile dominance. The Milanese tend not to use a lot of cavalry, if any, so I believe fighting them will be fairly easy. The Danes are infantry-dominant as well, and do not have long range missiles, so they will be easily defeated as well (I could probably beat them with a full stack longbow army). The HRE may be a problem due to their numerous cavalry and masses of infantry, but again, stakes and missiles. Always use the mountains for terrain advantages. Their units may be very heavy and strong, but suffer in speed as a consequence, so wear them down with steep slopes and AP arrow fire. One the HRE are done with, I could descend into Italy or expand into Poland, which may be a problem because of their horse archers, but they lack long range missiles so I could kill them off from a distance.

Now for the Papacy. Aston, your cardinal, has a very good chance of getting into the Pope's seat. I normally see two heretics in the British Isles and Ireland near the beginning of the game. You may want to keep the heretic in Ireland there for a while to build up heresy and use it to gain a few piety points. Aside from these, it may be difficult to gain piety. Since York and Nottingham seem to be centers of heresy, I use them to get Aston more points. One thing I do is train priests, preferably with 1 piety and maybe the odd habits line of traits, and use them to try and denounce the heretics. Quite often, they will fail, either becoming heretics themselves or gaining unorthodoxy and falling to heresy the second time around. Use Aston or a priest you're training up to denounce them.

A secret to the Papacy is that gaining cardinals is not always the best way to control it. As England you have very little opportunity to convert large masses to Catholicism. What you should do instead is expand. Aggressive expansion nets you large power and wealth ratings, and factions are always willing to align themselves with the most powerful of them all. Take all of the British Isles and quite a bit of France before Gregory dies, and you'll have a "Supreme" power rating in diplomacy. Use it when Papal elections come up to secure trade rights, map information, and most of all, alliances. Factions will vote for cardinals using the following priorities: Their own cardinals first, allied cardinals second, and most piety third, with eligibility, violence, purity, and unorthodoxy coming in if there is a tie for piety. So securing those alliances will net you the votes you need. As for map information, most factions will find simple alliance to be very generous of you, so get yourself an accurate overview of the state of things in Europe. Note: Don't bother with ceasefires in Papal elections, they won't vote for you no matter what you do by then.

Whew, that was long. Have fun!

I took a different route towards winning and took out the Scots first and then crusaded into the Holy Land, setting up kind of a crusaders kingdom there... Beat the Egyptians out of Jerusalem, Acre, Gaza, Antiochia and Alexandria and then made them my Vassals. I now turned on the Danes without any problems with the Pope since they are massive bad guys in this campaign and are permanently excommunicated... I mean when theres a new Pope everyone's reconciled but it only takes 1-2 turns and they're out again ^^

So I allied with the French in the beginning. I sold Caen to them so I had no problems at all with them and they and the Spanish are my allies for the whole campaign until now... The Portuguese declared war on me once but the Spanish have kept them off ma back pretty good and the French are a little weakened through the Portuguese and Milan but since Milan has been destroyed by the Pope (!) there is no direct danger to them... so with England pretty safe and a healthy crusader kingdom (gave the egypts a good amount of money to 1. make them happy and 2. make sure they can defend against the Venetians who conquered the gigantic african province and are trying to attack Cairo every once in a while - the Turks arent allies but I never had war with them and the relations are pretty good so I call it a lasting peace...) I am taking out the Danes now and we'll see what`s next... Probably the HRE, since they are pretty low on Papal standing and I try to be the nice catholic guy this time...

I did what everybody else seems to have done, i conquered most of the British isles, and eliminated the the Scots before they had time to expand. I then turned my attention to France and the Holy Lands. Just as i was about to declare war on France, as i had a decent foothold, i had taken Bruges, Rennes and i still had Cannes, a crusade was called on Jerusalem. I decided to divert my faction heir to this, as sent him on a boat down to southern france - northern spain, where i hopped over to the mediterreanen and got another boat to take my soldiers to Jerusalem. Here is what i did:

1. I went everywhere but Jerusalem, i took of Acre, Alexandria, Cairo and any other Egyptian provinces with my crusading army. By the time i took Jerusalem, i had completely got rid of the Egyptians. Not liking large multi-national empires, i executed the population of the cities and destroyed all buildings worth money before gifting them to the papal states.

2. I then used my crusading army and pretty much destroyed all other forces, causing huge losses to many Muslim nations, such as Turkey and Byzantine, although i didnt bother with the Moors.

When i had pretty much wasted all of my crusading troops, i had made around 30000 gold from extermiating the cities and handing them over to the papal states, i returned my faction heir to England, the crusades had toughened him up sufficiently to become the next king of England.

I then concentrated on France, rushing down and quickly securing Angers and letting the French invasion forces waste their armies trying to regain their lost city. From there I am planning on rushing into Paris and down to Bordeux and then an Eastern Expansion into Switzerland, Germany and Italy.

Alerion, How did you manage to avoid losing your Crusading army to desertion if you did everything BUT head straight for Jerusalem?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by boudica

Alerion, How did you manage to avoid losing your Crusading army to desertion if you did everything BUT head straight for Jerusalem?

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Sorry! that question was for Insane834!

Boudica, if you get there quick enough, then you can have some time to wander over to your crusade target. Also desertion isnt really a big problem, i bought the soldiers for around 100 florins, and the money you save because of the free upkeep is sufficient enough to buy more soldiers while the others desert. Also if you bring seige equipment with you, such as ballistas or catapults, you can quickly seige a city in 1 turn, so there isnt much chance of desertion.

For the rest of my England campaign, i was playing all of last night and a little this morning so ill tell you what happened next:

After taking Bruges, Rennes and keeping Cannes, I waited a while and built up a few armies to defend my fronts. The French attacked Rennes and i beat them back and took Paris and then a few turns later the city to its east. I then created two armies and sent one down to Bordeaux, and the other to capture Antwerp. At this point the French had lost much land, as HRE and Milan and Venice had been attacking them too, they were beaten back to a town in central France, south east of Bordeaux that i have forgotten the name of. The Pope then ordered me to stop advancing on the French or I might be excommunicated, so i did.

On my other front on Antwerp, the Danes came down and made a bold attempt to capture Antwerp, which failed and i rushed north and captured the two Danish settlements north of Antwerp. I then had the pope call a crusade on the Danes, on a minor city, and made a crusading army and instead of going to the objective, i rushed into Arhus and took it, along with the Danish settlement south of it. The pope again spoiled my fun by making me stop attacking Danes, so i used my gained gold and bought Madgeburg for 25,000 florins.

I then had a few problems with the HRE when they brought several large armies and attacked of my settlements, which i fought back. This is where I am now, I plan to Eliminate the French, Danes and Romans before moving down and destroying Venice who oddly declared war on me earlier for no apparent reason. The Gunpowder age has just started, with cannons being available for purchase. However I am the only one who has mastered them yet it seems, as many of my enemies are still fighting with spearmen, and are just starting to bring in some Heavy Infantry.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Insane834

2. I then used my crusading army and pretty much destroyed all other forces, causing huge losses to many Muslim nations, such as Turkey and Byzantine, although i didnt bother with the Moors.

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You do realize there are other religions than Catholicism and Islam, right? ;)

Other than that, sounds like an interesting campaign, though the lack of your opponents advancing in technology makes me ask: Which difficulty?

I did it on Medium/Medium although on my next campaign I plan to raise the battle difficulty as it is getting tedious killing 1000's of men and hardly losing any of my soldiers. The Black Death has just spread in my campaign, just as I conquered all of France too...

You should really try to also raise the campaign diff. - I dont have the game for too long but I got bored quickly with lower campaign difficulties, since the opponents seem to stagnate in everything... Your dominance on the battlefield could easily also come from your opponents fielding levies while you run into them with english knights, retinue longbowmen and armored swordsmen ;)

A good point, I might just do that because I stupidly saved over my England Campaign...:oops:
Yeah so ill try a different faction on raised battle difficulty/campaign difficulty and see how it turns out. Maybe a different faction too, the HRE sounds good

Another Tip:

If you start to conquer, dont stop! I had numero uno in every ranking thing, then I stopped to build up my forces and I was betrayed by 5 of my allys at the same time. Denmark hit Antwerp and Rheims, France attacked Dijon, Milan went for Angers, The Moors attacked my lone city of Tunis, and Egypt attacked Jerusalem and Acre. Also the Mongols came and took over whatever the Egyptians managed to take from me. If I hadn't of stopped I would have destroyed the French and the Danes would be next, now I'm going to have to bring my soldiers together from Africa and assault southern France and Italy to get my economic stability back.

I've found that as well. In my 2 attempted English campaigns so far,in the first one I was unable to secure a marriage alliance with the french early,so they attacked Caen,and were beaten back with heavy losses,due to the 8 units of longbowmen I had in there.Then Denmark launched a series of attacks against Bruges,forcing me to rush my longbow army up there via ship to deal with them,and Portugual decided that they wanted Dublin,forcing me to hire every merc in the area to repulse them.After I defeated them 3 times they switched to Caernorvon,again forcing me to hire mercs to deal with the stack of Dis feudal Knights they had. Then the spanish decided they wanted REnnes and landed a full-stack army there,against forcing me to ship my longbow army back to deal with them,shortly after that I started over as I could see that I wasn't going to get anywhere.

In my next go, I managed to secure a marrange allaince with the French,but while I was moping up the scots,the HRE decided that they wanted rennes and turned up with a full-stack army,which seeoing that I had just transferred everything to dublin as the last scot king had a 1,500 army which I needed to deal with,pretty much screwed me over.

Yeah I know it sucks when your hit by several allys at the same time. Thankfully, HRE is also struggling, and I've been allied with them from the start of the game. If they had attacked, i'd have probably lost all continental Europe cities. These weren't just half stacks i was attacked with either, they are full stacks, and half the time it's countries that can't even financially support their armies that are fielding them.

Make use of your starting favour with the Pope. Begin a Crusade against Jerusalem. Try to get there first. Take Jerusalem (along with the Pope's reward) and expand across Africa. From this point onwards, try to maintain alliances, don't bribe, and only attack if attacked and/or betrayed (for trustworthyness, it really makes diplomatic deals easier). Take part in any crusades that are called, and try to get to the target first. This way, although slow, allows military build up, and is the easy way to victory.

I have gone back to my badly going English campaign, in which I had been invaded by literally all of my allies except the HRE. I managed to recapture all of my cities and bribed the Pope lots of money to get my favour up. When my previous allies attacked me, they were almost instantly excommunicated, even the Danes and there was a Danish Pope.

After my previous humiliation, I launched an offensive into Danish territory in central Europe. I took Bern, which they had taken from HRE, and the settlement north of it. Im going to recapture Metz soon, which has a full stack garrisoning it, and a citadel. I also took Paris, which had been splitting my different cities, and was well worth it.

I also managed to call a crusade on Milan, the backstabbing runts. I took Genoa and Milan within 3 turns from the start of the crusade. I then crushed the Danes crusaders with help from the HRE. I left my empire in Egypt, I'm not ready to fight the Mongols yet. When I have eliminated the Danes and Milan, I plan to take the war to the Moors and possibly Portugal because i am planning on taking complete control of France, and they have taken Bordeux, and another settlement in southern France. Spain has proved to be reliable, I dont plan to break my alliance with them yet.

Another update on my campaign, here is an image:

https://i287.photobucket.com/albums/...9-35-15-56.jpg

As you can see from this, my empire is very small given the time period. This because i prefur to have economic stability, and I prefur to be able to support my armys and still make profit. I also like to turtle, and just see what is going on at different places on the map.

My treasury is very low because i recently bought huge walls, farms and ports for every settlement.

Looks like you have it under control.

Nice empire.

Thanks, i've been slowly expanding and putting fairly large garrisons in cities too keep them under control. I have also set Paris as my new capital, so that when certain things get 'distance from capital' as a downside on public order, it isnt there anymore.

I didn't play very much last night, but recently the Spanish cancelled our alliance, and enraged, I rushed down to kick them out of Bordeux. The English are not too be messed with....

I'm pursuring a somewhat different goal in my campaign. While my army of longbowmen and Mailed Knights teach the Danish why it's not a good idea to mess with me,my Crusader King and his army are over in Egypt,busy seiging their cities one by one. As I capture them I sack them for money to feed my war machine,hold them long enough to get a few priests out,then sell everything in the city,let it go rebel,then move on to the next target. Strangely enough,since I concluded a marriage alliance with the french they have been somewhat less aggressive against me than usual, I suspect they are fully engaged against the spanish/milanese,but the HRE has been sending small stack to attempt to take Bruges,only to be mowed down to the last man by the 10 units of longbowmen/yeomen archers I have stationed in caen,just in case anyone tries anything stupid.

My first game in MTW II was with the English and it didn't quite go according to plan. It was played a few weeks after release, so forgive any vauge details in here as that was quite some time ago.

My aim throughout the game was to serve the papacy, as i feel it adds more dimenson to the game. War with France and Scotland were unavoidable and so i accepted that i would have to endure the wrath of the pope for these, but hopefully i could get this over with quickly.

I started off with annihilating the french early on (i think i had Paris before i had finished off the Scots). Unfortunatley then the the Danes prevented me from finishing them off, forcing my hand after they hit normandy.

Me being at war with 2 christian factions (and after killing the Scots) had put me in the popes bad books. So i accepted his mission to cease hostilities with the French. The war with the Danes essentially drew me towards the Baltics, which is not the direction i wanted to head. Never the less i figured it would be intriguing to see what the long term effects would be of a prolonged campaign through the baltics and then into Russian territory. If succesful i could avoid a lot of the Catholic factions and still hold a large amount of territory.

In order to improve logistics i wanted a sea and land route to Russia, so turned on the Polish, despite them being Catholic i decided it was worth it. This actually took longer than i had initially anticipated with the remenant Danish and Poles proving quite a tough challenge, forcing me back on several occastions. There was a point i almost decided to abandon the campaign entirely, especially after a ressurgent France made an attempt with the Spanish to take back some of their lands. Initial success in Bordeaux left me slightly worried but my counter attack proved succesful, leaving me with more territory than before, after the Spanish were unable to reinforce their frontiers before the pope intervened once again. The French were down to one city (Marseille), and i begrudginly accepted the pope's orders to cease hosilities with them before i could finish them off. I wasn't really looking to finish the game at any point so didn't mind leave the French alive in the long run as this was my first game and i was to immersed to care about winning it in any real sense.

After my success i turned towards Russia once again, fighting off the temptation to ignore the papacy and deviate from my initial strategy to go after Spain and then finally the Moors.

I finished off Poland and Denmark and decided to prepare for a Medeivla rendition of operation Barbarossa. This involved building a defensive perimeter of castles along my border.

The border was with Hungary, HRE and Venice in central europe and a border with Spain in Southern France (and the french themselves). I was constantly attacked from most of these, having to maintain standing armies to deal with incursions until the pope would intervene and request a truce.

It was after realizing just how bloody big Russia was, that i decided perhaps this wasn't the most inspirational decision i had ever made, but i soldiered on (heh) regardless. I created 3 huge armies and began my march east. The conquest itself was rather easy, with my main worries being closer to home, and within 40 turns i had what i thought was most of Russia.

Seeing as this was my first game, i hadn't quite figured out all of the city locations, and much to my horror my spies were discovering more and more Russian cities and towns to the east. I figured it would only be a handful of them given the amount if uninhabbited land Russia holds, but this wasn't the case.

I was then presented with the issue of distance from capital effecting morale in the newly conquered lands (even some of the Polish towns and Cities were a pain). Constant attacks from central europe weren't helping either. With much of my resources going on securing the borders i held there. There was even an instance when Spain, HRE and France attacked in the same turn on three seperate cities, leaving me heavily stretched afterwards and worried that any further assaults would break my lines. Thankfully i was given plenty of time to recouperate by the AI.

Anyways i had finally finished off Russia but was paying through my nose on upkeep and much of the loot money that had kept my campaign going was starting to run out and the infrastructure of the East wasn't able to maintain the army that had been raised to conqueror it.

I then thought 'to hell with it' and invaded the last remaining French Castle to win the game.

I was truly gutted that i didn't get to take on the Turks (and the Mongols), but at the same time it was a nice change to go after the Russians, but found it highly annoying that the one thing from preventing me ensuring a catholic conquest of the world was the bloody catholics themselves, especially as it would seem that the pope was angry because i was at war with so many Catholic factions, ignoring entirely the fact that i hadn't started any of them.

Was fun none the less and i really enjoyed the game, makes for a refreshing change as opposed to the usual English strategy.

Nice campaign, Neeceh, you've taken a different approach to the English campaign than most people, you seem to have conquered the north, when many people try to take Italy and Spain. I never really saw much that was worth anything in the north, but attacking a non-catholic nation would be good, as change from the Pope giving you grief.

I think I'm playing on M/M at the moment and it seems to be going quite well for me. I'm not that far in but I think I'm at the point where the plan is starting to take shape ;). I like to use the English for two reasons: 1) I like their playing style on the battlefield (lots of hard infantry and archers with a bit of cavalry for flexibility) and 2) the British Isles themselves are fairly well isolated from attack, so IMO compared to most other factions you get a decent amount of time to build up and a bit more choice of who you want to go to war with. To be fair I'm only playing the short campaign for the moment in order to unlock the other factions, but I will probably carry on playing afterwards.

At the beginning I was cautious not to overstretch myself because most English starting troops are just a few crappy militia units, and although the Scots only had one province their armies were quite concentrated IIRC and highlanders are decent anti-spearmen/militia troops at this point. So I allied myself with them, with the Danes (because the HRE are potential enemies, being near my mainland European provinces), and also with the Pope, which I supplemented by making sure every province had some kind of church and a priest; my papal reputation was soon "perfect". At the same time I built at least basic farms everywhere and set about taking the rebel provinces of Dublin, Rennes, York, Caernarvon and Bruges.

Once I felt ready to attack Scotland I moved a fairly large army up to besiege Edinburgh. The Pope told me to cease hostilities, so I moved my army back down into York without any actual fighting. It wasn't long before they came down and besieged York with a fairly large army. The ensuing fight was pretty brutal but I defeated the Scots by bottlenecking them as they came through the battered gate, and killed two of their family members in the process. The Scots were excommunicated for attacking me so I got the Pope to call a crusade against them, which I obviously joined. By this point I had shipped my first few regiments of longbowmen up from Nottingham to join the force besieging Edinburgh, and when the Scots counter-attacked they got thoroughly spanked, losing their King, his heir and Edinburgh, which I sacked for adbout 8000 florins. Their only remaining territory is a small garrison in Inverness.

My continental territories of Bruges and Caen soon came under siege from the HRE and the French respectively, and they are allied. I wasn't bothered by this because the besieging armies were fairly small, and I successfully defended both pretty easily, though the French keep throwing small, pathetic armies at Caen (I think they must be at war with someone else). Furthermore, I knew my reputation with the Pope was much better than theirs so I wanted to bide my time until one of them got excommunicated; the HRE seem to have backed off for now, and the French have been excommunicated.

The next step will be to finish off the Scots once and for all and send the rest of my army to France, preferably with the help of a crusade from my mate the Pope :p. IIRC Inverness is a castle so once I've taken it I'll turn it into a city for extra income, as it's too far away from the continent to be really useful for producing troops. I will focus my military efforts on the French and try to sue for peace with the HRE, which I'm hoping will come more easily if I spank the French well enough. If they attack I'll just try to hold them off for now as they're actually providing a buffer zone to protect me from the Danes (who will, of course, eventually attack me if I have territory next to their borders.) In the long term, however, I will probably look to attack Denmark, possibly by sea, in order to reduce my front (as others have said) and give me access to the Baltic with all of its trade and anti-Russian crusade opportunies. Spain is also a possibility, as taking the Iberian peninsular will prevent me from being attacked from both sides.

I've owned the game since it's release but didn't start playing it until a few days ago. I have been playing as england on M/M. I tend to take it slower, building up a very strong economy, but I don't really start branching out to the mainland until around turn 150 or so... This may be my problem as I don't like to fight without general's and usually wait for generals that are 3star or better. But my main problem, in every game I've played so far, the papal states end up running me over and upon the last crusade called against me I am wiped off the planet.

No amount of payments seems to change my standing with the papal states (I usually make 20k+ a turn from taxes and trade). But it has been this way through 6 different games now, at some point after turn 135 the papal states turns to neutral, then you see 7 full armies head for different towns and it's pretty much over from that point.


*is there a desc file you can change to increase the life of family or decrease the chance of death?

So no suggestions for me?

You could try this

For papal politics:
1.Build Churches of all sizes when you can
2.Recruit priests, send most of them to areas with low Catholic populations so they can convert people.
3.If Hertics/Witches appear, send the priests in the denounce them. You will lose some to heresy but between converting people and denouncing heretics you make them earn piety.
4. Crusade when called upon with one small army at least to keep the pope happy. Try to call crusades for closer targets if you have enough papal favor as well. Easier for you to succeed.

Eventually you may get more votes in the College of Cardnals to vote for new popes. Voting correctly means you gain more favor with the pope quickly. You may even have enough votes to vote your cardinals in without any chance of someone else getting it.

Send a diplomet to Rome to sit there and Gift money every so often to boost your relations with the pope. 1000 is ussually enough to boost relations 1 level.

Be sure to eliminate Scotland early and take all of England and also Ireland.

Waiting til turn 135-150 is to late to start expanding at this point, unless your an expert, or modified the game to give you more turns, will just be frustating.

You could try this strategy

Take any rebel settlements you can that are nearby. If the French are excom, take as many cities as you can from them at that point.

Normally, when I play Britain, I will take all of Britain and Ireland first. Secure the rebel Provinces on the coast of France, Take out Denmark and take control of Sweeden and Norway. Be sure to keep your front line provinces supplied with good garrisons. At this point, I will concentrate more on economic development and defense for about 50 turns before I start conquering again and steamroll my way through the mid to late game.

It is important to get rid of castles you dont need, make them cities to give you extra money. I ussually keep only one castle in Notingham, and one in France and that one just beneath modern denmark. Everything else can be cities to maximize $$ before you start conquering. Leaving poor garrisons tends to make the AI attack you. Ussually, going to war with France is the next step when you are satisfied with your situation and want to expand more, Milan can be guaranteed to stab you in the back sometime during the French Campaign. When to attack France also depends on there papal status vs yours. If they lose status it can be good to take a few territories out.

Just remember when you start your conquering campaigns to convert castles you dont need, try to have at least 3 cities to every castle. I generally prefer a more cities than this. Some areas of the map have to many castles, so pick and chose the place places to convert based on geography and your next potential enemies.

Turn 1-25 England, French rebels and buildup 25-50, Denmark, Sweeden, Norway and buildup
50-100, Empire development
100+ Plan your attacks, take about 10 turns to secure and build in what you take, then wash and repeat.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Flak

So no suggestions for me?

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Send your diplomat straight off to Rome ASAP and make alliance with them, offer them alliance, trade right and map info, on medium difficulty the Papal won't refuse (Probably will only work if you restart your campaign). Constantly station a diplomat in Italy and when your Papal favour start dropping below 6 start dashing out bribes, as England money should never be a problem. over 10K should probably get you a perfect relation straight away. Call Crusades to nearby excomunicated factions; France and Denmark are perfect targets, France is your natural enemy while Denmark will make war with you sooner or later if you take either Bruges or Atwerp.

Concentrate at least one settlement for the recuritment of priests, unlike Spain or Hungary you won't get much piety over converting the locals since they're mostly Catholics anyway. Once you get a Theologian guild try to get its upgrades and eventually with a headquarter you'll be pumping our 6+ piety priests in no time.

Some good suggestions above.

I'd add:

Take a province you don't really want or need, sack it, strip it, then give it to the Holy Father.

I often do this at the time of the first crusade. I'll take Gaza and/or Acre and keep them but give Jerusalem to the Holy Father shortly after its conquest. Eventually, the Mongols take it from the Holy Father, die in droves on my stake-reinforced gates at Acre and Gaza, and then I take Jerusalem for myself.

Nothing makes the Pope happier than having a more powerful and better-landed faction -- just be sure that it isn't land YOU need for your empire unless someone like the Mongols will come along to give you another chance at it.

On m/m

The first move I did as England was to take my army out of Caen and bring back to england (Always keep a big navy around your seas both for transport and thwarting disembarkements) to aid the invasion of scotland. I managed to get an alliance and trade rights off the french and it's still lasting around turn 30 (though i had to cancel a few times) along with my castle-now-city, Caen). Anyway, I took York immediatly and started making a few units in nottingham. I then took most of my units in london (just left William there) and headed for wales. dont worry too much if you get bankrupt as I soon paid off my debts by bringing in 10k a turn thanks to some heavy taxation in london :beam:.

Anyway I took Caernarvon (appologies for spelling) and converted it into a city. Taxed it. rebelled:furious3:. took it again thanks to some mercs and the army from france. managed to get alliances with milan,venice (they declared war on each other at one point. choose milan. they'll help you against the french by taking half of their settlements) and the papal states.

After taking Caenarvon for myself, the scottish decided that it was there turn to expand. they took all their garrison of edinbrough and attacked york. took the troops i had been training in nottingham and destroyed their army. Pope wanted a ceasefire. This is why you must respect the pope during early period : the penalty was only "your relations will be seriously deminished" instead of "your going to get slaughtered by a crusading army and i'm going to enjoy it". I know its painful having to lick his butt constantly but its worth it once you get to assasinate him every turn and in the end "exterminate" the papal states (hopefully).

Anyway i took my Caernarvon heroes and trashed the scots. With a high garrison, i decided to tax edinbrough big time to make a compensation for all those units (i disbanded alot of them once the people loved me). Then I turned towards Dublin and Iverness with my other armies. Once i had all of GB, i only left Nottingham as a castle. The rest are making big money. I also have so many alliances the UN would be shivering. Caen has (despite myself not really caring about it) become a money-making city and is being untouched. I suggest you focus on getting big alliances with spain, HRE and milan as they will probably aid you against the french if your not as lucky as i was. But definatly enforce power in UK first IMO, you will lose far too many valuable soldiers, alliances and crosses with the pope and France generally tend to expand but then wither away as Spain and Milan take arms against them


But now I've basically got UK and one settlement outside it at turn 30 and making enough money to build up a suitable but not invincibile army so i have a choice:

Either head for Iberia : the portuguese have been fairly annoying. :wall: they've been blockading ports, attacking my ally, spain, and took rennes (that settlement west of Caen) under my noses when i was about to attack it. (the french and spanish didnt like this so they both seiged it despite being at war with each other ( a glitch that doesnt happen too often). the spanish got it in the end).
Though taking on Iberia might mean war with spain, a close ally of mine whowill help someday against the french

OR Head for the french? I dont think my armies are ready yet. The french have too many expanded territories and I want their wars with Spain, Milan and suprisingly, Venice to end so i can take them out swiftly and silently.

OR go west and get at the danish. this might seem the most "logical" solution. the danish are hated by everyone (including the pope) and are doing exactly the same thing as portugal (replace rennes by amsterdam and Spain by HRE it is exactly the same thing). Also, (I might be wrong here) I find the english army quite effective against the danish heavy troops who are slow and easy to pick out wth missile units.


:help:Its a dilemma i need sorting so can anyone convince me which is the best? thanks in advance.

PS: for the crusades problem, either just ignore the pope and give him a grand or the finger (depending if you like him or not). Or just build up an army in advance and get it as close to the holy land or wherever the crusade is as possible. It shouldnt be you main priority unless its a territory near by or a excommunicated faction's capital. I joined a crusade against Granada (moorish castle) and basically took it and sold it to the papal states for a few grand. Although the portuguese (who were excomunicated because of their vile yet cowardice blockading of my ports) decided on attacking it (probably thought i was still there and took it, great peice of business:yes:)

Just had my first VH/VH campaign with the easiest faction (England :laugh4:). I control 44 regions at turn 58 and I should be able to capture Jeruselum from a sea invasion in 3-4 more turns or so. So the campaign is pretty much done.

Here are some inputs for VH/VH:

(1) Use tons of assassins (in my game I have about 15), if you are not against Save/Load. Concentrate on your primary enemies and kill all of their family members. The worst chance you have is 6% - not that bad. You can do it in a few minutes. The good things about them is:

a. Slow down your enemy's insane growth. You can eliminate a faction and just take down the rebels. Rebels don't upgrade cities nor hire new units.

b. Stay in good terms with the Pope. I bet everyone is tired of the cease-fire-or-excom order. Attacking rebels does not anger the Pope.

c. Assassinate the current Pope whenever his rating drops to about 4 cross from the top, and vote the next one in. Free upgrade of crosses.

tip: If you fail an assassination attempt, load the game, save the game again, then try again. You get a new random number this way.

(2) Do not leave a weak border. The AI ally ALWAYS betray you as long as you have a weakly defended border region. It is very hardly done if you have a lot of borders - so assassinate your neighbors before expansion! It is very important to have "buffer zones" - neutral, rebel cities between the AI and you. They come at you slower this way. (They will have to summon an army to conquer that city first, taking at least a few turns if they are even interested.)

Also the AI ally loves to attack your weak stacks, in your territory or in a neutral territory, just for fun I guess. (But they declare war on you by doing so!)

tip: You can also lure them to declare war on you this way, but you will have enough enemies already, don't make new ones.

(3) If you do not wish to be betrayed by an AI ally, just before they siege you, give (actually you can sell) that settlement to another faction. They will go to war, but you stay friendly with the AI ally (to maintain trade, etc). This usually happens if you over-expand - as you don't have enough garrison and the AI takes advantage of you.

So basically you aim for the Inn line and start pumping out loads of assassins non-stop. You can then take out the rebel cities one by one.

Don't think the game will be boring this way - I just fought a battle of 1000 vs. 3000 rebels. (And left a famous-battle mark on the map, hehe.) The AI grows very fast, so by the time they turn rebels, they are still pretty good rebels.

(4) Exterminate every single city unless it is already a very small town. You do not have the money to keep the garrisons and build all the fancy buildings that do not further increase your income. For example, a city of 30000 can generate an income of 2200, 5000 can generate an income of 2000; a city of 2000 generate 1800. The difference is really little but the difference in upkeep is big.

(5) Money is tight. A good balance of army I find is to match it to your army upkeep to raw taxes. So trade, merchant etc. will be your hiring and building fund.

Thanks for all the tips in the thread, has made life in my English realm much easier.

One thing I've noticed though is that EVERYONE hates the English. I'm serious, every damn faction keeps attacking me constantly. I did make a grave mistake in my planing and it's costing me greatly. The froggies had decided to try to back-stab me but I swiftly moved in one of my stacks and smashed two of theirs in a bridge-battle (oh how I LOVE defending a bridge :smash:). The following round I sent in a diplomat and offered a ceasefire in exchange for a hefty sum of money. They decided to change the deal and offered and smaller sum of money and Metz. Like a fool I accepted, BIG mistake.

I seems that every European faction thinks Metz is the best thing since sliced bread and I consequently had stacks from HRE, Denmark, Milan, and Venice (go figure) all hotfooting it towards my newly acquired castle :help:

After beating off both the Danes and Milanese in some very heavy battles I came under siege from a 1k+ HRE army. I had a grand total of about 320 troops, none of them very hardcore to say the least. There were 3 peasants, 2 peasant archers, and a unit of cavalry militia. As the battle started they rolled up 4 sets of ballistas. To my luck they had their army placed way back in the middle of the forest so the ballistas had to move up quite a bit away from the rest of the army. I decided to go gungho and raced my cav out to as a welcoming-party. I managed to catch the arty without any backup and proceeded to slaughter them swiftly. By the time the rest of the army had gotten to my cav I raced back towards the castle. This is where the fun really began.

They used one tower, one ram, and only one set of ladders. This would be my saving grace as the tower and the ladders both decided to try to sneak off to my right side. I dispatched two of my peasants over there while the remaining one sat inside my gate and my archers let their fire-arrows fly against the mass of infantry trailing the ram. They managed to get the ladders to the wall but for some strange reason, not that I'm complaining, they had manned them with a set of archers. These were no match ever for my poor peasants and sure enough they routed within minutes. By another grace of luck I managed to set the siege-tower ablaze and that left them focusing on only the ram. As the ram was knocking on my front door :wall: they had placed some of their archers a bit behind the rest of the army. They just sat there for some reason and I manged to take my cav (that had just been moved out of the way of the incoming army after their arty-smash) and crush in to them from the rear.

Just as both their archers broke down and ran home to mommy :gorgeous: their ram broke through my gates and they started pouring in. My three peasants fought like there was no tomorrow (which was actually the fact for all of them) but were slowly wittered down by the onslaught. By the time the peasants were routed the HRE decided to send two of it's spear-units up on my walls to deal with my archers. This is where the archers really hunkered down and actually managed to rout both spear-units while only losing about 30% strength. The rest of the battle I used my last firearrows and the remnants of my cavalry to try to just score as many kills as possible before losing the battle. They had placed two units of cav in my square and won by holding it.

It was one helluva battle to say the least and even though I did end up losing the battle in the end I managed to kill 700+ of his units which made it much easier the next round when my stack of longbows, spears, and heavy cav showed up and cleaned house.

Now it's time to teach the Danes a lesson :clown::whip:

I pretty much whent like this:

- Secure alliance with the french. (Marry Princess Constance to your heir.)
- Secure alliance with the polish. (Marry Princess Cecilia to their heir.)
- Get trade rights with spain and portugal. Trade maps with Moors. (Diplomat 1)
- Get trade rights with HRE, Milan, Venice and Sicily. Make alliance with papacy (Diplomat 2)
1. Take rebel settlements form brittain and north european coast.
- York, Caernavon, Dublin (Army 1)
- Rennes, Brugges, Antwerp (Army 2)
2. Exterminate Scottish and keep french and papacy happy with coin.
- Go straight for Edinburgh and their heirs. (Army 1)
3. Exterminate Danish and keep french and papacy happy with coin.
- Go straight to Aarhus and their heirs. (Army 1 and 2)
4. Participate on the 1st Crusade. (Army 3)
- On the way to there take the two islands west of italy and the african castle (carthago).
- If you manage to get to Jerusalem, burn it to the ground and give it to papacy.
- After that take the island west of antioch. (Bysantines)
5. If Florence, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki or Vilna is still rebel, take em. (Army 1 and 2)

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At this point you have:
Brittain with two major cities, two smaller cities and 3 castles.
North coast of europe with 2 major cities, 1 smaller city and 1 castle.
Scandinavia with 1 major city, 1 small city and 1 castle.
Mediterrain with 3 small island cities. (They are castles at first but change them).
One castle in the middle of african coast.

- So basicly you have secure income by farming alone and quite a lot of trade income. On top of that you have possibility of naval dominance in brittain and scandinavia, naval presence in mediterraen, lauchpoint to attack russians with allies, lauchpoint to attack HRE with 2 allies, lauchpoint to attack moors weak spots, lauchpoint to attack italian pennisula.
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At this point I quitted playing but after quick calculations I think I would have attacked Moors, then HRE, then papacy and the italian states... And get ready for the mongol brawl in constanttinopole.

Mayby I start a new one to try it :)

I should practice more with merry England, they are of course one of the most best countries in the world, either by the Britannia Campaign, or just the whole map, it's sea power was increasingly awesome, and no one, I mean NO ONE, would dick around with them Normans. :whip:

I love playing the English, reckon they are my favourite Faction for Medieval II. Has anyone found a use for Sherwood archers? Their stats look great but they only have half unit size which really limits their usefullness in the open field.

1. Send Your Diplomat to marry the French Princess" Constance, or if you don't like France try and find either Portugal or Denmark (Maria of Ingrid).
2. In the same turn move Rufus' army up to York and take the settlement.
3. Put Robert in the Army in France and attack Rennes or Bruges (I prefer Rennes).
4. Move Princess Cecilia to France and try to get her Charm up, then try to marry her to Guillemot de Lyon (Usually in Angers).
5. As fast as possible take the rest of the British Isles (Caernarfon,Dublin and try Inverness). Don't wage war with the Scotts for some time as they can proove good Trade Partners in the beginning Finacial Struggle.

Hope This Helps!

I've played a lot of campaigns and finished the game as almost all of them. But I never understood the point of a Faction Leader. In real life he was, obviously, the most important character of a faction. But does a faction leader with good skills actually do something for the entire faction? Any bonuses at all or is he just a normal governor/general with an extra title?

My experience thus far (I have played and still play RTW, but i enjoy Medieveal 2 because it's more refined).

To anyone switching from Rome: TW and/or it's expansions, this game will be better when comparing vanilla vs vanilla (no mods). In RTW as the Brutii for example, i can get 8 or so provinces and from then on i can't seem to spend my gold, even with bribing. Here you will be presesd to find a good balance between gold producing buildings/farms/unit producing buidldings in castles.

Anyway, I am a fand of England as it historically hasn't been conquered since 1066 and their island makes the country very hard to take over If they keep a strong navy (which is recommended). How my campaing has been going so far (playing on my roommate's PC when he isn't home so it will take a good while to finish the game)

I play on VH/VH, latest patch, vanilla game.

I restarted once or twice, once i think because i read some idiot's guide of how "you must build farms ASAP". Yeah that might work in the lower difficulty settings but on VH/VH you need the trade buildings first! I am an agressive player so the first thing i did is (after taking York obviously), vanquishing Scotland. I couldn't take them out in one turn (I had managed to do that during the previous restart) and so i got excomunnicated, which didn't hurt that much.

Scotland had it's faction leader with a very large stack just sit there while i took Edinburgh, and they later turned to an immobile rebel stack. In my first start i had managed to crus them completely, but i had gotten lucky with councin missions and had received 6 units of Mailed Knights and 2 units of Hobilars as rewards, which really helped me overwhelm the other nation's early armies.

Anyway, after securing the whole of the British isles, I set out to continue conquering France. I had taken the two rebel setllements in South-Western France (one is a city, the one below is a Castle, Bordeaux i think). By this point the French and Danish had set their eys on my territories. Too bad for them!

Longbowmen and spear stacks is all i built. Yes, yes i know about cavalry, hammer and anvil and chasing fleeing stacks BUT Mailed Knights are too bloody expensive. I boomed my towns in England, getting ports, roads, markets, farms and merchants on top of those mines and sheep pastures. *note: You can trade from every mine on the campaing map. The one in Ireland is silver, and even if you have not developed it, a decent merchant will make 100+ profit at it.

So with Longbowmen+Spears i started splattering France. Portugal and Denmark debarked with some pitiful stacks that got repelled, but as a note: always keep units in Notthingham. It should be your only castle on England and it is Denmark's prime target of invasion.

Keeping Bordeaux is easy with peasant archers + merc crossbowmen + some spear stacks. It serves as a buffer vs Portugal, Spain and even the Milanese.

Meanwhile, Paris and the other major French cities have been conquered, Paris even had a Thief's Guild built, which was a nice surprise. The Pope had forgiven me, but due to my low standing with him and virutally no missions to build chirches, everyone and their grandma came at me. The Holy Roman Empire, the Milanese, the Spanish, Portugese, Denmark, etc. etc.

The only real threat was the French king with 9 stars and a large French stack near sothern France. Fortunately for me, my own general was 6 or 7 stars at the time, and the enemy attacked before combining the king with the army. The result was them charging uphill at two rows of Longbowmen and spears in the middle and at the flanks. Heroic Victory and then a subsequent chasing down of the lone general unit that is king Philip and his swift execution. So much for France.

The Pope has been getting moody lately and has been slapping me, the Germans and the Danish across the wrists for not palying nice with each other. There have been requests to cease hostilites (to which i oblige. Although Portugal went and attacked me anyway and got themselves excommunicated), but strangely none that would plead for the last two French towns. Inquisitors started chasing princessess around, which was funnny to me. I had married my own princess long ago to a good French general. (turn 3 or so).

The Milanese attacked, a large army lead by their Duke. It took 3 reloads to win the fight with a battered down stack of Longbowmen (2 gold chevrons) and some raggedy spears, but i succeeded! Milanese Crossbowmen are a big pain in the arse with these pavises on their backs, and when they are supported with cav/spers it's really hard to win. Tip for early Longbowmen placement:

IIIII IIIII IIII IIII IIII IIII
xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx
xxx xxx xxx xxxx

x - Longbowmen, IIII - spearmen. Put spikes down obviously and don't use flaming arrows if it's misty, windy or rainy. Only on a clear day, for the first two shots. And remove skirmish mode. If the enemy does not get past your spears he will lose, cav charging at spears and spikes dies eastily, and a sufficiently strong general will keep your stacks from routing. Once his general comes to fight, surround with spears and kill him. That is your chance at winning with an inferior force.

Meanwhile i've been getting very decent family members both as adoptees and as sons. Good governors and good generals all around, and stacks of billment and Longobwmen have been produced to continue with the expansion. Currently the Holy Roman Empire and a second Milanese stack attackd Metz and another border settlement, but they will be easily repelled. I'm thinging i'll consolidate my power first, maybe have my diplomats marry an enemy princess (didn't know i can do that), and stack some crucial cities with missiles/spears before i head on.

Nilgard and Myth:

Welcome to the .org!


Stake archers almost seem like a cheat after a while. With correctly placed stakes, you can pretty well murder any cavalry attack on any fortified area -- since you know the routes they'll take and can set up an easy reception.

I'd only add that a couple of Hobilars are cheap to add to your basic mix and get a lot of value for you.

First, they're horses so the enemy will key on them and you can use them as bait to draw them onto your spears while your bows pincushion them.

Second, eliminating routers -- which Hobbies do well -- is a great way to minimize blockades/devestation and other annoying crud that the broken remnants generate.

Thanks! You are right of course, in RTW i always had stacks of cav, it's just that i find MTW2 to be much less of a goldfest and so i get what's necessary first. No doubt now that i have consolidated some very good provinces and start racking up the incomne i'll get cavalry to mop up retreating armies. But even at the very worst possible scenario, where you can only chase down with your General, you can still have the enemy army disbanded, provided their morale held long enough for them to get heavy casualties when fightings spears/bows. I haven't gotten to a point where i can invest in siege engines and don't know how well they work in regular battles vs units, my Roman heavy onagers helped treamendeaously when i jumped down south and started battling a very well developed Egypt.

I'd assume that medieval balistae and trebuchets will work nicely. On a side note, what is the relation between my papal standing and the catholic nations all ganging up on me? I'm not excommunicated yet nobody wants peace, even the cruddy French who are down to their last one or two provinces.

English are tooooooo easy.... :)

And i don't know why... their units ar not OP, but they do have good starting position and after some turns good income.
Trainig a lot of Billmen and Swordsmen will allow you to make Swordsmiths Guild quickly in Caen or Training longows will give you the "Sherwood archers' Guild. I prefer the swordsmiths.

You lack good spears, billmen are next to useless (trashed them with border horse army :/), cavalry is mediocre, artillery is nothing special, longbowmen are not the greatest archers in game, armored swordsmen are like any other DCK clone... and still you take out the competition with ease... why?

well i think, it's all about unit availability... at the time your enemy has some unit you have already a better counter, at least i noticed it....

It seems to me that the longbowmen line of archers are in fact, the best in the game.

With respect England does so well (H/M) because:

1) you have a secure financial powerbase once the British Isles are secured
2) you can expand across the coast from Caen without immediately going to war as the neighbouring settlements are rebel
3) simultaneous expansion into Scandinavia is possible - the Danes can be delayed by placing a ship on one of the land bridges from Denmark
4) longbows are fantastic - easily obtained, reasonably cheap, long range, armour piercing, can fight in a pinch and lay stakes. What more do you want? With Yoeman and Retinue Archers to come it just gets better and better.

I don't say English Longbows are bad... just that there are better

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dzidek

I don't say English Longbows are bad... just that there are better

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Examples and justification, please?