How the heck do you get a 100% victory?

I just can't figure out how people can conquer the entire map and win a total victory. I'm just starting out (late to the game) and on easy it is indeed easy to win the normal conquest victory but when the game asks me, and I accept, the option to go for a 100% win that's when things get really, really hard for me even on easy.

The main problem I have is after I have about 70% of the map, I can't stop the revolts. They pop up everywhere and they just keep getting more and more intense and frequent as the game goes on. Pretty soon the revolvers are beating me and they are impossible to stop!

Just wondering if I'm wrong in saying that it is impossible to get a 100% win (I'm playing the Italians on the early map)... if it's not impossible how the heck do you guys do it? I find it impossible!

thx for any help...

It is not impossible. I have only done it on occasion but that was mostly due to lack of attention span rather than poor playing. I find my biggest problem as I progressed was that I only was focusing on a few quality troop producing provinces while everything else was for commerce or left to rot. As you get more and more land you need more troops so focus on building up infrastructure and pump out troops as much as possible dont stop!

Oh and a navy moving troops quickly is key

One more thing Tax rates and influence I suspect by 70% you can afford to set the "Very Low" option if so do it, and make sure your King isnt some weak kneed yes man...Get those crowns up!

This help?

It's sure possible but if takes a bit of determination to actually finish the game, heh.

Revolts are indeed annoying once you become big.

- Often enough you'll be raking in enough money to afford low tax settings. Do so, it will help to delay the revolts at the very least.
- The revolts, though rich in numbers, still tend to be peasants. Have a decent fighting contingent in each province (nothing fancy, anything better than peasants really) to crush those optimistic peasants when they do revolt.
- Have a lot of ships. Theyre invaluable for logistics.


The thing is you can't really do anything about the revolts. You can do everything in your power to minimize them, but they *will* happen anyway. It's the game's way of trying one last time to ruin your empire before you claim "teh victory".

The worst ones sem to be the multi stack re-emergences with high tech troops in the center of my empire. With only garrison type troops in the surrounding provinces I lose many and it takes quite a while to remove front line troops and march across to quell the revolts. It does add a challenge and makes things very interesting.

It's popularly known as the "bloat effect" and it's best to prepare for it before you get to the 60% mark. You should have happy buildings (e.g. church/mosque, watchtowers, town watch, brothel) in every province, especially those further from your faction leader and those with low base happiness, and a high valour spy in every province also. Holding tab shift before you end every turn will show you the state of the happiness of your provinces at a glance. Any in the red need to have their taxes reduced. Provincial happiness, referred to as "loyalty" on the info parchment for the province, needs to be at 120%+ for a given province or faction reappearances may occur.

Lots of happy buildings, low taxes, and big armies when you get to the 60% mark. Like others stated, keep the king/emperor/sultan/grand duke/grand prince in a nice landlocked province where he can't be separated from most of your empire. And keep a horde of assassins on hand to whack off any deranged, inbred, "howling at the moon" sons who might pop up and ruin your royal line.

EDIT: and keep the Papal States for last; their incessant rebellion will only be a hindrance.

Hi dan0808, (and everybody else)

So you really wanna win? Ok…

Here is what you do, apart from listening to the advice from all the other guys here; you prepare for it. As simple as that. And you cheat on the potential AI-trigger of 60 provinces (you beat me too it C). Go back to a saved game prior to your minor victory status; let’s say when you got 58 provinces. Load up and get to it and let it take it’s time.

Do a massive build up of military strength and at the same time lay some solid foundation for “peasant-loyalty” on these 58 provinces. Give it at the very least 30-40 turns. Also try to keep your ruler at the center of you empire and have extra garrisons on the islands and isolated places. Also make sure that you have an income surplus (is that the right word?). I would also suggest that you make sure that you include all islands in these 58 provinces it’s better and safer that way. Lose some provinces so you can take all the islands and still be under 60-region bar. And yes, makaikhaan is absolutly right, dont bother with the pope until its time to really do the big monster-attack....

Now, once you have amassed a ridiculously big monster army, I mean an army that outnumbers all opposition 3:1 you are ready for the final kill, during that build up to that point you keep your 58 provinces on a short leach for at least 20 years or so. Once you have prepared all this, you are finally ready and chances for failure is now minimized to an extent of making the game boring, but you wanna win so you don’t care right?

Also, be very careful to make sure that ALL your units are positioned at the right positions for your ridiculously mighty onslaught of angry Italians that crave world domination (more spaghetti for all! Or something catchy and Italian-ish).

When you do attack, include as many target provinces as humanly possible. And operate fast, as in do a rapid advance taking new provinces every turn thus shrinking the enemy area. Preferably as one single continous mass. This will optmize your strength in armies since they will eventually merge. Remember this; you are not fighting factions, you are fighting ONE enemy, think like that and there will be spaghetti around for all of us very soon. Also, when you do initiate the attack, use the initial weight of your armies. Because each turn after that they will have to get smaller in order for you to secure you new provinces. You'll have to garrison each new conquest with some troops of at least 400-500 men plus some low taxes. This shouldn’t be that hard for you since the AI will keep retreating from your Italian horde, thus making it real easy for you. However, it will all work out for you in the end since your various spread out army-groups that are still available for further attacks will link up together as enemy territory shrinks. You can’t loose this way…. It aint fun, but it works…


So there you have it,
get too it then…


Ill take that spaghetti now… Ketchup anyone?!?

Thx for all the tips!

BTW one problem I'm having that turns it from impossible to ultra impossible is I keep getting excommunicated by the pope. For example I got a warning from the pope telling me to lay off the English in 2 years and not attack in 10. All I did was finish laying siege to 2 English provinces (by attacking the castle) in the turn I got the warning and then totally left the English alone for the next two turns and I still got excommunicated by the 2nd turn.

I was at war with the papacy (which he started) who I attacked and another christian nation but I did leave the English alone (except I made an attempt to marry w/ my princess and a ceasefire w/my emissary.


I just don't get it, could someone explain how excommunication works?

Thx

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dan0808

Thx for all the tips!

BTW one problem I'm having that turns it from impossible to ultra impossible is I keep getting excommunicated by the pope. For example I got a warning from the pope telling me to lay off the English in 2 years and not attack in 10. All I did was finish laying siege to 2 English provinces (by attacking the castle) in the turn I got the warning and then totally left the English alone for the next two turns and I still got excommunicated by the 2nd turn.

I was at war with the papacy (which he started) who I attacked and another christian nation but I did leave the English alone (except I made an attempt to marry w/ my princess and a ceasefire w/my emissary.


I just don't get it, could someone explain how excommunication works?

Thx

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You cannot siege a castle, liberate a besieged castle or attacking a ship of that faction while having the warning.
Attacking the pope (and all things above counts as an attck) will most of the time mean an instant excom.


While mentioned, the 2 things that is of utter importance and can never be forgotten is to not attack with your king and keep the shiplines open. The loyalty of the provinces are in direct influence by the distance to the king, getting stronger and stronger the larger you get.

Of course it's impossible to keep the shiplines open while being at was with a large navy faction, but it's possible to be prepared for it and reduce the rebellions that occurs, by moving your king, your fleet, build happy buildings and most importantly troops.

The random rebellion feature is quite annoying at times...

I usually counter it with an all-encompassing navy, but that's not enough to counter the landlocked provinces.

Usually I'll build two ok/good quality stacks and place them in two adjacent central landlocked region surrounded by other landlocked regions. The other regions retain a minimum amount of cheap useful defence troops as normal.

If there is a rebellion in one or several of the landlocked regions surrounded by the central ones, I usually split one of the two stacks and send them to counter the rebellions. That way there is still another 1-1,75 stacks to counter other rebellions that might crop up close to the central regions. By then I can usually send reinforcements from a sea province and build more cheap troops in the rebelling regions.

Of course re-emergences cause problems in this model too. Still, having a number of Arbalests in the stacks gives an immense edge against even the toughest rebels. And if re-emergences are too annoying, then let the bastards keep their last province... Kind of like cheating, though. Also, re-emergences produce those decent quality stacks that otherwise are rare in the hands of the AI, so it's all good fun! Right?

I've had massive (i.e. half of my huge empire) rebellion problems even more the 60% marker. :dizzy2: Quelled, got to the 60%, and it started all over again.

Howwible :(

"problems even BEFORE the 60% marker" ^^^


Iz me idiot or no "edit" butan? :help:

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Originally Posted by bozewolf

I've had massive (i.e. half of my huge empire) rebellion problems even more the 60% marker. :dizzy2: Quelled, got to the 60%, and it started all over again.

Howwible :(

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Yeah, I've noticed the "bloat effect" seems to start kicking in once I've got around 30-40% of the map conquered. Although I do think it becomes especially bad if you go over the 60% mark.

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Originally Posted by bozewolf

"problems even BEFORE the 60% marker" ^^^


Iz me idiot or no "edit" butan? :help:

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Junior members don't have the ability to edit their posts. You should get promoted to full membership in the next week or two, though. ~:)

Thanks a ton for the help guys, I'm almost there mostly by building all of the "calming" buildings you guys suggested and doing the other tips I have practically the whole map done (95%) and everthings green! There's one problem though, I can't reach Malta! I think you need compass to build a ship that can reach the central mediterranean (where Malta is) and I don't know how to get compass. It's 1223, isn't that late enough for compass to be available. I don't get it....

Oh well thanks for the help, I could have done it except for stupid Malta. :(

Errr... never mind. That magnification of Malta fooled me it was the straights of Sicily you needed and I didn't figure out till now that there was a sicilian ship in the straights of Sicily that even though it was neutral if I attracted Malta (which the Sicilians owned) it would then be an enemy hence the blockage. I attacked the ship first then I could land and then I could finish the map. Yay!

Still can't figure out why I couldn't get compass by that later date and build better ships with the shipbuilder guild option...

Anyway thx again!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bozewolf

I've had massive (i.e. half of my huge empire) rebellion problems even more the 60% marker. :dizzy2: Quelled, got to the 60%, and it started all over again.

Howwible :(

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It may be that your faction leader was cut off from the rest of your empire? This has the same effect.

Is it somehow much more difficult to get 100% in VI compared to vanilla? In Vanilla I have achieved it at least three times and never had many random rebellions, nor any significant problems overall. Hmm... I wonder if I've done it on Expert though, once I got good enough for that I haven't really bothered to slug it past superiority down to the very end.

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Originally Posted by Caravel

It may be that your faction leader was cut off from the rest of your empire? This has the same effect.

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Maybe that had something to do with it. I'll look out for that next time.

The nasty thing about the massive "bloat" rebellions I had was that there was no loyalty drop right up until where it was too late. Loyalty could be on 200% then the next turn there was a horde of peasants. Those are some real "what the.." moments. Maybe that was a bug, I dunno.

Normally my factions leaders are quite merciful when it comes to rebels, but after a while I got pretty fed up and started executing them like a giant feeding on midgets.

Plonk a spy (2 or 3 star) in every single province and you'll never get rebellions, dude.

How the heck do you get 2-star spies in every province: There are how-many-provinces? And training so many spies up to that level has always eluded me. What do you do? Trial generals all the time??? :dizzy2:

/KotR

Very easily in fact. Just keep training spies from the start of the game. Yes you can do a few treason trials, and at the beginning of the campaign there are usually plenty of disloyal generals to bring under control, but there is a better method: Don't build the border forts.

Instead of constructing border forts in every province, build large numbers of spies. The spies both boost loyaly and kill any rival spies/assassins that pass through. Most importantly the spy will gain valour when he finds a rival spy. This way your spies effectively train themselves. If the border forts were there, the spies would not do the catching and thus would not gain the valour.

Once you've got this started it's simply a matter of moving them around to different areas. For example you may have a province where spies/assassins are getting caught every year. So move out your high valour spy from that province and move in a 0 or 1 valour for training. Conversely you may have a province where your 0 or 1 valour spy is not catching that enemy assassin that bumps off every emissary you train. In this case move one or more of your high valour (4 or above) spies (or assassins) into the province to get rid of this annoyance.

If you follow this system, by the time the bloat effect kicks in, you should be well covered, and you can then put up your border forts in the provinces that really need them and enjoy a very high level of protection and provincial loyalty in those provinces. I would advise that you simply don't border fort your whole territory however and avoid them completely if possible. Also if you lose the province and your spy is in there with the border fort gone over to the enemy - he's gone. If the border fort wasn't there, then he has the chance of starting a revolt in the province - hopefully bringing the province back to your faction.

Spies play a vital part in my campaigns, I simply wouldn't be without them.

:bow:

interesting.
i generally dont use many spies.
ill try it out.

fight hard and never give up!! lol but seriously start in early eara and work on it it comes in time

I have never used a single spy, assassin or inquisitor ^^

Inquisitors I'd agree, but spies and assassins are an interesting part of the campaign map game.

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Originally Posted by Vantek

I have never used a single spy, assassin or inquisitor ^^

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Aside from Alims/Bishops/Priests, spies are about the only agent I make widespread use of. I'll train a handful of assassins, but I don't like to turn out an army of them. As for Inquisitors, I *may* employ 1 or 2 throughout an entire campaign -- they're simply way too overpowered to justify spamming them.

Assassins are handy for attending to AI inquisitors and emissaries offering alliances/ceasefires to other AI factions.

I generally don't rush to make spies. They are handy for maintaining order in a province, but there are other ways of achieving the same goal (so I tend only to avail myself of that "luxury" after attending to more pressing matters). I often find that the "intelligence" that they gather is questionable to say the least. I still recall my Sicilian spy telling me that the Danes were going to invade me "the year after next" in the very year that they swarmed across about 4 borders! :wall:

Priests/alims/etc are useful alliance gatherers/spies....and it is always nice to help one's neighbours to improve their zeal.....just to be neighbourly, of course, no, no ulterior motives there, really...:eyebrows:

Inquisitors, however....hmmm.....one or two, but never any more than that. Often not even that many.

I usually have a team of about six to eight assassins only. This team get's moved around to "hot spots" to get rid of emissaries, princesses, rival religious agents most importantly the Inquisition. Basically anything that enters my territory gets killed.

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I still recall my Sicilian spy telling me that the Danes were going to invade me "the year after next" in the very year that they swarmed across about 4 borders!

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Oh give him a break, he obviously meant to say "the year before the next" :laugh4:

I guess the reason I don't use agents much is because they take wayy too much annoying mousework. Seriously. Like that spy tactic without border forts like Caravel described, that would drive me insane moving your spies all the time like that. The other thing I don't like about them is that the results are often very ambiguous or unpredictable. The only thing I do use is bribing (love it, actually :P especially when the target is a Man Of Principle with Weak Principles ^^), and Priests/Alims just to look behind enemy lines (Priests/Alims because I'm building a Church/Mosque any place that has a Keep or better anyway), I have put a Priest in 60+ provinces but I'm not doing anything like that again. Oh and I try to marry all my princesses, just because I'm a nice guy and don't want them to spend their life in a nunnery.

I have never launched a single crusade either! :embarassed: I guess that's mostly because 90% of the time I'm excommunicated :laugh4:

What do Inquisitors do? Are they really that effective at killing generals? What effect does the "out-of-control" inquisition have? I might just try one out in the campaign I'm doing right now!

You can use your inquisitor in three ways.

1: You can try a Catholic general (not agent). This is rather like an assassin attack except that your inquistor will not die if he fails. Prepare to be disappointed. Many times your chance of sucess will be zero. Things that improve your chances are: A: high zeal province B: low piety target C: non-royal target D: using a grand inquisitor E: using an inquisitor with lots of stars. Note that if the trial fails, the target may a new vice or virtue, making future trials harder or easier to suceed. Your inquisitors gain stars for sucessful trials, so you might want to work on easy targets for a while.

2: Just by being in a province for a turn (whether you try a general or not) your inquisitor raises the province's zeal by 1 point. Multiple inquisitors increase the rate. This can be handy as a way of increasing the chances of a trial suceeding in the province later, or for inceasing the piety of provinces you plan to raise a crusade in or expect your crusade to pass through.

3: If you don't keep your inquisitor busy putting generals on trial, he might decide to start trying common people by himself. Eventually you get a message that the inquisition has spiraled out of control and piety drops way down. If you want to push down a province's zeal for some reason, this is the only way I know to do it. Unfortunately your inquisitor will increase zeal for a while before he finally goes crazy and things spiral out of control.


I'm guessing that if you don't like micromanaging agents, then you'll probably only want inquisitors in small doses.

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Originally Posted by Caravel

I usually have a team of about six to eight assassins only. This team get's moved around to "hot spots" to get rid of emissaries, princesses, rival religious agents most importantly the Inquisition. Basically anything that enters my territory gets killed.

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Same here. The one addendum for me is that I also often have an assassin accompany my faction leader (if he's worth protecting, that is) as part of his "entourage". Better safe that sorry! :yes:

I make very little use of agents, especially since I tend to play like a gorging behemoth and go military expansion style like crazy. And I find managing scores of different agents to get immensely tedious with a big empire. I use emissaries, obviously, and sometimes a dozen spies to try and stir up an enemy province, but I find assassins to be very time consuming to "train up" and immensely vulnerable. Inquisitors are way overpowered, especially the Grand's, because all the time put in valouring them up is pretty much safe since Inqs don't suffer from death-by-botched-attempt. I will happily and without any moral pangs pump out a bunch of them to annihilate my most annoying enemy's cream. But spies and assassins, barely make use of them. Even emissaries tend to get left out later in the game since no one wants to be allied with me anymore anyway. :no:

Well if you play the blitzing game then you might find spies and assassins less useful. Though playing in this way also leaves you very vulnerable to the bloat effect, later on and poor territorial stability in general.

As to tedious management, I disagree somewhat. Spies require very little management. As I've said before, you leave them in the province and let them do their job, it's only when you start having problems with a rival faction's rogue assassin that you need to move your best spy into the problem province. Assassins require more work and care. Because they follow targets they tend to get trapped by border forts a lot. So it's important to cancel the mission if the target moves and forget about sending them into border fort provinces unless they're about 5 star and the mission is really worth the risk.

Inquisitors and especially Grand Inquisitors are an horrendous exploit. I used to have a rule of 1 Grand Inquisitor and 3 Inquisitors only. Nowadays I don't train them at all.

Emissaries are my least used agent. I prefer to use Religious agents for diplomacy. I only keep an Emissary for bribing and stripping titles and that's it. Emissaries are also very big targets for rival assassins. The AI seems to be tuned up to go for those first in preference to any other agent or generals. If you want to train your spies up keep an emissary in the province as bait.

:bow:

I have NEVER in my life had AI accept my offer of alliance, or ceasefire (they accept war though ^^). Stopped trying after the 15th or so rejection. Have I been exceptionally unlucky, or do you guys have the patience of a turtle? And do alliances even mean anything whatsoever? I try to keep them if I can, but I never thought they're actually useful. Hmm, now that I think of it, I can't actually think of an occasion where an ally backstabbed me. Is there an actual effect? Even if there is, alliances get terminated SOOOO easily. The odd man's boat attacks yours with no gain whatsoever and suddenly you're all alone.

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Originally Posted by Vantek

I have NEVER in my life had AI accept my offer of alliance, or ceasefire (they accept war though ^^). Stopped trying after the 15th or so rejection. Have I been exceptionally unlucky, or do you guys have the patience of a turtle?

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I've had many an acceptance of alliance and ceasefire but it's usually early on in the campaign. During the later stages where the bloat effect kicks in, you're hated and the smaller factions will all turn against you.

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Originally Posted by Vantek

And do alliances even mean anything whatsoever? I try to keep them if I can, but I never thought they're actually useful.

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Alliances gain your faction leader influence but that's about it. In every other way they're not worth the virtual paper they're printed on.

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Originally Posted by Vantek

Hmm, now that I think of it, I can't actually think of an occasion where an ally backstabbed me. Is there an actual effect? Even if there is, alliances get terminated SOOOO easily. The odd man's boat attacks yours with no gain whatsoever and suddenly you're all alone.

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I can think of many occasions where allies have stabbed me in the back. Alliances don't seem to mean much to the AI. As to the shipping this is a known issue. Try to avoid having single ships and always have at least three ships in each sea region. This will prevent the AI picking off your lone ships and starting a war/breaking alliances.

Don't forget that the loyalty of generals is linked to the King's influence, preventing civil wars, but much more importantly the quality of heirs! Low influence kings get 2-star heirs, high influence get 4-5-star heirs, and even higher if they are good generals themselves. Having a high influence king is paramount in securing the empire and laying the foundations of a 100 % victory.

Therefore getting alliances IS important, but not in the strategic warfare sense. If I have the opportunity to relieve the siege of an ally, I always jump on it. The bonus is significant.

Completing crusades add to influence as well. Don't know about jihads, though?

/KotR

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Originally Posted by Vantek

I have NEVER in my life had AI accept my offer of alliance, or ceasefire (they accept war though ^^). Stopped trying after the 15th or so rejection. Have I been exceptionally unlucky, or do you guys have the patience of a turtle?

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The comp will never accept an alliance with you, if you're at war with one of thier allies. Killing thier allies are no problem though, was able to get 4 more alliances (only had 1 or 2 before that) after killing of two factions that were allied to about everyone. This was late midgame.

Ceasefire varies, they can be acceptive at some points, but after a while they will simply die rather than accept. In one campagin, the Byz accepted peace twice (after losing some provinces in the process), before ending up in that mode. That 20+ dual stack fleet harassing me was also a convincing argument for to fullfill that death wish.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vantek

And do alliances even mean anything whatsoever? I try to keep them if I can, but I never thought they're actually useful. Hmm, now that I think of it, I can't actually think of an occasion where an ally backstabbed me. Is there an actual effect? Even if there is, alliances get terminated SOOOO easily. The odd man's boat attacks yours with no gain whatsoever and suddenly you're all alone.

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Backstabbing an ally costs 1 influence for the attacker. That means that occationally the backstabber will fall into a civil war after thier attack.

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Originally Posted by Ironside

Backstabbing an ally costs 1 influence for the attacker. That means that occationally the backstabber will fall into a civil war after thier attack.

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So you should always make sure you take 2 of their provinces when you do it! ~;)

i love assassins... trin them up by killing your own emessaries or spies and use them to kill tough gens or anything else that needs dead........... lol but u never use inquisitors... they are worthless

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Originally Posted by Kamakazi

i love assassins... trin them up by killing your own emessaries or spies...

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This is considered bad practice, is costly and when there are so many rival faction agents to practice on early in the game, pretty pointless.

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Originally Posted by Kamakazi

lol but u never use inquisitors... they are worthless

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Grand Inquisitors are in fact the most powerful strategic agent in the game. Almost comparable to the Geisha in STW.

:bow:

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Originally Posted by Caravel

Well if you play the blitzing game then you might find spies and assassins less useful. Though playing in this way also leaves you very vulnerable to the bloat effect, later on and poor territorial stability in general.

As to tedious management, I disagree somewhat. Spies require very little management. As I've said before, you leave them in the province and let them do their job, it's only when you start having problems with a rival faction's rogue assassin that you need to move your best spy into the problem province. Assassins require more work and care. Because they follow targets they tend to get trapped by border forts a lot. So it's important to cancel the mission if the target moves and forget about sending them into border fort provinces unless they're about 5 star and the mission is really worth the risk.

Inquisitors and especially Grand Inquisitors are an horrendous exploit. I used to have a rule of 1 Grand Inquisitor and 3 Inquisitors only. Nowadays I don't train them at all.

Emissaries are my least used agent. I prefer to use Religious agents for diplomacy. I only keep an Emissary for bribing and stripping titles and that's it. Emissaries are also very big targets for rival assassins. The AI seems to be tuned up to go for those first in preference to any other agent or generals. If you want to train your spies up keep an emissary in the province as bait.

:bow:

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The tedious work was mostly about assassins. Spies are indeed fairly easy to use. But since i'm already such a control freak regarding army composition, endlessly shovelling troops around to make sure theyre best suited to deal with the most immediate threats, with big empires I take so much time per turn that I really cant be bothered to puzzle out where my assasins are, what theyre doing, where they're going, etc, on top off all the regular stuff you have to take care of.

And inquisitors are the ultimate cheese, yes. But when the bloat is really bad and the game is trying to screw me sideways silly just to make my life difficult, I throw my principles overboard and stoop to their level. :smash: