My tips on efficient campaign play

Hi there,
I would like to learn other players' tips on making campaign game more efficient/speedy. Here's what I have learned from experience (some of you may find these old news, but they are seldom mentioned in the guides).

Tip #1: Keep auto-tax on. Before hitting end year ALWAYS hold shift key and then use the mouse on the minimap to survey around for yellow/red provinces. Takes literally 3 seconds and avoids rebellions.

Tip#2: When surveying for possible rebellions with the shift key, also hold the V key . Again, use mouse and minimap for quick survey Takes zero seconds if doing tip#1 already :-)

Tip #3: Use bihops and emissaries to efficiently explore the map with agents . Assign a province to build a pile of emissaries/bishops (preferably province with port). Use C, Z and X keys to hide everything but your agents . Then move them to provinces you do not currently see. Hiding other units/cities makes it SO MUCH faster to spread your agents on the map. On PBM games I routinely use this to have the entire map explored in 5-10 years (unless using .matteosartori.)

Tip#3b: Use C, X and Z keys to reveal ships and hide other armies when moving your ship line . Makes it easier to see.

Tip#4: Peasants and only peasants stay in garrisons. Fighting units are kept in non-garrison armies. Every few turns I take out whatever troops the province has produced and move them out. This way I keep garrison and fighting units separate. Only exception is that I garrison governors who are not multi-star generals in their respective province (this way they gain acumen from buildings and they do not die in battles, so I do not have to replace them. No point in losing a high acument governor in a field battle. So I prefer peasants for governors whenever possible).

Tip#5: To efficiently replenish depleted units (which allows your first 16 units on a field to pack more punch and preserves valorous troops), I keep "tidy units up after battle" option ON and the computer will merge compatible units in a single stack automatically. To replenish a stack from another one in the same province, I take out all full strength units in a stack and put them in a separate "full-strength" stack and then merge the remaining depleted units with another stack of depleted units. Once a merged unit reaches full strength, I move it the "full-strength" stack. Out of convention, I place full strength stacks in the east side of a province and depleted ones on the west side (assuming the province is large enough. Trebizond and Algeria are my favorites for doing replenishing).

Tip#6: Use "Esc" key to dismiss all the events dialog . It will not dismiss the last one about vices and virtues. [I prefer no to turn off the "display non-essential messages" because I like to know when important buildings get done]

Tip#7: Learn to use the left-hand shift key on the keyboard to check map for rebellions. Otherwise you will one day hit the return key by mistake


Tip#8: Avoid putting medium-star generals especially princes in the stack of a higher-star general. You may lose track of them on the battlefield and have them killed. Use them to guard other provinces if possible (of course, sometimes you absolutely need that particular unit in a fight, but generally speaking use lesser command units if possible).


Ok. That' all I recall.

I like to hear what others do. In particular, I am looking for tips to solve the following:
***How to quickly move an agent/army from one end of the map to another . I hate waiting on the map to scroll and it is so SLOW. Any way to speed scrolling on the main map up?)

***How to remember which province is teching up for what. Right now I write it down. I also queue up all possible buildgins that lead up teh tech tree to the unit I want, but often some of them are not available until you build earlier ones, which makes it hard to queue them.

***A way to "mark" armies that should do something on the next turn (e.g if I am sending an army back to its home province for retraining, I often forget to move on the way and it ends up taking YEARS to get back. I tried positioning it on a particular place in a province, but the computer does not save the exact spot from turn to turn.)

please post your tips and hints

afrit
https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...evalcheers.gif https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...evalcheers.gif

A quick thing to add to your comment on using the left shift key. When ordering archers into melee, be careful not to hit the windows key instead of alt. Take it from me, it sucks really bad to go to desktop in the middle of a battle or planning a campaign.
https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...cons/mecry.gif


I do it ALL the time..... https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...ns/gc-wall.gif

Good advice, Afrit. For me the shortcut keys are particularly useful because I must have missed those in the manual What I want to know is how to avoid (as far as possible) negative vices like lazy, informal accountant, etc.

Afrit you pretty much got it right https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...s/bigthumb.gif

I disagree with the tidy up armies and would prefer to do it myself. Also you might want to keep certain units in the same stack and tidy up armies doesn't help. I like the idea of "theme armies" so I keep tidy units and armies off.

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Originally Posted by [b

Cita[/b] (Duke of Gloucester @ Jul. 27 2004,02:13)]Good advice, Afrit. For me the shortcut keys are particularly useful because I must have missed those in the manual What I want to know is how to avoid (as far as possible) negative vices like lazy, informal accountant, etc.

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A good way to avoid bad vices is keep a commander in combat. Also try keeping you governor's and top generals out of other stacks, for some reason leaving them in their own stack helps.

the only way i find to not get the lazy vices is to fight, fight fight. https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/no...ns/biggrin.gif

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Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (mercian billman @ July 27 2004,02:53)] I like the idea of "theme armies" so I keep tidy units and armies off.

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can you elaborate on "theme" ? Do you put archers together, cavalry together etc.. ?

I used to have stacks with a single type of unit dominant because it is produced in that province (eg queue archers in province A, spears in B, etc..). I found mixing the units in the stack to become a well balanced army very tedious. So now I queue up units in a province in a way to end up with a balanced army in 5 years (e.g spear,FMAA, archer, light cav, spear), only exception being provinces with valor units, or specially teched provinces.

afrit

Here's a way to tempoarily disable the Windows key
http://www.bytegems.com/ihatethiskey.shtml

Thanks, Billman. I will keep governors on their own and see if that helps. Keeping generals fighting isn't always practical, Ah Dut, and I like them to be at home to pick up builder and steward virtues etc.

Thanks for your tips, especially the shortcut keys. I really should start using agent armies myself.

A few small things I disagree on, the main one being clean up armies. I find this option, if enabled so annoying

If you go for a generalised army as I do (4 spear, 4 ranged, 2 sword, 2 axe or other armour piercing, 2 or 4 horse depending on unit sizes) and often have two full armies in a rpovince together at the end of a year it mixes them up

Also auto-merge isn;t actually very usefull. I quite often have two partial units that I want to keep, for example two catapaults with 4 people in each, which can both be retrained in seperate provinces in only one year, same for any more-than-one year units. This is especially true of beserkers in VI. Also I go for seperate stacks of partials to go and retrain in a province with the best armour/weapons/moral bonusses, and if set to clean up armies they will mix with other armies along the way every time.

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Originally Posted by mercian billman

A good way to avoid bad vices is keep a commander in combat. Also try keeping you governor's and top generals out of other stacks, for some reason leaving them in their own stack helps.

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This is very true.

I found that commanders of large stacks tend to get the bad vices more than those who are seperate.

So dispersal is a good idea.

Afrit , about your suggestion with leaving governors in garrisons: I have not personally verified this, but my feeling is, and I also remember having read this somewhere, that they are more likely to get bad vices if they stay in their home province (i.e., the province they are ruling).
So what I usually do is swap them around, ie.g. gov for province A goes in province B, and viceversa.
I have not seen any evidence that keeping a general in a stack of his own or in a big stack makes any difference.

Also, as you all know, the bad vices really start popping up in two stages, when you have some 40% of the map, and really bad after you pass 60%. Until then, it looks to me they are quite random; in my current campaign as the Turks, my troops have been sitting _completely_ idle in Bulgaria, Greece, and Constantinople for more than 100 years (some 120 years to be more precise).
I get good vices as well as bad ones: some of them get lazy, but not too many; but I also get numerate and silver-tongued (+acumen), and a few oddly get utterly fearless and brave beyond belief (how can they, when they've never been in a fight ?)..

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Originally Posted by afrit

can you elaborate on "theme" ? Do you put archers together, cavalry together etc.. ?

I used to have stacks with a single type of unit dominant because it is produced in that province (eg queue archers in province A, spears in B, etc..). I found mixing the units in the stack to become a well balanced army very tedious. So now I queue up units in a province in a way to end up with a balanced army in 5 years (e.g spear,FMAA, archer, light cav, spear), only exception being provinces with valor units, or specially teched provinces.

afrit

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By "theme army" I mean not all my armies are the same. If I'm playing the English I'll use Highlanders as the main force in one army (I try to use no more than 4-6 units of the same type) or I'll use Gallowglasses and kerns instead of FMAA. Theme armies aren't better or worse than "regular armies" their just different armies suited for different purposes.

A army with Gallowglasses or Highlanders as the main sword unit is better suited for desert combat than one utilizing FMAA. Theming also allows you to take better advantage of valor bonuses, it helps me keep track of certain units and, in addition adds a little flavor to the game.

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Originally Posted by The_Emperor

Also try keeping you governor's and top generals out of other stacks, for some reason leaving them in their own stack helps.

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Originally Posted by The_Emperor

This is very true.
I found that commanders of large stacks tend to get the bad vices more than those who are seperate.
So dispersal is a good idea.

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I always leave govenors and generals apart, because the V&V's related to governing (farmer, builder, etc) go to the leader of the stack the governor is in, not the governor himself. Strange but true.

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Originally Posted by afrit

***How to quickly move an agent/army from one end of the map to another . I hate waiting on the map to scroll and it is so SLOW. Any way to speed scrolling on the main map up?)

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I use a resolution of 1024*768 for the campaign map. Then I scroll all the way up with the mouse-wheel. That way you can scroll pretty quick cause you already see about a quarter of the map.
I think you can also use the arrow keys to scroll the map.

Hope that helps

R'as

I find the quickest way is to zoom all the way out, then drag the army/strategic unit to a province in the general direction of the final destination, then scroll by dragging the trapezium around in the mini-map, then move the unit another screen's width, until you get to your destination.

You have to be more careful with armies than with strategic units, because dropping an army on a friendly/neutral province will bring up the 'do you want to declare war?' dialog. Strategic units can be dragged from province to province with impunity, though.

w.r.t. auto-cleanup - I agree that its generally better to leave it switched off. Its particularly annoying because your garrison units get mixed up with your combat units otherwise.

I think Ludens is right - vices and virtues go to the leader of the stack. I have sometimes noticed a prince getting a "steward" or "builder" virtue when he is not (& cannot be) a province governor but because he commands a stack which includes a governor. I am not sure if these nice virtues carry over to when he becomes king - I guess they do, but whether they add 10% to the kingdom rather than province, I don't know. Strangely, I have not found good leaders to pick up vices from their stack - maybe because such leaders are kept busy fighting and fighting seems to minimise the odds of picking up vices. However, my governors tend to have high acumen, so I tend to keep them out of such combat stacks to keep them safe. I guess if you are building up a province and want the steward/builder virtues, it would pay to keep the governors outside of a stack. Towards the midgame, it tends to be governor vices that are the problem so putting them all in a stack (ideally with the governor of Sinai or some such useless province on top!) might be good.

In a PBM campaign, the first thing I do is think what each province can build and from that assign to each province a role - e.g. Cyrenacia for Saharan cav etc.

I also try to assign 3 or so general objectives for the reign, to avoid being carried away by events and minutae, although I seldom stick to them.

Probably my main tip for efficient campaign play would be to assign at least 3 provinces exclusively to ship building. Crank out ships so that you have one in every sea and with maxed coastal trading facilities, you'll be rolling in florins. This will make it so much easier to accomplish whatever goals you have. You'll also be able to see most of the game world in all it's glory. Plus your coasts will be safe from invasion and you'll have great mobility internationally. The only downside is that AI piracy will doubtless spark some unwanted wars.

Mid-game, I also like to send a priest to every province - for intelligence, to convert unbelievers and to help loyalty in my own lands.

yep. I like to also use provinces as midway points for agents and use zoom.

when using the scrollwheel to zoom in and zoom out, it's really quick and when fully zoomed out, going from one end of the map to another doesn't take much time.

BTW, even if you "declare war" on the dialog and don't have an army attacking at the end of the turn, you will still be neutral.

just dismiss the dialog and you can use the province as a midway point for armies although don't forget to move it out before ending turn!

I dedicate at least 6 coastals to build ships until the seazones are filled with my ships plus about 4-5 spares. These 6 coastals are straight for ships in towers, fort, port, keep, shipwright.

I have all my coastals capable of ships by midgame.

I also spam with religious agents the internal land provinces first and then all the provinces to keep tabs on everything.

valor bonus and hence province specialization is big. I usually tech straight for the masters in these provinces to get v2 while iron provinces become upgrade provinces with weapons, armor, morale and just basic buildings to be able to retrain say swordsmen there for the upgrades. This way, high valor fully upgraded units come quickly.

Yes, but are we sure this works? If you upgrade weapons/armour do you lose the morale and valour bonuses from buildings and provinces? If not, Katank's suggestion is one of the best hints I have picked up from the board!

I disagree on two things. First, the tidy up units after a battle. I always leave that off. On early battles when I don't have that many good troops, I would use 2-3 princes on one army often. Auto tidy up units could combine those units making me lose some of my princes. I also use some of my governors that way and I could lose some of them also.

It's also more efficient for me to do it on my own. Putting a unit of 1 FMAA with a gold shield on a unit of 59 FMAA with a bronze shield will yield you a unit of 60 FMAA with a bronze shield. Doing it the other way around will yield you a unit of 60 FMAA with a gold shield. Also, some of my armies will have less than 16 units or around 16 units. It's much better in that case to have multiple 30-50 man units instead of having some 60 man units and having some 10-20 man units.

I also turn auto-tax off. First, you need around 120%, IIRC, to prevent factions from reappearing. Second, I've heard that higher tax rates have a bigger chance of giving some bad vices. The main reason I don't use it is that the loyalty of a newly conquered province gains slower when using higher tax rates. My armies have to be in garrison duty longer and that slows down my conquering. Also, if a king with good happiness virtues dies due to old age or the province gets blockaded from the king, even taxing it on very low might not prevent a rebellion. I always want a good degree of safety on newly conquered provinces.

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Originally Posted by andrewt

I also turn auto-tax off. First, you need around 120%, IIRC, to prevent factions from reappearing. Second, I've heard that higher tax rates have a bigger chance of giving some bad vices. The main reason I don't use it is that the loyalty of a newly conquered province gains slower when using higher tax rates. My armies have to be in garrison duty longer and that slows down my conquering. Also, if a king with good happiness virtues dies due to old age or the province gets blockaded from the king, even taxing it on very low might not prevent a rebellion. I always want a good degree of safety on newly conquered provinces.

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uhm, VI 2.01 has the autotax threshold at 120. So you can use that.
secondly, I am not aware of higher odds of getting bad vices if taxes are higher. I am really not convinced that is ture. Again, using as an example my current Turkish campaign, I've had very high set everywhere for the last 120 years. Very, very few of my generals have bad vices (and those are totally ignoreable, e.g. Greed +1 acumen -10 happiness). Oh, and they haven't been in a war in those 120 years either.

You are right about having to keep garrisons longer in, and slowing you down, but I find that is only the case when I'm really blitzing or going on a rampage and getting several provinces per year for several years in line. Otherwise it's usually not a problem, I only ever use peasants for garrisons and only in situations as the above I may not be able to keep up with my peasant production.
Also, unless it's _really_ early in the game, and you don't yet have spies, they do a _great_ job of boosting loyalty. AFAIK this has not been verified, but most people seem to agree that the same formula for decreasing loyalty in enemy provinces applies to your own provinces, except of course it increases loyalty: 40% + spy_valour * 20%. So a vanilla spy would give you +40 loyalty...which is more than enough usually.

The vices thing is not really substantiated so it may not be true. I'm aware of how spies currently work and I always place a spy in each of my provinces. They changed it so that I only need one spy per province.

I forgot which campaign it was, either the Danish or Hungarian campaign. During that campaign, however, my Middle Eastern Holdings had a drop in loyalty and went into the red and orange after they got cut off due to an enemy blockade. This was around at least 5-10 years after I captured them. The annoying enemy ship kept moving also so it took a few years to destroy it and they usually had a new ship soon after.

It's usually not a problem but you never know when a king with +30 happiness in all provinces suddenly croaks. Also, it takes more than 10 years for a province to assimilate which I find to be a problem even when I'm going slow.

You may be right.
I've also heard people claiming that some of their provinces rebelled or at least had significant drops in loyalty for no apparent reason, and some thought it had to do with the very high taxes.
But again, this has never happened to me, and I always keep taxes on very high.

And yes, I guess the question whether the assimilation process is fast enough or not is very closely tied to your style of playing, and "fast/slow" is a very relative thing anyway ~:)

@duke, I just suggest going for valor and upgrades in different provinces to get fully upgraded high valor units faster.

building all the upgrades and a master sword may take forever to get fully upgraded v2 sword unit provided it has a province bonus.

building straight to master sword in the bonus province wouldn't take as long and in that time, you can just build a regular swordsmith and upgrade buildings. train it in the bonus province and retrain for upgrades and you get an uber unit really fast.

note: assimilation periods vary upon happiness buildings, king stats, gov dread, religion, and other factors.

note: watch tower, border fort, town watch should be among the first things you build.

0 dread govs shouldn't be assigned to new territories as it actually lowers loyalty.

religion could be big issue. between catholic and orthodox it's not so bad but big problems with muslim countries.

dread on king very useful. ie. early brits have awesome king for blitzing due to dread level.

IIRC, if an AI faction with ships on vital sea lanes suddenly declares war on you, you could have loyalty on some provinces drop by as much as 50-60%, maybe even more. I usually find it very dangerous on the midgame especially since this could cut off some of my newer conquests away from the king.

What I usually do is put the money making lands that I initially have or have conquered early on on very high and leave the rest on normal. Troublesome provinces get set to low or very low. Once I have trade set-up, money ceases to be a problem for me so I don't bother with setting provinces on very high anymore. It's just a potential headache if mass rebellions start pouring in. I usually tinker with taxes only on the early game. I just leave stuff on normal in the midgame to late game.

Glad this thread generated good replies. Thanks for all the feedback.

Regarding auto-clean up for armies: after reading all the replies, the consensus seemed to be to turn it off. I tried that in a new campaign and I agree that it should be turned off (i.e my initial tip was wrong). I did discover the "M" shortcut key which allows you to merge an entire stack's units quickly and that pretty much makes the auto-clean obsolete.

Regarding auto-tax: Yes, there are situations when auto-tax is dangerous, but since I was really after quick and efficient play, I believe that auto-tax saves micromanagement time and may produce better income. What we really need is an auto-tax on per-province basis (I think RTW will have that as "auto-manage" Yipee!)

I liked the tip about moving your agents/armies to an intermediate province and then moving them later after adjusting the map. I will try it in my next campaign.

Agreed. If I could auto-tax my provinces at different rates, I'd do it.

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***A way to "mark" armies that should do something on the next turn (e.g if I am sending an army back to its home province for retraining, I often forget to move on the way and it ends up taking YEARS to get back. I tried positioning it on a particular place in a province, but the computer does not save the exact spot from turn to turn.)

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You can actually do this Afrit. Take an army or naval unit and place it where you whant it to be in an province or seazone then left-click on this province/ seazone. In 90% your unit will then be in that exact location the next turn. One exception though, if you build a unit or ship in that square your "placed" unit will automatically be moved to the default location.
I find this technique very useful when I´m moving units back and forth through my realm or setting up a shiplink when there´s alot of other vessels in the seas. Usually I tend to put units that are "going away" in the far end of a prov and units that are going "home" in the nearest location.

BTW, thanks for the C, X and Z-tip. Maybee I should read the manual after all this time, he he!

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Originally Posted by PseRamesses

You can actually do this Afrit. Take an army or naval unit and place it where you whant it to be in an province or seazone then left-click on this province/ seazone. In 90% your unit will then be in that exact location the next turn. One exception though, if you build a unit or ship in that square your "placed" unit will automatically be moved to the default location.
I find this technique very useful when I´m moving units back and forth through my realm or setting up a shiplink when there´s alot of other vessels in the seas. Usually I tend to put units that are "going away" in the far end of a prov and units that are going "home" in the nearest location.

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You can have a stack or strategic agent automatically find its way back to a distant province. Just drop him/stack onto the target province (which would be un-highlighted). Dont touch the stack again. When you press enter to end the turn, the stack would move (along with the AIs' stacks.) Leave the stack/agent on its own and it will find its way back. If you pick it up and drop it, the pathing is cancelled.

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Origninally posted by Maeda Toshiie
You can have a stack or strategic agent automatically find its way back to a distant province. Just drop him/stack onto the target province (which would be un-highlighted). Dont touch the stack again. When you press enter to end the turn, the stack would move (along with the AIs' stacks.) Leave the stack/agent on its own and it will find its way back. If you pick it up and drop it, the pathing is cancelled.

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Works fine as long as you don't pick the unit up next turn. If you do, then it forgets its orders.

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Originally quoted by Katank
0 dread govs shouldn't be assigned to new territories as it actually lowers loyalty.

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I wasn't sure about this, so I tried it out when I conquered a Spanish province - Castile, I think. I made sure I was taxing on "very high" and assigned a zero dread, four acumen governor. The happines rating went from 125% to 127%. Of course, when I re-loaded the game and used a four dread governor instead. happiness was a lot higher! However I can say for certain that using a 0 dread governors doesn't always make a province more rebellious. In some circumstances it may, fewer troops, more rebellious province etc.

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Originally Posted by Duke of Gloucester

I wasn't sure about this, so I tried it out when I conquered a Spanish province - Castile, I think. I made sure I was taxing on "very high" and assigned a zero dread, four acumen governor. The happines rating went from 125% to 127%. Of course, when I re-loaded the game and used a four dread governor instead. happiness was a lot higher! However I can say for certain that using a 0 dread governors doesn't always make a province more rebellious. In some circumstances it may, fewer troops, more rebellious province etc.

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+5% loyalty per skull. Have never seen a drop in loyalty from assigning a 0 dread governor. That 2% *may* be due to his piety, though I havent seen a concrete and exact corelation b/w piety, zeal and happiness.

Maeda Toshiie is right.
Even though dread is the main factor that influences loyalty, piety & zeal also account for some.
i.e., if your province is overzealous and you name a horribly heretic governor, you may notice a decrease in loyalty.

A couple of things that I noticed during my campaigns:
- if you appoint a low piety gov to a province and then try to increase the zeal to that province, it will be capped around 75%. I've tried this with lots of imams and alims, in 100% muslim provinces, without any change in zeal throughout more than 100 years. Once I got them a high zeal gov, zeal rocketed to 100% within a few years.
- The problem with high zeal province/low piety gov fixes itself over time; since your province has relatively high zeal, most of your troops that are produced in it and its governor will soon start getting plus piety/zeal vices.

try it on a newly conquered province. a 0 dread is sure to drop the loyalty 5 or so.

I've often forgone a gov for a turn or two if I don't have decent acumen sufficiently dreadful fella around.

It's a tough decision as more cash always helps a rush but a big loyalist rebellion or the like can stop your rush cold.

so you captured a reasonable income province and have a 0 dread, 4 acumen fella around but not enough troops to garrison as you need to push on. what do you do?

hey, K., is that a rhetorical question ?
If I were you (i.e., blitzing), I'd forget the 0A 4D guy, and just appoint some geezer with 2-3 dread and noe significant acumen. This way I can happily whip about in a blitz of glory.
What I usually do (unless it's beginning of the game, when more or less everyone needs to rush), is just churn more troops and wait until the province is happy with a decent acumen gov and its peasant garrison. If I'm particularly bored, I'll let them rebel and see what funny VnV's I get from training a jedi... ~:)

I don't have MTW with me right now to test this, but I think that moving a governor into his own province improves loyalty a few percent, regardless of his qualities otherwise. That's one reason I tend to station them in their provinces (other than getting building virtues).

afrit

they get "builder" virtues anyway, they don't need to stay in their province.
AFAIK, this is not true for "steward" virtues, though.
But I most certainly have had builder/great/magnificent builder govs who were not sitting in their own province.

yep, rhetorical.

I don't believe in govs staying in their own province.

I instead stack them together and move them around all the time.

I move them with the crown prince to where the buildings are completed next turn.

tons of completions means tons of good v&v's.

frequent travel also seem to reduce vice rate.

if they become a bit corrupt, I stick them into frontline stacks and keep em fighting until they are either brave beyond belief and reborn saints or dead.

"frequent travel also seem to reduce vice rate."

For laziness and drunkness only.

"if they become a bit corrupt, I stick them into frontline stacks and keep em fighting until they are either brave beyond belief and reborn saints or dead."

The vices that come along due to empire bloating is very irritating. I tend to get those money grubbing guys killed on the battlefield and appoint new ones (who again have short lifespans).

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Originally posted by katank
try it on a newly conquered province. a 0 dread is sure to drop the loyalty 5 or so.

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Sorry, Katank. I didn't explain myself properly. This is exactly what I did. I had just conquered Castile. The happiness went up, but not much. I suspect that MT's suggestion about piety matching the piety of the province provides the explanation.

Note, I am not suggesting that zero dread governors should be used, just saying that they don't always reduce happiness in a province. Your choice of governor should depend on the province and how rebellious and rich it is, how many troops you have and what you need to do next and your general style of play. I suspect I play more slowly than you, so I don't mind waiting while a province settles down before going on to the next one.

I hear you loud and clear Afrit , .. IDENTIFICATION is what you ARE SAYING the maps need moddifications done as they get very cluttered and annoying ..
you mention the word "REMEMBERING what province etc etc ,YES .. we shouldn't have to use a memo pad for this part of the game .
MARKING : armies , injured, artillery, etc : SO WE KNOW THEIR NEXT MOVE/HEADING etc etc , a flag would be usefull for this , i had the same idea many months ago .This requires modding skills , I have none do you afrit ?
How about anybody else ? ... I hope RTW has a joystick option as well ~;)
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I invite you all to check threads/topics started by me .. ~:idea:

Hey, thanks for the tips on the C, X and Z keys, Afrit. They're not documented in my manual (MTW 1.0) and they're darn useful...

@D of G, precisely my point.

for rushing, it's often best to wait 2-3 years before assigning a gov if you don't want to micro and all you have is high acu low dread ones.

This is a really good thread. Nice little details that I had wondered about but wasn't completely sure.

Marquis

@ D of G, katank:

Having read this thread I took note yesterday as I assigned a new gov on turn conquest+one to Portugal. He was a couple of dread, four acumen, zero piety and... Portugese loyalty did drop, quite significantly, enough to cause a drop in autotax rate from Low to Very Low and slip 2-3 points as well... Portugal was c. 60% zeal, so maybe it was the piety factor kicking in. It's also Portugal, of course - maybe that makes a difference?

I've also seen loyalty rise by the +5%/dread elsewhere too - clearly there's a wee function at work somewhere in the code...

I usually don't have the time to muck with religion stuff and just mark the assignment of 0 dread govs as risky and quite likely to lower loyalty.

I can confirm that religion is a biggie and that a combination of king and gov's dread gives loyalty indications just as how king and gov's piety with latter's more gives weight to how a zealous or not so zealous population responds and what the religion is

I've noticed that the loyalty of a provincial leader has more affect than dread. If you assign a guiy with 7 loyalty and 1 dread, you'll get a good bonus, even though they're a nice-guy. But try assigning a 1 loyalty guy to a province and watch that loyalty go dooooown. ~:idea:

Good thread, afrit. Glad to see that you have changed your mind on auto-tax. Simply set each province - I try to never use Very High - and then check using the shift key before each turn ends.

I never use auto-merge units feature as I want to be able to manage the recomibination process. Remember that valor/morale is tracked by individual, whle armor and weapons upgrades are tracked by unit, so how unis are combined is very important. Once I have taken care of the important recombinations, I just hit M on the province and the rest recombine automatically.

Peasants as garrison. OK, but there are better options. Peasants are worthless in battle, and with only peasants as garrison you are vulnerable should an enemy break your main line. Never lose your main line??? Then you are probably overbuilding armies on the frontier, which quickly zaps your savings from leaving peasants behind.

I try to garrison interior provinces with a high acumen governor (unless he is a good general) and another unit. This usually means I have a 60-man Urban Militia or Archer unit along with a slightly depleted Slav Warrior unit or some similar group. I add an archer or other odd unit to those provinces that generally have loyalty issues (Portugal, Scotland, Arabia, etc).

My tip for a successful campaign is to build money first, the upgrade provinces, then build the best troops before expanding. Of course there are endless variations, but I find it best to get trade and province $$$ upgrades like mines and farms and trading posts FIRST. Economy is the engine that drives your empire.

Once the money is there, then upgrade the provinces. I like to use small armies of very high quality troops. The AI uses a Soviet style strtegy of buildings lots of cheap units. Properly used, a few high quality troops will sweep them fields of masses of rabble. And it is a less expensive army to maintain. I frequently disband obsolete units unless I think they can serve as garrison troops, and I rarely build peasants or other militia.

ichi

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Originally Posted by ichi

Remember that valor/morale is tracked by individual

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How do you know that morale is tracked per individual? From the log-files?

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Originally Posted by ichi

My tip for a successful campaign is to build money first, the upgrade provinces, then build the best troops before expanding. Of course there are endless variations, but I find it best to get trade and province $$$ upgrades like mines and farms and trading posts FIRST. Economy is the engine that drives your empire. Once the money is there, then upgrade the provinces. I like to use small armies of very high quality troops. The AI uses a Soviet style strtegy of buildings lots of cheap units. Properly used, a few high quality troops will sweep them fields of masses of rabble. And it is a less expensive army to maintain. I frequently disband obsolete units unless I think they can serve as garrison troops, and I rarely build peasants or other militia.
ichi

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Wise w0rds. Thass what I do, too. The only problem you get, of course, is that the game is too damn easy.

I try to aim to have a massive annual profit with a 1/4 million in the bank and all the upgrades you need to build the good, high era troops like CMAA etc, with upgrades where possible by the time high comes around in 1205. Keep things small, but extremely high quality and then as 1205 arrives you're ready with a load of dosh to build some serious kick-ass troops that'll just wipe the floor with anything the AI will throw at you for some time. Then you can get onto massive expansion ~:cheers:

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Originally Posted by ichi

I never use auto-merge units feature as I want to be able to manage the recomibination process. Remember that valor/morale is tracked by individual, whle armor and weapons upgrades are tracked by unit, so how unis are combined is very important. Once I have taken care of the important recombinations, I just hit M on the province and the rest recombine automatically.

Peasants as garrison. OK, but there are better options. Peasants are worthless in battle, and with only peasants as garrison you are vulnerable should an enemy break your main line. Never lose your main line??? Then you are probably overbuilding armies on the frontier, which quickly zaps your savings from leaving peasants behind.

ichi

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ichi,
good replies. I agree with you on the auto-merge. At the time I initially posted, I was not aware of the M shortcut. Now I do exactly what you suggest.

As for tax, in the early stages of a campaign you can do custom-tax, but later on I think auto-tax is way easier. I personally still use auto-tax.

Peasants as garrisons. The one advantage of peasants is that they can always be produced by the conquered provinces with just a fort. I nowadays have a "spearhead" of good quality troops that I use to conquer new provinces followed by waves of peasants for garrisoning and keeping loyalty. Then move on to next provinces. When my main frontier gets breached, I scramble a defense as needed.

While that may not be the best, in sense of winning, strategy, I prefer it for its efficiency. And by efficient in the initial post I meant strategies that shorten the real-life time of a campaign so they take days instead of weeks.

cheers,
Afrit

I know that to get the steward virtue the governor has to be in his provence and you have to build a farming upgrade but how do you get the trader virtue, i find it impossible.

Oh and by the way great thread learnt a lot of stuff ~:cheers:

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Originally Posted by Sir Toma of Spain

I know that to get the steward virtue the governor has to be in his provence and you have to build a farming upgrade but how do you get the trader virtue, i find it impossible.

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You get the trader-virtue for building mines.

I prefer cheap troops like spears and archers. I save on maintenance and can defeat AI knights and MAA very cost effectively.

@ ludens, I hope by high quality you don't mean crank BG units like crazy. I found that perhaps the number 1 mistake players make in bankrupting themselves.

Economy is key. good farming and mines to finance ships and major trade boom.

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Originally Posted by Ludens

You get the trader-virtue for building mines.

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Really, i'll try that hope it works

pick a province with salt mine (ie. not worth much) and build the basic mine and strip it down again and again to get the trader virtue easily.

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Originally Posted by katank

@ ludens, I hope by high quality you don't mean crank BG units like crazy.

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I am sorry but I have no idea what you are refering to. Perhaps you are confusing the post of another member with mine?

sorry ludens, I think it's ichi's post.

just wanted to clarify as often people think BG units like RKs or Ghulam guards as high quality and pump them out like crazy while turtling and that just kills the economy like nothing.

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Originally Posted by katank

sorry ludens, I think it's ichi's post.

just wanted to clarify as often people think BG units like RKs or Ghulam guards as high quality and pump them out like crazy while turtling and that just kills the economy like nothing.

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I'd rather have 16 high valor/upgraded CMAA, Civ Knights, OFS, Longbows, and Pavs than 48 Urban Mili, vanilla spears, archers, Mounted Sargs, and Woodsmen. I see folks with huge stacks of obsolete units and their economy makes 789 florin per year despite having a ship in every sea.

ichi

that's true. your lineup is good.

I just hate it for people to misinterpret it as "garrison yer provinces with RKs" and then complain how they can't keep their economy afloat.

I'd still like to say that even lower quality troops can often be good. in competent hands, spears and archers can hold off AI forces for a very long time, enough to muster up high quality troops to counterattack.

that's why I personally have relatively low tech standing forces but good warchest and facilities when I need them.