The Turks

The Turks need to be unlocked before you can play as them. To do this you can either complete a campaign (on any difficutly, long or short setting) with one of the five starting factions, or you can edit the preferences file. To do this open your Sega/M2TW folder/data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign, find the file called "descr_strat" and open it with wordpad. Now find the section which says

Code:

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campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
  england
  france
  hre
  spain
  venice
end
unlockable
  sicily
  milan
  scotland
  byzantium
  russia
  moors
  turks
  egypt
  denmark
  portugal
  poland
  hungary
end
nonplayable
  papal_states
  aztecs
  mongols
  timurids
  slave
end

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Change it so it reads

Code:

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campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
  england
  france
  hre
  spain
  venice
  sicily
  milan
  scotland
  byzantium
  russia
  moors
  turks
  egypt
  denmark
  portugal
  poland
  hungary
end
nonplayable
  papal_states
  aztecs
  mongols
  timurids
  slave
end

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Starting as the Turks, you're in a mixed position.

You do have 4 regions - 2 towns (Iconium and Yerevan) and 2 castles (Caesarea and Mosul) - but none of them make much money and what little income you do have mostly goes to pay your unit upkeep costs.
Also, your settlements are horribly spaced out with so many mountains separating West from East you'll find 'yet another damn bunch of rebels' hiding around each corner. This distance - and the inability to march in a straight line anywhere means it's a real pain trying to move troops around to defend your borders... Something you'll be doing quite a lot.

Put simply, the Byzantines will harrass you early. It took 11 turns for the first half-stack to besiege Iconium and only 5 more for them to send an army across to Tbilisi, taking Trebizond on the way.
At the same time, the Egyptians will be steamrolling everything South of you.

My advice is to think very carefully about each mission your Nobles give to you. Get your Diplomat moving NorthWest as quickly as you can and hopefully you'll get a load of 500 florin missions to make first contact with a load of factions you probably won't fight for a while.
I also grabbed every spare unit I could get and headed for Antioch, ignoring Adana for now. The money you get from Antioch makes it a life-saver, even with Byzantium blockading it every other turn.

Another reason I would advise avoiding Adana early on is that the units defending it are an uncomfortable mix when the bulk of your army is Horse Archers of some sort.

Any veterans from MTW will know about the unit mix in general for the Turks (Horse Archers for breakfast, lunch and dinner) and in fact it's probably closer to the Parthians from RTW. The early infantry is dreadful and you'll have so little money for non-HAs that you'll probably spend what you can afford on Peasant Archers (bait for enemy archers).
The main problem with the unit mix early on is simply that the Byzantines have access to an equally wide selection of Horse Archers as well, so you'll be relying on the AI to field inadequate armies quite a lot.

It's also worth noting a couple of oddities. Firstly the Race Tracks let Towns recruit HAs and secondly both Janissary units are recruited in Towns as well, so don't be stingy with the Blacksmiths (or even Swordsmiths Guilds, if you're lucky).

I recently completed the Turks campaign (VH/VH) and quite enjoyed it. I pushed on the Byzantines relatively early, and was able to take Nicaea, which seem to distract them so I was able to expand a bit more easily. I also took Constantinople before the Mongols arrived (in force....). Holding Antoich as the previous poster mentioned would probably be a good idea, I didn't, and I wasn't able to displace the Mongols from there for a considerable time. The reason I didn't hold it was due to a crusade though, which you do have to be careful of...

I found the Sipahi horse archers very useful, as they do quite well in melee too, so they seem useful in chasing down enemy horse archers while continuing to shoot at them, especially in groups. This was especially important early in the game, as my enemies seemed to have significant numbers of horse archers. Foot archers, especially the non-peasant ones also will do the job against them when they're not in cantabrian. Getting too absorbed with horse archer numbers probably isn't a good idea though, I was finding 4-5 per 20 unit stack worked quite well, otherwise you're risking a bit too much in lack of melee power.

The basic spear militia aren't great but they aren't too shocking either, but the dismounted sipahis and saracen militia (and ottoman infantry, an "archer" unit) make quite a capable holding melee force and often can break infantry lines of their own accord even without the cavalry you should be charging with.

When the millions of Mongols arrived I got rather bogged down fighting against them, defending cities with decent numbers of the heavier spears is a must (and having a production line for retraining losses), but you can attack individual stacks in the open if you're confident with your cavalry or have a good position. I did though try to make sure I kept pushing on the Byzantines and then Venice with anything spare so that I was still taking some territories. When the Mongols finally burnt out, it was relatively plain sailing (except having to be quick taking the 45 regions). ~;)

As mentioned the 3 Janissary units are recruited from high level cities not castles, but it costs quite a lot of money to get there when for the early to middle part of the game you're better off with spears, cavalry and horse archers.

ps. Artillery is also very useful for taking cities in a hurry (i.e. just turning up and attacking), though this is true for any campaign, but it is highly useful to be able to take advantage of poorly defended cities instead of sieging and more defenders turning up.

I am playing the Turks right now on m/h.

I know this is pretty much "common knowledge" but: in the beginning you´ll be pretty poor for most of the time. This is bad. Your bigger cities start to rebel [in my case Antioch & Constantiople]. This is worse.

After that both cities fell within no time due to rebellion, and this is good...if you had a decent force there. Reconquer the city and rob it....:croc:

Should give you a good 10-20k to solve your financial problems before the Mongols come knocking on ya door.....I know I am a crook!

Ditto what everyone has posted so far but I like to add a few suggestions:

1) Try to push (be it through force or bribery) south as far and fast as possible. Why? Antioch, Damascus, Edessa, Aleppo have the potential to become large money spinners. Capturing Acre is important as it can quickly be upgraded to a fortress.

2) To save money and to get the most out of your troops merge all your units to 2 or 3 full stack (that's if you have the money) and based at least one in each half [i.e. 1 in ME and another in Anatolia] of the empire.

3) Brace yourself for the inevitable invasion of the Byzantine/Egyptian/Crusades. Don't worry if you are outnumbered, provided your opponents doesn't have as many Archers and HA's as you your armies can roll-over full stack with relative ease because of your superior fire-power and mobility.

Btw: Has anyone else notice the fact that Turkish Archers have a defence skill of 6? The same level as JHI?

Don't be let dwn by the apparently low stats of Janissary Heavy Infantry, compared to other heavy infantry (Western Dismounted Knights and such), they are in all tests i've done the BEST heavy infantry unit one on one. They have however to be protected from heavy cavalry charges and missile fire.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

The Turks need to be unlocked before you can play as them. To do this you can either complete a campaign (on any difficutly, long or short setting) with one of the five starting factions, or you can edit the preferences file. To do this open your Sega/M2TW folder/data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign, find the file called "descr_strat" and open it with wordpad. Now find the section which says

Code:

---

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
  england
  france
  hre
  spain
  venice
end
unlockable
  sicily
  milan
  scotland
  byzantium
  russia
  moors
  turks
  egypt
  denmark
  portugal
  poland
  hungary
end
nonplayable
  papal_states
  aztecs
  mongols
  timurids
  slave
end

---

Change it so it reads

Code:

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campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
  england
  france
  hre
  spain
  venice
  sicily
  milan
  scotland
  byzantium
  russia
  moors
  turks
  egypt
  denmark
  portugal
  poland
  hungary
end
nonplayable
  papal_states
  aztecs
  mongols
  timurids
  slave
end

---

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Greetings Noble Frog

Not sure if someone has already pointed this out, or, even if it makes a difference.

That file is read only. I don't know if it's necessary (probably not) but just thought I'd mention it, that you'll have to click properties and change the file from read only, before you make any changes, which can be saved.

Salute !

I'm used to play with Turks and I have some suggestions :
Give up Erevan and Mossoul, sell all buildings and use all the soldiers in the 2 cities for plunder Antioche. Now you are rich ! Then, give up Antioche right away (crusaders will come soon) and move your army to Adana. Once you have captured Adana, turn it into City and build a dock as soon as possible.
While Byzantium attack you, make one boat and go to capture Cyprus island. There is only 1 or 2 units garrisoned so it's easy and the docks already build will help you to get some money. Now you have to defend your borders against Byzantines and later, Egyptians. Make 4-5 Turks archers in Caesarea, send them to the mountains left to Iconium with 1 or 2 infantry units and let Byzantines army attack you. In battle, put your army on the higher position in mountain and watch your Turks archers devastating the ennemy army. If you play well, you can kill an entire 20 Units army with your 7-8 units. All you need is to place your archers very high in the mountain and protect them with your small infantry.

Right to Adana, you can see 2 mountains between the only road to Antioche. You will wait Egyptians attack here and use the same tactics than above.
When border will be safe, expand you territory only to the west, cities are more interesting. Don't forget to take Heraklion and Rhodes islands, many trades and money are available here.

Let the East cities to Egyptians who will have to fight Mongols alone, later in the game (good luck to them)

Here's some early game suggestions of my own after getting pulverized, then restarting.

No, it's not a secret that the Turks begin poor, but that can change in a matter of two or three turns. You won't roll in money, but you'll be able to field a solid force. And always remember, in a nutshell on previous statements, that Turkic cities produce better infantry than castles, but ultimately no heavy cavalry (Sipahis are solid, however, for quite some time).

First, take Mosul and turn it into a city. It's so far back and in a valuable stretch that keeping it a castle is more an expense. Develop your eastern cities for cash. Take the two Turkish Archers from Mosul and the city to the north and combine them with one to two spear militia. These guys should immediately go to Trebizond, which the Byzantines will also be gunning for with a sizeable stack, and which you should be able to break once inside the castle if you wait out the siege instead of storm it. (Note: After you defeat the Byzantine army going for this castle, change it into a city. Caesarea, Adana, and Aleppo are the only castles necessary at the start.)

In the western part of your empire, build Iconium up to port status, but think about getting yourself up to Saracen Infantry and catapults quickly. Saracens can beat any Infantry unit the early Byzantines will throw at you, and your cavalry/foot archers likewise. So pull together all your spare forces in the west on turn one and start thinking about Antioch -- this city and Mosul's transformation were the difference-makers in my campaign. Build Antioch the same way as Iconium, up to port status and with a level two or three market. After that, get Saracens, then more money.

If you can take the castle south of Antioch, good, but the Egyptians usually get there quickly. Absolutely take Adana and Aleppo and keep them as castles. The added defense buffer between money-making cities is paramount at this stage, and they connect your empire better.

Diplomatically, make alliances with everyone but the Byzantines, unless you sell it. They'll attack you as soon as you or they take Trebizond. Very important in my campaign was NOT destroying the initial Byzantine stack. When I did (it's a lot of spearmen) they replaced them with huge horse archer armies, which can really hurt you. Instead, field a mixed force of spearmen, Turkish Archers (which beat Byz spearmen in melee), a couple horse archers, and catapults. Artillery is wonderful against the early Byzantine army. If you wait to destroy the first stack, any new units they've made will likely go west to fight other wars, leaving you with a far less able enemy. Once you crush this force, move west and take Nicaea or Constantinople; simultaneously, take your Antioch conquerors and move them over to Cyprus, which might have a unit or two defense, and take it. At that point, you might have Trebuchets to make your efforts easier against Constantinople. After you drive them out of their Turkic holdings and secure the coast (and Byzantium), you can do whatever. The Egyptians have yet to attack me, but I've kept strong garrisons to deter them. I'll soon move on both Edessa and Baghdad.

This is, so far, my most successful beginning, and no one is yet strong enough to stop my advance. The only threat yet to come (overdue) is the first Crusade. With luck, it'll pass through to Egypt's Jerusalem. If that happens, usually, they grind each other down and make room for your next conquests.

I haven't tried turkey yet, but in my other games eventually turkey gets whooped big time, so I got a few questions for those that made it that far:

1- how do you survive the mongol onslaught?
2- how do you survive the even more terrible timurid onslaught which lands in armenia and ravages your every city?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lalartu

I haven't tried turkey yet, but in my other games eventually turkey gets whooped big time, so I got a few questions for those that made it that far:

1- how do you survive the mongol onslaught?
2- how do you survive the even more terrible timurid onslaught which lands in armenia and ravages your every city?

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With my tactics explained above, i let all the cities east to Adana to Byzantines and Egyptians. When barbarians invades they fight only Byzantines and Egyptians. Then, when they come on me, they are less powerful, i'm ready and very strong. I put 3-4 full armies east to Adana in the mountains with many and many archers and usually i stop them here. Don't forget you can reform your armies after every battles, barbarians can't do it...

I'll chime in, I'm 'wrapping' up a long turkish VH/VH campaign, and i've reached critical mass. Nothing has enough stopping force to seriously put up a fight. I'm making about 10-13k per turn, and am 1 in all the listings at turn 45ish. After fighting the mongols on the russian steppes (Not recommended. they outmatch your troops on every level, and don't run. The only thing you can possibly have better is numbers) I've got a pretty good idea on how to play it in the future, and vs. the timurids.

How is this possible? Well, you can't 'handicap' yourself in any way. This method doesn't use 'cheap' tactics, but it is violent, and fast.

Rule #1: Use common sense.
Rule #2: Troop shuffling is good. You start out with an attacking force of 3 garrisons that get reinforced, you'll need to swap around armies as you see fit. Don't siege a small town with everything you have, siege with what you believe will be able to take it, and have the rest move on.

Remember: The sooner you get new territories, the quicker you make money. Don't build settlements up at all in the beggining, instead, focus on chugging out the cheaper horse archers in castles, as well as Militias in cities.


Have EVERY territory build roads if able (first turn) Followed by a port in iconium.


This being said, opening moves involve Iconium and Mosul mostly working together, Northeasternmost territory on its own,

use your spy, diplomat, and imam to watch for the byzantines by heading west.

and Ceasaria doing triple duty: reinforcing NorthEastermost territory, working with iconium and mosul, as well as getting ready to help support iconium pending the eventual arrival of the Byzantines (who WILL come).

Ceasaria's first move should be to build some troops, and move most (including general) of the garrison to take Adana.


Your NorthEastern most territory (town) should move north and capture the castle there, and doubleback and secure Trebizond afterwards. This campaign is independent of all others. (Troops from ceasaria may help with Trebizond)

Mosul: chug out cheaper horse archers, move general and spearmen to the west, they will help attack antioch/aleppo or damascus: Cities to avoid are Baghdad (which i sieged until sallying with a bunch of horse archers fairly late, around turn 17ish. You may able to take it earlier, but I believe your initial garrison is best used in the west, and you won't have enough money to build structures to build ground units to take baghdad)

Also avoid Edenna. It's garrison is incredibly large, and will tie up forces far better used securing the holy land.

Iconium: build a port, then a ship. Keep your faction leader here, but move your initial garrison to Adana. Build cheap stuff each turn the port is being built, and send it to the port to take advantage of a ship that will be built soon (turn 4-5ish?) Transport ship to take antioch from behind (so you don't have to go around the river) and help take it with any other armies. Once the reinforcements ship is built and away, focus iconiums economy on building troops to fight the byzantines, use common sense, don't go overboard on building up.

Now that you have Adana, build a few horse archers (if possible), and send them to reinforce your troops, After this, use adana to reinforce an army and take a medium stack to take Edenna. Then turn Adana into a city, as well as Aleppo.

Around this point you should be poised to take Antioch quickly, with damascus as well.

Proceed southward, and sieze the rest of the holy land. You will encounter Egypt (potentially as high as acre, jeruselum, or damascus). This is good, as you can just mop up their depleted armies.


Sacking Holy land territories will give you tons of money. Money that you definatly need to produce better unit structrures/econ, just don't go overboard.


CONSEQUENCE #1: Because You've rapidly siezed territories, your family will have many kids very quickly, as well as numerous Man Of The Hour adoptions. The kids will come of age in Iconium, which will give you the heavy cavalry you so *desperately* need vs the byzantines.

Around this time you should be seeing byzantine armies start to trickle into your territories. Get the armies being built in Ceasaria and iconium to intercept Get your faction leader and his sons to spearhead an assault into Byzantine territory. If you have an imam, it will also be useful to declare Jihad vs Smyrna. Egypt may join in this jihad, which will take away troops from his defense. Although you must be ready for the journeying egyptian jihad army to attack one of your cities (they didn't to me, but i heavily garrisoned all the cities along the way).

Take acre, and use it to reinforce the egyptian campaign, convert it to a city once you take Gaza.

Take gaza, keep it a fortress, and eliminate the rest of the egyptian faction.

Take constantinople. Prepare for Hungary to get in your face. Make sure to engage in the fields, as you need the money from constantinople's trade, as well as producing reinforcements.

Thats pretty much it. The rest is mopping up (nikosia?) and common sense. start pumping money into econ in all trade heavy territories, and all mediterranian bordering territories as well.

Now: Vs mongols, you've got 2 methods. If they come from the top, make sure you know where they are. I decided to take the rebel territory immedietly north of the HUGE mountain range, but it probably wasn't necessary.

while you know where they are, start pumping out troops to guard the mountain passes, blocking them at Rivers where possible. This is where keeping 2 castles to the north as 'castles' really helps.

I hear the Mongols can also attack from around Baghdad as well, so make sure to build up mosul as well. Same thing applies here, Absolutely maintain them near the rivers if possible. If they break out, my strategy of switching aleppo, adana, and acre to cities will definately hurt you. In retrospect, that was really hedging my bets.

That being said, the mongols are contained for me. I didn't use any special equipment or troops. (no Jannisary heavy infantry.) The heaviest being Halbred militia. Siege equipment should definatley be used on river crossings.

That being said, all my campaigns (Turks, Venice, Portugese) have ended before the Timurids or america is discovered.

As for timurids, If the timurids show up ONLY in armenia, then the following strategy applies: Hold them at the rivers. let them sack the cities that you can't protect using the rivers. It appears that armenian-area is surrounded by
by rivers. I really doubt CA intended for us NOT to use them.

For river defense: Have at least 1 cannon and 1 trebuchet. Hurled cows make very very easy to break armies. And the cannon? Heh heh heh....

The CPU tends to rush all his stuff over the bridge after a set amount of time (when attacking) This includes his elephants. Once the elephants are on the bridge and in range of ANYTHING, focus all fire on them. They will panic, and rampage on the bridge. They will slaughter a good portion of the army and route the rest.
I have done this before in a 'Quick Battle' in which they give you 2x spearmen, 2x javalinmen, 1x trebuchet, 1x cannon, and some horse archers/peasants and other stuff that really didn't do anything The elephants ended up killing half the timurid army, and I was laughing.


Hope this was useful...

For diplomacy, I didn't really bother much. Securing trade agreements with the poles and russians will really help coastal territories north and south of constantinople. Egypt will help for the short amount of time before you attack them.

Diplomacy is one thing that is not critical for the Turks.

^ thanks for the help. this campaign was frustrating me. and welcome to the org!

well some of the elephants timurids bring have very good morale and so I sort of doubt shooting at them while they're crossing the bridge will really do much for them to go berserk.

I don't have much problem with mongols who are numerically superiour to timurids (they come at both Baghdad in 3 waves and north of armenia in 3 waves, but go to Russia proper), but timurids are better armed...

elephants are extremely annoying and the only way out of it I see is hiring your own elephant mercs (usually around Baghdad) and having a little mammoth shoot out, see who wins and whose cannon is bigger.

I think unless you give the entire armenia and georgia to byzantine and then take what's usually byzantine's area along with a part of hungary for extra profit, it would be a bit difficult to survive two consecutive onslaughts (i.e. mongols followed by timurids in big big quantities) and come out alive.

I'm going to try to secure the western anatolia and part of bulgaria, while also holding every island around (cyprus, crete) and see if I can avoid timurids until they're decreased in numbers by byzantines.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Onemanshow

I'm used to play with Turks and I have some suggestions :
Give up Erevan and Mossoul, sell all buildings and use all the soldiers in the 2 cities for plunder Antioche. Now you are rich ! Then, give up Antioche right away (crusaders will come soon) and move your army to Adana. Once you have captured Adana, turn it into City and build a dock as soon as possible.
While Byzantium attack you, make one boat and go to capture Cyprus island. There is only 1 or 2 units garrisoned so it's easy and the docks already build will help you to get some money. Now you have to defend your borders against Byzantines and later, Egyptians. Make 4-5 Turks archers in Caesarea, send them to the mountains left to Iconium with 1 or 2 infantry units and let Byzantines army attack you. In battle, put your army on the higher position in mountain and watch your Turks archers devastating the ennemy army. If you play well, you can kill an entire 20 Units army with your 7-8 units. All you need is to place your archers very high in the mountain and protect them with your small infantry.

Right to Adana, you can see 2 mountains between the only road to Antioche. You will wait Egyptians attack here and use the same tactics than above.
When border will be safe, expand you territory only to the west, cities are more interesting. Don't forget to take Heraklion and Rhodes islands, many trades and money are available here.

Let the East cities to Egyptians who will have to fight Mongols alone, later in the game (good luck to them)

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all this is completely unecessary. there is no need to give up on any cities! i would heed anyone reading this not to follow you advice. playing on h/h i was able to take the sorrounding rebel provinces, without any of these drastic steps and then see off the egyptians and byzantines fairly earlly.

i would suggest playing very agressively at the beggining, and taking out the egyptians and byzantines before they become too powerful.

with the turks it is favourable to use armies with alot of horse archers (you have no choice at the beggining). just surround the enemy and shoot the to peices - there is very little the enemy can do to respond. if they have some ha's of their own, surround them and then charge into melee with several ha units is usually sufficient. the horse archers really do allow a very agressive style of play as it is possible to wipe out large armies without sustaining many casualties at all.

dont be afriad to use the horse archers agressively as melee cav at the right moment. the siphais are decent melee troops, and though the others are less good being charged from all sides is often good enough to route the enemy. they will take casulaties but the ha's are a generic cheap unit and you can send them off to the nearest fort to heal after the battle. (also you will find that your ha's end up with really high experience as they take so many kills and this improves their melee stat not ranged.)

USE JIHAD - cynically use the jihad- this is the best way for the turks to get decent infantry at the earlly stage. (i believe i declared a jihad on baghdad at a very earlly stage and this will give you the footsoldiers to take on the egyptians.

it is possible to complete the long campaign before the mongols arrive. however if you are thinking you will still be around then it is important to prepare. i think they arrive around 1215. I would suggest builidng any farm upgrades you can in the middle east as you want all these territories to be be as highly developed as possible - eg big walls with ballista towers etc. this is another good reason to take the middle east as earlly as possible so you can start preparing.

I didnt have any problem with crusades - early in the campaign the pope declared a crusade on antioch (my city). a full stack army with the portugese king arrived near constantinople. i totally massacred the army to a man in one of my most enjoyable victories. they had few if any ranged units and were slaughtered by my horse archers whilst my sultan and his ghazis watched from a hill above. no one else seemed to have joined the crusade and it failed. i dont recall if any more crusades were called after that but i was too busy pushing west to be threatened by one.

The Sultanate of Iconium is an interesting faction to utilize. Although money can be scarce at the outset, and travel times painfully lengthy, the advantages of creating and maintaining a Turkish Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean far outweigh the pitfalls.

As the new Sultan you control 4 regions, these regions at the outset are not connected, Yerevan and Mosul are in the East, whilst Iconium and Caesarea are in Asia Minor. Your chief rivals in the early going will be the Byzantine Empire in western Asia Minor and the Fatamid Caliphate out of Egypt. In the early years aggression and rapid expansion will be key to the survival of this fledgling Turkish Powerhouse.

It is important to recognize that the Byzantines will be very aggressive if you allow them to expand at their leisure. Given time to themselves the Byzantines will acquire Smyrna and Trebizond and if that happens you can expect attacks on Yerevan, Iconium and Tibilisi (if you have it). The Egyptians have lots of room to expand and are less concerned with attacking you, so in my experience (at least early on) they can be safely ignored.

On the military side, the Seljuk Turks main strength lay in their projectile cavalry. As such it will be to your benefit to fight as many engagements in the open as possible. Your early infantry is fairly weak, and Janissaries are, unfortunately, a long way off. If you find a city under siege it is probably going to be more to your benefit to sally out and attack your opponent rather than try to fight them within the city walls. You'll also want to keep your units repaired and up to date, this means keeping a couple of castles around in order to replenish your horse archer forces (more on this later).

Now for the campaign itself. Tibilisi should be your first target of expansion, typically you'll get a mission to take the castle there early on, and I suggest you do so. Mosul will be the main source of units for taking this castle, so train and move up a general and horse archer units from there ASAP. The army you use to take Tibilisi is not done however, take the largest portion of the army you can spare and swing around west to Trebizond to take the city before the Byzantines can do so. While you are doing this, put the utmost effort possible into producing enough additional units at Mosul to take Baghdad (using the method of starving out the garrison). This way, you will have a large infusion of cash and you wont be in danger of getting into the minuses treasury wise anytime soon.

Now concurrently with this Eastern campaign Iconium and Caesarea should be building units, and in Iconium a port and several ships should be built as well. What your going to want to do is take the combined forces from your Castle/City in Asia Minor and use them to take Cyprus. This will be your first big score against the Byzantines it will undoubtedly get their attention (and not in the good Las Vegas way either). You will need a little bit of luck here, in so far as you'll need your ships to survive long enough to transport the largest portion of your stack back to Asia Minor to continue the campaign against Byzantium.

At this point you will be hurting financially. There's not much you can do at this point, since you have invested lots of money in units and the cash being brought in from your new provinces will not redress the balance completely for some time. Don't worry about money just yet, for now take your large stack now back in Asia Minor west, avoid Smyrna and instead head towards Nicaea. You will have to engage multiple Byzantine armies here, fortunately with a large force of Turkish horse archers, foot archers and militia spearmen on your side dealing with them will not be as hard as it might seem. Eliminate the field armies within reach and lay siege to Nicaea.

Now before you get any ideas Nicaea is NOT your goal. Taking the city is just part of a larger plan of attack for the Seljuks. For, once the city falls, your going to want to destroy its buildings and evacuate. Take the remaining army down towards Smyrna and watch the fun begin. the Looted cash from Nicaea should redress your money issues, and once the city rebells it will have a large rebel garrison which the Byzantines will now have to deal with. Head south and take Smyrna. Remeber to sack each city you take, even if you'll only recoup of a few florins, you need all the money you can get early on. Deal with any remnant Byzantine forces in the area and send your diplomats over to your Greek neighbors, very likely they'll sue for peace.

Now your free to begin building up your regions and earning some cash. Before you invest too much money in that quarter however, you need to transport a small army to Rhodes to capture the island for the Turks as well. This will be an easy conquest and it will round out the basic lands of your new Seljuk Dominion. Byzantium will likely recapture Nicaea but only after expending time and forces in sieging the rebel city. It will also be lacking in upgrades and that will occupy their time as well. Now, for me, I usually turn Cyprus and Rhodes into cities. I don't count on drawing military units from the islands and they bring in more revenue as cities. I keep Smyrna, Caesarea and Tibilisi as Castles, but much later down the line I like to transfer Mosul into a city too (but early on, leave it as is).

Here are some final thoughts on the Seljuk campaign. Bear in mind, there will be a jihad called against Baghdad, you want this city, do not let Egypt take it. Looting the town will reap large financial rewards and the proximity of Mosul will allow horse archers to be produced in quantity, typically I simply starve Baghdad out as this is much easier than trying to storm the walls and results in far fewer casualties. You can deal with the Byzantines and Egypt at your leisure once you've solidified your basic provinces which should total ten: Iconium, Cyprus, Rhodes, Baghdad, Smyrna, Caesarea, Mosul, Yerevan, Tibilisi and Trebizond. In my case I only had one European possession for many turns, that was Constantinople. I focused mainly on my Asiatic domains, supplementing my early conquests with Antioch, Aleppo, Edessa and Adana. This of course requires war with Egypt, but I never found them to be particularly imposing, army strength wise.

Bear in mind that over the years Constantinople and Tibilisi will be under an almost constant state of siege from Hungary, Byzantium and Russia (in my experience). Defending these cities will be most important. Antioch will also face numerous Crusader armies which will also have to be dealt with time and again. After my early conquests I largely play a defensive campaign, taking regions a few at a time and developing my internal economy (which is HIGHLY necessary). Just remember, take on the Byzantines early, focus on unit production ahead of city improvement until your position is secure, and focus on the defense of the cities which are most targeted by your enemies. Hopefully this guide will help those of you who are fans of the Seljuk turks operate an effective campaign, cheers!

The Turks are quite unlike most other factions, the first thing you should do with them is pick out a nice section of the map North or West that you'd like to take over, get all your starting units gathered up. The towns and castles you start with are a nightmare, mountains are in the way, you have FoW causing a problem, almost no income, and that's the good news.

The bad news is that if you make the HORRIBLE mistake of staying where you are, you're going to war with Byzantine and Egypt very soon, and worse still all of the catholic world will start marching through your land and inevitably go to war with you on some crusade or attack of convenience during a crusade. Not bad enough? The Mongols will eventually pour into your land and sandwich you between constant crusaders, angry catholics, hostile egyptians (unless you wipe them out, then all the crusaders come for your cities) and more.

Needless to say you need to pack up and relocate your empire, and this is one of the great things about the Turks, You choose where you want to land and carve out an empire. There are three obvious directions, through the ever more powerful Byzantine (they'll carve you up for good, and Hungry will be north if you do... Hungry doesn't like you.) or you can get on a boat and go west to a variety of exotic locals, though I highly advise against taking an Island until your capital is relocated. The third and maybe best option is to go north.


Option 1: Military Campaign to the West
If you're bold enough, or foolish enough, to try to martial a military force and cleave a path through the Byzantine, you should also end up at odds with Venice and Hungry before you're ready. Venice is naturally neutral toward you so you can get on their good side, they're less reliable than Poland but at least they can protect you from Hungry if they attack. The problem is if you're taking this path you're going to want provinces that Venice has, and they're not likely to sell them short of say, oh, a few hundred thousand gold! This means you'll eventually be going to war with them, and if you strike first it will hurt your global reputation. Still in the end you get some clearly defined borders to the north, and you can sell Hungry's provinces to Poland or the Papal States (a good way to position yourself to suck up to the Papacy).

Option 2: Naval Conquest
If you have your eyes set on any of a number of locals reachable by sea, you may want to build a dock and ship at your capital and head out. You can choose to land wherever you want, if you're going to make your empire on Italy by crushing Sicily you start with ample forces and get a position next to the pope so that you can influence the Papacy.

If you plan on taking Iribia it's good to choose a good capital city like Toledo, pushing out the Moors, and crushing the Spanish and Portuguese shouldn't prove too difficult. You should consider reconciling with the Moors though, their lands to the south are inconvenient to govern and have little real value but you get a good trade income from them and they should be peaceful allies unlikely to wage war once pushed out of Iribia. If your form an alliance with them they're somewhat reliable, though slightly prone to try and take back their old capital if access to Iribia isn't blocked (just build a fort and put some units in it). Other than that they add clout when dealing with the french, since the french are less likely to attack you if you have an ally.

Lastly a bold move would be to sail all the way up to Caen just south of London, making it your new capital then crushing England and Scotland. You can carve a good notch out of the french from there, but the HRE and Denmark naturally hate you for some reason. On the bright side Milan should prove reliable if you give them a gift of a hundred gold or so every five turns. This is good because Milan builds up a fast army, and they're normally hostile to other catholic factions.

Option 3: Northern Expansion

The objective of this path is to take over all the provinces Russia seeks to take, and destroy Russia in the process. Russia and Poland don't get along, so you can use this to your advantage if you have trouble with the Russians (weak as they are to start).

You can easily start by taking Tbilisi and making it your new capital. It's just north of Yerevan and acts as a gateway into the great north. You can easily block all access to the north with forts preventing your nosey southern neighbors from poking around where they're unwanted. Just push your way north and west until you have a line of provinces bordering Poland. Poland is a very reliable ally if you cozy up to them, and giving them your junky old provinces will throw them into war with Byzantine, endearing you to them in the process. This kills two birds with one stone and lets Poland act as a meat shield on both entrances to your empire and keeps Byzantine out of your hair, you could even sign a peace treaty and trade rights once they're in conflict with Poland, but Poland will consider this dubious (and thus it effects your reputation with them, and your world reputation). If Poland grabs Kiev, Vilnius, or Riga buy it from them, don't take it, you have junky start settlements to trade so you can get a discount and you don't want to cross Poland trust me, they're the only reliable eastern ally you have.

By the end of the third option you have three major port cities that provide easy access to your faction's main target goal, Constantinople, but why not have some fun first? You can sail out from Riga and invade the English and the Scotts, or you can crush Denmark, or go capture all the Islands, invade Iribia, and do all that other stuff you were going to do anyway. Go nuts.

Imo playing with the Turks is the hardest campaign in MTW2 cause you have many enemies who awaits sneaky in your borders.

After a few turn,Byzantines will directly rush you.Also Arabs(Egyptians are not reliable) may declare war to you after about 30 turns.I am not even talking about Mongol Horde threat.

I saw some comments about Turks but imo peps are playing in easiest campaing cuz in the hardest one,nearly impossible to be involved.Btw do not tell me that you re rushing to Byzantines...Turkish armies are not suit for attack.Turk archers can use shoot-circle mode maybe but you can't push armies without infantry which Turks dont have any.If you even are able to rush Byzantines,do not trust Arabs cuz they have to use Anatolia to inrease their borders.

There is also bug about Mongols.When they assaulted your castle,sen your diplomat to offer caese-fire which will be accepted.After caese they will assault again but when u offered same again,they are not rejected.Trully after 8-9 turns it was predictable so i gave up this.Than they took my 2 territories.In the same time Byzantines were keep rushing to me with Arabs.Economic problems,lack infantry and many enemies can be some of the reason to shut down your computer:)

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Originally Posted by Yavuz

Imo playing with the Turks is the hardest campaign in MTW2 cause you have many enemies who awaits sneaky in your borders.

After a few turn,Byzantines will directly rush you.Also Arabs(Egyptians are not reliable) may declare war to you after about 30 turns.I am not even talking about Mongol Horde threat.

I saw some comments about Turks but imo peps are playing in easiest campaing cuz in the hardest one,nearly impossible to be involved.Btw do not tell me that you re rushing to Byzantines...Turkish armies are not suit for attack.Turk archers can use shoot-circle mode maybe but you can't push armies without infantry which Turks dont have any.If you even are able to rush Byzantines,do not trust Arabs cuz they have to use Anatolia to inrease their borders.
:)

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push infantry? not sure exactly what you mean, but im presuming you mean engage head on.

using horse archers this is not necessary. an infantry army is easy picking for a horse archer army. simply swarm around the enemy so that you are surrounding them from all sides and shoot them to bits, there is really no response to this. units like the sipahis are actually fairly good at melee (and in addition horse archers all get there melee stats boosted from experience bonuses after a few battles as they cause so many casualties). so once the enemies are severely thinned charging in from all sides (using ALt + right to get them to use thier melee attack) will often result in a rout.

if you do have infantry dont engage them with the enemy until you have severely depleted their ranks + then charge in the back with your horse archers.

using horse archers i was able to wipe out many large armies with minimal casualties- for example ideally you want to engage the byzantines and invading cursaders in the field and you can decimate them.

try starting a new game mate, playing on hard/ hard i can honestly say i found the turks one of the easier factions to play - the ai just cant deal with you horse archers if used correctly.

My other massive tip is to use the jihad earlly - (maybe to get a city like baghdad or Antioch) This will allow you to recruit some fairly decent infantry troops at the earlly stage of the game, which is important as it takes a while to be able to produce good infantry as the turks.

Mate,first of all,i meant engaged but imo you think it is cheap to recruit sipahis.Also their upkeep cost is nasty.Trully,you can recruit maybe 300 town milita which is nearly same as the price of 40sipahi.You can't win battles with Sipahi but horse archers give deep and rotated situation to army.Without infantry,it is so hard to be involved in Anatolia.Also you only struggled with Byzantines,lets hope Arabs shall not attack you thou.While you are fighting with your enemies,not much money left for contructions.

I agree, moveing with the turks out of turkey and most likely relocateing to crete, serdina and cosrica and algers is most likely best, allowing you to expand with relative safety and your new "core" citys will be all islands, plus if you take sicilly you can march up the boot of italy and with your cav heavy armys most likely beat back any itilian based infantry armys. Going west or south with the turks is just foolish, and going north takes to long, also people dont relize that the mongols are just a small part of it, if you end up playing the long game to go to america your going to HAVE to fight the timurds and they can prove to be a nusance if not a major threat.

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Originally Posted by TheFluff

I agree, moveing with the turks out of turkey and most likely relocateing to crete, serdina and cosrica and algers is most likely best, allowing you to expand with relative safety and your new "core" citys will be all islands, plus if you take sicilly you can march up the boot of italy and with your cav heavy armys most likely beat back any itilian based infantry armys. Going west or south with the turks is just foolish, and going north takes to long, also people dont relize that the mongols are just a small part of it, if you end up playing the long game to go to america your going to HAVE to fight the timurds and they can prove to be a nusance if not a major threat.

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none of that is necessary. playing on hard/hard i was able to defeat both the byzantines and egyptians earlly on and never had too much problems with them.

basically i went west and south - the true historical direction for turk exapnsion and i didnt struggle.

i deffinately allied with the byz from the start and possibly did with the egyptians. this will give you a bit of breathing space as they wont attack for a few turns after forming an alliance.

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Originally Posted by KARTLOS

none of that is necessary. playing on hard/hard i was able to defeat both the byzantines and egyptians earlly on and never had too much problems with them.

basically i went west and south - the true historical direction for turk exapnsion and i didnt struggle.

i deffinately allied with the byz from the start and possibly did with the egyptians. this will give you a bit of breathing space as they wont attack for a few turns after forming an alliance.

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Beating egypt and byz is not hard. Its beating the mongols, fighting off crusades and on top of that dealing with venice and hungury that make it such an issue. When i wrote the egyptan guide i took for granted The fact that there two starting citys, cario and alexandria are isolated and relativly safe from mongol invasion. and they only need to worry about one front, the North front, or west if they take byz areas. By scraficaing 30 turns to relocate you gain haveing to fight 40 against varioius occupying powers. On top of that moveing to the islands allows you to launch naval strikes on ciro and alex with the turks, and they will be very lighty defended and most likley busy fighting off rival powers, allowing you to regain not only a foothold, but a STRONGER foot hold on the holy lands and africa itself. There are three types of games you can play with turkey, a slug fest with the mongols and conentnal powers, a tatical withdraw comeing out of turkey fallowed up with a strong comeback, or a mix of both. Its really the players choice but i feel the withdrawl works in the long term, while the slug fest yelds immidate results in the holy land and you can even beat byz and egypt but after the 70-100 turn mark with the emergence of powerfull western knights and the mongols can be risky and depends on the players actual battle skill and time willing to spend fighting off each stack and counting every coin he has in the bank!

Julius_Nepos has a great guide and I suggest you read it through. I do it a bit different and will mostly just add some suggestions and tweaks that I found helpful when playing the turks.


Important points for the turks.

1.) Expansion. The turks HAVE to expand rapidly in order to get money and support the vast amounts of troops you will need to expand. If you are taking over a castle, normally you can leave as little as one unit and move on the same turn you take it over. If you take over a town, stay a few turns to recruit free militia units and then move on.

2.) Money. You'll have none until you have 12-17 settlements. Most of you money will go to troops and the rest gets eaten up by building. this leads to point 3

3.) Building slowly. Keep the building to Inconium and Caesarea. Fast teching in 1 city and 1 castle will allow you access to your best troops early. which is important because if you want to continue expanding you are going to need much better troops then spear militia. I normally can produce Saracen militia by turn 15-20 and Janisarries by turn 25-30.

4.) Jihads are you friend early in the game. They give you access to very cheap and very good ground units to sieging larger settlements that your spearmilita + HA's just couldn't take. After 60 or so turns there not as useful because you should have better ground troops.

5.) Castles can be your friend. I keep around 50% castles to make sure that a.) some provinces are harder to take, b.) most don't have to be garrisoned, c.) I have good supply lines of HA's, which are the lifeblood of the turks army. The income you save on garrisons will make up for the difference in earnings.

6.) Watchtowers are your friends. Because you are so spread out, the early warning that a watch tower gives you is vital. It can save the day by allowing you to react as soon as a stack starts coming your way and Byzantine will be sending a lot your way.


Early Expansion tactics:
Start off by building roads in all settlements on turn one. The increased movement will help early in the game due to your provinces spread out nature. Recruit HA's in Caesarsea and Mosul, and militia in Iconium and Yerevan. Turn two involves getting HA's to Iconium and Yeveran and building a port. After this keep building down to a minimum unless it's in Inconium or Ceasarsea. By turn 3-4 you should have 2 partial stacks, 1 going to Smyrna and other other to Tblisi.

Once Symrna is yours you should start sending most of that stack back to Iconium, the Byzantines should be coming. On the same turn you take Tblisi, keep 1-2 units in the castle and start heading the rest toward Trebizond. Call a Jihad on Trebizond and have the stack that is headed there join. Buy as many of the jihad ground unit you can, you will need them. Byzantines normally send a full stack toward Trebizond by turn 3-4 so you'll probably only beat their stack with your Jihad army by 1-3 turns.

If you are not already in a full scale war with Byzantines it's about that time. Send your stack around Iconium toward Nicaea and capture it while moving the now ex-jihad army down from Trebizond toward Constantinople. Clear all Byzantines on the Peninsula, and once your reinforcements from Trebizond link up with your main stack from Iconium you should be able to call another Jihad on Constantinople. Sack Constantinople and start looking south. Constantinople is a rather flat province that is easily defended by horse archers and tech up ballista towers as soon as possible. Hiding an army in the trees just off the road west of Constantinople can do wonders for defending that province:beam:.

Once Constantinople is under your control, send a few generals back to Iconium. Hopefully you should have to ability to produce Saracen Militia and Hashishin's at Inconium at this point and can have a nice base of good troops for the generals to take once they get there (don't forget some HA's from Caesarea). Build a decent navy and send your generals to capture Rhodes, then Nicosia, and finally land and take Adana.

At this point your second south expanding army should be almost gone from leaving behind garrisons and sieging. But that's ok because the computer normally calls a Jihad on Baghdad at this point (or call one yourself)! Join and take Baghdad. Sweep back with Antioch in your eye, and take Edessa and Aleppo along the way. Egypt with probably be in Antioch by the time you get there, so it's about time you start that eventual war as well.

Don't worry, Egypt is normally a total pushover and the biggest problem expanding south through all the holy hands is keeping a big enough garrison for public order.

Once you have Jerusalem you should be able to get a peace agreement from Egypt if you need to (for teching up Jerusalem/Acre for example). If not, continue on and destroy Egypt. Once you have all of Egypt's lands, you should have about 20-22 provinces and be reaching that "critical mass" stage where you simply have too large an econamy and too many good troops for anyone to cause you any problems.

Once you hit critical mass, you can pretty much go about taking over Europe how ever you like. I do caution about expanding north of Tblisi, I normally use Tblisi as a choking point for the mongols.

As for the mongols and Timirids, pray. Pray and build up defenses in the holy lands. Hold them at river crossings and make them pay dearly for every city they take.


Good Luck and may Allah smile on you

ı'm playing with turks in vh\vh campaign. and ı can tell you it is very easy(for me)...let me give you some advice...first: storm adana with your units @ iconium and cae.. then change it to a city. while you're doing this, attack to tiblis and trabzon with a jihad army...and you dont pay any upkeeps for the units in the jihad army...thats a nice thing to know...these are some of the stuff you should do...now lets come to the economical an diplomatical side of the game
at the start you have to ally wit byz and egypt...byz will attack you but if you take all those settelments ı told you you will have no prolems.after all some lousy greecs cant withstand a turkish army.. :) sorry thats a little bit rasisct,but thats the truth...whatever. you will have a very rich treasure chest if you sack all the settelments you capture...but if you want a very strong economy, you have to take all of the middle-east...then in little time you will be the richest faction...

and lets come to mongols:
they are easy ro stop.
yes they are...
you can stop them in mosul or tiblis
when mongols come those two castles will be very important, and with a very strong garrison with lots of ottoman infantry, mongols will be a dust in history...
thats the same for timurids...

have fun lads...



and dont forget: the only way to independance is REVOLUTİON...

thanks for listening....:2thumbsup:

I recommend Turkey for anyone who wants to play their first Islamic faction. I'm am finding them extremely easy. I already destroyed the BE by using large armies of horse archer types and other archers. I also I also control all the cities paralell to baghdad. Most of the stuff is rebel, so in the beginning take as much as you can. Jihads are really effective because they give you money and free upkeep on your troops.

a general tip for the turks (or egyptians) is that after you have conqured the middle east - build farming improvements - you want to to be able to tech up these settlemetns with at least ballista towers by the time of the mongol invasion.

Trully i do not fear the Mongols like in MTW1.I was spam creating pikemens to stop their cavalary bur in MTW2,they are rushing to Anatolia befora i impoved my settlements.Yes,Jihads are so useful but towns are always predictable which is unhappy most of the time:)

There is no way to be ally with byzantines so we have to start praying that Egyptians shall not betray their Muslim friends.Trebizond and Tblis is easy to take but i always keep Adana to last cuz Adana is not easy to conquer with typing here:)You need large armies to get rid of armenian cavalary.

But the most disadvantage thing is to start in Anatolia..Hard mobilzing is a problematic which can not be held by paved roads...I am defending very well against Byzantines in Iconeum but thats not valid for assaults so i am waiting about 80 turns to march Constantinople...

Anyway,i am trying new strategies atm but do not tell me that Turks are easy to play...They are the hardest one...Its not like Scotland or Denmark..:)

As the Turks I find that their early game is not as hard as it is. The byzntines will attack you no matter what but a alliance can be set with Egypt as long as you maintain a good relationship. I recommend going for a jihad to Antioch coz its a cash cow and then turn against the byzantines by immediately taking Niceae. Sipahis and Turkomans pwn everything the Byzantines can throw against you. You may need to play sneaky when trying to take Constantinople by taking it while they move out their army once in a while. Once Constantinople is yours, Byzantine power will be greatly weakened and you can start expanding in the east again. Build ships to block of the two access points from Greece to Asia Minor. If you can, call for a jihad to Baghdad. The egyptians will join in but you have mosul so you can get there way faster. Sack it and voila! Insta cash! With your new cash, build up constantinople defences because a crusade will likly be called there. Race against the egyptians for the settlements south of antioch to prevent them expanding but if you have an alliance, i suggest you don't break it just yet or you may end up losing moey trying to defend both ends. As you gain cash and expand your borders, make sure your far eastern settlements are well developed(use farms and health buildings to speed things up).Stock your garrison full of trebuchets and archers and get ballista towers. Now prepare for the Mongols. Once they are done, the world is your oyster. So far I have gone as far as taking Rome and killing and have destroyed most of the Eastern European superpowers save for Russia which I can't be bothered with a weakling like that. I am now in a superpower headlock with Denmark which is the second strongest faction after mine. Man their infantry are tough and those Norse Clerics pwn on the field.

I am finding the Turks early game a breeze as well. I have the game set at M/VH. The siphais and turkomen wipe the floor with all of the units I've fought so far. I've taken most of the surrounding rebel settlements, Edessa I saved for last as it has a large stack defending it. Jihads are nice and quick, especially since you don't need to worry about appeasing the pope to get one off.

I agree with most of the above posts that taking Antioch quickly is a very good idea. With its cash flow the surrounding rebels are easy to gobble up. I've allied the Egyptians and kept them happy with a gift every turn or two.

One of the biggest helps to my steady and quick growth was the nobles giving me 4 units of Siphais for 3 of the rebel provinces they ordered me to take. Made the expansion steady and smooth as I as easily able to build garrison forces to move in after my full stack of frontline troops smashed its way through rebel settlement after rebel settlement.

I reckon since I'm playing on medium difficulty for the campaign and avoided angering the Byzantines they've left me alone all together. A few armies have threatened to cross the border but have been quickly dissuaded by my full stack of HA's lead by my Sultan. I've expanded as far east and south as possible without declaring war on the Egyptians. I guess now I'll either move in force on the Byz Boys or move further north of the Black Sea. Tsibli is my northern border as of now and looks to be a good place to set up for the eventual arrival of the Mongels. The mountain range stretching east to west with the few passes would be a great place to set up some forts with some specific mongel killing armies.

Well, everything was peachy, but now the crusaders are romping around and my HA's keep getting pwned by crusader/feudal knights. Anyone have some handy tatics for dealing with these guys with the Turks?

post-patch the AI won't let me rain arrows forever and its tough to keep track of 10 units of HA's.

Let your Turkomens lead them on a merry chase. The Siphais and General BGs should try to lure and then bag knight units one at a time (hit from all sides). I usually end up with 4-5 BG units with my sultan and also prince stacks. They work amazingly well.

If you want even more melee power, consider building some Siphai lancers. If that's still not enough to take out their cav, then I suggest switching gears and pumping out a horde of Saracen Militia to kill the enemy cav.

I was able to whomp them by luring them into crossfires that were easy for my HA's to escape and eventually routed the whole army by charging the arrow-weakened flank with the Siphai Lancers. That was an awesome battle.

I kept most of my HA's back and would work with 3 at a time raking their flank with arrows. When the AI's calavary would charge I'd run and draw them into a crossfire and after a few volleys a charge on most sides with my general, lancers, and the HA's would break them. Did this twice before routing the rest of the army. They were still relatively inexperienced and I think their morale was devastated.

The full stack of HA's and heavy cav is tough to control but fun to play with when you can pull it off.:beam:

Yep, eastern armies with lancers and HAs are probably the ultimate form of warfare during that time. Enough firepower to decimate just about anything and enough maneuverability to capitalize on any mistakes the enemy makes.

Only things that might be trouble is an enemy missile heavy army guarded by heavy units on a hill or huge amounts of enemy light and heavy cav. Fighting another veteran eastern force like the Mongols is also challenging.

I find that the Turks have an easy game if you are committed to aggressive expansion. My first target is to crush all rivals in the Balkans and Asia Minor while also pursuing, though with less urgency, expansion throughout the Fertile Crescent. The Byzantines cannot, with their lumbering armies, match the horsearchers....

After consolidating units outside Inconium, I call a jihad targetting Constantinople. This gives you, for the period, a very powerful and cheap army capable of crushing the Byzantines. Seize Nicaea. Burn it to the ground. Hire a mercenary ship. Cross over to Constantinople. Besiege. Capture it. In the meantime, small forces from Yerevan and Caesarea should have moved toward Trebizond and Tiblisi. After this, the campaign tends to stall as I digest and consolidate, but even from Mosul, I am pushing toward Baghdad and Antioch, which, as noted elsewhere, I tend to ignore for reasons of the Crusade and a desire to finish off the Byzantines with various strikes at Cyprus, Rhodes for good measure, and the Adriatic. This will bring me against Hungary and Venice, and by this time, I am well set with Constantinople and well able to push them beyond the Danube.

Meanwhile, newly wealthy and invigorated, you are pushing toward Egypt. You make it much faster by simply landing troops in Alexandria and rip their heart out.

Of course, that leaves the Mongols: Janissaries in the cities, protection of river crossings, etc, work fine. Just grind them down. Target the generals. It'll work. Timurids the same. However, I find it tedious to manage that struggle, so I usually save when warned and direct them into Russia... It's not like I haven't done it, it's just not that enjoyable.

Why merc ship? You can usually use the land bridges. Also, Antioch would be silly not to take. It's very rich. Most crusades arrive by land. Just blockade the landbridges near Constantinople and the Crusades won't get anywhere. Sink any seaborne crusades and you are golden.

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Originally Posted by Bongaroo

Well, everything was peachy, but now the crusaders are romping around and my HA's keep getting pwned by crusader/feudal knights. Anyone have some handy tatics for dealing with these guys with the Turks?

post-patch the AI won't let me rain arrows forever and its tough to keep track of 10 units of HA's.

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Crusades shouldn't be a problem, you will usually have overwhelming missile superiority and better maneuverability even with infantry. If your horse archers run out of ammo just retreat, if they chase you and force a fight you will have full ammo again. The crusaders have no unit that can catch horse archers, and they usually don't bring even close to enough missile troops to take out a HA army. Group them into 4-unit divisions and keep circling bad guy army with your 3 or 4 divisions of HA and watch crusaders stand in a big crowd and get shot to pieces.:2thumbsup:

Just to add to what the good Marquis has to say.

Turkomens also have some nice stamina and are fast moving. This means you can tire out those crusader knights by running them around the map. Note: parthian shot is nice but inaccurate. Thus, turn off fire at will for the unit that the knights are chasing. Instead, target another unit to run behind the knight and shoot it. If the knight change targets, switch your bait and shooter roles.

Siphais can gang up on isolated knights in melee and kill them like that, preferably after they are tired out and whittled down a bit by the Turkomens. The Catholics rarely have more than 6-7 units of heavy cav in their crusade stacks anyhow. Your all cav army should be more than enough to handle them. Hotkey some units to make things easier. Pause button is always there too if things get too crazy.

I do go after Antioch, but I prefer to crush one faction at a time, and Antioch will wait until I finish off the Balkans, then pivot to take out the Egyptians. Sometimes I push from the Caucasus and Mosul toward Antioch while also pressing against Constantinople. It all depends on my mood and desire. I'm not so fond of naval battles, though, so I tend to ignore the navy, as they just seem to spawn in vexing plenitude beyond my patience's capacity to endure.

The Turkish early game is superb, using mercs you can spread faster than any other faction. However, as soon as the mongols arrive you may aswell quit the campaign. Unlike their European equivilants, the turkish spearmen can't hold the gates against the mongol cavary, and even a full stack of Turkish bodyguard units will be wiped out in the field by the mongol forces.
I also found that in the early game you take so many settlements so quickly that by mid-game the settlements are undeveloped. This leads to settlements producing below par units that cant defend the settlement that produces them.

Hopefully someone will mod the game to remove the mongols, then the Turkish mid-late game will probably be quite entertaining.

Cheers

Removing the Mongols? You've got to be kidding. They are quite fun and definitely beatable.

A siphai and siphai lancer army with some BG backup is more than enough to take a mongol army in the field. Use bridge/river crossings to your advantage and you can get some very nice kill ratios (3:1 or better).

Ottoman infantry and janissaries are also more than capable of holding the walls/gate vs. the Mongol hordes should you choose to break them on your walls.

Seconded, by the time you get both Jannisaries and gunpowder technology everything becames incredibly (with exceptions) easy.

(When this happens I usualy trim down my Sipahis down from 6 units to 4 as well as convert my army from being a predominantly cavalry army to a predominantly infantry army)

Anyone who used Jannisary Musketeers and Grand Bombards in their armies will know exatcly what am talking about...

Having a ton of fun with my latest Turkish campaign. The Mongols are just as bad as everyone makes them out to be --- playing on H/VH with Darthmod, I've had several JHI units splinter and break under assault from Mongol Infantry. Don't even ask how my Sipahi Lancers are doing even against Mongol HAs, never mind Heavy Archers. The only real solution I've thusfar is Dismounted Sipahis, who I've found can withstand a charge on Guard mode, with massed Trebuchet barrages and Ottoman Infantry firing sheets of arrows as fast as they can. Even then I lose most of the time --- grinding attrition is my only real strategy. It's much tougher considering my Mongol hordes (the second wave has just arrived while the first wanders Anatolia) still hang close together and show no predilection to actually siege my citadels or split up to attack cities.

Meanwhile every single Catholic state, even little Portugal, is launching mass Crusades against Constantinople. These, fortunately, are nowhere near as formidable as the Mongol hordes --- swarms of Turkomans and mercenary Akinjis, backed by a thin line of Saracens and Naffatuns, are more than enough to wipe the floor with the Europeans. Naffatuns are just enormously powerful against pinned troops --- I fought three successive battles against full stack Crusader armies where one unit of Naffs had 200+ kills each time. Crusader Sergeants and Dismounted Knights rout almost instantly after one or two volleys from the Naffatuns.

Massed valored up siphais worked well for me against Mongols. Throw in a few BGs. Try to fight them at a river ford or bridge crossing. I found a particularly nice one that has high ground on 3 sides overlooking a gully next to the ford. That place quickly becomes a location of massacre as the Mongols pour in confused while my HAs unload on them.

Watch out for their heavy archers. Those boys have armour piercing maces as secondaries and the Mongols like to charge them into melee. Focus fire on those and heavy lancers first.

... also enjoying my game (normal/normal for little ol'me).

found that the halberd militias do a nice job as well, seeming to get a lot more kills than my other (earlier) militias.

I've played with just about every faction to turn 50ish and I've beeen far and away more successful with the Turks than anybody else (well maybe the Moors too). That being said I think a lot of it came from a very fortunate first 6 turns. The first thing I did was queue enough units to start a Jihad from Iconium. 2nd turn I ambitiously called a crusade to Constantinople and hired mercs. 3rd turn I progressed towards Nicaea. The 4th turn I seiged it with the faction heir and 1 unit defending it. 5th turn took it, left one unit garrison, hired a boat and a few more mercs, and seiged Constantinople on the same turn. 6th turn took Constantinople with Alexius guarding it, and much to my surprise the Byzantines were eliminated. As I said, I think there were some lucky breaks involved. On turn 6 as I was seiging a big enough force to retake Nicaea seiged it, but with them being eliminated the seige got lifted.

I haven't gone west of Constantinople yet as I get a cheap thrill out of defending it against crusades. The defenders there are getting close to gold experience chevrons from the amount of carnage they've taken part in. Otherwise I can't say there's been much strategy in my expansion. Anytime I was able to call a Jihad I'd call one against a rebel province in the area. Once I got Antioch it seemed like I couldn't lose money if I tried and I then proceeded to just swarm the Egyptians off the map. Only went as far north as Tblisi in the other direction and am just keeping a medium sized garrison up there, but not expecting any surprises from my neighbors, at least until the Mongols arrive.

I will now provide you with a unique way to deal with the Mongol invasion in the Turkish campaign. (The rest of this paragraph is an introduction to my situation. You may move on to the next paragraph if you wish :) )I was playing with the Turks on VH/VH. My main armies were defending against a crusade on Constantinople and on a campaign to conquer North Africa. I had already dealt with the Byzantines and the Egyptians and was in control of all of their lands. Most of my provinces were cities so producing those massive stacks to battle the Mongols were out of the question. I could produce them but I could not replace my armies. I was ready to lose all my provinces as far as Antioch and hold them there. Then this idea struck me.

Since I had a really powerful economy, I could afford many agents, namely assassins. I mass produced them and sent them to the eastern border. The Mongols invasion began in the Baghdad province. I had about 25 or so assassins in the region and every turn every city continued producing assassins to replenish the ones lost during missions. After 3-4 turns I had slain all of the Mongol generals and the beautiful faction destroyed message appeared. I did the same thing against the Timurids as well. So I was able to destroy those Mongols without firing a single arrow. Hope this helps...

I've been playing a new campaign as the turks and I have a few notes on why the mongols beat me, and why this time I have destroyed their faction (3 times so far).

Why I failed in my previous campaign:

* I converted all my far eastern settlements (Baghdad, Mosul, tiblsi, Edessa etc) into castles thinking they would produce the best troops and would be the easiest to defend.

* I neglected to tech up my cities to produce the top level Janissary troops.

* I was playing on the default 2 years per turn setting. This didnt give me anywhere near enough time to tech up my settlements before the mongols arrived.

* I decided to fight them on the walls of my castles instead of the many river crossings in the area. This gave them time to bring all their stacks onto the map before they attacked me.

Why I have succeeded (so far) in my current campaign:

* All far eastern settlements have been converted (or left as) cities.

* I changed to using the 1 year per turn setting and this has enabled me to tech up all infantry buildings and armouries in the far eastern settlements to the highest level.

* I have attack every Mongol stack less than 3/4 full in the field with overwhelming missile superiority with the intent of killing their general.

* I used the bridge crossing south of Baghdad and the river crossings south of Mosul and west of Baghdad to destroy every stack that has been sent onto the map.

The secret Mongol killer

Stakes! Jannisary archers can place the same stakes longbow men can. This means you can destroy Mongol stacks on bridges and river crossings without losing more than 10-15% of your stack.

I am hoping that stakes work against timurids because if they do I think they can be wiped out fairly easily aswell.

Thanks to all the suggestions posted here, my present campaign is far more enjoyable than the last Turkish one I played.

Cheers :smash:

Just as a heads up for people using assassins to kill off the Mongols, there are 3 waves I believe, and even if you kill the first stack and get the "Faction Destroyed" message they will come back. I was quite surprised as I had planned for their arrival and had a stack of trained up killers waiting. They came at Yerevan and they were eliminated in 4 turns. Thinking they were done I sent my assassins north to harrass Sarkel when much to my surprise a new stack appeared myabe 10 turns later. The bad news was they sacked Tbsili and it went rebel before I could eliminate them again, but at least they just sacked it and didn't occupy it. So now I'm leaving the assassins there for the third and final wave. One moire thing, don't just leave one Mongol Khan/General/Heir alive at the end of the turn if you can help it, as they always seem to respawn one the next turn. Leave 2 and don't bother killing just one if you just have one assassin turn left, wait til next turn when you have them all ready.

The Turks are probably my most played faction so I´ve elaborated a lot with different strategies. One thing that I´ve yet NOT found an optimal solution for is placement of castles.
In my first games I kept castles only in Adana, Acre and Gaza but later found that I really was making alot more money if I converted theese to settlements instead - "if u can build a port, choose settlement". So I moved my few castles to provinces like Yerevan, Aleppo and in some cases Mosul or Baghdad.
With the Turks I like to blitz then turtle. Coquering the ast needed settlements in the very end of the game. Initially I try to secure the Bosphorus and Kaukasus. Towards the Fatmids I usually secure Acre, Jerusalem and Damascus. Taking Edessa and Baghdad usually leaves them with only Jedda on "my" side of the fence. I try to keep the peace with them for as long as possible since I consider them my brothers but eventually, before the mongol and timurid onslaught they are usually gone and sometimes I even go for the rest of Africa.
I´ve found that a very few amount of castles are needed, for any faction, much fewer than I initially understood. So for a Turkish empire stretching eventually from the Kaukasus to the Gibraltar I ususally settle for castles in Timbuktu, Aleppo and Yerevan.

Any other strats or input?

I've just started A turks campaign on H/H and having a great time. The only problem I've found is that with HA heavy armies sieging becomes infuriating. I'll end up being hemmed in narrow streets by spearmen and theres no room for my cav to move. Any Advice:dizzy2:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jonathan_Thompson

I've just started A turks campaign on H/H and having a great time. The only problem I've found is that with HA heavy armies sieging becomes infuriating. I'll end up being hemmed in narrow streets by spearmen and theres no room for my cav to move. Any Advice:dizzy2:

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Dont assault settlements. Starve them out instead, and when they sally on the last turn crush them in the field.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jonathan_Thompson

I've just started A turks campaign on H/H and having a great time. The only problem I've found is that with HA heavy armies sieging becomes infuriating. I'll end up being hemmed in narrow streets by spearmen and theres no room for my cav to move. Any Advice:dizzy2:

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I always use two stacks in pairs, one field stack and one siege-stack. My fieldstack contains only siphais and my primary general. My siege stack contains good infantry and siege-weapons and my secondary general. This way I can assault with infantry or auto-calc with litttle losses and offensively I can hammer the enemy with HA´s then bring in my infantry. But most of the time the enemy routs before I have to bring them in.
As the Turks you basically only have two fronts to maintain so this works very well.

Thanks to the posts above, my second campaign, compared to the English meatgrinder, with the Turks has been fun. On M/M, patched to 1.1, with the default number of years per turn, anyway, there are far more non-siege battles and strategic challenges.

From the start, my Turks decided to prepare for the Mongols. The aim was to accelerate a strong economy, first to develop the technology needed to resist the hordes, and second to build up the Eastern cities' defences. In the field we wanted Janissary archers with their cavalry-killing stakes and ultimately, muskets and handguns; in the cities, we wanted ballista towers and thick, high walls. Troop production was to be centred in Antioch and Acre. The Final Showdown with the hordes was to going to be river crossings across the Euphrates River, West of Edessa, and centred around Aleppo.

This is how it turned out...

On day one, one Turk army struck West quickly, relying largely on Caesarea's horse archers to overrun Asia Minor, and in a bold thrust bypassed Byzantium's armies and took Constantinople by Jihad around 100 years earlier than the Turks did in reality, and before Byzantium had even reached Trebizond. Meanwhile a second corps took the two islands of Cyprus and Rhodes for their port-based economies. It then opened a second, lower priority front South to take Adana and Antioch, before facing down the Egpytians in Damascus and Acre and subsequently taking all of the middle East in the name of the Sultan.

In the West, a couple of high piety imams went to preach the one true faith in Rome once Constantinople had been taken, and this distracted the Christians sufficiently to deter any crusades for a century -- until the Turks had all of Italy under their heel, when another story unfolded...

Taking Constantinople attracted the attentions of the remaining Byzantium forces, Hungarians, the Venetians and the Milanese. While fending these off, the Turks sent a marauding army to strike out North and West, assaulting and sacking cities with mercenaries rather than seiging, filling the state's coffers. Despite the action in the West, The loot was prioritised into troop, cavalry and armour upgrades in Antioch and Acre above all other needs. The rest was spent on the economy and the cheaper population contentment buildings.

Three successive waves of Mongol invaders duly arrived around Baghdad and North in Tbilisi, but joined up near Mosul and headed West towards Edessa. They bypassed all the by now heavily garrisoned cities and reached the Euphrates river, about 50km West of Edessa... There were two nervous Turk armies waiting for them, sitting astride the crossings South West and North West of Edessa, steeled with armour and stiffened with cavalry veterans of the Jihads of liberation in the Middle East. Overconfidant, the Mongols assaulted West towards Aleppo across the Euphrates into a narrow defile to be confronted with two rows of the Janissary Archers' stakes. Their cavalry was impaled, and their infantry milled around, trapped, as three trebuchet, three janissary archers, five Ottoman infantry, and sundry Sipahis fired down into the mob. The sky was black with arrows. Some infantry broke out and tried to climb the cliff walls but were charged by the Turks' armoured Sipahi Lancers. The Mongols' general died under a fiery rock and his surving troops broke and ran. The entire stack perished, cut down as they fled by Sipahi Lancers held in reserve. A second stack attacked immediately and met the same fate, for the loss of only around two hundred Turk in total.

The Mongols milled around near Edessa for a few years as the Turks recruited another army near Aleppo. The invention of gunpowder and upgraded Armourers in Antioch finally gave us toughened Janissary Musketeers and Hand Gunners. The minor losses on the Euphrates front were gradually replaced and the gunpowder troups introduced just as the Mongols tried to break through across the Uephrates again. The slap of musket balls and bombards felling the hordes, who were terrified of these outlandish weapons, replaced the hiss of arrows. By 1340, all of the Eastern invaders had perished -- most of them turning the Euphrates into a river of blood amd drifting bodies.

In the West, the Sultan's forces conquered the Italian peninsula by way of a literal toe hold in Palermo, and worked their way up as far as Milan, battling the Milanese, Venetians and Sicilians all the way. The homeless pope wandered the peninsula and finally called a crusade, which brought all of Christendom down upon the Turks, thankfully just after the Mongols had been crushed in the East. Over 10 years, two veteran armies narrowly fought off successive Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, Milanese and Venetian crusaders. The Turk navy sank an English fleet with its army just off the coast of Rome.

Conquering the neighbouring islands of Ajaccio and Cagliari won the campaign game around 1350.

Continuing on, the Timurids arrived in 1374, way north in the Sarkel region... But that's another story.

One thing you should not neglect with the Turks is to declare Jihad(I know I neglected it in my first few games.) Whenever you can, declare a Jihad. There are many benefits...

1. Your beginning imam Baraka can declare a Jihad. I use him to declare a Jihad on Baghdad, Antioch or Constantinople. It depends on your starting strategy really.

2. Do not forget to send some imams to Christian provinces so that they get high piety and become Jihad capable.

3. Declare a Jihad whenever possible. The benefits are
- Jihad armies move much faster. You will gain a lot of mobility through the use of Jihads. You will be able to reposition your armies much more easily through the use of Jihads.
- Your generals get many bonuses after a successful Jihad. They become highly chivalric, and earn a lot of stars.
- Your units get chevrons for free.
- You get access to two Jihad specific low upkeep infantries. They will play a key role in your armies in the early period. They make really nice shock troops, or you can just make them defend your cities at a low upkeep. Turks just do not have the necessary infantry early game. Jihads fill that niche.
- You do not pay any upkeep for armies in a Jihad. You can quickly turn this into an economic advantage. Siege a large city with a Jihad and make your generals join the Jihad with their armies. Keep on sieging the city until it surrenders. The Jihad allows you to pay no upkeep for all those stacks and if you built even a semi-decent economy, you will be swimming in cash in no time.

Turcs on H/VH.

Take Constantinople/Byzantium is your goal.
You can be friend with the Egyptians, not Byzance.

Use loads of archers.
Use mercenaries troops at the start.
Move against Byzance from the start.
If you get attacked besieging, you are in a very mountanious and will defend
from a very high position. You will win 1/10.
Once Constantinople/Byzantium is yours you will be numero uno.

From then on the game get more and more easy/boring.
So its not a good strategy. But its a winning one.

Would someone be so kind as to tell me what I'll need to tech my cities up to,and build, for me to be able to recruit the Janissary type of troops ? I've read cities are the way to go, so I reckon it 'll be huge cities with the highest level barrack ?

I'm about in turn 30 in my current campaign, since the mongols turn op around seventy turns later (right?) I was wondering if I'd actually be able to have Janissary concentrated armies by then.

:balloon2:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dutch_guy

Would someone be so kind as to tell me what I'll need to tech my cities up to,and build, for me to be able to recruit the Janissary type of troops ? I've read cities are the way to go, so I reckon it 'll be huge cities with the highest level barrack ?

I'm about in turn 30 in my current campaign, since the mongols turn op around seventy turns later (right?) I was wondering if I'd actually be able to have Janissary concentrated armies by then.

:balloon2:

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Dutch_guy,

Janissary heavy infantry is available when you build a Dar al-Imara, which is a town hall building, at large city level.

Janissary archers are available after you build militia barracks, at huge city level.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Caelus

Dutch_guy,

Janissary heavy infantry is available when you build a Dar al-Imara, which is a town hall building, at large city level.

Janissary archers are available after you build militia barracks, at huge city level.

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Also, just to let you know Dutch if you haven't fought Mongols before, don't bring any Janissary heavy infantry, bring dismounted sipahis or saracen militia instead. The only melee you're going to get into are charges by Mongol heavy cav, which will wipe out your expensive JHI in a hurry (example: Mongol general charges a unit of my JHI, I lose about 90 men in 120 in less than 5 sec.).

I try to pick 1 city to preferably tech up to Huge so I can get the Janissary archers quickly, who, with their stakes, is an instrumental unit in fighting Mongols. Now Antioch, fully teched out, will make you 10k a turn, so that should be the first city you'd want to tech up (if I remember correctly, Iconium wasn't that far ahead of Antioch as far as buildings when I took it on what, turn 2 or 3?).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Caelus

Dutch_guy,

Janissary heavy infantry is available when you build a Dar al-Imara, which is a town hall building, at large city level.

Janissary archers are available after you build militia barracks, at huge city level.

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Ah, thanks a lot. The Sultan has promised to send you his best camel.

It would be most unwise to refuse...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Marquis

Also, just to let you know Dutch if you haven't fought Mongols before, don't bring any Janissary heavy infantry, bring dismounted sipahis or saracen militia instead. The only melee you're going to get into are charges by Mongol heavy cav, which will wipe out your expensive JHI in a hurry (example: Mongol general charges a unit of my JHI, I lose about 90 men in 120 in less than 5 sec.).

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:sweatdrop:

Thanks for that, I was actually planning on going JHI heavy on them - go figure...

Instead I'll probably tech up to the JA as you advised me, those stakes will probably come in handy. Strange that they have stakes by the way, would probably never figured that out had you guys not told me. Not complaining though, really.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Marquis

I try to pick 1 city to preferably tech up to Huge so I can get the Janissary archers quickly, who, with their stakes, is an instrumental unit in fighting Mongols. Now Antioch, fully teched out, will make you 10k a turn, so that should be the first city you'd want to tech up (if I remember correctly, Iconium wasn't that far ahead of Antioch as far as buildings when I took it on what, turn 2 or 3?).

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Indeed, Antioch is my main JHI recruiting city. Plus, it's also nice to have such a cash cow in the middle of ones empire. Although I imagine it can get a bit hectic with all those crusader armies coming my way.

:balloon2:

Any one know the details about vassals?:book: I have the byzantines in a pinch and think I may be able to make them my vassal.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TheJace

Any one know the details about vassals?:book: I have the byzantines in a pinch and think I may be able to make them my vassal.

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It's very hard. I think you have to have them down to one city, surrounded at least 3-1. You must have overrall 5-1 military (easy enough by this point) and offer upwards of 30k. That's from what others have said. I've never managed myself (laziness more than anything else. If you're that weak you deserve to become part of my glorious empire. You'll thank me in the long run...)

Yes, the crusading armies are a bit ridiculous, since the dirty crusaders usually have 2 or 3 waves of 2 or 3 full stacks. At least you know they are coming and can prepare some ambushes along the normal routes. Now if they drop them by sea you might not have time to see it coming but trying to sink those fleets is about the easiest way to stop them.

Once caught a mongel jihad full stack in a fleet of 3 ships and was able to sink them, felt pretty good.

The Turkish are a lot like the Italians inasmuch as they have excellent garrison units; all of their best standard infantry are produced by cities rather than castles. Because you don't need to pay upkeep costs for garrisoned units, and because cities generate much greater revenue than castles, it makes sense to convert most of your starting castles and captured castles to cities. That allows you to field a massive army of strong but cost-free infantry units while generating a large income. With one or two cash-cow settlements (like Antioch) added to this mix, the Turks will never have cash-flow problems. For this reason, I don't understand a couple of posts which complained that the initial disadvantage of the Turkish is that they are poor.

Furthermore, most cities will be able to train Turkomans and Sipahis early in their tech development, so castles are only needed for archers and occasional elite units, like Naffatun, Sipahi Lancers and Dismounted Sipahi Lancers. Afghan Javelinmen mercenaries are so superior to Turkish Javelinmen that I prefer them despite their higher upkeep costs.

I used only two castles to crank out my archers and the occasional elite units for my empire. I teched up the cities to produce Saracens and cavalry as soon as possible, then the Janissary units.

I alway try to get the Horsebreeders Guild Headquarters and Swordsmiths Guild Headquarters, no matter which faction I try to play, but the Swordsmiths Guild Headquarters is nearly impossible for the Turkish. The only way that you can get a Swordsmiths Guild early in the game is by getting a Citadel (or Huge City) as soon as possible, and then building the entire line of smiths -- from Leather Tanner all the way to Armour Factory -- at the fortress.

In order to do this, I moved my governor with the highest Chivalry rating into Caesaria and converted it to a town on the first turn of the game, and set the taxes to "Low". I then built all 1-turn and 2-turn structures that improve population growth (small mahjid, an inn, land clearance) followed by all 3+ turn farm upgrades, which would stay intact after converting it back to a castle. (Of course, when you convert the town back into a castle, the new recruits are going to destroy the inn. You know how much those ancient soldiers hated their inns!)

I ignored the alert when the population reached 6000 and avoided upgrading it to a Minor City so that I would be able to convert it back to a castle when the population was a little closer to the 9000-population-requirement of a Citadel. After exhausting the farms upgrades, I built a town watch which only takes 2 turns and translates into a Drill Square after the conversion to a castle (whereas it would have taken 3 turns if I'd waited until after converting it back to a castle, because the mustering hall must be built first.) After converting it back to a castle, I immediately upgraded it to a fortress and then a citadel and purchased the entire line of smith upgrades, one right after the other. After the Armor Factory was built, the Swordsmiths Guild was immediately offered.

However, a Swordsmiths Guild is more useful in a Turkish City than a Turkish castle, since the castles are used primarily to train archers (as I mentioned earlier), which don't receive the Swordsmiths Guild weapons upgrade. So I changed Caesaria back into a city immediately after it had been awarded the Swordsmiths Guild.

I then cycled my existing units through Caesaria to receive their upgrades, and started using Caesaria as the central location for producing new garrison units. This not only prevents the logistics problems of sending units to Caesaria to get upgraded, but it prevents the additional cost of upgrading a unit after it has already been built.

In fact, this approach was so successful, that I did the same thing in Adana, except that I left it as a castle. Now I had two settlements for training units with the Swordsmiths Guild's weapons upgrade, one for garrison and city-based units and the other for elite castle-based units; either one could be used for upgrading mercenaries, generals, or units that were trained at a different settlement. My second castle was a little easier to develop, because it did not have a Swordsmiths Guild, as it was used exclusively for building archers, horse archers, and Naffatun.

For the Horsebreeders Guild Headquarters I chose Iconium, which was a simple matter of developing the racetrack line of buildings, throwing races, and cranking out cavalry (and sometimes immediately disbanding them, just so I'd get points toward the Horsebreeder Guild objectives.) Of course, you also need to focus on population growth so that Iconium becomes a Huge City as soon as possible, in order to qualify for the guild headquarters.

While I was gearing up Caesaria and Adana to give me a technological edge by the time the Mongols arrived, I expanded my empire as usual, starting with rebel provinces. I found it possible to take Tbilisi, Trebizond, Adana and Antioch by Turn 7 without building a single military unit, just using my starting units. (If you have trouble with this you can always hire a few mercs and disband them after taking a settlement.) Several people mentioned on this forum that the forces in Yerevan should immediately invade Tbilisi and then move on toward Trebizond from the first turn of the game, and I agree. I also used my forces in Iconium and Caesaria to take Adana, and combined them with my forces from Mosul to take Antioch.

One other thing that I try to establish each game, regardless of which faction I'm playing, is the Merchants Guild Headquarters. Antioch, being a cash cow, was the obvious choice. Constantinople would have been another good choice if I had attacked the Byzantines first rather than rebel territories, but I chose the Antioch route. I built the merchant and shipping line of buildings as quickly as possible and kept the taxes as high as possible in Antioch, and cranked out as many merchants as possible in Antioch and sent them to nearby trade goods (like the spices in Aleppo). I also had my diplomat establish trade agreements with everyone I could find. Soon I was offered the Merchants Guild, and I used similar techniques until I had a Merchants Guild Headquarters.

Although my taxation was set as high as possible in Antioch, which counts toward points for a Merchants Guild, taxation was kept as low as possible in all other provinces n order to encourage growth. This is particularly important early in the game, since small cities grow much more slowly. My main sources of income were Antioch and my diplomat, who was busy on the Italian Peninsula selling trade agreements and alliances for obscene amounts of money.

The trick with alliances is that an alliance isn't worth very much to anyone if you're not allied with anyone else. So you give away or sell cheaply the first couple of alliances, until an alliance with you is worth something to someone. It becomes worth something to them if it will keep someone else from attacking them. So they look at who you are already allied with and decide if it's worth anything to purchase an alliance from you to keep themselves from being attacked for a while, so they can build their infrastructure a little before warfare becomes inevitable.

It seems like everyone sends their diplomats to Rome, and several factions have settlements there, so it's a good place to establish/sell trade agreements (which count as points toward the Merchants Guild) and to establish/sell alliances. In addition to generating a lot of cash, it will protect you to some extent from early invasion threats other than the Byzantines, who will attack the Turks fairly early no matter what the political scene looks like.

The very first alliance to establish is with the Pope himself. Don't sell him anything, just give him free trade rights and a free alliance and he'll like you and your relationship will improve. Then you can butter him up by giving him a few gifts of 500 to 700 florins (depending on which difficulty level you selected when you started the game). In fact, if you want, you can butter him all the way until you're relationship is "Perfect." With the Pope as your bosom buddy, you'll find that the other Catholic factions are open to an alliance too, especially if you already have several of them established. Your alliances will become worth more and more. Establishing alliances with all or most of the Christian factions has the additional benefit of temporarily protecting you from a Crusade in Antioch early in the game; even if a Crusade is called, few will answer.

Meanwhile, another diplomat can forge an alliance with the Egyptians and butter them up a little too. Early in the game, you'll only have to worry about incursions by the Byzantines, allowing you to develop your settlements for a larger income and better military technologies.

With a +2 valor bonus for all cavalry from the Horsebreeders Guild Headquarters, and the ability to provide all melee units with weapons upgrades from the Swordsmiths Guild, and the massive income established by the Merchants Guild that is not squandered away on your sizable army of strong and reliable garrison units, you should be in a good position to conquer the other factions.

I've began playing the Turks, third time 'round, and have done things much better. I'm at turn 97 and am fighting a long war with the Mongols.

A few things I've learned:

1) When facing Mongols, don't use Horse Archers. This is how so many people get screwed over. Used spears and Archers. Mass archers. Preferably Ottoman Infantry, as they can deal with almost anything that come their way.

2) Flanking their Cavalry with your Cavalry works well. Sipahi Lancers or the unit who's name I can't spell (it starts with a Q, it's heavy cavalry, you know what I mean) are ideal for the job. Their charge should flatten a sizable amount of their cavalry.

3) Gunpowder. Janissary Musketeers own all Mongol units. A couple of veteran cannons will level the opposition general.

4) Yerevan will always hate you. Try to keep it under your control, though.

5) Get an alliance with Hungary and tell them to provide military assistance against the Byzantines. When you kick the Byzantines out of Constantinople, they will go and attack Bran, more often than not. Optionally Venice, too, but I haven't seen the Byzantines try to fight them in anything more than skirmishes.

6) Turn Mosul into a city in the early game. It has a good population and will become one of your main centres, and when the Mongols come, stock it up with Militia and Janissary Archers. They probably won't attack, but it's good to have something there to reclaim a settlement after a now-wounded Mongol army takes it.

7) Take Alexandria and Jerusalem. You will get huge money out of these places, don't need to bother too much with the rest of Egypt, though. The Mongols will never go to Alexandria, either, so it's pretty safe.

8) Take Iraklion, Rhodes and Nicosia(sp?). Convert all to cities. Seen as AI will extremely rarely attempt an amphibious assault, these places are more of less assured incomes. Nicosia is also a good place to launch a reclamation mission to Antioch, Aleppo, Jerusalem or Damascus.

Well, this is what I've come up with third time around. This time it's on the hardest setting possible, though, so I have had to think things through more.

I hope this benefits someone. :medievalcheers:

-Max

I was really suprised by the Turks, I expected to be poverty-stricken and struggling to make ends meet, however I became extremely wealthy early on.

The first thing I did was construct a series of roads due to the vastness of the empire, also I massed available forces from Iconium, Caeserea and Mosul to advance on Antioch, my first target. I starved Antioch and forced the garrison to sally easily defeating it and sacking the city, which I think gave me about 7000 florins it memory serves. Which sure helped.

I then decided to try and absorb as many rebel provinces as possible, namely Rhodes, Tbilisi, Aleppo and Baghdad, Rhodes fell easily and Aleppo followed the same pattern as Antioch and I launched a successful Jihad against Baghdad. My armies are made up primarily of Saracen militia, Turkomans and various archer units along with whatever mercenaries are of value.

However I am still unable to take Tbilisi due to a shortage of troops at this time.

All of these conquests relatively early on raised my coffers to around 35,000 with a decent profit of around 3000 thanks to trade with Egypts provinces.

Byzantium decided to attack me and briefly besieged Iconium with a single stack, 3 defeats in a row (destruction of 3 stacks) hasnt slowed them down though and they keep hiring hundreds of HA mercenaries which are often a match for my own HA and foot archers.

The result is stalemate, I win the battles but struggle to push onto Nicaea because of constant Byzantine armies swarming around, also the Byzantine navy is hurting trade, which effectively died out when the Egyptians declared war on me.

My position now is financially precarious (around 60 turns in) i'm not making much money, but cities need to be expanded and armies need to be trained, I also need to establish somekind of fleet at some point to. My allies have both betrayed me so I have no sea trade and large military commitments.

All in all it's been suprisingly fun so far, but it is getting tough, I feel I can hold the Byzantine back for quite some time, so I can campaign in the holyland against Egypt. If I can seize Jerusalem and the surrounding territories it should repair the damage done to my economy and force Egypt to sue for peace.

If I can do that I can develop a fleet to challenge Byzantium and reestablish trade atleast among my own provinces and finally remove Cyprus, the persistant thorn in my side that it is.

Well my first goal as the Turks was to head West immediately...

I moved my Sultan at the head of what forces I could muster (backed up with a lot of Mercs) towards Smyrna. It was a high risk because I knew the Byzantines had their eyes on it and I knew from early attempts at a Byz campaign it was rebel.

Turned out I was right and I was able to quickly sack the place while the Byz army approached. From then on I quickly dispatched him over the sea and nabbed Rhodes converting it to a city.

After that moment the Byz attacked and declared war on me and after a few turns I was able to bring a second army to bear on them. My faction leader led an assault on Nicaea while his son led a Jihad on Constantinople which pretty much crippled the Byz very early on.

Right now things have developed strangely, I took Adana, Antioch, Edessa and Aleppo with a new Jihad on Bagdad and Egypt declaring war. Trebizond is amusingly enough still rebel and I am travelling south towards Jerusalem now. My hope is to be able to drill south enough to take Egypt and have time to fortify to prepare for the Mongol invasion when it comes.

Money is starting to improve and sacking of settlements during my conquests seems to produce enough money to keep me going.

Wow is it just me or do we get tons of family members and generals in the beginning? Also why are the Byz sending their leader and other family members so much? At the first attack on my captial, i killed the leader and one family memeber, after few more turns, they sent another leader with little army and got killed also..

i have finished the holy roman and the turks on hard it was real fun they have complete different armies.
Holy romans had attacks from everywhere because they are in the middle of europe that was pretty hard.
Playing the Turks was not that hard in early i think. Yes, you dont have enough money thats true. And i didnt know how to declare a jihad after playing with roman because they had a Pope:)) i discovered it on late period. it really works though even in that time. the byzantines and the crusades are nothing especially crusades if you play well in battlefield. i even managed to conquer Rome and all of italia for fun:) i got bored of crusades and took action. sent ships full of armies, conquered sicilia first. went to north.
but something worse than crusades and byz. and egypt was coming:) i was waiting for them in baghdad.. it was a terrible mistake.. they came from northern bordes.. their armies are the same of turkish armies. all of their inf. are archers like the ottoman inf. ive put full armies in cities but it can not work because they engage in combat 3 to 1. 3 mongol armies are invading your city and you can just control one:) i have left those cities and decided not to fight with them until i am ready. that really hurts:) they say" i will take your lands and women soon" when you click on them.it must have been hard times:) i weakened them over the mountains. waited them to attack 3 to 1 but with janis. heavy inf. and archers you can easily defeat them on mountains. just place them like in the lotr the two towers. after that i have finished all their armies with janisseriies and some hand gunners(they are not that good janisseries are far more better)

Where can one find what r the Turks units ??? and what r the best

Quote:

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Originally Posted by qal

Where can one find what r the Turks units ??? and what r the best

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A) Start a Turk Campaign. Go to a city. Click on building browser. Click on the top building in the barracks/archery/stables list. Right click on each unit and read stats. Repeat with a castle. This is the only way to see what builds them and how hard they'll be to get. The methods below are easier for jsut seeing all the different units.

B) Start a custom battle. Choose the Truks. Read each unit in the list.

C) Go to http://www.totalwar.co.kr/ Click on the Turks. Click on each unit.

D) Go to the Units thread on this forum. Read all units (not easy to isolate just turks but best comparison for seeing if you get better units that, say, venice.

Hope that helps.

Playing with Turks may be hard for you depending on your skills on battle map.If you're an experienced player,inspecting their archers and horse archers,you will have no problem.If you are noob and don't know what to do,Turks won't be very comfortable for you.

My suggestion is "fighting".Fight all the way.You will have money problems at first but your 1st quality Turkish archers and Sipahis will get rank and crash whatever they hit.Don't hesitate attacking byzantine cities and castles.Take Smyrna(Izmir) first and drive to the north to Nicea.Meanwhile your units will be very experienced.Use your Bodyguard units wisely to exterminate all of the encountered units.Have at least 2 bodyguards in imperial army.Do not reject adoptions for Sultan Jalal and Crown Prince Mustafa.They will help you in your campaigns.If they lose unit(s),go to city and spend 2 turns,they will complete themselves quickly.Have some Turkomans or Peasant Archers in case of spending them for False Attack.Make a false attack and surround main units of enemy,use your archers and finally charge with Bodyguards.

Can anyone give me some advice for managing my imams? they tend to become heretics quite easily... also how can I counter the conversions of the priests? is there a way to kill them without assasins?

1. Group the Imams together

2. A theological guild (in Iconium?) gives better starting stats to Imams
plus the guild spreads its love through all your citys, not just the one hosting the guild.

3. Enemy priests arnt so bad...they spread other religions, which your Imams convert, and get XP for.

4. Leave a Imam in a provonce for 3 turns (dont move him, or even click on him) where there is a 70% or more state religon and he will get a 'monk = +1 peity.'

Basically, put a group of 5-10 Imams in a province with low state religon % that you just conqoured, they should lose 1-2 of thier number to heresey, but the rest will all level up as the state religon % increases.

Dont feel bad, Ive admitted defeat in a campaign coz I got beaten down by a heretic production line.

you cannot have mines in every region, can you? in which regions can you build a mine considering the first four regions you start with turks? also when does the ai let you build them, I mean what triggers it? thanx and appologies for my ignorance!!!!

For mines to be built the region needs silver or gold resources. No trigger or anything more complicated here.

As far as I know none of your staring regions provides these. But you can build mines in Trapezunt/Trabzon for sure.

Anyway, 2000 florins for mines is a lot in the early game. I usually start by building small masjids, followed by roads, farms and markets. Don't build ports early on, because this will lead to war with Byzantium or Egypt, and you want to avoid that until you are ready for them.

Mines should be built as soon as your economy is stable and you've conquered a few regions. Don't wait too long to get the most benefit out of them though.

It's quite important to send your imams to Nicaea in the beginning and put your spy into Constantinople. This will give the bizzies some disorder and distract them from attacking you.

It seems to me that Egypt is far more dangerous for the Turks than Byzantium.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Flavius Merobaudes

For mines to be built the region needs silver or gold resources. No trigger or anything more complicated here.

As far as I know none of your staring regions provides these. But you can build mines in Trapezunt/Trabzon for sure.

Anyway, 2000 florins for mines is a lot in the early game. I usually start by building small masjids, followed by roads, farms and markets. Don't build ports early on, because this will lead to war with Byzantium or Egypt, and you want to avoid that until you are ready for them.

Mines should be built as soon as your economy is stable and you've conquered a few regions. Don't wait too long to get the most benefit out of them though.

It's quite important to send your imams to Nicaea in the beginning and put your spy into Constantinople. This will give the bizzies some disorder and distract them from attacking you.

It seems to me that Egypt is far more dangerous for the Turks than Byzantium.

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Yuo said you start with building masjids. Does that mean you do not start raising big armies in the beginning. I mean when I was playing vh/vh with turks and built masjids in the beginning my economy collapsed somehow... Anyway thanx for the mine tips.

First I build small masjids in every region to get a constant conversion to islam. I believe it lowers the appearance of heretics somewhat. As they take only one turn to be built, it's not a big deal.

The Turks have a very good starting location I think. Just like Scotland or Egypt. You don't need such a big army in the beginning, as the only one who would attack you is Byzantium. But I've made the experience that you can prevent that by being aggressive with your spies and imams. And I ally with them at first.

Anyway, I'm very careful not to recruit too many troops. I recruit one unit of Sipahi in Caesarea (Kayseri) and one in Mossul. That's it for the first few turns. The other money is spent for buildings and imams from Iconium (Konya). My eastern army from Mossul and Yerevan heads north for Tiflis and Trapezunt, while my western army crusades to Antioch taking Adana on the way. Once you have taken Antioch there should be no more finacial problems for the rest of the game.

After that reinforce Ikonium to prevent that the Byzzies break our alliance. Be aware of Egypt. They will attack you when there are no more rebel settlements in between you. Make sure you crush them fast. Having taken Egypt you have practically won. Prepare to attack Nicaea, take out some crusaders and get ready for the invasions.

In my opinion,key of the game for all factions is "valored and armored" units.

This means minimizing the army is not a valuable strategy.Overpopulate your army,fight as much as you can.after you conquered strategic cities(what are these cities?answer yourself.In my opinion;Tiblisi,Adana,Antioch,Baghdad,Smyrna have priority),you can feed more army.But you will have high valored sipahis,Turkish archers and -most importantly- ghulam bodyguards in hand.This means you can conquer more and more.Since Turkish faction never has family member problems (they reproduce themselves constantly and adoptions are also very useful) you will always have the greatest army(not in terms of numbers of units but quality is assured means having capability of winning 700 vs 1500 enemies fights)