Iron Man House Rules

I'm getting kinda tired of thrashing the AI. I want a challenge.

So for my next campaign i'm going to play with a set of house rules - which include a bannination of cheesy exploits, trying to avoid taking advantage of known AI weaknesses, and imposing a few extra rules to make things a bit more difficult.


Diplomacy

Thou shalt never attack an enemy faction unprovoked, but shall instead wait for them to attack you first. The only exception shall be with regard to performing crusades or jihads.

Thou shalt follow every papal decree.

If the pope has ordered you to cease hosilities against a faction, thou mayst not attack them again until they attack you once more, even once the decree has expired. In effect, treat a papal nonagression decree as a formal ceasefire, even if the game still says youre at war.

Thou shalt respect the borders of other factions. Thou may not enter another faction's lands unless you are at war with them (and also bear in mind the papal decree rule above), or (obviously) have an alliance/military access. Thus you are not allowed to park a small stack next to somebody's capital in order to provoke them into attacking it and starting a war. An additional exception can be made for crusade stacks passing through.

Thou shalt gift all unspent funds to AI factions at the end of every turn.

Thou may not buy favour with the papacy in the form of gifts. If thou wishes the pope to approve of thee, thou must carry out the Lord's work.


Crusades & Jihads (thanks, Ramses II)

Thou shalt not request a crusade or jihad on a province controlled by a faction that you are not already at war with.

Thine crusading army shalt only attack the target province of a crusade. No provinces or armies shall be attacked on the way.

Thou shalt not hire crusader mercenaries, as they are too powerful and cheap.

Thou shalt only build one crusade stack for each crusade/jihad. If this stack fails in its holy mission, thou may not create another.


Agents

Thou shalt not put merchants inside forts to protect them, as this is a cheesy exploit and is thus a blasphemy in the eyes of the Lord.

Thou shalt only perform aquisition on enemy merchants when they are trading a resource.

Thou shalt not use spies except in a passive role (i.e. defending your generals or cities, and uncovering the map). No spying on enemy stacks or settlements, and definitely no opening of any gates you may find unattended.

Thou shalt not train or use assassins under any circumstances, as it is far too easy to beat up on thine enemy and render them powerless.


Military

Thou shalt not camp bridges when the mongols/timurids invade, but shall instead always attempt to engage them in open battle.

Thou shalt not perform the honey trap fort manoeuvre on the mongols and timurids.

Thou shalt ensure that each and every army is made up of no less than 50% militia units. After all, thine enemy's always seem to be. A possible exception might be when fighting the mongols and timurids, or any other enemy with an economy sufficiently well developed that they start fielding decent armies for once.

Thou shalt always occupy captured cities. No sacking or extermination is allowed.


Battles

When thou art defending a siege, thou shalt not send thine cavalry out for a quick sortie to take out the enemy's artillery, that they have thoughtlessly sent out ahead unprotected. Again.

Thou shalt not send out cavalry to attack the archers/crossbows that the enemy ALWAYS sends out too far ahead of the rest of its infantry. This way, we might actually see an archer duel once in a while.

When thou art defending a siege, thou shalt not place stakes in front of the doorway. Or indeed at any other location.

When defending, thou may only attack any isolated artillery that are not with the main enemy force once they have already started firing on you. No charging your cavalry around the main enemy force and taking out their arty before theyve even got a shot off.

When the battle endeth screen doth appear, thou shalt never continue in order to capture/slaughter as many enemy as possible. Instead thou shalt endeth the battle there and then.

Thou shalt always release enemy prisoners.


In General

Thou shalt never reload, unless maybe if thou has made a genuine mistake such as clicking in the wrong place, or forgetting to do something. Like i really meant to move that fleet, honestly. That kind of thing.



Does anyone have any other rules that might be worth adding?

if you like being the nice guy heres one.you will never kill pow,you will all ways like them go.leting pow of war go all the time will make it a lot harder.

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Originally Posted by uruk-hai

if you like being the nice guy heres one.you will never kill pow,you will all ways like them go.leting pow of war go all the time will make it a lot harder.

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Oh yeah, forgot about that one - thanks for reminding me. Been playing with that one for quite a while now actually - makes things a bit more interesting.

Also, only ever occupy captured cities - no sacking or exterminating, ever. Also been playing with that for a while - makes having a good economy more important.

Added those to the OP.

Wow, that's a tough set of rules!
Let us know how you go on.

All generals must be in the field. No governors.

All generals must be roleplayed - cowards run away after their unit recieves it's first causalty (if not before), brave generals always lead the charge, stupid generals deploy badly and make dumb tactical errors etc.

Never engage an enemy stack with a larger stack _ unit per unit or numerically.

Faction leader always leads the main army - even if he sucks.

No deliberately killing generals with negative traits.

You forgot: Thou shalt not use Holy Wars except when attempting to retake Holy Places (i.e. the Holy Land)

And my personal favourite:
Thou shalt not take another settlement unless thine character-to-settlement ratio exceedeth one which is the whole and holy number. Thou shalt not attempt to bring it below one, nor shalt thou attempt to take it above two.

Four is right out!

To add something constructive...

Battles

Thou shalt view the battlefield only once fully at the start of the battle, write down thine battle orders, give them, and then shalt thou lock thine holy General Cam. At three minutes of real time thou mayest pause and take a battle overview and alter thine orders, writing a new set of orders to be executed immediately. But only once mayest thou doest this.

Four times is right out!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tamur

Four is right out!

To add something constructive...

Battles

Thou shalt view the battlefield only once fully at the start of the battle, write down thine battle orders, give them, and then shalt thou lock thine holy General Cam. At three minutes of real time thou mayest pause and take a battle overview and alter thine orders, writing a new set of orders to be executed immediately. But only once mayest thou doest this.

Four times is right out!

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Yeah we all love the Holy Hand-grenade of Antioch. Besides, I still have to add a certain relic to the game... ahem.


I thought of another one I frequently use:

Thou shalt campaign on your esteemed foe's territory only if your campaign is led by a member of the royal family.

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Originally Posted by Tamur

Thou shalt view the battlefield only once fully at the start of the battle, write down thine battle orders, give them, and then shalt thou lock thine holy General Cam. At three minutes of real time thou mayest pause and take a battle overview and alter thine orders, writing a new set of orders to be executed immediately. But only once mayest thou doest this.

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Not sure i could handle this as it would take too much fun out of the battles for me. I might consider locking the camera on my general for the entire battle but still issue orders at any time. Hmmmm....

Another set of rules which i've considered but never actually played is: capture every territory by only taking rebel held provinces. Which means, in other words, that you have to assassinate the royal families of all of the other factions into extinction (although i guess you could incite individual provinces to rebel in other ways). No attacking non-rebel factions is allowed in any way, youre only allowed to fight defensive battles.

Anyone ever tried this?

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Originally Posted by Daveybaby

Not sure i could handle this as it would take too much fun out of the battles for me. I might consider locking the camera on my general for the entire battle but still issue orders at any time. Hmmmm....

Another set of rules which i've considered but never actually played is: capture every territory by only taking rebel held provinces. Which means, in other words, that you have to assassinate the royal families of all of the other factions into extinction (although i guess you could incite individual provinces to rebel in other ways). No attacking non-rebel factions is allowed in any way, youre only allowed to fight defensive battles.

Anyone ever tried this?

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I think somebody did but I don't know what happened. I always had the problem that it's extremely hard to assassinate all living family members because the AI can adopt pretty much every turn.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daveybaby

capture every territory by only taking rebel held provinces.
Anyone ever tried this?

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I'm doing it in my current campaign (The Long Road H/VH), playing as the Danes...

It's tough as the mod makes rebel much stronger than Vanilla (with a General in each rebel-held province...)...

However, it still is possible to destroy factions by assassination...

Making cities rebel is doable (mainly if far away from the capital or if of a different religion, otherwise, it can be very difficult or even impossible in the case of castles...)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tamur

Four is right out!

To add something constructive...

Battles

Thou shalt view the battlefield only once fully at the start of the battle, write down thine battle orders, give them, and then shalt thou lock thine holy General Cam. At three minutes of real time thou mayest pause and take a battle overview and alter thine orders, writing a new set of orders to be executed immediately. But only once mayest thou doest this.

Four times is right out!

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Wow, I suppose that makes it real hard. I´ve settled to giving orders only to units not engaged in combat.

Guilty as charged, yer honour!

Seriously though, I have just finished a french campaign (m/vh vanilla 1.2) roughly along these lines, although I forgot the 'giveth thy enemy all of thine florins as each turn endeth, good Sire' clause.

My houserules were similar, ie: max chivalry, occupy/release. I'd also balance armies and fight field battles most of the time. Although, general + weak garrison siege defence vs strong AI stack attackers is always fun.

Crusades I had similar houserules, although the 'uber chivalry convert the world and keep pope happy' soon means you own the college of cardinals and spend the next 100 turns supplying the world with well funded expansionist dread-popes *whistle*

You will also be surprised with the economic picture long term, especially when you lose all ransom/sack florins short term.

Reputation-wise, all I can say is I found its a fairly long walk to immaculate. I made it by turn 164, could have been much earlier If I had chosen some early alliances more carefully..

Whilst some people are dismissive of the chivalry style, I found it a very rewarding long game to play. I was mainly influenced by both the Kobal guides and other tales of chivalry on this forum; but mainly I was fed up of having every king turn into a dreadlord, and despicable global rep by turn 80 etc..

Finally, you do generate some nice characters with this style, although the last of the Timurids really didnt expect the Chivalric Crusade powered cannon stack ramming them open field:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

https://i207.photobucket.com/albums/...W/chivalry.jpg

I think the GenCAM lock is the best. That will be a completely new ballgame.

Yes, I didn't go that far in my game either, Generalcam is a fairly hefty restriction. Not so bad on flat areas, not too pleasant in mountains/forests though, or sieges for that matter. I often play at 'eye' level though, just to hear the clash of steel and cries of battle. Eye level cavalry charge into an unsupecting unit always brings a wolfish grin.

Another recommendation I would add is a chivalric general should prove himself worthy in battle whenever the oppurtunity should arise, such as supporting a weakened unit, bravely protecting your footmen from enemy cavalry or seeking a chivalrous 1v1 duel with the enemy general (and if I choose to flank charge with DNK during said duel, it will be in a noble manner)

Crusades are one of the most broken parts of the game against the AI, if ya ask me. You need some additional rules around crusades, otherwise they're a huge advantage.

1. You can only attack the crusade target.
2. No crusade mercenaries (They're stupidly powerful and cheap, even after the crusade ends).
3. Only one stack can go on crusade at a time.

If you can smash everything in your path with cheap-uber units and 6 stacks of no upkeep house troops then the game is pretty much over after the first crusade.

I'm considering a general cam campaign as my next one. I think it would make for an interesting AAR, as your character might often have no idea what exactly caused him to win or lose.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daveybaby

capture every territory by only taking rebel held provinces. Anyone ever tried this?

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I tried it and succeeded - check out my thread

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=87178

[QUOTE=Daveybaby]
Military

Thou shalt not camp bridges when the mongols/timurids invade, but shall instead always attempt to engage them in open battle.

Thou shalt not perform the honey trap fort manoeuvre on the mongols and timurids.

QUOTE]

So your saying, that you must attack timurid elephants, or mongol horse archers, in the open, you know what, I don't fancy it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by phonicsmonkey

I tried it and succeeded - check out my thread

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=87178

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Nice work. Think i might have to try that at some point (might make an extra rule to disallow buying provinces though - sounds to me like it makes it a bit too easy).

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Originally Posted by Abokasee

So your saying, that you must attack timurid elephants, or mongol horse archers, in the open, you know what, I don't fancy it.

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Well, obviously it's going to be difficult - that's the whole point. The reason the mongols and timurids are in the game in the first place is to provide a challenge. If you avoid that challenge then you could be missing out on one of the most fun parts of the game.

So, meet them head on - and get your arse handed back to you a couple of times. Try and find some (non-cheesy) tactics that work. Have fun!

Daveybaby

i was looking for a new challenge but you are obviously mad as king George!!


no seriously.....good set of rules

im gonna try some of em to start off with,regarding giving your money to the AI

would it not be better to give it to his holiness to distribute to his followers??

im gonna do that with my funds.


many thanks for the insperation

Moose

:2thumbsup: :2thumbsup: :2thumbsup:

@Ramses II CP: nice additions there regarding crusades, especially regarding mercs. Think i might add those to the OP.

And i look forward to that AAR.

@sprucemoose Cheers. I think the really difficult rule for me personally will be the '50% militia in each stack' one. Gonna really have to think hard about my stack construction now.

Also, I think giving all my cash to the pope might be a bit of a cop-out, cos the papacy isn't (usually) expansionist. Better to give it to potential enemies, cos that way youre hopefully going to be facing better enemy stacks later on.

Having said that, IIRC - if you give the pope too much money, he suddenly becomes VERY expansionist, and will take over large chunks of the map.

And I'm actually considering a rule banning the giving of gifts to the pope outright, as this makes it far too easy to stay in his good books. If youre going to be a good catholic, do it by doing good deeds rather than just buying your way in (has to be a first time in history for everything, right?)



A couple more rules to add:

Once the pope has ordered you to cease hosilities against a faction, you may not attack them again until they attack you, even once the decree has expired. In effect, treat a papal nonagression decree as a formal ceasefire, even though the game still says youre at war.

Respect other faction's borders : you may not enter another faction's lands unless you are at war with them (and also bear in mind the papal decree rule above), or (obviously) have an alliance/military access. Thus you are not allowed to park a small stack next to somebody's capital in order to provoke them in starting a war.



Unfortunately I'm not gona have a chance to try this out for a bit. Off to munich tonight for a few days, as i have an important... um... business meeting. Yes, that's it, a business meeting. Although if anyone else here is going to be at the oktoberfest over the next few days, I apologise in advance if i throw up on you.

Once i finally get Kingdoms I'm gonna have a game like this. BTW I always hit the Hordes in the open, it's just waaay more fun.

ENJOY ! the business meeting at the Oktoberfest! ;)

That 50% militia rule certainly favours the Italian factions...
Have fun at your business meeting! ~:cheers:

- Guru

My personal settings for Iron-Man is normal taxes + no mercs + no backstabbing. VH/VH

Here's a few addtions:

Crusades:

Your crusade stack must have at least 5 units of pilgrims. They will take a passive role in battles/sieges but defend themselves. They will not be disbanded after crusade, and will only defend towns/castles. (no rebel hunting etc.)

You will not 'ninja crusade'. ie: call crusade/join/win crusade in a handful of turns, or call/crusade win same turn. Other catholic factions should get a chance to join and crusade a little, say 10 turns from call to win. Perhaps set a 1 crusade/20 turns limit.

Military:

Once a unit has 1xp+ it cannot be disbanded. Merge of units is allowed, lowest xp merge into highest xp etc.

Diplomacy:

No 'open ended' diplomatic offers. It's all too easy to imagine your diplomat swirling his winecup idly and mildy speculating 'so what would you give me for Antioch?' but it's very easy to get perfect like this. Perhaps a 3 transaction limit/turn/diplomat. Also, train and maintain 1 diplomat/faction as fast as you can.

I can't seem to find that 'quaffing steins of bavarian finest in lederhosen on expenses' smilie so this will do :dizzy2:

1. no siege engines

2. no guns (excl small muskets/handguns)

3. The General leads from the front! No suicidal charge (unless you want to get rid of him) but general unit must kill something in every game.

4. 50%+ composition of the army must be of close-combat infantry variety.

5. No more than 20% should be of ranged units.

No Navy (except for crossing straits). All navy disband after transporting troops.

This is what I have been playing with (most times) although i did broke #4 sometimes (due to heavy casualties and logistics issues into Holy Land) and sometimes #5, since I just couldn't resist those mercenary longbows and Pavise-Crossbow.

[QUOTE=Abokasee]

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daveybaby

Military

Thou shalt not camp bridges when the mongols/timurids invade, but shall instead always attempt to engage them in open battle.

Thou shalt not perform the honey trap fort manoeuvre on the mongols and timurids.

QUOTE]

So your saying, that you must attack timurid elephants, or mongol horse archers, in the open, you know what, I don't fancy it.

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Actually I've done it. It was the only challenge really before modding provided non-militia armies for teh other AI factions.

For Mongols you need spears to counter cav charge and lots and lots of archers. If you can stand up long enough to the arrow duel, he'll charge and then you pounce on the cav. Once they're gone you charge with yours. The scots were surpisingly good at this due to pikes and decent melee archers. With English or Turk archers who can lay stakes it's even easier. It wasn't cheap or easy but it was fun.

I found Timurids much weaker than Mongols actually. They don't have the same overwhelming army for the 1 strategy. I loved the perfection of teh mongols uber stacks: it works perfectly for that 1 trategy - and it's a good one (arrows to wound and hurt morale, then charge with high dread general. insta-rout).

Halberd militia et al mixed in with timurids make it much easier to pick them apart and trounce them - except for elephants.

So for Timurids concentrate on taking down elephants then mopping up teh rest: if you can make them frenzy they trample many timurids. Use a) Jav cav b) naffatun or c) flaming arrows.

If you're a crossbow non jav-cav army it's a bit trickier (like HRE). Cannon or artillery with flaming shot can sometimes do it.


I don't understand people who say it's all too easy then use the flaming fort or bridge trick on the only 2 challenges...

[QUOTE=Daveybaby]
Military
Thou shalt ensure that each and every army is made up of no less than 50% militia units. After all, thine enemy's always seem to be. A possible exception might be when fighting the mongols and timurids, or any other enemy with an economy sufficiently well developed that they start fielding decent armies for once.
QUOTE]

My Armies are always [when fully made] the same.
Playing England :
1 General/Heavy Cav as Gen,
4 Cavalry,
3 Missile Units/Siege Units, [normally missile as I dont like the time taken to move Siege units]
4 Dismounted Knights, [any type]
2 Billmen, and
4 Levy Spearmen.

There is your 50% army. It is also quite adaptable and with good sefensive positions can take on 2 full AI armies without too much trouble.

I do use the punch though, line up 4 units wide and charge the centre break off secondries to angle the flanks!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ToothyTurtle

My Armies are always [when fully made] the same.
Playing England :
1 General/Heavy Cav as Gen,
4 Cavalry,
3 Missile Units/Siege Units, [normally missile as I dont like the time taken to move Siege units]
4 Dismounted Knights, [any type]
2 Billmen, and
4 Levy Spearmen.

There is your 50% army. It is also quite adaptable and with good sefensive positions can take on 2 full AI armies without too much trouble.

I do use the punch though, line up 4 units wide and charge the centre break off secondries to angle the flanks!

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By 50% militia i mean that half of each army must be made up of spear militia, archer militia, bill militia etc - i.e. city produced units. All of yours are regular (i.e. castle produced) units. The reason for this rule is that the AI stacks are often made up mostly of militia (usually due to its poor economy) - if you use militia in your own armies then it should make the battles more challenging.

Edit:
Oh, and the Oktoberfest was sehr gut!
(what little i can remember of it anyway) :rolleyes4:
Just staying upright was kind of like iron man rules.

What about limiting the number of stacks you can have at one time? It's always bugged me that your medieval king in the game can have tons and tons of permanent, standing troops, when in reality soldiers were called up for a fixed amount of time.

So maybe you could try to emulate that situation. Build enough troops to garrison your cities/castles -- but make them militia troops, and just enough to prevent revolt.

When you go to war, begin training some *real* troops, but only enough for one stack. Use that single stack until the war is over, or maybe even for a fixed number of turns. After that, disband your stack.

Don't know how feasible this would really be, but it would certainly reflect the sense that medieval kings had, usually, a single army at their command, that was in one single place at a time, rather than the gamey ability to train several stacks or half-stacks for any given situation.

Any thoughts?

CountMRVHS

That sounds pretty nasty.

w.r.t. garrisons, i would say that for cities only allow the up to the number of free upkeep units (plus one general/governor). For castles, say, a maximum of 4 units on top of generals.

w.r.t. number of stacks, how about limiting you to one mobile stack for each faction you are at war with? Obviously you can bolster your garrisons when youre at war. So if youre at peace you wont have any standing army at all and will have to raise it from scratch if you go to war. Once the war is over disband all of your troops except your bare minimum garrisons.

Of course, this means that you will probably have massive levels of cash to play with each turn, since you have minimal troop maintenance costs, so you will probably be way out ahead of the opposition in terms of tech.

Ahh, good idea on how to make the stack limitations. Nice and simple.

You're right about the cash situation. It would probably be good to combine this with one of the gifting rules, where you give the remainder of your cash at the end of each turn to other factions. Or maybe try to bribe as many rebels as possible to drain your treasury; if you end up actually gaining some rebel units, disband them of course.

Thou shalt turn the radar off in battles?

Thou shalt not play Medieval 2: Total War because it is too easy. If thouist must play, thine army may consist of no more than peasants and peasant archers (no generals either, keep them in settlements). So it is written, so it shall be done. :bow: