the Start of an epic campaign

[Tristrem]

while i have been home during my spring break, i put mtw pack on my desktop, and rediscovered the magic this game used to hold over me. I am playing an xl campaign as the turks, and it has been a blast. I have been constantly trying to beat back the byzantines (they are out of asia minor now, and i'm knocking on the door of constaninople), which is a challenge when their jedi generals and superior byzantine infantry kick my butt back and forth across the battle map. Now on top of that egypt has invaded and i'm fighting a two front war. It is quite the challenge, even with one of the easier factions. It is so much more challenging than any of the newer titles are. I fear i'm falling into a trance playing this game, with the old mantra of just one more turn keeping me glued to the computer. i wanted a small session of 45 minutes today and ended up playing two and a half hours. .

[Martok]

I fear i'm falling into a trance playing this game, with the old mantra of just one more turn keeping me glued to the computer. i wanted a small session of 45 minutes today and ended up playing two and a half hours. .

Yep, that'll happen when you play this game. I loaded up my Mercian campaign last night around 11:00 intending to only play for about an hour....but wound up not going to bed until after 2:00 a.m.

Good luck on your Turkish campaign, Tristrem! Fighting against both the Byz and the Eggies simultaneously, I suspect you may need it.

[Tristrem]

As of right now the war on both fronts is going well. I've destroyed the byzantine navy, and they are limited to greece, bulgaria, and constantinople. The trio holds about three stacks of troops, and i'm planning to invade constantinople soon. They also have the three islands, and the the crimea. However, since their navy has been sunk, they are stuck on those islands, and they emperor is stuck on cypress. I'm hoping for a major rebellion if i can sack constantinople. Then all i would have to do is mop up the rest of their forces on the mainland, and snatch up any of the providences that rebel.

As far as egypt, i'm not worried because they only have the starting ones, egypt, sinai, and arabia, plus that huge desert one. Their forces are mostly camels, and in total their forces are barely 2 full stacks. I plan to deal with them second, using spearmen and archers mostly, no need to kill my horse archers by making them fight camels.

[Ravencroft]

Well good luck.

Keep posting yer progress, could you?

[Tristrem]

today i played about 50 turns of the campaign, and some interesting events have taken place. I've held off the byzantines, and as of right now they are limited to greece, the crimea, and the three islands. I want to banish them to one of those islands, so that i won't have to worry about them reappearing.
(hungary took bulgaria from them and they hold one and a half stacks there now)

The war against egypt has gone well, and they are pushed back to egypt itself. So at this point i held the the approximate golden triangle (constantinople, georgia, and sinai intsead of egypt). Then the cumans invaded georgia, and beat back my 200 man garisson of peasents and 100 spearmen. I quicky made 2 stacks and sent them to reatake the providence and now i have a strong northern border.

All was going well, then i had a crusade called against me. The french and the danes joined the crusade to eddessa. I quickly beat back the two crusades with my four stack army in constaninople lead by a 7star general. Then i see a swarm of longboats emerge and they are infesting the waters of the eastern mediterrianian. I've killed about half of them, but it's hard to just keep boats in the water against them. Meanwhile every time they get a chance they invade the coastal providences. I beat back two major waves of attacks. This was due to the large amounts of turkomen horse, and foot archers i have been making recently.

Next they controled the seas for two turns while i was waiting for ships to be completed. Bad News..... They invaded constantinople and nicea with 4 stacks each . I only had about 700 men in each of those providences, so i abandoned them, and now have about 3 and a half stacks of turks ready to fend off the 8 stacks the danes now have in my lands.

I'm trying to cut off the seas, but the boats just take so long to build and sink so fast. If i can do that, i think i can wear down the 8 stacks and eventually reclaim my lands. The plan for this is the global troop recruitment, and the spamming of the jihads. About 4 jihads will turn the tides, as long as i can hold the front lines until they are ready.

on another note, what is up with the longboats? These things can sink anything, i'm losing tier 2 ships to these outdated dingys on a one to one battle, and there were about 50 of them on the map at the start of this war.

[Heidrek]

I remember my scottish campaign when fighting france. I had a pretty decent navy and a stack of about 9 Caravels all in one place. The Frnch dropped a stack of anout 15 Dromons (or Barques, whatever the level 1 ship is) with 5* commander and they slaughtered me without a single loss.

[Spongie]

Are these large navies to do with the XL mod? Playing vanilla, I never see more than two enemy ships (of the same faction) in any one territory.

[Heidrek]

There are a bunch of changes made in the XL mod, some of which enable the AI to makebetter use of their economy by increasing farm revenue and decreasing trade revenue, as the AI doesn't use trade well.

Net result is that the AI has more money now and can therefore finance bigger and better armies and navies.

[Tristrem]

Well today i had a record and played for 5 hours striaght, and it was quite a nailbiter.

First off the danes are dead. i whittled down their navy, while other countries attacked them near their homeland. They never had a civil war, but their king did die without an heir.

While this was going on, spain got into the mix and both invaded via greece and constantinople, and they wiped out egypt so that they shared a direct border with me. I eventually got enough ships to block their reinforcements to greece, and held them back on both fronts with a jihad spam.

Meanwhile the horde showed up in kazaar, and georgia (held by me). They attacked me with everything they had. I quickly beat them back with a overhwelming jihad spam, and they have about 2 stacks of troops left.


While this was going on, i lost a few jihads to constaninople, and had a huge infuence drop, and we know what that means, civil war!!!!

I had about four civil wars which consisted of be bribing back my troops, while slowly losing territory. During these wars, the egyptians re-appeared on the border to the south and stole arabia and palestine from me.

I'm slowly trying to rebuild my troops back up, and get some new jihads ready. On a positive note it's about 1250 and i have janissary troops availible in rum. I'm going to try to build a high quality army to beat back the masses of unwashed catholic heathens.

[ArtistofWarfare]

Well today i had a record and played for 5 hours striaght, and it was quite a nailbiter.

First off the danes are dead. i whittled down their navy, while other countries attacked them near their homeland. They never had a civil war, but their king did die without an heir.

While this was going on, spain got into the mix and both invaded via greece and constantinople, and they wiped out egypt so that they shared a direct border with me. I eventually got enough ships to block their reinforcements to greece, and held them back on both fronts with a jihad spam.

Meanwhile the horde showed up in kazaar, and georgia (held by me). They attacked me with everything they had. I quickly beat them back with a overhwelming jihad spam, and they have about 2 stacks of troops left.


While this was going on, i lost a few jihads to constaninople, and had a huge infuence drop, and we know what that means, civil war!!!!

I had about four civil wars which consisted of be bribing back my troops, while slowly losing territory. During these wars, the egyptians re-appeared on the border to the south and stole arabia and palestine from me.

I'm slowly trying to rebuild my troops back up, and get some new jihads ready. On a positive note it's about 1250 and i have janissary troops availible in rum. I'm going to try to build a high quality army to beat back the masses of unwashed catholic heathens.

It's always nice to have a tech up time itself nicely with a reloading of an offensive

[Martok]

Dang, Tristrem! You've definitely been on a bit of a roller-coaster ride thus far. Are you going to go after the Spanish then (once you've regained Constantinople, that is)?

[Tristrem]

ok, i played a little more today. My ships have effectively cut the spanish troops in the middle east off from any reinforcements. I've been whittling down these remaining stacks somewhat successfully, it's going to be a war of attrition. The egyptians have been neutralized again, and the horde never attacks me anymore. My main concern is a new spanish and hungarian crusade that could possibly tip the balence of power as it enters the region. I'm going to have to have a few lucky battles, or spam some jihads to keep my hold on my territories.

The hard part is that constantinople is so advanced, that the spanish are building lancers there, and those are tough nut to crack. I've been trying to pin them down with spears and flank with JHI. It works quite well, but i have high causualties.

The spanish are focusing more on their land war with the english and the genoese, and the people of novogard. They are not expanding anymore, maybe they will have a civil war or the king will die without and heir.

[ArtistofWarfare]

ok, i played a little more today. My ships have effectively cut the spanish troops in the middle east off from any reinforcements. I've been whittling down these remaining stacks somewhat successfully, it's going to be a war of attrition. The egyptians have been neutralized again, and the horde never attacks me anymore. My main concern is a new spanish and hungarian crusade that could possibly tip the balence of power as it enters the region. I'm going to have to have a few lucky battles, or spam some jihads to keep my hold on my territories.

The hard part is that constantinople is so advanced, that the spanish are building lancers there, and those are tough nut to crack. I've been trying to pin them down with spears and flank with JHI. It works quite well, but i have high causualties.

The spanish are focusing more on their land war with the english and the genoese, and the people of novogard. They are not expanding anymore, maybe they will have a civil war or the king will die without and heir.

If the Spanish are in a landwar, how open is Constantinople to an amphibious landing by you?

[caravel]

Constantinople is only reasonably defensive and it's not exactly the kind of province you want to going under siege. You should always take Bulgaria and at least Greece, preferably Serbia as well. This is a much more solid defence than the "golden triangle".

Greece/Serbia has hilly terrain and Bulgaria is a river border, these provinces also provide Constantinople with a decent buffer zone, in that armies retreating from there will fall back to Constantinople and can help defend it if things don't go to well.

[Tristrem]

I was going to let hungary have serbia and bulgaria. However, the last time i was playing they launched a crusade to my territory, so as far as i'm concerned, their lands are now fair game.

I also agree that serbia/ bulgaria is a better border, and once things calm down, i will expand to get those territories.

[predaturd]

i once decided i would have a 30 minute stint on it and ended up playing for 9 hours
most ive played in one is 32 hours
yeah ive got too much time

[Ironsword]

Yep, that'll happen when you play this game. I loaded up my Mercian campaign last night around 11:00 intending to only play for about an hour....but wound up not going to bed until after 2:00 a.m.

I hear you there. I thought i'd catch a quick 45 mins last night whilst waiting for a TV program to start.

10p.m. - Begin Turkish assault of the Med. / Have a cup of tea.

12 a.m. - Take constantinople / Say goodnight to gf.

2 a.m. - Repel Italian crusade of Serbia, Scicily re-take Rhodes / Cars stop roaring past and I hear foxes in the street fighting.

3 a.m. - Catholic nations rise as one to stop my advances and civil war engulfs my realm. / I turn off my computer in spite 'Who's the man now AI...' I whisper menacingly and crawl off to bed a broken man

[Heidrek]

with an angry GF?

[bamff]

Have to admit - I'd be sending an emissary into the bedroom first to offer a treaty before I entered the room myself.....

[Ironsword]

with an angry GF?

Have to admit - I'd be sending an emissary into the bedroom first to offer a treaty before I entered the room myself.....

^^ Spot on guys! Going to have to lay off it for a few days....

[Heidrek]

Haha - you're not alone brother, we feel your pain!

[Ravencroft]

Yeah dude, don't forget you have life away from M:TW.

So where's our friend Tristrem?

[Tristrem]

i've been busy getting some school stuff squared away, i'm heading back to school this weekend. The campaign is on hold at the moment, since i haven't played it in nearly a week. I tried the samuri warlords mod, it has been fantastic. It is the hardest game i have ever played. At times it seems the whole line decides it's time for a good chain rout just because one unit is losing badly. Everything is condenced into this tiny map which makes every decision vital to not only your success but your survival.

The past week or so i have also started playing my command and conquer the first decade, all my old favorites in one bundle. I've been play C&C red alert and have had some good success so far. The early missions are easy, just spam your newest unit and overwhelm the enemy, but the last 5 or so missions on each side are qutie difficult. They require you to use combinations of units and tactics, like the soviet misstion i had last night where riflemen, the cheapest unit in the game ended up being the best unit for assulting the enemy base. i plan on playing that while i'm at school since my laptop can play that, but not MTW. Why this is true i have no clue?

So for now, thr turks are on hold until further notice, but i think i'll return to them once get back for summer break, and i have the stomach to deal with the seemingly endless civil wars and catholic crusaders who want my land.

After this campaign is done i'm thinking of starting one as the either bohemia, HRE, or poland, somewhere that doesn't have huge ocean borders that i have to defend from endless stacks of enemy ships.

[Ravencroft]

Maybe there's compatibility issues with MTW and your laptop, especially graphics cards (There have been many a thread discussing that, one possible soultion has been stickied, try this.

[Tristrem]

thanks for trying to help, but it is a lost cause. I spent a week trying every solution, and even a combination of solutions. The game just won't load the campaign map, and in custom battles i can't select unit by clicking on them, i have to click on thier unit cards. The game just does not like my graphics card. There is no hope for MTW on this laptop, so i just play it on my old desktop when i am at home.

[caravel]

Have to admit - I'd be sending an emissary into the bedroom first to offer a treaty before I entered the room myself.....

"The lord bamff wishes to ally with you, do you wish to accept? "

[Kaidonni]

News from your emissary in the Bed Room!

Lordess Bamff has rejected your proposal of an alliance. Lordess Bamff has suggested attacking our mutual enemies, and then she may reconsider.

Sorry...had to be cruel...probably about as funny as I will ever be.

You try again a few turns later...

News from your emissary in the Bed Room!

Lordess Bamff has rejected your proposal of an alliance. She refused to meet me in person, but I was told that her answer was no.

[Ravencroft]

Originally posted by Kaidonni
News from your emissary in the Bed Room!

Lordess Bamff has rejected your proposal of an alliance. Lordess Bamff has suggested attacking our mutual enemies, and then she may reconsider.

That made me laugh... no, seriously.

[bamff]

Close, but actually she suggested that I withdraw my troops from along our mutual border of the locked bedroom door......

I wound up invading the neutral province of "Spare Bedroom", and awoke the next day to find that she had launched a crusade against me.....

[Tristrem]

i suggest a jihad to keep holy lands in the right hands. possibly a jihad spam??