Anyone looking for a challenge in the vanilla campaign: try playing as the Rebels. (Just add them to the Playable Factions in your descr_strat.txt file the same way as the Papal States).

You don't have to worry too much about constraining yourself with House Rules as there's plenty of new dynamics to get to grips with:

• You'll have no agents except Heretics. Keep them out of your regions and into everyone else's to spread unrest. Your religion varies depending on geographical location (and despite what the game says, it isn't Heresy).
• Diplomacy isn't an issue for you: everyone loathes and attacks you without exception or respite.
• Neither is rebellion a problem: you're already rebel - you can't go rebel-rebel without the help of David Bowie around turn 1790. Any settlements or troops that turn rebel from other factions become yours to command, so you have a regular supply of random free gifts each turn.
• You don't have a standard unit roster. This is an alliance of rebel factions, so every settlement has its roster determined by geography, e.g. the British Isles south of Edinburgh will produce English units; Middle Eastern territories will be either Turkish or Egyptian. This makes expeditionary forces face the issue of not being re-trainable. (A good working knowledge of which units each faction can recruit is recommended. It will help when deciding where to build barracks, stables, etc.).
• You don't start with a family tree, you just get a few generals like El Cid the Chivalrous in Valencia. You can gain family members when you destroy a faction by taking their last settlement. Any orphaned family members that become rebel are then yours.
• Eventually the game offers you adoptions of heretics that become generals/family members with names like Esau, Satres and Spartacus.

Beginner's Tips:
As you know from playing, every other faction in the game is eager to grab as many rebel settlements as they can, as soon as possible. When these settlements happen to be under your control... you've got a very defensive campaign on your hands!

Enjoy!

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Sounds fun.

I thought thought that the rebels could'nt recruit any units at all. If you click on their buildings they don't show any recruitment options.

Also Heretics can become family members? I've never seen rebel family members with the Heretic names before?

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That's what I thought mate, and that's what stopped me bothering to try a Rebel campaign before. If you try it though you'll find that recruitment works fine, but you'll need a rough working knowledge of all the factions unit rosters in order to know which buildings train which units.
Not quite; it's just that when you are eventually offered family member adoptions, the characters have Heretic names like Solomon and Jubal. In all other respects they are standard generals and governors.

Sometimes you'll aquire the odd rebel stack with a character-general, but with a different combat unit to the regular General's Bodyguard. I've had Camels and Chivalric Knights as general's units. Unfortunately they only have one hit point, but the character himself can govern settlements and gain traits like any other family member.

The Heretic agents themselves appear automatically in regions of religious unrest. They act like priests spreading heretical nonsense. You take control or let the AI move them.

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might try this out tomorrow, thanks for the heads up.

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Glad that one didn't fall on stony ground - I was quite pleased with it ;-)
Have fun, I recommend it.

If you think about it, the potential is there to eventually build your ideal stack: swordsmen and bowmen from England, cavalry from France, militia from Italy and so on.

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I'm having a go at this while I'm waiting for Kingdoms to arrive.

I notice the Short Campaign is to hold 80 regions. I've got to 67, started with 60.

Instead of consolidating a homeland, I've gone on a blitz spree. I basically emptied every settlement, leaving them undefended, and grouped all armies from nearby settlements into full stacks. Doing this I have stormed the English and the northern French territories. Hamburg is under siege. In the east, I've got a full stack besieging Novgorod. My men from Bern took Milan, though Venice snatched it when I went to take Genoa.

Basically, I'm winning the war in Britan and France. I'm also crushing the Turks and Egypt, with my army from Timbuktu going to get the Moors. Russia will also soon be mine. Also the Byzantines are getting hammered, I just took Constantinople and Nicaea. Plus Hungary's in trouble, while I took Krakow from the Poles.

However, there are areas where I'm struggling. In Spain things are pretty even, but in Italy I think Venice will overpower me, while Sicily is going into my African and island territories. Also Scotland could cause me trouble now I've beaten the English. Also, the Danish are advancing into Scandinavia.

Using blitzing tactics, its getting harder as my armies are depleted. My money went well into the red from the first turn, so I can't train new units. Battlefield success has been the key so far, especially with the stakes of my Welsh Longbowmen against the English cavalry.

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Huh. I guess I could go about sacking cities without worrying about reputation.

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Blitzing is the way to go:



That won the Short Campaign (80 regions) by Turn 12. I normally turtle as well.

That was probably the single most fun campaign I have ever played, and I have played as every faction. The diversity of units makes it so fun. From making English cavalry kebabs with my Welsh Longbows to fighting the Egpytians with my Nubian units in the desert, I loved every moment of that campaign.

If you think you've had enough of the usual factions, you have to give the Rebels a go.

My tips are to blitz like Askthepizzaguy in a Panzertank while on some serious stuff. Abandon every settlement and group all units together, then storm the AI off the map. As you can see from my screenie, you will find there are two troublesome areas of the map - Iberia and around the Alps. Therefore, you should avoid these areas and concentrate on taking out everywhere else first. Also if you can kill off a factions family members, that could save a lot of time. I got both Yerevan and Mosul after killing the last Turkish general in Iconium.

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And all of that with just 12 turns??

I tried the rebels .. used add_money and process_cq cheats to find out where I should build something .. one thing I discovered that in the polish/hungarian territories you should keep the castles or convert all towns to castles cause you can not recruit any troops from towns there

But other than that .. this is fun

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Best advice you'll ever get, folks...

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