The Camel Campaign

[Knight of the Rose]

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KotR’s Crazy Camel Campaign

After reading about a certain love of camels, and having (hopefully) served my time in the stables, I thought I would do something different. So I fired up a campaign with these settings:
MTW:VI, vanilla, 2.01, HIGH campaign, EXPERT difficulty, playing as Egypt
House rules:
• Can only train or retrain Beduin Camel Warriors
• No trade routes
• Can keep and fight with princes and kings, but cannot retrain them
• Cannot fight with any other unit, and after 10 turns (1215) must disband all non-camel units
• Cannot bribe
• Cannot Jihad
• Must capture, never kill prisoners, unless losing the battle

With these rules, we start the game:
1205: Egypt is rich, more than wealthy enough to pay the grand sum of 94 florins pr. Camel-unit. Starting training of camels wherever possible, starting a fort in Sinai, starting morale-boosting buildings in Egypt.
1207: Building keeps in Syria and Arabia to gain access to morale-buildings
1209: Well, how nice! France decides to throw a crusade at my camel-booming Khalifate, instantly bringing me at war with Tripoli and Antioch. I planned to take them out first nonetheless, so no big deal
1210: Instantly invading Tripoli with my hero al Din (three stars & countless acumen – cannot afford to loose him now) and 440 camels. The French field a mixed 812 men, but 500 are peasants. There are, however, also Order Foot and Templars. They get a good hill to defend, but I succeed in baiting out the crossbows and overwhelm them. The Order foot and some feudal knights charge in to save them, but they are flanked and charged in the back by my camels coming in from right and left. The templars wait at the extreme top of the hill, and when they finally engage, they are the last unit on the field, and they are overrun by camels. I loose 207 camels and kill 328 taking 192 prisoners, 70 thereof Order Foot

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

First blood of the campaign, the ballista was placed to far from the main army
The Templars thought they had a good hill, but waited untill the rest of the army was overrun by the camels
The templars are destroyed, though their general escapes, much to my surprise

1212: Tripoli falls
1213: Trying to take out the French by invading Antioch with a full stack (586 camels), this time against a much more substantial enemy of 972, and only 150 of them peasants. Though the battle starts well when I trap a unit of turcopoles between three units of camels, it soon turns to worse. The French field many spearmen and many Order Foot, and though I flank them and make them run after me to a good killingzone, the battle is lost when I fail to get al Din out of harms way. 40 Templars charge right into his unit, and as I try to save the pieces, the Beduins soon break. Luckily al Din survived (and without “good runner”) but I lost 445 camels effectively stopping my lust for expansion for a couple of turns or more. I killed 591 good Frenchmen, so I reckon I’ll get them in the long run.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Oh my God! Where did they come from?!?

1214: Three-star Prince Ali, with the reassuring *one* shield of loyalty, is sent to Tripoli to make sure the French doesn’t get any smart ideas. They stay put however, and I train camels like there was no tomorrow. Or perhaps more like there was a crusade coming my way…
1215: My ten turns are up, and I disband all non-camel, non-prince units, leaving me pretty thin on most fronts (counted 1100 camels total). In those 10 turns I only managed to gain one province and roughly lose 2/3 of my camels. Not a bad start. At least I produce 160 camels a turn from four provinces. Hopefully the Horde won’t come my way in 1230…

To be continued...

[Martok]

Heh. A very intriguing premise for a campaign indeed, KotR. It'll be interesting to see how things progress, particularly given the rules/guidelines you've set for yourself. Looking forward to it.

[Raz]

Ooh, camels... Can't wait for more...
And don't worry about those Mongols, they won't have a clue what hit them, they'll say "Hang on, I thought we were the horde here?" Also, you do know how hard western europe will be to take on? Gothic knights in heavy armour vs Camel Warriors with no armour + the penalty for camels in lush terrain... Hmm. Not to mention that your petty camel archers won't do a thing when their arrows bounce off that inch thick steel.

Oh, I haven't played vanilla for a while, does the HRE even produce gothic knights? I guess not because of all the requirements.

[Knight of the Rose]

Raz: I only have Beduin Warriors. No Archers...

2nd Chapter: 1215-1230

1216: Spanish take Cyrencia through a bribe and open up my western front. I begin the second battle of Antioch with my 580 camels, but it ends in disaster as the numerous Order Foot tear them apart. The camels apparently don’t like pointy sticks. Even the crossbows do well against my camels, and rout them to my surprise. After the battle I realised they must have had the “there is no escape” morale bonus that together with Expert difficulty made them impossible to rout.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

They may look like regulars, but these guys saved the day for the french

1217: French crusade hits Egypt. 360 camels and 40 Ghulams against 816 crusaders. This time a good victory, as the march through the desert fatigues the French. The desert bonus is also nice, and the camels actually does some damage unlike in Antioch. My bad luck (or bad choice of house rules) places the 200 prisoners in Antioch after their ransom. I would have preferred them back in France… I begin a steady buildup
1221: The Spanish declare a crusade against Egypt! This puts me at war with the Spanish in Cyrencia
1222: Cyrencia is duly attacked and again the desert is with me. I wait just outside the reach of their ranged troops until the fourth quarter (I play with timer on) and charge! Though it was a victory, the guys with pointy sticks took an awful lot of camels before routing. Western border turned out to be almos, so no more expanding in that direction. No only am I waiting for the crusade but I also need more camels. I don’t expect the almos to be my friends for the rest of the game.
1227: Attacks Antioch for the third time, with a horde (900) of camels, and it is a total disaster. I spread them out in a wide fan trying to flank wherever I could. But my left flank was hit by archers and spearmen, almost instantly routing them. My center and right flank did only little damage, and even when I caught an Order Foot of 20 between two princes, 8 Ghulams charging in the front, 12 in the back, the spearmen prevailed in the end, though ‘loosing badly’ most of the time… I lost 391 camels and ghulams and only killed 108 Frenchmen. At this point I’m a little surprised I’m not facing civil war.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A beautiful army full of camel warriors. So far...

1228: The Spanish crusade reaches Cyrencia, numbering 1372 eager crusaders. I can field 900 camels and once again had the desert on my side. This time I used the Ghulams as a “heavy cavalry wall”, making them both hold formation and hold position against the charging spears. This way I could hold them off while flanking with the camels. I never caught the 50 jinites that came along for the party, but won the battle none the less. Though the camels prevailed, once again I lost almost half my army.
1230: Buildup again for another run at Antioch, or perhaps a horde defence.

At this point I am almost ready to quit the campaign. The camels are not able to do much damage to spears or armoured units. The cavalry of the western armies are worthless however, and I have no problems with them. And in the desert, camels rule. Half of them die, yes, but they rule.
But the spearmen! Oh my! What can I do against the spearmen??? And I’ve yet to see serious action against polearms...

Do you think I can win this?

[bondovic]

Do you think I can win this?

Dude. That is a handful for anyone. I hope I can provoke you into seeing this through by saying 'No!'.

It sounds fun!

[Jxrc]

Seems a hard one to win but that's looks fun (I assume that your aim is a GA victory since you cannot really hope to conquer the whole map)

Some bending of your rules could make the campaign last a bit longer.

Would suggest to allow handgunners. Egyptian handgunners are not as good as the vanilla one so that it's not a huge bonus but with loads of micromanaging you could perhaps rout those pesky spearmen ... Will remain quite hard though.

[Martok]

Do you think I can win this?

Hard to say, although it's still probably too soon to tell. I think your main problem is going to come should you decide to invade mainland Europe, since (as Raz pointed out earlier) camels are penalized when fighting in lush terrain. Of course that's not really an issue yet since your current lands are all desert/arid/semi-arid provinces, but you may have some real difficulties should you attempt to expand beyond Anatolia and the Pyrenees.

[Tony Furze]

WOW! That's bigger than I expected...camel training in the snow.