Where do you win your campaigns?

[Rhyfelwyr]

Playing a New Spain in the Americas I could even overwhelm the Aztecs etc with my numbers.

[PBI]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but if you want a campaign you can't win through overwhelming force, play BC.

The difficulty of building a huge economy and the punishing unit upkeep means you can't simply spam your best units, the huge enemy stacks that spawn whenever you siege anywhere mean you have to plan any invasion carefully and attack against the odds and the AOR system means you have to conserve your troops, because if you get your only invasion stack wiped out halfway through a campaign, you won't be getting another one in a hurry.

My Kingdom of Jerusalem campaign has probably been my most enjoyable campaign of M2TW thus far; I had great fun mounting an expedition up the Nile valley with a single veteran stack, finding myself in battles against multiple full stacks of Makurian troops, knowing that I had not only to win, but to do so with enough of my army intact to siege several well defended cities afterwards, since there would be no possibility of reinforcement.

So in answer to CR's original question, I would say I win my campaigns on the battlefield. I much prefer building a single stack of good troops and mounting a risky campaign deep into enemy territory, against seemingly impossible odds, knowing that I have to win every battle I fight, while the enemy only need to win one, to simply building endless stacks of militia and sending them in to win by weight of numbers, knowing that no matter how badly I fight and how many men I lose I can simply raise more. Militia have no place in an offensive campaign anyway, I tend not to use them for anything but garrison duty.

[anders]

in the field, but then again, thats not because Im any good at the tactical game, but because I have a sensible army composition and battle , while the AI seems to totally lack both.

I try not to keep more stacks in any given theater than the AI has, so as to avoid winning by sheer force of numbers.

[Eikon the Magistrate]

I find it difficult to pin the AI down to a single decisive engagement in the field. Unless the faction is very small, there will usually be at least another stack or 2 hanging around. Thus, my campaigns are usually determined by siege and sally affairs. Sally battles are unfortunately too easy to win which makes the capture of the AI large cities and castles predominant in my strategy. Id love to spam stacks of armies against similarly numbered stacks of AI but the game presents few opportunities for this with the exception of the mongols and timurids.

That being said, I will have an expeditionary army as often as possible, will not use for sieges and which I throw into every tough battle scenario I can find. Thereby ensuring a high body count of enemies and chevron gain for myself.

After retraining, the army will be sent to another equally impossible feat. This becomes at least in my imagination the "decisive engagement" and becomes quite entertaining as I try to test the limits of this small 1 stack force against any faction possible. More a sophisticated raiding party than anything else, they usually travel by boat ensuring mobility and the prospect of catching large enemy concentrations with "their pants down."