How do you enjoy the slow game?

[jsberry]

After mastering the blitz game, I am looking for more fun out of MTW until ETW comes out. I have tried the slow/turtle game before could not get much fun out of it. Starting in early, I teched up to chiv maa, chiv spears, feudal knights, etc. and my enemies accross the borders had a handful of UM and peasants.

I've only got the vanilla game so the GA goals are broken.

Please share ideas on how to play and enjoy a non-blitz style. Do you just send agents running around killing and burning people? Amass six-figure florin totals? Or is it just for the fun of role-playing and imagination?

[Empirate]

Try turtling in the High or Late period. An Early start isn't so great for turtling, as the AI never manages to put up decent troop production facilities, or doesn't have the money to use them. So try High, lots more upgrades for the AI from the start, so you should be facing ChivMaA, ChivSarges, and Knights, not UM and Peasants!

[caravel]

The turtling game doesn't have to involve lots of agent use or bloated trade revenues. Generally as a turtling player myself, I tend to expand slowly in a non aggressive fashion. I do this by setting myself some basic rules. The foundation of this is to avoid attacking rival factions unless you're attacked first, never breaking alliances and lowering taxes to normal once you have enough income rolling in. If you set only these basic restraints upon yourself then your faction will not be sprawling half of Europe by 1200.

You can choose what you want to do as regards agents. You may decide to increase agent production and usage, or you may wish to apply the same rules; only using agents against the enemy. When turtling it can be tempting that once you've secured a decent territory, have upgraded to a certain level and have a decent income coming in, to start building a large trading fleet. You should really resist this however. The reason for this is that trade in MTW is not really fair. The player can amass over a million florins in the course of a campaign through trading whereas the AI is a useless trader and fails to maintain contiguous shipping lanes. For this reason you should build up your fleets steadily but slowly. Don't blitz them across the map because the income you get will be ridiculous. To improve this situation some modding is necessary. The ideal piece of modding is to tweak the import percentage. This will mean that those rival faction ports that you trade with will gain a larger income from the trade you are doing there. This effectively means that your massive fleets will do a good portion of the AI's trading for them.

Another part of a good turtling game is the rule of no razing. Razing can set the AI back hundreds of years and can end up with you having to rebuild everything once you finally take the province. The AI itself cannot raze either. It's a bad tactic, so avoid it.

Lastly get yourself the VI expansion. Even if you don't play the VI campaign the VI version of MTW, namely MTW v2.01, is a big improvement over MTW v1.1.

[Misfratz]

I've only got the vanilla game so the GA goals are broken.

Well, you've touched on the nub of the issue there. You really need to either get a patch, or Viking Invasions, so that the GA goals are fixed.

Some of the GA goals are more interesting/difficult for different factions. The French GA goal of building a Citadel in Tripoli by 1205 strikes me as quite challenging for example.

The other thing to do is not to exploit things that are slightly out of balance. Don't overdo trade, or mod it to reduce it's value (I think it's relatively easy to reduce it by changing the base values of the different commodities). Use smaller armies to make sure the AI doesn't retreat too often (excessive retreating seems to be a feature of blitz games).

There are also some mods that help with the composition of AI armies. I think there's one that removes Peasants from the game entirely, for example. Starting in High or Late will also help.

[Matrim]

I have never, in any strategy game I've ever played, been adept at Blitzing. Or at least, not "rushing." I feel the term "blitz" is too widely used for what, in Age of Empires for example, was called "rushing." This simply means teching up and attacking with superior troops/numbers early on to set the enemy back. Even if your attack sputters and dies, it does enough damage to slow the target considerably, giving you a free hand to expand and trouce them at your leisure. And if it does eliminate them, wahoo!

Blitzing is somewhat different. If, for example, I am at war with another faction, attacks are thrown back and forth without any real headway. One province here, one province there, over the course of several years. That's just a war. Blitzing is, from a recent campaign, launching the bulk of your forces into one region. This much force in one area in such a short time will likely cause the enemy to retreat fully or fall back to the keep. Simply bypass the castle, leaving 1 stack, and send the remaining stacks further into enemy lands. Whether on a wide front or a small one, it puts your forces in a tight cluster and nearly invincible. And then from there you may strike outwards, is as many provinces and you can cover with your forces. This is not the early "rush" but a well-timed lightning strike that cripples the enemy's ability to fight effectively. Especially if you can cut them in half. Then the peasants will help, lol.

I turtle. And I must be doing it wrong, lol. I almost never have a great deal of superior troops compared to the enemy. I'm not sure what I do differently, but it makes for a quite enjoyable long term game.

[Kaidonni]

I turtle a lot. In fact, I've found that, as some factions, it is best to. I play XL, and the last time I played Aragon, having a lot of Iberia was really empowering. Too empowering, in fact - I became doubtful as to how weak I was and how strong the other factions were, and lost interest.

I'm currently playing as Sicily in Tyberius' 2.0 mod, and I'm making over 2,000 florins every turn with my starting provinces (granted I set up a trade network with the Genoese and Venetians). I'm planning to attack Crete, but the campaign started in 1087 - it's now in the 12th century, around 1101 or so (can't remember off of the top of my head). I've been building a full stack and the necessary Barques (hoping for 2 fleets of 3 each), because the Byzies have decided lots of Dejma was a good idea, so I need the cavalry (my cavalry are a sort of insurance policy in case they decide to stand and fight...I'm playing an Expert game). The fleets are, well, to deal with powerful enemy fleets (Byzantine ships seem to rack up nice command, even newly built - and the naval system is confusing at the best of times).

I hope to eventually launch a crusade, as I'm playing GA. Now, having lots of income will be useful there, because I'm going to take one or two regions in the Near East - then...'Contenders, ready! Gladiators, ready!' In other words, I'm going to build up powerful defensive armies, and that will be all that they are - and the Muslims can try and get me. I'd really be happy if they ended up eventually defeating me, after lots of fighting.

I once played as Scotland, Early, Hard, GA. Was interesting. I was eventually raking in about 16,000-17,000 florins by 1205, and had massive armies. But so did everyone else, at least the armies. An arms race had taken place. Heck, I'd have about 2,000-4,000 troops in Saxony, and the Sicilians, having set-up colonies, had about the same in Friesland and Franconia. LOL! The Polish were doing the same. The Novgorods and Kievans had their own private cold war going on. Then I decided an attack on France, who'd been fighting the Castile-Leonese for quite a while, neither really making many gains in territory - and I got trounced. Highland Clansmen and Scottish Spearmen (or is that Pikemen?) versus Norman Knights, Norman Foot Knights, Feudal Knights and Feudal Foot Knights. LOL! I'd actually conquered all of the British Isles, save Ireland, by 1098, and proceeded to take Ireland and, later, Norway, Sweden, Scania, Denmark and Saxony. But, I lost interest after that. Had massive fleets to counter the Castile-Leonese.

So, the moral of the story is, you can blitz to an extent, and then hunker down and let really interesting things happen. A blitz at one time can become the frontline which you have to defend fiercly at another.

[Roark]

Well, that's basically what I do. Blitz until I've got enough provinces to produce everything I want (troops, agents, boats & war machines) and then hunker down into turtle mode and improve the quality of my troops and provinces.

For me, that is the fun bit. Having small, high quality armies defend their homelands against massive crusades (bloated by Hungarian zeal) or making surgical strikes against blitz factions/superpowers.

At the moment I'm playing as the Turks in Late, and I've only my GA goal provinces and a handful of others, but I'm having a great time enticing big crusading factions into attacking cannonades of serpentines and organ guns backed up by a small standing army of high-morale (Ribat level) Turcoman Horse, arquebusiers, Futtuwas, Muwahids, and Armenian Heavies.

Good times.

My next goal is to build an "ultimate" 1 stack army (including Janissaries and Hashishin) with a moderately-talented general (4-6 stars), and to see how far my boys can strike into Christian territory. I'm even gonna have some boats waiting in the Channel and North Sea to ferry them over (just in case they get lucky).

[Martok]

So, the moral of the story is, you can blitz to an extent, and then hunker down and let really interesting things happen. A blitz at one time can become the frontline which you have to defend fiercly at another.

Well, that's basically what I do. Blitz until I've got enough provinces to produce everything I want (troops, agents, boats & war machines) and then hunker down into turtle mode and improve the quality of my troops and provinces.

I used to do the same, but not so much anymore. I tend to roleplay factions a bit more now, not just in terms of how they'd behave specifically, but in general terms as well as is fitting with the medieval period.

For instance, the Reconquista of Iberia took a couple centuries -- not that even I can make myself wait *that* long to drive out the Almos, but I often will take a good decade or two before my Spanish/Aragonese armies reach Gibraltar. Yes, it certainly makes the game harder (and I do end up losing slightly more often now), but I generally come away with a much greater sense of satisfaction.

At the moment I'm playing as the Turks in Late, and I've only my GA goal provinces and a handful of others, but I'm having a great time enticing big crusading factions into attacking cannonades of serpentines and organ guns backed up by a small standing army of high-morale (Ribat level) Turcoman Horse, arquebusiers, Futtuwas, Muwahids, and Armenian Heavies.

Good times.

My next goal is to build an "ultimate" 1 stack army (including Janissaries and Hashishin) with a moderately-talented general (4-6 stars), and to see how far my boys can strike into Christian territory. I'm even gonna have some boats waiting in the Channel and North Sea to ferry them over (just in case they get lucky).

Dude, you should totally post an AAR (either in the Pics & History thread, or start your own). We've not seen a good Turkish campaign in ages!

[drone]

I find it pretty hard to keep the game pace slow. There are too many ways to take offense at what the AI does. I just had a stretch of about 10 years of peace in my campaign, and it was killing me. I finally gave in and pounded the Spanish (they were building too many ships, can't have that ).

I find a slow game hurts the King's influence and generals' loyalty. No wars means you can't train your heirs, and generals start getting lazy. After years of peace and a couple of successions, your 2 crown, inbred, unhinged loon of a king is not going to be able to keep things together.