Archived campaign: Spain (aggressive)

[cambovenzi]

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EDIT: Conquest for Spain: AGGRESSIVE (original thread title)

Due to the effects and aftermath of the Spanish bug this thread (and all the efforts put into it)
was eventually and regretably abandoned. Sad but true. - Axalon
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Spain, Expert, Redux.
i guess this is supposed to be one of the hardest factions in Redux Total War.
popular opinion, including axalon's guide, says to build up, and that using quality troops later is the way to go, instead of getting in an arms race with the moors and possibly losing or not getting anywhere.

In the original conquest for Spain thread, William the Silent had as many as 82 years w/o attacking any other factions.

I however had much success attacking very early in the game. attacking as early as turn #1.
I would like to share my strategy and moves with you for possible discussion, critique, and to maybe even reform your strategy.
i think this aggressive strategy is much more effective, and very quickly gets you the entire Iberian peninsula and more.

here it goes:

1st turn:
Train Spanish Spearman in Castille
Build fort in Leon for peasants
Jack up taxes in Castille to maximize profit

2nd turn: sent everything to cordoba
Train feudal cav in Castille, and peasants in leon
Moors retreat from Cordoba.

3rd turn:
Move newly trained peasants and feudal cav to Cordoba to maintain loyalty.
Train Spanish swordsmen and peasants. built blacksmith in Leon, and fort in Cordoba and started to Build a metalsmith in Castille.



4th turn:
Build swordsmith in Leon.
more peasants in Leon and now Cordoba
Trained feudal archers in Castille w/ the 300 or so florins i had left.
moved swordsmen down in Cordoba, and moved Leon's peasants into castille so i could move taxes up to very high.

5th turn:
Building horse breeder in Castille and bowyer in Cordoba(archer units are 100 men, with low upkeep,
and they are a nice change up to massive amounts of peasants. they can actually be used)
train feudal cav, and 2 more peasant units.
put everything into Cordoba, and invaded Granada with all available non-peasant troops.

6th turn:
The Moors try to retreat to the keep in Granada. troops that didn't fit into there keep got
ransomed for almost 600 florins, and i received another 750 for taking the province. (destroyed buildings)
lowered taxes in Granada, and assaulted keep with the following units:
5 star Prince, 2x Spanish swordsmen, 3x reg spearmen,2x feudal infantry 1x feudal cav.
moved the rest to Cordoba to prepare attack on morocco and defend Cordoba in case of attack.
then i moved 100 peasants to Granada to ensure loyalty.
trained archers, reg spearmen, and swordsmen.(who are now recruitable in Leon)
started building metalsmith in Leon, and christian shrine in Cordoba.
moved my warship over to straights of Gibraltar to at least delay a possible Moorish naval invasion of Cordoba or Granada and secure the coastline.

7th turn: assault on Granada succeeded, any remaining survivors were ransomed back for another 500 florins.
attacked Spanish ship in hopes of getting them off my shores.
trained: feudal KNIGHTS in castille, archers, spanish swordsmen, and light halberd that are available in Granada.
remaining non-peasant troops in Granada moved to Cordoba.
100 peasants moved to Castille to jack taxes back up to VH.
building armourer in Castille, and christian shrine in Granada.

8th turn:

my warship has won the battle.

NOW is the time to attack morocco.
my 5 star prince leads an impressive stack down into the Moorish North African province.(2 units of Spanish swordsmen, almost 3 full units of feudal cav, 105 feudal infantry, 3 units of reg spearmen, 100 archers, and 40 more feudal archers)
my emissary has scouted ahead and sees a rather unflattering Moorish army.
(100 each of Moorish cav, infantry and warriors, as well as 406 slave militia, and 20 some odd camel archers.)

a unit of peasants and light halberds are moved to Cordoba.
training: feudal knights, archers, light halberds.(florins almost depleted after that)

9th turn:
even with half a stack of the Moorish sultan's men moved into morocco, they decide to run away. i receive 3000+ florins for the capture of morocco.

i have enough troops built to maintain loyalty in all provinces, and move the same prince's army into Algeria where there are 1000 men waiting.
but i decide against it, as i would be outnumbered almost 2 to 1, and not have enough troops leftover to maintain loyalty.
i train light halberds, feudal knights, archers, Spanish swordsmen, and crossbows available in newly acquired morocco.
started royal estate in Castille, shipwright in Granada.

10th turn:

i will build even more spearmen, 2x archers, light halberds and Spanish swordsmen to prepare for an eventual attack on Portugal and Aragon, and still have enough men to keep everyone happy.
i decide to have my men hold back in morocco, and make an attack on Portugal.

the attack on Portugal of course worked, and they fled and weren't ransomed. so i have portugal now.
surprisingly portugal made an attack on leon, but one of my princes was there with a few units and took care of business.



after just 10 short turns, i have managed to knock the almos out of Spain, and have a secure border at morocco. I also have knocked off the Portuguese and am a turn or two away from owning the entire peninsula due to having recruiting capabilities in many provinces, as well as some nice standing armies. this of course is possible due to much lower upkeep costs than in vanilla MTW.

[cambovenzi]

I apologize if my story telling capabilities are not up to par.(i failed english)
But i think my strategy and performance more than makes up for it.(there i go starting a sentence with the word but)
I will continue and post what happens if anyone would like, or if i just feel like it.

what do you guys think?

[Axalon]

Yay! Cool! Hi there Cambovenzi!

I must say that your strategy is probaly closer to my own than the one Williams got (all three obviously works so far). Anyway, it is obviously possible to do all the stuff you have done here. Personally I am bit slower because I do hate to rely on peasants (and I do like to fight rebellions more as well). And this is of course this strategy’s greatest weakness. Also the hardcoded flaw in the AI to do silly retreats sure helps your case. As long as you can keep the control in the provinces were your peasants are posted. It will all work out for you in securing the entire peninsula. It all is kind of dependant on what happens with the AI, whether it decides to start off aggressive or not and the likely rebellion in Cordoba that otherwise has to be dealt with. This time you at least was spared from the rebellion in Cordoba. Otherwise it would have probably slowed you down 1-2 turns I'll guess….

At any rate, there is one factor that is likely to cause problems for you further down the road. That is the over all quality of you troops. You’ll most likely will have to do some re-arming yourself to successfully deal with bigger armies than what you have encountered so far. However you seem to be quite aware of your overriding plans so you can possibly do that on the fly, but that fact will probably slow you down a bit more as well. Blitzing will probably be a lot harder to do further down the road.

Anyway, one thing is for sure, partly influenced by you actually, I have decided to make an increase in the Portuguese army to some extent for the future official patch to halter the this silly self-destruct retreat (both you and I know that its not supposed to be like that, but its all hardcoded so there is not much that can be done there. Regardless of any version). At least that way make it harder to happen, as in it should require more troops to trigger it. Well, well… You have at any rate a certain reader right here! Keep it up Cambo!

Finally, it is very hard to set the bar that applies for everyone. Some people feels right at home even with reduxes Expert-level others don’t. Thus it is very hard to tailor a text in a way so it suites everyone (besides I have already stated that the people that play Spain set on Expert-level should not need to ask for my help). “The Spanish Dicta” is primarily written for people that don't really play on that level (and my guess is that some of it are still viable for you as well), if you know what I mean.

[William the Silent]

I apologize if my story telling capabilities are not up to par.(i failed english)
But i think my strategy and performance more than makes up for it.(there i go starting a sentence with the word but)
I will continue and post what happens if anyone would like, or if i just feel like it.

what do you guys think?

I'm impressed. That is lightning speed. I would never have tried that, because my style is slow . And I use double recruit time. But you proved yourself.

I see you're going to have some opposition from Algeria. Attacking in the desert is hard if you play out the battle, because of the exhaustion you'll suffer if you have to walk far to get to the enemy.

Don't worry about your storytelling. It's to the point and clear. I would like to see more. Hehe.

I guess I'll be going back to my slomo game story . Even that goes slow.

[Axalon]

Yes? ...And then what happened???

[Obliqueattack]

This aggressive strategy does work. I tried it myself yesterday on expert and, believe it or not, I eliminated the entire Moorish faction by 719. I'm going to try it again to make sure I haven't gone crazy or made a mistake and I will report on my second attempt later.

Re the first successful aggressive attempt:(sorry this is only an outline, I don't have time for detailed explanation.)

Strategy: move most or all available troops into Cordoba; AI does its silly retreat thing, thinking they can't win the battle; VERY IMPORTANT: build peasants or other 100 man units (archers) to prevent revolts in newly conquered territories; I like to build farm upgrades 10% 20% 40% etc to develop income. With any extra cash build best available cavalry/infantry. Important: send emissary to ally with Aragon and Portugal. (I did not build any ships)
Continue like this; build 10% 20% 40% farm upgrades, build peasants to prevent revolts, move troops to front lines. Attack Granada; AI does its silly retreat thing; attack Morocco AI does its silly retreat thing and so on through Africa to Egypt and victory.
I only had to fight 2 actual battles; once in Cyrenaica where the Moors attacked me and I defeated them. (Reason: I was on defense and they hadn't developed those huge spear/sword armies yet)
Final battle: in the Sahara;last Moorish province)

To summarise: I won because of AI retreat in the face of perceived superiority (silly retreat thing). Hence Moors don't get time to develop their formidable armies.

Re: my first post that started the battle reports discussion on expert Spain:
I remember starting out the same way by invading Cordoba and Granada early. But then I stopped. I didn't attack Morocco; instead I concentrated on Portugal and Aragon. Result: Moors develop their armies leading to a much more difficult (and enjoyable game)


I'm going to test this again

[Axalon]

Ok guys, this is totally unacceptable. “Blitzing with peasants” should not pay off in that way!
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THIS IS AS OF NOW LABELLED AS A BUG-MATTER.
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More info on the “Spanish bug” in the debug-area...