Quote Originally Posted by Durango View Post

The most enjoyable way to play a TW game, is IMHO as a political simulator, in a way. Not purely management, as Civilisation, but heavily centered around diplomacy, religion, family dynasties and such.

Going out and randomly conquering is much less gratifying than having roleplayed different reasons for fighting (just as real life, war starts for a specific reason, not just for the sake of it). My empires are almost always one of the smaller ones on the map, as I in a Machiavellian way try to unbalance factions that are too big for their boots, and rarely do I gather my full army and go on a slaughtering rampage.

For just the right challenge, I often only attack with an army about 1/3 the size of the enemy. That is in MTW, mind you. In RTW, you can send forth your factionleader's wife equipped with a butterknife and still, claim victory!
This is exactly the way I play the game. I often play merely to see what happens, rather than to go conquering the whole world.

A favourite game of mine is to play as a faction that can easily defend it's position (England is best for this). I build up my economy early on, take all of Britain and Ireland as soon as possible, and then focus on building up a trading Empire.

After I'm rolling in florins I use bribery, agents, diplomacy and a small but high tech elite army to mess around with the rest of Europe. It's fun to cause wars, give random factions provinces in odd places, launch crusades at strange targets and occasionally invade the mainland for a laugh and then give the land I take to the Pope.

I very rarely end up actually winning these games (although I could If I actually tried) but it's rather a lot of fun just messing around creating a story within the campaign. If Englang had been ruled my way for the Medieval period history would be much, much more intersting.