Finally conquered all of Broken Crescent
It's been a goal of mine since I first tried the mod out, so a long time ago I started a KoJ campaign to wipe out all the enemy factions and take all provinces. Here's the screenshot of the map (I was too lazy to blow it up):
So, as briefly as I can manage, campaign notes:
The Broken Crescent campaign is substantially better than vanilla IMHO. The variety of units, the unit balance, and the atmosphere are all excellent. I particularly enjoyed fighting some of the semi-realistic early battles between the Ayyubids and the KoJ.
As with all MTWII campaigns, however, there fairly rapidly comes a development point at which the AI can simply no longer compete. Even if the AI manages to win a battle with the scripted stacks generated for it those can only last so long, and the AI won't build quality stacks on it's own. So I had some fun with the Ayyubids, especially when the Turks attacked me on the other side just as I captured Gaza, but the challenge of the campaign rapidly declined afterward.
My general idea was to ally with the Christian factions, including Makuria, and wipe out the local Muslims. I was never able to secure an alliance with Georgia, but I did keep good relations with Armenia and Rome while I wiped out first the Ayyubids, then the Abbassids, then the Turks (Who became simultaneously Armenia and Rome's vassal when they got to 3 provinces). The Seljuks and Kypchaks, meanwhile, conquered Georgia between them and started on Rome's eastern provinces. After I bumped off the last Abbassid spot I sold their eastern provinces to the surging Kwaz in exchange for an alliance so I wouldn't have to fight around the gulf yet.
Then I turned north and smacked around the Kypchaks and what was left of the Seljuks. The Kwaz actually helped a little with the Seljuks, going so far as to capture Rayy on their own. I was suitably impressed and concentrated on the Kypchaks for awhile, until an exchange of maps showed that Rayy had fallen back to the Seljuks and the Kwaz were in retreat. With Baghdad in hand I didn't have financial problems, so I generated a few more stacks and made a serious invasion of the more dense Seljuk lands.
The Seljuks died fairly quickly, but I got into a war with Oman around Arabia at the same time and had to wipe them out as well. I bought some Makurian stuff, marched armies down next to most of the rest of their holdings, and conquered them in about 3 turns. Meanwhile the Kypchaks went horde mode, severely annoying, and had to be hunted down. While I was doing that the Kwaz got AI'd and decided to blockade one of my ports and break our alliance I smacked them around, cleaned up the Kypchaks, and forced the Kwaz into a vassalage agreement so I could deal with Rome and Armenia.
The Romans were already in trouble because they'd foolishly declared war on Armenia. The Turks stuck with Armenia, and the Armenians immediately started crushing the Romans. By the time I entered the war there was little left of the ERE but a few provinces south of Constantinople, which I captured quickly. This rolled directly in an assault on the last Turkish provinces and then a full war with Armenia.
The Armenians really put up a fight. They had a lot of large stacks roaming around due to the Roman war and I couldn't just cap off all their provinces instantly due to geography. I'd say they fought on for ten turns or so, with some major battles, some of them pretty good. Afterward everything west of Rayy was mine, and a line of formerly Omani provinces marching up the Rajput lands as well. A very irritating line as they had to be constantly defended and were very disorderly due to distance and my policy of occupation. The Rajputs were off and on at war with me after they knocked off the Ghorids while the Ghazni were strangely passive.
So I launched a long range, thinly supported invasion of India, during which the Mongols arrived and marched all the way down to India (I had taken that city they always target first, Somnath? and I fought them off there, but then they marched on south away from me). I refused to cheese my way through with mercenary javelins so there were some truly difficult battles. In the end my archer heavy stacks won out, but I took vast losses in some of the open field battles. These were some of the most fun fights in the entire campaign, and it took me quite a long time to conquer my way through all of India with the Mongols assaulting me in the formerly Sindh lands. The Mongols were tough, but they were stupid as well, and they lost about four or five stacks trying to capture a citadel (Even in BC the AI is too broken to ever take a citadel).
After that the Ghazni fell with hardly a fight as I had spies in all their towns already, and the Kwaz weren't far behind once I dissolved my vassalge agreement. Then the ultimate annoyance, the Kwaz went horde mode. I had plenty of stacks to chase them down, but as you can see in the screenshot one of the Indian provinces rebelled while I was doing it and I was out of patience to recapture it.
Broken Crescent is an excellent campaign, loads of fun. The KoJ's combination of armoured sarges and turkopoles is excellently effective, few other troops are necessary. I did use mercenaries extensively because you almost have to in BC, but I didn't feel like I met any enemies that could break my native armies without mercs.
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