without actually playing as the Turks, are there any tips

[drone]

You could always mod them to have more money/troops at the start...

[Lexio X]

You could always mod them to have more money/troops at the start...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Of, course just pump them up with florins and play as England then you're all good to go.
Now why didn't I think of that.

On a side note, that reminds me of the epic 4 crusades I launched against them to recapture Constantinople after I lost it. Half a million men died for that province and then the Black Death scroll popped up. That was a bad decade for my virtual representation of medieval European History.

[chris34au]

thanks for all of the tips. i haven't ever tried to mod anything in the game before but it sounds like it might be a good time to give it a shot. if i have the gnome editor, is that all that i need to be able to mod the game?

without going too far off topic, is that how some people are able to play as the Swiss? i've always wanted to try playing a Swiss campaign but i haven't ever been able to find them in the game.

[drone]

If you just want to mod in starting cash or troops, you just need the Windows Notepad or other text editor, since this info is kept in the startpos file for the era. In the "Medieval - Total War\campmap\startpos" directory, there are 4 files called EARLY.txt, HIGH.txt, LATE.txt, and VIKING.txt. These are the files used when starting campaigns. So if you want to experiment with Turks in Early, you want to modify the EARLY.txt file. (backup the file first...)

To change the Turks starting cash, look for the line:

SetTreasury:: FN_TURKISH  10000 8000 6000 4000

This line determines the starting cash for the Turkish faction for the 4 difficulty levels (in order: easy, normal, hard, expert). So if you want to add 3000 florins to their starting treasury on Hard, you would change the line to this:

SetTreasury:: FN_TURKISH  10000 8000 9000 4000

Adding troops is done by adding MakeUnit:: lines for the Turkish provinces. So say you want to add a unit of 60 Desert Archers to Rum, you would add the line:

MakeUnit:: ID_RUM  DesertArchers 60

to the file down with the rest of the MakeUnit lines. This is a little more difficult, since the MakeUnit line requires the internal game name of the troops which can differ from the english descriptive name.


To play the Swiss, you need to modify the LATE.txt startpos file, change the line:

SetActiveFaction:: FN_SWISS		FT_MINOR

to

SetActiveFaction:: FN_SWISS		FT_MAJOR

and they become playable when starting a Late campaign. It's not easy, you can survive but money is tight, time is limited, and you must attack either the HRE or France quickly before you go bankrupt (I recommend France). If you manage a 60% victory, excellent job. If you manage 100%, you cheated!

[chris34au]

thanks so much for all of the help. i can't wait to get started on this next campaign to see how it goes. i'm going to try helping the Turks before i give the Swiss a try. i'm kinda intimidated by Late era campaigns.

[bondovic]

The Turks are at a huge disadvantage due to their crap melee units. About the only real fighter available to them until Jennies is AHC. Since all comp vs. comp battles are simulated, the faction with the stronger melee units is going to win, c'eteris p'aribus.

Someone suggested a while back that one needs to remove the crap melee units from the Turks' roster. Away with DA and vanilla archers. Away with vanilla HAs and peasants. Etc. That way they'll be 'forced' to build slightly better melee units, and, as a consequence, survive better.

I would like to suggest that one also modifies the starting provinces so that they start with Master Horse Breeder. This to give them a little sume sume of a head start in cavalry, especially then regarding the TH. Maybe also move the camel bonus from Arabia to Syria (you play XL, right?) to help stem the Egg tide.

Even so, they'll be lots weaker than the Byz in melee. A few units of BI will cause serious problems for any Turk in a simulated battle. But compare the typical Turk army of:

Archers/DAs, Spearmen, HAs, AHC

to:

TFS, SI, TH (+1 valour), AHC (+1 [2] valour)

To compensate for their melee weakness, I feel that drone is right on - give them more money. Not only for starters, but lower support costs for their unique Early era units also. It might feel like cheating, but if that's what it takes to even out the playing field... it's really not.

Lastly! You absolutely have to tie up the Byz in order to help the Turks. Egg armies are less of a threat to them. Maybe the Cumans are your go to faction for this? I find that their roster is quite the match for Byzantium.

[HopAlongBunny]

Just so you don't have to reinvent the wheel: read https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=31294; read katatanks post far down the first page.

He describes, quite clearly, an opening move that almost guarantees a capture of the Eggy sultan; more money=good!