60 years in France.

[PershsNhpios]

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[gollum]

Nice one Mr Glenn, it seems you almost got them to me... Push a bit further and they are done for. Although the XL/Tyberious is not my cup of tea gameplay wise, the sprite graphics are absolutely top notch and the best i've seen in any MTW mod so far. Good work on those graphics Tyberious!

[Vantek]

Although the XL/Tyberious is not my cup of tea gameplay wise

If I may ask, why not and what do you prefer?

[gollum]

Its a rather long answer to this Vantek; XL is a popular mod and lots of good effort has gone into it. However i have my own ideas as to what the game should have been and so i play a home modded version. One of the things that put me off XL is adding more units, as i find already the roster of vanilla MTW overbloated relative to what the engine can do.

[Vantek]

I see. X)

[PershsNhpios]

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[caravel]

Your chances of making the French accept a ceasefire are very slim, even if they do it is unlikely to last. The best option now is as gollum observes; press on to victory.

[Vantek]

Why would you want a ceasefire with the French? They look almost crushed, and without the danger of being excommunicated, it is a brilliant opportunity to grab land!

From the map it looks like you are leaving Lorraine and attacking Franconia? That seems peculiar to me. I would try to secure Provence-Burgundy-Lorraine-Friesland line ASAP, and not go any further for the time being. This leaves you with only 4 provinces to defend on this front. Going any futher would inevitably increase that number.

After you have secured this line, you can proceed to grab French provinces beyond it and leave them with only a tiny garrison - retreat to castle if a new faction declares war and attacks, and retake the province (as well as possibly other provinces of the same faction) next turn.

How to defeat small nations like Ireland with ten units of valour 5 royal knights.

I would go with Longbowmen + Billmen. Longbowmen can shoot over infantry, they do well against cavalry, and valour doesn't protect from arrows. Billmen can mop up the remaining forces.

How to destroy those chains of one-ship fleets which are easily beaten, but which constantly provide a blockade.

Hmm? You need to just outproduce ships and advance your fleet sea by sea, leaving 2+ in every region. Unstack the ships and have 2-3 separate ships attack a link of the chain at the same time. Stacking is only necessary when attacking big stacks. XL is much harder to dominate navally than vanilla, you need to produce a TON of ships.

Whether to favour flexibility over deadlock against greater military powers, risking destruction of provinces for the sake of seeking out battle, or maintaining impenetrable defences at the risk of losing all mobility.

Elaborate. I do not see a dilemma - all armies move at the same speed, and a strong army is a strong army, possible to use both to defend and to attack.

[PershsNhpios]

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[Vantek]

Fair enough ^^

Won't razing Franconia and Bohemia and then leaving cause massive loyalist revolts though?

I assumed you will be taking Aragon, and in that case you can take Provance without increasing your border. Or are you perhaps afraid of naval attacks? Or do you want to use the river?

[caravel]

This is a much better use for Army Champagne than if I allowed 600 of its men to be massacred in an auto-resolved assault upon the troops in the Lorraine citadel. They can be bribed later when I have some form of currency.

Chevauchée tactics are very worthwhile in this situation. But if you are to take the French provinces, you will face the same problems again. Once your economy is safe again you may want to start building catapults.

-Edit:

Won't razing Franconia and Bohemia and then leaving cause massive loyalist revolts though?

That's one of the risks. On the plus side it may give the French a lot of low quality (and hopefully low loyalty) troops that he has to support. On the other hand he might get a rebellion of FMAA and FK - but that's rare. There is also the possibility that such actions might trigger a civil war.

Personally I don't manually raze provinces as it's something the AI cannot do - which makes it a bit of an exploit IMHO.

[PershsNhpios]

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[gollum]

Originally posted by Glenn
I will be burning every French bakery and restaurant in Europe until they submit.

Hit hard particularly the patisseries - this may even cause a civil war.

[caravel]

Edit: The Frenchman razes my gains everytime he retakes Aquitaine and causes 4 more buildings to be lost. He has enough florins anyway! I will exploit him for the sake of victory - I simply musn't lose!

That's auto razing. When a province is taken, some buildings are destroyed or downgraded automatically. Manual razing is where you go in and use the destroy button to demolish buildings for florins. The AI cannot do this, nor can it disband units, hire mercenaries or dismount cavalry among other things.

-- Can such a large loyalist uprising really occur if no troops are in the province?

Well I thought loyalist revolts, i.e. the previous owner of the province rebelling against you, usually involves about 4 or 5 units? Though now you come to mention it, the infamous single ballista revolts spring to mind (there are a few funny stories around this forum regarding that). I've certainly seen loyalist revolts where several units are involved, even where the province is empty. If you mean peasant revolts or bandits, those are usually always 1 or 2 units in an abandoned/empty province.

[Roark]

Who's that in Saxony, Glenn?

The Bohemians? Are you allied with them?

[PershsNhpios]

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[PershsNhpios]

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[Vantek]

Luck? I would be absolutely FURIOUS to see 8000 men to appear next to my border :P Not to mention you can't sack/conquer Provence now.

Judging by the map, Almohads seem to be pretty strong (esp. navally). Do you expect to have difficulty with them?

[gollum]

XL Serbia does the usual tour-de-force

Well done Glenn, i would crush the Italians too and get the western-central German provinces also, but that's just me. Going after the Iberians is just as good.

Paint it all black err.. i mean red.

[PershsNhpios]

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[Vantek]

I thought your plan to conquer Iberia was best! Rich, developed (?), isolated, what more could you ask for! You would need to defend an enormous border if you went east...

At this point, pushing for naval superiority while conquering Iberia seems like the most effective strategy. Then I would roll over Africa to Egypt and in case of success call it quits as victory seems inevitable, but that's just me.

[PershsNhpios]

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[PershsNhpios]

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[Vantek]

Goodness me!

The Almohad navy made a comeback after being destroyed and from nowhere (?!) blockaded the Channel and the North Sea (A most unfortunate state of affairs).
This meant that all of France was reduced to a maximum of 77% loyalty on very low taxes.

Could you explain this? I totally do not understand what is going on here! I guess it must mean that in my own English campaign I have been playing with fire all along! Just one war with a strong naval kingdom, and my whole empire rebels from reasons I didn't even know existed!

BTW, from the map it honestly looks like you've won :)

[PershsNhpios]

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[Ironside]

Goodness me!


Could you explain this? I totally do not understand what is going on here! I guess it must mean that in my own English campaign I have been playing with fire all along! Just one war with a strong naval kingdom, and my whole empire rebels from reasons I didn't even know existed!

BTW, from the map it honestly looks like you've won :)

The XL mod removes the landline between Britain and Flanders AFAIK. Not that bad in vanilla, but you would still suffer a notable loyalty drop (at least +2 in loyalty lane= notable drop). Correct king placement is vital during wars with major naval nations.

You're familliar with the "distance to king" loyalty factor? It's vital for handling larger empires.

[caravel]

If the king get's cut off on an island without a port, or where the port is blockaded, your entire kingdom can revolt. This is because in such cases the "distance to faction leader" parameter goes to maximum, causing loyalty to plummet in the cut off provinces. This is why you should never send your king abroad to lead i.e. an invasion of Ireland. If you invade Ireland with another general/heir, they will suffer loyalty problems there, due to being cut off, though this is much more preferable to having it the other way around.

To be honest, the removal of the wessex/flanders landbridge (or any other landbridges for that matter) is bad design. I have added more landbridges to the game rather than taking the existing ones out. In Glenn's campaign for example where your king is likely to be based in either Ile de France or Wessex, the situation is damaging either way.

[Vantek]

Crikey!

I knew about the distance to king factor, but I assumed it worked simply based on how many provinces/sea regions are between the king and the province in question, without taking in account wether the inbetween provinces belong to you or wether you even have ships in the sea regions at all, nevermind wether there's a blockade or not!

I had absolutely no idea that sea blockades have any effect at all, let alone cause the distance to be maximum! On the same line, I take it that if a landlocked province is cut off from the empire by enemy territory, it has the same effect? I didn't even know about that! I must have been unbelievably lucky with my career so far, because I have never lost a game due to revolts or civil war And I often ignore the Pope altogether, so excommunication is an everyday thing for me...

You have been sleeping on a powder keg!

Tell me about it! Not only that, I have been smoking and playing with fire while sitting on the powder keg!

[gollum]

Excommunication raises the rebelliousness of the catholic flock, this may be particularly a problem if you hold regions like Portugal that have high rebeliousness.

Beware of the Holy Father...

[caravel]

Crikey!On the same line, I take it that if a landlocked province is cut off from the empire by enemy territory, it has the same effect?

Exactly the same.

The king can get cut off in ways that you wouldn't expect. For example, if you're playing as e.g. the Turks and you capture Malta. Let's say that it turns out that Malta is your most teched up province even after razing a Citadel down to a castle and demolishing the port (which always seems to happen about 99% of the time). The next thing your Sultan passes on to the next life and Prince Orhan takes over as Sultan. He is immediately teleported to the most technologically advanced province (assumed by the game engine to be the "capital", Malta. This means that Sultan Orhan is now in Malta without a port. The result is that all of the provinces back home get hit by the maximum distance to faction leader penalty, and loyalty drops dramatically...

This is why I always build/train in every province:

1) At least one, usually two high valour spies.

2) Watch Towers (and border fort upgrade if needed*)

3) Town Watch (first level only, do not build the later levels unless you want to train any units they provide)

4) Church/Mosque

5) Brothel (first level only, do not build the later levels unless you want to train high valour spies there)


In addition to the above, for the problem provinces (e.g. Norway, Portugal, Lithuania etc):

1) Monastery

2) Reliquary

3) College of Surgeons (unique)


Grand Mosque/Cathedral is also a very good provincial loyalty booster, but you should really build this in your troop producing centre (for the +3 morale bonus) and not some rebellious backwater province.

-Edit: The Ribat should probably have had some kind of provincial loyalty bonus attached to it. Unfortunately this is not the case, so the muslim factions are sold short when it comes to these types of buildings.


*I tend not to upgrade border forts as I prefer my spies to do the counterspying, as they gain valour from it. It's best to wait until you have about 50% of the map and then upgrade all of the watch towers to border forts in one go. By then your spies should be good enough and the addition of the border forts will raise your security to the highest level.