Any tips for getting through a campaign faster?

[Gilrandir]

Hi Gilandir

A misunderstanding: "I always leave one province unconquered" only made sense to me if you were in a position to conquer it. Which usually means being adjacent to it.



As part of my AI dynasty management policy I have occasionally, and after careful consideration of the cost-benefit equation, invaded a last/sole AI-dynasty-owned province with the deliberate intention of culling the AI's forces. There must be a keep/fort in the province. The idea is not to kill the king or any useful heirs just drive them into the fortification along with, say, a couple of hundred of their men. I'll then leave the province next turn. But this is a bit tricky to pull off completely successfully, obviously.



Loyalist rebellions can occur whenever a province changes hands provided the happiness level drops too low. In other words, you don't have to leave or relinquish one. Being kicked out will do. Or even besieged, I guess.



As far as I know, expert level does not enhance the strategic AI, or change its behaviour on the strategy map, or allow/enable or prohibit things which do happen on hard level.

Expert level merely affords the BAI a bit more morale and valour, as I understand it. Personally, I find this 'tedious' as AI units tend to fight virtually to the last man which just pointlessly drags out the length of the battles, it seems to me.

Best regards
Victor

Sapere aude
Horace

Hi Victor!
I don't know how to split your post into several quotes, so I will answer in a solid block. You are almost right in expecting a left-intact rebel provice to be adjacent to your own lands. Almost, because you forget the islands. So when I deal with Italians, Sicilians, the English, the Byz, and occasionally other factions who have islands in their possession (once I had Russians on Malta!!) I use the tactics I descibed.
I'm also in a habit of handicapping the army of a faction in the last/sole province, but more often I don't invade but wait for the attack to be able to use all the advantages of a defensive battle. Mostly I don't have any problems with it afterwards as their single province can't support any troop producing.
Misunderstanding about "relinquishing". I may have chosen a wrong word, by which I meant "to stop possessing the province irrespective of the way or causes." Thus kicking out=being besieged=relinquishing in that post.
Speaking battlewise, you may find hard difficulty more appealing, but I think it is a matter of taste. On expert I often win battles when the enemy (having plenty of reinforcements) withdraws after the first stack was repulsed because it sees no perspective of victory. On hard I can hardly remember the AI behave like that. Plus on expert the AI is more cunning on the battlefield and does not forgive any mistakes of yours. And it has more attack bonuses (or so the beginner's guide to MTW teaches us).
But speaking strategically, on expert the AI is more agressive, it may attack you with several factions at a time, consistently turn down your marriage and alliance offers and generally give you more pain in the ... (select the organ you prefer). In a word, it does not let you relax and bask in the rays of your glory.

[cpgray]

Loyalist rebellions can occur whenever a province changes hands provided the happiness level drops too low. In other words, you don't have to leave or relinquish one. Being kicked out will do. Or even besieged, I guess.

Just recently I experienced a loyalist rebellion in my favor while besieged in a castle. The Aragonese kept invading Aquitaine and I kept repelling them but my forces got whittled down. They finally invaded when I didn't feel I had enough to repel them right away so I withdrew to the castle to gather outside troops. But before I could do that the loyalist rebellion happened and I got fresh troops with some units I couldn't yet train and kicked them back to Aragon.

A related question: Under what circumstances does the Papal faction reemerge? If you keep loyalty high will it never happen or does it happen every so often no matter what or is there some other factor (such a zealousness)? I got the impression from the Guide that it just happens randomly no matter what you do.

Because of that, when I got tired of being excommunicated, I eliminated the Papal faction, destroyed all the buildings, built a fort, and trained 100 peasants and left them in charge. I figured that would limit the strength of any reemergence. When the Sicilian's invaded, I let them take over the headache.

[Trapped in Samsara]

Under what circumstances does the Papal faction reemerge?

I believe the Papacy is a special case: the Pope cannot be 'permanently' suppressed by the usual methods, and so is always likely to make a comeback unless the game ends shortly after he's been taken out.

I have been on the receiving end of a gi-normous Papal reappearance (quantity and quality) which took me by complete surprise because I though I had Rome/The Papal States absolutely nailed down North Korea-fashion.

V

[drone]

The Papacy will always come back, although I'm not sure about the time frame, but the usual rules of happiness percentages don't apply. Papal reemergences can be pretty harsh as well, so I usually leave them for the last faction standing in my path. The time-honored way of dealing with the Pope is to take the Papal States, strip it of just about everything, and then abandon it to be retaken. Then take the rest of their territories leaving the Pope with one province, no cash, and an army upkeep large enough to keep him broke and unable to build/recruit anything for the rest of the game.

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi

...on expert the AI is more cunning on the battlefield and does not forgive any mistakes of yours...
But speaking strategically, on expert the AI is more agressive, it may attack you with several factions at a time, consistently turn down your marriage and alliance offers and generally give you more pain...

I have read several debates down the years about the differences between the hard and expert levels. My recollection is that all of them concluded that the only difference between hard and expert is that in the latter case the AI-player received some additional morale and valour uplift for its units on the battlefield, and you get some more florins at the start of the campaign.

So the expert level AI player (perhaps that should be engine), both on the battlefield and on the campaign map, is no more cunning, or aggressive (except for what the additional morale would confer), or tactically or strategically sophisticated than the hard level AI player.

What do people think?

Best regards
Victor

Sapere aude
Horace

[Trapped in Samsara]

Sorry, should have done my research first.

From Thread: A Beginners Guide to Medieval: Total War - Page 1
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...eval-Total-War

"On difficulty
There are four difficulties, easy, normal, hard and expert. Your difficulty will decide how much money you start off with, any bonuses given to you or the AI and what tactics the AI will use on the two maps. Starting funds are as follows:
Easy = 10000 florins
Normal= 8000 florins
Hard = 6000 florins
Expert = 4000 florins
On easy the player will get an extra +4 to morale in battle, making it harder for the AI to rout your troops. On expert the AI get this bonus. Normal and hard don't give anyone a bonus. The AI will use different tactics on the battlefield depending on your difficulty. Here is a list provided by GilJaySmith, one of the developers of Total War:
- On expert the AI gets a morale bonus - on easy the player gets one
- On hard and above, AI skirmishers will try to avoid being pincered
- On easy the AI will not consider going into loose formation to avoid being shot at
- On easy the AI will not consider outflanking, double-envelopment, or stop-and-shoot tactics
- On easy the AI won't move troops out of the way of castle walls that may be about to collapse
- On easy the AI will try to hide rather than flee if the battle is going badly
- On easy the AI will not try ambushes
- On easy the AI will not try the 'appear weak' battle plan
- The AI is more likely to deploy in woods on harder difficulties, and less likely to camp near the red zone on easier difficulties
- The AI is more likely to consider scouting the map to find the rest of your army if it can't see it all on higher difficulties
- On easy the AI will not skirmish
- On higher than easy, the AI will specifically consider sh00ting at your artillery
- On easy the AI will generally attack rather than defend, and will not consider withdrawing for a much longer time
- On higher than easy, the AI will check to see if it's marching into enfilade fire when attacking your main body
- On easy the AI may come out of a wall breach to chase you if you attack and are repulsed

In addition to these changes LongJohn (another developer) says the following: The combat strength of the a.i. units is affected by the difficulty level.
On easy its combat effectiveness is reduced by 30-40% (can't remember the exact figure).
On hard it's increased by 10-15%, and on expert its 30%. 30% being around 75% of the increase you'd get from 1 valour upgrade."

The above would suggest you are mistaken Gilandir.

V

[Gilrandir]

"Your difficulty will decide how much money you start off with, any bonuses given to you or the AI and what tactics the AI will use on the two maps.
The AI will use different tactics on the battlefield depending on your difficulty.
- On expert the AI gets a morale bonus
The combat strength of the a.i. units is affected by the difficulty level.
On hard it's increased by 10-15%, and on expert its 30%. 30% being around 75% of the increase you'd get from 1 valour upgrade."

The above would suggest you are mistaken Gilandir.

V

I don't know what (battlemap or campaignmap) observations of mine you find ar fault, Victor.
But the quotations you offer do not seem to bear you out. I made bold the points in your quoting which are in agreement with what I said: more agressive behavior of the AI (both in battles and campaigns) and its units more difficult to overcome on the battlefield.
I also rely on my personal experience i.e. I don't lose a single battle on high at my present level of skills (and I can't boast of the same on expert). Campaigning on high gets boring after approximately a hundred years, campaigning on expert keeps me thrilled until about 1350 at the earliest.
But you are right in one thing: lets ask the MTW community to experss their judgements.

[Trapped in Samsara]

I don't know what (battlemap or campaignmap) observations of mine you find ar fault, Victor.

Hi

Remember, Gilandir, we're debating whether there is a difference between the AI's tactical and strategic abilities when set to hard as opposed to expert. I would restate this to mean, 'is there an increase in the AI's sophistication'. And I'd see "sophistication" and "cunning" as interchangeable in this context.

You wrote, "...on expert the AI is more cunning on the battlefield...". This is not supported by the extract from the guide document.

I am interested to hear if other players believe that, "...strategically, on expert the AI is more agressive, it may attack you with several factions at a time, consistently turn down your marriage and alliance offers and generally give you more pain in the ..."

(I've had all these things happen to me when playing on hard. And I didn't notice any difference between the hard and expert CAI in those half a dozen campaigns that I have played on hard down the years.)

V

[Gilrandir]

Hi

You wrote, "...on expert the AI is more cunning on the battlefield...". This is not supported by the extract from the guide document.

The document you refer to speaks of the use of different tactics on the battlefield depending on the difficulty, the combat strength of the a.i. units affected by the difficulty level and of a morale bonus the AI gets on expert. I believe taken together these features can be equalled to a more sophisticated way the AI behaves being harder to overcome.
But if we forget the data provided by the Guide (for a minute): I had drawn the same conclusions experientially (by playing on different difficulties) long before I came across this information in the Guide.
As for your invitation for others to express their opinion, it seems that people at the Org have already discussed it some time ago and do not wish to repeat themselves. We are too late to have opened discussion on that topic, Victor.