Archived: Redux adventures (2nd ED)

[Axalon]

...

Recently – or somewhat recently none the less – Axalon claimed that playing the polish faction on Expert in his Redux mod probably is the most difficult situation you can put yourself into. And I went into that trap like a fool. The experience I gained from the following adventure could be shared in the relevant subforum, but I feel the Main Hall might learn from my story. Or at least smile at my vanity.

I downloaded the mod and gave the polish a swing. I had heard that farm and trade income had been nerfed. And by clicking through the impressive number of units available to me I found that recruiting was very expensive, but upkeep cheap.

So – my first go was trying “the rebel economy” – I didn’t believe Axalon could change the ransom pocketed from taking rebel lands. And Poland was surrounded by rebels and rebellious provinces. And at first I came out fine. But the second wave of rebels was large and the third a pure horde. Rapidly the income from the rebels was sucked into training new units.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Just as I was slowly shifting my economy from confiscation to taxation the first DOW hit me. The Lithuanians, an unplayable faction with strong horsepower, thought it could take on the might of the Poles. This led me into the first battles against a proper enemy. Quickly I realised there were a lot of lessons to learn in the mod. The AI is more aggressive, and the troops move quicker. Secondly the Poles do not have a spear/halberd unit of any significant worth. I was caught in many very even battles before I had slowly worn down the Lithuanians and took their capital province.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Then I though my eastern border secure, as the Rus was still struggling to gain power on the steppes. I then tried to fight the Hungarians over the southern border as they looked quite weak. They proved tough as well, but I managed to get Monrovia and Kiev, making my Kingdom a bottleneck between east and west. Yet peace can be hard to keep – the Lithuanians kept trying getting back their province.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Some turns later I managed to land a peace deal with the Hungarians. Meanwhile the Danes had appeared on my northern border as they invaded Pomerania. These guys can really take a beating as they are very tough heavy infantry with nice medium cavalry too. Through some practise and a lot of horse archers I managed to beat them back to the cold north. Feeling somewhat secure on all other fronts I then invaded the HRE which seemed to struggle with the Italians/Venetians.

But as troops are expensive and my economy small, reinforcements are coming in as a trickle at best. The HRE, however, managed to get troops into Bohemia in the thousands. They even, to my big surprise, attacked Poland with a half stack as their friends in Bohemia were under siege. This led to a bridge battle where I was as close to loosing as you can get. My general charged in and managed to suck up all opposition and yet survive to see another day. Poland was saved by a hair thin margin.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Then I was pushed back from Bohemia and rebuild, invaded, sieged and was pushed back. But the infantry heavy HRE finally crumbled under a lot of crossbow fire. Just as my main army was besieging Prague castle for the third time the Hungarians decided to take revenge for their losses in our first war. As Poland, your most important province can be attacked well into the game, and this campaign was no different. The following battle was very close, very close indeed.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Bridge battles need to be fought differently from vanilla MTW. Archers with long range can wreck havoc on short range archers usually vulnerable to missile fire. I had one crossbow unit cut down to almost half strength before I knew what was going on. Secondly I had no proper stopping unit. All my efforts to hold the Hungarians on the bridge proved in vain. But the scramble to at least deny them anything but a bridgehead started to push them back. The breaking point came when the King was taken prisoner after a very hard fight.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

At this point – roughly 80 turns into the campaign things started to go very wrong for me. I had only won 3/5 of my battles and precious florins had been spend rebuilding old units instead of training new ones. All the empires around me – The Byz, the Rus and the Italians – looked rather freighting, but I though I’d settle in for a lot of turns building and turtling like there’s no going back. I was quite pleased that after taking northern Germany I could boast a handsome profit of 2500 florins each turn.

But it was too late. The Rus had secured the east long ago, and had a powerful war machine going. In the east more or less all my troops were based in Lithuania, with a somewhat smaller force south of it in Kiev. I also had no generals of worth, nor troops of merit.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The Rus DOW’ed me, and Lithuania fell, opening up the east completely. I threw back my forces from Germany to repel the eastern invasion. The German provinces rebelled and soon the HRE was back in strength. The Byz now fielded two and a half stacks in Hungaria and could take Poland whenever the felt the need to.

Then I quit the campaign, fearing I would outright loose the game if I continued.

The morale of this short story: When you’re used to do things in one way, and you enter new territory, don’t continue to do what you used to do. I’ve now just abandoned my third attempt at making the Polish a great empire, and I’m not sure I can bear another attempt. But the mod has my recommendation – very nice challenge…



/KotR