War Stories from Your Campaigns

[Gregoshi]

Got a great story from your M2TW campaign you just have to share? Or you just want to update everyone on the progress of your campaign? Pull up your keyboard and post them here. We are getting some nice stories but they are scattered over several threads, so let's collect them in this thread.

[Gregoshi]

I've become Mr. Popularity in my HRE campaign as I'm at war with half of Europe. My list of "friends" are: Sicily, France, Poland, Venice, the Moors, the Papal States and I've just eliminated Milan. Denmark and Hungary are allies but they won't lift a finger to help. Guess I've got to work on my diplomacy skills. It probably doesn't help that I've been ex-communicated twice. The Sicilians are my next target. They have been hounding me since the beginning to the point of annoyance. I'll have to make them an offer they can't refuse. I've been at war with Poland just as long but they've not been as tenacious as the Sicilians.

I'm really enjoying the game - more than I thought I would. Funny how you can get attached to some members of your family and it is rather sad when they die (all of old age so far).

[easytarget]

I just finished my French campaign and since I'd just spent like 200 hours non-stop playing it I'm taking a moment to consume some ginger to clean the palette with a Shogun 2 campaign as Oda (always love those middle of Japan starts that are life or death right from the get go).

This shouldn't take too long though and I'll pick up a new MTW2 shortly and stop by with stories, being part Scottish I feel duty bound to play them next as I'm a bit remiss in not starting with them.

Oh, as for stories, from my last campaign my two favorite moments: first one, getting the Pope not once but twice to declare a crusade on someone effectively located in Europe he had just excommunicated. I wait for these moments, so I hit the Moors and the HRE with a well timed crusade that each in their turn spelled the beginning of the end for them. And my other favorite moment, even though it was in reality quite sad, my faction leader being killed by a Polish spy. Bravo to those guys, they came at me once I finished off the HRE with a wave of espionage and while mopping up Spain/Portugal/Moors on my other front and taking my eye off Poland they got one in the castle my faction leader was in and killed him. Shame too, after wreaking much havoc on the HRE he was a full blown mad man of dread, and ironically his one espionage program was at least half of the reason he was so feared, live by the sword, die by the sword.

[Gregoshi]

...my faction leader being killed by a Polish spy. Bravo to those guys, they came at me once I finished off the HRE with a wave of espionage and while mopping up Spain/Portugal/Moors on my other front and taking my eye off Poland they got one in the castle my faction leader was in and killed him. Shame too, after wreaking much havoc on the HRE he was a full blown mad man of dread, and ironically his one espionage program was at least half of the reason he was so feared, live by the sword, die by the sword.

I'm guessing that was a long shot of an assassination. Note to self: get a secret service set up for my king.

You do give me an idea though. My kings are usually out leading an army. Don't know if I've ever had a stay-at-home king. Will have to try that with my next king with which it makes sense to do so based on his traits.

[easytarget]

Yep, I was pretty surprised by it, they tried like 3 or 4 times before succeeding. I had never had one actually succeed so I didn't take it that seriously, other than killing off their agents when they were exposed by my spies.

As for my faction leader being at the front, I had gotten him so buffed up I couldn't resist. I've often left them in castles far from the front lines, just so happens this one was at the front and we encountered a nation determined to field a lot of agents, not many I've encountered do that, I mean i get a fair amount of merchant spam, but not that much spy/assassin stuff.

It amused me.

[Gregoshi]

After a bit of traveling, I'm back at my HRE campaign. I finally knocked off Poland last night. The Sicilians are still a nuisance but I'm slowing working at them since I'm fighting in about five different directions. I took Rome but didn't knock out the Papal States since they had expanded into a province in Spain. I was rather disappointed in that. And the Moors have been Moor or less wishy-washy. They attack me and put my town/castle in Sardinia under siege and the beg for a ceasefire a couple of turns later. This has happened 3-4 times now. I'm not really complaining since my garrison there is nearly non-existent and would not stop an invasion of Avon ladies.

[easytarget]

Always tough to fight in multiple fronts, but then with the Pope often proving a nuisance telling you to lay off someone it does come in handy to flip flop back and forth between fronts so you can keep expanding and still abide by his edicts.

I wrapped up my Shogun 2 Oda campaign, it was a blast, with the ability to recruit inexpensive ash the only hard part about playing them is their start location. I think for the foreseeable future I'll switch back and forth between MTW2 and Shogun 2, next Shogun 2 I believe I my play ROTS.

So, started up the Scots campaign, they start out fairly weak militarily, and it doesn't help that I'm a bit of a hack in handling RTS battles, but be that as it may I still managed to take the island over from the rebels and England by 40 turns, not saying that was quick or anything, just saying at least now I've got a starting base of operations, good income, a pretty complete selection of units to recruit now, so next will be getting a couple of full armies together and crossing the channel to go look if I've still got some rebel controlled provinces I can knock off, I won't be surprised to find that I don't, in which case I'll just finish off England. Once again playing all the battles has been a blast, taking London was much fun, brought 3 catapults and put two with the main army and one on another side as a distraction with one cav unit just so the AI would have something to think about, worked as planned.

Well, that's all for now I guess, talk to you soon.

[Gregoshi]

I'm finally getting back to my HRE campaign after being away for a good chunk of June.

I had a pretty funny event happen last night. I had a rather tough heretic show up in my heartland. So I sent a small army of four priests and an assassin after him. Three new heretics and one dead assassin later I have a bigger problem. My chances of success where slim (20-25%) for each, but I expected a simple failure rather than three priests converted to heretics.

I'm still learning how to utilize all that I have at my disposal. I had viewed castles and towns as similar and wondering why castles existed. That is until I captured some enemy castles and saw the kinds of units they were producing. The light bulb finally went on last night.

[the prince of wales]

in medieval total war 2 I'm playing a campaign as England the three most annoying factions Milan France and the HRE are all attacking me my only ally Denmark (only due to a marriage with the daughter of one of henry 2 basterd born I liked his name it had a welsh sound to it) and I conquered the French port cites on mainland Europe let Denmark have some and as i love Poland in the game i gave them the best two i also captured Paris and the cut off some French general from aid so I am sending cannon fodder raids against him (not risking them capturing my forts) these raids is made up of peasant archers and them Scottish mercs it going well so far
yes the house of Normandy is nearly dead the king is the welsh named man I like plus he married a legitimate daughter of Robert so they are not related good on the 30 year old marry that 16 year old

[easytarget]

I'm finally getting back to my HRE campaign after being away for a good chunk of June.

I had a pretty funny event happen last night. I had a rather tough heretic show up in my heartland. So I sent a small army of four priests and an assassin after him. Three new heretics and one dead assassin later I have a bigger problem. My chances of success where slim (20-25%) for each, but I expected a simple failure rather than three priests converted to heretics.

I'm still learning how to utilize all that I have at my disposal. I had viewed castles and towns as similar and wondering why castles existed. That is until I captured some enemy castles and saw the kinds of units they were producing. The light bulb finally went on last night.

Yep, I've amusingly had that happen as well, you end up creating more heretics while trying to get rid of one. Which is why it's always good apparently to send an assassin along as well as you did.

As for castles and cities, definitely not the same for recruiting purposes. I try to keep about a 2 to 1 ratio of cities to castles so the economy continues to hum along (money after all makes the war machine world go round) while still keeping a castle near the front lines to keep supplying the engaged armies with fresh troops and replenish depleted ones.

[the prince of wales]

BUGGER them French and Milan pricks killed Garrett the Mad he was the victor in over 20 battles well at least his half brother Hugh his 2nd in command defeated them it was like the game version of Agincourt we out number them CROSSBOWMEN AND LONGBOWMEN KICK THEIR BUTTS FOR ST DAVID

[easytarget]

At least he did not die in vein!

[Gregoshi]

It is funny how you get attached to certain kings and generals. It hurts just a bit when they finally die. I had that happen last night. Leopold, my first king's younger son, was a terror, but an outstanding general too. He mopped up against the rebels and Poles. After having no further opponents, I shifted him to the Balkans to take on the Venetians. Alas, he died of old age just as he arrived at the front. This is one of my gripes about the TW campaign maps - it shouldn't take 2-3 years (or more!) to march across Europe. Movement rates within your kingdom should be greatly increased.

[Myth]

This is also my main gripe with vanilla M2TW. The abysmally low movement points. It takes 15 years to reach Jerusalem from London. I also don't like the two handed bug and the pike wall bug.

That's why I recommend you guys download and play Stainless Steel. You won't be able to go back to vanilla afterwards.

[Gregoshi]

I plan on giving Stainless Steel a try after I finish this campaign.

[Gregoshi]

Victory for the Reich! Well, that was fun. My game-long Hungarian ally, after doing pretty much nothing all game aside from a phony war with the Russians, finally jumped in and assisted in two naval battles, thereby declaring war on two of my enemies. They did this on the turn in which I won the game.

Overall, I enjoyed M2TW. Despite a few annoyances, I liked the pacing of the battles and the campaign was nice too. Now on to try the Stainless Steel mod.

[the prince of wales]

The dog of Spain and now dead their last city fell to my armies that what they get for spying on me

[Gregoshi]

...my faction leader being killed by a Polish spy.

My Emperor was offed by an English assassin just two turns into our war. I was in shock because I had a very good spy traveling with him. He was rather young too (mid-30s).

[Macksimus]

I was playing as England, mopping up the Scots and securing my holdings in France. That next turn I had three brothers come of age and a crusade was called on Jerusalem. Needless to say I had the three brothers make a pact and join the crusade. They raise a very nice army and beat out the Polish and Hungarian crusading armies to the Holy Land. After the success of the crusade I have them take Acre, Antioch and Damascus. The Holy Land flourishes under their reigns: Christopher the Fat, Michel the Grand Crusader, and Henry II the Watcher. Things went really well for the brothers, fame and fortune followed them (one had the shroud, another had a piece of the true cross). Until those darn Mongols decided it was high time they appeared. usually they go north in my experience, but this game they unfortunately went south. Michel retreated to Jerusalem, and Damascus was the first to fall. Henry II then retreated back to my Armenian castle and Christopher the Fat took his ship back home. By the end of their lives Christopher lived out his life in Caen and died peacefully, Michel died in battle with the French and Henry II held his Armenian castle until the Timurids took it from his lifeless corpse. All in all a fantastic play of the game that time, I am hoping that I can get another one of those style games soon. I hope you all enjoy my game-story.

[the prince of wales]

is kingdoms any good

[easytarget]

I've not given any of them a go yet, so can't say personally. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to like Teutonic and Brittania and probably Crusades. Just because I like what each one covers. Not as sure about Americas.

I've not been able to stop playing MTW2 vanilla and Stainless 6.4 mod of the main game long enough to start up a Kingdoms campaign. I'll get around to.

And I'm quite happy at the prospect of having so much game play left in this one, leaves me free to ignore the Rome 2 debalce and allow the dust to settle to see how much of it they fix (given the announcement of Atilla I'll be interested to see how much further CA gets in fixing it).

[the prince of wales]

played kingdoms the other day the Britannia campaign and I am in command of wales it is awesome

[easytarget]

In current campaign as England I lost not one but two fleets with full stack armies to the Venetian navy (way more of them out there off the tip of Italy than I anticipated and I didn't take sufficient naval support to handle them.

And one of the two was a Crusade fleet headed to Jerusalem, which of course I called because this is in the latter part of the campaign and I have to take it to win and needed the help of the other European powers to deal with the Timurid and Mongol powerhouses who own the region in strength.

I so enjoy when the AI does things that at least appear so intelligent as intercepting my fleets specifically when they contain high value targets like entire armies.

[Gregoshi]

Ouch! But cool at the same time.

[easytarget]

Yeah, I got to say, it made me happy. And btw, these weren't throw away armies I was sending, these were chevon'd up bad boys capable of taking over a settlement no matter what was defending it. Early on I sent crusade armies that are token just to appease the Pope, but this is late game and I was going in earnest to take Jerusalem because it's a victory condition.

Fortunately the Venetians took it, which meant I could take it from them instead of being forced to take it from the Mongols or the Timurids, both of which could prove very problematic in that part of the world, I doubt I could hold them off. Remains to be seen if they leave me alone long enough for me to get the rest of the province count I need to secure the win.

[easytarget]

Started a French campaign, grabbed the rebel settlements around me, started building up, had a bit of a fight on my hands with one of the coastal settlement next to the English at Caen, I forget the name. But that's not the point of this story anyway.

I was laying siege and being patient about it so they had to sally forth to meet me. Everything going according to plan, had a couple knight units in the town square just waiting out the timer not paying any attention to my general and his bodyguard idling outside of the walls, one lone unit of I forget what sneaked back out and darn if they didn't kill my general. Ok, so amusing enough the AI thought to do this, good for him.

But it gets better, way better.

I take the settlement and the turn resolves itself out. Next turn the Holy Roman Empire just up and attacks my castle that is the closest to them. This completely caught me off guard because I started the campaign in the first year by sending a princess off to marry one of their generals. So I figured we're in a tight alliance and I can ignore that front and focus my attention no Portugal and Spain, basically head south.

So, change of plans, got to move an army back in the direct of the HRE, this is most certainly not according to plan, and while I'm doing that they attack the town next to the castle they are already laying siege to. I mean this is just all out of the blue right, I mean you just don't get allies in MTW2 that just up and w/o warning or a change in diplomatic status up and attack you, not in one place but two in back to back turns.

So, yep, that General I went and got dead, it was their general.

[phonicsmonkey]

hey guys it's good to see you enjoying M2TW, takes me back a while! In fact you inspired me to go back and dig up a thread I made about my favourite SP M2TW, so I hope you enjoy reading it:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...of-the-Shadows

[Adidas]

7 faction coalition against me as venice. at one point, it was hungary, hre, france, spain, england, egypt, and papal states to take rome. i just bribed papal states with 100k cagliari, and ajaccio.