allies, neutral and enemys

[someone]

I been playing most easy and normal games and yesterday i thout i should try hard.

im playing the turcs

i started to take out all the egypts first, after they was gone i put up a strong garnison against the almos, and moving rest of my men north against the byz and started a big war with them around 1110 took all of turkey as we know it today and bribed the rebels in kazar. during this time i manage to put some ships into sea where italy and the hungary immediatly started to attack them, in some way i won all sea battles.

as if that wouldnt been enough the almos attacked me in egypt. about the same time france and germany launched crusades against me in constantinople. short there after spain, my last ally also launch a crusade against me.

[someone]

and this was only 1130. i succed to fend of all attacks and massproduce troops. around 1130 i send 2800 men, mostly saracen, muwahid and armenian cav units to pillage all of byz beach provinces. they succed so now i dont need to worry about ships from them in a while.

that take a few years so in bulgaria the german and the france crusade had arrived and the byz controll the province with around 1500 men with a 8 star gen.

i checked the diplomacy screen and saw that france and german already was in a war against each other and that byz was neutral to both of them, so i thout if i attack bulgaria with my pillage army it would be all against all in that fight and that byz get 2 more enemys wich would help me in my war.

[someone]

here comes the weird part. all three armies attacked me.
france and german units walked side by side to attack me and those was in war against each other and the byz wich was neutral with them should have attacked them also, atleast i had to do that once when a neutral force got into one battle i had ages ago.

how come did i have to fight all three armys? why didnt they fight each other also?

i lost the fight cause i only had a 2 star gen, but i reduced the crusades armys into nothing and the byz only had a handful men left.

but my troubles didnt end there. all the beach provinces that i pillage became rebels, no big deal i thout. but then the last of them became byz and all the rebels joined them so now i face 10 000 men strong army with almost only elite units, plus those 5 000 that he had before.

why is there a so big leap in the dificult between normal and hard? Normal is to easy, and hard is to hard. do i realy need to be better then an expert to complete the expert dificulty?

very sorry for posting like this but i couldnt post one long post

[Midnj]

don't worry. play for another couple of months and you'll be here complaining about why hard is a joke and expert is too easy.

the ai kills itself. you don't even have to do anything to win. just watch them kill each other into army and province revolts.

i really wish there was an option or cheat to turn off revolts of all kinds for the AI.

[Gregoshi]

I'm just amazed that there were 3 AI armies on the battlefield.

Who got the province? The Byz since they had men left? I too would like to know how the AI makes its battlefield decisions on who to attack when there is the situation you decribe.

On the bright side, you do have a bit of a challenge ahead of you now. There is little comfort in that though, is there?

[someone]

the byz controlled the area with 1500 men, the german and french had crusade armys there with 1000 men each. thats how i got 3 a.i. at the same time

during my playtime i realy hate it, but after i quit playing, i had very much fun after i think about how it went, cause im still on the plus-side or how i shall say it

Midnj i know what you mean. I had to strugle hard the first 100 years, but now i own all southeast map to morocco, constantinople and kazaar. i just saw spains country fall into the hands of the rebels. exept from me german fight many others also, but as their enemy send crusades against me all the time leaving none or very little men left in their land hre have no problem killing them but as they do that their land also fall into the rebels piece by piece

i guess i whined to early

[Nowake]

I don't understand why all the people that start playing with the turks in early are having such a hard time. You have only one choice ... attack Byzantium. You can crush it before egyptians notice it.

[someone]

in my starting posstition i had only one 4-star gen and the king with 3 stars, the byz had three 7 star gens and couple of real good units and the egypts had one 6 star gen but most peasants so for me there was not much of an option

[Aragorn]

I say someone you should not attack no-one for about 20-40 years and just build up your turkish army and then lash out on the byzantines and the egyptions at the same time trust me then you will have both factions yours

[Darkchampion]

Whenever I play the turks in early I crank out armenian heavy cav and turcoman horse/horse archers as fast as I can and invade nearly every turn

Just use your horse archers and fire until you run out of ammo then withdraw, come back next year and repeat until the enemy is sufficiently weakened for a full on attack

Utilizing this strategy I have gotten from the start to constantinople within 20 years.

[Eastside Character]

for me real fun is only expert level - it is the most challenging - that's why I like it so much but playing as turks is not so hard - you just have to fight one taction after another and avoid conflicts with more than one enemy, just one at the time and that's it

[The_Emperor]

Quote[/b] (pr Fire @ July 28 2003,15:32)]I don't understand why all the people that start playing with the turks in early are having such a hard time. You have only one choice ... attack Byzantium. You can crush it before egyptians notice it.

Really? I'd rather attack the Egyptians... they give you lots of good rich provinces to help finance the war with Byzantium and a few provinces with bonuses to Turk troops.

The Byzantines are number 2 on my hitlist.

[Duraz_asks]

what ive found to work is from easy to normal u are on the attack then once u start doing hard and expert u start getting more defensive and slowly move and mostly consentrate on alliences

[Brutal DLX]

Quote[/b] (someone @ July 27 2003,14:09)]how come did i have to fight all three armys? why didnt they fight each other also?



why is there a so big leap in the dificult between normal and hard? Normal is to easy, and hard is to hard. do i realy need to be better then an expert to complete the expert dificulty?

To answer your questions:

Well, crusader armies never fight each other, they are on a mission and there are very few cases when they will interfere with each other. The fact that the countries that sent them are at war with each other has no relevance on the movement or mission of the crusades, they are sent to fight the Islam, and the Turkish Empire has this religion.
About the Byzantines, this is tricky, I suppose they granted safe passage to the crusades and they are at war with you, in that case all 3 armies have a commom enemy, which is you. The Byzantines keep the province because I suppose they had the largest army and the crusades will move on towards their destination.
The only situation I can think of that would result in a fight between Byzantium and the crusaders would be if the Byzantines attacked the destination province of one crusade.
In that case the crusade would demand withdraw from the Byzantines or simply attack them.

As for your second question, the leap is not big, it is mainly that the playing field is even at normal, in easy you get combat bonusses and on Hard the AI starts getting bonusses in combat (morale, and valour on expert), which increases their staying power. The exact amount of these bonuses can be found in a few posts here at the forum, personally I can never remember them.
Basically, you have to understand the combat system of total war in greater detail, for instance by playing a few multiplayer games with experienced guys, then you will be surprised of how easily you can handle the AI even at harder levels.

[Aragorn]

Quote[/b] (Brutal DLX @ Aug. 14 2003,14:22)]

Quote[/b] (someone @ July 27 2003,14:09)]how come did i have to fight all three armys? why didnt they fight each other also?



why is there a so big leap in the dificult between normal and hard? Normal is to easy, and hard is to hard. do i realy need to be better then an expert to complete the expert dificulty?

To answer your questions:

Well, crusader armies never fight each other, they are on a mission and there are very few cases when they will interfere with each other. The fact that the countries that sent them are at war with each other has no relevance on the movement or mission of the crusades, they are sent to fight the Islam, and the Turkish Empire has this religion.
About the Byzantines, this is tricky, I suppose they granted safe passage to the crusades and they are at war with you, in that case all 3 armies have a commom enemy, which is you. The Byzantines keep the province because I suppose they had the largest army and the crusades will move on towards their destination.
The only situation I can think of that would result in a fight between Byzantium and the crusaders would be if the Byzantines attacked the destination province of one crusade.
In that case the crusade would demand withdraw from the Byzantines or simply attack them.

As for your second question, the leap is not big, it is mainly that the playing field is even at normal, in easy you get combat bonusses and on Hard the AI starts getting bonusses in combat (morale, and valour on expert), which increases their staying power. The exact amount of these bonuses can be found in a few posts here at the forum, personally I can never remember them.
Basically, you have to understand the combat system of total war in greater detail, for instance by playing a few multiplayer games with experienced guys, then you will be surprised of how easily you can handle the AI even at harder levels.

crusader army's may be on a mission but if another crusader gets in there way that they dont like they will fight so its not that rare to get 2 crusader army's fighting

[Aragorn]

Quote[/b] (Brutal DLX @ Aug. 14 2003,14:22)]Well, crusader armies never fight each other, they are on a mission and there are very few cases when they will interfere with each other.

crusader army's may be on a mission but if another crusader gets in there way that they dont like they will fight so its not that rare to get 2 crusader army's fighting

[Reynald]

agree with the guy who said that expert aint much of a challenge, as far as my experiences go (playing the french from early) supposedly harder than expert all u have to do (once u get past the difficult first 60-75 years when your achieving the crusade objectives... also grabbing possibly the richest potential province of the game in antioch and then u solidify and watch the ai smack the bejeezus out of each other while u set up your trade links back home... by the time the ai turns its attention to you the money situation because of the vast trade income has become escalating, and you start getting the richest economy/ technologically most advanced messages ...after that point the ai just seems to play dumd throwing armies in with much inferior quality and the game loses the edge of difficulty which makes it fun in the early years....

an example of this is in my campaign game... got all of france including the german / english parts all of great britain and ireland all the crusade provinces, aragon, navarre and egypt including citadels pretty much every were and a balance of 190,000 florins is it just me or does the trade part of the game just seem to be way too important to the overall sucess, anyone with any tweaks for the trade and/or anyway to tinker with the fact that the ai dont seem to try to go for the best unit upgrades it can as quick as it can let us know????

[Reynald]

Ummm maybe shoulda posted this as a new thread ...but anyways its my first posting so ill get it right next time ... as a note to my previous posting though ive got to the point were ive started taking the foot of the gas as far as smacking the ai is concerned and im starting to cause rebellions in some of there provinces to desperately try to give them some higher technology tree troop types ...all in all not what the games supposed to elecit from u ( compasion for the ai to try to help it&#33

[someone]

i also use to take rebel provinces teching it up as much as possible then leave it empty, but the stupid ai wont go in and take it, and if it does it doesnt move units enough in there so it either get a rebelion there often to my favour, after couple of times all the teching i made in there is gone again.

[Reynald]

Seems to be a inherrent poblem with the IQ of the ai , all said and done in my campaign i started losing a bit of interest around 1270 as i conquered england in a grand total of 4years including scotland ...which for some reason still had the starting rebel army of 3 clansmen and a bowman unit??? as the enlish had not actually attacked any nation throughout the game besides wales and were still (in the mid high age) fielding armies of peasants / urban militia and short bowman... all said and done at this age in reality the english had great quantities of long bow and mainly chivalric + prob some feudal foot types .....sort of felt like i was fighting against a saxon army from the time of hastings using my french army from the late 100 years war time?????
very discombobulating