New approaches to MTW: Do CRAZY stuff!!

[Spartakus]

Right, I'll bet most of you are getting comfortable with RTW these days, leaving good old MTW to gather dust on your shelves. "Played all the factions" you say, "the game gets repetive, the AI never does anything new."

But are we any better? Here's a little suggestion on how you might enjoy MTW again, at least it works for me.

I guess you all have played as the English at least a couple of times, and as the English, what does one do? Oh, pretty much the same stuff the English did back then; consolidate the island, grab land from France, have tea and biscuits (okay, not the last one). Well, no wonder the game gets repetive if you're going do the same old trudge all the time. Problem is, when playing we think about two things: 1. What is the best strategy for winning. 2. What did the faction did historically. Of course, both of these are sound approaches to the game, but it gets boring after a while. So why not just scrap them and do something completely unhistorical and strategically crazy?

Let me make a few examples.

Playing as the Danes, early, what is the best strategy? First step is conquering and consolidating Scandinavia, then it's taking the rich trade provinces in the Eastern Baltic. Novgorod never is much of a threat, despite it's potential this faction has rarely conquered more than Finland when you reach them. With these lands and Scandinavia you can trade yourself soaking rich, and from here you can pretty much go anywhere. Good strategy, but boring if you keep repeating it game after game just because it works. Let's say you were to scrap the entire Eastern Baltic-project, and instead head for Britain, or maybe Spain, or why not march straight through the HRE and down to Rome? Stupider, but much more entertaining. There is so much fun to be had creating the Holy Danish Empire. :P

Let's say you're playing as the Turks, then it's all about Constantinople, right? Hey, let's forget that city, forget the Byzantines and forget the Egyptians. Head north, through the steppes, conquer Novgorod, move on to Scandinavia, before taking Britain. Then it's time to attack Europe from the West, no Turk ever did that before, eh?

I mentioned the English above, conquering France and all that. Why not forget about your lands in France, and instead head for the Mediterranean? Conquer along the Spanish coast, take Italy, have fun in the Middle-East.

Another "fun strategy", especially if playing as the trader and navy factions like Italy and Denmark, is establishing small colonies everywhere. Never conquer large amounst of land, just secure your home base, land forces at random places around the globe, and try to keep these. Let's say you're playing as the Italians, conquer maybe Valencia, Flanders, Tripoli, Denmark and/or Scotland, doesn't matter, as long as they're random and far away from each other. This way you'll be at war with nearly half the world, which makes for great fun.

Don't mind excommunications, fight Christians as well as Muslims if you're Catholic, forget reason and just play for the fun of it. You'll fight a lot of battles, I guarantee it (probably lose a lot too).

[Marquis de Said]

Spoken like a true soulmate.

I do that all the time, otherwise a lot of games would become boring by 1250. I still haven't played all the factions, but I've played enough to be able to turn any one-province faction into a pan-European behemoth.

I remember one game as the Eggies. It was about 1250, I'd just consolidated North Africa except for Morocco, just got all my best units and thought, right now it's time to kick some ass! Then I realised, that I would never be threatened, because I had only 3 border provinces, and I'd managed fine with the weaker troops. I got bored, and quit the campaign.

Nowadays I just go for amusing little projects. In a Russian campaign, I annihilated the Horde, then got borders in Lithuania and Kiev. So I decided I'd send a little Orthodox "crusade" against the heretics of the west to capture Switzerland and found the Swiss nation. It was great fun. Two stacks of troops trailblazed their way through Polish, Hungarian and German land to take Switzerland.

Another way of making the game more challenging is trying to balance power in Europe. Always defend the weaklings against the strong nations, rather than gang up on the weak. That way you get massive wars, your navy gets sunk, your economy goes in the red and half your armies (and, in the worst-case scenario, provinces) get annihilated, and you have to rebuild. I'm sounding as if these were glorious goals to strive for , but I've always found the game to become boring once my treasury goes over 100k, and there's no stopping the trade income.

We should start making a list of crazy objectives for the game. It could be fun.

Marquis

[bretwalda]

How about stopping after you have reached your GA's, and developing your provinces and caring about your peoples happiness?

And (or) pushing all neighbouring provinces into rebellion, thus losing all contact with the rest of the nations? ;) Hard, but doable ;)

[Mithrandir]

Try this, it worked when I got bored with the standard online armies,
conquer the world with peasant class armies (worked amazingly well online as well :D).
So just archers, spearmen, militia sergeants, mounted sergeants etc.

[Procrustes]

Play as a heretic. Pick a non-crusading* Catholic faction and never build a single religious building. Murder every Catholic religious agent you can find. Fight with all the other Catholic nations - only ally with Orthodox and Muslim factions. Fight with the Pope. Ignore excommunications. Hell, try to stay excommunicated. Kill the Pope every now and then - fight constant wars with him. Capture the holy lands and raze all the churches. Raze Rome. Destroy every church you capture and execute Catholic prisoners.

(* It's easier if you pick a crusading faction to do this as that is one less faction that will be crusading against you.)

[Marquis de Said]

Establish a steppe faction. Pick any faction in the game and in the first few turns bribe the rebels in Khazar. Build up Khazar, and somewhere along the line lose your original provinces in wars or a civil war. Make Khazar your capital and expand into the steppes. This would also mean that the Horde will come a-knocking on your door some day.

Marquis

[MerlinusCDXX]

Play as a heretic. Pick a non-crusading* Catholic faction and never build a single religious building. Murder every Catholic religious agent you can find. Fight with all the other Catholic nations - only ally with Orthodox and Muslim factions. Fight with the Pope. Ignore excommunications. Hell, try to stay excommunicated. Kill the Pope every now and then - fight constant wars with him. Capture the holy lands and raze all the churches. Raze Rome. Destroy every church you capture and execute Catholic prisoners.

(* It's easier if you pick a crusading faction to do this as that is one less faction that will be crusading against you.)

HeHe... I did just that with Denmark, bringing back the days of the Viking reign of terror. (the excuse was that we Danes were "nominally Catholic" ie. converted at sword point, and it was now time for Odin's revenge)

[Spartakus]

HeHe... I did just that with Denmark, bringing back the days of the Viking reign of terror. (the excuse was that we Danes were "nominally Catholic" ie. converted at sword point, and it was now time for Odin's revenge)

Yeah...Odin's catholic revenge.

Guess some of you have played as the Aragonese, right? Well, then you know how they're stuck between three greater powers; Spain, France and the Almohades. This can be solved quite easily, just emigrate! Sail away, sail away... Where to? I don't know, someplace safe. Grab maybe England or Scandinavia, places easily defended. A much better platform for development and further expansion.

Emigration is quite fun to do with any faction, really. Abandon your home province, move to another side of the world where there's some easy pickings, and make this your new heartland.

[Marquis de Said]

Another insane "glory goal" would be to wipe out the Pope.
Start as the Italians or Sicilians. Unify Italy. Wipe out the Pope and build up his provinces. Defeat all 20-30 re-emergences he will make during the game. Keep building up the Papal provinces so the Pope appears with harder units every time.

Endless mayhem.

[English assassin]

Random seaborne mayhem is the way to go. Pack together your best army, send it off to some random province, conquer it, and then never reinforce the garrison or build any troops there. In fact smash up all the infrastructure you can find just for the heck of it, and cut the sea link in the hope of some entertaining rebellions. See how long you can last before your glorious colony is overwhelmed.

This is especially fun if you pick the most teched provinces like Constantinople and Egypt, and make it your mission to bring a new dark age of rebellions and factional collapse to Europe. And its best of all as a muslim faction because when you do get kicked out you have a target for Jihad, hoorah. (Extra satisfying when its Rome you have been squatting in and the Pope re-emerges.)

[Procrustes]

Reminds me of a game I had as the French. I had troops in the holy lands trying to build the Krak before 1200 when the Byzantines went nutter and wrecked most of my sea lanes, trapping my armies. Well, I was stretched pretty thin but I still had one ship left off of Palestine so I took a few modest troops and dropped two companies in each Rhodes and Cypress. Every year they had a battle and after every year there was a small loyalist Byzantine rebellion - sometimes with some pretty good troops. Each battle got more desperate as my troops got fewer in number. The Byzantine navy gave me very few opportunities to reenforce my marines, and even when I could my other troops were stretched so thin trying to hold Palestine that I just could never send more than one mediocre company. After a few years I had a fort and was able to start supplementing my troops with peasants and then urban militia - more of a challenge as a few more troops - even crappy peasants - only meant that the rebellions were larger. By the time I finally was able to rescue the meager remnants of those armies I had built a four- and a five-star general from scratch, though my troops in Palestine weren't able to hold out against the Turks and Byzantines so I eventually lost the holy lands before I finished the Krak.

It was loads of fun. The battles were tiny and desperate and forced the dogged use of woods & terrain. Growing those two generals was more fun than the rest of the campaign.

[Marquis de Said]

Speaking of growing generals: One of my favourite pastimes in the game is creating an uber mercenary general. I pick a unit of mercenaries (preferably a strong unit) and let it lead an army. It picks up a star after the first battle, so after that it's easy to have that unit lead new armies.

One example was in a Russian campaign. I had a lone Billman go up to four stars, plus expert defender and skilled attacker. He had valour 8, and I kept him always married to one of my daughters. In one battle he made me rotflmao when he single-handedly charged from the rear and routed 20 Feudal Knights who were fighting a unit of Militia Sergeants of mine.

[Silver Rusher]

Hehe... a funny tactic.

As the Sicilians I forget EVERYTHING ELSE WHATSOEVER and go for basically every rebel province I can find. Just bribe bribe bribe bribe bribe... and so on. Eventually start to bribe other faction's armies.

Also, playing as the French, put every single man in your command on ships and head off to Scotland. Now you can become a scottish faction! In your homelands, destroy happiness buildings and raze taxes to make sure that france becomes a rebel faction. As your new Scots faction, expand not into england but into other wierd places like the steppes (always a favourite, it's just so fun) and make sure that you never ever keep any lands other than Scotland for more than 5 years. Stay as a minor faction with a huge army. Your economy will plummet down the drain, but who cares?

[Marquis de Said]

Brilliant tactic, Silver Rusher.

This thread is becoming a proper anti-GA collection. With a few more, we could come up with a complete set of "Vainglorious Achievements" that should be stickied in the forum.

(poke, poke, Mods)

[bretwalda]

Maybe sail off to England and Ireland with your army and never conquer anything else ;)

[English assassin]

Hmm, In my current Almo game its about 1200 and the Byzzies have just stabbed me in the back. (well. more of a pin prick really)

I was going to attack back, but, fired with the spirit of this thread, instead I am going to clear the seas of their ships, do nothing except take Kazar only in, shall we say, 1225, and garrison it with the biggest peasant army you have ever seen. Which I will of course disband in 1231.

Hey presto, the Super-Horde shall do my dirty work for me.

[CherryDanish]

I was going to attack back, but, fired with the spirit of this thread, instead I am going to clear the seas of their ships, do nothing except take Kazar only in, shall we say, 1225, and garrison it with the biggest peasant army you have ever seen. Which I will of course disband in 1231.

Hey presto, the Super-Horde shall do my dirty work for me.

This is one of the funniest MTW ideas I have read in a while. I gotta try this on my next campaign.

[Marquis de Said]

I was going to attack back, but, fired with the spirit of this thread, instead I am going to clear the seas of their ships, do nothing except take Kazar only in, shall we say, 1225, and garrison it with the biggest peasant army you have ever seen. Which I will of course disband in 1231.

Hey presto, the Super-Horde shall do my dirty work for me.

Is the size of the Horde dependent on the size of the garrison in Khazar, i.e. the more troops someone has there in 1230, the more stacks the Mongols come with?

I'd like to know, because I'm playing a Turkish campaign and it's 1115. I've decided to build up Khazar and make it one of my strongest provinces, and worry about the arrival of the Horde later.

Marquis

[Lacker]

I posted this awhile back but I think if fits this thread pretty well.

I play campaigns now trying to stay as peacfull as possible. It's a real trick! I avoid any kind of wars suing for peace the minute they start.

I also tried to play a campaign as ONE person. I picked one unit ( a unit of Mounted Sergents) and aside from initial set ups in each battle I'd ONLY fight with that one unit, and keep the camera as low as possible right next to them. I command units near me only if I'm the commanding unit on the field. It's lead to some pretty unfortunate routs, as well as my nation pretty much going to buckets in a few years, but it was really fun!

[Ludens]

Is the size of the Horde dependent on the size of the garrison in Khazar, i.e. the more troops someone has there in 1230, the more stacks the Mongols come with?

Indeed. All rebelions work like this, and the arrival of the Horde is essentially a sort of programmed 'faction resurrection' rebellion. If you leave no troops in a low loyalty province, the rebels will also get few troops. If you have a large garrison in a low loyalty province, the rebels will get a large army. This makes rebelious provinces like Portugal so hard to keep down: if you have a garrison that is big but not big enough, there will be a large army of rebels knocking on your castle gates shortly.

Mind you, the number of troops does depend on the kind of rebelion: especially faction resurrections get loads of troops independent of the size of the garrison. So however little men you will have in Khazar, there will always be a large number of Mongols. But putting a large army there will only increase the threat. It does, however, make for exhilarating battles .

[Marquis de Said]

Mind you, the number of troops does depend on the kind of rebelion: especially faction resurrections get loads of troops independent of the size of the garrison. So however little men you will have in Khazar, there will always be a large number of Mongols. But putting a large army there will only increase the threat. It does, however, make for exhilarating battles .

I knew about the rebellion mechanism and formula in general (=the bigger the garrison, the more rebels), but I'd never thought that the Mongols emergence followed this formula.

I guess I'll have to put a few stacks of hard-arse Turkish troops in Khazar around 1230 "to be prepared for the threat all my messengers in Asia are warning me about" Should make for an interesting battle.

[Frankymole]

Another "fun strategy", especially if playing as the trader and navy factions like Italy and Denmark, is establishing small colonies everywhere. Never conquer large amounst of land, just secure your home base, land forces at random places around the globe, and try to keep these. Let's say you're playing as the Italians, conquer maybe Valencia, Flanders, Tripoli, Denmark and/or Scotland, doesn't matter, as long as they're random and far away from each other. This way you'll be at war with nearly half the world, which makes for great fun.

I like it. Of course, this is pretty much what the Normans did in real life, with "colonies" in Italy, mediterranean islands and Antioch as well as their lands in France and England.

And didn't the Vikings actually colonise deep down the Volga and into Russian territory? I seem to recall that the Finnish language is related to Magyar (Hungarian) for similar reasons.

[Frankymole]

I posted this awhile back but I think if fits this thread pretty well.

I play campaigns now trying to stay as peacfull as possible. It's a real trick! I avoid any kind of wars suing for peace the minute they start.

Playing as the HRE, Early, Hard, I've managed to keep alliances with most small factions. Byzantium and the Papacy got really big (Byz with territory and top generals, Papacy with huge armies on a re-emergence), and Europe is divided now between three huge empires - mine, my allies the French (holding everything west of the Rhine including North africa, Britain, Spain etc) and the Byz (everything East of Poland except the Baltic states). Yet a 20-year standaoff with Byz has them now sueing for peace and asking me to ally with them against France! (I politely declined)!! France is falling apart due to a failed crusade into Byz-held Tripoli, so I am cleaning up the rebel provinces. Touch wood, neither French nor Byz will break the peace, they're too busy dismembering each other while I pick up the wreckage and grow ever more powerful, heheheh.
I've never known alliances last so long, it's now 1213 so that's nearly 130 years of peace, apart from a few skirmishes with Byz over Poland, Austria and Kiev. My next step is to get the Papacy and Byz to attack each other - they are at war, but I'm in the way...

[Spartakus]

And didn't the Vikings actually colonise deep down the Volga and into Russian territory? I seem to recall that the Finnish language is related to Magyar (Hungarian) for similar reasons.

Yes, and some historians even claim that the Russian state can trace it's roots back to these Vikings. Of course, this is disputed. You have the "normanist theories" which support what I just said, and the "anti-normanist" theories which rather try to emphasize a Slav heritage.

However, the Volga was no limit for Viking conquest. We have sources which tell of Vikings who penetrated far longer south, where they managed to grab an important trading city from the Abbasid Caliphate. This didn't last very long though, because even if the Vikings managed to subdue the rebellious citizens and repulse the Arab armies who came to the aid of this city, they supposedly ate some bad fruit and an epidemic soon spread among them. In the end they were forced to flee.

Now this should inspire another crazy strategy for the Danes; head straight for the Middle-East!

[bretwalda]

I seem to recall that the Finnish language is related to Magyar (Hungarian) for similar reasons.

Well, I am not sure that the reasons are similar ;) As far as we know now (which is about the certainity of any pre-writing history...) there was a huge mass of people around the Ural mountains that split to two main branches: Finnish and Hungarians - but that was way B.C. then they both travelled, raided, plundered and finally settled somewhere.

Actually there is a joke that is told differently in each nations, here is the two versions:

The Finnish and Hungarian peoples were wandering together, and finally came to a post signaling two roads:

1) (told in Hungary) The post said "middle of turmoil in Eastern Europe with angry neighbors left to the south, nice fishing places and nice neighbors right, to the north" Those who could read went right...

2) (told in Finnland) The post said "lush plains, rich fields, nice women, gold and silver left to the south; freezing cold, ice, fishsmell and 9 month winter right to the north. Those who could read went left...



well, you always think the other choose better ;)

[Dragoncrusader]

I feel inspired by all this mayhem!
First of all I want to play a campaign as the Hussites - marching round Europe as a heretic with all my possesions on a wagon. Attack everyone and move from province to province. I just have to figure out a way of getting the wagons onto the battle map! Not sure who the best faction would be to use - the Germans or Hungarians or Polish.
Then I will pick France, launch a crusade to Palestine and take everything with me, leave France to the rebels and set up as King Baldwin in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
I have always felt that MTW really lacks something in that the map does not extend further eastwards as so many of the Turkish armies came from modern day Iraq. You do not get the real flavour of the Turks as a huge empire.

[bretwalda]

Reminds me of a game I had as the French. I had troops in the holy lands trying to build the Krak before 1200 (...).

Oh, by the way is there any way to mod the game to be able to crusade with the non-crusading christian nations, like Hungary and Poland? Or maybe someone has already did this mod? ;)

[Ludens]

Oh, by the way is there any way to mod the game to be able to crusade with the non-crusading christian nations, like Hungary and Poland? Or maybe someone has already did this mod? ;)

As far as I know, the only thing you need to do is make the chapter house available to all Catholic factions. But you won't get GA points for it. WesW's MedMod v2.04, apart from making the AI thougher, added the chapterhouse for the Hungarians and the Poles but not for the Danes.

EDIT: ah, I see you already figured out how to do this.

[bretwalda]

EDIT: ah, I see you already figured out how to do this.

Yepp, but thank you very much for the answer!

[Marquis de Said]

Well, I am not sure that the reasons are similar ;) As far as we know now (which is about the certainity of any pre-writing history...) there was a huge mass of people around the Ural mountains that split to two main branches: Finnish and Hungarians - but that was way B.C. then they both travelled, raided, plundered and finally settled somewhere.

Actually there is a joke that is told differently in each nations, here is the two versions:

The Finnish and Hungarian peoples were wandering together, and finally came to a post signaling two roads:

1) (told in Hungary) The post said "middle of turmoil in Eastern Europe with angry neighbors left to the south, nice fishing places and nice neighbors right, to the north" Those who could read went right...

2) (told in Finnland) The post said "lush plains, rich fields, nice women, gold and silver left to the south; freezing cold, ice, fishsmell and 9 month winter right to the north. Those who could read went left...



well, you always think the other choose better ;)

I think you have the history of our two peoples and languages (I'm a Finn living in England) more or less correct. That's the history I was taught at school, too.

Maybe the Finns were the first ever people to play real-life MTW in the spirit of this thread. Instead of choosing Hungary with its iron, good farmland and silver and copper mines, they did the CRAZY thing and went for Finland with only furs to trade. Of course they were playing on expert so they got attacked by Huscarles and then Boyars and got left with only one province that has gone rebel.