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)

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Goofball]

I like using cheat codes to make the game more interesting. By that I mean cheating in favor of enemy factions. For example, I switch to Godmode, them cycle through all of the enemy factions, and use the .deadringer. cheat to give them all 1,000,000 florins. Then I periodically cycle through the enemy factions to make sure they are building up their provinces correctly and training good units.

On of the things I've found to be interesting about playing this way is that since the AI factions are so flush with cash, they will quite often bribe large army stacks of mine, which is something I had never seen playing normally. Very good fun...

[Jamais Le Dimanche]

Crazy is Good!
In MTW VI Early Normal, I took all the starting Byzantine units, destroyed every building and marched across Europe. Fighting whenever and whoever chose to attempt to stop me, I got as far as Aquitaine and made it my new home, with most of Europe behind me in ruins and rebellion. Every place I conquered I devastated for the cash. It was great.

MTW is soo much fun, because you don't have to follow some rigid senario if you don't want too. Ignore the GA, do what you want.

[derF]

Have a peaceful strategy. Attack no-one. Build a fleet, spot rebel-held provinces and claim them as your. In otherwords Colonisation.

[henoch]

own GA. become calif as muslim (which is stupid, yes, but many foes mean...).