Blitzing vs Prudent

[Saracen_Warrior]

Do you guys like to be try and take over the world in the shortest time possible or go nice and slow so slow no one thinks anyting till they realize you control all of europe. I like to expand to a healthy size tech up then wait till I get a good king then use him to lead my armies so i feel like Alexander the great or sumtin and try and conquer the world with one king. Ill alos use other generals and armies, but my king will play central role and ill always use him in the death blow to a faction. Its also fun if i can get my king to kill antoehr king, although that hard to do. I can do it once maybe twice a game.

and i realized my screen name is saracen not saharan. i wanted saharan, but that ok saracen is cool too.

[Simovek]

I play really slow but it always seems I never have enough armies to really go and conquer. I usually only have 2 or 3 stacks

[Sir Price]

It depends, I don't like to backstab my allies for no reason, so if all my neighbours are friendly, I'll sit tight and develop my provinces. Maybe that's because I play GA, but sooner or later someone's gonna attack you anyway, and then it's on. My last campaign (Danes, GA) I actually did nothing for the last 50+ years, just so I could see what happened when the game ended with me having the most points. Not to exciting.

Bottom line: I usually play slow, but conquer in bursts, when someone violates my territory.

[Saracen_Warrior]

I try and respect my allies. BUt i figure if they dont ahve many troops on my borders they dont respect me as a miltary power and thats an insult so that gives me a good enough reason to attack them. Or one time the sicilians were trading with everyone but me. Huh, think your too good to trade with me. I sent about 40 syrian assasins over. I was able to assasinate a bunch of em, but they had a million heirs. I still had to invade them. Then i figured the world would like to bow down to me so i took over the rest of europe. That was agood egyptian campagn on normal so it wasnt very hard, but still fun, because I assasinated a lot of people. That was suprisingly fun. I got rid of the horde, the spanish, and the hungarians just with assasins. Now thats too easy so i dont do that.

[derF]

I start off slowly and keep military activity to a zero. This will give the opportunity to 1) See who my friends are, 2) Build a strong economy.

When ive identified my enemies, i build sufficient armies and deploy them on the frontier. When reinforcements are at a suitable level, i push forward and move the frontier.

This method takes a long time because i need to constantly reinforce my armies with the EXACT troops i want. But that time is used productively by settling the locals and setting the right religion and all that stuff.

[Ash]

Maybe its because I always play civilizations which are forced into conflict, but generally I attack someone within 5 years in Early.

As the English (my favourite civ), it's simply impossible to stay at piece with France (and later HRE, Aragon, Spain/Alamohads).
In one of my first games ever I did try to respect my allies and even allied myself with the French. They didn't attack me for some reason and I ended up with a small kingdom completely being pwned by the Alamohads who steamrolled over Europe.

I came to the conclusion that respecting alliances is pointless since the AI doesn't respect them either. And that you need to conquer a sizeble territory before concentrating on building.
Otherwise the AI will use you as a doormat.
So it's blitzing as much as possible, only stopping once you get a sizeble empire with which to work with.

[CherryDanish]

I like to go all out the very first year till about 15-50 years in, then I pace myself. The battles in the begining of a campaign are more intense, easier to control with smaller units, and I think they require more skill on a tactical basis as you can't just drop into a war of attrition and you're pretty much left to deal with what you have available. Once I get established, I'll slow down my pace, but I hate stopping. I try to respect good allies and slowly rend my enemies (I generally like to lower their leader's influence till thier provinces erupt into civil war). I always put trade before conquest, well, untill I run out of butt to kick, then I have to turn on someone, or provoke them into attacking me.

I enjoy using siege engines and when my campaign lasts long enough, artillery to level castles, but I hate assaulting fortifications. One tactic I enjoy is taking a large offensive army and running it around through my enemies provinces, defeating them in battle, but not holding the province, instead moving to the next one. It completely levels the opposing ruler's influence, limits the number of available troops, valours and builds my generals and forces the opposition to build better upgraded units. Best of all, if I'm playing a muslim faction it allows me to throw waves of Jihads at my foes later in the game.

[Hold Steady]

Like cherry, I like campaigning early on, with quick down and dirty fighting in the beginning with all the troops I can get my hands on and spare from garrison tasks. After that, it's building for swordsmen and cavalry and the economy. I'd like to wait a decade or so after that first fighting, but I can't resist the urge to conquer

[_Aetius_]

Depends who i go, if i go my fave faction the byzantines i blitz the turks kingdom within 5/6 years, and conquer it within 10/12 turns. I always take serbia, crimea, and wallachia from rebels.

Then stop, and have a eastern frontier of armenia, rum, edessa and lesser armenia, egypt usually sides with me so i let them have syria from the turks.

I develop my frontier armies and leave decent garrisons on my western one and develop naples as quick as possible so i can hold it. Then ill wait awhile then swoop down using my navy to land in egypt and palastine, i push down into antioch and syria. The egyptians will usually go into civil war so mop them up, and have foothold in north africa.

After all that conquest, i try my best to (because im a byzantine history nut) try and reconquer the empire of justinian, the rest of north africa, granada in spain, all of italy and croatia, in addition to the things ive already conquered. Then im pretty set to do nothing except make lots and lots of money and build garrisons to repel mongol incursions.

[The_678]

I'm like some of the others with a quick early blitz then buildup. For example when I play Danes (my fave) I'll quickly get all of scandanavia then sail over and take all of great britain. Then I'll build up till I have awesome armies and tons of money and kill one faction at a time. I like to attack one at a time, with an amphibious assault and kill everything they have, settle then kill someone else. I like to blitz each country i attack till they are totally demolished.

[TwinMfg]

I try to role play a little, so I don't attack my neighbors without good reason. I will take over rebel provinces, however, justified by their needing civilization. I'm cautious with whom I ally, because I don't like breaking treaties. All that said, I usually end up at war relatively soon with my neighbors, thereby owning a sizeable portion of the map.

In my current game (Early, GA, Normal) I'm playing the English. I took Navarre before Spain or Aragon could. Spain allied, but Aragon would have none of it, and they only had one province. Navarre was garrisoned with only 100 peasants because my troops were needed to deter any French aggression. After about 10 years of trying to ally with Aragon, I decided they had to go. It was only a matter of time before they would have attacked me, so: do unto others, before they do unto you.

Then, France and HRE went at each other. Sound strategic doctrine required me to absorb Brittany and Flanders into the British Empire, and since I was not allied with France... With the two new provinces well in hand, I made multiple attempts at a ceasefire. For some reason they refuse. Well, those aggressive froggies started massing troops on our common border and we can't have that. Now, France is down to one province and I may as well have played a domination game.

I try to be peaceful, I truly do!

[_Aetius_]

Lol peace isnt the best tactic for some nations, with the turks on early in my opinion if you dont take tripoli within 6 or 7 years then you might aswell kiss a decent economy goodbye because the egyptians wont stay pitifully weak for very long and the byzantines will be looking for a fight if you show weakness.

However with the Holy roman empire i avoid conflict with other nations like the plague i absorb pomerania and prussia into the empire but war with any of my established neighbours in my view is suicide.

[ah_dut]

I'm a turtler by nature but then again I suck at this game

[Sensei Warrior]

Like cherry, I like campaigning early on, with quick down and dirty fighting in the beginning with all the troops I can get my hands on and spare from garrison tasks. After that, it's building for swordsmen and cavalry and the economy. I'd like to wait a decade or so after that first fighting, but I can't resist the urge to conquer

LOL Must kill. Can't stop. Voices in my head. MUWAHAHAH

[Hold Steady]

LOL Must kill. Can't stop. Voices in my head. MUWAHAHAH

ROFL where do you get them great smilies?

Indeed, it is something programmed into main core. It may be temporarily overriden, but still it runs trough every program. Shut down a few things and all that is left is scorched earth strategy. I actually like the horde for that, if it weren't for their ridiculous chicken-style fighting.

So: !!!!

In the end it leaves me a little dizzy

[Zajuts149]

[QUOTE=CherryDanish]. One tactic I enjoy is taking a large offensive army and running it around through my enemies provinces, defeating them in battle, but not holding the province, instead moving to the next one. It completely levels the opposing ruler's influence, limits the number of available troops, valours and builds my generals and forces the opposition to build better upgraded units.

That was the thing that made med fall for the English in the late campaign. Doing the Chevaucheè against the French. Beautiful strategy.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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I play GA and slowly but practice Blitzkrieg from time to time as a strategy. Well, I played should I say.
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[Sensei Warrior]

ROFL where do you get them great smilies?

When you type in the post there is Similies to the right as you well know. Well there is a hyper-link that says more. Click on that and there is tons more, well over 100.

[macsen rufus]

I guess I'm prudent in that I never START a war, and I'm doing Turk Late GA right now, so I've gone really slowly on conquest in favour of trade and development. I also try to avoid "game" loopholes that seem unrealistic, so don't do too much mobbing with agents. But bribery is good when you have the cash... I had William Wallace subduing Scotland for the English, once!

Rebels are just asking for it, but allies I respect until they stab me in the back. I keep borders strong, so anyone who goes for me will exhaust themselves on assaults, lose influence, collapse into civil war - THEN I counter attack, and keep some territory for the effort. Most of my disasters, both tactically and strategically, have been due to overstretching my forces or resources, so I try to resist the temptation.

But once the conditions for attack are met, then blitzkrieg and pillage, certainly.

[Marquis de Said]

I like to play GA, but will also conquer additional land that is strategically/economically feasible, especially if a back-stabbing neighbour attacks me first. I often like to take on little colonies here and there, then lose them when they it gets too difficult to hold onto them.

In my current Turkish campaign, I conquered all of the steppes, up to Novgorod and Livonia, then "managed" to lose them all, first to the Horde and later to their successors, the Rebels. Now all the steppe provinces have at least a castle and more developed infrastructure than Spain, Central Europe, Italy or North Africa
As someone already mentioned, little rampages with Muslims are always fun, because you can later follow them up with Jihads.