More reasons to love MTW

**DensterNY** · 08-10-2005, 18:25

I really have to give it to the developers at Creative Assembly they've really put some thinking into the development of this game and there are so many little gems that add to the quality of the gaming experience.

I've read on some posts here about how near the end of your game MTW is coded to get a little crazy to challenge you. So last night I'm playing and my empire is pretty damn big (English) having absorbed The French, HRE, Aragonese, Spanish, Italian, Danish and The Almohads. I attack the Sicilians, who are excommunicated, and somehow everybody gets sick of my warmongering. This was certainly the straw that broke the camels back.

First, the newly gained Sicilian provinces are extremely loyal so I'm fighting rebellions even after clearly dispatching their armies. The Byzantines decide to stack what are clearly offensive armies onto his bordering provinces with me and also moves all of his African and Meditteranean navies to my coasts. The Italians reemerge in the rebel province of Croatia (wtf?!? Italians in Croatia?) with three full stacks and attack me. Also loyalties in all of my lands except for Great Britain drop dramatically forcing me to churn out thousands of peasants to garrison my provinces and at the same time trying to churn out more offensive troops to prepare for the new war facing me. Plus, my king is 55 years old and will probably die in a decade, even though his heir is pretty decent can a new king hold together an empire that stretches from Scandanavia to North Africa?

Wow, so in a matter of two years my steamroller turns into pandemonium which of course makes my game a lot more interesting... and I still haven't had to deal with the Horde in this campaign.

I really have to hand it to CA, things were getting pretty boring picking apart the map piece by piece and nation by nation... now I find myself on the brink of my own destruction and have to use all of my wits and wiles to stabilize my empire.

**Azi Tohak** · 08-10-2005, 19:06

I can sympathize. My Italians just got stabbed in the back by my ally the pope, and even the HRE too! I was just amazed by the HRE because they have been battling the English for turns and turns, and now the Spanish.

Meanwhile I'm just slowly buliding away, smacking the Hungarians if they try to attack me (I've been at war with them for 50 years...), and punishing the infidel Turks (mmm... Crusades...). So now the HRE attacks me... with a bunch of peasants and urban militia. Brilliant! So my 2 star general, with an excellent army of ~700 men, butchers 2000 HRE peons. And I say butcher because when I got to 1000 prisoners, I decided... nope! Bye!

Definitely more interesting. Especially since I can't really run 6 armies at once! I've got the money... but that is very hard the on the treasury. At least I own trade!

Good luck DensterNY,

Azi

**Kommodus** · 08-10-2005, 20:42

It sounds like your empire is not really in as dire straits as you think. With such vast resources at your disposal, you should have no trouble holding off the Byzantines and Italians. The loyalty drop could be the well-documented built-in loyalty drop that happens at least once during the campaign when your empire gets large, or it could be due to controllable factors, such as:

1. Your king getting separated from the greater part of the empire (i.e. stuck on an island with no port or with enemy ships blocking his departure).

2. Enemy naval blockades that block crucial waterways.

The death of your king and resulting succession should also not pose much of a problem, unless you have many provinces where the loyalty is dangerously close to 100%. Just build a bunch of structures and get the new king the builder virtues as quickly as possible once the succession occurs.

You're absolutely right that the AI factions gang up on you when they perceive your power growing unchecked. That just happened to me in my Danish campaign. I had an empire that was actually considerably smaller than yours - just Scandinavia, Britain, France, and most of the HRE. I was planning an expedition to the East to pick up former Russian territories that had fallen into rebellion, when suddenly, my allies the Spanish attacked.

Now understand that I hadn't been very aggressive in this campaign, starting only about three wars with AI factions. But the Spanish had conquered the Almohads and gone to war with Egypt, building up vast armies (about 10-12 stacks) for the battle in North Africa. It turns out that the battle never happened - the Egyptians also had huge armies, and so the two great antagonists simply stared at each other across the desert sands until a cease-fire was arranged. When the Spanish decided to claim my southern lands, the great yellow horde began moving towards my borders.

Thus it was that I found myself outnumbered by about 5-1 in the south, while in the east the Hungarians (who deserted their alliance with me to side with the Spanish) outnumbered my army on that border by 2-1. The battle with Spain was deadlocked for several years, as I whittled down their numbers through defensive actions. Finally I sent my best general on a daring sea-born invasion of Castille, and won a decisive victory there. The Spanish still had more men, but the numbers were much closer, and it was clear I would soon win the war.

Then my aging king died, and the Hungarians chose that moment to invade. Although outnumbered 2-1, I destroyed their attacking army, and will soon sack their capital. The current pope, despite the fact that his predecessor's head was removed by my assassins a few years ago, is threatening excommunication again. My last allies, the Poles, have deserted me. And I didn't even start any of my current wars! No matter; I'll simply crush them all; no kingdom in the world has the power to oppose me.

The Golden Horde arrived a long time ago, but was soundly defeated by the Russians. It lives on as a shell of its former self, but poses no threat. Byzantium is defeated and exiled, Egypt is plagued by internal problems and by the remaining Spanish troops in North Africa, Hungary is militarily weak, Poland remains small, and Russia only just re-emerged. There remain large armies to fight, but victory is not now in doubt.

**dgfred** · 08-10-2005, 21:23

Nice playing/fighting Kommodus!

**Patron** · 08-11-2005, 06:22

They must have had a secret discussion. Much like Attila the Hun and the pope at the gates of Rome. In the end the Egyptians could have invaded the Spanish whilst they were up north inavding your kingdom, but they mysteriously decided not to.

**ichi** · 08-11-2005, 08:00

Great thread, so many times people complain that the game is throwing too many curve balls at them.

Nice to see someone recognizes a challenge and is up to it.

ichi

**Kommodus** · 08-11-2005, 14:32

Originally Posted by Patron

They must have had a secret discussion. Much like Attila the Hun and the pope at the gates of Rome. In the end the Egyptians could have invaded the Spanish whilst they were up north inavding your kingdom, but they mysteriously decided not to.

Actually, once the Spanish declared war on me and their African hordes began marching towards the northern front, the large Egyptian armies marched away as well (presumably to deal with Egypt's internal rebellions in the Middle East & Asia Minor). But then the Spanish crusade aimed for Egypt (which had been stationary in Tunisia for many years) noticed that the Egyptians were gone, and invaded Cyrenacia, capturing it! With some help from the remaining Spanish troops in the area, it then moved on and took Egypt itself!

This is obviously not what I was hoping would happen - I thought that Egypt would help me out by nipping at Spain from the rear, instead of getting thumped by the otherwise-occupied Spanish. But Spain's armies were simply so large that they could have steamrolled Egypt anytime they wanted; it's anybody's guess why they didn't. Looks like Spain will be a North African kingdom for the next few years.

**DensterNY** · 08-11-2005, 14:39

Well, you do have to give it to CA for programming in all of this to keep things interesting. When things are difficult and nearly desperate its the most fun.

I hate to Rome bash but when I was playing that once my steamroller got rolling I crushed anything and everything without any problems but in MTW there are always monkey wrenches in the works. It seems like all of these Provinces that I've annexed are sitting on the sidelines waiting to rebel and secret heirs running around with hate and revenge in their hearts.... Cool!

Kommodus, you're correct that things weren't really that dire although challenging nevertheless. I put two full stacks of quality troops in Venice which discouraged the Italian resurgent heir and army from doing anything but standing there. Second, I spammed peasant garrison armies to every province without a standing offensive or defensive army so loyalty is assured. Third, the Byzantines aren't much trouble because they have all green troops and all of my armies are hardcore grizzled veterans who stand and fight to the man.

One very interesting thing that I discovered in my war with the Sicilians. Well when I attacked them they were excommunicated and I killed their king which made them righteous again so my conquest of them stopped short with an excommunication warning. However, their provinces were rebellious and they had a popular uprising or Rebels and Sicilian loyalist who attacked automatically. After two rounds of rebellions the Sicilians got excommunicated again even though we had stalemated since we both had gotten ex-comm. warnings. So I guess that's another tactic we have in our arsenal against fellow Catholics... you can engineer their excomm. without their willing cooperation.