Quote Originally Posted by Wigferth Ironwall
You need the Royal Court to get the Royal Estate. How do your survive all through Early with NO Knights?
I make sure all the foot troops and archers do all the fighting!

I also make heavy use of spears, making sure to have at least two units in every stack. In my current HRE campaign, I've killed three enemy kings so far, captured a Prince who fetched about 2k in ransom, captured a king for about 10k and it has been the spears which did much of that for me.

It has to be two units, so that I can sandwich the RK unit and stop it from escaping. In one battle, I had a 0-star general in command and he was off in the distance (ie his morale boost no longer in effect) when the enemy king engaged my first set of spears. Couldn't see my second unit but got them to run to the scene and join in. What was 200 men at the start was down to a 20 and a 30 but they still got 'im.

In other battles, the AI has under-used its RK units and, rather than attacking at full tilt, it has held its ground, or marched up too slowly and secondary RK units have simply been shot down by my archers!

It's not as if I have NO Knights, just that, knowing what I'm capable of doing to theirs, I tend not to take any risks with mine. All I have are the king and the princes, as and when they pop up. So I basically use tactics which don't involve cavalry at all, for the first century or so. They are there on the field but they just sit at the back, overseeing the action, conferring valour and morale boost but basically staying out of harm's way unless there's either a dire crisis, or a 'free hit' at chasing down archers and routing troops.

Strictly speaking, it's not as if I can't afford the Royal Estate, it's just that I'd rather spend the money on the swordsmith, getting FMAA cranking out (175/60 and 45pa maint is a bargain, for what they can do) and advance the spearmaker for feudal sergeants, who will steadily supercede my basic spears.

So I'm something of a 'low budget' operator. The Royal Estate is on the 'luxury items' list and I'll usually build it once the trade network has got off the ground.

I think that, the next time I start a campaign, I will try and alter this policy, build the thing asap, see how much of a difference it makes to have the RKs around, not be afraid to take risks with them and see what my finances are like after replenishing any losses.

I have this sneaky feeling that it's sheer troop numbers which deters the AI from attacking me, half the time. When it can get the edge in numbers it will attack but it doesn't appear to be fussed about the quality of my troops. In other words, a stack swelled by 500 peasants will put it off attacking, though they wouldn't put up much of a resistance in an actual fight. Therefore, I have to question the deterrence value of smaller numbers but better quality troops. On the other hand, if it encourages the AI to attack and I slice it to pieces with knights, then that would be very satisfactory indeed.