house rules for MTW

[tonedog]

what house rules do people use to make both the battles and campaign more of a challenge?

[elbasto]

Personally, in the campaigns, I never grow too much, I establish an objective and then only grow so far and only when my provinces are mostly developed.

[petertmorgan]

Try playing on hard or expert first if you haven't already.

After that, I like to think of a 'theme', and stick to it
1) Snobbish aristocracy - cannot recruit peasants in any province/ every army must have an aristocratic unit

2) Isolationism (works best for non-catholic powers) - No emissaries, no religious figures, decline all diplomacy. assassins okay if you want

3) Pillager - must destory all remaining buildings in a newly conquered province (excepting provinces you held for some time then re-acquired).

etc.

[Bohdan, Lord of Courland]

Well, I usually set myself a limit to the amount of ships I build in order to establish trade routes. Otherwise the game can become too easy quite early on after you finish spamming out your ships from the harbours: you'll have thousands of florins pouring in annualy into your coffers in no time
I usually don't find the battles themselves too easy if I limit the numbers of each unit type I include in my armies (many pavise arbs. will make it rediculously easy): the fact that the AI keeps spamming huge armies of peasants-like troops (vanilla archers, spearmen etc.) in the vanilla version makes it even easier. But, on the whole, I normally don't find myself trying to limit my style of play as much while playing MTW when compared to RTW.

[ichi]

The rule here seems to be that you play the game the way that makes it the most fun for you.

I play with the game set on Hard and units set to normal size. I fight every battle (with setting always Fatigue on, Ammo Limited, Clock turned off), I usually start in Early and play GA.

Some ideas that have been thrown around over the years here include:

As a Catholic faction, be a good Catholic. Try to crusade if your faction is able to, try to avoid excommunication, support Papal requests, etc.

Never break a treaty or attack an ally.

Governors must be Royal Knights (other variations include allowing other Knights).

Never ally with the French

As a Muslim my first priority is to Jihad to recover a lost province, then to destroy Crusades, then fight Catholics.

I also try to be a good King, removing gens and guvs with nasty vices, keeping happiness/loyalty high, buidling up my empire as much as possible. For me its not about beatin the code and winning the game in as short as time as possible, its about playing the game and having fun.

For example, I try to collect one unit of each type. I buy mercs and bribe rebels trying to collect an example of each type of cav or infantry. Little things that make it interesting.

ichi

[lugh]

I've a few

1)Governors must be RK or better.
2)Build only enough ships to cover your provinces.
3)Linked to the above, no trading buildings of any kind.
4)No mines and no agriculture over 40%. XL'x 40%farms can't be destroyed so if I capture an enemy farm, I'll raze it to 40%.
5)Offensive armies must be lead by a governor general, so heroes that get spwawned in a FMAA are out of luck.
6)Complete all GA goals, no matter how ruinous to the realm.
7)Help allies when they're besieged and you can reach them, even overseas if it means paying ransoms.
8)No killing off bad heirs.

9)In the battles, no whorish tactics like sitting your men on the eney's reinforcement vector.

[VeroImperatoreDiRoma]

Behave like an ally to allies,not letting crusades through etc.

When defending a province not to sit up at the highest point and pummel your foe with Arbalest

Next time I invade Burgundy to finish the French,accept the humiliating defeat instead of pressing the restart button on pc.(true event but not to be repeated)

and to quote ICHI play the game the way that makes it the most fun for you.

[The Darkhorn]

I have something I printed from another website ages go for "Ironman rules." They are pretty good and make it VERY challenging, almost impossible for landlocked empires. It's too much to type. I will try to find it on the web again and give you link.