Turkish "Delight"?

[caravel]

A baptism of fire this was called...

Turkish/GA/Early/Normal

Managed to get to 1210,the Spanish launched a Crusade which sat outside my province in Constantinople.

Common, though not usually the Spanish. More often the French or the Holy Roman Empire. The trick is to let it sit there and ensure that if it does decide to attack, that you'll meet it with a strongly defensive force or futuwwas, turco foot, ghazis, saracens and armenian heavy cavalry among others.

Clever Spanish...put all their crack troops in another force and attacked Egypt,one of my most promising provinces.A good battle-my Sultan got up to 10 valour then fled and ended up witrh -1.

I'm not sure what you did, but you need to be wary about commiting your faction leader to battle. He should only be in the thick of it when the outcome is a foregone conclusion, otherwise he should only be out there pretending to fight. You can deploy your Sultan's unit at a decisive moment in a good flank attack and turn the tide of the battle. If this was a battle you thought you couldn't win, you'd have done better to pull your men off the field, though it doesn't always work out like that.

Shortly after, a mass rebellion takes place in the Turkish camp-due I suppose gto the Sultans fall from grace.

When you say a "mass rebellion" do you mean civil war or revolts? The sultans losing influence from the defeat may have triggered a civil war, though normal revolts don't usually occur if your provincial loyalty is under control with a 100-200 man garrisson, spies and happy buildings.

Can I salvage the situation? I ve been here before...and lost. When my man went up to 10 valour(we'd killed the enemy generaL) was there something I should have done?

Once he had gained 10 valour you could have sent in another unit to enage his opponents and then pull him out of there. If your general cuts and runs the rest of the army's morale goes with him.

[Tony Furze]

I think that there are actually 3 Crusades waiting in Constantinople:a German,an Italian and a Spanish.The first two are tiny, but the Spanish one has 1000+ men.

The Sultan turned up in Egypt because it has the most buildings,and (silly me) I forgot he was there.When the invasion occurred,so he got caught uCivil war- I was asked to choose between loyalists and rebels.

What do you normally do in this circumstance? Roll back the clock or patch up the kingdom? I m going to try both.

[Aenlic]

Sounds to me like you had a rebellion by your generals. That could happen if your faction leader takes a big hit to loyalty and you already have borderline (3 flag) generals. Spies help a lot with this. If you have a spy in the same province as an army, and the general is leaning toward rebellion (his loyalty goes below 3), then you'll get a message about his loyalty. When this happens, you can shift army leaders around until the disloyal general is under the command of some other general with a better loyalty and higher command. If you have no other options, pull the disloyal general back to wherever your king is and put him under your faction leader's command, in the same stack. You can also assassinate him, although this can lead to rebellion by itself.

As for handling the rebellion, that's going depend on what option you chose when the rebellion arose. It's not always the best bet to choose the loyalists. It also might not always be best to just choose based on who controls the most provinces. What you want to choose by is number of troops, if the number is uneven enough that you can quickly overcome the disloyal troops. If the troops numbers are close to even, then choose the side with the best, not necessarily the most, provinces. You could choose the side with the most provinces and suddenly find yourself without your richest and most developed.

In your case, it sounds like you should choose the side which doesn't control Constantinople. I know this sounds counterintuitive; but stay with me on this. Why keep Constantinople and thus tie down armies keeping the crusaders at bay, when you need all your armies to retake your rebelling provinces. Let the crusading armies do your work for you. They'll either tie down a bunch of rebels, or the crusaders will attack and whittle them down for you. By the time you get back to Constantinople, you'll have rebuilt your armies, and gotten some more high valor generals in the process. This seems a fair trade for giving up the wealth of the big city for a while. If the crusaders are strong enough to defeat the rebels in Constantinople, then they'll likely be much reduced in size, making them less of threat when you get there.

When you do get near Constantinople, if the crusaders are still there waiting outside; you now have a dastardly option to deal with both. Send in enough troops to make the rebels commit to battle instead of a massive force guaranteed to make them cut and run. Don't send in your valuable generals. Send in cannon fodder generals. The crusaders might decide to join in, and will appear as an allied force to the rebels. If so, call off the battle. If the crusaders don't join in, then send in your cannon fodder troops and take command of the battle yourself.

Now here's the tricky part...

Don't win. Just whittle down the enemy forces and then abandon the field and let them win. This is why you want to use cannon fodder generals. You don't want to lose the high valor and command points of your good generals. If you do this right, the rebels will still be in control of Constantinople with a much reduced army, and you'll have most of your armoy with all your good generals intact. The crusaders will then be more likely to take the opportunity to invade. Whomever is victor of that battle is then easily crushed, and you've killed two birds with one stone - eliminated the rebels and eliminated the crusaders.

Worst cast in the above tactic, the crusaders just wait it out and you'll be forced to send in all of your armies and your best generals for a second battle. Hopefully you'll have enough troops and good generals that the rebels will just give up without a fight. Now you're back in charge of Constantinople, with the crusaders right outside. That's where you were before, anyway. So, no harm done except the turns wasted fighting the rebellion.

Remember to use spies. Every game I play, I usually have one province pumping out priests/alims. I use these as my spies in other provinces, with the added benefit that they prepare the other provinces of the map for my eventual conquest by turning the populace to my religion slowly but surely. Over the course of the game, I put one of my priest/alims in every province on the map, including any of my own that aren't at 100% my religion. They keep me apprised of who is doing what to whom and where my chief enemies are going to be.

While the priest-maker province is pumping out priests, it is building up the tech tree toward assassins and spies. That's all it does - assassins, spies, priests and any financial benefit tech like farms and traders, mines, etc. As soon as the province can make spies, I make enough for every province I own. That isn't usually many more than 8-10, which is when I turtle up and begin building my forces for conquest. After that it's back to priests or alims, etc., and a few assassins to work on building up their valor for use against enemy. I usually only use assassins to destroy enemy agents and priests in my territory so they can't spy, and to take out the Pope when I'm playing a Catholic faction and the Pope gets uppity.

One more thought. Generally the AI will go after whichever faction has the most provinces with a vengeance. This is one reason to put cheap priest/alims in every province. You can keep an eye on the mini-map to judge how you're doing. If you can stay in 2nd place, then the AI will do a lot of your work for you by attacking the first place faction instead of you all the time. When the time is right, crush the 1st place faction. The rest should be a piece of cake.

Good luck on that rebellion! Pain in the butt, but they're fun sometimes.

[macsen rufus]

The 3 crusades in one province sounds like fun -- I'd be tempted to wait it out, depending on what are their targets?

If they're all trying to capture Constantinople, there should be immediate diplomatic ructions in the west once the stronghold falls. Three crusades can't all capture the same province, so there should be two civil wars and a major breakdown in international relations in the west. That may be more to your strategic advantage

[Sensei Warrior]

Macsen is right. It is not clear whether Tony meant the 3 Crusades were aimed at Constantinople or they were just hovering outside Constantinople because none of them were willing to attack his forces stationed there. Either way if he lets the Crusades play patty-cake with the Rebels and then goes in to mop up, like Aenlic suggested (very devious Aenlic, mucho clever), and all three Crusades fail, there will still be horrible ramifications in the West.

Aenlic, that is a very clever play. Most players knee-jerk reflex would be to back the faction holding Constantinople, but in this case the rebels would serve as a speed bump into the Turkish Empire. Enough to give Tony some time to get his Imperial House in order. I remember the thread on using rebel buffer zones, and this particular case it would seem wise as long as it doesn't become a permanent fixture like you outlined.

I see only one pitfall, albeit a small one. A simple solution to neutralize the rebels for the 3 Crusading factions would be to bribe the rebels. I have seen comp factions bribe rebels alot. If thats the case, the plan might have to be adjusted a bit.

My vote is to not back up to an earlier save. Rebellions can be frustrating, but they tend to be one of the factors that make campaigns memorable. Keep us posted, if played right you will have seriously undermined a number of Catholic heavy-hitters in your game.

[Tony Furze]

Thanks for the great replies!

The generals loyalties were fine before the civil war, so it must have been triggered by the crushing defeat in Egypt.

The 3 Crusades are sitting in Constantinople which is held by the Italians. I had a huge force in Nicea, who now have become majority rebels.
The Crusades are all targeting Antioch-my province.

Sounds like I should stick it out with the civil war...haven t managed to get back to this one yet...

Again, a really big thanks.

I lost and now I m out of it as my CD DVD Drive is being fixed...

I lost in the end-and now Im out of it while my CD DVD Drive is fixed...sitting on the sidelines...
just when the new Gold patcxh has been released too.

Later...

civil war followed by civil war followed by...more civil war!At some point I guess i should have backed the rebels.How do you know which side to choose when faced witha civil war?

[Sensei Warrior]

Later...

civil war followed by civil war followed by...more civil war!At some point I guess i should have backed the rebels.How do you know which side to choose when faced witha civil war?

If you followed Aenlic's advice you should back whomever will not gain control of Constantinople. Under most normal circumstances I back whoever looks to be a better King or whoever looks like they are going to get key provences or the most provences.

If I'm roleplaying then I might stick it out with King. I typically click and hope for the best. Usually I dont have rebellion problems until a point where I can opt out under a Lesser Victory.