Im a newbie on here but not to the Total war series, as I have owned and played the whole series, like a large majority here I expect. However, im no uber General and actually consider myself pretty pants and just manage to bumble through lol

Im on turn 125 playing the English and again, seem to have a completely different approach to others.

From day one I was put under pressure by the French in Caen. They would come and have a sniff, siege me for a turn or two before backing off and disappearing into the fog of war. I used this time to build up a decent stack of the mixed troops that are available at the beginning. My main concentration was the worrying fact that the majority of the british isles was owned by either rebels or the scots so turned all attentions in this direction. After being told to clear off by the rebel cities using diplomatic means, it was either force or nothing. Something had to be done as those damn heritics were worrying my townsfolk.

I bumbled an army together made up from troops from across the 3 towns owned leaving a minimal guard in each until I knew which, if any, would be seen as easy meat for a wandering band of rebel scum. Fortunatly after a good few turns, the rebels didn’t seem interested and more importantly my townsfolk seemed quite happy with little security and supervision. This enabled me to send my ramshackle army northwards to claim York. Taken within 2 turns the army turned west with wales in the sights. Slightly tougher but still no real challenge for my now confident general.

Diplomacy with the scots didn’t seem to work, they wouldn’t even be friends for a while as I figured a temporary alliance would stay and southward intentions they may have had and bide me time to build up my newly aquired towns. Fortunately they seemed content with trading so I sent my weary army over the irish sea to take Dublin. Again, easy pickings.

By this time my council of nobles and merchants guild had started to get a taste for continental life and asked me to take rebel towns of bordeau and one other (I forget which). Sounds simple but when the fog of war extends all the way up to my caen boundary, the first job was actually finding the towns!!!

After sending my diplomat in completely the wrong direction, I failed to meet the deadline imposed. This happened a few times until I decided that my council didn’t really understand the pressure they were putting my men under so chose to ignore them and concentrated on my campaign of taking the british isles.

This actually included moving all my armies out of Caen and Rhiens and shipping them over to back to Britain. France, as expected took the opportunity from this and marched on my two fortresses, easily suppressing the few units of militia I callously left barrackaded in. With my continental links now severed, I was able to finish off my British isles campaign.

As my towns were developing well (I find it suprisngsly easy to make money compared to previous versions) I took the fight to the dormant scots. A few guys in skirts couldn’t be too hard could it? After all, my all conquering army is now extremely battle hardened and confident. Well…. My complancy was my downfall. Those Scottish guys sure know how to look after their turf. Although they didn’t massacre me, I was sent home with my tail between my legs and a few broken bones. Oh and ¼ of my army left. Time to rethink. After a half a dozen turns sat mulling things over in York, I marched forward with a ¾ stack of fresh lambs to the slaughter. And slaughter it was. Now aware of my impending attacks the scots had hardened themselves, done a few extra push ups and were ready and waiting outside their door. In actual fact, they brought the fight to me as soon as stepped on Scottish soil and we had a decent battle in open ground. Embarrassed once again I returned back to york empty handed and bloodied.

Time to leave them alone for a while I think, so sent a faithful diplomat to Edinburgh to try and restore a few things to bide me some time for a rethink as my forces were now fairly depleted. Fortunatly my diplomat must have appeared arrogant enough to fool them into thinking I was still a threat and they agreed to a ceasefire and reintroduction of trade rights.

I left my Scottish neighbours alone to munch on their haggis, while I licked my wounds and concentrated on building up what resources I did have. If anything, it would shut the whinging pope up for a while who wasn’t overly impressed with my taste for catholic blood. He never really threatened to excommunicate me as I had quite a number of priests and cardinals by this point who were doing the lords work in the cities I did control.

This was actually a move that paid dividends as the relaxed scots, secure in their false impression I would leave them alone, marched northwards and took the rebel town of Inverness. This left them very overstretched and spread thinly. I seized the opportunity and within a few turns, I had a fresh army banging on the gate of Edinburgh. With a hastily recoiling pile of Scottish stacks heading back south to counter my offensive on Edinburgh, it was under my control before they even had the city on the horizon. Taking Inverness after this was a walk in the park and the deflated and broken scots fell easily before dispearing into the highlands and any official trace of the once mighty haggis eaters now in the past. The British isles was mine. And it felt good.

After the parties had died down, I was actually rewarded not long after with one of my cardinals being voted in as Pope. However, this little upstart soon forget who put him their in the first place and showed little regard for his English heritage as he condemned my march over the English channel to give the French some pay back for exploiting my poorly defended French cities. As enough time had passed that gunpowder had been invented, my generals seemed to get a little overexcited by the new technology and went a little overboard on recruiting bomdards and cannons. In hindsight, it wasn’t a bad thing as my show of flamboyance with the gunpowder arts was enough to scare the French into handing over both Caen and Angers with only the threat of offensive action.

A shrewd move to stay any reprisals by asking them to be friends again (my diplomat assured me he had his fingers crossed at the time) has given me a little time to strengthen these citadels into my main battle HQ of the mainland. Little do the French know of my future plans. I think the Spanish do though as they has sent an eager messenger to offer friendship and an alliance, which I accepted.

That’s where I am at the moment. Ive no doubt there will a be a few blooded noses on the horizon and I know my progress is slow, but im definitely enjoying myself.