England

[past caring]

Question for those of you playing the English campaign:

What is the best way to fight France without angering the Pope? My campaign so far has been concentrated on Rebel towns/castles in the british isles and then Bruges, Rennes, and Antwerp, as well as the Scottish. But, strategically, I'm eyeing the French properties of late.

Do I just trying to fight as much as I can, but obey his orders when he asks me to back off? Doesn't just attacking the French lower my relations with the Pope?

Ideally, I'd like to fight my way down to the mediteranian before beginning a crusade...

Almost certainly not the solution for all scenarios, but in my current (and first) game patience has proved to be a virtue....I'm up to around turn 50, have secured the British Isles and have Caen, Rennes and Antwerp on the continent. On reflection, following the obvious strategy of securing my "home" territories first may have been a mistake; though I grabbed Rennes early on, by the time I was able to turn my attention to Bruges and Antwerp they'd already been swallowed by Denmark. This has meant that I've nowhere to expand without incurring the possible wrath of the Pope. It may have been a better bet to go for the three continental rebel provinces in a blitz and then worry about my rear later.....

Anyhow, after a short campaign against the Danes in the Low Countries (short due to a "cease and desist" order from his Holiness) I've got Antwerp and they've retained Bruges. Been kicking my heels for a few turns, mustering a sacrificial army of peasants and town militia to send on Crusade. It has to be sacrificial 'cos the Danes will obviously want revenge at some point and whilst the French have shown no sign of hostility so far, I'm sure that it is, as they say, in the post. So I need to keep my best troops close at hand.

My relations with the Vatican are decent - we've got an alliance, I'm rigorous about burning heretics in my lands and have even sent my top assassin to pop a few Bretheren of the Free Spirit types outside my realm. But the French have an even better relationship with the Pope. Suddenly, they join the Crusade and, bosh, they're instantaneously excommunicated.

Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I've beseiged Angers and then taken it by way of ceasfire treaty in the very next turn (a nice touch in this TW instalment that in such circumstances, you also take the garrison) but the French are still excommunicated. Paris next or maybe Metz? Hmmmm.....

[Dalrogad]

I have been unable to ever take any city with diplomacy, regardless of any circumstances, and I have tried many times, with many factions and diplomats.

In fact, I usually find that I am lucky to even get map information, let alone trade rights. But I have seen a number of people posting about getting plenty of free territories with diplomats. Free territories? Are we playing the same game?!?! I would think this type of diplomacy would be even less successful in a harder game.... and my current campaign is M/M.... so I dont see how it is possible to accomplish that.

ALso, I finally got tired of the pope and his BS, so in my second campaign, once I became powerful, I obliterated the papal states, and assasinated a couple of popes in a row (lost about 6 assassins doing this, and this all took well over 10 turns), just to prove to myself my suspicion that the pope, and excommunication, appears to be of no real consequence. Even having gone so far as to obliterate and assassinate the pope and his people, I never had a holy war called against me, or anything else really - as I have read somewhere is a possibility.

I am unclear as to the use or purpose of the pope, and I have found diplomacy to be good for nothing but establishing trade rights, and occasionally, alliances (which appear to be useless, because I have never been able to convince an ally to attack anyone.)

[Kekvit Irae]

All posts must contribute some useful information, ideas or strategy to the topic in hand. Any posts which do not run the risk of being deleted in order to keep the theads on topic. This is not the place to chat about your campaigns, or to cheer on other players; you may do that to your heart's content in main M2TW forum. Strictly no spamming allowed.

AKA, this is not a board for discussion. This is a board for tactics and strategy. Discussions on billmen and their usefulness can be directed toward the main M2TW board.

[Flavius Gonzo]

I figured out during this weekend's campaigning something about cavalry that would have been critical to know earlier in the game. It is:

DON'T RECRUIT MAILED KNIGHTS WHEN HOLIBARS WILL DO THE JOB

There are a few key advantages that your light cav offers over knights:

1) They are much cheaper to recruit & maintain
2) They do *almost* as good of a job outflanking a "pinned" unit, though they die quicker due to the lack of armor.
3) Most importantly: they are faster. Holibars can actually ride down an enemy general whereas mailed knights our your own general cannot! Having a unit of Holibars on hand when an enemy king flees the field is really important. They also do a better job riding down infantry and archer types than mailed knights.

Either way, keep your cavalry mixed, a stack with many knights and no holibars is much less preferable and much cheaper than a mixed stack.

[Grimmy]

England is in a fantastic position with its multiple secure island provinces. You can sit and build up your infrastructure for as long as you wish without fear of invasion.

For income, England is trade dependant to a large degree. Much of England's trade will be sea-born with the north Europe coastal provinces. This poses a problem when it comes time to expand off the island home territories, for those who like to hold back and build up before expanding.

To counter this problem, it can be useful to plan a 3 step, phased expansion.

Step 1: Take the Danish homeland and the 2 provinces north of that first. You don't have to worry about wiping out the Danish faction at this phase, just take those 3 provinces, soldier them up well enough to ensure their defense and then pause to rebuild your trade infrastructure. Once the trade cash if flowing well enough again, then...

Step 2: have at least 100k in the bank and begin building enough of an army to be able to seize all the northern European coastal provinces from Antwerp to Rennes in one amphibious push. If you can manage it, one full stack of good quality troops for each province. If not then as much of a full stack per province as you can.

Your eastern flank is secure and trade will continue there. The euro coast is your next target so that you can reestablish your trade there, free of blockade and piracy. If you spend the time and loot to build the larger armies, even though the garrisons on the coast will be light, then you'll have enough troops on the continent to react and respond to counter attacks as well as maintain momentum by seizing desired inland provinces or seeking out and destroying enemy force concentrations without having to build crap troops to fill the ranks.

By taking all the coast at once, you minimize the amount of time that trade is disrupted and will begin to recover the costs of the invasion quicker.

Also, you should have nearly enough troops of good quality already on the continent to at least double the number of your provinces without having to rush in building and transporting new troop replacements.

If you plan on using the forces you land with as your main core all the way to finish, you also maximize experience gains along the way.

Anyhoo, this is the method that has worked for me, and given me less headaches in having to pick and choose when to build, what to build, etc as there tends to be sufficient income to just keep building.

Step 3: which I forgot to add earlier is, of course, the continued fight to secure the rest of the continent and battle on to victory. The only thing I'd caution here is to watch out for over expansion and remember to pause in territory acquisitions on occasion to allow for financial infrastructure building to catch up to army maintenance costs.

[Grimmy]

The demi lances that come with the Military Academy in cities make a good replacement for hobilars. They've got better armor than hobs and are still faster than knights so can chase down fleeing generals.

[Rosacrux redux]

Grimmy, I don't think this is a viable strategy. Playing England in my current campaign (H/H) I think the Angles are way too easy and can overcome any difficulty with little or no hassle. Just try to keep a good buddy relationship with the Pope, and you are going to own the continent in no time. My initial expansion was two rebel provinces on the isle, next the three coastal rebel provinces around Caen (Renes, Antwerp and the other Icantremember) and then I wiped out the Scots and secured the isles for good. By that time Germans and Milanese were after me. They both got excommed soon enough and a well-placed crusade got me Hamburg, while I took a couple Milanese cities and gave them... to the pope.

Right now I am in turn 130 or so, I have wiped out the Danes and got their lands, got almost all of the HRE, got half france from the milanese (they took it from the French, who have just three provinces in the south) and the only serious threat appears to be the Mongols - they sacked Byzantium, Egypt and Turks and have now three provinces in Europe, including Constantinople (and a rather impressive Crusade is on its way to the Big City).

I am wondering what a SO STRONG Mongol faction will do against the Timurids...

[Grimmy]

It is viable in as much as those that dont rush to expand will run into financial problems once they start.

Personally, I like to hold off expansion once I've got the islands secure until I have armor factories and the swordmakers guild so that what I produce as troops are what will be there to the end of the game. I dont like messing about with trying to upgrade units in the field or disbanding experienced troops because a better type is now needed.

So, for those that do like to hold off until they're building the best that can be built by England, taking the Danelands first and then rebuilding trade, then taking the French coast and holding until trade is rebuilt again, helps alot in avoiding going bankrupt with the more expensive armies.

For those that like to jump out and expand at the beginning...yeah, this wouldnt help them much at all.

I've never been one to play the TW games as a speed drill. Since I've no one to beat but the AI, I like to take my time and then break out with "best of breed" forces and that gets real expensive, real fast.

[past caring]

Well, I did as I suggested I'd do in my previous post - started a new game and went for a land-grab on the continental rebel provinces first. Basically, this involved taking Rennes with the army in Caen, shipping an army from England to take Antwerp and building another army in Caen to move on Bruges all in the same go.

It worked well, giving me a decent continental base (and trade) early on. I used the army in Nottingham to take York (which has the bonus of limiting Scotland's options to Inverness and Ireland) but otherwise didn't worry about the rest of Britain until I'd secured the continental provinces. When it came to it, Scotland still hadn't moved on Inverness or Ireland, so I took Inverness first then snuffed them out in a pincer move.

Admittedly, this was on M/M and the AI might be a little more aggressive on harder settings. That said, my first campaign was also on M/M and in that game the Danes had taken both Antwerp and Bruges by the time I'd secured Britain.

You'll need to use your king and all available generals to pull it off, as you'll not be able to take Antwerp in the first couple of turns without hiring almost all the available mercenaries - but these can be disbanded as soon as the job is done.

[Skott]

I did a bit of both strategies. I grabbed all I could along the English channel and also grabbed as much of the rebel towns in the British isles. I failed to get Dublin before the Scots did though. Then I sat and built up. I went for Scotland first. I made the mistake of taking too long though and the pope excommunicated me. The best strategy as to take Scotland with two armies all at once before the Pope realizes what you are doing.

Then I turned my attention south. Franze got excommunicated so I concentrated on them. I had an alliance with the Danes and THE HRE. The HRE stayed allied with me till the end. The Danes however attacked me after a while even though I married my princess off to them. Ingrats. No matter. I held Antwerp and they couldnt take it from me even though they tried a few times. The HRE and I worked together on taking out France. Once that happened game was over. I met all my victory conditions for the short game.

England is a good faction to start out learning with. Even if you make mistakes (I made quite a few trying to figure out some tatctics)you are in a good safe position to work from. Especially once you take out the Scots. Basically the strategy is Blitzkrieg, build up, Blitzkrieg, build up, Blitzkrieg. During build ups you build up your economy and troops meanwhile waiting for the Pope to excommunicate someone and then you push your armies forward as fast as possible. Dont fight open field armies. Go straight for the towns and castles. Thats the quick method anyway. If you want to fight open armies you can. It just slows you down though.

I'll come back to England again after a while when I'm ready to do a full campaign but right now I want to try some other short campaign factions first. I'm craving some variety right now.

[hotingzilla]

My strategy on campaign H/ battle VH was very simple. Tech up on cities to gain the most income. If you cannot maintain trade rights with a foreign coastal settlement, just take it otherwise it's no use. I didn't really bother with diplomacy or many other micro stuff. I focused 100% on military and a strong economy. Raised the best longbowmen, some armoured swordsmen and a few knights. I am at around 120 turns with over 60 regions (just not taking Jerusalem in order to play on).

Every turn I was sieging at least 4 settlements so it ended up sweeping up the map quickly. I sack almost every settlement and that almost always bring you 20k florins per settlement ( some can even reach up to 60k). I always try to engage an enemy before they come to besiege me. it's much easier to fight on open plains than behind walls.

For middle-late game I would suggest the following types of troops (listed in decreasing importance):

1. Retinue Longbowmen (+2 exp) (use archers effectively - keeping them alive; shooting the best target and on the best terrain and angle)
2. Armoured Swordsmen (these are cheap to maintain and well round good infantry)
3. Merc Xbow w/ Pavise (excellent meat shield)
4. Sherwood Archers
5. Demi Lancers (great flankers, just don't prolong melee)
6. Culverins, bombards, mortars (the AI taught me the importance of these units)

I personally wouldn't bother with Billmen and English knights (foot or mounted) simply because that they are weak and expensive to maintain respectively.

I got excommunicated soon after I had a strong income and force when I began conquering territory like crazy. The Pope doesn't stand a chance... buried their godly papal forces under arrows and cannon fodder..

[Grimmy]

If, for what ever reason, you are late in expanding (either got held up by a defeat and loss of forces or turtled) then a way to get established on the mainland without getting Pope problems is to target towns and take them in one turn.

Hit the coast with large enough invasion force and the arms necessary to break down a city wall and take it the same turn you set foot on their lands.

It also helps if you have a good diplomat sitting outside Rome to grease some palms with alms and buy your way back up the respect meter.

The same can be done with castles, land and seize in the same turn but those tend to be bloodier and potentially messy so it might be better to take the towns first and the castles in a follow on wave.

But, so far, if I manage to take a town or castle too quickly for the Popes messenger boy to reach me with the "back off or else" letter, then I get no grief for it.

[Test112345]

Two questions:

1)Where can i find the papal states to make an alliance with them?

2)How the heck can i join the Jerusalem crusade if im all the way in england? there is no way for me to get there!

thanks

[Test112345]

Also, since i can't edit:

how come i joined the crusade along with a bunch of other people, and we're all laying siege to the town, but nothing happens? no one is attacking...

[past caring]

Two questions:

1)Where can i find the papal states to make an alliance with them?

Roughly the equivalent of modern day Rome. You may be lucky enough to find one of their wandering diplomats anywhere, though.

2)How the heck can i join the Jerusalem crusade if im all the way in england? there is no way for me to get there!

thanks

You get double movement points when crusading. Moving your army next to the sea will also allow you to hire mercenary shipping. March your army through France to the Med then hire a boat. Simple.

Also, since i can't edit:

how come i joined the crusade along with a bunch of other people, and we're all laying siege to the town, but nothing happens? no one is attacking...

It's treated sort of like a "normal" AI siege - the beseiging AI army may decide to assault or may try to starve the defenders out. The defenders may decide to sally or they may not. If things aren't moving quick enough for you - hit the assault button yourself.

ps - general gameplay questions such as the above are better suited to the "Citadel" section.

[Skott]

One good strategy that I do is send a diplomat to Rome to camp the city. His main job is to grease the Pope's hands with gifts in money. 1,000 florin will get you at least one step up on Pope's view of you. Sometimes it'll give two steps up. I've gotten three steps with 2,000 florin. This is a good way to keep in the Pope's good graces whenever he starts to get upset with you. When your diplomat enter's his mid-50s in age then its time to send a replacement. Characters in this game tend to die not long after they reach 60 years of age I have noticed.

Crusades in this game kinda suck IMO. Too often the crusading army deserts before you even get near the target. Especially if you are traveling from northern Europe to the Middle East. I have found it better to just not go on crusade and give the Pope a small gift when he frowns on my lack of participating.

When attacking a faction a blitz type of strategy works best IMO. Build up and try and attack as many towns as possible in one or two turns and then stop. If its a nation with few territories you can take them out in one or two turns. Then grease the Pope's hands with a one or two thousand floring and he'll not get upset with you.

If you can get get your Cardinal elected Pope then you can do alot with him on the chair. He's more likely to call a crusade of your target of choice because typically he's liking his homeland more than anyone elses.

[Grimmy]

Something to keep in mind when considering Papal interferance with your plans of conquest.

IF you begin the tussle with high standings with the Pope, then you'll get a "cease and desist or you'll lose favor with the Pope" instead of "knock it off or you'll be discommunicated".

That can buy you the time you need to finish that wave of conquestering. So, as England, build up your Pope standings prior to hitting the Scotts and or the French.

If you get an alliance with the Pope, you max out your standings and that's a good time to start your necessary attacks on other catholic factions.

If you can't get an alliance just prior to attacking then it is a good idea to spend a few turns bribing your way up the favor ladder to at least 3/4ths the way to the top before launching your offensive.

[sapi]

The pope's really annoying me at the moment, but it is manageable ;)

I was at 10 on the pope-o-meter at one stage, then he tells me to stop fighting france. Of course, they attacked first and wouldn't accept a peace. 20 turns later, i get reconciled, 5 more turns later, i've got the same mission...and again, no way to complete it :(

[PureFodder]

Hi all.

I'm new to these forums, but have been playing the total war games since the original Medieval TW.

I'm doing the English on M/M difficulty on turn 90ish.

Firstly I assaulted York an Wales, sieging them, but not directly attacking to so I could keep the army in tact for the Scotts. Once the Rebels had been sorted out Scotland was assaulted and defeated(resulting in me being excommunicated, but with an aging king it doesn't matter too much as you'll get reconciled as soon as he dies) . After taking Ireland too I converted all of the castles in the British Isles to towns to make maximum amounts of money and plunged money into any building that will generate money.

In my game the French seemed much more interested in going South and East so I used the foothold in Northern france to take the entire North and West coast of France up to Antwerp off the rebels. This gives plenty of places to produce an army, so the British Isles can concentrate on funding me. The French repeatedly attack my settlements in France, but the pope has been doing a great job of stopping us from having any sort of propper war.

The Danes decided to assault Antwerp, getting themselves excommunicated. This allowed me to remove them entirely, taking provinces all the way to Stockholm. The Portugese did the same, attacking with an underpowered army, getting themselves excommunicated and allowing me to take the Pyrenees region.

The best way I've found to conduct a war with Catholic contries like France is to build up 2-3 large armies, typically 2 artillery, 6 Archers, 1 General, 1 Mounted unit, 3 Spears and 7 Heavy infantry. Get all armies within striking distance of cities then in one turn each one assaults a settlement, using the artillery to batter down 2 adjacent holes in the wals and any nearby archer towers. The computer will then stick a few units infront of the gaps. Now take your archer units one at a time and walk about 10m away from the hole in the wall, set them to fire fire arrows and shoot the defenders almost point blank till they run out of ammo, then bring in the next archer unit. The computer is too dumb to send units past the wall to engage your archers, so you can inflict easily 50-70% casulties to the defenders doing this before charging in with the rest of your army to mop up when the timer/ammo runs low.

Doing this will allow you to take a few provinces before the Pope orders you to stop, by which time the damage is alredy done. It's also worth noting I haven't shared any land borders with a country who didn't decide to randomly attack me.

[mercian billman]

I'm at turn 100 with the English and tried the turtling strategy for a long time. I even sold Caen to the French in order to help in my conquest of the British Isles. Everything was good until I decided to go on a crusade to Jureselam, the Crusade went well enough and ended up controlling Gaza, Jeruselam, Acre and Antioch, unfortunately after being in the Holy Land for 15 years, I was in deep debt, facing a problem with heretics and my troop numbers were dwindling. I was forced to disband my forces and sent my best general back to England which took about 15 years, in addition to this I had to disband half my troops in England in order overcome my budget defecit.

As soon as my general returned, the Pope excomunicated France and I crusaded to Paris, and used another army of 1 General, 4 Armoured Swordsmen, 2 Foot Knights, 6 Yeoman Longbows, and a Bombard to capture Rennes and Anger. Unfortunately the HRE managed to take Paris from me and kill my best general in the process.

[CharleyLFC86]

I've been playing on H/VH with the expanded gametime patch from the Org main page (which I absolutely love, as I like to take my time and not rush it too much. 1200 turns is a beautiful amount of time, heh) Anyways, my first goal as the English, as it was in MTW, was to secure the British isles, which I did so swiftly. I beat the French to Rennes, Antwerp, and Bruges, at which point the Danish began attacking me, probably because Hungary was completely dominating everything east of Denmark, and the HRE had become mostly Milanese territory. After a gruleing amount of turns to defeat the French; they somehow were recruiting at least 2 full stacks of armies every turn despite only holdling Paris, Rheims, Bordeux, and Angers, I'm facing Milan, the clear second strongest faction at the moment, second of course to myself in everything but financial. I'm about 125 turns in, I believe.

Anyways, I absolutely hate and despise the Milanese in this game. I don't know if other people have encountered the same thing, but generally a Milanese army is entirely composed of Genoan Crossbowmen, with a spattering of ridiculously accurate catapults and ballistas and the usual general's bodyguard (they have killed my general severl times now after only a couple barrages, which is incredibly annoying...). They also sometimes tow along one or two units of infantry, I think it's broken lances, which they rarely seem to use.

My problem is a cost-effective way to deal with these armies. They seem to be able to produce 2 or 3 full stacks of these clone armies every turn. My armies are generally made up of 5 units of retinue and yeoman archers right now, with the rest of the stack split between Demi-lancers and armoured swordsmen. I've found the most effective way of beating them seems to be forming a long line of battle with my cavalry, then walking towards them and engaging a massive charge, which usually crushes about 45% of enemy troops on impact and routs the rest. However, it's rarely cost-effective as to train 6-8 units of cavalry every other turn is taxing, especially when I need to maintain a strong prescence in Antwerp to fend off numerous attacks by the Danes.

I've tried simply matching them blow-to-blow with archers, but their pavises make the the kill ratio something like 7:3 in my favor, not nearly cost-effective enough, especially as their catapults, ballistas, and treb's absolutely devastate my expensive units, even when put on loose formation.

I've also found that unless I can overwhelm units of GXmen, they will inflict large amount of casualties on my swordsmen and cavalry. Has anyone found a better tactic at beating the pesky Milanese consistently with less than 10% losses? It doesn't help that my pope-o-meter sucks (that's probably my worst ability in this game, or perhaps stems on laziness of not interacting much with the Papal States...) and that the Milanese have a knack for stacking the College with their home-grown Cardinals.

[sapi]

When i was facing the Milanese, i simply used my financial advantage to overwhelm them with mercanaries, focusing my elite troops on the danes and the french. After i'd taken them out, i was able to focus on milan, which is currently dieing nicely ;)

[Von Nanega]

One good strategy that I do is send a diplomat to Rome to camp the city. His main job is to grease the Pope's hands with gifts in money. 1,000 florin will get you at least one step up on Pope's view of you. Sometimes it'll give two steps up. I've gotten three steps with 2,000 florin. This is a good way to keep in the Pope's good graces whenever he starts to get upset with you. When your diplomat enter's his mid-50s in age then its time to send a replacement. Characters in this game tend to die not long after they reach 60 years of age I have noticed.

As stated in the above quote, Get that diplomat to Rome quickly as possible.
Then I load up ships with three priests and sail them to muslim lands as fast as possible. They preach, get piety. This will help get them a cardinalship. I fort up in Cain untill England is secure. While you are doing this build forces and ships. (Your other ships are busy getting priests south to convert muslim lands.) When England is secure you are ready for the war on the mainland.

[Ethelred Unread]

I hadn't really done that and my standing with the pope is pretty low, but as previous posters have said I always take towns in one go so when the pope tells me to stop I can. I did try and send a dip to rome, but he got as far as northern italy then got burnt by an inquistor. There's also one near my lands but I've managed to avoid and family members getting burnt, just a few priests.

My strategy so far on Vh/vh has been to take as far as antwerp and wait until the danes get excommed as they usually do, ally with the milanese and help defeat france (who also in my game seem to like going south more), and try and take the british isles. As it's my first game, it's not going that well as I was very focussed at the beginning, should have had clear aims really, but i think i'll play it out and see how it goes.

I've also got a little colony in the holy land around aleppo and antioch from a too slow crusade stack, the problem with that is that the mercs are really expensive to keep, any ideas about how to prop them up?

[Braedonnal]

Has anyone found a better tactic at beating the pesky Milanese consistently with less than 10% losses?

I find that light cavalry does pretty well against all foot ranged units. This does take a lot of micromanagement as you need to charge and recharge until the enemy breaks but as long as you are willing to do that, it works very well. I even use them against the filthy Mongols to shatter their foot units and siege weapons. Just don't let them stay in hand-to-hand, they aren't made for it.

[Beefeater]

Second Braedonnal. Playing England, Hobilars are your best friend against the Italian crossbow/pavise militia units. To achieve consistently low casualties, aim for four units of light cav: two to draw or herd the missile units out of position, and two to attack from the flank once the missile units are engaged.

[CharleyLFC86]

It seems they've learned their lesson after I've been crushing their armies repeatedly now, and they've begun creating more typical infantry-oriented armies, which I can easily defeat with superior ranged units and tactics. Hopefully they won't switch back to assembly-line speed making Geonoese xbowmen, I hate them so much.

And despite only holding two cardinalships, one of them was extremely pious and has been elected Pope. With only a few major Catholic Factions remaining (HRE, France, Scotland, Portugal have felt my wrath), everyhting is looking up England.

[Iyasu]

When i've played England before, i used the first 10 turns to capture the rebel settelements of Bordeaux, Rennes, and Bruges in the continent while attacking Dublin. i made an alliance with France initially by marrying their princess (constance) to my faction heir (rufus) during the first turn. when i runned out of rebels settelemts to capture, ive began my covert operations against the french. ive trained spies and assassins in rennes, i used the spy to enter the french castle of Angers, then used my assassins to sabotage their chapel and kill off their priests! eventually after several assassinations, the Pope excommunicated them! so the french territorities is up for the taking. the strategy relied heavily on lots of saving and reloading. also it is better to have an assassins' guild on rennes for better effect.

just my two cents

[Sphinx]

Hiya, just adding my two cents here.

I played on Medium for both parts of the game and played a short game with England where the end goal was destroying the French. Since it is on Medium you can often get away with some things that in a harder game would be suicidal.

Anyway, like others stated, I concentrated on the main isles first. I left Nottingham as a military city as well as Caen but all other cities I turned into villages. I concentrated on the Scots last after taking out all other rebel factions. I never ransacked or exterminated the population on the main islands but instead just occupied the settlements.

By about turn 20, the Pope calls for a Crusade. I had one general who I didn't like much so I sent him on the Crusade with a small army. To my surprise, he made it to Jerusaleum in only one boat and so after getting a few more units attached to him the little army took the city. But, having them just sit there wasn't helping me much so I abandoned the city and turned south thinking I could go west across Africa and take some more cities now that the Army was quite large and even the Pilgrim units were seasoned veterans.

I found that sacking Cairo and Alexandria is very profitable making about 40000 gold off those two cities, money which I used to upgrade all of my provinces.
A little later another Crusade started and it went to Antioch. I took that same Army up there and then tried to sail them home because by this time the general was getting old. But, their ships were attacked and sunk.

As for the French I took some of their territories but the Pope kept telling me to stop. During those times I would just shift units and rebuild. By about turn 50, Denmark and Milan also posed a threat. They would attack me but I could normally stave them off easily enough allowing me to focus more units on France.

By about turn 70 the French were gone so now I might restart and try a larger campaign.

[PureFodder]

Having finished the long English campaign on m/m here are my thoughts.

1) The best thing I ever did was to turn take the whole of the Uk and Ireland ASAP before teching the settlements up much, then converting all of it to towns and using it as a money maker. The computer will almost never go for amphibious assaults, so you can leave it poorly protected and it'll finance anything you do.

2) Iberia is the best place to assault, possible even before taking France. It's easy to defend once taken and provides a great staging area for you to head towards north africa and into the non-Catholic regions.

3) The French may hate you with a passion, but the pope never let any attack by me or the french last more than one turn before threatening excommunication. This means all French aggression towards me got thwarted and any assaults against France required a mass assault on several provinces, backed up by artillery in order to take several settlements in one go before the pope could get involved.

4) Yeoman Archers can decimate armies, especially when backed up by armoured swordsmen. Retinue archers probably aren't worth the 9600 to upgrade the facilities, but the Sherwood archers are worthy (available through the woodsmen guild, great at killing heavily armoured troops and cavalry)

5) Mounted missile troops can absolutely demolish most English armies, but the English starting position means this shouldn't be much of a problem till the very end stages of your campaign.