England

[Agent Miles]

This post applies Kobal2fr's guide for Generals/Governors and Davybaby's Guild guide to a long campaign for England (VH/VH). In addition, I have added some of my own tips as well.

Always occupy the initial conquered cities to increase the General's chivalry and keep the starting population. Set the 7 cities in England/Scotland/Wales/Ireland to low taxes ASAP to increase the Governor's chivalry and to promote population growth. Edinburgh, York and Nottingham need to grow quickly to gain Guilds.

Edinburgh-Put a Governor here with Chivalry 5+ once you have one, so that you accrue points for a Crusader Knight's Charter house. Join the Crusade to add more points.
Dublin-Build a brothel for training spies. I put this in faraway Dublin to prevent accidentally sending a General there who might then become a boozer. Use enough spies as scouts to see all of your targeted enemy provinces as possible. Know your Foe.
Nottingham-Put a Governor here with Chivalry 5+ too, so that you accrue points for a Woodman's Guild. Train archers to aid in this.
Inverness and Caernevon-Convert to a city to gain a merchant.
York-Put a Governor here with Piety 5+, so that you accrue points for a Theologian's Guild (TG). Have the starting princess marry an Englishman (not a French Prince) with high piety for this. Build churches, but wait to make a lot of priests until the TG can be made.
London-Eventually build Academia buildings, a city hall, all merchant buildings, farms at least +2 and a military academy.

New family members travel to York and then London. Each trains a priest (piety +1) at York and gains another piety +1 from TG. Once in London, the young royals get a chance for Intelligent, Mathematician, Prim, Upright, and Academy Trained with ancillaries of Academic Adviser, Money Counter, Overseer, and Scribe.

Governor's can also be sent on quick missions to build nearby watchtowers. You want to have none of your realm or coastal seas covered by shadow unless it is the southern deserts of Africa. Specifically, you want early warning of Spanish or Portuguese fleets coming from the SW and Danish fleets from the east.

My English field army consists of the following:
A General, 1 gate busting siege device, 6 cavalry, 6 infantry and 6 archer types with a spy and a priest.
The cavalry start as Royal Knights, but are then replaced by Crusader Knights. England usually gets Templar's. With the Guild HQ, the Knights are level 2.
The infantry start as Militia Spearmen. I upgrade their armor to silver shields. These get replaced by Dismounted Knights and eventually Swordsmen. The Gallowglaich mercenaries are also useful early.
The archers start with longbowmen and progress through their upgrades. With the Woodsman's Guild HQ, the archers are level 2.

I deploy the infantry line in the center behind stakes if in the defense. The archers are split into two groups of three on the flanks, with two in front and one behind. These move forward and engage the enemy and eventually fall back to the outside, not to the rear behind the infantry. That way the archers can fire into the flank of an attacking enemy or switch to swords and attack the rear of anyone engaging the infantry line. The knights are also split into two groups of three and form outside the archers in column. These advance to attack the enemy in the rear, enveloping their force. The General goes where needed.

I also make a reserve National Guard Army:
One Governor, 6 Merchant Cavalry, 6 Militia Spearmen with silver shields and 6 Militia Archers level 2 with silver shields. Each group of units garrison a Huge City that can maintain them for free. These can be used in an emergency. I eventually have 1 in England (London/York/Caernevon), 1 in Scandinavia (Arhus/Oslo/Stockholm), 2 in Iberia and 2 in France.


On the first turn, move the army in Caen to the fortress. Train Royal Knights and sell all the buildings except the port. Move a cog there. Next turn, ferry the army to England and sell the port in Caen. Now have the Diplomat sell Caen to France. This will keep them happy for a long while. Leave one cog as a ferry in London and disband the other. Build a siege works at Nottingham and a ballista first thing. Train more knights. Take Edinburgh in one turn with the stack that has the ballista, wiping out the Scots. Secure the other cities ASAP. I did this by turn 15.

Send the Diplomat to Rome. When the Crusade is called, have the King join. Ferry the old King's army to Bruges and sack it. Sell all the buildings. Give this city to the Pope for an alliance. Ferry the King back to England and move his stack along the southern coast making watchtowers. He'll eventually die and you are off the hook for the Crusade.

Now station a Diplomat in Bruges to be envoy to the Pope. Give the Papacy 100 florins per turn and maintain this throughout. Train one more Diplomat to travel to France, Denmark, HRE, Poland, Russia, Hungary and the Byzantines for trade rights. The diplomat in Rome gets trade rights from the Pope and then travels to Sicily, Venice, Milan, Spain, Portugal and the Moors for the same. You can sell the trade rights and your map if possible.

The Danes will eventually attack Nottingham. They were no match for my field army. Send a field army to take Hamburg, then Arhus, Oslo and Stockholm. To move armies to Scandinavia I used one cog in Nottingham's port loaded with the land troops. The next turn, this can move to the northern coast of Antwerp's port and then unload. The cog was then disbanded and the army proceeded east. This way you don't have to maintain a larger fleet than the Danes.

To the immediate east of Hamburg is a forest. Build a fort north and south of this forest. Build a fort south of the river by the bridge west of Hamburg. Put one cheap unit in each to restrict movement into your new eastern empire. If an enemy lays siege to the fort, move the field army next to the fort and disband the fort's garrison. The enemy will occupy the fort the next turn. You can then lay siege to them and easily destroy an enemy army for the price of one garrison unit. Also, build a fort next to the amber resource icon in SW Stockholm province to use as a sort of "trading post". You can station up to 20 merchants in the fort/trading post, all working the amber resource. Put one merchant out in the open next to the amber south of Stockholm, so that all the merchants get the Monopoly traits. I was eventually gaining 10k+ each turn from the merchants alone.

Spain and/or Portugal will attack Caernevon. They were also no match for my field army. To invade the Iberian peninsula, I first sent as many priests as possible to convert the Moslem provinces and to act as scouts. These also quickly become cardinals. I keep these moving into Moslem lands all across North Africa. Ferry them to Caen and then march them the rest of the way. I built one fleet of as many Gun Holks as needed to safely transport the combat forces to the Leon province, one field army at a time. As soon as several armies were moved, the fleet was disbanded. March on the Moors. Use the new area as a base. When the Portuguese or Spanish get excommunicated take them out. The eastern border of Iberia can be secured with four forts closing the passes through the mountains to France.

This gets me lots of florins for many field armies. I was able to take out half of the French cities in one turn, then wait out the 9 turns the English Pope ordered us to get along. I finished the conquest of France in one more turn. Four more forts secure the mountain passes of southern France by Marseilles and my armies held the north. At the same time I took Marekesh and Crusaded across Northern Africa. I ferried a field army to Corsica and Sardinia. Finally, I built two more large fleets and took Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus while my field armies took Egypt and Mongol Jerusalem. The long campaign ended with 179 battles won and zero lost.