I had 4 shots with Sicily early in the campaign with 5000 florins on the first three ceasefires. On the fourth ceasefire, I was happy to get 3000 since I was still at war with the Moors and the English. I did lose the starting General in defense of Marseilles on one of the defensive battles, but otherwise it seemed to work well. On the fourth war, Sicliy was finally excommunicated. My alliance with Rome and good standing finally paid off. I called a Crusade on Sicily and that seemed to have solved the problem. They remained distracted with Milan and Venice (which also seemed to keep Milan busy as well)
The Moors were a differant story though. They always seemed to arrive when the Toulouse garrison would send off reinforcements to Marseilles. I was lucky to simply get ceasefires, but I never did have to fight a battle to hold the castle.
The English broke their alliance thorugh my own fault. The Council had advised on strengthening Angers and I ignored the advice. On the last turn to provide the reinforcement, the English attacked. Paris was well stocked with the usual militia plus a couple of mercenary crossbows, two balistas (build this building as a priority, you will not regret it), plus a couple light cavalry and one unit of heavy cavalry. The Pope must have given a cease combat order because the English withdrew back into Caen. The army from Paris followed up and sealed the English in for a long seige. They weathered out the seige which gave me time to fill out the army with more castle infantry. The Pope never intervened (maybe the continuing tribute had a hand in this). Caen fell when the English finally sallied. They were crushed.
My initial expansions were Prince and company from Toulouse into Bordeaux, attacked, sacked, and converted to the urban line. The General and army (except a peasant archer) at Angers seiged and waited for a sally to take Rennes. The General and spears from Rheims oins the captain led army to attack and occupy Dijon. I had intended to then move onto Metz, but changed my mind. There really is not time to upgrade and develope before the HRE wants to take it. I redeployed and decided Bruges was a better target. I let the Bruges garrision to sally and the 4 spear, 4 cav including the general were sufficient. I also grabbed the rebel town of Zaragoza after Spain (or was it Portugal?) had softened it up to the point that there was only about 80 men left in the garrison.
That is the other reason for priests and diplomats. I use them as spies doing double duty. I find the chances of opening gates are not really a good use of resources. My spies are used defensively to help keep out the enemy spies (mainly in Touslouse, Mareilles, and Dijon)
You will notice that some settlements are attacked and others are seiged into a sally. There is always a play off between expending the resources to take the settlement quickly to balance the cash flow versus keeping the army intact to be available if needed. I always like to keep a force available near the English, near Marseilles and also near Toulouse. This requires florins to pay the men which also means slower builds to also maintian cash to quickly bulk up when the nearly continuous wars break out.
At some point, I had secured the borders of the French nation and stopped the southern boundary warfare. It was then on to take out the English. My final journey was into Iberian peninsula which ended the short campaign. I was never at war with the Scottish, the Danes, the HRE, and the Milanese. My 25 settlements were the basic french plus the low countries and related adjacant rebel held settlements except Metz, the English startng settlements plus York, the Iberian peninsula eliminating Portugal and Spain, plus a short Crusade into Cairo plus two other Egyptian settlements.
I took the advice of many of the other posts in this thread. The French are fun to play in the unmodified out of the box and fully patched game. They are fun because the combination of cavalry, weak missile units, and 3rd level castle infantry mean very even openfield battles. With the constant incursions, you will have more than your share of open field battles.
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