The Moors

[frogbeastegg]

The Moors need to be unlocked before you can play as them. To do this you can either complete a campaign (on any difficutly, long or short setting) with one of the five starting factions, or you can edit the preferences file. To do this open your Sega/M2TW folder/data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign, find the file called "descr_strat" and open it with wordpad. Now find the section which says

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
end
unlockable
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

Change it so it reads

campaign      imperial_campaign
playable
   england
   france
   hre
   spain
   venice
   sicily
   milan
   scotland
   byzantium
   russia
   moors
   turks
   egypt
   denmark
   portugal
   poland
   hungary
end
nonplayable
   papal_states
   aztecs
   mongols
   timurids
   slave
end

[LordMorgan]

Tried to do this and it didnt work I guess I will have to play as the English first anyways.

[frogbeastegg]

Odd; it works for everyone else I've seen mention it. Did you make sure the file you were editing wasn't tagged as read only? Right click the file, choose properties and then look for the set of tick boxes near the bottom of the window.

[shifty157]

Just a quick little thing i wrote up for another thread. I was asked to post it here.

I played the beginnings of a campaign as the moors. YOu dont have to worry about Egypt because its far away and seperated by big provinces and desert.

The big problem with the Moors is that they have no real heavey units in the beginning of the game so youre easily outclassed man for man by the Spanish and Portugese. You do however start out with a fairly large empire (4 provinces, 2 castles 2 cities) and if you develope these correctly you can really start making alot of money.

Its a really good idea to open up two fronts as quickly as possible. One in Iberia against the Portugese and Spanish (though not both at once because youll be stomped) and one in the east to take Tunis, Sardinia, Corsica, and eventually Italy.

The other big problem with the Moors is that because youre muslim, none of the christian factions want to ally with you so its really only a matter of time before christian factions on your borders declare war on you even though you may be much stronger than they are. If you play well then this shouldnt pose too much a problem (seeing as how youd probably be declaring war on them before too long anyway) but it can be rather frustrating because the constant declarations of war dont really give you much time to breathe. This can get especially bad once youve conquered France and get into the heart of EUrope because suddenly youll find yourself with many enemies all across youre rather large borders.

As someone else said, jihads will be your best friend for the early part of the campaign because suddenly you can have a very large army and not have to pay a nickel of upkeep. Of course once you get past the Pyrennes you lose this ability because i believe you can only call a jihad on a province that is mostly muslim.

Like i said though. Youre big lack as the Moors as any real heavey units so unless you can manage to get your hands on some (as mercenaries or any other way) youll want to make sure that you go into battle with a sizeable numerical advantage. Its also generally better to wait out seiges because generally even if you could win the seige youd take too many casualties in the process leaving at best with a long pause to rebuild your army or at worst completely open to counter-attack. Getting access to artillery evens the ground somewhat in seiges so that you can open several breaches to gain the numerical advantage and avoid bottlenecks like ladders and seige towers that can often turn into massacres with such lightly-armored troops.

Basically you have to refine the art of maintaining the pressure of an offensive while avoiding major battles as much as possible. WHat this results in is alot of maneuvering of your armies and alot of hit and run tactics. You have to leapfrog your armies across the map. WHat i mean by this is have your armies work in pairs. One army will move in and seige the next settlement while the other goes beyond that settlement and harasses the enemy to keep their attention diverted away from helping the beseiged settlement because more often than not the strength of the beseiged force and the relief army is more than enough to overpower your seiging army. But if you can catch the relief army in the field with another army then you should be able to crush it. EVen better is if you divert the relief army and lead it on a wild goose chase until its too late and the settlement is yours. What can be good at this is armies composed entirely of cavalry because of their much larger movement rate on the campaign map. YOu can lead a diversionary raid and seige a city in the heart of their empire and then at the last minute (have a good spy network to keep track of all enemy movements) before the relief force comes to destroy your army lift the seige and escape into the fog of war only to turn up a turn later at the gates of another city. Just be very careful not to fall into ambushes and always know exactly where all your enemies are. If worse comes to worse and you get trapped then keep some cash reserves to hire up all the mercenary infantry that you can.

Fleets become incredibly important for this tactic as well. It is incredibly important that you have a powerful navy and that you keep an iron grip on the seas at all times. Fleets are the only area where you are on the same ground as the Europeans so it shouldnt be too difficult to do this especially because the AI doesnt seem to spam fleets anymore like it did and because you dont have to spend countless turns chasing defeated fleets across the map because they just wont die. Its a very good idea to keep at least one 'amphibious' army that you always keep at sea. That way in a pinch you can land the army anywhere that its needed to cause some havoc and generally piss the AI off and then just as quickly it can escape beyond the AI's reach. The other reason for a strong fleet is to blockade the enemy. Blockades are an incredibly useful tool at denying your enemy income and less income equals less armies which should help to even the field a bit so that you arent at such an overwhelming disadvantage.

[Quillan]

A jihad can be called on any province. As Byzantium, I played for close to 100 years with a jihad called against Constantinople, which was 100% Orthodox. 4 different armies died on the walls, and two more never made it that far.

[KARTLOS]

The javelin horseman can be lethal if used correctly.

I reccomend trying to take the iberian penisular as quickly as possible. I went all out at the beggining, moving all my troops from africa to the extent that i left algiers undefeded for a few turns. Following council of noble missions i took valencia and zaragosa. by the time i took zaragosa the army that took it was a full stack spain had also been planning to take zaragosa and so most of their troops were bunched in the north east. this meant that i was able to sneak up with a small army and take leon, and then dealt with the rest of their armies with my full stack before taking toledo.
portugal then declared war on me. rather foolishly as it turned out as i took thier two cities very easily by virtue of having larger armies.
i am guessing i had taken the entirity of iberia by around turn ten.
following this i invaded france (after they declared war on me) with most of my military force, whilst a small troop went off to take , corsica, sardinia, tunis and tripoli. i also conquered sourthern italy up to rome and london.
my expansion then run out of steam for several turns as it was necesary to maintain large garrisons on the towns i conquered because of the differnce in religion. i am now invloved in an intersting conflict with milan in italy (they have bologna and venice whilst i have genoa) and england in england. in both instances i have reached a technological impasse as the english are fielding armies with lost of unmounted knights etc, whilst the italians have their excellent milita troops.

taking all of iberia gives you a very solid position- because it is the edge of the mapyou are only going to face conflict on one border and thus dont need to leave many troops in the penisular. the same applies for north africa. i have never been attcked - in fact i have never seen the ai mount a naval invasion in any campaign- it mostly tends to attack what is next to it.

i seemed to make loads of money as the moors on h/h i think this may partly be becasue they have weaker(lighter) troops than most factions i have palyed with previously and hence cheaper upkeep.