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.

[Aenlic]

I completed my first short campaign using the Moors on H/H.

I did something which I suppose is a little unorthodox. I immediately allied myself with Spain and Portugal. I did it, as always, in steps. First I offered maps for maps. Then trading rights in exchange for cash, which they both seemed desperate to acquire. Then alliance for cash from both. With them allied for now, I sent one mixed stack to take Tunis then Timbuktu then Alguin. The rest of my armies went NE to take Valencia.

First priority in my towns was getting markets so I could build 4 merchants. The income from monopolizing the two gold SE of Timbuktu and the two ivory SW of Timbuktu is amazing. So, I need those 4 merchants quick.

After building a market in Marrakech, my next priority there was acquiring better ships. Both the Spanish and Portuguese early ships outclass the Moorish fleets. So better ships is a must before you go after either or you'll soon find yourself without any fleet and all of your ports blockaded.

I kept my diplomat heading east in southern Europe gaining trading rights as often as possible. I ignored any council missions which would have involved me in wars too early. It was income I wanted and eventually I racked up quite a few 500 florin diplomatic missions heading all the way east to the Turks and the Egyptians via the Byzantines.

With the income my merchants and trading rights I was able to rapidly build up my military tech and build a couple of really nice stacks at Valencia and Granada. While all this was going on, the Portuguese and Spanish and French went to war. The Spanish first went to war with the French over Zaragosa. Then the Portuguese went for Bordeaux and got into it with the French. Meanwhile, I'm happily planning the demise of all three.

I went for Spain first. I sent a stack of 6 ships to blockade Leon. Then I hit Castille and Leon simultaneously to begin a siege of both. With their armies up fighting the French in alliance with the Portuguese, I had no real trouble. Both cities fell, leaving the inconvenience of rebel armies for the Fench and Portuguese to deal with for the moment. I begin building another strong stack in Valencia for use in Zaragosa. I sent my Castille stack west toward Lisbon along with extra garrison units from Cordoba. I sent my Leon stack to get ready for an attack on Pamplona. I sent my fleet to blockade Lisbon and started readying a second fleet to head toward Toulouse in case the French became a problem.

Lisbon turned out to be lightly garrisoned thanks to their war with the French over Bordeaux. I took it easily after a one turn siege. I sent my fleet north toward Bordeaux. I had a new diplomat on the way to France to make overtures. The Portuguese owned Bordeaux and Pamplona and took Zaragosa while I was still allied with them and at war with the Spanish. I sent my Valencia stack to take Zaragosa and my waiting stack on the border to take Pamplona. My fleet blockaded Bordeaux and the Portuguese were doomed.

The French tried to blockade my Valencia port, apparently feeling threatended when I took both Pamplona and Zaragosa. I responded by blockading Toulouse. I had my diplomat ready and the French acquiesced easily the next turn to a ceasefire proposal coupled with renewed trading rights. Meanwhile, I had two stacks ready now from Zaragosa and Pamplona to go after the reeling Portuguese in Bordeaux. They made quick work of the Portuguese and I now owned 14 provinces and had destroyed both the Spanish and the Portuguese. The poor unsuspecting French were no match for my two armies in Bordeaux and Toulouse fell giving me my 15th.

Had it been a long campaign, I would have left the French alone and possibly even evacuated Bordeaux in favor of the more easily defended Pyrenees borders of Pamplona and Zaragosa. Then I would have continued east from Tunis to Tripoli and on to Egypt and continued building up my sea power to take on Corsica, Sardinia and eventually the Sicilians. The French are suprisingly easy to push around at about this point because they're usually involved in wars with the English and even the HRE by now. The trick would be to balance out war with Egypt to about the same time as the Mongols invade, so they are weakened, then sit tight and hope the Mongols get bogged down with the Byzantines, Egyptians, Turks or Russians. Then pounce for the 45 provinces.

[troymclure]

Ok some quick tips...

It is possible to elminate portugal in three turns! When i started as the moors i sent an army to the oporto province. I can't remember why exactly but i didn't declare war straight away, but waited till turn 3. I besieged their main city and was then attacked by the main portuguse force. During the battle i killed all the General's bodyguards, next turn i was greeted by the fact that portugal was destroyed.

I haven't tested it again, but this does mean that sometimes it will be possible to eliminate portugal with one battle.

Other advice, is to take iberia asap. It shouldn't be overly difficult, my advice would be too take out portugal first, then the rebel provinces (though not valencia, leave that and el cid till after the spanish are dealt with). Then the spanish, it shouldn't take too long, after that you are practically homefree.

[PaulTa]

It seems like most of those heavy hitters that moors are lacking early on are present later in the form of the best European infantry unit, the christian guard. Pound for pound, these guys are better than the famed Janisary heavy infantry.

If you can sit back and tech up a bit while developing a lucrative trading empire, you should be set for the later stages of the game with those christian guard.

[Debe2233]

The Moors have some great units available, I know in their weaknesses is says weak late armies but… yeesh what faction are they looking at.

The Moors come with some of the best late units in the game;

Christian Guard – High damage high defence not too difficult to get they're a perfect unit, come in mounted and unmounted varients make use of both.

Sudanese Hand Gunners – All Muslim factions come with these, they lack the long range of musketeers but they do have high damage, they come quite late but seem to mop the floor with the western equivalent.

Camel Gunners – in my opinion one of THE best units in the game, remember to hold fire at the beginning don’t let them waste their shots, get in close, flank and get behind and let the enemy have it.

To start off with wait for your first son to reach 16 (turn 2 or 3 ) he’ll appear in your capital, then send him off on a Jihad towards Portugal it provides all the command stars and chivalry a growing boy needs, with luck you’ll finish off Portugal by killing off all their family members then its just you and Spain.

Using Jihads liberally will give you some high chivalry leaders, using these you can build your settlements up in no time (0.5 + to settlement growth per point of chivalry) plus of course make advances in Spain, once you’ve taken the whole place you’ll be making a lot of money and be set to conquer anywhere you feel like, your far away from the invasions and close to the new world, what “Moor” could you want.

[grinningman]

*edit*

The latest version can be downloaded from https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/local...=156#linkid358

*end edit*

Original post:

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In a fit of enthusiam, I made reference chart for the Moor castle tech tree. Guilds (only the swordsmith's for castles) aren't included, but everything else should be there.

*snip*

For buildings that produce units, only the new units produced by a particular building are listed, but you can still produce all the previous units from that building series. For example, a citadel can produce Arab Cavalry, Desert Cavalry, Granadine Jinetes, Dismounted Arab cavalry and Granadine Lancers. If you find any mistakes, let me know.

I might not end up making a city reference chart, so I thought I'd upload this one now.
-----------------------------------------

[Carl]

Hey, loads of thanks for this. Well done .

[SCRIBE]

Are the Moors still able to deploy the Almohad Urban Militia?

[grinningman]

Yes, but they aren't the early game powerhouse unit that they were in MTW. They're built at a level 3 barracks building in cities.

[grinningman]

The latest version of these tech trees, which print out properly, look nicer and include a lot more info on all the buildings, are now here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/local...=156#linkid358

I had some free time on the weekend, so I did end up making a city chart. I also corrected a couple of mistakes on the castle chart.

They are now here:

*snip*

I've removed the link to the old version of the castle tech tree. As before, guilds aren't included.

[Slaists]

All in all, Moors are an enjoyable faction to play, after playing one of the Catholic factions.

Converting all your neighbors to Islam and not worrying about those marauding Inquisitors just feels refreshing (for a heretic like me). As a bonus - the faction campaign map music felt great to me (could be, it is the same for all the Islamic factions though). By the way, I played on H/VH setting with 2 years per turn.

Strategy wise, there is no need to follow the initial advice of the internal game advisor about rushing for Valencia - a poor, undeveloped castle with strong early defenders. On top of that, it is not on your initial Jihad target list, which means that taking it would drain your economic and military resources for quite some turns with no immediate reward. Meanwhile: the Spaniards and Portuguese might attack Cordoba.

Depending on your particular map situation, You might as well, declare a Jihad on Lisbon (a great cash city with few castle units in their garrison). This is what I did after Portuguese attacked my border fort. I guess, they did not have a family member in Bilbao, since the faction was destroyed after my Jihad. From then on - it was a bit of a marathon finishing off Spaniards in the peninsula (I did take my time with it).

Note, sending a bunch of your Imams into a Spanish province will convert the province to Islam fast and will boost your Imams' peity. This helps to counter efforts of catholic priests in your own provinces: 1) their priests tend to rush back to thier home provinces to counter spread of Islam, 2) higher peity helps your imams to convert your own provinces back faster.

Another side note (and a sad one): it seems Timbuktu gets flash floods some time in mid 1100-s. This means movement impairment for any units there, including your merchants (and this effect does not seem to go away. probably, due to a bug observed in RTW too). So, my advice, turn Timbuktu into a castle (cheaper to keep and no need to have a city there since the trade income (not counting merchants) seem to be low) and make sure you take West Sahara and turn it into a merchant factory to farm resources for both provinces. Otherwise, walking merchants through the desert from your mainland provinces will be a hellish experience.

[PureFodder]

I`m on my second campaign as the Moors now on H/H after the first one ended up grinding to a deadlock and a couple of trial runs, here's my thoughts so far.

Initial Building strategy

First turn you get the option to upgrade 2 castles, I upgrade both and set the other cities to make land clearance / ports / markets / roads to up income.
I set Granada to be my ranged troop production centre once the castle is built. Toledo will make foot troops and Pamplona, mounted units.

Agents

Send your spy and Imam towards Toledo to keep track of the Spanish armies. Send your emissary asap towards France then onto the Papal states. Making peace with both these factions will pay huge dividens, my lack of attention in this area on my initial attempt resulted in having a crusade called on me and being at war with all the Catholic countries at the same time.

Initial assaults

Force 1
Take all but one unit from Marrakesh with your heir and link up with the troops just standing around the desert, buy a couple of merc units and declair a Jihad on Lisbon. This means that half your troops don't pay upkeep giving a nice cash boost early on and you can get to Lisbon asap which is important. As has been mentioned, Portugal only has 2 family members, both in Lisbon, so battering them will destroy the Portugeese and make your life alot easier, plus you'll get a load of cash.
DON'T STOP, dump one or two units to hold Lisbon then send the rest north, along with some more Mercs towards Leon.

Force 2
Take your units from Granada, send them to Cordoba and buy some more milita units there. Once your Lisbon Force is roughly 3 turns from Leon, send this force out towards Toledo so they arrive at the same time.

Every time I've started as the Moors pre and post patch, the Spanish did the same thing. They stick all their troops into two armies and march off towards El Cid and the rebel provinces there leaving their cities practically unguarded. Once they see you knocking on the walls of Toledo they turn round, but can't make it back in time to stop both provinces being taken. Bye Bye Spanish. Now Iberia is left to you and the rebels

Force 3
I guess it's up to you, you can take the forces at Algeirs down towards Timbuktu and the money pot there, but there's absolutely no chance that anyone will take it before you. I personally send that force plus a few mercs to take Tunisia before dumping them on a ship and heading to the really poorly held tiny rebel provinces in Sardinia and Corsica. Convert them both into cities to maximise income, the mines help the income too. A word of warning; Post patch, Sicilly has gone all out amphibious assault on Tunisia and Sardinia so watch out for them.

[PureFodder]

I've now finished my campaign as the Moors so I thought I'd add a bit to my last post.

Firstly, the Moors have a lovely feature of having absolutely no use for stables whatsoever. Your Castle walls provide the same cavalry as you'd get from building a stables there and the awesome Christian guards are available at any huge city. The stables don't even give any experience bonuses so don't build them and destroy any in castles you take for extra cash. Also the main bulk of your armies will be made up of dismounted Arab Cavalry which are also available at any fortress. This makes restocking your armies nice and easy.

Infantry
Spears spears and more spears. For the early and mid game your infantry will consist entirely of spearmen. Berber spearmen make up the main bulk of early armies and will take massive casualties whenever used, but they're cheap, easy to train and will hold up the enemy long enough for you to get round the sides and back of them to kill them.
Nubian Spearmen have the exact same stats and costs as Berber spearmen but lack the good stamina and fighting in desert bonus that the Berber spears have, making them an utterly pointless unit for the Moors to have.
Dismounted Arab cavalry are far better as they are well armoured but still you should expect decent casualties whenever you use them. These are your best troops for taking and defending castle walls.
Lamtuna spearmen do alot better in melee than their stats seem to indicate but get destroyed by archers as they have little in the way of defence, so be careful with them and they can excel.

A milita drill square in a large city will get you access you your first of two heavy infantry units the Urban Militia. Well armoured, cheap and free upkeep in large cities where they are trained makes them a very useful unit. Good against enemy spearmen and light infantry but lacking the offensive power to challenge good heavy infantry and win.
Finally you'll get a citadel, upgrade to an armoury and you get the Dismounted Christian Guard. An excellent heavy infantry unit that can go toe to toe with pretty well any infantry unit, 16 attack and 22 defence. Make loads of these and you won't regret it.

Missile troops
Sudanese Javelinmen are your entry level missile troop, bad in melee and far less useful than your javelin throwing cavalry, generally not worth it.
Desert Archers are a long range archer unit that are great for defending walls as they can fire flaming arrows almost as far as longbowmen with good damage for an early archer unit (just higher than longbowmen). They do suffer from quite a high trajectory of fire meaning missed shots don't hit other people very often. Terrible in melee and poorly armoured though, so they need protecting.
Crossbow militia. Made in barracks in small cities, ok damage, surprisingly small range and terrible in melee. Not a great unit.
Peasant Crossbowmen. Do NOT confuse this with the peasant crossbowmen that some Catholic factions get. These guys are great. Same long range as the Desert Archers, a very flat trajectory and a missile attack of 12. They are like Merc Crossbowmen with slightly lower defence and half the upkeep and recruitment cost.

Cavalry
Arab Cavalry. Cheap fast light cavalry that are very handy at killing, routing or simply disrupting enemy archers while your Javelin cavalry kill things.
Tuareg Camel spearmen. Actually make very good early game heavy cavalry. Generals bodyguard units will destroy them but against light cav, mailed knights and infantry they are lovely. The best bit is they are trained at a Caravan stop which can be made in any castle, only costs 1200 to build and increases trade in the settlement. The downside is they are financially crippling, with a whopping 300 a turn upkeep costs (they only cost 600 to train in the first place) so only train them when your are gearing up for an offensive.
Granadine Lancers are available at any citadel and are quite good heavy cav. Much better than your Camel Cavalry and with a lower upkeep cost.
Christian Guard. A great heavy cavalry unit, high attack, charge and armour make these guys invaluable. Same upkeep costs but slightly more expensive than Granadine lancers. Best bit is they can be recruited from any huge city, so with Citadels making lancers and huge cities making Christian guards you can very easily make and retrain your heavy cavalry armies.

Missile Cavalry
Desert Cavalry. These Javalin throwing cavalry can gut most western Catholic armies before they have a chance to fight back. Run them round the back of their formation while your arab cavalry disrupt their archers and lob Javelins into the back and sides of the General/Heavy cav/heavy infantry. Fast but vulnerable to missile fire and melee they take quite a bit of micromanaging to get the most out of them, but the results are worth it. A word of warning; Spain and Portugals Jinetes outclass desert cavalry in every respect and will massacre you so keep away from them!
Granadine Jinetes. Exactly the same as desert cav but with some armour, still not as good as Jinetes though but against French, HRE, Milanese, Venice, English, Scotts and Papal armies they shine, provided you can kill or occupy the enemy archers.
Granadine Crossbow Cavalry. If you can get a citadel well before gunpowder these are a relatively useful unit to have. Use them in a similar way to your javalin cavalry. Slower firing but with much more ammo they can happily sit behind the enemy formation slowly killing their heavy cav/infantry. Fast enough to escape from most cavalry attacks too.

Camel Gunners
These are good enough to get their own section. Make sure every citadel you own has a Caravansary asap. The building cost 3600 to make and only building you before you can make them is a caravan stop. As mentioned they also up your trade income. So the entire tech tree required to make one of the games greatest units costs a mere 4800 to complete, takes 6 turns and will eventually pay for itself .
You can make one unit every 2 turns, they cost 1180 to make and have an upkeep of 300 a turn. If they cost twice that they'd still probably be worth it. They have long range shots that drop the enemy morale quickly, they have a missile attack strength of 16 and can easily flank round the back and sides of an army to hit their weaker rear armour. An almost flat trajectory of fire means that when shooting at a unit near the middle of an enemy formation even if they miss they will almost certainly kill something. The are best used with fire at will off to conserve their 20 shots to do the maximum damage to the enemy army. They aren't good in melee, but that's unlikely to matter as they have a great range and any enemy cav that attacks will be under constant high power demoralising fire as they chase them and if they manage to get into melee combat the camels cause fear to the horses. If you can afford it I reccommend 6-8 units per army.

Artillery
Pre gunpowder you get the Ballista, catapult and Treb just like everyone else.
Gunpowder gives you the Bombard, the Grand Bombard and the Cannon. Your selection may seem limited, but these are enough for blasting walls down and defending bridges. The role of anti-personel artillery is more than capably handled by you camel gunners.

Stuff I didn't use
It took me ages to be bothered to tech up to make Handgunners and Sudanese Gunners, but as camel gunners have the same shot power as them, longer range and the ability to hit the sides and rear of the enemy formations it didn't seem worth it.
I was never given the opportunity to make Hashisham infantry but they seem quite similar to Dismounted Christian Guard but have 30 units with 2 hitpoits instead of 60 units with one.
In custom battles you can get Dismounted Tuareg but I've never seen them in the campaign so I figured they were partially removed from the game (the last thing the Moors need is yet another spear infantry unit).

Tactics
These tactics are based on fighting the armies found in western Europe which is pretty much the only type of army I fought against (France, Milan, Venice, Sicily, Denmark, Papal states and Scotland). Spain and Portugal died too quickly and with too few battles to really see how to fight them and I never went into the holy lands except to take Jerusalem (which was in the hands of the Danes)

In the early and mid game an all out melee brawl in the middle of the map will get your armies very dead. On the open field deploy your infantry and archers as close to the back of the battlefield as possible this gives your cavalry extra time to demolish the enemy, your light and heavy cavalry at the front in the centre and your javelin cavalry at the front to either side of the melee cav.
Use your cavalry to charge and kill the enemy archers first. I either spread them out into a long line and charge head on into the front archer rank, kill as many as possible before the front rank of spearmen can get to the rescue. I've also has success using a tight formation and charging from the side of the archers as this way when they run away they don't head towards their waiting spearmen. Also do this to any artillery they have.
Once they're dead send your Javelin cavalry round the sides to hurl pointy stick death at the general and any cavalry they have, then any remaining ammo can go into the backs of their heavy infantry.
Now move your heavy cavalry round the back of the enemy and wander your archers and crossbows (supported by your spear line) into range and give the enemy a good blasting. If the enemy formation decide to rush your position, let them come while constantly harrassing them with your cavalry. Again, concentrate melee cav on any archers, and Javelin cav on their cav followed by their heavy infantry if you still have any ammo left. If the enemy make it to your spear line charge them into melee and hit your cavalry into their backs. Generally the enemy will be routing en mass just about now.

In the later game replace the archers in your army for as many Camel gunners as you can afford and replace all heavy and light cavalry with Granadine Lancers and Christian Guard. Make sure you keep a decent number of Dismounted Arab Cavalry as bait to make sure the enemy is always aiming their formation towards these guys and not concentrating on your cavalry. Add some Dismounted Christian Guard to the mix so you can pummel the enemy if they manage to get into melee. They're also very useful fighting on the streets during siege battles.

Timbuktu
Make sure you take this and Arguin to the west of it. To find it select an army and tell them to move to the bit of green land to the south of the massive dessert, the arrow to it will show you the only way they can get there and highlight that it'll take about 6-8 turns to get there. Before America is discovered you can't sail there apparently.

Expect a decent defence garrison too (8-10 units i seem to remember). To get to Arguin go west of Timbuktu til you hit the sea then go North a bit. The two gold mines in Timbuktu earn 1400 a turn with a Mining network. A simple mine in Arguin earns 400 a turn. I had a merchant on every trade good and mine in these two settlements and between the 8 of them (3 mines, 4 Ivory and one slaves) they were pulling in 3561 every turn (cost of 4400 to train them all). This is how you can afford all those lovely Camel gunners .

General advice
If you go my route taking western Europe keep a diplomat next to Rome to drop a few thousand gold on the Pope when you sack a Catholic settlement. You don't want a Crusade called against you, especually when the crusading armies can get there in 2-3 turns. If you look like loosing a settlement to a huge army, sell every building you can, retreat out of it and sell the settlement to the Pope for a few thousand gold. They will most likely carry on the attack and in doing so become enemies of all the catholic countries, slowing down their offensive against you. Also keeps the Pope from setting crusades against you.

Expect to see Sicily in north Africa if you have the patch installed. It's well worth going and crushing the Sicillians as they will cause you alot of strife. It also provides a nice launch pad to go take Italy. I found it quite easy to grab france and slowly grind my way through northern Italy. If England or Scotland has taken all the provinces in the British Isles then a co-ordinated assault with a couple of armies and some garrisoning troops can take the whole place very quickly. The AI won't station much in the way of a garrison there as there are no bordering enemy armies for it to worry about. Land one in London and one in Edinburgh and you can take the Island in 4 or so turns, before the computer has time to reinforce itself.

Egypt seemed happy to totaly ignore me and went off killing the Turks and Byzantines and were almost matching me in populace, settlements and army strength for the entire campaign.

Jihads are great. Find a Jihad target that you were going to take soon anyway, send an army off to capture the place. Just before you fight the siege battle to take the jihad target, take every general who can amass an army of 8 units just out of their settlements and join the Jihad. Take the city and each unit in a jihad army will now have an extra experience level. You also get about 3000 florins bonus for a successful Jihad and you general gains a load of Chivalry, which means you can get to the Huge cities/Citadels faster.

I hope this has been of some use to someone and my hangover hasn't resulted in a complete breakdown of spelling and grammer.

[IvarrWolfsong]

PuerFodder,

That was ne of the clearest and most concise guides I have read here! Very nice work.

[Gingivitis]

My winning campaign also saw me mopping up Europe and leaving the rest of North Africa alone east of Tunis. For some reason I really wanted Tunis and every time I started a game Sicliy got there first, so I decided to call a Jihad there and was able assult it the the same turn Sicily landed there. I kept that army there after turning it from a castle to a town and Sicily never stepped foot there for the rest of the game. With the part of North Africa that I controlled completely peaceful I only had one battle front the whole game. Add the resource jackpot of Timbuktu and Arguin and I was basically able to expand as fast as I could build troops.

[Nepereta]

my Moor campaign so far consists of beelining for the 2 saharan territories asap. Meanwhile I have just been maintaining good diplomatic relationships with everyone I see. One diplomat is currently passing the alps having made friends with the portuguese, spainish, french, milan and english. Gonna try and make good friends with the Papists if that some how helps.

A little hint with timbuktu is get it in order (green face) prior to building merchants. Even if that means lowering taxes. I find yellow and blue face cities tend to generate negative trader traits. Each merchant is bringing in 300 or so from the get go on the gold and ivory.

Also to get your soldiers back its a good idea to use a jihad to tunis and rush your troops home using that and the roads.

The portuguese war decced me by virtue of a failed espionage attempt on there part. I used this to seize Lisbon which was undermanned and the El Cid territory ( which was upgradable to fortress straight away). Portugal are sitting in pampolona.

A good way to get heavier ( read marginally heavier than weak spears) city assault troops is to make use of the sahara ( saharan tribesmen) and also make use of jihads Using the jihad you can get Ghazhis and a peasant shock troop Muutwa'Ekekeke'Ptang! ( all these light infantry units have really low upkeep and are ultimately expendable.

Troops I use in the early game:

Saharan Tribesman ( Light infantry swordsman) good v weak spear types. You can pickup 3 or 4 of these units during the Saharan campaign.
Ghazis ( Light infantry axeman) good v weak spear types. Purchase cheap in large numbers during jihad. ( cheap upkeep)
Muutwa ( Fanatics) good flanking junk unit. ( Massive attack value). Purchase cheap in large numbers during jihad. ( cheap upkeep)

All of the above will disapear under a cav charge.

Spear Militia pretty rubbish especially if you ever played Italian at some point. Expendable meat wall.

Desert Cavalry: javalins ftw ( seriously use these to strafe command units from a couple of sides)

Desert Archers: not as good as longbows but v cheap. A number of these dudes will help a fair amount.

Arab Cav: don't think they are mailed knights they aren't. Skinny spears use these for flanks and rear attacks they run down light inf and archers handily. They also don't fare too well v jinnettes which is a little sad.

Basically compared to european games each fight has relied on hideously large stacks overwhelming heavier troops with sheer numbers. Expect to be using you generals more at the hard end to break up the harder units.

The dhows are a little weak looking. Consider getting war galleys for your navy?

Keep you main city growing as quickly as possible. Its not that far off large city == urban militia ( your godsend infantry unit). Go all out on farm upgrades and city hall upgrades.

[tequila]

Just a quick note. If you are playing on Hard or VH on the strat map, DO NOT GO EAST as the Moors --- at least before you take all of Iberia. Taking Tunis will just bog you down in a neverending war against the Italian powers --- Sicily, Venice, and Milan, who post-patch go crazy for North Africa. Even worse, after I took Tunis I foolishly launched an island invasion to Sardinia, where my armies were assaulted regularly by massive full-stack Italian armies. The Sicilians in particular were nasty --- swarms of Norman Knights, Muslim Archers, and Dismounted Norman Knights that made mincemeat of my Lamtuna and Berber spearlines (only massive doses of javcav saved me). They got so bad that I eventually conquered Palermo and Naples to destroy Sicily, which has alleviated the problem somewhat as Milanese and Venetian armies are nowhere near as challenging. This has probably been the toughest M2TW campaign I've had so far --- gotta admit it was fun as hell, though.

Also on VH, expect to see regular invasions of English and even Scots from the North into Iberia. Plan naval allocations accordingly.

[Nepereta]

thanks for the FYI tequila, this is my first new game since the patch on an earlier pre patch game that I loaded post patch playing as Venice I noted sicily island hopping. Which is a vast improvement on the usual Sicily hitting bologna in turn 30 or 40 which was pitiful imo.

[tequila]

No problem, I was quite surprised to see massed Italians outside my walls, especially with the quality of the Sicilian troops. Very nasty surprise when my first full-stack army (made up primarily of Berber spears, Desert Cav, and Touareg Camels) was utterly destroyed by a half-stack of Norman Knights, Muslim Archers, and Dismounted Normans. Those Dismounted Normans pack a punch, and Muslim Archers shredded my Desert Cav like paper when I trotted them out there unsupported (which made it so much sweeter when I later used Christian Guards to crush the little bastards in an avalanche of steel).

I would advise going full bore to conquer Iberia first and foremost. This will give you the safe haven and the economic foundation to do whatever else you want to do. What really killed me was having to conquer the Spanish and Portuguese (still haven't finished the latter, they are clinging to a citadel in Toulouse) at the same time fighting off British/French invasions of Iberia AND contending with the Italians. A major cost factor in trying to do that was maintaining a massively farflung empire that required massively large fleets to safely convey my troops from Iberia to North Africa/Italian islands/Sicily, never mind fighting off constant blockades of my crucial port moneymakers. Constant naval battles against all the Italians and the French in the Med was both extremely expensive and had no guarantee of success.

[Nepereta]

did you ally all the italian factions prior to all this going off? My diplomatic policies ( in every game bar the first as english which was of mixed success because I practiced a great deal of catholic killing) are based around allying everyone and let them do the aggreement breaking. It makes them appear dishonorable and hence potentially gives them more problems because the other factions should trust them less.

Until in theory all aggresor factions become inherently venal and their word isn't worth a damn and they just get caught up in an endless cycle of war with each other.

[tequila]

Didn't really bother with diplomacy. On VH all the AI factions are rabid dogs out to get you.

[invalidopcode]

When playing as the moors, be very careful about auto-resolving battles. I found that some battles that should have been guaranteed wins turn out to be devastating loses. I guess I attribute it to the fact that the game does not properly assess the advantage of the moorish army (i.e. mobility).

I also want to second the battle strategy mentioned already. Harass the enemy with the mobile archers, spear chuckers, and camel gunners (w00t!). Then when the ammo is used up, use them to attack the enemy archers/crossbow from the rear and side. The whole point of this is at best, to demoralize the enemy so he turns and runs, or at worse, kill enough off to make it easy for your infantry and mounted units to clean up.

As a side note, make sure you use your camel gunners on the most heavily armored unit in the enemy stack and from the flanks. They appear to run out of ammo pretty quickly. Concentrate gunner fire on a single unit at a time to try to "encourage" them to run away, run away....

Early on I was having trouble playing the moors because I kept on trying to go toe-to-toe with the European infidels. However, once I switched to these tactics the battles got a whole lot easier!

[tequila]

Let me second the enormous effectiveness of camel gunners. I just started buying these bad boys, and in every single battle I've fought with them (mostly targeting heavy armored Western units, mostly General Bodyguards and Dismounted Feudal/English Knights), every camel gunner unit has had 150+ kills at least, and I don't use them to chase routers. You don't really notice how effective they are until you see the enemy line thinned out halfway into the battle. I mostly use them as recommended by others above: string them out in long range on the flanks and enfilade the enemy line. Note that if enemy cav gets at them, these guys are still meat --- the scare-horses feature can't make up for their lameness at close range. But they are well worth that risk. One unit in a massive battle that destroyed the last hope of Sicilian independence had 355 kills.

[Nepereta]

what year to camel gunners come out? in all the total war series I tend to find when I hit the 1337er units the competition is pretty much dead and the game is a forgone conclusion. I wish we could select different times to start the campaign like in some of the earlier games.

[grinningman]

I've posted another updated, and probably final, version of the Moor castle and city tech trees. They look nicer, have more corrections and more info than my previous ones. They should also print out correctly (unlike the previous versions). They can be found here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/local...=156#linkid358