How to deal with the "showdown" effect?

[caravel]

Sounds pretty much like the complete opposite of me I simply can't deal with horse archers (nor with camels for that matter), but give me an army of billmen/longbowmen (or unless I'm not playing as England: [swiss]halberdiers/arbalesters) and you've made my day.

Horse archers have to be micromanaged. When moving them you have to turn them off skirmish or they'll do something stupid. You have to deploy them in lines by dragging formations, moving them into position at top speed by hitting ctrl+r and then waiting for the enemy to advance. Once the enemy are getting close they have to be redeployed again. Relying on the skirmish is a bit of a lottery, and is not recommended. If used correctly they can do horrendous damage. I often send Turcoman Horse or Szekely into certain battles alone. They spend all of their arrows on the enemy and then charge from all directions repeatedly. I've had some good successes with this and created some high valour units, and good generals.

Camels have poor morale, but under a good general can be dangerous. They only depend on the fort so whatever you build won't give them a valour bonus. A church a ribat and a grand mosque are the best things to build in order to improve their morale. They're cheap, so you should use them in larger numbers than cavalry, and begin by charging only weakened mounted opponents in the flank. Once they valour up they will start to show their worth. I've had a few veterans going in my current campaign that have decimate the Byzantines to the point of no return. They have got me out of trouble at some critical moments. Such as when my rulers Ghulam unit was Flanked by Byzantine Lancers, unable to extricate him from the melee, I charge them from behind with the camels and watched them rout.

I personally find the Irish to be pretty easy in VI actually. The easy access to spies in VI simplifies the divide et impera tactic, and both Kerns and Gallowglasses are pretty über.

I agree, the Irish are easy in VI once you know how. I rarely play them now as they're the easiest faction for me, apart from the Vikings, Mercians or Saxons of course. I used to struggle with the Picts but had a 60% victory with them a few months ago.

Completely agree It's more fun to be historically accurate than just creating an over-sized empire which cracks and falls towards the end anyway (besides, it's no fun if every single turn takes you about 30 minutes). One of the most interesting factions from this aspect is the Burgundians, who actually held ground in modern day Holland, so to recreate this scenario, I usually try to conquer Lorraine and then Flanders and/or Friesland. Gives you a very odd-looking duchy.

That's what I hate about controlling more than about 1/4 of the map. Trying to remember what you're doing in all of those provinces. and having to go through the building summary to see if anything important was built that now needs to have something else built. I've often trained units and forgotten about them also, due to the empire being so big. I don't use auto construct or auto tax either.

Thanks for your contributions...

Im handling things a bit better this time. The Irish have had a strange rebellion: I put my king with some troops on Manau, he decided to withdraw from battle and (of course) there was no port. He was captured and a ransom asked. It was refused. He was executed, and a rebellion broke out in which the Rebels had 0 men, 0 provinces, 0 money, and a leader with the same name as the loyalists.

I backed the rebels and everything went back to normal with a new heir...

It sometimes makes sense to have a purge of the old monarchy if things are going badly. I enjoy a good civil war in my campaigns. In my current Turks campaign, things are going well but the Sultan and his sons are a pathetic bunch of losers, that don't deserve to preside over the empire. I may yet try to engineer a civil war to get my best general to take over.

I ve secured the mainland and making tons of money. Its the next piece of planning that s crucial.

Keeping your coasts secure from invasion is crucial. An empire without secure borders isn't really an empire. Once your ships are in those waters in decent numbers and you have a good shipbuilding capability, those provinces count as landlocked (inaccessible) and you can reduce the garrisons there to a 200 man peasant or spearman unit, provincial loyalty permitting.

The Hungarians are good. My expansion has been pretty gentle with no economic problems so far. Rebellions have actually helped-my king has 5 crowns after starting with three.

Rebellions are a way of getting cheap battles, and is often regarded as an AI exploit, and referred to as "farming for rebellions", they're still like any other battles though and your forces engaging in fighting the rebels will only gain (providing they win).

The szekely are really really long range as their description says. Im following a policy of attack intuitively-ie when you can, without dilly dallying.

Their bows are the same as any other horse archer. The best thing about them is that they are statistically better than most other horse archers and well balanced.

I ve not got back to the Portuguese yet-they almost lost their single province to the alMohads as the king went off to fight. He rushed back to save it.

I've only played the Portuguese in XL once, but like the Aragonese you have to move quickly or you will unable to expand, especially when heirs start to mature and take all of your florins in support.

Something i've noticed when i play is that, no matter who i play as the usual big dog is one of the Muslim factions, and i only have the original so far, played VI, but i don't have a disc of my own yet. The other thing i notice is that there is generally one faction at war with just aout everyone, is huge, and borders me so i end up with only them as an ally as most times i play, i play just to watch and see what happens next, only taking territory as my army is able to do. A good example of this is a Danish campaign of mine, i've only attacked rebels at this point, have 6 provinces and already make over 20000 florins per year, but i digress. The super power i 1st noticed were the French who took England, and united most of france, now the Almohads are coming up from the iberian and have started to batter the French, who i noticed one day with the map cheat have pitiful armies, small, filled with second rate soldiers. Also if memory serves me well i believe this is the same campaign featuring a Byzy juggernaut of sorts, which has put the smacked down on eastern europe, and is working over central, the only thing i hope for is they don't have a lot of jedi knights, and if they do i hope my assassains can do their job.

Have you installed the patch (Medieval Total War v1.1)? Without it, there are no era limitations as to who can build what and loads of bugs. The Almohads are also quite overpowered before v1.1 if I recall correctly (though I may be thinking of before v2.0 (VI)).

The one huge faction at war with everyone is one of the quirks of the game. The French tend to be the usual suspects for his sort of thing, though it can also be the HRE or occasionally the Poles. Those big factions will often ally with anyone if they accept. Most of the other factions won't. If you're in a similar situation you may find a, temporary, ally in them.

The Byzantine are dangerous if they get the chance to expand. It is likely that the Turks attacked them, got whipped as a result and lost their territory to the Byz, who may then have got into conflict with the egyptians and taken some of their land as well. The result is the "Byzy juggernaut" you speak of. The other alternative, and no less probably, cause is that the Turks, Egyptians or Golden Horde (if they've emerged yet) have pushed the Byzantine out of their homelands and into eastern Europe. When this happens they can get even more dangerous conquering most of Russian and working their way into eastern Europe rather quickly.