Spain

[Lorenzo_H]

Hey I am now at turn 129+.

How do I get Pikemen? I presume the Spanish get them, but I haven't been able to get any yet...

[Quillan]

Two ways, and both require a huge city. First, build the Militia Barracks (6 turns and 9600 gold). This will let you build pike militia (150 to recruit and 100 to maintain), and will also let you build handgunners with the development of gunpowder. The other way is to build a Military Academy (4 turns and 4800 gold). This will let you build Tercio Pikemen (350 or so to recruit and 155 or so to maintain), and will give the Officer Training trait to generals left in the city for a while (+2 command). I prefer the Tercio to the militia pike.

[Lorenzo_H]

Ahhh thankyou. You see I have only built any military improvements in Toledo, my Citadel (which obviously cannot be a huge city). I didn't bother making any in my Towns.

What other buildings does a Military Academy require? And while I'm at it, what other surprises do non Castle towns have the ability to do?

[PaulTa]

Well late game you could get away with nothing but cities. The military academy offers tercio pikes, but the upgrade to that offers more tercio pikes and Gendarmes (heavy cavalry. Not bad either, since they are pretty well armored). Once gunpowder hits, you can build musketeers in your huge cities too, which means that you can produce good melee units (sword militia, tercio pikes), good cavalry units (gendarmes), and one of the best ranged units (musketeers).

Obviously, the city has more income. The city also has functioning cannon towers (according to Katank), horse breeder's guild, top tier ports (?), and still has the top tier armor facilities.

[Spark]

In settlement details, there's a button that shows you the entire building construction tree as well as where all the faction's units offered by each building. That should answer all your questions.

[baron_Leo]

Hasn't got Spain pikeman in citadels? Portugal has aventuros...they are not bad, actually they pwn cavalry. (but i find them slow and don't build them, I only trust in Knights of Santiago - man they look good, and with maxed out XP after some battles they are just the coolest cavalry unit (I know they are not the strongest, but the coolest - no discussion:-))

[Lorenzo_H]

Yes but I haven't even got to the new world yet! I think it is going to be a problem...

[sapi]

Not one of my games has got to the new world....

I've got 45 territories as both France and Egypt at around turn 50, and 60 as the HRE at about the same time...

[Lorenzo_H]

wow then maybe you can give me advice as to which direction to conquer in because I desperatly need to conquer 32 more territories as quick as possible.

[Quillan]

Mainland Europe and the British Isles. The Isles have 7 territories in them, and Europe will give you what you don't have of Toulouse, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Angers, Rennes, Caen, Paris, Bruges, Antwerp, Rheims, Dijon and Metz. Expanding on into Italy can add Milan, Venice, Genoa, Florence, and Bologna just in the north, and in the mountains north of there you can snag Bern, Stauffen and Innsbruck. There are some more closely packed territories in northern Europe, but beyond that things start spreading out a lot.

[dopp]

Have you taken Africa yet? You need Jerusalem in order to win, so unless you want to do a crusading hit-and-run in the final few turns, you should pick up Africa and Egypt before taking Jerusalem. If your navy is large, gobble up the islands as well. Northern Italy, France and the coastal provinces of the Middle East have numerous provinces clustered close together, so grab those. Beat up the Egyptians until they accept vassalage if you don't want to manage all those cities yourself. 65 turns before the campaign ends you'll get world-is-round event. Shuttle 2 stacks of your best troops across to America and capture the six cities there. You should then have more then enough to win.

[Kraggenmor]

wow then maybe you can give me advice as to which direction to conquer in because I desperatly need to conquer 32 more territories as quick as possible.

Heh. I'm right there with you DelMar.

I got the game for Christmas and once I loaded it, I spent many turns of my vh/vh Spain campaign were sepnt getting turned every which way but loose by Sicliy, Milan, France, Portugal and the Moors. To the point of restarting the whole thing several times.

In some defense of myself though, I never played RTW and came in straight from MTW and so had a lot to learn about the value of certain units, buildings as well as needing to learn various game mechanics - like the value of converting castles to cities etc.

Now, with 75 turns left I feel like I finally have a solid grip on things and will be racing from here on out to capture the remaining 34 territories I need as well as Jerusalem.

Should be fun!

Certainly has been so far, despite all the beating I've taken. ;)

[Wizzie]

Yes, I think campaigns become much more interesting as the game matures. Certainly now that I know how the more arcane and obscure mechanics of the game work (thanks to the research of many a hardworking code-monkey here on the Org) my campaigns have become infinetly more interesting.