"Newbie" problems with campaign game....

[Alpha666]

Hi,

i bought MTW + Vik. Invasion 3 or 4 months ago. I´m now quite familiar with it.

I have some problems though:

a) I mostly build up my empire and then mostly me, some minor nations and another bigger, greater nation is left. This nation then attacks me on severall fronts with huge troops. Those were the english in a normal camp game as well the Saxons (i think) in a Viking game. Maybe i could handle that after a while but i have not the time and willingness to play all these huge battles. So i tried the autocalc feature, but it brings bad results i think. so i gave up my games mostly...

Any thoughts or tipps ? Probably the solution is to attack such nations that are becoming very strong earlier ? But then my expansion plans mostly go wrong with conquest early in the game...

b) Any tipps for sea battles ? I think this is a annoying feature of the game. How can you overcome severall small fleets (up to 5) in a sea area ?

c) How to use inquisitors? I mostly don´t use those units like spies, priests etc. much but perhaps this is wrong....

[naut]

Having a rival power is common, almost a feature it would seem. When it comes to autocalc, some advice:
- Have no archers in your armies
- Have a good general with no nasty vices
- Having some Elite men can give you the advantage

Boats:
Clicky.

Inquisitors I don't really use.

[Sensei Warrior]

A Crash Course in MTW.

I am not an expert, but I thoughly enjoy playing MTW/VI. So I will give you a little of what I know to get you through the rough bits.

A.) This sounds like death by turtle-ing to me. There is a cliche for this its, "Keeping up with Jones's". You play with three main types of resources:

Technology. All the buildings to give you new and better units, more money, better defenses, everything from the lowly Watchtower to a Fortress and etc.

Units. This is your armies, its generals, ships and your diplomacy and espionage units. The protect your borders, gather resources and what not.

Money. This is the resource you use to buy Tech and Units.

Alot of guides and the etc. talk an awful lot about establishing a good money supply and small defensible borders. They are right but there are a few more things you have to consider. You have to keep the 3 types of resources in balance and on par or better than your rivals. If you tech up your Provences but don't upgrade your troops eventually someone will attack you and win. If you build super huge armies then you may not have any money left over to develop your provences. You have to balance those three resources.

Take Spain for example. Optimally, a very defensible position is the Iberian Pennisula. Aragon and Navarre, and everything south to Morocco. This leaves you 3 Provences that border another faction. Thats nice but its only something like 8 Provences. Technically you can make lots of money, build them up any way you want to, but if England sweeps the British Isles and Frances holdings then it has somewhere around 12 or so Provences. This faction can out produce you unit for unit until it breaks through your defenses by sheer numbers, not to mention more potential sources of money and more buying power.

So what's a conquerer to do? Well in the case of Spain trekking across N. Africa to Egypt is always a good idea. Your bordering Provences stay the same, your troops get training and don't become fat and lazy, you get more money, and have more provences to pump out troops in case of an all out attack. I believe you should try to stay the same relative size as your biggest opponent.

I also believe in upgrading/ retraining your troops. If its 1222 and your still guarding your borders with Spearmen then you've got a huge problem. You should have the most advanced units you can with as many perks as possible sitting on your borders. Chivalric Sarges and CMAAs with armor and weapon upgrades if possible led by a high star General.

With that said and Rythmics tip on auto-calcing you don't have to fight any of the uber-huge battles. No missiles but I would add to make it a mix of Cavalry, Infantry, and Spear. I don't know if it helps, but it seems to.I don't fight the super huge ones either.

Phew that was alot, but not really considering there is so much more to consider, but I am going to stop for now.

B.) I keep my ships in stacks by type. The fast ones in one stack, the powerful ones in another. Typically all ships with the same name ie. longboat in the same stack. It seems to work better for me when I fight battles.

C.) I don't use them much either. I have played and won whole games and never made an Assassin, Spy, or Inquisitor. Someone else will have to help you there.

I hope it helps. If it didn't ask more questions and I'll do what I can. Look over the guides from froggie, the unit guide, the how to play guide, and the guides for specific factions in the forum, they have lots of good stuff in them.

[gunslinger]

Hello, and welcome. Since I recently started using inquisitors myself, I'll give you a quick rundown.

Inquisitors can be used to conduct heresy trials on Catholic generals, princes, and kings. When you drop your inquisitor on a target, you will get a message screen telling you the odds of a successful inquisition on that target. The odds of success are based upon the target's piety, the zeal of the province where the inquistion will take place, and the valor of your inquisitor. The rank of the target will also be taken into account. After you initiate an inquisition you will get another message on the next turn giving you the results. If the inquisition was successful the message says something along the lines of, "The disease of heretical thought is rife, etc." If the target is found not guilty, your inquisitor suffers no harm. Regardless of the outcome, an inquisition is not seen as an act of war, so you can burn your allies' high valor generals and high acumen governors without fear of reprisal or excommunication.

If the inquisition fails, the target will probably pick up a new vice or virtue. The process may leave him disillusioned with the church, causing him to pick up the "atheist" vice, which lowers his piety and makes him much easier to convict on the next try. On the other hand, the inquisition may have scared him straight, causing him to pick up the "God Fearing" virtue which adds to his piety. Spies can be used to root out hidden vices like "Secret Perversion" which also make the target easier to convict.

If the province your target is in has low zeal, this will adversely affect your chances of a conviction. If you leave your inquisitor sitting there preaching for a few turns, he will raise the zeal of the province. However, if you forget about him over there, you will eventually get a message about the inquisition "spiraling out of control" along with a message from your inquisitor proudly telling you how many people he burned at the stake. At this point zeal plummets. You can use this ability to control the zeal in your own provinces. You only want high zeal in provinces where you're going to create or move your own Crusades. High zeal anywhere else is a liability.

When a general dies of old age, he is replaced with a perfect copy of himself. When a general (let's say one with 9 stars) is burned at the stake, he (and his stars) are gone.

You should start your inquisitors out on some lowly 1 and 2 star generals to build up their valor.

You can only conduct an inquisition on the general of a stack. For this reason, you should keep your high acumen governers who aren't necessarily good generals in a stack under another unit. Seems like at least once per campaign, the papacy goes on a rampage trying to burn all my highest acumen governors.

The only real defence your enemy has against an inquisitor is the assassin. For this reason, I like to occasionally move my inquisitors back to my own territory (in a province with a border fort) for a turn or two. Then, those nasty assassins can follow him there and get killed by my spies.

One interesting feature of inquisitors is that they can move one province and conduct an inquisition all in one turn. Other agents need one turn for travel, and the next turn to propose marriage, conduct an assassination, or whatever.

Almost forgot, bishops negate the effects of inquisitors in the same province. So, always move your bishops out of enemy territories where you plan to conduct an inquisition, and always move a bunch of bishops (and maybe an assassin) into one of your territories if an enemy inquisitor camps out there.

I was going to thrill you with some of my own ideas about campaign strategy, but if you've gotten through this whole speal on inquisitors, then you've done enough for one day. Go get yourself a well deserved beer, and have some fun impugning your political enemies as bad Christians and burning them alive. You've earned it.

[Ironside]

As for the tip about no archers. Haven't heard that before, but I assume that it's because they have a low combat value in auto-calc. As crossbowmen and arbs are quite cheap in upkeep, you don't need to follow it rigoursly.

A balansed army works perfectly fine and does also work well if you decide to fight the battle in person.

[Innocentius]

About the auto-calc thing: In an auto-calc it seems to me that your troops react similar to how your allies in (custom) battles act: Head-on charge with no real thoughts about it.
When you command the battle personally, you can position and manouver your troops in a far better way, thus, the enemy AI will act according to your moves. If you atuo-calc, the battle will just be on big slugfest with two incompetent AI-armies charging each other, so it pays of to actually have 100% cavalry units in auto-calcs.

[Alpha666]

Ah, thanks for the tipps @ all.

Guess i skip the inqusitors since too much micromanament also it reads a bit like an exploit...

Regarding the fleet, i laid out a new plan for my next camp:

I build a fleet for trading, but when at war i try only to protect my coasts and a smaller number of trade routes since it also will be too much micromanament otherwise. I think the most important is too guide the costal provs so that the mighty enemy faction cannot land/attack 10 or more of your provs at the same time (as happened).... better would be an airforce for that task though

[Alpha666]

Mhh, not an easy game.

I downloaded the XL mod and started another one as sweden.

Later in the game i had much territories in the east. There was
a peace period while i prepared to attack the danes.

Then the Golden Horde appeard they had 12000 something soldiers.
They attacked only me it seems i lost most of my eastern territorys
but fought on. Then a civil war appeared (are these historic or
in which case those happen ?), i was left with 6 provinces.

Still not giving up i wanted to retake norway from the rebells, but the
danes were already there with 3 huge armies. Another attack in the
east form the Golden Horde and i quit the game. Seems i need still
more practice. What are the tipps from "pros" regarding the "Horde" ?

[Innocentius]

Well, I'm no "pro" but I might give some tips nonetheless.
First of all: Don't expand too far eastwards, not matter what faction you are. The southern parts of the map are a lot more fertile and have a good trade income (thanks to the Med).
There are probably countless ways to beat the Horde, but I personally use plenty of heavy infantry and focus on defending. Avoid expanding as far east as the Khazar provinces, instead, let the Horde come to you and let them spread out first. Once they're few enough and have reached your lands, hope for a bridge battle (in which case the Horde will be totally screwed if you have a single unit of Halberdiers) or a heavy forested province. Try to get longbow units, but if you are some other Christian faction than the English, use the combo of Arbalesters and Halberdiers. Hold your ground and let them come to you. Your arbs will easily outrange them.

As for Sweden, take out the Danes as early as possible. It's more or less a 100% chance you'll get into war with them, and its better to have it over with quickly rather than facing them while they've made some benefits at the expence of the HRE. Sweden in Early is a pretty hopeless case actually, as the Norwegians will come at you once they run out of money (which they do quickly) and the Danes have one province more than you, so they'll out-produce you by 2:1.

And finally, no, civil war is not historical. It is triggered by a severe lack of loyalty amongst one or more of your generals or the death of an heirless king, excommunication, failed crusade etc.

[Sensei Warrior]

I think Civil Wars also happen if you continuously lose battles or Provences although I don't know the actual mechanics of this. Sometimes while fighting a large faction I noticed that there is a rebellion when I'm a good way through it, this could be coincidence.

Civil Wars can also occur when the Good King dies and the heir is useless. The Generals will take a huge dip in loyalty, and if not taken care of they will rebel.

[Kavhan Isbul]

Oh my, Sweden in early in the XL mod is one of the hardest factions. You need to take out the Norwegians without being excommunicated in the process, and then rush the Danes while they are still fighting the HRE. I do not know why, but Viking Horde, the creator of the mod put the Swedish at a significant disadvantage compared to the Danes - the Danes can crusade, the Swedish cannot; every other faction loves the Danes, everyone hates the Swedish - indeed the Lithuanians will go out of their way in trying to sink your boats in the Baltic even if you have no provinces bordering them and are allied to them; the Danes get mounted crossbowmen, the Swedish do not; the Danes can built longboats cheaply, the Swedish have to pay almost double for the same ship type. Really, really unfair.
Try something easier - Egypt, Byzantium, Novgorod, the Danes, Sicily.

[Ironside]

I think Civil Wars also happen if you continuously lose battles or Provences although I don't know the actual mechanics of this. Sometimes while fighting a large faction I noticed that there is a rebellion when I'm a good way through it, this could be coincidence.

Civil Wars can also occur when the Good King dies and the heir is useless. The Generals will take a huge dip in loyalty, and if not taken care of they will rebel.

Loss of provinces=loss of influence=loss of loyalty=increased risk for civil war

[caravel]

As for the tip about no archers. Haven't heard that before, but I assume that it's because they have a low combat value in auto-calc. As crossbowmen and arbs are quite cheap in upkeep, you don't need to follow it rigoursly.

A balansed army works perfectly fine and does also work well if you decide to fight the battle in person.

Missiles are not taken into account in autocalced battles, so archers, javelinmen and crossbowmen will "fight" in melee. This is why it's not a good idea to send missile units. Rythmic was not advising the player not to train missiles at all, more so he was suggesting that valuable missile units be kept out of autocalced battles where possible to avoid losses to these units and to avoid you losing the battle.

[Sensei Warrior]

Missiles are not taken into account in autocalced battles, so archers, javelinmen and crossbowmen will "fight" in melee. This is why it's not a good idea to send missile units. Rythmic was not advising the player not to train missiles at all, more so he was suggesting that valuable missile units be kept out of autocalced battles where possible to avoid losses to these units and to avoid you losing the battle.

What he said. I've tried a couple of auto-calcs like this, replacing the archer units with melee units, and it works very well, sometimes a little too well.

Loss of provinces=loss of influence=loss of loyalty=increased risk for civil war

Thanks for clearing that up, considering it seems very basic, I can't figure out why I didn't remember that, oh well.

[Innocentius]

Oh my, Sweden in early in the XL mod is one of the hardest factions. You need to take out the Norwegians without being excommunicated in the process, and then rush the Danes while they are still fighting the HRE. I do not know why, but Viking Horde, the creator of the mod put the Swedish at a significant disadvantage compared to the Danes - the Danes can crusade, the Swedish cannot; every other faction loves the Danes, everyone hates the Swedish - indeed the Lithuanians will go out of their way in trying to sink your boats in the Baltic even if you have no provinces bordering them and are allied to them; the Danes get mounted crossbowmen, the Swedish do not; the Danes can built longboats cheaply, the Swedish have to pay almost double for the same ship type. Really, really unfair.
Try something easier - Egypt, Byzantium, Novgorod, the Danes, Sicily.

Well, it probably has something to do with that Sweden wasn't ment to exist in 1087 Not untill the 13th century did Sweden appear as a (united) kingdom.

[gunslinger]

I think the most common system for defending against the Golden Horde involves heavy use of pavise crossbows/arbalests. Just set up on a hill near your end of the map (on a defensive battle) with a few cavalry killers (Spears, halberdiers, billmen) very few swords, a couple units of the fastest cavalry you can get (for pursuit of routing infantry), and several archers and pavise units. Make sure that you have lots of archers and pavise units in your reinforcement pool. The horde will come at you with mostly horse archer types. You can use your anticav troops to deal with the few mongol heavy cav units that they send in each wave, but for the most part, you'll just be sitting there waiting for your ranged units to run out of ammo on their horse archers so that you can order them to withdraw and get more archers / pavs from your reinforcement pool. Be warned that this will result in an extremely long, and probably boring, battle. I've read accounts of these battles taking several hours. The upside is that you will knock out thousands of horde troops while losing very few of your own, so you will end up with some very high valor units.

If you run out of arrows, then you can try to circle your fast cav around the back of their horse archers when they get near your defensive line, and then pin them there for a few seconds while your infantry charges forward and chews up the horse archers. They are actually very easy to kill if you can just catch them. This method is tricky though, and it exhausts your troops pretty quickly. Exhaustion is a major issue when you're fighting a force 12,000 strong.

Good luck.

[Sensei Warrior]

I've done what gunslinger suggested although it was a very long time ago, and I didn't have any Crossbows or Arbalests. What I did have was a large force of some type of archer unit. I placed myself on a rather large hill and had some type of very heavily armored spear unit sandwiched between 2 layers of the archers. I used Cav and AP units to keep the Mongol heavies away from the archer lines. I withdrew a missile unit when depleted and summoned up another missile unit. Rinse Wash Repeat.

The battle took 4hrs. I ended up having to withdraw from the field. I ran out of missile units and Mongols were trying to engage the rest of my force. I chased them off and withdrew. I don't know the specifics but the Mongols paid a very heavy price for that Provence.

[gunslinger]

Pavise units last a long time, plus you can neutralize a lot of those mongol arrows by putting your Pavs in front of your army.

[Sensei Warrior]

I agree, and I would have used them if I could've. I think the problem (besides my faulty memory) was that I either didn't have access to them, or hadn't teched up enough to get them.

If I had Arbs or Pavies I think I would have fared better, but I am unsure I would have won. I admittedly had a large force, but I was still disturbingly outnumbered. I think I might have worked my way through only 1/2 or maybe even 1/3 of their force before I withdrew.

For awhile I had a screenie of the recap of the battle. For a long time, it was the best battle I ever fought, even though technically I lost.

[Alpha666]

So i started another camp with the english. Works much better now. Much fun with teched up billmen and longbows. Some of the best units it seems.

I remember the golden horde in my sweden game had quite much of the heavy cav. Those were the main problem. In a game before that as the dans the numbers of the horde were lower and in this one i was able to beat them. I mostly concentrated masses of vikings on the heavy cav, if they were gone/routed they rest wasn´t so hard anymore. Still quite challenging.

[Adrian II]

Hi Alpha666,

I recognise most of the issues you mention.

It can't hurt to recall from time to time why we play this phantastic game.

We play M:TW because it feels good to be in control in the most 'real' of all the realistic games out there. It is fun to be in control of your game (to use the game mechanics to your advantage, be an exceptionally good General and strategist, outwit the machine) as well as in control of yourself (by mastering your own vices as a player, such as your laziness, lack of analytical thinking, lack of concentration). And the crux of this game is in the battles. They make or break your campaign, and they make or break your gaming experience. I still play the game after three years because of the battles and nothing else.

In my Present Turkish campaign (Early, Expert) I owned half the world by 1232. I had flushed the (21.000 strong) Horde down the toilet in two go's, I had a huge technological advantage over my poor rivals and literally more money than I could ever spend (over 700.000 Florins). So I picked my own battles and experimented with different set-ups, I made Steppe armies in the steppes and desert armies in the Desert. Specifically, I laid plans to crush smaller rivals in a short a time span as possible through invasions, sea battles, well-planned assassinations: the Sicilians in three turns, the Polish in four.

As for your specific points:

1. Huge battles need not be boring, they can be fun. Instead of composing your armies specifically for autocalc (speaking of boredom...) it is much more rewarding to compose them in the 'historically correct' fashion for your faction, or to adapt to the landscape and circumstances. Fight those battles yourself and experiment with different set-ups. I have fought some of those five-hour battles and they gave me a lot of experience. In the case of the Horde, all you need is a hill, a sick-pack of valour-1 Pavs, some disciplined Spears, a four-star General and buckets of coffee.

2. Overcome small enemy fleets with your own fastest ships. Put them in stacks of 2 and have them attack seperately from the larger, slower ships.

3. For inquisitors, you were given an excellent briefing already. However, I have played entire campaigns without ever minding my Agents or those of the enemy. All I did was build the Watch Towers in every territory I conquered. This increases provincial Loyalty, too.

Into the breach!