Anyone Else Feel Rushed in the Campaign?

[Quickening]

I never played vanilla, I always modded my game to 2TPY. When you mean rushed, do you mean that in general you feel rushed to meet your goals, or rushed in that the AI keeps harrying you? As for the first, I've never felt that because I play a 900 turn game. As to the second, I'd have to say it depends honestly. Playing at my own pace and selectively going to war with certain factions works out fine and I can progress at my own pace. However, there have been a few instances where I bit off more than I can chew, and I start a war with a neighbor (or vica versa) and the others smell blood and all jump me. In that case, yes I'm hard pressed to fight or maintain several fronts. Invariably when I start winning, I have to make the choice of whether or not to expand and if so where, and along what fronts. Given the right opportunity it's very easy to overextend yourself.

Cheers

Yeah I meant rushed to meet my goals. I'll soon be joining you on your timescale and I'll be glad. I like to take time to manage my empire and have the right men for any given job. I like to develop my cities into lovely places. I just love to savour every aspect of the game.
With the default timescale it just seems you have to just keep on attacking as relentlessly as possible. I know this is Total War not Europa Universalis but still, I enjoy empire building as much as conquering.

[Whacker]

Yeah I meant rushed to meet my goals. I'll soon be joining you on your timescale and I'll be glad. I like to take time to manage my empire and have the right men for any given job. I like to develop my cities into lovely places. I just love to savour every aspect of the game.
With the default timescale it just seems you have to just keep on attacking as relentlessly as possible. I know this is Total War not Europa Universalis but still, I enjoy empire building as much as conquering.

Join the crowd, I like taking my time and building up a big high tech empire too. I seem to recall reading somewhere that CA stated they aimed to make it 2YPT to aim this at the (supposedly) larger audience that wants a quick fix and "more action". There was a poll back when M2 was released asking how many TPY folks use, 1 and 2TPY took the lions share by a long shot, hardly anyone played at the default.

[RoadKill]

I myself felt rushed when i started off with the 2 year per turn timescale but i hanged it to 0.5 years per turn time scale and I found that i could take my time destroying other factions lmfao

[Foz]

I have to admit I've been a bit torn on this issue since the beginning. On the one hand, yes it starts to seem very pressing as you get further into a campaign. You look at a maybe 20-ish province empire on turn 100, and it looks like it will be very difficult if even possible to complete the objectives. When I thought about it, though, I discovered that the little edge of anxiousness that I was feeling about the time limit lurking on the horizon was actually a very positive thing. It was pushing me to manage the empire better, to learn more effective strategies. It made me keep on top of everything, and coordinate multiple simultaneous attacks in order to make better progress. This made me feel very uncomfortable at first, as it felt like the game was demanding too much from me. Over time that's changed though: I've become a lot better and more comfortable at managing things and making good progress, and feel like I've grown as a commander and empire manager as a result. It's grown on me so much that though I know I can sometimes appreciate the merits of a slower game, I will likewise miss the edge-of-a-knife drive that a fairly demanding time limit lends to the game.

[TevashSzat]

In the beginning it may be slow going to gain territories, but your territories will expand exponentially as your economy becomes better and you are allowed to field multiple armies. Other than that, it is just dependent on play style. I am more of a blitz player and thus has never finished a campaign after 75 turns. I continually blitz through the whole campaign fueled by either mercs or crusades with funds gained from sacking. Occasionally once I get about 30 regions or so around turn 40 I will just stop and build up and wait until gunpowder, but it never lasts since all of my neighboring factions are just begging to be whiped out and before I know it, I have all of Europe

[sapi]

I've got the opposite problem - thanks to non-existant diplomacy, everyone declares war with me and thus i have to fight them.

Though it takes some skill on the battlefield (more in army composition than anything else) it's perfectly reasonable to be at war with denmark, milan, venice, sicily, the papacy, france, england, scotland, russia, poland and hungary at once and win.

I may just lack the ability to play a totally defensive game, but i tend to complete games before i get a chance to use gunpowder :(

[Koval]

Personally, i feel that I am constantly pressured to speed up and capture provinces due to squalor. It seems that any time a wall or castle upgrade is possible, I am forced to upgrade, even if i can't afford it, or suffer repercussions later on.
Sometimes, I don't want every single one of my cities to be super huge, yet have no worthwhile buildings. Squalor has been nothing but a pain ever since it was implemented.

[Foz]

Sometimes, I don't want every single one of my cities to be super huge, yet have no worthwhile buildings. Squalor has been nothing but a pain ever since it was implemented.

Welcome to the everyday problems of every single government in existence.

[Razor1952]

I've got the opposite problem - thanks to non-existant diplomacy, everyone declares war with me and thus i have to fight them.

:(

I find that hard to reconcile, my personal experience is that diplomacy works if you cultivate your friends. As Venice I was able to go from deceitful where lots of factions declared on me to reliable where everyone wants to be my friend. Of course I bribe the pope(100x100) and did the same for Milan and france and Hre early on till I made the mistake of travelling through HRE territory without consent. I never had to fight a catholic army which was not excommed.

Pretty much all catholic factions are so-so or above relations(except Milan which I had to take out the local cities to stategically leave with a few choke points to defend if necessary(after they were excommed of course). Even HRE now at peace and amiable.

Now 30 provinces and the mongols have arrived and Jerusalem and most of nearby provinces are heavily defended and upgraded. Only the Turks and Moors are at war with me (aside from a crippled Milan) and everyone else is happy with me.

I turned my young doge +8 dread down to +2 dread only in about 20 turns. he's still in his 40's. That probably did more for my reputation than anything else.

Unfortunately even playing to preserve reputation and relations my game could easily be over before gunpowder.

[nekrotyrael]

in 3 vh/vh long campaigns i haven't got to gunpowder yet ;(

[Foz]

I find that hard to reconcile, my personal experience is that diplomacy works if you cultivate your friends. As Venice I was able to go from deceitful where lots of factions declared on me to reliable where everyone wants to be my friend. Of course I bribe the pope(100x100) and did the same for Milan and france and Hre early on till I made the mistake of travelling through HRE territory without consent. I never had to fight a catholic army which was not excommed.

Pretty much all catholic factions are so-so or above relations(except Milan which I had to take out the local cities to stategically leave with a few choke points to defend if necessary(after they were excommed of course). Even HRE now at peace and amiable.

Now 30 provinces and the mongols have arrived and Jerusalem and most of nearby provinces are heavily defended and upgraded. Only the Turks and Moors are at war with me (aside from a crippled Milan) and everyone else is happy with me.

I turned my young doge +8 dread down to +2 dread only in about 20 turns. he's still in his 40's. That probably did more for my reputation than anything else.

Unfortunately even playing to preserve reputation and relations my game could easily be over before gunpowder.

Unless you've enabled the diplomacy variables, what you've described is not due to diplomacy working correctly. The variables control at what level of reputation and relationship the AI factions will trust you and thus respect your alliance with them, and are set by default so they never will. If you haven't enabled diplomacy, then any experiences of the AI seeming to keep alliances are typically due to your overall military presence being so great that they fear to attack you, or that you have a strong enough military border presence against any given faction that they do not feel they can successfully attack.

While I understand that the AI does not really feel things, of course, what I am talking about are the various triggers in descr_campaign_ai_db.xml that tell the AI when and how to attack. One of the primary conditions is to check military strength nationally and locally of the target, to gauge if a war could be profitable or winnable. If you have a strong enough military presence, it would essentially make the AI understand that it could never win, and thus not attack. The fact that you say your game could still be over before gunpowder indicates that you probably have a very large military, or you'd not have amassed territory so quickly... which of course makes it all the more likely that your power is the factor staving off the AI aggression as opposed to anything else. In my experience w/ diplomacy disabled (i.e. out of the box game) your border defense is the single biggest factor that determines whether you keep peace with any given AI faction.