Turks are much harder than Scots

[Didz]

SITREP Turn 175

As predicted Mosul broke the Mongol seige, they never even managed to attempt an assault on the walls.

Surprisingly Edessa also defeated the Mongol assault inflicting massive losses on the assault forces and killing the Khan.

Mosul has since been beseiged by a second Mongol army and this time did get assaulted but thrashed the Mongol assault.

So, about 3 Mongol stacks gone and only a couple more to deal with.

I also tried the advice and declared a Jihad on Budapest. The Mongols and Egpytians responded. Unfortunately, although one Jihad Mongol force was selected from amongst those near Edessa it never bothered to move and the Mongols captured Budapest with another army from somewhere north of Budapest in Russia. The only slightly positive result was that Egypts jihad army ended up in the middle of my territory so it might just do something useful,

The really bad news is the Timurids ignored the Jihad and are now beseiging Antioch.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Picking up on the Scots are weak thread posted earlier, I have to say that playing both a Scottish campaign and a Turkish Campaign in parallel I'm having much more problems with the Turks.

....

So, far I've lost two cities to the Mongols (didn't even bother fighting those seiges as they were totally no hopers due to minimal garrisons) and Mosul to the Timurids.

The problem is, even if I defend every city just as fiercely by the time the Timurid's run out of stacks my empire will be wiped off the map.

The Scots certainly don't have to cope with that.

While I admit the Turks are not my favorite faction, heres a couple tips.

Take out the few rebel states nearby at the beginning with those cheap, disposable infantry units. Save those expensive horse archers for non-seige, important battles. Expand early, expand quickly.

Make peace with your neighbors early, get alliances if necessary. You need time to build your empire. Once you have the space, then you need the florins.

Once you build up properly, see if you can't call a jihad by training up one of your Imams. Send your entire standing army on this jihad... it should give you several turns of reprieve from army upkeep. Use this money to bolster your farms, trade, ports, and fortress.

Train your generals up, especially at night. Fight any and all night battles. You need this for the hordes.

Stave off crusaders the usual way, with blockades at land bridges and naval forces turning back catholic navies. Sink them, block them.

Try to take over Egypt before the mongols come. Your empire should be ready.

When the Egyptians are done, and Turkey is fortified against the Byzantines, (your jihad should aim to repel them from Asia minor, use navy and land bridges to block them as well)

disband all irrelevant troops and send your best generals toward your best fortress.

Build the most massive and powerful army Turkey has ever built. Make this a priority by turn 50.

When the Mongols arrive, let them take a city. Then surround the city with about 3 stacks, all with NIGHT FIGHTER, and reverse the tables on them.

No city can withstand an assault by 2, let alone 3 maxed out stacks. With NIGHT FIGHTER, the mongols may not be able to field more than 1 army at a time.

Systematically eliminate each mongol stack, one by one.
Send reinforcements if neccessary. Use the terrain advantages.

When they are gone, prepare for the next wave. Rinse and repeat for the Timurids when they come.

The key is knowing when not to fight. Dont try and save your city, if it's surrounded by 2 mongol stacks it is done. The best you can do is take as many of them with you as possible. Spam a bunch of spearmen and fill the garrison with cheap, blunted spearpoints and archers firing flaming arrows at elephants from the walls.

You may just wipe out half of them. Perfect for your main force to mop them up.

Use cheapo troops as garrisons. Use expensive horse archers for beating back standing armies. Never use horse archers for simple seiges. Even your less than stellar infantry is better than horse archers in melee. Too expensive to waste good horsemen on spear and sword seiges.

use bridges if neccessary to hold back the Mongols. Bridges may not work so well vs elephants. Best bet against elephants is artillery fire or archer fire from walls.

Good to go...

[Askthepizzaguy]

I'm seriously considering cutting my losses and abandoning this campaign as I'm not sure I can pull it round.

The current situation is as shown below.

...

Basically, I think I needed more time to develop my economy and begin to build up a decent level of military technology.

I took one look at the photo and I have to say uh oh.

You're clearly able to field lots and lots of troops. But let's think tactically for a second... its almost impossible to stop 2 Timurid stacks attacking anything, even with a full garrison. I tend to see cities and fortresses as traps for your troops.

A) sallying is awful. You must destroy them all or you lose your city. You also lose all the advantages of having walls to begin with. Therefore sallying is a bad option.

B) They can overpower you with seiges. 2 stacks and you're done. Maybe you can trip them up once, but no castle is indestructible. They will get you.

C) If they were smart like a human, they would starve you out. Your choices? Salling which is awful, or starving to death. Seiges hurt.

Keep all your best troops in several stacks close to each other. Pull that same strength in numbers tactic the mongols and timurids pull on you. Dont wait inside your city like a sitting duck. They will take it eventually. When they do, they will either give it up again or they will become trapped inside.

Tactically, 3 standing armies together beat 3 garrisons far apart. Plain and simple.

I see a map like that and I see targets, not obstacles. BE the obstacle. BE the horde. BE the offender, not the defender.

If you are defending, do it to wear them down, not to save a city. Use cheap, disposable spears and arrows. point those spears at the gate and post arrows on the walls, and keep your captain away from the front line. Dont waste good generals inside cities adjacent to hostile armies. move them to friendly territory, or use them as commanders, even if they arent good ones. Bad is better than zero.

This is not intended to be foolproof advice or indisputable fact... just a different perspective on why you can clearly field massive armies, but cannot hold back the hordes. Suck those lazy garrisons out of the cities and mass them all together to form your own horde. Strike whilst the iron is HOT!

Your cause is not lost my friend. A change in tactics may be neccessary, but dont call it over until it's over.

Let's face it... you may be able to hold out for a little bit, but they will wear you down, city by city. Don't wait and take it from them, stand up, sally forth, mass your mightiest army, reinforce it with every troop and every florin spent, even tear down marketplaces and anything you can spare. Recruit, recruit, recruit. Field your mightiest force and outthink them on the battlefield. Outmaneuver their armies, use the terrain, use bridges, forts even. Build dummy forts and hope they are stupid enough to take them and get stuck inside, then crush the mice in your trap. But even the best general will need to retreat and reinforce. Dont let your generals die.

You might be able to take out a few of those stacks without reinforcements, but you will need to retreat and reinforce. Hack away at the dragon one sword swipe at a time.

[Askthepizzaguy]

If you go down, go down fighting. Exploit their weak formation... you can have 3 stacks attack the lead Timurid stack, and the battle would then be 3 to 2, your advantage. Once the battle is over, make a tight formation and withdraw if possible.

Anyhoo, I've spoken too much. Any other ideas, anyone?

[Didz]

@askthepizzaguy

I think that advice might hold for the Timurids, but I have had considerable success using the attrition approach against the Mongols.

In the above game I have just broken one Mongol seige through using repeated sallies by four bombards and Eddessa has just defeated a Mongol assault and trashed two whole Mongol stacks killing their king in the process.

I even came close to defeating two Timurid stacks at Mosul during an earlier siege and only really lost becuase my archers ran out of flaming arrows before they decided to bring in the reserve ram.

The problem with your strategy is that it pre-supposes that I have lots of large and powerful armies, but I don't. Most of those garrison's which you probably imagine to be stacked with Jannisaries are actually full of militia whose only purpose is to prevent the city revolting.

Horse Archers are hopeless in huge unit scale as they just stand around and get overrun and I don't have enough artillery to deal with Timurid elephants in the open.

What you are suggesting is what would probably work for a 'slash and burn' player who has destroyed everyone around him has a huge empire and highly advance military technology. I don't because my game concentrates on economic growth and so my priorities are to avoid conflict and make as many friends as possible. Thus I am poor and my army is weak, which actually reflects the biase in the game design, which rewards a playing style which according to Sun Tzu ought to lead to total ruin.

[Kobal2fr]

You focus on economic growth and thus you're poor ? Isn't that sort of a contradiction ?

[Didz]

You focus on economic growth and thus you're poor ? Isn't that sort of a contradiction ?

Exactly, but that seems to be the trend.

Which is why I think this game is a bit skewed towards constant conflict. I have watched my son play and he ignores trade completely. He can't be bothered with merchants and markets, he just goes bald-headed at every target in sight with whatever troops he can raise and he rakes in the cash. He's never short of money and his troops are the best you can get, even though everyone hates him. He can be at war with everyone on the map and it doesn't bother him a jot, as he just considers them more useful targets.

As soon as you start trying to focus on economic growth you start falling behind becuase the rewards for trade and diplomacy are trivial compared to those for violence and pillaging.

For example 8 merchants earning 1,000 florins per turn = 8,000 florins. One city trashed and pillaged per turn 20,000 florins. Go figure!

'When an army engages in protracted campaigns, the resources of the state will not suffice. When your army is exhausted and its morale sinks and your treasury is spent, rulers of other states will take advantage of your distress and act. Then, even though you have wise counsellors, none will be able to make plans for the future. Thus, though we have heard of excessive haste in war, we have not yet seen a clever operation that was prolonged.'
Extract from Sun Tzu's strategies of War

However, the reverse is true in MTW2. Prolonged and constant war is the only way to ensure a future for your state and those players who try to limit their operations are the ones who end up short of money and unable to plan a future, and that is a direct result of the game design.

[Kobal2fr]

Yes, sacking is quite bonkers in this game, it's true. I wonder if it's moddable, come to think about it.

[Subedei]

E I have watched my son play and he ignores trade completely. He can't be bothered with merchants and markets, he just goes bald-headed at every target in sight with whatever troops he can raise and he rakes in the cash. He's never short of money and his troops are the best you can get, even though everyone hates him. He can be at war with everyone on the map and it doesn't bother him a jot, as he just considers them more useful targets.

Man, I share his playing style...even though I really TRY to change it [support of trade, sophisticated diplomacy....], I fall back into old habits after a while of playing...."Well, let´s go for that unprotected city on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. Why should they care?!?!?"....but one can not depend on this strategy on vh I guess. I am a "medium-hard in both categories" - kind of player...

[andrewt]

I disagree on that assessment. Yes, sacking gives a ton of money, but after a while it's nothing compared to your base income from cities. I focus on building economic improvements first and in fact, I build an improvement every single turn. None of my cities/castles are ever idle. Also, at the start of the game, I try not to sack if I don't have to because I like to grow my cities faster.

There's a limit to how much cities can earn. In my Turk game, Antioch reached 7k florins per turn. However, that's not even 2 stacks of high quality units. The Mongols eventually get 11-12 stacks. If your provinces can support an average of half a stack while having money left over for improvements and troops, you need 22-24 provinces to have that many stacks.

Another thing is that once your empire gets bigger, you get a core of cities that you barely have to defend. You can leave only free militia troops in those cities while they give you income every turn. In Moors game, my merchants in Timbuktu + Arguin are earning me around 5-6k per turn. In contrast, I have 10 cities in Southern France and Italy earning me that much each. They all have almost full merchant upgrades.

[Kobal2fr]

True, but that doesn't make a totally aggressive campaign unviable, nor does it mean that building up is the "best way".
Like Didz said, you can pretty much maintain your whole empire through building only troops and troop related stuff. One full stack more than upkeeps itself by sacking a town every other turn (even more so on a crusade rampage), and who cares about garrisons when you have that many stacks roaming around ? So an AI takes one of your regions. Your mass forces took 4 this turn. Net gain, and you've got the required 45 in no time.
If anything, building up your economy slows you down because every dime spent on farms is not spent on more troops :/

Note : I also play very slowly and build up as much as I possibly can, in fact I'm pretty much overwhelmed by the AI because I keep so few soldiers around and am friendly with everyone except a couple of well defined enemies. I'm just saying that the game is skewed towards aggressive warmongering

[Didz]

I disagree on that assessment. Yes, sacking gives a ton of money, but after a while it's nothing compared to your base income from cities.

How many cities?

I mean the 'proof of the pudding is in the eating', its patently obvious to me that concentrating on economic growth and trade brings in much less income than 'slash and burn'. Crusades for example are a major income earner in my game simply because I get a large cheap army and the Popes blessing to go and pillage a large trading centre.

I focus on building economic improvements first and in fact, I build an improvement every single turn. None of my cities/castles are ever idle. Also, at the start of the game, I try not to sack if I don't have to because I like to grow my cities faster.

Same here but what does that prove your still confirming that we need 22-24 provinces to stand a hope of matching the Mongols in battle and your not going to have half that if you've been concentrating on trade and economic growth.

I've watched my son play and he can maintain a full stack high tech army in the field with no drain on his treasury at all simply by taking and sacking cities. He doesn't even bother building the tech tree becuase as he pointed out to me sooner or later you capture a city with all the buildings you need anyway.

And as you quite rightly say, as your Empire expands you need fewer and fewer troops per city to defend it. So the 'slash and burn' approach wins on every count. Higher income per turn from pillaging, more cities mean more tax, more cities mean fewer units per city, more cities mean more armies can be supported, more armies means more cities can be attacked.

It basically confirms that MTW2 is heavily engineered towards prompting the 'slash and burn' strategy and the merchant and trade options are really an irrelevance.

[andrewt]

I'm not disputing the fact that aggressive play is very good in this game. All I'm saying is that you can be a builder and still have a very good empire.

When I start a campaign, it's usually because the faction has a unit roster I like. I pause my conquering every now and then to wait for my castles/cities to tech up so I'll get those units I wanna play before the game is over. Like you, I keep pretty minimal armies at the start except I do get twitchy when I have an army that isn't defending anything. I just have to attack something with it.

[andrewt]

I've watched my son play and he can maintain a full stack high tech army in the field with no drain on his treasury at all simply by taking and sacking cities. He doesn't even bother building the tech tree becuase as he pointed out to me sooner or later you capture a city with all the buildings you need anyway.

That's too slow for me so I prefer to tech up my own cities.

Honestly, I think you're creating too many house rules that slow you down and I'm not sure what you mean by concentrating on trade and merchants. I'm a builder and I know for a fact that you can build both trade buildings and troops at the same time. You just need to specialize your cities and castles. Some of my cities can barely build the crappiest militia troops in the midgame because I specialized them on trade. I build the fast, quick ROI economic buildings in my castles then just build the troop buildings.

The Sun Tzu quote doesn't really apply in this case. In a real life scenario, Luxembourg has one of the highest per capita income in the world, much higher than China. However, they're going to get crushed in a fight if China declares war on them.

I don't really think I play slash and burn. I never abandon any city and only attack cities that I plan on holding. It's more conquer, assimilate and build up. I just hate wasting turns, though, so I tend to expand pretty fast even while playing build up. 22-24 provinces by the time the Timurids show up is pretty reasonable I would say. You get 150 or so turns to do it. The Mongols arrive a few at a time, anyway. I also think you have too many troops if you intend to make peace with your neighbors for 100 turns or so.

[Didz]

Well try it without giving in to your twitch and limiting yourself to council missions and crusade targets. It doesn;t matter how much effort you put into economic development and trade you just can't make enough money to survive at least not in the east where the Mongols and Tims are going to pounce sooner or later.

Scotland is doing quite well but then they have a more secure location.

Honestly, I think you're creating too many house rules that slow you down and I'm not sure what you mean by concentrating on trade and merchants.

I'm merely trying to play the game at a more realistic pace, so I try to limit myself to objectives set by the council and the Pope. The point being that the game is not designed to allow that style of play, it seems to assume that everyone is a raging psyco who is going to want to kill and burn everything which makes most of the game elements like merchants rather pointless.

The Sun Tzu quote doesn't really apply in this case. In a real life scenario, Luxembourg has one of the highest per capita income in the world, much higher than China. However, they're going to get crushed in a fight if China declares war on them.

Thats not the point Sun Tzu is making in the quote I used.

His point is that in the real world no nation can expect to acheive victory as a result of a long and protracted campaign. In real life the longer an operation takes to acheive its goal the more expensive its becomes to maintain and the less likely it is to succeed. MTW2 does not reflect this, troop upkeep is a constant it doesn't vary according to the length of one supply lines, nor do armies in field exhaust the ability of the province they are in to support them. If it did then it would become more and more difficult to keep an army operational and supplied the longer it was on campaign.

Likewise, troops become disillussioned with long campaigns, particualry if their backpacks are already full of loot. Basically they just want to go home and spend it, and so armies become less and less effective and desertion increases the longer troops are kept in field. That is not reflected in MTW2 where troops seem to have no homes and don't care how long you make them wander back and forth.

Finally, troops being away from home for long periods increases dissatisfaction at home and makes it difficult for the home state to function effectively, e.g. not enough men to bring in the harvest, again not modelled by MTW2.

In fact MTW2 rewards players who engage in prolonged and continuous warfare by dishing out huge amounts of dosh for pillaging cities. In reality, the general would be lucky to see any of that cash which would go straight into the soldiers backpacks and even if he did get his hands on some of it, why on earth would he hand it over to the state treasury.

I think it would be interesting to see what impact it would have if say:

Sacking a city produced little on no state income at all, but merely boosted the morale of the troops for a few days when the effects of the wine wore off, and if troops operating outside their own national borders lost both morale and strength due to attrition steadily every day, and if their upkeep rose according to the distance they were from the nearest friendly city.

It would certainly add an interesting and realistic level of attrition to things like seiges, and would add a whole new dimension to Crusades.

It might also stop the annoying way the AI camps armies in your territory all the while.

[Shahed]

Nope.

LUXEMBOURG'S 500 man army will kill MILLIONS of THEM ! & take all their CHOP SUEY TOO !
Tsing Tao my ... they'll be drinking BOFFERDING before they know it !

Just joking, obviously.

[andrewt]

Well try it without giving in to your twitch and limiting yourself to council missions and crusade targets. It doesn;t matter how much effort you put into economic development and trade you just can't make enough money to survive at least not in the east where the Mongols and Tims are going to pounce sooner or later.

Scotland is doing quite well but then they have a more secure location.

Don't think I'll do that. Council missions don't always choose the best provinces to conquer. Sometimes, they even overstretch you, which I found out during my first Venice game. It just sounds like a very limiting house rule. Especially since council missions are pretty random. They can have you conquering too fast or just blockading ports right and left without a point to them. It makes you play like the AI, to be honest.

[atheotes]

I too prefer the build up you conquered cities-concentrate on trade and improvements-peace with everyone-no attacking first (except under papal edict) approach. I have tried the slash-burn approach and found it very easy to complete a campaign. I did not enjoy it.
I think the game is balanced towards the slow empire building approach because it provides more of a challenge to the player and that what i guess CA intended to do.
In my current Scottish campaign... i am in turn 160 and have 24 provinces. I am at peace (and trading) with everyone except Denmark (perenially excommunicated), Timurids (they havent settled yet) and Sicily - my long time ally who recently backstabbed me by blockading a port and doing nothing else for the last 10-12 turns (they have refused offers of ceasefire and parked a small army near one of my cities - maybe they intend to siege it sometime in the future )
The only factions that have been destroyed are Russia - my allies who were wiped out by the Mongols and Moors - destroyed by my allies Spain.

I have perfect relations with the Pope and somewhere between outstanding and very good with the rest of the christian factions.

My challenge now is to get 45 territories and antioch (only hope is if the Pope calls a crusade) maintaining my peace with everyone and not attacking first.

[andrewt]

I'm merely trying to play the game at a more realistic pace, so I try to limit myself to objectives set by the council and the Pope. The point being that the game is not designed to allow that style of play, it seems to assume that everyone is a raging psyco who is going to want to kill and burn everything which makes most of the game elements like merchants rather pointless.

What really is realistic and not realistic? Keep in mind that 1 turn is 2 years. Given that time scale, the Mongols conquered a land area as large as MTW2's entire map in 50 or so turns. The U.S. is around as large as conquering 45 provinces and it was conquered before 100 game turns have passed.

Thats not the point Sun Tzu is making in the quote I used.

His point is that in the real world no nation can expect to acheive victory as a result of a long and protracted campaign. In real life the longer an operation takes to acheive its goal the more expensive its becomes to maintain and the less likely it is to succeed. MTW2 does not reflect this, troop upkeep is a constant it doesn't vary according to the length of one supply lines, nor do armies in field exhaust the ability of the province they are in to support them. If it did then it would become more and more difficult to keep an army operational and supplied the longer it was on campaign.

Likewise, troops become disillussioned with long campaigns, particualry if their backpacks are already full of loot. Basically they just want to go home and spend it, and so armies become less and less effective and desertion increases the longer troops are kept in field. That is not reflected in MTW2 where troops seem to have no homes and don't care how long you make them wander back and forth.

Finally, troops being away from home for long periods increases dissatisfaction at home and makes it difficult for the home state to function effectively, e.g. not enough men to bring in the harvest, again not modelled by MTW2.

That is actually more an argument for my style of play than anything. I build up my economy and build enough troops to defend my lands. I keep them inside my borders near the edge to protect my provinces against opposing armies. I try to make peace with everybody as much as possible. When I attack, I make lightning strikes and wipe out the opposing faction in a few turns. If I'm not going to conquer anything, I try to make peace with everybody.

In fact MTW2 rewards players who engage in prolonged and continuous warfare by dishing out huge amounts of dosh for pillaging cities. In reality, the general would be lucky to see any of that cash which would go straight into the soldiers backpacks and even if he did get his hands on some of it, why on earth would he hand it over to the state treasury.

I think it would be interesting to see what impact it would have if say:

Sacking a city produced little on no state income at all, but merely boosted the morale of the troops for a few days when the effects of the wine wore off, and if troops operating outside their own national borders lost both morale and strength due to attrition steadily every day, and if their upkeep rose according to the distance they were from the nearest friendly city.

It would certainly add an interesting and realistic level of attrition to things like seiges, and would add a whole new dimension to Crusades.

It might also stop the annoying way the AI camps armies in your territory all the while.

I agree that that would be interesting but it's not going to affect my playstyle much at all. My troops are rarely out of my borders for more than 3-5 turns without conquering something. And I don't sack and leave. I stay put and build the newly conquered province up.

[Didz]

What really is realistic and not realistic? Keep in mind that 1 turn is 2 years. Given that time scale, the Mongols conquered a land area as large as MTW2's entire map in 50 or so turns. The U.S. is around as large as conquering 45 provinces and it was conquered before 100 game turns have passed.

It was obviously a mistake to use the word realistic, but I couldn’t think of a better one.

However, although the years increment at the rate of 2 per turn the game does not run at that pace. The actual game play increments at the rate of 6 months per turn with alternative summer and winter seasons and people age at the slower rate, and to be strictly in tune with movement rates of units a turn should only represent about a week of elapsed time.

The 2 years per turn is merely a fudge to get events to happen faster than would normally have been the case. As such one obvious solution for those of us who want to saviour the game at a more leisurely pace is to change the time per turn increment from 2 to 1 or even 0.5.

I think I’m right in saying that a time increment of 0.5 would cause the year, the seasons and the aging of characters to become synchronized. The only other effect would be that all the in game events would be four times longer in appearing.

This would at least allow time for proper trading empires to be established and a reasonable level of technology to be achieved before a major event based challenge hit your faction. In fact I may try that with a new Turkish campaign and see how much difference it makes to playability.

[Shahed]

If you do try that you might want to change the event dates, if you do here's a link that would help:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74279

[andrewt]

I think I’m right in saying that a time increment of 0.5 would cause the year, the seasons and the aging of characters to become synchronized. The only other effect would be that all the in game events would be four times longer in appearing.

This would at least allow time for proper trading empires to be established and a reasonable level of technology to be achieved before a major event based challenge hit your faction. In fact I may try that with a new Turkish campaign and see how much difference it makes to playability.

It would help your style of play. The difference between Scots and Turks is that there is nothing scripted in that part of the world that necessitates the player to have X amount of technology with X amount of armies. I know at around turn 150-160 on my Moors campaign, my starting castles are fully teched up and have nothing else to built. I even built up the walls even though they were so far away from my border.

Anything Eastern basically forces you to have decent troops at a certain date or get butt kicked by the Mongols/Timurids.

[Askthepizzaguy]

@askthepizzaguy

I think that advice might hold for the Timurids, but I have had considerable success using the attrition approach against the Mongols.

In the above game I have just broken one Mongol seige through using repeated sallies by four bombards and Eddessa has just defeated a Mongol assault and trashed two whole Mongol stacks killing their king in the process.

I even came close to defeating two Timurid stacks at Mosul during an earlier siege and only really lost becuase my archers ran out of flaming arrows before they decided to bring in the reserve ram.

The problem with your strategy is that it pre-supposes that I have lots of large and powerful armies, but I don't. Most of those garrison's which you probably imagine to be stacked with Jannisaries are actually full of militia whose only purpose is to prevent the city revolting.

about the Mongols: Go with what works my friend. If you can manage to hold them off with your garrison forces alone, then more power to you, and you can focus on this invading Timurid army.

about the Timurids: You know the wait and see approach definitley won't cut it with these guys. It is unfortunate that you need those garrisons in your cities. If you could get them on the field somehow, you'd have a prayer...

I've found that numbers work well against the AI. Could be all town militia an a couple generals thrown in, if you surround from both sides, let the AI controlled army attack the horde, and then attack simultaneously, the sheer wieght of numbers and being surrounded can take out most of them. The problem is with their dread rating... you'd need high dread or chivalry yourself and I doubt that you do if you've adopted a more or less pacifist approach.

If those stacks in your cities are garrisons that cannot be moved into a standing army, then yes, I think this is an example of a failed strategy. With unmoveable garrisons that big, I doubt you could afford a huge standing army. And yes, the game plan seems to have backfired in that case. The only way you can field a massive army against the Timurids is if you have many cities making a profit, or lots and lots of low garrisoned castles. The profit per turn of your empire (before your standing army cost) should nearly equal your standing army cost. But if your garrison cost is too high and you dont have enough cities where the public order is good enough to make a profit, then you largely become a sitting duck. Of course, you already know this and have come to this conclusion.

Any other empire besides the Turks have time to sit and grow. The Turks really don't... they must create the Ottoman empire and single-handedly repel both invasions and the crusades or they will die. The economy isnt the way to go, I suppose. It must be by the sword, or they risk an untimely death.

[alpaca]

To be honest I had a look at your save-game and it's far from hopeless, if you're good at the tactical part of the game (i.e you own them as a battlefield general).
The main problem you have in my eyes is actually that you have so few family members, with most of them being old pricks. This means you don't have a good general and are sorely missing the heavy cav.
Nonetheless, I gave it a whirl (I'm usually up for a challenge) yesterday and had a nice time wiping the map with the Mongols.

Here's a screen of the mongol army strength after some turns, and a shot of a battle. These were the rough k/d ratios I had, although they were usually a bit worse; in this battle I had very nice terrain but it was also a mongol starting stack with gold-chevroned units. I also admit to using pause extensively, especially with the huge unit sizes which I don't like very much...




As for the Tims: I made Damascus go rebel by selling everything and disbanding all units, and "gave" the Timurids Antioch, defending the bridges with stacks full of Ottoman infantry and some merc elephants. The task is now, after they settled down, to get them to spread out their stacks so I can take them in ones or twos. I only have 3 (elite) stacks in the area and since you didn't expand at least to constantinople I can't really afford the attrition approach, so I have to try to lure them into some traps and then go reconquer. The mongols are, as I said, more or less pacified on that front (they're still busily expanding in Russia but who cares lol).


Something else: It doesn't look to me like you really built your economy up to an extreme amount. You don't even have mines in Arguin or Mining Networks in Timbuktu, neither did you have a dockyard in Antioch for the export route. Furthermore, the huge garrisons are killing you financially. I assume you only just conquered Nikosia, I simply sold off all military buildings there and disbanded most of the garrison in most of the cities (lower garrison and lower tax rate are sometimes to be preferred), only keeping core armies in most of them because my doctrine is that I'd rather fight the enemy on the field where I can do insane stuff with Spahis.

I'll let you know what happens later on. By the way, would you be interested in some replays or savegames? I can give you a few saves along the way but didn't make any replays yet.

[Didz]

Alpaca,

Sounds like your having fun.

Your right about the birth rate its been really bad, I think my ruling family are all impotent or something. What happened in my game was that I began to get a lot of adoption offers and just accepted all of them regardless of quality to boost the breeding potential.

I'm on turn 175 now and like you I've more or less neutralised the Mongols, though the Timurids are currently besieging Antioch.

Your right about the lack of development, for approximately the last 100 turns I've been forced by the Mongols and more recently by the Timurids to spend all my cash on troops, so what your seeing is the extent to which I managed to acheive ecomonic growth prior to the Mongol invasion.

My conclusion really is that I either need more time to develop before the Mongol horde arrive or I need to forget my economy and stick to 'slash and burn' when playing eastern factions. The African settlements are about the best developed simply because I refused to stop spending on them even when I was desperate for troops in the East, but even here you can see they aren't fully upgraded, and thats with almost constant development since their capture.

Actually managed a bombard sally at Antioch last night and killed about 300 Timurids including a few of the Panzer Elephants. The game reckons the seige is balanced but I doubt it somehow.

[andrewt]

Early game I usually keep my taxes at normal/very low and keep minimal garrisons. I think in my Moors game, I actually had no garrison for quite a few turns on a few provinces. The exception is the capital as it has a decent population. The reason is that I could grab as many rebel provinces as fast as possible while not paying upkeep. Another is that higher population means I'm sacrificing a little bit of money early on for a lot of money later on.

You can also time the Mongol invasion since you know when it's coming. Keep minimal troops until turn 50+ before building the troops.

[alpaca]

Yeah I'm enjoying myself, didn't have a hard scenario with this game in quite some time

A small update: My bridge strategy worked. I was attacked at one bridge by a stack with elephants, which I destroyed (flaming arrows all the way) and at the second brigde by two stacks consecutively and one and a half stacks the turn after. Luckily that was the stronger stack of the two where I had my own elephant artillery and two bombards.
The mongols came down south again with two stacks and one of the Tims' ele stacks joined my Jihad against Constantinople and sneaked around the back, so it's now at the eastern bridge where I'm holding it off with a smaller stack until I can get my good stacks there. I'll have to give up my bridge defense against Antioch now, but the main threat is gone with the Tims being reduced to four stacks, only one with elephants, with maybe 2000 casualties on my side as opposed to 8000 or so on theirs.
Now to kick them out of my lands

By the way: I think there's a fundamental difference between your style of play and mine. You like to defend your settlements with large garrisons whereas I like field battles (with minimal garrisons at home) and keeping the initiative on the strategy map, choosing my battles or at least having the option to retreat should I be about to lose. Interesting.