Blitzing

[Rebellious Waffle]

I've been repeatedly startled, reading through the forum, at how other players can totally demolish the AI and rule the world in a few dozen turns.

How exactly does that work? All my campaigns are long, bloody, drawn-out affairs with lots of marching and countermarching with the occasional city slipping into or out of control depending on how much I've extended (or overextended) my military presence. But from what I gather, there's plenty of folks who knock down their neighbors like they're on teeball stands and keep walking.

Where can I get me some of that?

[FactionHeir]

Use cav heavy armies and higher militia as you get them is the main point, second being to sack every settlement you come across.
In your cities, build the barracks line of buildings with at least 1 brothel to train spies to open gates for you. Train spear militia and higher.
In castles, train mailed knights (christian faction) and use those to move around quickly and devastate enemy armies quickly using their charge.

Early on, you need to use all your generals and garrisons (just keep enough so the settlement does not riot) to besiege any nearby rebel settlement and take them swiftly before the AI can.
Concurrently, use your diplomat/princess to buy settlements off the AI for alliance/map/trade or florins.
Any new settlement you take is to build more troops immediately when possible and continue expanding.

Fast-paced game, slightly boring as all battles will be Charge-Win or extended melee-Win for sieges. Don't bother with ranged troops early on. Just heavy cav and loads of cheap infantry.

[Razor1952]

The beauty of MTW2 is that there are many ways to skin this cat.

-for blitzing sack everything and be ultra aggressive, the ai is reactive rather than proactive so its quite easy to keep it running for cover.

- generally you will always win close battles, so don't wait for a mega army before taking on the foe, you might loose 1/10 battles but sacking cities gives you huge $'s to finance aggressive war, so an occasional setback is far outweighed by your wins.


-the down side is that it gets a bit boring IMHO after you have ~10-15 provinces after say 20-30 turns, the ai will be usually broke and poorly developed and even more susceptible to your blitz tactics. You won't have access to many fun and top of the range troops with blitzing, so I personally prefer a slow ai death.

- as above for christian concentrate on mailed knights, for other factions horse missile/ archers are great.

- dread generals are also terrific in battles, seeing the enemy run from 9 star dreads in funny.

-BTW I usually use an archer unit or two with flaming arrows,mainly for the moral hit

[Monsieur Alphonse]

You also use a lot of mercenaries. They are the best troops you can get early in the game. All the cities and castles close to your capital don't need a garrison.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Perhaps I was one of the people you encountered who touted the merits of smashing the AI quickly, as most of my recent posts have been about this.

The general idea is to overwhelm the enemy, only fight battles you can win, avoid the enemy's main force unless it is trapped inside a city, crusade/jihad your way across entire continents and use the extra money to recruit, and use spies/seige equipment to open gates for you on the first turn.

For more details, just message me.

[SirRethcir]

@ Rebellious Waffle
Well, it depends on how long and how far you want to 'blitz'.
Do you want to 'blitz' with the HRE to win a long campaign in 20 turns. Well, all you have to do is conquer, sack and recruit mercenaries.
Avoid big armies, concentrate on the settlements. If you concentrate on destroying a faction, the big field armies of that faction become rebels and you dont have to worry about them any longer.
There is no need and no time for diplomacy, crusades and such things.

My rush thread:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=85054
;)

[John_Longarrow]

With the blitz strategy you often forgo settlement development for troops. Basic rule of thumb is "Upgrade to just what I need to take the next settlement" and then let it stagnate since you need the cash for your troops and to hire mercs.

This does tend to leave you cash heavy early and drops an entire portion of the game in favor of combat. Think of it as "The Soviet method".

[Rebellious Waffle]

I have this pet idea of pulling up stakes and moving the whole Byzantine Empire to Spain; claim island territories and Sicily on the way, demolish and abandon your settlements when the Turks get too close. Once the armada lands in the Iberian Peninsula, blitz the place to make up for lost time and Drang nach Osten through the Catholics until you're in a position to recover the now-restored Eastern settlements you demolished.

(Byzantines) - (Mongols) - (Timurids) = (good times)