Open blitzkreig challenge

[Askthepizzaguy]

Post your favorite blitz campaign from version 1.0.

(Or, if version 1.2, indicate that it is the patched version)

Pick any faction. Post a picture of the faction scroll showing the turn number and regions controlled by you. If you think I cannot beat your record, post your challenge.

Rules: No modded games. Version 1.0 or 1.2 only.
No codes or cheats.

Turn number must be between 20 and 100. Otherwise it is not a challenge.

For Orthodox factions, try to get the ratio of provinces taken versus turn number to be better than 1:1. For Catholic or Muslim factions, try to get the ratio of number of provinces versus turn number to be better than 3:2.

Good luck!

P.S. No complaints about how cheap crusades/jihads are or how easy the unmodded game is. I've heard them all. This is a way to make even the vanilla version of M2TW seem challenging.

If you post a campaign record that I cannot beat, you will temporarily earn my signature title.

"Master tactician, holder of walls, sacker of cities, great crusader, superb diplomat, pious and pure, intelligent, witty, faithful and charming, Praetor of Rome, Emperor of Byzantium, Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire, lord of Spain, France, Milan, Venice, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Timbuktu, King of the Britons, Defeater of the Saxons, sovereign of all England, Patron Saint of War, Beloved Ruler of all Europe, Greatest Generalissimo of all time, and a damn fine lover to boot." -Me, regarding (YOUR NAME HERE?).

I'm interested to see how many responses I get.

[alpaca]

Hehe ok I'll have a look if I can do one when I have a bit of time. Never finished a blitzing campaign before because it's quite boring really.

So, what'd be the best faction
The HRE seems interesting, France or Milan maybe (but Milan doesn't have too many starting provs)... let's see.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Hehe ok I'll have a look if I can do one when I have a bit of time. Never finished a blitzing campaign before because it's quite boring really.

So, what'd be the best faction
The HRE seems interesting, France or Milan maybe (but Milan doesn't have too many starting provs)... let's see.

Depends on your definition of 'best'.

Do you want a challenge? Try an orthodox faction. Without crusades to help you, it is harder to move swiftly from province to province and roll up the map, especially when dealing with a challenge involving the ratio of provinces versus turn number. If you moved slowly, and bunched all your troops together, blitzing is easy. But you will not capture more than one province per turn that way, on average.

If you are looking for the best faction suited for blitzing, try a Muslim faction. As soon as you have an Imam pious enough to call a jihad, you are the most dangerous faction in the game.

Witness my Egypt thread for an example of that. It's like calling a crusade against all the Catholic factions at once, something no Catholic faction can do. And there are more Catholic factions than Muslim ones.

For the most powerful (easiest) Catholic faction, I say France is your winner.
They have a lot of provinces between them and the holy land, they are a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Moors, have access to all of western Europe, have plenty of starting provinces, only one major front (HRE) and one minor front (England) to deal with (Spain hardly ever attacks you), plenty of rebel provinces to take over, good troop selection, and many starting generals to go on crusades with. In other words, they are almost too easy. But if you are trying to take all provinces by turn 60, it's not so easy.

So it really depends on your point of view.
For blitzing purposes, here are my less-than-official faction rankings:

(expert)
Russia (crappy troops, bad position, no crusades, one starting province)

(advanced)
Byzantium (Good troops, good position, but no crusades and attacked on multiple fronts)
Milan (Lack of generals, largely undefended while on crusade, cramped position and several strong enemies)
Scotland (Difficulty in reaching the Pope to request crusades, otherwise good)
Venice (multiple fronts undefended while on crusade)
Denmark (far away from Pope, too involved in Northern european politics)
Portugal (weak starting position, far from Pope, few generals, otherwise good)
Spain (better than Portugal, but few rebel provinces nearby and fewer generals)

(intermediate)
HRE (due to their multiple fronts being largely undefended when waging an aggressive campaign, otherwise perfect)
Poland (due to the difficulty of rolling up the excommunicated Catholic factions while on crusades)
Hungary (see Poland)

(easy)
France (great troops and starting position, great economy, close enough to Pope, effective crusades through excommed catholic territory, large number of generals and starting provinces)
England (see france)
Sicily (Call a crusade on turn 2, excellent starting position, few major enemies, expand in all directions, excellent troop diversity, good potential economy, protected by the Pope himself and the sea, but few starting generals and poor starting economy)
Moors (Cannot call jihad until Imam gets more piety, otherwise good)


(very easy)
Egypt (Can call jihad on turn 1, excellent starting position, has no defensive fronts, excellent troops and economy. You can't touch this.)
Turks (ditto)

[Monsieur Alphonse]

The Turks can call a crusade on turn one. The starting imam has enough piety. I use him to call a crusade and wipe out Byzantium within a couple of turns.

PS it is blitzkrieg and not kreig. Krieg is German for war.

[Askthepizzaguy]

True. Thanks Monsieur Alphonse. I have updated the list accordingly.

[SirRethcir]

Post your favorite blitz campaign from version 1.0.

(Or, if version 1.2, indicate that it is the patched version)

Pick any faction. Post a picture of the faction scroll showing the turn number and regions controlled by you. If you think I cannot beat your record, post your challenge.

Rules: No modded games. Version 1.0 or 1.2 only.
No codes or cheats.

Turn number must be between 20 and 100. Otherwise it is not a challenge.

Ok, here you can find mine:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=85054

- HRE, 1.2, VH/VH, long Campaign
- 20 turns

I'm quite sure it is possible in 19 or 18 turns.
Have fun! ;)

[Askthepizzaguy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Ok, here you can find mine:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=85054

- HRE, 1.2, VH/VH, long Campaign
- 20 turns

I'm quite sure it is possible in 19 or 18 turns.
Have fun! ;)

Challenge accepted. I will beat 20 turns on the long campaign.

The results will be posted here.

[SirRethcir]

So, how is it going?

[Askthepizzaguy]

So, how is it going?

I managed 50 provinces by turn 16, but I forgot to take Rome, so it doesn't count.
The proof is here in the save file.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/n5083o



Although, theoretically I could still take Rome and beat the 20 turns... but I don't see the point.
I still have all the save files from each turn, so if anyone wants to see this turn by turn, I can send you a link.

[SirRethcir]

Ah I see, Rebel provinces and crusading armies. !?
Though I haven't looked in your savegames.

Nice!

[Askthepizzaguy]

Notice how Spain, Denmark, and Turkey are the only factions I haven't bothered invading yet. It isn't obvious from the screenshot, but Poland is about to be toast.

Every other faction has tasted my sword. Except the Holy Conehead, which would die in a single turn from spies and a single invader stack.

[Shahed]

I managed 50 provinces by turn 16, but I forgot to take Rome, so it doesn't count.
The proof is here in the save file.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/n5083o



Although, theoretically I could still take Rome and beat the 20 turns... but I don't see the point.
I still have all the save files from each turn, so if anyone wants to see this turn by turn, I can send you a link.

IINM (lol) this 16 turns (or earlier victory) should be a new record. Last one was 19 turns but I have'nt followed for a while.

[Askthepizzaguy]

IINM (lol) this 16 turns (or earlier victory) should be a new record. Last one was 19 turns but I have'nt followed for a while.

I suppose it all depends on whether you must reach victory conditions (taking Rome) for the challenge to be successful. Otherwise I would not really be beating the record. Still, 50 provinces in 16 turns is pretty nifty.

EDIT: IINM? What does this mean?

[Askthepizzaguy]

http://s205.photobucket.com/albums/b...skthepizzaguy/

http://s185.photobucket.com/albums/x...rjack_andimok/

http://s189.photobucket.com/albums/z148/itsthepizzaguy/

These are the places where you can view my wonderful library of death and conquest.

Images galore. Some of them are out of order. Go from lowest number to highest.

[YAKOBU]

Hi everyone

If i'm not mistaken I would guess IINM would be........................................................................If I'm Not Mistaken.

[Shahed]

Correct !

[d3nn16]

hi askthepizzaguy,

I would like to know if you did the blitzing without saving and reloading ?
Did you have limited battle time and auto managed settlements ?

If you did then

[Askthepizzaguy]

hi askthepizzaguy,

I would like to know if you did the blitzing without saving and reloading ?
Did you have limited battle time and auto managed settlements ?

If you did then

I saved every turn, yes, so that my saved files could be uploaded by people who wanted to follow along. But I rarely ever reloaded. If a spy dies on a really simple mission, I tend to reload that. No sense blowing an entire speedrun simply because of one incompetent agent.

I don't use the battle timer or auto managed settlements. I never understood why someone would want the incompetent AI to manage a city for you. Churning out units you don't need, building things in the wrong order. Utter nonsense. As for the battle timer, I don't use that. I don't see why a battle should end after a few arbitrary minutes; it's not realistic.

Sorry to disappoint but it's just not my playing style.

[Budwise]

The battle timer I sorta understand. Your given enough time to finish your objective in destroying your enemy and if the battle timer ends, if your defending you don't always win. I think its determined on who was winning if you were fighting or if you did fight, who would have better odds of success.

I agreed with you for a while about why should the battle end at this timelimit instead of going on until one side is annialated but if you think about it, troops get hungry, need a bathroom break and plain out tired. Most field commanders during that time would pull their men away (I believe, I can't quote this a bit) or come up to an agreement of a ceasefire for the night so their troops can rest and attend to the wounded.

[d3nn16]

askthepizzaguy

I asked that because I just finished my second campaign as Venice and my style of play is same as yours : save/reload, no battle time limit and no auto managed settlements.

Just wanted to know if doing all upside down would add some challenge.

With a bit of imagination you can find that AI uses, in a way, auto managed settlements and the AI faction agents don't have a second chance either. So disabling some of your super skills as human would bring you close enough and still superior to the AI level.

I think the same way as Budwise about battle time limit.

About the auto managed settlements, you can only manage if you have a general inside, I find that it's quite realistic because generals at the time that went on campaign didn't know what was going on in their castles/cities and they had some difficulties when they returned home. Also adding buildings in queue will be equivalent to a general in medieval times giving some orders and guidelines before leaving.

I'm going to try a campaign with this new challenge (no save/reload, battle time limit and auto-managed settlements). Who else takes the challenge ?
The winner is the one that achieves victory in the smallest amount of turns with a given faction with the official 1.2 version.

[d3nn16]

Forgot the VH/VH condition too (was too obvious).
I don't know what condition to put on battles auto-resolved or manual.
Who's willing to try at least ?

[John_Longarrow]

D3nn16,

If you really want it to be a challenge, autoresolve every battle that does not contain your current faction leader. That would put you in the shoes of the leader of a nation, thus limiting what you can do to a larger extent.

This way you would have to plan things out a bit better ahead of time so that you go to fight those battles you think you really need to win while you entrust your generals to take over lesser settlements.

[d3nn16]

That's a plus in difficulty but not as important as avoiding save/reload which I think is more challenging.

I didn't start a campaign without save/reload yet to see how it's like (very hard I suppose).
Did you start one like this yourself Longarrow ?

[John_Longarrow]

I've been toying with the idea. I've also been toying with the idea of only allowing units or building to be put into a production queue if there is a general present (and only then can you change tax rate) but I ran into a couple problems with this. First it requires more micromanagement of generals than I like to do. Second, it doesn't make sence that a General couldn't get someone to carry instructions for him back to a castle over a two year period of time.

For the autocalc, I've tried it but I've gotten a little bored with it. There are too many fun fight that happen to not have a general present to skip.