Invasion from the inside

[rockoutloud1213]

I am playing as Aragon in early. It's been almost a century since the start of the game and I already firmly hold all Iberia, Northern Africa, the holy land, and pretty much everything the Byzantines had from Greece to everything surrounding the Black Sea and the Middle East, with the Biz cornered to (I think) only Bulgaria and Rhodes. Having newly (within the last 25 years) conqured all these provinces, every Byzantine victory seems to push loyalty into the ground, but I can easily put down these minor rebellions, and once I had defeated the Byzantines, everything would be smooth sailing for awhile. Then the Turks reappeared. Suddenly Edessa is filled with 5 full banners of pissed off Turks (the Byzantines eliminated you! Really! I just took your land from them! They don't seem to care.) Now loyalty is down all over the Middle East. I wasn't sure what to do. My forces were spread out a lot, so I couldn't get a reasonable fighting force there quickly. I decided to just leave a unit in the stronghold to buy time in hope they wouldn't assault. Now it's the next turn, and I'm not sure what to do. I've got a crusade in Morocco ready to be launched, but due to Byzantine ships it will take at least 2 turns for the path to be cleared to land in Tripoli. Meanwhile, every province bordering Edessa is at extreme loss to loyalty. I'm about to lose half my empire. Help?

PS

I'm not nearly as good with battles in Medieval as I am in Rome, so I usually auto-resolve. Any idea how 1 defender in Bulgaria killed 475 besiegers all by his lonesome?

[Brandy Blue]

I faced a similar situation recently. There were two things that helped.

First, moving my king closer to the low loyalty areas seemed to calm them a bit. Clearing the Byzantine fleet might help you too. The loyalty drop might be partly because no sea route links your king to outlying areas.

Second, I raised at least one peasant unit in every province I thought was likely to rebel, and built a watchtower or boarder fort if appropriate. These are reletively quick and cheap ways to push up loyalty.

These measures may buy you time until you are ready to deal with the Turks directly. If you are rich, you might also consider bribing one of their stacks as soon as they spread out. (It is harder to bribe generals who are right under their king.) Its expensive, but if you can swing it, you would get extra troops in the area and weaken the enemy at the same time.

By the way, beware of those Byzantine guys in the future. Sometimes it is easy to roll up their land forces, but then you find that their big fleet can cut your sea communications, while protecting their last outposts so you can't knock them out. As I already hinted, this may have something to do with your problem in the first place.

Finally, if you have a really good assassin, you might try to knock out the Turkish leader before he can get any princes (unless he already has some). Mere rebels would be easier to deal with.

Sorry, that's the best I can do.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hullo rockoutloud1213,
If your empire's general's loyalty is terribly low, then you could, in addition to the advise provided by Brandy Blue, train some spies and keep them in the disloyal regions. They should help prevent dissent out of fear of been caught.

Alternatively, you could place a Grand Inquisitor in the province to force the local into loyalty out of fear of him. It also removes religious unrest as he preaches to the populace.

Hope this helps you, good luck, cheers!

[Ironside]

I'm not nearly as good with battles in Medieval as I am in Rome, so I usually auto-resolve. Any idea how 1 defender in Bulgaria killed 475 besiegers all by his lonesome?

They added a quite linear system to make sieges more expensive to auto-resolve. Simply put 472 of your attacker died to the automatic defense.

Otherwise you could take a well manned fortress with almost 0 losses by a simple huge overpowering.

[rockoutloud1213]

I understand the premise is that it is harder to take a well-defended fortress than to defeat an army in a field somewhere, but 1 man killing 475? That's not plausible, regardless of fortress.

[Ironside]

I understand the premise is that it is harder to take a well-defended fortress than to defeat an army in a field somewhere, but 1 man killing 475? That's not plausible, regardless of fortress.

You have to treat the castle defenders as somewhat neutral troops that surrenders and switches sides when all the loyal troops are dead. Sworn to location, not leader.
Gamemechanics vs realism you know.

[Zathernon]

I understand the premise is that it is harder to take a well-defended fortress than to defeat an army in a field somewhere, but 1 man killing 475? That's not plausible, regardless of fortress.

If your general at the time of the assault was a weak general, i.e. no-command, low or negative valour, low or negative morale and the opposing general had positive traits, consider yourself lucky to have won at all.

If perchance you had done a "quick-save" in the pre-battle screen, try doing it in 3D. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Once while defending against The Golden Horde, they had lost over 2800 in order to take the fortress. Sometimes the enemy will stand around as if drunk and be eliminated by arrow fire.

Most resurgent factions have no command or valour so their bark is much more than their bite. The Sultan/King may also be old and die-off as quickly as they appeared.

[rockoutloud1213]

Today, I tried assaulting again with about 200 troops and played it out myself. Here's what happened. I figured last time, all my troops must have died from arrow towers. Not so. Only about 10 troops died from arrows or boiling oil. What happened was that the computer made the 1 Kataphraktos gaurding the castle a god. He himself killed almost 200 men, down to my one last soldier. Then, the Kataphraktos and my Urban Militia traded blows for about 15 minutes. THey would still probably be fighting now, hours later, had I not just routed the soldier to get it over with.


Simply put, the game hates me. Is this some glitch I am experiencing, or are Kataphraktos supposed to be able to kill that many people. IF so, why couldn't he kill my last man?


WTF?

[Zathernon]

Sorry , double post.

[Bregil the Bowman]

I understand the premise is that it is harder to take a well-defended fortress than to defeat an army in a field somewhere, but 1 man killing 475? That's not plausible, regardless of fortress.

I recently took on a citadel with 8 defenders, played it out in full and got horrendous casualties. Getting past all those walls and towers ain't pleasant.

Auto-calc will often give you worse casualties than playing out the attack. I once had a bridge battle where I had about 400 men and the AI had 2. Not to waste time I auto-calced - 250 casualties and I lost the battle! I went back and played it out - it turned out the bridge defenders were two "Jedi" Royal Knights. I hit them with two units of jinettes - lost two men in the melee and one to friendly fire, both knights went down with javelins through them. It's the biggest difference I have ever seen between auto-calc and a full battle.

[Roark]

The siege auto-calc is pretty damn generous. It's a total cheese play to auto-calc sieges, in my humble opinion.

Assaulting the big structures is tres painful.