Quote Originally Posted by askthepizzaguy

Greetings, Joh.

As for my seige technique:

If the enemy does not have a full stack garrison, I can pretty much blitz rush the center square by making a feint to the walls, smashing the gate, and abandoning the ladders and seige equipment and rushing straight through the gate with my crusader mounts. (Good, cheap, mid-level knights from my insane crusades).

If the enemy foolishly guards the center, then I can easily take the walls and rain arrows of death upon him. Granted, if he's prepared, that means I will be taking arrow casualties as well.

Assuming he's got the dismounted knights or better, I will not be able to take the center simply by clubbing my way there. Then it comes down to waiting out the seige or surround/pound on the sally or seige relief.

If he's backed into the castle, I can afford to wait him out. I prefer seige relief battles because then it's an even ground numbers game. Simply surround with your cheapo crusader seargents, merc spears, crusader knights, militia spears, and general units (of which I have plenty).

There are decent troops you can get without any effort at all.

Once I'm out on the campaign map, and he must relieve the seige, I can play defender with my myriad stacks of troops. I can defend my general until my relief forces arrive, and by then even the best troops are tired and depleted from all the killing. Bye bye main defender stack.

I can wait them out, Blitz the center, take the walls, or win seige relief battles easily. What can they do?

They can sally... always a bad move. I brought far too many troops to defeat easily with a sally, not to mention my relief stack. They can cover the center while I take the walls. They can cover the walls while I take the center. They can do both and starve to death. They can relieve seiges and lose by numbers.

Defenders have poor options. True, a frontal assault against DFK's inside a citadel is a silly move. But then, if I did that all the time, I wouldn't be the pizzaguy, Blitz dude extraordinaire.

As the Turks, I tend to overwhelm the Egyptians first while allying with the Byzantines. Then, I call a jihad against any catholic faction or the Russians. If I get crusaded against, assassins or navies will sink thier mission.

Once I have the entire Arab caliphate under my control, I wipe the Byzantines off the map (Need a reason? How about insulting Islam. The Emperor named his teddy bear Mohammed. Therefore, according to the Holy Text, he must be executed!)

I send imams to convert and my jihadis to exterminate and pillage all settlements in my wake. Then I build up my castles and prepare for the Mongoloids.

A few well placed stacks near bridges near castles will trip them up. Night fighter works well. A good mix of heavy/missile cavalry and spearpoints will do wonders against the Mongrel scum.

Holding provinces is not a priority, my friend.

What happens when the Mongols take a province? Don't they let a stack sit inside of it?

Now what happens when you take a couple of generals with night fighter and catapults and re-take the settlement? It's called the Venus Fly Trap.

Come little mongrels... take my undefended castle... and then DIE!!!

catapults and archers rain death upon them... they sally into my spearpoints and slowly bleed to death... no reinforcements in sight. Mounted units suck inside of castles. Even stampy the elephant is a poor castle defender. I just aim fire at Stampy so that Stampy stamps his friends instead of me.

Alternatively, you could let the Mongols come... just prepare massive armies first and deploy them somewhere hidden to shadow their movements.

Let them come... let them take settlement after settlement... let them spread out and divide their forces... let them create a bloated, fat, poorly defended and spread out Mongol empire... and suddenly blitz their provinces which are defended with no more than one stack.

Slay them all.... rinse and repeat.

Seiges are too easy to kill the defender, especially when the defender is an AI. Seiges are the name of the game.

I can understand your strategy, but I can also see two (imo) flaws in it.

First: you are again assuming a human player is as incompetent and predictable as the AI. That would probably not be the case.

Second: it is the first turn of the campaign, and you are going to START your blitz. Where have you exactly got your multiple stack attacking armies from? I have not tried that many factions, and I know some (generally the small ones to even things out) start with large armies, but not all. You are using a small army to attack a (usually) small garrison, and you win because the AI is bad at defending (or attacking for that matter). In this case, reinforcement used by a human player will make a huge difference (imo).

Imagine you are catholic player, you cannot exploit crusades off the bat as no catholic faction will be excommunicated for a while, and either getting the Pope to accept it or reaching your destination takes time. Then again, I am assuming the aim of the crusade is a human player, who will make a much better work than the AI. Assume you take my settlement, next turn I will declare Jihad on you, which means things will level out, or even if you don't, I will do my best to punish you, I am a turtle, but not stupid. I do not even have to wait until you take my settlement, I can call for a Jihad and face my "almost free army" with yours ... of course mine in a defending position.

The whole point of the blitz is to gather momentum, the larger number of settlements I conquer, the larger the armies I can field. What I am saying here is that a HUMAN player can deny you that momentum.