Since on VH campaigns, the AI "cheats" to give itself gold and stuff, do you bother blockading and sabotaging?

I have four assassins in Italy now just causing havoc, all targets have 80+ success rate. It's fun blowing up marketplaces and assassinating princesses, especially since my king is a "tyrant".

Anyways... is it worth it to attack the enemies economy in VH campaigns?

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I do it a lot, more out of amusement then actually trying to bog down my enemy. I'm sure it helps me though.

It may be worth it if the enemy has a very well defended border.

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It has my priority to asassinate enemy targets, but when the odds aren't good enough I blow up their city. Even on VH, every little bit of damage you can do to your enemy helps you defeat him. I'm not sure whats the scale of the damage for the AI, considering their bonus on VH.

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in this game, with castles and cities system you dont need to put some special efforts to killing enemy's economy. Just take his cities

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Yeah, but those require expensive armies, whereas assassins are only 500 a pop.

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if you cant afford 1 stack of soldiers then you should focus more on developing your economy than destroying others.

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Sacking and demolishing infrastructure = building your economy

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it seems, on vanilla VH, economic warfare results can still be seen. however, one has to wage it on a much broader scale than on medium and hard. the same does not hold true for Lands of Conquer and similar mods that use scripts to "fix" AI's financial situation if any faction runs too low (for example, in my LOC campaign, all AI factions have "boundless wealth" around turn 100) in that case, economic warfare has no meaning and I am not talking about pillaging. as far as pillaging goes: yes, sacking equals "building your own economy" as the pizza guy has mentioned here.

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Well in LTC 3.0 the money script gives a cash boost for every settlement owned, it is not dependent on treasury levels, and you can cripple the ai's economy enough to make the money boost not make up for the deficit. Plus it only applie son H and VH in LTC 3.0.

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I did a lot of merchant acquisitions in my first Vanilla campaign. Did help me, not sure about crippling the enemy :-)

I do blockade ports. Not for economical reasons however - in my experience AI rarely builds ships in blockaded ports. And the mastery of the seas is paramount :-)

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I'll block ports, blow up buildings, kill merchants, spies, princesses, cardinals and priests of other religions any chance I get. What better way to enact Total War? (now if they just had an Execute and Hang Heads From Poles option)

Seems to work well in keeping my enemies down. But then the AI does a pretty good job of that itself.

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When I used to play the TW series -- indeed, emphasize 'used to' -- I commonly blockaded ports and sabotaged marketplaces (as well as as many enemy buildings as possible). I also declined any trade offer from a soon-to-be foe to withhold them any fruit from it that could aid them. And I also wished there were a way to diplomatically cease a foe's trade agreements with other factions. Sending in spies to cause dissatisfaction among their settlements and the use of assassination were two of my favourite tools.

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I pretty much take a swing at everything in an assassin's path unless he has a specific mission, knocking out ballista/cannon towers before an assault for example. The enemy's economy is a far and away secondary concern IMHO.

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I used to do that frequently -- blockade ports, place small scouting armies on land trade routes to block them, and send in assassins to destroy infrastructure. It's a great way to soften up a strong faction. But I've really cut back on it, because it means I face lower-grade armies in battle, and that's not as much fun. The enemy needs money to field a decent army.

About the only thing I do now, is port blockades to bottle up the enemy as a strategic move, not so much for the economic loss of sea trade.

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Your signature is very funny, I couldn't stop laughing at the Mongol accent when I first heard it

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Likewise, and Sabotaging key trade buildings every now and then etc etc.

I try and use 'raiding parties' just very small and fast forces that disrupt trade routes (sit on roads, sit in ports, etc). The main armies always get bogged down in manoeuvering etc and so I use smaller forces to disrupt the enemies economy.

Wish that by placing an army next to an enemy merchant camping a resource that it disrupted their trading ability etc , Or ... does it? Because that'd make a lot of sense.

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i sometimes blockade ports.i don't use assassins a lot becurse , makeing a army to take over a town seen easyer,then trying to destroy there income.pays off better in the long ran.i find troops more usefull.troop can help me keep my towns and take over enemy towns and kill there armys,and not just there leaders.

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I figure anyway to hurt the enemy is good and hitting them in the moneybags especially so. I always go for the ports first to limit naval ability and because sea trade seems to be the biggest moneumaker.

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The best was back in the Shogun days when you could put 10-15 Shinobis in one enemy territory and cause an immediate revolt on the next turn.

Talk about economic sabotage! Plus if the Rebels won you could then take the province without starting a war. Oh it'd be nice to pull that trick on other Catholic factions when the Pope gets pissy with you.

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