The MTW challenge thread.

[nara shikamaru]

A challenge is always good to have with any game, as that can make a monotonous moment, become a great experience, even if the challenge is self made.

That brings me to the point of this thread, which I hope will have a decent run, as I'm sure it was either done before, there's gonna be little interest in it, or not a lot of ideas going about, but that's enough about crying about things that may not happen. I wanted to have a thread, that not only had us telling tales of things we did to make the game more fun, but to put challenges forward for other players to try, and then tell us how they did.

The best way I can put this is, let's say "You" are playing as the Turks, well you might make it more of a challenge by never using "unit x" whatever it maybe, it could be peasants, or JHI. Or let's say you haven't tried the "challenge" yourself, but you have the idea of going as the Hun's and never making your king/princes fight unless they are attacked.

Well I hope I was clear, and if not just tell me and I try to be clearer. Oh and as something I've done to add a new level hardness, I did a game as the HRE, and limited what I could make from sea trade to no more 1500 florins.

Well that's my idea, hopefully it'll have a half decent run before it gets forgotten.

[caravel]

Good idea for a thread, but why not extend it to simple mods to the game in order to make it more challenging??

For example you can mod peasants out altogether to prevent the AI from creating spam armies full of them or you can resrict them to being only trainable via the VI muster field.

Another way you can make the game more difficult is to mod out anything that you can do that the AI can't. These include Inns and Mercenaries and Dismounts.

There are also things that you can exploit all too readily that the AI can't. Provincial valour bonuses to Assassins or Grand/Inquisitors for example. These can be removed easily.

You can also reduce the trade income of trade goods to get rid of the huge trade bloat problem and remove the inland trade goods from the map altogether as they're of no real benefit in MTW where there is only sea trade anyway (the "local trade" you see is simply the value of one trading transaction per year that the province generates within itself, it is not trade with neighbouring provinces over land). Trade income should be balanced so that it covers small scale ship support but gives a small profit.

In terms of restricting yourself without modding I've found that you can often use common sense rules:

1) Instead of taking a huge overkill force into a battle against a weaker foe, just take enough to do the job. Regard such battles as "training".

2) Don't attack unless attacked

3) Don't assassinate your own generals/heirs, only try them for treason with spies if their loyalty is pitifully low.

4) Don't send generals/heirs on suicide missions to get rid of them.

5) If you must use inquisitors limit yourself to one GI and two Inquisitors only and no more.

6) In battles don't blatently try to shoot out the AI general.

7) In battles, no edge camping.

8) Try to put together realistic and balanced combined arms forces. No large armies full of uber units such as 10 units of Viking Huscarles. Try to defeat the enemy through smart maneouvering ambushes height advantage and morale destruction rather than brute force bumrush.

9) Absolutely no executing of prisoners on the field - the AI doesn't do this to you! Take your chances and you may find that the outcome is better overall, with the enemy having lost the battle and having to pay the ransom for a huge mob of disloyal men. Next turn it could be a civil war for him.

10) No breaking of alliances. Try to remain true to your allies and grin and bear it even if you know they're building up a force on your borders and are preparing to stab you in the back next year.

That's it for now, I may think of more.

[nara shikamaru]

Thanks Caravel, I completely forgot about the idea of self modding, which can be somewhat easy if you know what your doing, and if you can follow direction well.

Oh and I got one that tho I haven't done, sounds fun, if you're playing a faction with camel units, make them your only cav unit you train, except for royal family members that need re-training. OR maybe try a game where you use no cav whatsoever, relying only on infantry and archers/x-bows etc...

[caravel]

Thanks Caravel, I completely forgot about the idea of self modding, which can be somewhat easy if you know what your doing, and if you can follow direction well.

Most of those are easy to do and require only a few minutes with notepad or the gnome editor.

Oh and I got one that tho I haven't done, sounds fun, if you're playing a faction with camel units, make them your only cav unit you train, except for royal family members that need re-training. OR maybe try a game where you use no cav whatsoever, relying only on infantry and archers/x-bows etc...

Well you don't have to be that extreme but if you were say playing as the English you could field "realistic" armies mostly made up of spearmen (Sergeants), UM, FMAA and archers with only small numbers of cavalry and very few knights units. Historically the Knights would not have been in such huge numbers and most of the army would have been made up of infantry.

[macsen rufus]

When I played my first Irish campaign in XL, I was shocked to discover that they could train archers (unlike the Irish faction in VI, which is what I was expecting...) So I did the campaign without training any archers other than "specials" I could pick up from foreign provinces (eg Welsh longbows). I will one day edit my XL so that the Irish simply can't train vanilla archers

[Ironside]

You can also reduce the trade income of trade goods to get rid of the huge trade bloat problem and remove the inland trade goods from the map altogether as they're of no real benefit in MTW where there is only sea trade anyway (the "local trade" you see is simply the value of one trading transaction per year that the province generates within itself, it is not trade with neighbouring provinces over land). Trade income should be balanced so that it covers small scale ship support but gives a small profit.

If you prefer having a large trade income, you can mod the import percentage to a higher value (like 100%). That way, the comp will gain as much as you on your own trade network. Easier modding as well (needs only to change one value).

[Bregil the Bowman]

Play as Almohads, no AUM...

[seireikhaan]

Play as Almohads, no AUM...

Ooh, that'd be interesting. Pretty much would have to rely on muwahid's for 'heavy infantry'(not that they're even heavy) at that point, and just use pure mobility to try and win battles. LOTS of Gulam cavalry/Saharan cavalry, Faris, and muwahids... Dang, I might just have to try this sometime! Winning battles with lots and lots of mobile but weak units. Those are some of the funnest battles of all.

[Max Power]

Having played the MTW for a while I have a couple of rules that keep the game interesting for me.

1. Don't use inquisitors to burn enemy generals. They quickly become immortal killing machines, capable of bringing down an empire with no real effort. The only exception is when the A.I. burns one of my generals, then
I burn one of theirs in exchange.

2. If an area has a unit bonus then build only that unit in that territory. It forces me to use units like urban militia or woodsmen that I might not otherwise use.

3. Only build units from historically correct areas. If I'm playing the Turks I don't build turkomen horse archers in Wales. I try to build 'local' units where possible. I do cheat a little as I can't build all of the local units though. It's much more fun to field a mixed army with a mixture of strengths and weaknesses.

One thing I have been considering is only personally fighting battles where my King is the commander...