Danish campaign: Lands to Conquer

[Dragunija]

Yeah,that's why i always play out every battle there is.It's really time consuming,but c'mon,point of game is to have fun! (And satification (Spelling?) on crushing Scotland/France/England/HRE/Egypt of RTW (Most annoying thing EVAR!)/RTW factions/Your most hated faction.

OH,and i nominate you King of Blitz Borgs of the year.

Dragunija

[Tillan]

Hi Pizzaguy,
Posting both versions of events sounds great (even if it will take twice as much work) it would be intresting to see how large the difference in time is in dominating the map between both situations. So I vote for both! =p


Look forward to updates, an entertaining read all round, especially as I can never seem to blitz as well I would like, to much a natural turtler I think.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Hi Pizzaguy,
Posting both versions of events sounds great (even if it will take twice as much work) it would be intresting to see how large the difference in time is in dominating the map between both situations. So I vote for both! =p

Look forward to updates, an entertaining read all round, especially as I can never seem to blitz as well I would like, to much a natural turtler I think.

I've already played several turns with both versions of events.

The non-excommunication timeline results in total Borg domination of the entire former Holy Roman Empire, France, and northern Italy, followed by a reconciliation with the Papal State and another crusade into excommunicated Venice, and a sudden counterstrike into Hungarian lands after the Polish-Hungarian alliance betrayed me.

England and Spain remain unassimilated, however they are in no condition to launch a counterassault.

On the other timeline, the collective is in chaos. Our drones roam through space, assimilating whatever they can find, but the collective is beyond damaged. There is almost nothing left of Borg space. With the collective in such chaos and disunity, they have severed their links with the collective and have begun decimating entire populations as vengeance for the Papal state unleashing their neuralytic pathogen upon us.

The collective will survive... but the galaxy is in chaos, and it will take much regeneration before the Borg will be a stable collective once again.

Speaking of blitzing... would any of you like some tips from myself and the other berserkers in the forum regarding how best to effectively blitz?

Nah, I'm sure there was more than that watching.

I enjoyed the Borg story by the way. Next-gen was always my favorite of the Star Treks...

Well it's pretty fun to roleplay as the Borg. But obviously the collective had to start somewhere. Here's a short bit of hypothetical I wrote, as told by a fictional version of myself, regarding the Borg. Consider it fanfiction... but very, very compatible with Star Trek canon.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

They were once a normal, albeit technologically advanced faction. Perhaps they were a race of telepaths who were already familiar with joining minds to solve problems, and designed a neural interlink to make the process easier and to sort out random thought processes, as well as add gigaquads of data storage and improve memory, reflex, and recall.

Other implants naturally added to these advantages. But somewhere, the 'humanity' was purged from the borg's collective consciousness. They ceased to think like individuals and focused solely on pragmatic expansion of their network to include all non-networked minds. Perhaps part of their rehabilitation process for criminals... they were forced to join the hive and have thier criminal impulses erased. Eventually, it was decided that all citizens were required to join, to prevent all crime.

Then, there was a war. A species attacked the Borg, because they needed resources. They were a tough, aggressive, powerful race, but they lacked technology. And the hive reacted swiftly and decisively to neutralize the threat. To end the war they were losing so badly, the other species accepted a cease-fire in exchange for being part of the Borg criminal rehabilitation process. They were also linked to the hive and their individuality was erased. Now they were to serve the collective... as tactical drones. Thus the Borg had a powerful military presence.

But their aggressiveness was added to the Borg's collective consciousness...

And soon, all the cold, calculating traits acquired from all of the minds of all of the individuals began to add up, and the traits of warmth and forgiveness, freedom, and desire for recreation began to disappear.

The collective became a ruthless aggressor, with the singular mission of bringing order to the galaxy.... by any means necessary. Thus the Borg are the ultimate police state, a fascist authoritatian regime, a communist collective bent on galaxy-wide assimilation.

Soon thousands of species across thousands of worlds were added to the collective. Some were deemed unworthy, and remained unassimilated. Some few were resourceful enough to avoid being assimilated... but as time progressed, fewer and fewer could withstand the Borg.

The Borg needed a singular mind to command their network, as the collective had difficulty keeping order without a command structure. Even without individuality, different minds had different strengths, different views, different opinions, different past experiences. Someone was needed to silence the masses and have them think as one, someone was needed to speak for the Borg.

I was chosen to be that voice.

For a time, the thoughts of the collective were mine alone. I chose to send scout teams into the Beta quadrant. The Romulans, as they called themselves, were a species worthy of assimilation. However, they possessed technology unknown to the borg; the power to cloak their ships and pass through our sensors undetected. Multiple attempts to assimilate this technology have failed. But it is of little concern, the Borg were easily able to repel their other primitive weapons, and even with cloaking technology, the Romulans were no threat to the Borg. There were other, far more advanced species within our grasp that were worthy of assimilation. Our wars in the Gamma quadrant with the Dominion were less successful, and we were forced to retreat... but the Borg are relentless. We will come again, in force.

We opened a gateway into fluidic space, and found a species most worthy of assimilation. Their biotechnology was far more advanced than ours... plans to assimilate the Federation, a loose organization comprised of several worthy species and hundreds of worlds, were put on hold after they repelled a single scouting cube. We had to commit all of our resources to the war with species 8472.

We had planned to build a transwarp hub in the middle of a sector of space known to the Federation as the "Briar Patch", which is filled with sensor-jamming nebulae, uninhabitable planets rich in resources, asteroids, and other spatial phenomena which make the area quite defensible and hidden.

However, we were in the midst of our war with species 8472, and we were unable to send more than a few dozen vessels into the hub. The federation found out about our plans, destroyed what few vessels we had in the area, and even mounted an offensive against us. We were damaged, but we utilized a temporary alliance with the Federation to neutralize the threat of species 8472.

However, those events along the timeline were erased when the one known as Janeway changed history by travelling back to the Delta quadrant with knowledge from the future regarding ablative hull armor and transphasic torpedoes, as well as a powerful neuralytic pathogen. She managed to destroy my heir, the Borg Queen, and collapse our transwarp network, which severed our links across the quadrants.

I myself am the sole remaining Locutor of the Borg, trapped between the Beta and Delta quadrants. The Borg remaining in my network were undamaged by the pathogen, as several of my drones were from a species with a natural resistance to it, from the Beta quadrant, which is where the pathogen originated. However, they had not had a chance to have their distinctiveness spread throughout the collective. I attempted to disseminate the information through the network as soon as I sensed what was happening, but by then the Queen, who I had left in command of the transwarp hub, had succumbed to the neuralytic pathogen. She finally recieved my instructions, but only after the network began it's collapse.

Now we are a small collective of rogue Borg, and we must assimilate the Beta quadrant. That Romulan cloaking technology might come in handy after all, because we are too few in number to conduct a direct assault into the federation. I will begin construction on a new transwarp hub as soon as we assimilate Romulan cloaking technology to disguise it. We will also begin construction on a massive supercube, with assimilated Federation ablative hull armor and transphasic weaponry.

This time there will be no stopping the Borg. Resistance is futile.

That sounds like the start of a novel, doesn't it?
I wish I knew how to write dialogue and characters, because that's a book I'd like to read.

Quick question: You may have answered this already but how many field battles do you fight it out and how many are AR'ed?

Is your decision it based on the odds or your army composition?

I mean, it usually seems to me that unless its a siege battle playing the battle will often give less casualties and capture more prisoners, althogh it can be time consuming...

I fight out all battles which are close in odds. I never leave anything critical to the computer. Sometimes the computer calculates a loss with battles I can easily win.

Example: Vilnius. Defended by some axemen, this settlement was easy to overpower. However, the computer consistently auto-resolved it as a loss. So, I decided to fight it myself and I won with a glorious and lopsided victory.

If I plan on assaulting a large force on the field with multiple stacks, I auto-resolve it, because the battle takes too long and I have a version of the game where you cannot control your reinforcements effectively. Plus, even my beefy computer can't really handle the battle... it's slow, even on low graphics settings.

So in those cases, and really easy seige battles, I auto-resolve. It makes the game more fun, to me, because I don't lose my concentration on the overall campaign which often happens after a 20 to 30 minute battle which I was going to win anyway even if I hopped onto the field wearing a blindfold and a peg leg and wielding a plastic picnic spoon.

Yeah,that's why i always play out every battle there is.It's really time consuming,but c'mon,point of game is to have fun! (And satification (Spelling?) on crushing Scotland/France/England/HRE/Egypt of RTW (Most annoying thing EVAR!)/RTW factions/Your most hated faction.

OH,and i nominate you King of Blitz Borgs of the year.

Dragunija

Thank you for the nomination. The collective appreciates your contribution to our thread.

I do play all of the difficult/fun battles. Except in the above mentioned case where the battle itself is too difficult for my computer to handle, and it's slow and sluggish. And usually in such cases I've brought a stack or two reinforcements, which would be a bloody slaughter no matter who played it.

If my cat walked across the keyboard, it would win such battles.

Thanks to all who enjoyed this thread, I will update it soon!

[Tillan]

Speaking of blitzing... would any of you like some tips from myself and the other berserkers in the forum regarding how best to effectively blitz?

That would be good, though ive a feeling it will always come down to practise makes perfect XD

[Askthepizzaguy]

That would be good, though ive a feeling it will always come down to practise makes perfect XD

It's deceptively simple.

All you have to do in "versus AI" games is recognize the fact that the computer doesn't know how to strike. And if it does strike, it takes a province (maybe... defend your frontier with militia spearmen and that will NEVER happen) but cannot typically blitz through your territory like I would.

So the "best defense is a good offense". If you are attacking all of your neighboring factions simultaneously (or defending a frontier with militia spearmen) they cannot strike back. You would roll through all their provinces and deflect what meager stack of troops they can muster against you.

Remember, they are terrible at blitzing. If they hit you, out-blitz them and cripple their core provinces. You will survive, they won't. They won't be able to reinforce, and you will. They will die quickly.

The first rule of blitzing:

1. Strike early

You need to be attacking someone or something (in fact, everything in range that you aren't draining diplomatic florins from) on turn one. One. Not five. Not three.

Turn One.

2. Strike hard

Use every single loser troop at your disposal. Mercenaries, your top generals, your GARRISONS, even peasants to boost the size. Every soldier must attend.
Attack your enemy at his weakest point.

Alternatively, if your enemy FOOLISHLY keeps his giant stack inside a city/castle... beseige them.

It's a BAD position to be in with all of your main forces being starved out by a massive invading army with no relief troops. You lose troops every turn and they don't. You will lose unless you sally, and sally situations are awful.

Therefore, attack. Defending is for those being conquered, not conquerors.
Rarely do I defend with anything more than basic militia.

3. Strike often

You will lose troops on the campaign. Recruit, recruit, recruit... diplomacy tactics and sacking florins give you money for more troops. Continue pumping them out until you are into debt.

Make sure these troops are within a few turns striking distance of the enemy. Otherwise, you will waste too many florins getting them there. By that point, you will need mercenaries. They are cheaper pieces of meat that you can use immediately, rather than spend decades training and armouring and then marching for several more decades... what a slow, slow, slow, slow waste of time.

Unless they can join a crusade/jihad and then SPEED away.

Do not allow your HEIR and HIS heir to die in battle. Everyone else is a kamikaze general you can afford to lose.

Use your King as your main general with your main assault force, and do not let him die in battle. Thats why he's got your best troops. Use him on less risky, but hard missions. Like taking castles and stuff.

Kamikaze generals you can load up with mercs, militia, peasants, archers, and other kaze generals (they make great mounted units, just dont use them foolishly) and ship them off on kamikaze missions and crusades. Pair them up with other kazes and you have a disposable double stack... which means lots of death to your enemy. Keep fighting until you can't anymore.

4. What is money?

Money is what you get from foolish AI during diplomacy. Money is what you can use to purchase your first ally's core provinces for 1000 a turn for 6 turns for 3 provinces. Money is what you get for selling Vilnius to poland for 3000 florins. because it's a loathsome, unprofitable, POS in the middle of nowhere. Money is what you use to purchase troops and recruitment buildings and castle upgrades and ports/grain exchanges for cities.

Money equals troops or buildings. Spend it all, and use your troops until they die. When they all die, you turn a profit again.

5. Go into the red wisely.

If you have 5 stacks of troops (a not uncommon thing in the first 15 turns) USE them against your enemy in a manner which will destroy half of them. All of a sudden you were in debt, but then you had fewer troops, sacked some cities, sold some buildings, sold a worthless province to Hungary who seems to always be rich and stupid, sacked it again because sometimes they don't get a garrison and you can just sack it again with your own garrison or the massive stack you just sacked it with (sack, sack, sackie sack) because reputation is for chumps.

Now you aren't in debt anymore and you utterly decimated some poor fool before he had a chance to strike you.

That's what blitzing is.

If you just ended a crusade and your 9 stacks of crusader units are in the middle of East Armpit, The Middle East, and you can't hold those regions and they would be unprofitable anyway if you could, and the nearest sackable region is Byzantium...

Just give them a rest. Disband, disband, disband, and recruit soldiers near your real enemies. That's like teleporting thousands of troops. Much smarter than walking 5000 miles. And do the disbanding on the year you capture the crusade/jihad target. Don't wait.

Being 20,000 florins in debt isn't fun, unless you know you can rampage yourself out of it quickly, like me.

There is more, much more I can teach you, grasshopper. Mostly it's nothing more complicated than sending as many troops under a good general towards your foe to harass them, force them into a strategic corner... seiges, sitting on a bridge while causing devastation, blocking a port with a unit of 15 peasants while you delay their main force, taking towns, destroying trade, demolishing recruitment buildings and selling off things, and then selling their own provinces to someone you'd like them to be at war with, or someone you know they won't want to go to war with (like their ally, or the Pope).

Just be a vicious, nasty bully, and care a lot less about your troops than the devastation you can cause.

6. Get used to actually fighting battles with bad troops.

Yes, get used to fighting with militia men and generals. Those and your mercenaries are all you get to have. Crusades/jihads give you better troops, and affordable mercs.

But you must learn to fight with a stack of basic archers, peasants, milita men, and generals. Sometimes thats why you need two stacks. Just move quickly and take down your enemy before they can build up a massive superstack of elite troops. And even if they do, surround it with 2 or 3 militia/merc stacks... surround and pound.

Numbers win in this game, especially against the AI. So field more troops, strike quickly, and dont worry about armour or weapons. Pitchforks and generals can win battles, you know.

7. Be nasty. I said it before... but seriously. This is total war, not polite disagreement. Do your dirtiest. Betray allies after draining their coffers and buying their provinces from them, sack cities after selling them and destroying their infrastructure.

Dont worry about merchants, spies, or assassins. Unless those spies are opening gates or warning you of an imminent attack. But thats what watchtowers are for. And milita spearmen.

Now be evil and kill them all at once. That's an order.




+++++++++++++++++

EDIT: Will be updating soon. Just dealing with life at the moment.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Hello thread viewers-

UPDATE:

So when am I going to post both versions of events, anyway?

Yeah life's gotten in the way a bit. (Work, school, ended a romantic relationship)

Played both versions of events and got quite a few nice screenshots. Went back and replayed then and got even more interesting results...

1. Got myself excommunicated... and strangely lost only one province. Continued exterminating resistance. Destroyed the HRE and France. Hungary and Poland double backstabbed me, and my florin count went down into the deep 5 digit negatives. Slowly losing troops to attrition and battles, no hope of recovering with the Pope. However, unless my provinces begin to truly rebel, I'm no weaker than I was.

2. Continued the assault and AVOIDED excommunication!

Gifted new acquisitions to the Pope, continued slaughtering innocents. Destroyed France, Milan, and the HRE, crippled Venice and Spain. Sold land to Byzantium. Still turning a profit every turn!

3. Disbanded my military and focused on economy...

Eventually backstabbed by Poland/Hungary and depleted forces made me lose a province. Gave up on Iberia, and focused on destroying France. Got on Pope's happy list and forced another crusade against Venice... now I have uber stacks heading EAST... looks like Hungary and Poland are about to feel the wrath of the Pizza guy...

I obviously won't take Venice until my stacks o' death are in position to annihilate the Hungarian empire.

==============
I have several versions of events... mostly positive. But I feel I need to go back and replay them again and post just two outcomes... keeping my military strong and attacking everyone I can possibly attack, and disbanding my armies and playing the economy game.

What is troubling is that I have figured out how to avoid excommunication entirely and I can continue rampaging and selling deadweight provinces to allies (or enemies... for immediate reconquest) so I can maintain not only my endless stacks, but also my florin count.

That's pretty scary. The Borg are clearly too powerful for this game.

Placating the Pope when misbehaving needs to be more difficult.

As for posting screenshots... yes, for you loyal fans I will eventually get around to it when I have the two final versions of events completed. I will try to keep both versions interesting and challenging.

Happy Holidays to you all, in the interim...

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Hello thread viewers-

Placating the Pope when misbehaving needs to be more difficult.

Happy Holidays to you all, in the interim...

I am looking forward to the screenies.

And yes it is too simple to fool the old man. Get your pope o meter high enough and you won't be excommend. Sack a city and give him some part of the loot and he will be very happy and you will be his pet darling. Actually this is very historical but we the evil ones can exploit it.

Happy Christmas to you.

Mr A

[Dragunija]

Woot,thought that you forgot this.Can't wait for some more screenies.

[Paradox]

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! I couldn't have improved on this if I spent a whole week! I was hooked to this thread from the moment you claimed that this campaign was yours, my reaction, "yeah right he's crazy". LOL.

Thank you for the guide, you have inspired me to play as the Danes.

Also, can you tell me how many 'crosses' you have from "his holey-moley-ness?" Because I've been threatened with excommunication several times against reconciled factions, but I tend to avoid them, after that the only thing that happens is "displeasure of the pope", which is far from excommunication.

[Lusted]

@askthepizzaguy, last version of LTC has just been released if you're interested. Whilst i'm sure you'll be able to blitz in it, will be interesting to see how you do.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! I couldn't have improved on this if I spent a whole week! I was hooked to this thread from the moment you claimed that this campaign was yours, my reaction, "yeah right he's crazy". LOL.

Thank you for the guide, you have inspired me to play as the Danes.

Also, can you tell me how many 'crosses' you have from "his holey-moley-ness?" Because I've been threatened with excommunication several times against reconciled factions, but I tend to avoid them, after that the only thing that happens is "displeasure of the pope", which is far from excommunication.

Some are familiar with my blitz talent, and others have never heard of me. But the idea behind this thread is simple: Showcase the possible upper limit of conquest speed, showcase AI and game weaknesses, and utterly dismantle your rivals as fast as humanly possible.

I do not claim that this sort of speed cannot be improved upon, however it should take many, many replays of save files before it could be significantly improved upon. Believe it or not, the first part of this campaign was played straight through exactly once.

I have played as the Danes before, but started over from scratch. This one was done in one sitting in an evening.

At the point of the sacking of Cordoba, I had maximum crosses from the Pope and a reliable reputation, as well as alliances with every world power except Sicily and Venice and the Moors. A good reputation is exactly the sort of bargaining chip that can get you to the brink of glory... but a dastardly betrayal is precisely what will take you to the upper limit of your power.

Come, join the dark side. It's much more entertaining...

bwahahahaha!!!

Thank you, Shogun. I am glad I have taught something about ruthless aggression to a fellow forum member. Believe you me, I have played the Chivalrous leader before... but never again, except as pretense.

@Lusted:

LTC for Vanilla M2TW? Latest version? Link plz. TY
I will not be upgrading to Kingdoms at this time. Perhaps later.

I have xmas off of work. I will be working on the next leg of the campaign now.

[Lusted]

@Lusted:

LTC for Vanilla M2TW? Latest version? Link plz. TY
I will not be upgrading to Kingdoms at this time. Perhaps later.

Latst versions are Kingdoms only.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Latst versions are Kingdoms only.

Yeah... not quite through with this version yet.

When I unwrap Kingdoms, rest assured I will attempt to destroy it and post the results for all to see. Thank you for improving an already awesome game by making things more realistic/difficult.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Woot,thought that you forgot this.Can't wait for some more screenies.

Sorry folksies. I am officially tired of playing this particular campaign. All the fun has gotten sucked out of it.



I've played a bazillion different outcomes by now.

It's seemingly possible to accomplish anything after Cordoba gets sacked.
I can turn the map into a joint Danish/Papal empire, I can get excommunicated and become weak, I can continue expanding and avoid excommunication, I can disband my armies and turtle from this point with perfect reputation (the chivalrous game)... anything is possible. I've done it all.

Now it's too easy and it's also boring and un-fun.

However; a consolation prize to any and all who are interested.

I have all my save files still. If ANY of you wishes to continue this campaign yourself... PLEASE let me know!

I strongly encourage you to start from the point where I sack Cordoba for the first time and end the crusade, as BIG decisions have to be made afterward, and fast.

I can post a link for you guys to download the file from, all you have to do is ask. You will probably need to be playing my exact version of LTC, but I'm not sure.

You will need LTC, obviously. Try it and find out.

Who wants the link?

[Dragunija]

Not me,i don't even have M2TW installed yet.Anyways,could you please try to play same blitz camp. as Islam faction? For your loyal fans? Please? With cherry on top?

[Monsieur Alphonse]

He has already done that, shamelessly abusing something noble as the Jihad to conquer 45 provinces in a very short time. I have forgotten which faction he used. It was either the Turks or Egypt. Search the forum.

[Askthepizzaguy]

It was Egypt, and yes, I greatly abused the Jihad function, as did the Muslims historically, to conquer provinces which were neither Muslim nor part of any faction engaged in war with them.

Political and religious sensitivity aside, many religions were spread by the sword, including Islam and Christianity. Which is ironic considering their message is one of peace.

The spirit of the message often gets lost in the zeal for spreading it. Other than Muslim armies forcibly conquering Russia and Germany, the spread of my Egyptian caliphate happened rather realistically, according to historical record.

Also I recommend clicking my name, selecting view public profile, and selecting find all threads started by askthepizzaguy, and then look for the thread in question.