Blitz All Challenge

[Askthepizzaguy]

At long last the pictures are now viewable.

...Impressive.

Most Impressive.

(notes record has been shattered to pieces... not even close)

AAARRRGGGGHHHH!!!

THE SHAME!!! THE SHAME!!!

[Askthepizzaguy]

ALL HAIL BLITZ MASTER GROG, RECENTLY CROWNED HIGH COMMANDER AND BLITZKRIEG WARFARE CHAMPION!

Former Blitzmaster ATPG presiding over the title ceremony

Master Grog:

Not only have you shattered my record, but indeed you have demonstrated a mastery of blitz warfare that I did not think was possible. You managed to shave not one or two, but several turns off of my time. You truly have applied the lessons and principles of which I can only claim a small amount of credit for teaching the members of the forum.

Before I was the master, I was but the learner. Now I am the learner again. I would be most pleased to hear your advice on blitz war, that I might make a reasonable attempt to match your incredible achievement.

But for the here and now, you are to be rewarded with the only tangible evidence of your blitz mastery other than the proof itself demonstrated here today to me, the former blitzmaster.

Grog, for a long time, no one could credibly claim or prove that their campaign map skills were better than mine. But you have easily demonstrated your abilities are superior. My official blitzmaster title, indicating my status as champion of the realm, is hereby bequeathed to you, until such time that I can defeat your record or at least match it and share in the victory.

My previous title:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

"Master tactician, holder of walls, sacker of cities, great crusader, superb diplomat, pious and pure, intelligent, witty, faithful and charming, Praetor of Rome, Emperor of Byzantium, Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire, lord of Spain, France, Milan, Venice, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Timbuktu, King of the Britons, Defeater of the Saxons, sovereign of all England, Patron Saint of War, Beloved Ruler of all Europe, Greatest Generalissimo of all time, and a damn fine lover to boot." -Me, regarding myself.

I can no longer claim this title. It is yours.

__________________
"Master tactician, holder of walls, sacker of cities, great crusader, superb diplomat, pious and pure, intelligent, witty, faithful and charming, Praetor of Rome, Emperor of Byzantium, Kaiser of the Holy Roman Empire, lord of Spain, France, Milan, Venice, Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Timbuktu, King of the Britons, Defeater of the Saxons, sovereign of all England, Patron Saint of War, Beloved Ruler of all Europe, Greatest Generalissimo of all time, and a damn fine lover to boot." -Master Grog, true champion of blitz warfare

[Grog]

War Marshall Grog steps up to the podium. His basic chainmail armour is soaked with the blood of a thousand vanquished foes, and torn with the cut of a thousand blades. His ageing but powerful frame is ruined with many war wounds and scars of battle.

As he approaches the poduim, a ragged cheer arises from his ramshackle armies of peasants, pilgrims, drafted Militia and bloodied mercs. A nod of acknowledgment silences the loyal troops of the Holy Roman Empire.

He turns to the crowded hall, surveys the assembled host with a steely glint in his eye. A hush falls over the room.

Raising one mailed fist high in the air, he bellows "TURTLE POWER" before collapsing stone dead...

[Grog]

On a more serious note, I could certainly write a book or a least a fat thread on what I learned playing this campaign, so I'll just do a basic assessment of where I varied from the ATPG blitzkrieg Theorum.

Ok first off faction and difficulty. I used HRE on VH/VH standard vanilla 1.3 (1.2 with kingdoms).

Why HRE?
I wanted a castle-based catholic faction. I planned on 1:3 castle:town ratio for quick mailed knights everywhere. Also, they have good centralish position, can snag a lot of rebel land off the bat if you are quick. Once you have 15+ territories in western/central europe you are unstoppable.

However the main advantage is proximity to rome, but you start with no diplomat and princess is way up north. So turn 1 I build a townhall at bologna, turn 3 train diplomat, turn 4-5 get alliance/perfect then call crusade. I got lucky here as papal states diplomat approached florence (captured turn2) in turn 3 AI moves, so I grabbed alliance and perfect then and called crusade to antioch turn 3. (note: secure initial tribute: usually accepts 100/5 gift after gift 100 + gift map info, then incrementally increase gift to 100/10, then open offer provinces to perfect)

Why VH/VH? well I always play all my battles VH, so no worries there. I chose VH for stategic map as this makes the AI stupidly aggressive, which works to my advantage tbh. I'll expand on this later.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

On a more serious note, I could certainly write a book or a least a fat thread on what I learned playing this campaign, so I'll just do a basic assessment of where I varied from the ATPG blitzkrieg Theorum.

Ok first off faction and difficulty. I used HRE on VH/VH standard vanilla 1.3 (1.2 with kingdoms).

Why HRE?
I wanted a castle-based catholic faction. I planned on 1:3 castle:town ratio for quick mailed knights everywhere. Also, they have good centralish position, can snag a lot of rebel land off the bat if you are quick. Once you have 15+ territories in western/central europe you are unstoppable.

However the main advantage is proximity to rome, but you start with no diplomat and princess is way up north. So turn 1 I build a townhall at bologna, turn 3 train diplomat, turn 4-5 get alliance/perfect then call crusade. I got lucky here as papal states diplomat approached florence (captured turn2) in turn 3 AI moves, so I grabbed alliance and perfect then and called crusade to antioch turn 3. (note: secure initial tribute: usually accepts 100/5 gift after gift 100 + gift map info, then incrementally increase gift to 100/10, then open offer provinces to perfect)

Why VH/VH? well I always play all my battles VH, so no worries there. I chose VH for stategic map as this makes the AI stupidly aggressive, which works to my advantage tbh. I'll expand on this later.

I never play on anything besides VH VH. What would be the point? Hurt me plenty.

Your biggest differences IMHO were the faction of course (I did 50 provinces by turn 16, myself with the HRE) and the destination of your initial crusade. You chose Antioch with HRE, I chose Cordoba with France/England.

I dont think I made any real mistakes other than the choosing of Cordoba for the crusade. I think if I had chosen HRE and done antioch I would have had more success.

You made the better choices; I feel our blitzing ability is rather even. There's only so much you can do in a single turn, and the maximum with the HRE clearly bests the maximum of England. They start with more and are closer to the Pope.

But again, congrats. I have changed my sig line to reflect your victory.

[Grog]

Basic overview of campaign objectives/timeline:

From the start I planned to do this with two crusades, I took a lot of ATPG advice on-board, but I didnt read either of the tactical threads (although I remember some of them in part from first time round, and I did look at the 'win' screens), mainly as i didnt want to bias my expectations. However a lot of the advice ATPG gives on this thread is very sound, especially the exploitation of crusade mechanics.

I didnt know for sure I'd beat ATPG's 58 turn mark until about turn 30 I'd guess (as detailed above). If you had asked me between turn 10-20 I'd have doubted it..nearly quit at this point.

I knew to get a good start I'd need early crusade, pure luck saw this called turn 3 as detailed above. This means 3-13 I have free armies to play with and move in any direction, so I'd thought to use this to make early in-roads to russia and try to capture most of Byzantine before establishing a strong base at antioch (I am a dab hand at mastering antiochearly). My mistakes here were sparse mercs east of Thorn, so northern stack became really threadbare breaking russia.

Also, Milan/Poland/Hungary all chose this time to attack so things were a bit strained for a while, I ended up circling my crusaders back to the eastern front and ravaging poland/hungary as Antioch fell. Milan I beat off with a constant attrition of town milita and fake sieges to hurt their economy (read 1 chap with a ladder heh), before finally dumping a heavy post-crusade stack on Milan/genoa.

So basically turn 1-10. I managed 1.9 province a turn. turn 11-20 this fell to just 1.1 turn as I needed to get things under control. So in reality, I did relatively turtle for a short period (and hit a few rebels here and there to get more generals etc) just to get things stable and get my economy kicking to fund a truely stupendos second crusade plus asscociated invasions.

Now this brings me onto early financial/economy objectives. HRE is a powerhouse ecomonically once you have the northern ports and italian cities all joined. my power house objective for turn 20 was castles at Hamburg, thorn, bern/innsbruck, Bran with everything in the middle of that a town. I mostly accomplished this and had a fairly powerful economy cooking along. i even built quite a few farms and markets etc. In the whole 36 turns, I was only in debt once, less than 2k florins..

(blitz-hint: only build outlying dirt roads when YOU need them, make the AI chuff along in the mud until you are ready to go that way.)

By the time crusade 2 was launched (turn 26) I had done some farily heavy prepping so that turns 26-36 would see me break the world or lose. I initally launched over 10 generals, at one point I had 16 crusade armies in operation, each in a different non catholic province. (I'll do a seperate post on armies and fighting later.)

Crusade two was lauched for Gaza. Now why Gaza you ask? wll my masterplan was to explode in all directions on crusade two and smash the world with the plan being that at turn 36 any remaining army could turn for gaza and suffer minimal deserting losses on path of destruction (the AI really has no idea what to do! stacks flying past everywhere!). therefore the plan was to use the early part of crusade 2 to reach bulgar/timbuktu/baghdad which i more or less achieved, then snap in and crush everything east and south

I also used the last few turns (31-36) of free crusade movement to position heavy stacks on inverness/stockholm/lisbon/iraklion for a MASSIVE attack once the crusade was won on 36 (use all your crusade movement, win crusade, then attack everywhere.

Ok so why did I leave UK and spain till late? Sacking Income plain and simple. If I blitz them early, poor income to logistics ratio. By destroying them 'late game' I get 8-20k a city cha-ching pays for everything and a few abbeys etc.

Once crusade armies drop off the organic expansion path at the end of the crusade , just disband any spare straight away.

the last turns 40-43 were really waiting on the final push on arguin/dongola and quelling the last sparks of resistance on the british isles, have to say,england made me work for it more than any other faction.. (Byz did well too, I just out-logistics them)

I'll post some more on military and battles next, then do logistics/general stuff.

[Askthepizzaguy]

The man knows what he's talking about. Glad to see my suggestions helped.

You've taught me a thing or two. I thought it would take 3 crusades, and with France/England it does take that many. I am intrigued.

I will see what I can do with the HRE, as soon as I get in some more practice and lay waste to all imperial forces in my War for Independence campaign with Sicily.

I have much to do in this game. This will take time. At least I'm no longer bored with the game.

I highly encourage all players and readers of this forum to try my challenges.
Even if you cannot beat mine or especially Grog's score, just do your best and have fun for goodness sake.

It helps me in particular to swallow my pride and realize that only one person can truly be the best of them all. The rest of us just have to strive for our PERSONAL best.

Mark my words... I WILL improve MY personal best and shatter MY record as well.

58 turns for ATPG? I don't think so. My new goal is 45. I believe it is attainable for me to come close to Grog, but to be honest, beating him looks dicey.

[Askthepizzaguy]

You must have used ballistae effectively. I never really included them in my blitzes except for Paris/Rhiems for England and Bern for France.

I see now that the non-crusading middle portion MUST include them to avoid excommunication and cause severe damage to the enemy.

True, Grog?

And spies... I'm thinking more spies.

[Grog]

Yep, just two crusades. I really think a high 30's win is possible, if you call crusade turn3. I got caught up with logistics and unexpected resistance toward the end somewhat, although as mentioned this was offset by sacking income from Spain/england.

Another thing I would do is make Inverness/Arguin+dongola/Jedda/Bulgar first crusade 'targets' (or be there at crusade drop off) with a mid east province as the target (I just like antioch, easy to defend and grab alepo/adana, keep one as castle = insta powerbase to repel egypt/turks). Castle the lot then reverse-smash back into the world.

I'm going off to dig up screenshots and make a military post next (be a while),so heres a little teaser:

You have all of northern france. england have Caen.
Your army is general, 2 cav, 3 varied spear, 6 trash (various peasant bows/cheap milita), and is just inside the border north of Angers.
England has 4-5 units in Caen and a toughish 14 stack a move out.
No more troops available.

How do you lay siege to Caen that move without the roaming stack attacking your siege army next turn?