The faction you could never handle

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi

I'm currently at around 1330 in my vanilla VI, Polish, Hard, Early, Glorious Achievements campaign, and it's been a SLOG, I can tell you. I've only recently gotten 'round to building my first citadel. Money has been tighter than a falsetto's y-fronts! Every florin has had to be coaxed into my treasury, husbanded attentively, and I practically wept as I had to sign the 4K florin cheque to upgrade Krakow castle to a fortress. (Required for the Jagiellonian Cathedral GA.)

My empire consists of Scandinavia, modern Poland and eastern Germany, the Baltic states, western-most Russia, and a corridor of Balkan provinces down to the Black Sea. I do have a 'hinterland' of lightly garrisoned provinces which produce a surplus to support the large armies in my border provinces, and allow for some slow and carefully considered development outlays. I also have some sea trade from my Baltic provinces: Sweden and Lithuania are quite decent cash cows.

However, there hasn't been a decade when I haven't been at war with one or two AI factions big enough and well-resourced enough to smash me. So far I have seen off the English, the French, HRE, Byzantium, Hungary, the Danes, and the Peeps of Novgorod. The biggest threats were the English and, predictably, the Mongols.

Re the latter, I rough counted the invasion force at 20K troops. They still hold a couple of provinces in Russia and are trading blows with the Egyptians. I proudly claim to be the Sword and Shield of Christendom: I did not lose a single province for even a single year to them heathen baskets! That said, my companies of Armoured Spearmen, Crossbowmen and Mounted Sergeants suffered horrific casualties in a couple of seriously near run thing battles in Volhynia.

My current strategic quandary is this: if I can just hold onto what I've got I'll *probably* finish the campaign with more GA points than any other faction. BUT, and it's a big but, either the Almohads or the Egyptians could conceivably overtake me. Practically all my sea trade is with Almo ports along the Atlantic and north western coast of Europe, and the Almos own all of Iberia, the three western provinces on the African coast, all of modern France and the Low Countries. They are at war with what's left of the Spanish in England, and they've recently invaded Italy and discomforted the Pope.

Bottom line: the Almos are currently too big for me to go to war with, and my finances would be wrecked if I lost the trade income. As it is I’m making a profit of, say, 600 florins a year. I.e., barely in the black.

As for the Eggies, they own all of the rest of North Africa, the Levant, practically all of Turkey including Constantinople, and quite a few of the Russian Steppe and Caucasus provinces. They have two four-stack armies on my southern border and much better generals than me. I could probably take out one or other of these armies, but I have no confidence I can defeat them both.

So my dilemma is: do I sit tight, behave passively, hold to my existing borders, and hope that neither the Almos nor the Eggies rack up so many conquest points that they overtake me? (And maybe they'll suffer the imperial overstretch syndrome and implode, which seems unlikely.) Or do I try to roll one of them - probably the Egyptians - back to a more easily defended frontier (from my point of view), and then focus all my energies on the other. I dunno the answer to that question. The Council of State is vacillating. I have, however, sent a couple of barque flotillas on a decade-long cruise to the Black Sea. Once there they'll join up with flotillas to be produced in Moldavia and I hope to be able to interdict Egyptian troop movements across the Black Sea. That should give me a fighting chance of out-producing them in the Balkan theatre if we do come to blows.

One other thing: my kings have been crap. I mean real dregs of the gene pool rubbish. Not one of them up to snuff. We're talking wouldn't-be-allowed-out-unaccompanied retards.

I reckon I've played at least a couple of dozen MTW campaigns (various mods, as well as vanilla, always from Early). And I know that I've lost two. But in terms of 'still tough 250-odd years in' this one takes the biscuit.

MTW: such a great game!

Best regards
V

Sapere aude
Horace