Iron Man House Rules

[Daveybaby]

I'm getting kinda tired of thrashing the AI. I want a challenge.

So for my next campaign i'm going to play with a set of house rules - which include a bannination of cheesy exploits, trying to avoid taking advantage of known AI weaknesses, and imposing a few extra rules to make things a bit more difficult.


Diplomacy

Thou shalt never attack an enemy faction unprovoked, but shall instead wait for them to attack you first. The only exception shall be with regard to performing crusades or jihads.

Thou shalt follow every papal decree.

If the pope has ordered you to cease hosilities against a faction, thou mayst not attack them again until they attack you once more, even once the decree has expired. In effect, treat a papal nonagression decree as a formal ceasefire, even if the game still says youre at war.

Thou shalt respect the borders of other factions. Thou may not enter another faction's lands unless you are at war with them (and also bear in mind the papal decree rule above), or (obviously) have an alliance/military access. Thus you are not allowed to park a small stack next to somebody's capital in order to provoke them into attacking it and starting a war. An additional exception can be made for crusade stacks passing through.

Thou shalt gift all unspent funds to AI factions at the end of every turn.

Thou may not buy favour with the papacy in the form of gifts. If thou wishes the pope to approve of thee, thou must carry out the Lord's work.


Crusades & Jihads (thanks, Ramses II)

Thou shalt not request a crusade or jihad on a province controlled by a faction that you are not already at war with.

Thine crusading army shalt only attack the target province of a crusade. No provinces or armies shall be attacked on the way.

Thou shalt not hire crusader mercenaries, as they are too powerful and cheap.

Thou shalt only build one crusade stack for each crusade/jihad. If this stack fails in its holy mission, thou may not create another.


Agents

Thou shalt not put merchants inside forts to protect them, as this is a cheesy exploit and is thus a blasphemy in the eyes of the Lord.

Thou shalt only perform aquisition on enemy merchants when they are trading a resource.

Thou shalt not use spies except in a passive role (i.e. defending your generals or cities, and uncovering the map). No spying on enemy stacks or settlements, and definitely no opening of any gates you may find unattended.

Thou shalt not train or use assassins under any circumstances, as it is far too easy to beat up on thine enemy and render them powerless.


Military

Thou shalt not camp bridges when the mongols/timurids invade, but shall instead always attempt to engage them in open battle.

Thou shalt not perform the honey trap fort manoeuvre on the mongols and timurids.

Thou shalt ensure that each and every army is made up of no less than 50% militia units. After all, thine enemy's always seem to be. A possible exception might be when fighting the mongols and timurids, or any other enemy with an economy sufficiently well developed that they start fielding decent armies for once.

Thou shalt always occupy captured cities. No sacking or extermination is allowed.


Battles

When thou art defending a siege, thou shalt not send thine cavalry out for a quick sortie to take out the enemy's artillery, that they have thoughtlessly sent out ahead unprotected. Again.

Thou shalt not send out cavalry to attack the archers/crossbows that the enemy ALWAYS sends out too far ahead of the rest of its infantry. This way, we might actually see an archer duel once in a while.

When thou art defending a siege, thou shalt not place stakes in front of the doorway. Or indeed at any other location.

When defending, thou may only attack any isolated artillery that are not with the main enemy force once they have already started firing on you. No charging your cavalry around the main enemy force and taking out their arty before theyve even got a shot off.

When the battle endeth screen doth appear, thou shalt never continue in order to capture/slaughter as many enemy as possible. Instead thou shalt endeth the battle there and then.

Thou shalt always release enemy prisoners.


In General

Thou shalt never reload, unless maybe if thou has made a genuine mistake such as clicking in the wrong place, or forgetting to do something. Like i really meant to move that fleet, honestly. That kind of thing.



Does anyone have any other rules that might be worth adding?

[uruk-hai]

if you like being the nice guy heres one.you will never kill pow,you will all ways like them go.leting pow of war go all the time will make it a lot harder.

[Daveybaby]

if you like being the nice guy heres one.you will never kill pow,you will all ways like them go.leting pow of war go all the time will make it a lot harder.

Oh yeah, forgot about that one - thanks for reminding me. Been playing with that one for quite a while now actually - makes things a bit more interesting.

Also, only ever occupy captured cities - no sacking or exterminating, ever. Also been playing with that for a while - makes having a good economy more important.

Added those to the OP.

[Slug For A Butt]

Wow, that's a tough set of rules!
Let us know how you go on.

[Gallicflair]

All generals must be in the field. No governors.

All generals must be roleplayed - cowards run away after their unit recieves it's first causalty (if not before), brave generals always lead the charge, stupid generals deploy badly and make dumb tactical errors etc.

Never engage an enemy stack with a larger stack _ unit per unit or numerically.

Faction leader always leads the main army - even if he sucks.

No deliberately killing generals with negative traits.

[alpaca]

You forgot: Thou shalt not use Holy Wars except when attempting to retake Holy Places (i.e. the Holy Land)

And my personal favourite:
Thou shalt not take another settlement unless thine character-to-settlement ratio exceedeth one which is the whole and holy number. Thou shalt not attempt to bring it below one, nor shalt thou attempt to take it above two.

[Tamur]

Four is right out!

To add something constructive...

Battles

Thou shalt view the battlefield only once fully at the start of the battle, write down thine battle orders, give them, and then shalt thou lock thine holy General Cam. At three minutes of real time thou mayest pause and take a battle overview and alter thine orders, writing a new set of orders to be executed immediately. But only once mayest thou doest this.

Four times is right out!

[alpaca]

Four is right out!

To add something constructive...

Battles

Thou shalt view the battlefield only once fully at the start of the battle, write down thine battle orders, give them, and then shalt thou lock thine holy General Cam. At three minutes of real time thou mayest pause and take a battle overview and alter thine orders, writing a new set of orders to be executed immediately. But only once mayest thou doest this.

Four times is right out!

Yeah we all love the Holy Hand-grenade of Antioch. Besides, I still have to add a certain relic to the game... ahem.


I thought of another one I frequently use:

Thou shalt campaign on your esteemed foe's territory only if your campaign is led by a member of the royal family.

[Daveybaby]

Thou shalt view the battlefield only once fully at the start of the battle, write down thine battle orders, give them, and then shalt thou lock thine holy General Cam. At three minutes of real time thou mayest pause and take a battle overview and alter thine orders, writing a new set of orders to be executed immediately. But only once mayest thou doest this.

Not sure i could handle this as it would take too much fun out of the battles for me. I might consider locking the camera on my general for the entire battle but still issue orders at any time. Hmmmm....

Another set of rules which i've considered but never actually played is: capture every territory by only taking rebel held provinces. Which means, in other words, that you have to assassinate the royal families of all of the other factions into extinction (although i guess you could incite individual provinces to rebel in other ways). No attacking non-rebel factions is allowed in any way, youre only allowed to fight defensive battles.

Anyone ever tried this?

[alpaca]

Not sure i could handle this as it would take too much fun out of the battles for me. I might consider locking the camera on my general for the entire battle but still issue orders at any time. Hmmmm....

Another set of rules which i've considered but never actually played is: capture every territory by only taking rebel held provinces. Which means, in other words, that you have to assassinate the royal families of all of the other factions into extinction (although i guess you could incite individual provinces to rebel in other ways). No attacking non-rebel factions is allowed in any way, youre only allowed to fight defensive battles.

Anyone ever tried this?

I think somebody did but I don't know what happened. I always had the problem that it's extremely hard to assassinate all living family members because the AI can adopt pretty much every turn.

[_Tristan_]

capture every territory by only taking rebel held provinces.
Anyone ever tried this?

I'm doing it in my current campaign (The Long Road H/VH), playing as the Danes...

It's tough as the mod makes rebel much stronger than Vanilla (with a General in each rebel-held province...)...

However, it still is possible to destroy factions by assassination...

Making cities rebel is doable (mainly if far away from the capital or if of a different religion, otherwise, it can be very difficult or even impossible in the case of castles...)

[phonicsmonkey]

capture every territory by only taking rebel held provinces. Anyone ever tried this?

I tried it and succeeded - check out my thread

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=87178

[Ciaran]

Four is right out!

To add something constructive...

Battles

Thou shalt view the battlefield only once fully at the start of the battle, write down thine battle orders, give them, and then shalt thou lock thine holy General Cam. At three minutes of real time thou mayest pause and take a battle overview and alter thine orders, writing a new set of orders to be executed immediately. But only once mayest thou doest this.

Four times is right out!

Wow, I suppose that makes it real hard. I´ve settled to giving orders only to units not engaged in combat.

[Abokasee]

[QUOTE=Daveybaby]
Military

Thou shalt not camp bridges when the mongols/timurids invade, but shall instead always attempt to engage them in open battle.

Thou shalt not perform the honey trap fort manoeuvre on the mongols and timurids.

QUOTE]

So your saying, that you must attack timurid elephants, or mongol horse archers, in the open, you know what, I don't fancy it.

[Moah]

[QUOTE=Abokasee]

Military

Thou shalt not camp bridges when the mongols/timurids invade, but shall instead always attempt to engage them in open battle.

Thou shalt not perform the honey trap fort manoeuvre on the mongols and timurids.

QUOTE]

So your saying, that you must attack timurid elephants, or mongol horse archers, in the open, you know what, I don't fancy it.

Actually I've done it. It was the only challenge really before modding provided non-militia armies for teh other AI factions.

For Mongols you need spears to counter cav charge and lots and lots of archers. If you can stand up long enough to the arrow duel, he'll charge and then you pounce on the cav. Once they're gone you charge with yours. The scots were surpisingly good at this due to pikes and decent melee archers. With English or Turk archers who can lay stakes it's even easier. It wasn't cheap or easy but it was fun.

I found Timurids much weaker than Mongols actually. They don't have the same overwhelming army for the 1 strategy. I loved the perfection of teh mongols uber stacks: it works perfectly for that 1 trategy - and it's a good one (arrows to wound and hurt morale, then charge with high dread general. insta-rout).

Halberd militia et al mixed in with timurids make it much easier to pick them apart and trounce them - except for elephants.

So for Timurids concentrate on taking down elephants then mopping up teh rest: if you can make them frenzy they trample many timurids. Use a) Jav cav b) naffatun or c) flaming arrows.

If you're a crossbow non jav-cav army it's a bit trickier (like HRE). Cannon or artillery with flaming shot can sometimes do it.


I don't understand people who say it's all too easy then use the flaming fort or bridge trick on the only 2 challenges...

[ToothyTurtle]

[QUOTE=Daveybaby]
Military
Thou shalt ensure that each and every army is made up of no less than 50% militia units. After all, thine enemy's always seem to be. A possible exception might be when fighting the mongols and timurids, or any other enemy with an economy sufficiently well developed that they start fielding decent armies for once.
QUOTE]

My Armies are always [when fully made] the same.
Playing England :
1 General/Heavy Cav as Gen,
4 Cavalry,
3 Missile Units/Siege Units, [normally missile as I dont like the time taken to move Siege units]
4 Dismounted Knights, [any type]
2 Billmen, and
4 Levy Spearmen.

There is your 50% army. It is also quite adaptable and with good sefensive positions can take on 2 full AI armies without too much trouble.

I do use the punch though, line up 4 units wide and charge the centre break off secondries to angle the flanks!

[Daveybaby]

My Armies are always [when fully made] the same.
Playing England :
1 General/Heavy Cav as Gen,
4 Cavalry,
3 Missile Units/Siege Units, [normally missile as I dont like the time taken to move Siege units]
4 Dismounted Knights, [any type]
2 Billmen, and
4 Levy Spearmen.

There is your 50% army. It is also quite adaptable and with good sefensive positions can take on 2 full AI armies without too much trouble.

I do use the punch though, line up 4 units wide and charge the centre break off secondries to angle the flanks!

By 50% militia i mean that half of each army must be made up of spear militia, archer militia, bill militia etc - i.e. city produced units. All of yours are regular (i.e. castle produced) units. The reason for this rule is that the AI stacks are often made up mostly of militia (usually due to its poor economy) - if you use militia in your own armies then it should make the battles more challenging.

Edit:
Oh, and the Oktoberfest was sehr gut!
(what little i can remember of it anyway)
Just staying upright was kind of like iron man rules.

[CountMRVHS]

What about limiting the number of stacks you can have at one time? It's always bugged me that your medieval king in the game can have tons and tons of permanent, standing troops, when in reality soldiers were called up for a fixed amount of time.

So maybe you could try to emulate that situation. Build enough troops to garrison your cities/castles -- but make them militia troops, and just enough to prevent revolt.

When you go to war, begin training some *real* troops, but only enough for one stack. Use that single stack until the war is over, or maybe even for a fixed number of turns. After that, disband your stack.

Don't know how feasible this would really be, but it would certainly reflect the sense that medieval kings had, usually, a single army at their command, that was in one single place at a time, rather than the gamey ability to train several stacks or half-stacks for any given situation.

Any thoughts?

CountMRVHS

[Daveybaby]

That sounds pretty nasty.

w.r.t. garrisons, i would say that for cities only allow the up to the number of free upkeep units (plus one general/governor). For castles, say, a maximum of 4 units on top of generals.

w.r.t. number of stacks, how about limiting you to one mobile stack for each faction you are at war with? Obviously you can bolster your garrisons when youre at war. So if youre at peace you wont have any standing army at all and will have to raise it from scratch if you go to war. Once the war is over disband all of your troops except your bare minimum garrisons.

Of course, this means that you will probably have massive levels of cash to play with each turn, since you have minimal troop maintenance costs, so you will probably be way out ahead of the opposition in terms of tech.

[CountMRVHS]

Ahh, good idea on how to make the stack limitations. Nice and simple.

You're right about the cash situation. It would probably be good to combine this with one of the gifting rules, where you give the remainder of your cash at the end of each turn to other factions. Or maybe try to bribe as many rebels as possible to drain your treasury; if you end up actually gaining some rebel units, disband them of course.