[Tips and Tricks] Tactical Advise as Makouria

Greethings all!
First of all I want to Thanks the BC team for the fantastic work on this amasing mod!

I'm a long time TW player but new to BC and more experienced in RTW (mostly Europa Barbarorum but also Rise of Persia, Iberia total War and some other mods) than In MTW2 (Third Age Total War and a bit of Vanilla, waiting for EB2). What I'm also not so experienced is with long campains, mostly because the mods I play most tend to crash a lot in late game, and also because I usualy get anoyed with large empires managing and TW issues like stack spam (I prefer a more relaxed gaming).

Althought I've been hearing a lot of good coments about BC only recently I decided to try it, mostly because I lately got very interested in early muslim history. But, when was the time to chose a faction to start a campain I got fascinated by Makouria, a very interesting mix between african and arabic military tradition and at time extremely exotic and familiar to my playing style (I usualy play with barbaric style infantry based armies and dont like to use horse archers too much). And after almost 150 turns I'm still as fascinated with them and can't imagine me playing with any other faction. But the last developments may be threatning my game.

Until now my campain (H/H) has been a relative success, I've been slowly tearing the Ayyubid apart despite having great casualities in almost every battle, probably both because of their troops being of superior quality and my tactics not being very suited to BC combat system (too many years of playing EB).
The Jerusalem Kingdom started with a very quick expantion and after some time invaded egipt from the north so I allied with them to put more pression under the Ayyubids. But I didnt trust them so I send a naval expedition to the Arab peninsula to conquer Mecca and Medina and gave them to the Imamate of Oman in trade for a more reliable Alliance. My plan was to finish of the Ayyubids, secure Egipt (after surely being betraied by Jerusalem) and then Turtle on it. But something unexpected happened. The once mighty Crusader realms got overrunned in a few turns by a Roman blitzkrieg! And I didnt noticed the peril until this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/6...1121617587.png

I was foolishly caught by surprise. My professional armies are depleted by the last desperate fights with the Ayyubids (who fought bravely to the last end destracting me from what was happening) and the one you see was supposed to fight off the remainments of them that went rebel and to see what the new troops available to recruitment can do (Heavy infantry from Axum and medium cavalry and levies from Bilbays). The elephants imported from India can be handy but still, I'm Ill prepared for such a large roman invasion.

And then, curious about how powerfull the roman military machine was I found this in Georgia:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/9...1121618489.png

Wow. Just wow. How am I supposed to deal with that? I'm already thinking about some strategies to weaken them like sea raids, buffer zones, bolstering their enemies and agent warfare but will they give me time to do that or will keeping sending enless stacks? The first ones they sent were are mostly of good quality infantry and cavalry, pair to my best men, I'm unsure even if I can deal with the first wave without retreating to south egipt...

Has anyone dealt with that kind of situations? Is just my lack of late game experienced talking or am I in a dead end? Any advise? I dont want to abandon this game but I would hate to have to fight a endless stack spam and I dont even know if I would have the logistics for that.

Thanks for reading =)

Resist in the south and invade turkey from sea

haha I had to deal with much harder campaign and I conquered the constantinople even though at the beginning of the war, my army was only 21% as powerful as the romans.

heres what I did.

I eliminated their navy by building a superior one
I then placed full stacks with catapults and any other fire throwing unit at the bridges
I let the 3 roman full stacks attack, They cross the bridge and I fire the catapults and watch their 3 stacks disappear while their generals burn to death
After dominating the sea, I blockade their most important cities ports and I send 2 full stacks on raids on the coastal cities in anatolia and any islands. DONOT occupy them not even for 1 turn, instead demolish all buildings and watch ur treasury go from 3000 to 90000 minimum.
I NEVER NEVER NEVER cross to their territory nor face them in an open fight with 1 stack only and a low star general.

this is more or less my strategy, within 40 turns I am sure u will be able to advance on the roman territory with not much resistance. Just be sure to not open battle any roman army in their territory until there is a huge supply line and all of their full stacks are defeated since the makurians dont have the best roster unlike the romans.

O and beware of their general unit, its by far the best horse Bodyguard available in the game and the hardest to eliminate. If you wanna kill it, then trap it with spearmen (more than 1 unit) and repeatedly attack with ur BEST cavalry from the flanks and rears and trust me, u will lose many men in the process.

Or just burn them with the catapults or w.e

Thanks for the advise.

Thats all I wanted to know, if it was possible to deal with situations like that since I'm new to them.
I was already thinking about tactics like these except the catapult use since I almost only use them in sieges (historical accuracy and realism?) but since this is a desperate situation I think I'll may give it a try. =)

Attack lightly defended Roman settlements by sea, sack them, demolish all the buildings, and leave. Constantinople is an ideal target because, with a good enough navy, you can block the sea crossings and prevent the Romans from recapturing the city. And since you're Orthodox, you might even be able to keep the city instead of wrecking it in a raid. Also, as Harith said, use bridge battles with catapults. Frequently, the Romans look intimidating with all those stacks, but they're mostly composed of cheap militia.

And please post the updates in your campaign!

I've only played a bit more but completely changed my battle tactics to great results (from 20-50% losses battle to less than 10%), so I'm not concerned anymore of anything they throw at me as long as I can do the logistics right and my economy can keep it going (my main concern atm)! The first wave is almost over and my reinforcments are close so in one or two turns I'll start may own counter offensive.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shasqua

Frequently, the Romans look intimidating with all those stacks, but they're mostly composed of cheap militia.

---

Yes, already noticed this, while some of the stacks are quite good quality others are mostly cannon fooder. The main problem are the generals and the cataphacts.

The use of catapults is very risky, in the last battle it killed my own faction leader by accident :laughter:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mads

And please post the updates in your campaign!

---

I will, later, after I got some progress on it (not much time to play). Thanks for the interest :)

I find that tactics such as bridge battles with siege engines are a bit of an AI abuse and keeps you from having a more interesting game - but everyone is free to play as they want obviously.
My advice is that you should focus more on the actual problem, which is expanding way to slow: it won't matter what faction you play, if you only conquer <15 regions in 100+ turns, there will be superfactions with endless stacks coming your way eventually who will flat out outproduce you. Even if you like a relaxed game, you can have Egypt well secured and with a firm foothold in KoJ territory in 100 turns without rushing. Also as a tip, I wouldn't use a naval invasion to capture Mecca just to give it away to Oman. Either you keep these regions or you don't invade at all - which is a difference from other games where you can get away with doing suchs things: in BC, losses per battle are way higher than M2TW or RTW(mods) so you really need a constant line of (re)supplies. Hope this helps and good luck on your campaign!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by I3enjaIvIin

I find that tactics such as bridge battles with siege engines are a bit of an AI abuse and keeps you from having a more interesting game - but everyone is free to play as they want obviously.

---

Yes, totally agree. And I'm having worst results with that kind of exploiting than with free field battles, as for Makuria mobility is the key to success. And siege weapons are too risky and unpredictable.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by I3enjaIvIin

My advice is that you should focus more on the actual problem, which is expanding way to slow: it won't matter what faction you play, if you only conquer <15 regions in 100+ turns, there will be superfactions with endless stacks coming your way eventually who will flat out outproduce you. Even if you like a relaxed game, you can have Egypt well secured and with a firm foothold in KoJ territory in 100 turns without rushing. Also as a tip, I wouldn't use a naval invasion to capture Mecca just to give it away to Oman. Either you keep these regions or you don't invade at all - which is a difference from other games where you can get away with doing suchs things: in BC, losses per battle are way higher than M2TW or RTW(mods) so you really need a constant line of (re)supplies. Hope this helps and good luck on your campaign!

---

Slow expantion is propositated and maybe an habit created by too many EB years. Super powers are a problem and thats what I try to avoid by helping the expantion of other factions like I did to Oman, thought the main point there was to weaken the Ayyubids and to avoid Jerusalem expanding that way, since I had no interest in keeping that regions and also didnt looked right to have Ortodox cristians controling Mecca and I didnt wanted to have a Jihad on my way :laughter:

And btw I play to have fun, and importing indian elephants to use them in egipt and sacking distant lands just for the sake of it is fun :tongue:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LusitanianWolf

Yes, already noticed this, while some of the stacks are quite good quality others are mostly cannon fooder. The main problem are the generals and the cataphacts.

The use of catapults is very risky, in the last battle it killed my own faction leader by accident :laughter

---

look, just block the entrance with 3 crappy levies or 3, keep ur general next to them to boost their moral.... then launch the catapults and watch the millions die..... yes obviously u will have to sacrifice a 1-3 units

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Harith

look, just block the entrance with 3 crappy levies or 3, keep ur general next to them to boost their moral.... then launch the catapults and watch the millions die..... yes obviously u will have to sacrifice a 1-3 units

---

Bah, not my style :tongue:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LusitanianWolf

Bah, not my style :tongue:

---

I know its cheap... but I only do it to the romans in BC because they are honestly a spam faction..... wth they destroy turkey in 40 turns... and turkey has a damn good roster.... so just my way of evening out the huge imbalance.. beside I only did it 3 times in my abassid campaign... the rest were heroic victories in the open fields or mountains with no siege engines... I conquered Constantinople.... my campaign is so cool.... lol

yes that far in the romans usually devour the koj and rampage across mesopotamia... your best choice is to trade a settlement in return for an alliance. That way you can do your own thing elsewhere, remember the basilea ton romaion spread christendom to the blacks of north africa so it would be canon to team up :yes:

I played as Makouria for my first try at the game, on VH/VH. Acquired some adopted generals, made a stack of all my best units including lots of macemen. Had like 4-5 spies constantly improving their skills by infiltrating enemy forts/towns.

I would get all my spies into each city until the gates had a very high chance of being opened, and ambushed the city when it had few soldiers in it. Sacked it, then held it. Conquered all the way up to Thebes, but the Ayyubids came down south with their armies. I destroyed all the buildings in Thebes for extra money, and while they sieged it, I raced towards Alexandria, put spies in it, sacked it on the same turn, destroyed all the buildings, put it on very high taxes, and went to Cairo.

I successfully maneuvered around the Ayyubid forces returning from Thebes, sent spies into Cairo, sacked it and destroyed all the buildings in it on the same turn, then headed back to Thebes, with the Ayyubids hot on my heels.

I returned home with much glory and a :wub:-ton of money, and with the Ayyubids unable to produce any decent soldiers anymore, and the majority of their money stripped of them, I easily conquered all of Egypt.

This took me less than 25 turns to accomplish. Might have even been less than 20. And I was also able to make a second army and expand to Axum and the other places in East Africa, and was even able to conquer part of southern Arabia.

Truth be told, playing SS with the hardest mods on the hardest difficulty makes BC look like a piece of cake, even if its on VH/VH mode. Makouria is the bomb. However, despite my crushing victories, I was pwned in the face by a CTD which destroyed my save game and I didn't feel like starting all over. I sure hope you fix that in 3.0.

comparing vanilla BC to a version of SS designed to be as difficult as possible is unfair... besides makuria is one of the easier factions despite complaints levelled against it. They only face one adversary and do not need to worry about surrounding factions ganging up on them. The main challenge comes later in the game, when the romans suddenly explode outwards and devour countless regions. Playing as the khwarezm shah and holding back the mongols is pretty nasty as well

A very informative read.

Makurian armies have poor stats, you can use this to your advantage and lure hapless armies into bridge battles.

There are plenty of bridges on the nile and you can use your projectile spamming infantry to the best advantage. Concentrating fire on armies crossing bridges is very efective, it also (largely) nullifies the devastating killing power of heavy cavalry, which makurians cannot match.

Interesting I've never had much trouble with ERE, biggest one was probably when I was the Ottomans (go figure) but still defeated them.

As far as holding that off lol, (that pic of the Roman stacks in Turkey was quite impressive) tactically they have a very large army for the territory they own so they must be financially fragile.

As someone else mentioned I would send raiders by sea to attack coastal cities, trash them, sell off all the sites to make a quick profit then raid the nearest city and repeat.

The good thing about this is you will only need one stack in Turkey and you can use the money from the raids and your other resources to sure up your stacks in Egypt and bank on the fact that the ERE will likely get into more bother with other kingdoms as is usually the case with expansion.

Tactically when it comes to Makuria I don't have that much experience with their army but I would use the old Zulu tactics of Shaka Zulu and his Impi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impi
Basically your forces are never going to match the armour of the northern kingdoms so use numbers and mass to swarm them, in some cases this is called spamming however in this case that is the factual real tactic of the most successful African army ever assembled.

Bulk and double line formation from the front then take units from the flanks or secondary flank lines to run around the flanks of your enemy, and if you can get them to the rear and sandwich the ERE's ranks.

You've actually got me interested now, I might have to give it a go myself.