A collection of DLV strategies and hints - rules changed

[Tokus*Maximus]

Version 5.6 - stratmap2D & battlefield3D reinforcements

When fighting a battle with reinforcements but want to leave the back up army up to the AI.

MUSTER THE HORSEMEN!
I keep a fast reaction army of horse divided up between my forts (4 at a time to quash their running costs). When I move into an attack stance or need their support in defence it is a lot easier to gather horsemen into a sizeable lump. Sometimes I can muster and field an 8 or even a 12 stack army of horse in support which I bring into the side of the NME force. I leave it to the AI knowing they will come in quick and harry the NME drawing off their focus of attack. I like seeing them from my ranks - usually just saving the day - especially if it's a seige I'm in!

After the battle, the surviving horsemen from force 'B' swell the ranks of my surviving army. This tactic is of course only to be used when you begin to face full stacks of tough NME and not on the local bandits (unless you take the young prince out with a few men and bring in one troop of horse as AI support! *horn parp!* My Lord, Rohan has come at last!

[Furin]

Version 5.6 - technical

The worst thing for a player is when a campaign is lost due to a bug or a corrupted savefile.

- make multiple savegames (for example, I call them "year summer" and "year winter")
- when you exit the game at the end of your playtime always make two savegames, the second with a different name and a slightly different content (for example move a diplomat one step).
- always save at the beginning of the turn, when disbanding units they sometimes do not get added to the recruitment queues when you save and reload. Same for the "Used Military Size", if you disband a lot of units, save and exit the "UMS" will sometimes not be correct once you reload
- make additional savegames at the beginning of a battle, you can hit ESC and save if you get attacked, also save after the battle or the taking of a town
- last but not least, if you don't have trade rights with a faction and a diplomat of this faction is always talking to one of your cities, but the dialogue never pops up, save, exit the game and reload. Chances are big that this diplomat will now ask you for trade rigfhts and stop bugging you every turn.

[mikeon]

I always thought the diplomats or princesses were trying to bribe my cities and castles. I usually send out around 10 units of my army to deal with the pest.

[Omar Nelson B.]

Diplomacy
If you want the pope to stay on your side then bribe him. I usually just stay with low amounts for a long period of time. 50 to 100 coin every turn usually keeps him at bay. I find that this gives me some more freedom in attacking my same religion. Also remember that if the pope, in all his holy wisdom, tells you to cease fire then DO IT(unless you are looking to get the boot for a while)

[Furin]

Version 5.6 strategy/dark ages

Another one of the unique features of DLV are the dark ages. First you get hit by a massive plague and then everybody attacks you, even if the faction is at the other end of the known world.

Although this time is always a challenge to the player there are some things you can do to survive them better.

• If you play a catholic faction always ally with the pope at the first opportunity and make sure not to share a border with the patrimonium sancti petri. This will prevent your excommunication during the dark ages, although sometimes the pope blockades yone of your harbors just for the fun of it and you are knee deep in poo poo. Make sure your relations with the pope are as high as possible before the dark age but do not give him too much money, else he will build up an army and attack you too, with the known consequences.
• Two turns before the dark ages strike ask for a crusade. The best target is a muslim faction, because the crusade will not stop when the pope dies (or the faction leader of the excommunicated faction). Due to the plague this can happen quite often. The second best target is a city that is as far away from your territory as possible. The third best target is an excommunicated neighbor and the last is a rebel city, which would fall too soon due to low defense/garrison. This crusade game has the additional advantage that you can join and then disband units, you don't need to actually go on the crusade. As long as your governors live your cities will be under the protection of the crusade during the dark age, and if someone attacks you he immidiatly gets excommunicated. It has a nasty downside though, if the crusade finishes before the end of the dark age, you will have a lot of former crusading armies coming your way. It's a gamble...
• Before the dark age check your merchants, any merchant older than 50 or self serving? Get rid of them as long as you can. Try to enter the dark age with as many young and loyal merchants as possible, your income will seriously drop during the dark age and you need these extra florins from your merchants!
• Also check your family tree, a lot of your family members will become victim to the plague, perhaps you can save some of them by sending them on a walk, even if this means extra costs. Let the old and bad ones die but save the young and healthy if possible.
• Make good use of the forts, there are two tactics I am using. One is to garrison a fort less than the city in this region, so when the invading armies come there is a chance they will besiege the fort first and your city will have time to recover from the plague. If you get besieged while the plague still rages in your settlement, it can go on forever, further weakening the region. A good garrison for a fort would be 1 unit of peasants for the stakes, 2 units of archers for burning incoming siege towers, 1 unit of crossbowmen and then 3-4 infantry types, preferably 2 spears,2 heavies, 1 unit of light cav is useful too to charge out of the fort and kill enemy artillery. This small band can seriously weaken if not beat an enemy fullstack and buy you some time. The other tactic would be to garrison the fort to the max and immidiatly invade the enemy neighbor when the dark age starts. He is coming your way, perfect, now go his way and loot and burn his cities to get a boost of money during the dark age. The army is on a suicide mission, it is not there to hold the regions, just to exterminate and plunder.
• If you have neighbors of a different religion send priests into their territories prior to the dark age, not one after the other, but ten at once. This will raise the religion conversion very fast, causing unrest and limiting the enemies recruitment possibilities. As soon as the plague hits him there is a chance that the neighboring region rebels and he will be busy taking it back instead of attacking you.
• Try to start some really expensive buildings before the dark age, for example high level barracks or walls/castles. When your income seriously drops and you can't recover even after the plague is gone undo the building and get your money back. Better to recover earlier and build that thing later.
• Get rid of your fleet, not only are you paying for the ships, but each admiral costs extra, just like a general. Try to reduce your fleet to one admiral and four ships or disband them alltogether. If you do that in one harbor the ships will be added to the maximum pool and once you have your money back you can recruit them back quickly. Even an island nation like England can not hope to intercept enemy fleets because of the high movement points of ships, they will land their troops before you can see them. And everybody will blockade your harbors anyway, nothing you can do about it.
• Check your maximum possible military size, if you are close to the max, disband units fast. As soon as the dark ages come you will gain a lot of used military size and if this pushes you over the max and you recruitment pools freeze you are in big trouble.
• The dark ages last longer than the plague, so if you recover sooner than your neighbors and you have money left you can try to bribe incoming armies. If they are not at war with you yet this can prevent a war alltogether, if they are at war with you it will weaken them. You need good diplomats for that so try training them on rebel spawns (without general) before the dark ages. Bribed armies can either garrison a fort or be disbanded to let your UMS drop.
• In 5.6 there are still some cities that are not hit by the plague. If that is a design choice or an oversight is beyond me but if you can find these cities and conquer them you have a great advantage. One is on an island so much I can give away.
• If the plague is gone and you are still in the red after ten turns you are doing something wrong. Either you have too many castles, too few merchants or to many troops. Try to have more cities than castles before the dark age!
• If you have some spies try to infiltrate garrisoned enemy forts, the troops there will die of the plague and even more so if they leave the fort and move back inside again.
• If you get excommunicated during the dark age the papacy will not make peace with you unless you can seriously weaken them. Only after the end of the end days you can hope for a peaceful solution. Conclusio, don't get excommunicated, that's especially hard for sicily, venice and milan. The HRE can at least abandon it's italian settlements. If you are playing sicily a good tactic could be (haven't tried it yet) to conquer rome early in the campaign and gift the pope a region in africa. He will only ask you to give back rome once. If you can cope with the early excommunication, which will be canceled once the pope or your leader dies, conquering rome and getting some room between you and the papacy can help you greatly in the long run of a campaign.
• Obviously, if you cannot hold a region, before it gets conquered raze everything you can.

Okay that's all I can think of at the moment. Sorry for the long post but it's a complicated subject

[Furin]

No new hint for a while, so I blatantly break the rules and make a double post

Version 5.6 - battle map

Crossbowmen work differently in DLV than in Vanila. They can only shoot in a straight line, not in an arc like archery units. To use them efficiently you must either

- place them in the first line so they have a free view and retreat them once the enemy comes too close
- place them on higher ground, a small hill will make them shoot over the heads of the infantry

When assaulting a settlement you need to shoot through the gates or holes in the wall, the crossbowmen cannot fire over the walls. An exception would be a low tier wooden wall, when there is a hill on the outside. With suffiecient range the crossbowmen will be able to shoot over the small wooden wall then.

Like with any ranged unit it is important to let them finish their reloading animation before moving them, else half of the unit will stay behind and will be caught by the enemy. You need to calculate this extra time when giving a move order. Hold fire, wait a little bit, and then move them. Also fire at will should be used with caution, it is always better to micromanage the crossbowmen.

[Tokus*Maximus]

DLVerison: 5.6 (buts work with all)

SPIKEY DEATH TO THE ATTACKERS !

FOR WHEN? Battle map. When seiged and attacked by a vast enemy.
AGAINST: A huge enemy force when you've fewer defenders and need to equal the odds.
UNITS REQ? Peasants, Longbowmen and anyone who can put sharp pointy sticks in the ground.

Always keep a trusty peasant unit handy. This is a particularity underhand action that I deploy when settlement/castle is under heavy siege and the enemy are commencing a full on attack. Get the peasant (or longbow troops) to construct staves just inside and around your entrance gate. When the battle then begins these stalward troops can hold long enough so any wall towers can fire what they have at the enemy but can be pulled back at a running pace to where your army is, hunkered down at the bottleneck entrance of the market or centre square. Eventually the gate will fall and his unsuspecting general and horse troops will surge through only to get slaughtered by the staves. Hopefully you'll have the bowmen and infantry to hold the enemy from all entrances into the square... Killing their general in this way can balance the fight, especially if you have a good man behind your defence lines.

[Furin]

Version 5.6 - strategical

In DLV governors get titles for being the governor of a settlement. These titles are done with ancilliaries which can be transfered to another general if he is in the same settlement. If you do this, the former owner of the title will get a bad trait though, "title stolen". This means he is less loyal and will not fight as well for you as before.

The faction leader and the faction heir are not affected by this though. Also if one general has two regional ancilliaries, and you take one away he will not get the bad trait either.

So what you need to do is exchange these titles rather than taking them away.

Example:

Your governor in Zagreb is 45 years old and his son comes of age, the castle in the south, Zara, has no governor and you want to use the old man for the castle. Instead of giving the title for Zagreb to the youngster and then move the old guy, move the old guy first and wait one turn. The old guy will get the regional ancilliary for Zara as second title. As soon as he can move to Zagreb again, most likely the next summer, he can go back and give the title for Zagreb to his son but keep the title for Zara and he will not get a bad trait.

Example 2:

Your king dies and your heir is already in the capital and has the title for the capital. After one turn he will get the crown and hopefully not offend the nobility. If you move the new heir to the capital now, he can take the title for the capital and the king is good to go. He will not get the bad trait and once he dies your heir will already be in the capital to be crowned. This can be rinsed and repeated throughout the whole campaign.

This information is especially crucial for the capital regions as you want to move an old governor out there before he dies, else you will get the nasty rebel spawn once he dies and the happiness drops below 100%.

[LlamaD]

Version 5.6 and any other - stratmap2D & battlefield3D reinforcements

when a small army of your enemy stands next to a city or castle of them, attack the outside army and the city army will reinforce them. If you beat the outer army and the reinforcing city/castle army, the whole city/castle will be empty of troops. So you avoid a nasty siege battle and fighting more troops due to the garrison-script.

But make sure its either more than one unit in the outer army or you have unlimited men on battlefield =1. We don't want the city/castle army to miss their own slaughtering, do we ?

[Furin]

Version any - strategical

You maybe know that you can move garrison pools from one region to the other by recruiting soldiers in one region, then move them to the other region and disband them. But did you know that it is not neccessary to be inside the city/castle when doing it? It's enough to be within the target region.

This is especially handy when you don't have the movement points to reach the destination and want to save the extra upkeep.

[Hieronymos]

For DLV for Teutonic Campaign: Strategy & Trading for T.Knights

Strategic for Teutonic Knights: Take 4 neighboring rebel settlements first.
1) Take Bialystok with Dietrich's army turn1..I usually build it up to wooden_castle or castle, then switch to town/ large_town, so as to build trading structure for an additional merchant.
2) By turn 2-3 mission to take Olysta will be offered. Take it and treat it same as Bialystok.
3) Send faction leader and his army + artillery by ship to Visby, usually after Lithuania asks for peace on turn 2 or 3.
4) As soon as is practicable, reinforce F'Leader and send him on to take Abo, or use forces of first 'crusading noble' as reinforcements.
[Danes and Norwegians will later attempt to take Visby and Abo, so keep some sword/orderspear units to bolster ur militia pikemen.]
5) Don't bother with the rebel settlement just south of Corland--let Novgorod or Lithuania fight over it..if u take it, Novgorod will become much more aggressive--which is undesirable in the early game.

This approach will put your faction in an excellent financial position to later take on the Lithies or Danes (Reval/Narva and Palanga/Siauliai are my favorite next acquisitions--usually the Danes DOW pretty quick after u take Visby & Abo.). I've tried first wailing on the Lithuanians, but it can get bloody, and the risk of getting dow'd by the Poles and Novgorod, AND Danes is high if the war drags on..And if you wait too long, the Norse factions will snap up Visby and Abo.

Trading Strategy:
Values for different trading commodities varies considerably by faction, but for the Teutons, the very best is the 2 GOLD [1 nr. Minsk, 1 nr. Bohemia], that max out around 3,000 fl. Next best are TAR [2 within yr. territories, rest mostly in Nov'y territory] and 2 CLOTH [2 local ones just southeast of Riga]. Cloth & tar prices fluctuate slightly thru game, but max out around 1,600 fl. HONEY [2 nr. Uppsala] are good if u push into Sweden. WINE [1 great one south of Hannover], has high max value, but is pretty far away from Riga, which should be ur chief merchant recruitment area for early game.

[Seraphic Fate]

DLV - ( how to assassinate your own family members without death ships)


1. Put the character that you want to assassinate in one of your cities alone.

2. Go to the city management screen and hit the magnifying glass.

3. The adviser screen will pop up... click on that and you will go to the "View City" Screen.

4. You will go to the battle map with your character in the city by himself.

5. Intentionally accept defeat. ( the only enemy is an rebel catapult)

6. Your unwanted family member will be killed upon surrender.

This hint has been floating around the forum for awhile so I can't rightly say that I discovered it. But it is useful!

Following these instructions, I cannot kill off my own generals no matter how many times I tried. Nothing happens after step 3 as step 4 describes, but I notice that quick move on the campaing map is deactivated and whatever battle I decide to take is imediately loaded without taking me to the pre-battle screen. I use DLV 5.6.

[Furin]

@ Seraphic Fate

That was an exploit, using the scripted city view that simulates a siege battle with an invisible catapult, that might have worked in earlier versions of DLV. I am not sure if the city view is even active any more in versions > 5.6 but i must admit that I have never used it. I guess it's back to the death ships for now...

An alternative is to get the general inside a fort and attack an army that stand beside fort, you cann attack this army indefinitly until the general finally dies. That saves you a field battle where the general might have run away, but it also increases your "lost battle" score.

[Seraphic Fate]

@ Furin

Thanks for the reply. That is too really bad. I was hoping I could kill a few rebel family members that locked themselves in a few settlements. Death ships obviously wouldn't work... then I tried taking all the garrison away for a while to spawn rebels, but their behaviour is just too erratic!

[LlamaD]

@Seraphic Fate

Version any - Killing own Generals

If your too far away from water for the almighty Death ships, add a unit of peasants to your unloved general and attack something (rebels, enemies).
Peasants can deploy stakes before battle. Go figure.

[Furin]

version 5.7 (beta) - strategical

The extra garrison in cities and castles is spawned whenever you hit the "maintain siege" button in the battle popup window. So if you bring some artillery or infiltrate the settlement with spies before the attack, you can avoid the extra spawn, at the expense of slow artillery or expensive spies.

A really great new feature imo, if they have extra time they will muster extra forces but if you take them by suprise you have the advantage. But having artillery slows down your advance one turn on average and gives the AI time to get more troops into the region, it all evens out somehow...

[Furin]

version any 5.6 and lower - message windows/minor exploit

At the beginning of the turn you will get a lot of message windows in the lower left, for example events, construction report etc. If you open a window you do not have to accept or decline it immidiatly. If you click the upper right section of the window it will minimize again and you can look and work with a different one first.

This is useful if you want to use your money for building first, and then, shortly before the end of your turn you accept an event that costs you additional money. The events deduct money from your account no matter if the money is there or not, and if you go negative before the end of the turn you also have the chance to get the good anti-corruption traits.

[Rugin84]

Version 5.6 - Strategy

Plague can work for you. If you have a city, or cities going through a bout of the plague send as many spies to this city, lets them get the plague, then spread the misery upon your enemies by having your spy viist their cities. That way you arnt the only one being weakened. A favorite tactic of mine.

*Note: in the spies character sheet the little rat symbol lets you know they are infected with plague.

[svean]

version any - message windows/minor exploit

[...]The events deduct money from your account no matter if the money is there or not, and if you go negative before the end of the turn you also have the chance to get the good anti-corruption traits.

But if you have a bank or merchants guild you can get loan of 20k$ payable in rates for a long time. Only disadvantage of that loan is that you have to pay 40k$ over the years

[repman]

in 5.7 if you go below zero you loose gov points
You can although use the jewish temple for the money lender

repman