[M2TW AAR] As promised: Retaking Europe Whole From the Timmy's

[Double A]

So what's your playstyle? No Jerusalem?

[HMD Temeraire]

I have got an idea for you if you have not thought of this already. You could send an expedition force using boats to the middle east and buy tones of mercenary elephants there. You could then give the timmys a taste of there own medicine.

[Double A]

Oh I remember something:

Unit creation cheats:

These are all basically Timurid or Mongol units, which are devastating on the battlefield. You can use them against the Timurids or the Mongols to even the odds.

Elephant Units:

madras - Elephants, plain no-frills elephants, have archers on their backs, and can stomp, not as fun as the next two can be.
rogan - Elephant Artillery, elephants armed with cannons, a lot less vulnerable than normal cannons, because they can stomp anyone that tries to attack them
vindaloo - Elephant Rocketeer, elephants armed with Rocket Launchers, as the in-game description says, they are devestating to say the least. Incredibly fun for blowing apart a grand army or majestic city. Just like all elephant units, can stomp anyone that gets past the rockets, or hasn't run for his life fast enough.
Be aware, the elephants can run amok if they get too spooked, try to keep them from being attacked with arrows, especially flaming ones, and make sure they don't shoot each other. If you ever played as Carthage, Seleucids or Parthia in Rome: TW you know how bad that can be.

Artillery Units:

houston - Mercenary Rocket Launcher - Blasts away anyone unlucky enough to be in their way. The rockets are a bit inaccurate.
george - Mercenary Monster Ribault, fires about 30 guns on a rack, can be devastating with the right placement.
istanbul - Mercenary Monster Bombard, the big ol' gun at the end of the intro video. Fires a half-ton cannonball that looks really cool. Will blast a massive hole through an enemy wall with one shot (two for the strongest). You could try using it against an army, but it only has about 20 shots, and is meant for bigger targets.
Remember that unlike elephants, these units are vulnerable to cavalry, so make sure to keep them protected.

Battle map cheats:

jericho - Breaches the walls of the city during a siege.Does not always work.

[Imperator Romani]

+ rep

[R0mm3l]

I must say, this is uber, epic, awesome, generic "cool" word, etc. I want to try getting deep into a campaign and see if something like this happens.

[Blurgh]

hey when do you think the next update will be?

[Kryme101]

Oh man! This is THEE best AAR iv ever read!! such an epic tale lol cant wait for the next update please make it soon!!!!

[Jingles]

Downloaded the save. I'm gonna see if I can somehow edit it to play as England, then put on some of my favourite churchill speeches and get to work

[R0mm3l]

"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender!"

The Tim's control pretty much what the Axis controlled in like 1942. If there were planes, the Battle of Britain would happen, and that would be very epic.

[Jingles]

Flying Rocket elephants versus Spitfires FTW lol

[Biggles]

Flying Rocket elephants versus Spitfires FTW lol

Now that would be interesting.

The Spitfires would win, obviously.

[Nazgūl Killer]

You are brilliant, Dunecat, not only have you found a way to effectively fight the Timmies, you have also managed to fight against ALL odds, sustain 4 different factions and repeatedly fight against an immense power beyond belief. Great work.

[Dunecat]

hey when do you think the next update will be?

IDK, hopefully sometime soon. No matter what, I'll have a significant report within two weeks when I get home, but until then I'll try to cook up some quick mini ones, maybe detail some battles or idk.

[Ramashan]

Battle details would be great. Would love to see your strategy against them charging hordes of Elephants.

[Dunecat]

Battle details would be great. Would love to see your strategy against them charging hordes of Elephants.

Usually death.

Pikemen and cavalry are many times poor but sometimes unbeatable. Not reliable in any case.

It's when I can maneuver lines of gunpowder, get lucky on cannon shots, and make the right calls (mostly by luck) of how to get rid of the infantry. More and more I've been fighting with 1. Junk armies (anything on hand, mercs, spear militia, etc. I have like a good 10 stacks of these ragtags now IIRC), 2. Cavalry Armies (fast, maybe led by a general, that try to snag elephant-light armies and support main attack groups. I have maybe 4 of these), and 3. "Balanced" armies (late russian foot skirmisher-I do not know name, gunpowder infantry, sieging equipment, a ribault or two, a General, and some good cavalry. I have maybe 3 of these, and are my spearheads that lead a few other stacks against a mob of Tims to get to and siege a city. Slow and meant to anchor a force, almost always the army I choose to personally command in a battle. They might hold the Tim's to a place on the map while a AI-controlled cavalry stack might sweep in late, or a rag tag group diverts attention and splits the opponents forces, hopefully taking advantage of the poor AI by confusing it and causing it to hesitate enough so they can close to join a killing blow. If the opposing AI is agressive, or applies the right forces where needed against my ragtags, they will flee before reaching the main battle. Generally I try to choose the terrain I fight and plan the positioning of my armies so I can get the right matchups and give me a better chance of giving my Ally AI a fast path to the battle).

[Add1ct]

it's probably a stupid idea, but you could try the mongol tactics of clogging a lot of armies together, that way you'll at least outnumber them when they come to fight you.

[Kallum]

but you'll can't fight on many places at the same time. I would say fight bridgebattles! but then again elephants will go through anything

[Dunecat]

Well numbers aren't really that big of an advantage against Timurids (plus my Laptop can only handle so much ). Tim's always have good units and Elephants... So my style is to take out the elephants, and protect whatever takes them out from the rest of their army. After that it's pretty easy standard stuff.

I don't like bridge battles... The Elephants are tough mobile cannons that tear through mobs so... If you stay out of range until they won't stop when you rush towards the bridge exit, they'll tear through you anyway really...

My style in a field is to stay at max range and try to snag some elephants, fight mini-battles against the remainder of their force, while inching forward and trying to finish off the rest of the elephants (if they are more passive). If I wait too long generally I'll have too many depleted forces. That is, in a 1on1 battle. In any case, if the elephants are aggressive and I don't have good positioning to shell them I'll get mowed.

Otherwise my strat is on a case-by-case basis... Terrain is the dominant factor.

[Ramashan]

That's great that you really consider terrain as your dominant factor in the battles. Are you able to see this in the strat map or do you just run away to fight another day if the terrain on the battle map doesn't seem to be what you would like?

[Dunecat]

I don't really know how to flee a battle map still.