Portuguese Campaign

[recentiy03]

Any advice? I tried to call a crusade on Granada within the first 5 turns but I wasn't able to defend Silves, which was taken during a Jihad against Jerusalme (go figure, the AI can go in the complete opposite direction of the Jihad and sack my cities without desertion) and as a result of losing one of my two cities and the cost of maintaining a crusade I haven't even been able to purchase any crusading troops because the 5K put me in the hole and I can't get out...half my royal family is dead and good old Castille, my faithful ally, has an army chilling behind Lisbon just waiting to attack...I'm thinking this campaign is basically done...I don't know if the Moors have more advanced troops as a result of using the no-waiting mod to enable plate and gunpowder units earlier or what, but this has been the hardest campaign i've ever tried... any advice for next time? I am going to start over I'm thinking since the combination of losing Silves and crusade upkeep seems to be a point of no return and rather than worrying about expanding I will just try to get an advanaced baracks ASAP for gunpowder units.

[Spartan90]

I found Portugal pretty easy. I think your problem was calling a Crusade within the first 5 turns. Maybe spent a good 15-20 turns grabbing any Rebel settlements nearby and stabilizing your economy. Grab trade routes with the Iberian factions, and maybe France and the British Isles. Lisbon should be raking in some pretty healthy profits by this time.

By not taking on Spain and by spamming your Priests in Moorish territories, you'll be in the Pope's good books, which in my experience will hold off any Catholic nations attacking you early on. Keep your cities and castles relatively well garrisoned to ward off the Spanish / Aragonese anyway if they have half-stacks parked outside your borders.

From here, you'll have a decent enough economy to fund a reasonbly professional army that you've pumped out of Oporto. Use your Knights of Santiago if you can afford them, backed by Portugal's best weapon - javelin units. If you can try and conquer Cordoba via subterfuge (very easy, a couple of spies plus a few priests), you've already taken the Moors economical centre without even declaring war. Use diplomacy to get Aragon to get frisky with the Moors in eastern Iberia, and ONLY THEN declare a crusade and smash them back into Africa.

[RollingWave]

Moor's early spearman line is a bit better than yours, once they have garrison quoters they can spam nubian spearman (which is a very significant improvement over spear militas) with near impunity. and they start out with a lot of desert archers (arguablly the best early era archers in the western half of the map) but their scattered across several settlements and they can't build anymore until they get a practice range. oh and they also start with 9 (!!) settlements to your 1 .

Your advantage though , is that Jinet is better than Desert cav in almost everything except desert bonus, and of course their only access to heavy cavarly is basically their family member.
After Silves, if you find Sevilie and Cordoba too well defended, then the idea is to get a spy, check out their African holdings, find a settlement that is sparsely defended, and just sail there and attack, most of them (especially marrakesh and Algiers) is very far from other settlements that there's no way they can get reinforcement in 1 turn. their lack of heavy infantry also makes them pretty easy to defend against in siege, Nubian spearman are pretty good but their also completely unarmored, making them easy targets for even levy archers.

Also, gunpowder units? are you playing late era? if it's late era why bother with Granada? just go after Marrekesh right off the bat. the biggest problem with a late era Portugese campaign is hardly the Moors, it's them dang Spaniards.

[Sir Wem]

Playing the Portugees myself, i captured S-Iberia and kicked Moors back to their deserts.
In the meanwhile i established a buffer between my empire and the Spanish people by giving Murcia and Badajoz (?) to his holiness in Rome.
After 10-15 turns of building and building and building, spanish were foolish enough to attack me... I´m now heading for Toledo with the support God himself
If you play the Portugees campaign a bit smart, espacially against the Spanish, and whole of Iberia becomes your backyard, the world is yours...

[recentiy03]

Thanks, that seems like good advice...although my biggest problem has been the fighting...someone mentioned the Moorish spearmen are stronger than mine and it is very noticable, especially because every Moorish general has 8-10 stars right off the bat, where as my best generals only have 2-4...less moral and weaker troops is too much for me to overcome....I should've mentioned I'm playing a late campaign so there aren't many rebel settlements, however I will try to implement some of your ideas when I play this campaign again.

[recentiy03]

I can't even win autoresolves with a 2 to 1 advantage because their generals are so strong...and I have VERY powerful armies...apparently having a strong general is more important than having highly trained soldiers.

[RollingWave]

if your battle setting is anything higher than medium, you should pretty much never auto resolve since you'll almost always lose except in all but the most lopsided battles.

Personally though, late era Moors shouldn't be much of a problem, their spearmans are better than spear militas and more numerous than sergents etc.. but by late era almost all western factions have better options.

again, if it's late era, just get a couple of bombards /cannons. sail with a infantry heavy army, and attack the Moorish settlements from the sea. it basically can't fail espically if you spy ahead and just pick the thinly defended settlements. then force them to waste their army trying to retake those settlements.

[recentiy03]

I realized a huge part of my problem was I had fire at will turned off for all my gunpowder/cannon units...I was wondering why my cannons weren't firing and since I usually don't get far enough to use gunpowder units I didn't realize they come with fire at will turned off...when I realized they were idle it made me realize all the gunpowder units weren't doing much....that doesn't explain the autoresolve problems, an army of 2400 and an army of 1500 late era gunpowder units should beat any army of 1700 easily enough, but it does explain some of my recent loses.

[RabidSheepLegion]

i love the aventuros

[Sir Wem]

I´m playing early era, like to build up my empire and ´change´ history...
Although, i always try to keep it somewhat real, for example, i will never invade england or the baltic.

What i experienced is that timing in battle is as important as military strengt of your units, because early on, moorish units are stronger so you need to break their formations and|or kill their general(s), whatever the cost.
Thanks to good management and financial support of his Holiness i got AP units now to smash true enemy formations, what a lovely view
All of my attention and money goes to city|castle development so i´m the first with good units.
Try to keep excellent relations with European powers, because you start very small and don´t have the money to keep large army´s, so you´ll need to scare spain (and other potential threats) with your ally´s.
For example, i´m allied to France, excellent relations but i´m giving financial aid to HRE to keep to war between those two goiing. Result is that (hopefully) i can secure all the Spanish lands and establish a strong line of defence, so that France (my ally but you never know, backstabbing bastards) will think twice before crossing the mountains.
It takes a lott of good strategical choices and diplomacy before you have a respactable empire, but that´s why i play this game!

Good luck, but hey, if God is on your side, Moorish blood will be all over your units swords

[Birk]

Graculs AI Early-Era.
Battle: Medium Campaign: Very Hard


I took over Lisboa fastest as I could. Then I build an army and took over Ortpo. Right after that I hit Silves. Then Cordoba, took me 18 rounds to get Cordoba. Leons backstabbed me when i lost my main armies, so i got in trouble with the papal states. But i managed to build up my army and ships to make my army respectful. Now I dont have the Leon after me anymore.
Now Im going for Granada. Which is well protected. On the road to Granada I killed a mighty General with a large army. Granada itself i protected with loads of units. And they´ve brought a large army from Africa which I have to get ride of before sieging Granada. It seems like i have reinforcment my general which is dreaded. Because I dont want any muslims return home and make a comeback and i want to be feared.

Atm. I dont have heavy infantry. Only spearmens, javelins, mounted javelins, levy archery, mounted merchants from the guild and swordsman + militia swordsman, urban spearmen, arbalast xbows from Cordoba.

[maurogti]

Actually, all the times that I've played with portugal (in VH/VH) it was easy, first I conquered Lisbon, maked alliance with Aragon to have support against the Moors, after that I recruited all the troops that I could and launch a attack to Badajoz and Silves and took them from the Moors, I maked a armada with 4/5 boats and send them to the passage between North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula (in portuguese it's called "Estreito de Gibraltar") so that I could prevent reinforcements coming from the south, after that, I've launched a full attack to Cordoba and all the armies that I could find in the way, next I took granada and murcia, waited for a few turns, maked a ceasefire with the moors, and cut my alliance with Aragon, attacked them, and took all their territories, with the kingdom of Castella surrounded by my territories, I launched a full attack on them, and took all the Iberian Peninsula, after that, I prepared a big army, some 2/3 army's with generals and full stack's, and conquered north of africa. it's easy see ^^' the trick is to start attacking at the first turn and never stop, 'cause the factions are more weaker at the beginning.

[Birk]

Actually, all the times that I've played with portugal (in VH/VH) it was easy, first I conquered Lisbon, maked alliance with Aragon to have support against the Moors, after that I recruited all the troops that I could and launch a attack to Badajoz and Silves and took them from the Moors, I maked a armada with 4/5 boats and send them to the passage between North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula (in portuguese it's called "Estreito de Gibraltar") so that I could prevent reinforcements coming from the south, after that, I've launched a full attack to Cordoba and all the armies that I could find in the way, next I took granada and murcia, waited for a few turns, maked a ceasefire with the moors, and cut my alliance with Aragon, attacked them, and took all their territories, with the kingdom of Castella surrounded by my territories, I launched a full attack on them, and took all the Iberian Peninsula, after that, I prepared a big army, some 2/3 army's with generals and full stack's, and conquered north of africa. it's easy see ^^' the trick is to start attacking at the first turn and never stop, 'cause the factions are more weaker at the beginning.

It depends on which AI you use and which Era :p