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Thread: [TW Guide] MTW: The Danes (Late)

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    Default [TW Guide] MTW: The Danes (Late)



    Author: [user]Vercingetorix[/user]
    Original Thread: Not Available

    MTW: The Danes (Late)The Danes (Late)

    The Late game starts out in much the same way as the High game, but with important differences. For one, you own Livonia. But then again, the only rebel provinces around you are Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Lithuania. The rebels there are better equipped than in High Period, too.

    Just as in the High Period game, invade Sweden on the first turn. The HRE will not invade Denmark on the first turn, and your loyalty there is sufficient to leave the province empty. The Swedish rebels will retreat, and you can claim Sweden without a fight. Now you must prepare your army before you can expand further.

    Build 2 chiv sergeants and 2 arbalests in both Denmark and Livonia. Then build 1 CMAA in Denmark, and mounted sergeants in Livonia. Build to a border fort in Denmark, then start on advanced trade improvements. In Livonia, the first build should be a port, even before watchtowers. After the port is completed, build a border fort, then start on improving trade in Livonia.

    You need the 100 man chiv sergeant units to pump up your loyalties, and for military force later. Keep one of them, and one crossbow, in Denmark. Put everything else from Denmark into Sweden, in preparation for the invasion of Norway. In Livonia, you are basically marking time until you can take on Lithuania and connect up with your Scandinavian provinces. Send a princess to the HRE and try for an alliance. Usually the HRE will offer to you first.

    There is an inn in Sweden. This can allow you to skip a couple of building turns and invade Norway right away. Just be careful not to spend too much money on mercs, or you will get into a financial hole that will require a great deal of time to get out of. Remember that each caravel costs 900, and even a small trading post costs 800. It’s certainly worthwhile to pick up 100-200 mercs to invade Norway. You do not want to lose many men from your regular army during the invasion. But you want to be able to release the mercs immediately after you complete your conquest. Otherwise they drain your economy. Invade Norway with enough of your regular army to prevent a loyalty rebellion after you take it.

    The Russians will capture Finland before you get a chance at it. The Mongols will invade Lithuania, lose it, attack it again, lose it, et cetera. At some points, rebel Lithuania may seem appealing as a target. It is best, however, to just forget about it for now. Learn a lesson from the Mongols: their losses in Lithuania weaken the entire faction, while the Russians build their strength. After a few years, the Russians will invade Lithuania and grab it from the Mongols. Then they will proceed to wipe the floor with whatever remains of the Golden Horde and destroy the faction. If you attack Lithuania, not only will you put yourself in the middle of this impending Russo-Hun conflict, but you will throw away the lives of a significant number of men that you need to maintain your defenses in Livonia.

    You need to maintain a strong garrison in Livonia because the Mongols will likely attack you there when they think they have Lithuania secure. A good Livonian stack is 3 chiv sergeants, 3 arbalests, 2 mounted sergeants, and the other troops you started with there. This is enough to repulse all but the most determined attack, and your two neighboring predator factions will typically turn away to look for easier prey.

    Be alert for opportunities arising from rebellions against the HRE. For some reason, the HRE seems to have great difficulty holding it all together in Late Period. If you see Saxony go rebel, grab it with your king and all your army. The same goes for any other of the small HRE northern states. It helps a lot if you are allied with the HRE, because the Emperor will often send a small force, at the same time you invade, to attack any rebels. Try to keep your army in one big stack so that you will always outnumber the HRE after a successful attack. Whichever ally has the most men present in the province at the end of the battle gets to claim the province.

    The accretion of some of the small HRE states can be a great boon to your game. As in the earlier periods, the Danes have a tiny economy, and have to force trade growth to bring themselves up to competitive levels. This does not leave much build room for military units or their building improvements. The addition of 2 or 3 small states is much more significant to you than their puny income might indicate, because they widen your military base and allow you to build many more men in an emergency, while they also provide you with enough provinces to dedicate some to building strategic pieces.

    You need strategic pieces because AI assassins and inquisitors are quite active in Late Period. The AI especially likes to enter the port in Norway and kill someone of yours. As soon as you can spare a province, build spies and distribute them throughout your kingdom.

    In the meantime, build a few peasants for domestic security. If you captured a few rebel provinces, then build a couple of military units (whatever is the best of the types available when you capture the province) then concentrate on building bishops. Because Livonia has significant Orthodox citizenry, you will not be able to get the annual 1000 florin reward from the Pope for quite a while. However, bishops make excellent eyes and ears on the world.

    Emissaries get assassinated if they hang around in a foreign province for too long, but bishops can often stay at a post for the whole game without being disturbed. Some factions do assassinate bishops—the Byz seem the most aggressive in this—but most will leave them alone. If you need an alliance in a hurry, a network of bishops will not only locate the foreign king for you, but can propose the alliance also. Bishops can do anything an emissary can do, except bribe and deal with marriage proposals.

    I used to build tons of emissaries. Now I build only a half dozen or so and reserve them in my territory until I need them to bribe rebels or propose marriage. It is better to use the same emissary over and over so that he gains valor stars, thereby making his next action more likely to succeed. So, build tons of bishops to scout the map, and reserve the emissaries for specific purposes.

    In a similar manner, there is not much reason to build a horde of assassins. Build 6 to 12 of them, depending on how much you really like using assassins, and use them over and over. Train assassins on foreign emissaries, then on foreign princesses. It is fairly easy to train a 3 or 4 star assassin this way—just be sure to move him out of foreign territory as soon as he completes his job. When that 4 star Papal grand inquisitor comes around to burn your generals at the stake, your small, but highly trained, cadre of assassins can put a quick stop to that nonsense.

    You need at least two provinces producing ships, and would prefer more. The first ship you build is probably going to have to be a barque. The 200 florin price difference between barques and caravels is a big deal at the start. Note that the rebels have a ship when you start the game. Do not attack this ship with your barque because, thanks to the godly powers of the AI navies, you will almost certainly lose your only ship and then be even farther behind. The rebel ship will wander off without attacking you, and then probably gets disbanded after you take Sweden.

    After building your first barque, though, spend your money on caravels. Caravels have good defense. They have slow movement, but you are going to string your ships out one to a square for most of the game. So, your navy is not going to be doing much search and destroy until later. If you want to get all 15 GA points for the Kalman Union quickly, you need to cover as much ocean territory as possible, and spread your ships as thinly as possible.

    Cogs are primarily offensive warships. Their attack of 4 can kill most AI ships, but their defense of 2 means they should preferably be stacked with other ships. Cogs cost 1000 florins, and more importantly, take 4 years to build. You can develop your provinces to build cogs, and later carracks, but keep pumping out caravels until you can cover all of the ocean squares.

    Of course, there is no game directive to make the Kalman Union your primary goal, but meeting the 6000 florins in trade per year target puts you in a commanding position for the rest of the game. You can obtain this much trade by around the years 1365-1375 by avoiding military clashes and picking your way carefully through the minefield of alliances.

    In general, avoid switching sides with your alliances. Very often, a faction that is losing a war against one of your allies will send you an offer of alliance. If you switch sides, it counts against your trustworthiness, and you will find it more difficult to make alliances in the future. Actually breaking an alliance by attacking your ally counts a lot more in the ill-will column, but simply dropping one ally to side with a faction on the opposite side of an armed conflict has a still-significant deleterious effect.

    The Danes should try to stay out of any conflict at all until they have maxed out their trade. Never accept an alliance with someone who is already at war with one of your present allies. If two of your current allies go to war, chose to stay allied with the faction closest to you geographically. (The exception is if one of the factions has a huge navy. Then it may be preferable to side with them regardless of where they are located on land.)

    There is no ill effect if you have to choose between two current allies in armed conflict—only when you switch sides after the conflict is in progress does it count against you. If you happen to choose to stay allied with the eventual losing side, just bear with it. Eventually you will get a chance to ally with the winner when they are not at war with one of your other allies. (And if not, then that faction is often playing the rogue’s role, and has a number of wars going on. Then your continued alliances with that faction’s enemies presents a show of solidarity against the rogue nation, which can slow its military advance.)

    Once you can cover most of the Mediterranean with your trade routes, you should begin looking around for rebel provinces. The AI frequently lets some provinces slip into rebellion. Have your committee of emissaries standing by to rush to the scene of any rebellion and offer bribes.

    This strategy is dependent on maintaining sea contact. Beware of bribing an inland province that you cannot ship troops to in an emergency. Also be careful of bribing any of the island provinces until you can connect with them through your fleet. For any far-flung colony, you should put enough men in the garrison to bring loyalty to at least 150% on very high taxes. This way, when one your ships is inevitably sunk and your trade route disrupted, you will be able to switch the province to very low taxes and probably still hold on to it without a rebellion. It is best to maintain security by providing fighting troops in these colony garrisons. If the colony is invaded, you may not be able to reinforce the province (because the enemy already sank your ship posted off the coast and put its own warship there). When this happens the colony will have to fight for its survival using only the men present in the province, and peasants are not combat-worthy troops.

    Thus, colonialism has its inherent risks. However, if you wait to apply this strategy until after you have a large annual income from your trade, you will be able to afford garrisoning a full stack of fighting troops in each colony. You should try to have a couple units each of cav, missiles, and foots, but colony garrisons need not be so carefully balanced as your main attack armies. Just the sheer number of men present, regardless of type, is often enough to dissuade most predators from attacking a colony.

    The colonial strategy can let you pick up some very valuable provinces for a song. Once you have advanced trade buildings, and coverage of most of the ocean, you will be making more money than you can spend in a year, so bribe costs do not impact your financial status. In a recent game, I was able to bribe and secure Egypt, Khazar, and Valencia. I would have gotten Sicily and Morocco, too, but the Aragonese and Almohads resurged before I could get my emissaries there to complete the bribes.

    If you have been playing well, the game seems especially anxious to bring about resurgences. If several factions have been eliminated and there have been no resurgences, you will often not get more than one turn before a rebellion generates a resurgence. There is not much you can do to prevent this in provinces you cannot reach within one turn.

    For those rebelling provinces you can reach, have 12-20 emissaries standing by in a port province. Send 3 emissaries offering bribes to each stack of rebels present in the rebellion. (Actually, send the emissaries to the province, then have them offer bribes the next turn, since the game gives 1 year advance notice.) 3 bribe offers each is usually enough to get at least one stack of rebels to join you. If there are rebels in the castle, bribe them on the next turn, after you hold claim to the lands. Rebels besieged by you will usually join you for little money. Rebels besieged by another faction will almost never join you.

    As noted earlier, rebel states are always vulnerable to a faction resurgence. Unless their province is surrounded by other factions and cannot attack you, try to colonize rebels quickly, or the province will morph into thousands of troops for a resurgent faction and alter the balance of power. (Of course, if the rebel troops could not easily reach you by land or [potentially] sea, then it’s someone else’s problem, and you’re happy to let the new and the old fight it out and weaken each other. J) If a number of factions have been eliminated and have not resurged, the game sometimes forces a resurgence and will not give you the opportunity to complete the bribes. If that happens, all you can do is ally with the resurgents or attack them.

    Colonialism greatly increases the risk you will have to go to war with a Christian faction that attacks you. You have to decide if the risk is worth the reward. Generally, colonialism creates a more complicated game. For a simpler game, ignore rebel provinces surrounded by other Christian factions.

    If a Christian faction attacks your colony, you will have to lose the colony or attack the Pope. This is because the AI waits until it believes it can win the invasion of your colony. If you respond to relieve the siege, the Pope will warn you and you will not be able to counterattack without getting excommed. Again, the Pope is purely a hindrance to the Danish game, and you should not hesitate to replace Him if you are excommed. In fact, a little preemptive strike is often called for.

    The Papacy generally has very well developed lands, if the Pope has not been conquered during the game. You will want to hold on to these provinces. With provincial loyalties above 150%, Papal resurgences typically take 15 to 20 years. So, you can delay the Papal resurgence by keeping high loyalties in former Papal territories. (You cannot prevent an eventual resurgence, however. Papal resurgencies are automatic. But you can usually finish the game before the Pope returns, if you wait this long to attack Him.)

    Until such time as you are attacked by Christians, concentrate your efforts on Asia Minor and the Middle East. Note that each enemy you add to your list further decreases your trade income, which is the backbone of your economy. Try to attack one heathen faction at a time to minimize the economic hits you must sustain. Improving your trade buildings to their next level is often enough to offset the income losses. With luck, you will not be too dependent on Middle East trade, since this is usually the last region your ships reach, and the Muslims and Byz often squabble between themselves and destroy ports by invasion.

    The Hungarians are the one Christian faction you need to take out, if you are following the Asian/Muslim conquest path. However, once you control Poland and Kiev, and have a ship posted in the Adriatic Sea, they are fairly easy to break. Just invade from all directions at once. Attack Hungary, Croatia, and Bulgaria simultaneously. The king will go to either Serbia or Carpathia, and you can trap him there for a possible ransom. By the time your Papal warning expires, the Hungarians will be stuck in a rump state, and you can finish them off 10 years later. Be aware that, if the Pope owns Venice, you will almost certainly be attacked by Him in a few years. It is possible to be at war with the Pope without getting excommed, but only if you do not counterattack Him. To forestall the Papal war, pile lots of troops into the garrisons bordering His lands.

    The Pope is a lousy neighbor. He attacks you without provocation, then excomms you if you return the favor. As soon as you end up with a province bordering Papal territory, you should begin planning to replace Him with a puppet. Make sure you have enough men to finish off the Pope quickly. You do not want to get into a scrap with Him, taking a province one turn and losing it the next. Build up enough armies to steamroll His entire kingdom.
    Last edited by jimkatalanos; August 12, 2008 at 06:51 PM.

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