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Thread: [TW Guide] MTW: The Aragonese (High)

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    Default [TW Guide] MTW: The Aragonese (High)



    Author: Morble
    Original Thread: Not Available

    MTW: The Aragonese (High)In High period, the Aragonese start out with a somewhat easier position than in Early period. This is due solely to the greater range of units available to build in Aragon. Otherwise, Aragon has much the same problems initially as it does in the Early game. I follow the same beginning strategy in High as I did in Early.

    The first order of business is to build some feudal sergeants, a watchtower, adjust income to very high taxes, send the princess out to scout, and send the emissary to try and bribe Navarre. I never have good luck bribing Navarre at first, so over the next few turns I send the emissary around to garner alliances, especially with the Spanish, HRE, Almohads, and Italians. I do not accept alliances with the French or English, and when the Spanish and Almohads go to war in Valencia, I stick with the Spanish, whom I regard as the more dangerous faction.

    As soon as I have built 2 feudal sergeants and my first prince comes of age, I invade Toulouse. Toulouse is just sitting there in French hands, but is cut off from any French reinforcement. Also, there are no knights there. So, it is a rather quick battle. With your cav, you should be able to prevent any French from escaping off the field, and thus, you will not have to besiege the fort. So, attack one individual French unit with multiple cav charges from different directions, then chase the routing unit until you have killed or captured all the men. Then focus on the next unit. You can use your spear troops to slow up the other French units and keep them from supporting each other.

    As soon as you have taken Toulouse, the war with the French will be over due to lack of contact. About this time, I get a nice bribe price for Navarre and so, I gain that province also. I develop Toulouse for urban militia, then shipbuilding. You will need a ship because the Italians will have already posted a ship in the Gulf of Lions, making you vulnerable to an invasion by sea. Also, as the game intro suggests, Mediterranean trade is a good source of income for you.

    I rely on the Almohads to occupy the Spanish for at least this early part of the game. My next target is English Aquitaine. In High period, the English now own Brittany, and their king is on the mainland, cut off from England by the French holdings in Flanders. So, pushing the English off the mainland will give you a safer, more defensible position than it did in the Early period.

    Build, build, build your armies. I prepare for the invasion of Aquitaine by securing 3 feudal knights, 3 jinetes, 4 feudal sergeants, 1 almughavars (from Navarre’s rebels), at least 1 archer, and some urban militia. This is enough of an army for me to conquer the English. If you generally have higher losses, you will need more troops to start with, because once you start, you must push all the way to the English Channel. You can make some allowance for new units built during the campaign. I also build an inn in Navarre, but I have yet to find mercs there at this time, since there are so many wars going on nearby.

    Pile as many men as you can into Aquitaine. If the Spanish are at war with the Almohads, they are unlikely to attack you, so you can probably strip Aragon and Navarre down to a 100 men each (alternatively, keep extra units in Navarre to generate higher taxes). You must be more cautious of the HRE. Most likely the HRE will drop their alliance with you when you attack the English. To a large degree this is because the HRE fears the French, and so want to remain allied with the English. But if the HRE is not currently at war, you have to be aware of the possibility that the HRE will take a sudden liking to Toulouse. So, I try to leave extra troops in Toulouse.

    The troops left in Toulouse are only peasants and urban militia, but the AI gives greater weight to troop quantity over troop quality. If you leave about 2/3 of a stack in Toulouse, this will likely be enough to stay any German attack.

    You threw as many troops as possible into Aquitaine because you really wanted the English to retreat to their stronghold instead of meeting you in the field of battle. If the English king is in Aquitaine when you invade, then the English are even more likely to retreat. This will leave you in control of the province and besieging the keep there. The AI typically waits until the last year, when the castle is about to fall, before it counterattacks to try and break the siege. Sometimes, though, it will counterattack right away. Regardless of what the AI does, you should assault the keep right away.

    Having started the war with the English, you must move quickly. English Anjou can attack both Aquitaine and Toulouse. Aquitaine can be attacked from both Brittany and Anjou. If you dally about, the English will break their focus on Aquitaine long enough to notice that Toulouse is ripe for the taking. In general, though, the AI will try to save its besieged troops first, because England cannot hold any of its Continental properties if it cannot save those troops. So, the English will attack Aquitaine with everything it has within a year or two.

    You must win this battle. Jinetes are at somewhat of a disadvantage here because of the flatness of the land. The hilly terrain found in their native Spain allows them to get significantly better range by throwing their javelins downhill. But Aquitaine is mostly flatland, so your jinetes must attack from very short range, and will almost certainly get stuck in melee before you can click over to them and save them. Try to make the most of them by focusing their attack on a single unit of heavy cav—RKs or feudal knights—on the outside edge of the enemy troop formation. Javelins are excellent against armor, and the English cav are their most costly troops. Try to keep your jinetes out of contact with English foot troops. Nonetheless, expect to lose most of your jinetes in this battle, despite your best efforts.

    Aquitaine does have significant wooded cover, and some small hills. Try to line up your spears at the crest of a wooded hill, put the almughavars slightly in front of them, and the archers in front of the almughavars. Hide your cav units on the flanks in the woods. Remember that your king cannot hide in woods, so place him somewhere in the open where you can easily spot attacks aimed at him and can safely retreat him if threatened.

    Make sure your archers are not hidden in the woods. Not only do missile troops take a penalty when firing out of woods, but you want the AI to spot your archers and try to attack into what it doesn’t realize is the teeth of your formation. Typically, the AI will send a cav unit forward to scout, then will use that cav unit to attack your archers. That’s exactly the situation you want. With your archers set on skirmish, they will automatically retreat up the hill while you rush your spears forward and impale the English cav unit. Meanwhile the almughavars will have some free shots with their javelins at the hapless cav unit.

    After this predictable disaster, the AI will bring its main army close to your battleline. It is also likely to try and flank your spears with the bulk of its cav. Oppose this flanking maneuver with the cav you have posted on that flank, while you rush your remaining cav over to that location to charge the English cav from the rear. This should be enough to rout them. Note that you must not have separated your cav too far apart on the flanks in your initial setup, because you will need them to support each other now.

    With most of the English cav run off the field, the AI will now try to bring its longbows into play. You will definitely lose any sort of archery duel with the longbows. So, it’s best not to even try. If your archers have any arrows left, have them shoot at FMAAs or cav. Use your cav to attack the longbows. Remember, though, that longbows have reasonable melee skills, although their morale isn’t too good. So, you do not want to melee with the longbows; you want to charge them simultaneously from front and back with two cav units.

    Because of their low morale, longbows are very susceptible to this sort of cav shock tactic. If you do it right, timing the two charges to hit at the same time, the longbow unit will rout. Send one of your attacking cav to chase them off the field, and swing the other one to attack something else. Your jinetes, who by now have probably been ripped to shreds in various ill-advised melees, also make good chasers of routing troops. They are faster than anything else in the battle, and routing troops will not rally if an enemy unit, no matter how small, is hot on their heels. So, you can chase the longbow unit with your regular cav until the jinetes can race in and take over the chore. Then send your regular cav back to the main battle.

    No battle is complete, it seems, without a battleline charge, and the English will try this now—usually throwing their king into the fray, also. If you have placed your feudal sergeants in good order, re-aligning them along the crest of the wooded hill, you have little to fear. Note, though, that feudal sergeants have an excellent charge, but not much attack capability. So, don’t just absorb the English charge. When the English foot troops are close, charge your men downhill to meet the attackers.

    Be careful of matching up your feudal sergeants against English FMAAs. MAAs are spear-killers, and this is not a good match-up for you. Try to handle the FMAAs by meleeing with them using your urban militia, while you charge them from the rear with a cav company. Don’t make your UM melee too long before the cav get there, because they are outclassed by the FMAAs. So, you want to contact the FMAAs at a location where you have a cav company reasonably close by. Luckily, the terrain in Aquitaine is pretty wide open, so you should be able to arrange this.

    After the battle, you will have a commanding position against the English. With luck, you captured the king, and can demand a ransom; but it is more likely he was killed or escaped. Regardless, you must quickly press your advantage.

    The castle in Aquitaine should fall the next turn, if it has not already. Once the siege is concluded, put more reinforcements into Aquitaine, and attack into English lands. Again, throw as many men at them as you can, and attack the province containing their king. Again, the English will likely retreat or abandon the province, to save their king. Press forward immediately into the remaining province(s).

    The French, always quick to join the side they think is winning, will probably have also gone to war with the English and taken Normandy by this time, so you will typically end up trapping the English king in Brittany. You have likely managed to obtain alliances with the Italians and French, but the HRE will leave its bets down on the English. Send your emissary to the Poles and Danes to try and surround the HRE with your allies. This will help keep the HRE from arbitrarily attacking you.

    Since the war with the English is almost over, you should be looking towards your next victim. With the HRE at least momentarily held in check, and the French engaged in a war with the English, the Spanish may be next, so I send my princess to the Almohads, if they are still a viable faction. If the Almohads are dead, or nearly so, you must decide between attacking the French and the Spanish.

    In the final battle of the war with the English (Hopefully—even though the English can still maintain contact with you through their ships, the French have a good chance to clear the English Channel using their navy), the English army likely consists of mostly longbows and cav. Like any unbalanced army, it is weaker than its numbers make it appear. You should have a decent amount of cav, spears, and militia sergeants, with your archers, almughavars, and some jinetes left from your earlier battles. This will be sufficient to win the day.

    One point of note, though, is that every unit always takes a –8 hit to morale when they lose over half their numbers. By now, you probably have some partial units with small numbers in the company. If you put these on the field, it will not take many casualties to earn them this morale penalty, and they will rout soon after. So, make sure these “bits and pieces” are at the end of your reinforcements list.

    The land in Brittany is hillier than that of Aquitaine. You must avoid climbing up a long slope while the English longbows pick apart your formations. So, maneuvering is likely to play a part in the battle. I prefer the Eastern European starting formation for this type of battle. It lets your cav immediately race off to forward positions on your flanks, while your missile troops are supported by a single battleline of spears interspersed with your better melee attackers.

    When the battle starts, isolate and overpower the English cav, then feint and threaten with your cav at the English longbows, to get them to turn away from the main battle. You can charge them once you get your foot troops up close and personal on them. Quickmarch your missiles and battleline up the inevitable hill (or to equal altitude first, if available) to make melee contact. When your line gets contacted, have your spear troops put their hats on the English hats, while you swing your militia sergeants around to attack from the flank or rear. If you beat the English at Aquitaine, you should have no trouble with this battle.

    Again, if you’re lucky, you have the chance to capture the English king and demand a ransom. Alas, I always seem to end up killing him on the field of battle, but at least I capture a prince or two.

    Having pushed the English off the continent, you now have a handful of years to develop your lands. Caravels are preferable to barques, so build towards them in Toulouse. I also develop shipbuilding in Aquitaine and Brittany. Aquitaine is well-developed, and could be used to build more troops, but getting trade income established is more valuable at this point. Once the northern sea routes are covered, I will switch Aquitaine back to building ground troops. Meanwhile, I develop troop capacity in Navarre and Aragon. These two provinces are also excellent locations for a chapterhouse. Crusade units built there will get the armor and attack upgrades for their special units.

    Building a church and bishops, and assassins, is also a good idea at this point, and I direct Anjou to build these. Your first church will likely gain you 1000 florins from the Pope. Bishops are good strategic pieces for intelligence gathering. They are somewhat harder to kill than mere emissaries, and the faction that assassinates a bishop risks the wrath of the Pope. Their presence in a foreign province helps increase the percentage of Christians there, and makes the province more tractable for your future conquest. Bishops can also offer alliances, although they cannot bribe. Finally, bishops prevent inquisitors from killing off your generals. Since you live next door to Spain, a faction that is ga-ga for inquisitors, you should have a bishop in every one of your provinces.

    As noted, once you have finished with England you must decide between France and Spain as your next target. Spain is usually starting to flex her muscles by this time, while the French are likely to be at war with the English, HRE, and Egyptians. If this is the case, as is most likely, you should throw in with the rest of Western Europe and grab as many French provinces as you can. The French will likely survive as a faction solely on the island of Cyprus.

    From this point you have no easy options to expand. You will face a powerful Spain in the south, and a powerful HRE on your long eastern border. You will not yet have enough naval power to make much of a difference at sea. Your best option, then, is to sit quietly and develop your lands.

    By now, the Pope is most likely calling for Crusades against the Egyptians. You may well want to take time out to build a Crusade from Aragon, send it through the high zeal Spanish lands, and have it attack the nearest Egyptian province. Prior to launching your Crusade, send bishops to the Egyptian lands to scout and perform missionary work.

    Unless you really load up your Crusade with extra troops and a good general, you do not actually have much chance for success with it. But the Egyptians will be at war with most of Europe—which will be sending numerous Crusades against Egypt—while the European navies will be scouring the Mediterranean free of Egyptian shipping. At this time, you will not have enough ships yet to entertain the possibility of trade with Egypt. So, sending a Crusade of your own against the Egyptians is a possibility, and you just might get lucky and take the province. Be prepared to shift your navy to secure a route for troop reinforcements there if you do, however, because the Egyptians will eventually counterattack with a large force of regular army or a Jihad, or both.

    It is not a good idea to get too entangled with the Egyptians as yet, though, because those dastardly Spanish will eventually attack you. You can use your Crusades to pass through Spain and soak up some of the Spanish troops for yourself. (Note that, if the Almohads are still alive, they will fight any Crusade attempting to pass through their lands on the way to Egypt.) Spanish zeal will not be high enough in their provinces to counteract their entire building capacity. So, you must gather your forces together and attack the Spanish. Usually, the Spanish will beat you to the punch and attack you first.

    I prefer to take Castile first, and build inquisitors there to increase provincial zeal. A regular inquisitor increases zeal by about 2% per year. A grand inquisitor increases zeal by 5% per year. Every few years, the inquisition will spiral out of control and those nasty inquisitors will kill off a bunch of your population. This also has the effect of greatly decreasing zeal in the province. Bishops do not appear to ameliorate this mass murder effect. (I really dislike inquisitors, but they do have their political uses.)

    From Castile, I send my armies to Leon and Valencia, then throw them all into Cordoba. The Spanish will be switching their troops between Cordoba and Portugal (assuming your invasions have been successful), and a popular revolt is likely around this time in Portugal. Be careful not to let the Portugese rebels sit around for long, or else they will turn into an Almohad resurgence. So, have a couple of emissaries, or an invasion army, standing by to take care of Portugal when it rebels. The same rebels/Almohads situation applies in Granada and Morocco.

    If you have controlled the rebellions, you will likely be flush against the Egyptians in Granada/Morocco. Iberian provinces are excellent, with good trade and agriculture, and you likely got a good amount of development when you took them. You can pump up your income very quickly by building more agriculture in conquered Spain.

    Also, Portugal gives valor adds to caravels. You need lots and lots of ships, so you should build caravels in Portugal and at least two other provinces. You need more ships than you would imagine, because the AI ships have godly powers on expert and will typically defeat exactly equal ships of yours by a 2:1 margin. If you get attacked by the Italians or Danes, two very strong maritime powers, you will see your provincial loyalties and transport capability drop right off the scale when your enemies win 2/3 of the ship battles.

    So, you really need an ideal of at least 2 caravels in every square. When you do get attacked by a maritime power, pull back your trade routes, which are useless at this point anyway, and stack your caravels 3 and 4 deep. Use these hunting packs to attack squares containing 1 or 2 enemy ships. If you try to attack with only 2 against 1, you will still lose half your sea battles—and the enemy ship will gain 2 stars, making it verge on the invincible.

    To continue, you will want to roll up the Egyptians across North Africa and into Asia Minor. Crusades can be very useful here. I prefer to start my Crusades in Aragon, which by now has attack and armor buffs. However, Leon is another option, if you have developed it well enough, because Knights of Santiago get a valor add there. Knights of Santiago are one of the best heavy cav in the game. They are equal to High RKs and chivalric knights, but are not impetuous, and only cost about half as much to maintain as a unit of CKs. Santiagos will not rashly charge at the enemy when you are focused elsewhere on the battlefield. On the other hand, they will not charge a weak enemy unless you tell them to.

    You have to be careful using Santiagos in Crusades in the desert. This cav is so heavily armored that they will tire very, very quickly, and they will not be able to rest at all during the battle, due to the heat. This means you must reserve them for short charges, relatively close to your edge of the battlefield. Farther up the battlefield, they are much weaker than they would be in a similar European situation. Their exhaustion will prevent them from charging or running, and they will also rout much more easily when exhausted.

    I put grand inquisitors in Aragon, Castile, and Cordoba, and let my Crusades sit 1 or 2 years in each province, depending on how high the zeal is in each. Maximum size for a Crusade appears to be about 2500 men, and Crusade membership is fluid. You will not keep all your original Santiagos and Order foots, even though you are gaining hundreds of men each turn. If you want pristine Crusader units, you need to move the Crusade to the target as quickly as possible. However, I find it best to just send a number of Crusades, and combine the special units after each Crusade has reached its objective.

    While you make progress in rolling up the Egyptians, you must take care to fortify your European borders. Usually the HRE will attack at some point across your long mutual borders. I never have much trouble putting down the HRE, and the Pope rarely stops me until the outcome is already assured. (I don’t know why this the Pope is not more proactive for the HRE.) During this time, England may be ruled by either a rump English state or rebels. If it is the latter, make sure to quickly bribe or conquer the rebels in order to prevent loyalist uprisings. A large loyalist uprising can result in a strong English threat on your northern flank.

    Typically, either the Russians or the Mongols will have won out in Asia by the time you approach Poland/Hungary. You must be very careful here or you will end up in a World War. Keep your border provinces well fortified. Even peasants are better than nothing for this purpose. By the time you destroy the HRE, every faction will have significant development and stacks of troops, but will be locked in and unable to expand without attacking another faction. You want to make sure to make it look to the AI that attacking you will be more difficult than attacking in another direction.

    The Danes and Italians can cause considerable damage at this time if they go to war with you, because of their navies. Take care to allow each of these factions to maintain a border with a faction other than your Aragonese. Build up the number of men in each of your border provinces to a total greater than can be found opposing the Danes or Italians on their other borders. This may slow your efforts with the Egyptians, but it is worth the effort it takes to prevent the destruction of your navy.

    The Byzantines are another possible naval power, but they are typically less aggressive. And, by this time, they are usually confined to Rhodes. The Turks will likely attack you before you have finished with the Egyptians. But the Turks do not build many ships, and so, they are usually not to difficult to handle, since you should by now have plenty of troops in the area already contesting with the Egyptians.

    Once you have finished off the Muslims, you really only need to destroy 1 more faction to get your victory. Oftentimes, you will not be given a choice of victims; one or more of the AI factions will attack you. You must respond quickly because your land holdings by now are extensive, and therefore the Pope will not issue a warning to your opponent, but will warn you immediately if you do anything other than simply defend your own provinces. Of course, if the Sicilians or Italians have a puppet Pope in place, there will be no warnings in any case.

    Given the opportunity of choice, I prefer to go after the Russians (or Mongols, as the case may be) through Georgia, Khazar, Crimea, and Kiev. If you have a port in Trebizond and a ship in the Black Sea, you will be able to attack these provinces near-simultaneously, using the armies you brought across North Africa. The Asian Steppes are typically lightly held, and you can gain a lot of ground very quickly to claim your victory. Unfortunately, the AI will almost certainly go through its standard endgame paroxysm of attacking you with multiple factions when you initiate the war with Russia. But if you have built your defensive border armies around pavise arbalesters and chivalric sergeants, you should be able to set each of your armies on a hilltop and beat off the AI attacks on your provinces with concentrated ranged fire. At the same time, the Russians will typically retreat from your overwhelming attacks in the East, leaving you in control of the land, and you will be able to claim your Aragonese victory.
    Last edited by Sir Adrian; December 07, 2013 at 05:59 AM. Reason: fixed author hyperlink

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