How do you control so many regions?

[tom91x]

Hi there, first post , i have been playing M2 TW for a long time now, had various games as england, egypt demark, and my current scotland game.

I always choose long campagne as i like to play for a long time, but recently i just looked at the thread 'show us your empire' and noticed some people have nearly all (and sometimes all) of europe under their control, with nearly everyone else wiped out. Whenever i play, in all my games i never have more than 12 regions under controll because if i start taking over people everywhere, i just cant manage all them cities and stuff, you'll have more and more people attacking you from every angle and i would of thought it would get frustrating and confusing trying to do it.

So has anyone got any tips on how i can build up an empire thats huge? Like half of euopre would be nice and a good nation to try and do it as?

Thanks.


PS: Im on the vanilla game with 1.1, unfortatly, i cant get the new patch because my connection is very bad and cuts out a lot, it would take about 10 hours to get it, but it wouldnt make it that long anyway. If there are any good mods on 1.1 please let me no

[Rommel]

When i played as Scotland I usualy take over the Island as fast as possible. THen build up for about 5 turns, usualy you want to build things that we'll get you money, like roads, and ports, then you invade, Best way to beat the AI is try to attack only one at a time.

The AI is stupid and usualy it'll attack one city/castle everyturn until it takes it, so I usualy enforce that castle/city with a nice sized army, so I have time to build up another stack and continue.

Try and take France over fast as possible, ANd make Allies with all frances neighbors, If you have a mod installed like me they actually wont attack you, if your playing the Original M2Tw, then it might buy you a few turns.

Rommel

[Aeneas Veneratio]

I posted 3 of my empires in that thread. Are those the ones you are refering to?

In the Denmark and England ones I still used auto control, while in the HRE one I micromanage everything.
In the Danish one my only fronts were actually Sarkel (Mongols) and Europe towards weaken powers. With HRE I had 1.2 installed so alliances worked, while I took out Poland and Hungary, which made the Eastern border so easy to defend with no real foes (byz being harrased by the Turks), as it allowed me to send almost every single soldier to the Western border.

Edit: I only took the regions East and South(Italy) of HRE's starting position. The Western regions are mostly bought from my abundance of money. I get a load of money since some/many settlements are not auto-managed to build crappy buildings all the time.

[TW_ruler]

I’ve never won as Scotland (long Game) but a good faction for me that is completely winnable and you don’t have to resort to cheating with is “England”. I won so many long games with them it isn’t funny they are good at taking Europe.

How I manage a lot of territory is don’t rush your turn make sure you check on everyone from time to time even check the territories you do little with. You don’t have to have every little thing built up in each territory nor do you need to keep territories that are miles away from your front lines fully garrisoned with generals as governors. They will manage just fine with a small garrison and no general. Always stay focused on your fronts even if you have many fronts you are defending.

I also will never auto-manage no matter what, I need all the money I make to build things I need to build other wise your looking at frivolous spending by the AI which will cause you to cheat because you have no money when you need it.

I only take territories that will benefit me I rarely go after territories the council requests sometimes it’s not in your best interest to do so. Sometimes it will hurt you more than help you.

Finally managing large territories you must stay focused, and plan things out stick with your plans work intelligently and you will have a huge empire. Also there is all of us at twcenter ask for advise on anything your dealing with in your game it’s a huge help and inspiration to keep going.

Rock on brother …

[Gerin]

TW_Ruler you could just set the Ai to save instead of spend and you could just put a general in the settlements that you want to supervise.

[TW_ruler]

TW_Ruler you could just set the Ai to save instead of spend and you could just put a general in the settlements that you want to supervise.

Yea brother I know, but I really hate auto-manage. Also, I only put generals in strongholds at my borders or if the territory is big on cash and needs a general to keep it that way.

[sumaznguy]

I find it most helpful to constantly attack enemy settlements. I normally prefer to turltle and develop my territories first, but I always find my economy collapsing late game. My cities are real developed, but the enemy has many cities giving them many stacks of troops. So my superior tech is useless.Trying to conquer everything as soon as possible is extremely useful because it does several things.

a. Provides you with more income(its nearly impossible for cities to have negative income, so more cities means more trade and some base income(from farm and taxes).
b. Provides you with more troop building capabilities. I used to underestimate the power of the lower tiered units, but I find them extremely useful, since more troops means its easier to outflank enemy.
c. Takes away enemy income and enemy troop building capabilities. Every city you take early on means a huge dent in your neighors future economy/armies.


So if you expand quickly early game, it makes it very easy for you to manage your huge empire. I am playing as HRE on VH/VH. I have 11 settlements(you start out with 5 as HRE IIRC) and in sieging two other settlements. And I am only on turn 13. In previous other games I wouldn't start expanding until like turn 20-50 lol, early game would turn out fine, but late game my small empires would crumble.


Of course, there is also the fact that HRE is surrounded by rebel settlements. I grabbed most of them, 3 are still up for grabs but I am sieging 2 of them, and 2 were already conquered by Venice and Poland before I got to them. Now Venice has declared war on me, so I think its time to take it back. =P.

[Mig el Pig]

-Grow towards natural borders
-If you start a war make sure to be able to take out several of his provinces at once(and take a siege weapon with you so you can take a city in 1 turn and start moving on to the next).
-Fight your own battles, even on VH/VH it's easy to win versus overwhelming odds
-Rely on infantry, their good in any situation
-Do the missions(except the ones that start a war you don't need)
-Convert every castle you don't need
-don't waste money on assassins, merchants early on
-Always take the coastal cities first.

[crazyj]

Sound advice.

[Hookah Smoking Caterpiller]

make lots of beechheads... use a naval invasion to take a settlement, convert to a castle, and off you go.

Remember to clear out the seas of enemy shipping, the AI often blockades ports for no real reason, and it can damage your income (slightly) and tends to attack your fleets (irritating if they sink an army)

[delra]

Automanage taxes and build buildings always in the same order. For me it's road, farm, barracks, church, market. :-)

[Saibot]

I'm playing as Egypt right now and I control the complete middle-east and Northern Africa so it get's hard to micromanage every settlement every turn. But I just try to remember as much as possible to do the next turn and I check all my settlements every 5 turns to recruit new units and get new buildings.

[Greg89]

Its fairly easy. Keep a max of free upkeep units in the settlements. Uncheck the Auto construction and recruitment squares. Also keep priests in all the regions if your budget allows. And my favorite, get urself a general, get him 3(or more if you want, but 3 will do just fine) units of cavalry, they will serve as a anti-rebel and reinforcement units. For example, if you control Iberian Peninsula, that general along with 3 units of cavalry should be enough to reach anywhere and stop anything, and that will aslo help him increase stats and experience, alot.

[Oxberger]

On my HRE campaign I have everything west of modern day Russia border and the middle east.

I just forget about cities and leave them be(cities in Spain/France get little to no attention). The only time i'll bother with them is:
-If they grow and need the upgrade
-If there's a riot
-Or if I get 12 generals in my capital and I need to send them somewhere

When you get a huge empire you're home cities eventually become pretty useless unless they are close your fronts.

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

Hi! My post @org might help you spend less time micromanaging:

Well I'll tell you how I manage my turn mostly:
1. Checking 'droping boxes' info at the start of turn and acting accordingly.
Say I see that priest has died somewhere I go and recruit another to replace it in my specialized guild cities. Then if I see new family member of age i assign him settlement to govern.
Also open building scroll and see what buildings where built and assign new projects from there as it helps save time.

2. Check if all settlements are building using according tabs, if agents (priests and merchants) are at the max (if not then build/recruit), check financial status and red tape stuff.

3. Quick check of loyalty, family members positions, assign to govern who and where, build watchtowers/forts where necessary

4. Agent (priest, spy, assassin, merchant, diplomat, princess) management - this is by far the most time consuming part. I do it in 2 ways:
a) if your empire is small enough (say <20 provinces) you can, as someone earlier told, open (right click) agents tab and sort them. Then press the agent and you'll see its position, then perform mission, go again into agents tab sort again, etc. This is really boring so when my faction is huge I do it in second way
b) try to remember general locations of your agents and just use them where you see them, try to move assassins in wolf packs i.e. as it makes easier to manage

5. general overview of empire for foreign threats, brigands and pirates - recruit units and act accordingly, try to complete a mission

6. military action - going into battles - this definitely takes the longest to finish the turn, but is by far the most interesting aspect (like a completely new game side)

7. press end turn and circle goes again

For me turns untill 1200s (im playing standard 2 yrs per turn) go quite quickly, but later it can be a nightmare as 4 turns can take even 2 hrs. I'm trying to learn other tips too, plz add, cause I really want to finish long campaign more quickly (it usually takes 2-3 weeks for me as I like turtling and play M2TW like 4 hours max a day)
So plz add your own ideas how to shorten managing time

Hope these little managing details helped
Cheers

[sumaznguy]

On my HRE campaign I have everything west of modern day Russia border and the middle east.

I just forget about cities and leave them be(cities in Spain/France get little to no attention). The only time i'll bother with them is:
-If they grow and need the upgrade
-If there's a riot
-Or if I get 12 generals in my capital and I need to send them somewhere

When you get a huge empire you're home cities eventually become pretty useless unless they are close your fronts.

Well your home cities provide you with massive income. Plus they are likely to be vastly more advanced than your newer cities. So just transport troops using ships or spend the extra turns to get your troops out in the frontlines. It's nice to have troops being churned out from everywhere. You have troops being built on your border and the interior providing you with much more troops making it more difficult for enemies to conquer your cities.