Turtling 101

**nosjo78** · November 15, 2007, 03:12 PM

After getting bored with the game doing the normal Blitzkrieg I decided their has to be another way to be a good king. Ive practiced many stratagies for many factions and found this to be the best way to go.

1. King and Heir- Starting Kings are usually pretty good so just put him in your capitol. Get that faction heir out there winning your battles. This will build your stats up. Do not exterminate or sack, you are looking for Chivalry. CHIVALRY = GOOD, DREAD=BAD
2. Traits- Keep your King/Heir's stats high by using them in battle and join EVERY crusade. Doing this will give you massive boosts to your Chivalry, Piety, Authority, and sometimes Command. The better your rulers are in traits the easier it is to keep your settlements happy and productive. I usually send in my Heir to crusades but right before I take the settlement get 7 units on the King and join the crusade as well (Do this with as many generals and family members as your can). You gain Exp and they all get a little stat boost usually.
3. Economy- Making money is so easy when your turtling. It make sure to build all your economic buildings asap. I usually start with Church, then move onto roads, farms, markets, and ports (Ports first if available). Keep your citizens happy, if your starting to get some unrest in your cities switch out to building Inn, Tavern, Barracks, churches etc... Revolting cities make u 0 money. Try to get your merchants out to the Middle East, Timbuktu, or Constantinople regions asap. These merchants are so very important to early game success.
4. War- Go easy on the war. Only go to war if the enemy attacks your and you can hold them off/defeat them without endangering your economy. Alot of times you can just fight defensivly with them and they will tire out or the Pope will jump in and put an end to the fighting. If they dont stop then you can get the pope to call a crusade on them and that will put a hamper on their expansion plans on you. If you must war try to only go to war with neighboring nations. Keep your regions together. With experience you will learn certain cities are always targeted by certain factions. Stay out of them. Try to keep your fighting for to 1 stack. I usually send in 1 attacking stack followed up by a few more units to garrison the city im sieging. This way i can take the settlement and move on in the same turn without stopping.

5.Allys- ALLY ALLY ALLY, try to get an alliance with EVERYONE. You will loose some of your allys when war breaks out between them but thats ok. You can try to get them back as an ally later. If you have no plans to expand in a certain direction keep those nations as your allys. Send them some money now and then or exchange map info. Again Dread=Bad Chivalry=Good. The more Chivalry you have on your King the better global reputation your going to have usually.

6.Capitol City- Shift your capitol city around to keep it as close as you can to the middle of your Empire. I know some people say keep it as far as you can from the resource you want to trade but that just causes alot of corruption. Look at your city details and adjust your capitol around until you find the most money made. This is why you want to keep your empire all together instead of expanding off into far reaches.

7.Make sure you convert your castles that are on the water into cities. Sea trade is so very important. Their are a few exceptions but for the most part keep those lucrative water front properties as cities.

These are just a few stratagies for turtling but I've found their about the most important. Good luck
Comments? Suggestions? Questions? +Rep?

**sherbs** · November 15, 2007, 03:40 PM

Thanks for that. Two things I can pick out that might help me are kings/heirs and alliances.
I've never concentrated on my royals' traits. If they've got command, they head an army, if not they're govenor.
I've only ever had one ally, through marriage and they ended up attacking me so I didn't bother again.

I really want to enjoy this game so I'll give your advice a go and see if it helps.

Cheers

**nosjo78** · November 15, 2007, 04:17 PM

Chivalry and Piety seem to keep your alliances in better shape. Also put a little larger than normal garrison in your border settlements. One thing I forgot in my previous post is an exception to exterminating towns. Arguin and Timbuktu need to be exterminated ALWAYS. They will rebel every time if you dont.

**gr33kp1mp777** · November 15, 2007, 07:06 PM

Take maybe.....one holy land province as a colony, and use it to throw merchants from up close to the great resources, and it just really helps over all.

TIP: use Milan, unite Italy, and open up a few colonies across the world (just one or two, like maybe Antioch, or Alexandria, or Arhus or something.)

**nosjo78** · November 16, 2007, 09:45 AM

Originally Posted by gr33kp1mp777

Take maybe.....one holy land province as a colony, and use it to throw merchants from up close to the great resources, and it just really helps over all.

TIP: use Milan, unite Italy, and open up a few colonies across the world (just one or two, like maybe Antioch, or Alexandria, or Arhus or something.)

I do that sometimes too. Take Jerusalem and Gaza. Jerusalem for merchants and Gaza as a Castle to back up Jerusalem. If Jerusalem rebels you can retake it from Gaza. Plus it breaks up Egypt nicely. And its rather easy to defend both due to Gaza always being a pretty well built castle with good units even from the start.

**Bluice** · November 15, 2007, 07:50 PM

ALLY ALLY ALLY

Then when your ally wages war on a third party say goodbye to your relations with them. Not always the best option, sometimes better to sit on the fence. The only advantage is that allies are less likely to decieve you but then again that was one of the Ultimate AI mod change so the vanilla version factions will still backstab you.

Try Stainless Steel, the mod really weights the alliances as more significant and is less likely to betray you.

**nosjo78** · November 16, 2007, 09:50 AM

Originally Posted by Bluice

Then when your ally wages war on a third party say goodbye to your relations with them. Not always the best option, sometimes better to sit on the fence. The only advantage is that allies are less likely to decieve you but then again that was one of the Ultimate AI mod change so the vanilla version factions will still backstab you.

Try Stainless Steel, the mod really weights the alliances as more significant and is less likely to betray you.

I play SS 5.1 and you have a point there. But id rather have rock solid relations with a few factions than being on the fence with alot of factions. Plus keep in mind if your turtling you will be making tons of money and you can just buy out all the territories that you want. It also increases your relationship with the faction your buying from until you have bought up so much of their land they have nowhere to go anymore. I did this as Leon to both Milan and France. I bought 7 of Milans 10 territories. They never attacked me but I wanted the city of Milan so I had the pope call a crusade on them. I took Milan on the crusade and sent my assasins to their remaining cities and murdered their ruling familys. Goodbye Milan. With France I must have bought 20 territories from them. It cost me about half a million florins but it was well worth it. They are now down to about 5 settlements, loaded with cash but nowhere to go. I think Ill do the same thing I did to Milan.

**gr33kp1mp777** · November 16, 2007, 09:22 PM

lol very interesting!

but if you're milan then you don't need Gaza as a castle since you get your solid settlement defense units from a city!

**nosjo78** · November 19, 2007, 12:34 AM

The reason for Gaza is incase your town in the middle east revolts. Castles rarely revolt so it will be a good place to stage a retaking of your lost city.

**Kalos** · November 16, 2007, 10:44 PM

Moved to Battle Planning.

**Ciaran S** · November 17, 2007, 05:17 AM

Good advices. But what to do with all that money, because sooner or later that in itself becomes a problem due to the fact that excessive amounts of gold in your coffers give your characters corruption traits.

**nosjo78** · November 19, 2007, 01:47 PM

Originally Posted by Ciaran S

Good advices. But what to do with all that money, because sooner or later that in itself becomes a problem due to the fact that excessive amounts of gold in your coffers give your characters corruption traits.

The EASIEST way to spend that money is to keep buying up your neighbors lands. Eventually you will reduce them to a few provinces and they will attack you. Then you can go ABSOLUTLY NUTS with massive army's and pulverize them. Since they started the war you rep will not go down.

On my last campaign as I was spending upwards of 300k per province. Which didn't matter since I was bringing in so much money it would only take a few turns to get it back.

My next test to this strategy is to see if I can avoid war all together after say 50 turns. After my economy is humming along im going to see if I can buyout all the factions and leave them with just their capitols.