Hardest Faction to Play in 6.1

[dstarsboy]

I've only tried France, Scotland, Lithuania and Cumans but I have to admit, I got my BUTT KICKED in the Lithuanian Campaign on VH/VH. Absolutely destroyed.

I had a good chunk of probably 16 regions and had no wars going, allied with the Orthodox factions and was raking in my money. Suddenly, a crusade was called on me. Like an idiot, I tried to actually defend against it (didn't want to pay the 5k to change my capital and give it up to rebels, lol, and I had a sizable army at the time, 3 good stacks at least). Poland and Hungary invaded from the south and took 3 regions each. Denmark's boats landed on the west bank and took a couple more. My capital fell. The Teutonic Order suddenly arrived just after the crusade and marched on my new capital. When all was said and done, I had 2 regions left and was in dept so bad.

Does anyone else think Lith is this difficult? I heard Jerusalem essentially has the same problem.

[Clayton Gold]

Lots of threads of the same topic to check out if you search

[ShockBlast]

'Donate' some money to the pope to put you in a good relation with him and you will have no problems with crusades.

[grunt123]

i heard that teutonic knights is pretty hard ... probably the hardest faction to play

[Serious J]

i heard that teutonic knights is pretty hard ... probably the hardest faction to play

You can destroy an entire faction (Lithuania) with their starting troops alone within 7 turns. They're not that hard. Just need to keep good relations with Poland and the Russians.

[dstarsboy]

Lots of threads of the same topic to check out if you search :wink:

I didn't see any on 6.x +, since the introduction of the new factions and with the land/town location changes, I did not search but I went through a few pages of threads looking for anything recent. I'll search next time though.

'Donate' some money to the pope to put you in a good relation with him and you will have no problems with crusades.

I was allied with the pope when this happened... and stayed allied with him even in the end... I guess i have to spend some money to keep the relationship strong.

[EDraven]

I'm playing a great TO campaign now. However don't get excom'd. I allied with Poland playing the good chatholic after killing lithuania. The Danes seige the Pole town closest to Konigsburg, so eying the one Danish province north northeast of Riga I declared war and sent a stack to help my Polish ally. Broke the seige, but the got the excom warning from the Pope. Fine. Also got caught up with the Pole forces as I didn't have military access. I just saved thier a$$, have been their ally for 20 turns, and try to trade access while giving them 5k and they just won't take it :hmmm:. Retarded.

So I imagine some story for it (this camp would make a good AAR actually). Decide to live with it and try to get back in TO lands, one zone of conflict at a time... Well I end up next to the remnants of the Danes, and the Poles my ally attack the Danes. This draws me in to that fight as I'm thier ally, and of course I get Excom'd. Everything's ok despite the fact that i just can NOT get into the pope's good graces. Then the bastard declares a Crusade against Riga.

Knowing every Catholic faction will at some point jump in (literally every one sent a stack to Granada last crusade) at some point, I thought about giving up Riga to rebels. However, that's really gaming the game. So I'm thinking now of killing off my grand master (he's already 62) as honorable atonement for his sins he did commit, and honorable self-sacrifice knowing the church lowered this Crusade based on trumped up charges, but sacrificing himself for the good of his brethren and the order.

Will this end the Crusade since the order has no family tree? (bold so that it isn't lost in the wall of text)

I also imagined roleplaying his angry charge into Rome to take the issue up with the pope personally, although I'd probably have war declared on me by half the world by then, and he probably wouldn't live long enough to bring an army to Rome anyway. Honorable self-sacrifice I think is how it will end as I can't fight off all the catholics while also in conflict with Russia...

[lacrossepl9]

Thats a great story line and a great plan. I'm not positive but almost sure that if the faction leader dies the crusade is dropped and you are no longer excommunicated. Actually now that I think about it I'm positive that this happens at least it did in Vanilla M2. So quickly sacrifice your general before people declare war on you. The pope will let you back in but the Catholics will stay at war with you and still may send a stack at Riga. Good luck. That is a great storyline I can just picture it. The head of your order mounts his steed with his bodyguard next to him. The peasants and soldiers in the city throw flowers at his feet and the leader does not look back only forward trying to keep a stable face. He then charges out of the city and heads for the nearest rebel army which he attacks and fights a glorious bloody battle but is finally brought down and the heir takes his throne. This brings tears to ones eyes lol.

[Logik]

Knights Templar

[Erlinggra]

Kwarezmians late era VH/VH.

[l3asu]

Kwarezmians late era VH/VH.

True Story, the Mongols hurt bad! I found out historically that the Mongols sent emissaries to tell the Kwaz you might as well give up our lands to our mighty horde, so in response the Kwaz beheaded the emissaries and returned them to the Mongols. The Khan obviously pissed off sent a couple hundred thousand troops to deal with them, ouch!

[EDraven]

Negativo. Sacified two faction leaders and the Crusade was still on. I suspect the TO having an Order and not family tree is scewing this up. Also as suspected the entire Catholic world joined the Crusade the turn after it was called. It takes 3 turns+ for a city to go rebel. Sooooo, it WAS a fun TO campaign. It's really really too bad that I didn't know about this before it happened on turn 77 as it has completely killed my TO campagin. I'm almost disheartened to the point that I can't find another faction to play. I started up a late Norway campaign, but it's just not the same.

[Iscariott]

Negativo. Sacified two faction leaders and the Crusade was still on. I suspect the TO having an Order and not family tree is scewing this up. Also as suspected the entire Catholic world joined the Crusade the turn after it was called. It takes 3 turns+ for a city to go rebel. Sooooo, it WAS a fun TO campaign. It's really really too bad that I didn't know about this before it happened on turn 77 as it has completely killed my TO campagin. I'm almost disheartened to the point that I can't find another faction to play. I started up a late Norway campaign, but it's just not the same.

Norway is an absolute blast early era. And i dont like early era normally lol. Front rank norse archers w/ stakes. Set not to skirmish. They do a good job withering early troops from afar, and have no problem absorbing a spear militia charge and tiring out the enemy.

Behind the archers is your shield wall. Flanks are spear militia in schiltrom if cav present, normal if not. When the archers start taking a few too many casualties pull them behind the shield wall. It's a tight box of absolute death to early troops, and since the important troops are ap scales well until technology obsoletes the units...

[melancholic]

Norway is an absolute blast early era. And i dont like early era normally lol. Front rank norse archers w/ stakes. Set not to skirmish. They do a good job withering early troops from afar, and have no problem absorbing a spear militia charge and tiring out the enemy.

Behind the archers is your shield wall. Flanks are spear militia in schiltrom if cav present, normal if not. When the archers start taking a few too many casualties pull them behind the shield wall. It's a tight box of absolute death to early troops, and since the important troops are ap scales well until technology obsoletes the units...

What does a shield wall do exactly? Is it better than telling them to charge the enemy?

[Barser]

Templars can be very hard.

I startet a campaign as the templers and it startet out fairly easy.
But now I am in trouble. I play with the jerusalem emerges script so when they showed up and took jerusalem from the egyptians i allied with them thinking we could have some fun times smacking the egyptians around.

Then jerusalem rebeled right after koj took another castle. I then felt like I had to take control of it since it was full stacked with decent rebbel troops and i knew koj didn't have the power to get it back.

But then a jihad was called on jerusalem and right now I am fending of full stack after full stack of turks/kwasam/moors/egyptians. It is redicules how many units they can come up with and koj arent helping out as they have to defend there only castle against the egyptins.
And if that wasn't enough the byzies showed up wanting to take a peice of me also ;-(.

Anybody know how many turns it takes before a jihad/crusade fails? I can't hold out much loonger.

[Iustinianos]

In my current Templar campaign a jihad was called to Jerusalem in 1167 after a lot of epic battles a message turned up in 1189 saying that the jihad had failed. So that´s 22 years.