Help with crusades campaign.

[Staerke]

I'm a new M2TW player, I played the original and a little bit of rome.

My question is this: When playing as Byzantines, what the hell do you do when venice shows up? I get destroyed every single time. And the situations are BS too...they have loads of heavily upgraded military units and I've got jack squat to face them with. I can't seem to upgrade my army fast enough to meet them. And I'm playing on easy (for campaign, battle is on medium) .

Any advice for this situation?

[Strom]

You should have enough time to fully garrison Constantinople before the Venetians besiege it. If you're short of men you can generally run a leader outside the city and recruit eight units of mercenaries or so. This lets you man a lot of walls.

Make sure that you have upgraded the towers, I'm pretty sure that I had cannon towers when the Venetians attacked. Cannon towers have so much range it's insane.

Have a couple of cannons as part of the garrison.

When the Venetians besiege you you sally out, having most of your units on the walls to activate the cannon towers. Then you wheel your cannons just outside of the gates (possibly backed up by some spear men and archers to defend against cavalry/cavalry archer rushes) and blow up the Venetian siege towers and rams. Then expend your remaining ammunition blowing the Venetians to pieces. Babysit your cannons and be prepared to run the crews back into the city if it looks like they're about to get chewed up. (If you alt-double right click on an enemy then the crew will drop their cannon and charge the enemy, then you just double click inside the walls and they'll run to safety. Then you can later right click on the cannons to have the crew run out and man them again.)

Note that the Venetians often surround you with three stacks or so from different directions. When you sally it will walk two of those stacks over to reinforce the third, besieging, stack and will happily do this within range of your towers. So it can really, really pay off to activate the towers that they walk past. Indeed you can have a unit activate two of your side towers (by standing on the wall between them) and then sprint that unit to man two different towers once the enemy has walked out of range of the first two towers. The carnage this can cause is pretty fearsome.

Once you run out of cannonc ammo retreat back into Constantinople and jack the timer up to x6 speed and wait out the rest of the battle. As you blew up most of their siege equipment they will probably build more during their turn rather than assault you so you can then repeat your sallies until either the Venetians assault or you thin them out enough to be able to defeat them on the field.

I believe you can make Varangian Guard pretty early on, maybe even from the start, in Constantinople and those are pretty fearsome wall holders so if the Venetians do get some ladders to the walls then stack a couple of units of Varangians opposite the ladders and watch the Venetians get chopped into itty bitty little pieces and rout really quickly... For breaches you need at least one unit of spears in each breach, prefereably three in a U shape to envelop anyone who charges the breach. If you fight off the assault in one breach and the enemy are threatening to break through a second breach then run your cavalry out through the safe breech and charge the rear of the second breach. This usually results in the enemy army routing.

Hope that helps.

[Theseus1234]

what i did to deter the venitians was when i had extra cash

i made, literally, a wall of 5 or 6 or 8 forts across the greek side of the bosphorous

you cant place forts next to each other, but if you put them close enough, you make a wall that has impenetrable area of occupation zone

then, place 1-2 crappy units in each, and when the venitians come and besiege one of the forts, draw back all the units in the others to either constantinople or your last line of fort defense.

the siegeing time should give u enough time to make several good and powerful units in constantinople and to draw forces from nicea

try to take out as many venitians as you can at the first fort, preferably the doge or general or whoever is leading it.

[ssgrock]

You don't need to make it too complicated or get terribly extravegant in your defense against the Venetion invasion. I have a simple strat that works. Build up your forces early and station at least three, maybe four Armies and leave them around Constantinople untill they invade. It is also helpful to create as much heavy cavalary you can in Rhodes and keep a fleet there to move them up to Constantinople quickly if needed. It is also helpful to build ballista and catapult makers and put them to work as soon as they are available. Always manuever carefully when the Venetians show up. Ensure that you out maneuver them, surround their force with yours so you have reinforcements available for all battles. Another little bit of advice. Defeat the Venetians in battle, but don't wipe them out. Each time you defeat them you can ransom whats left of their army because they usually pay the ransom, this is a good way to fill up your coffers with lots of florins. It takes a few games to get it just right, but keep practicing, it isn't that difficult. You need to build up early due to the limited availability of locations with the ability to recruit cavalry, heavy infantry and VG units, so start early. Light infantry doesn't do well in prolonged battles. Be money hungry early. Try to get other factions to pay you for map info, trade rights, alliances, etc. Anytime a diplomat comes to your door, make him pay for what he is asking for. You must be brutal too, no room for nice guys in this game because everyone becomes your enemy eventually. So, put your assasins to work, keep them around your merchants and off anything that comes near them no matter what faction they are from.

[Ex Tenebris Lux]

i lucked out once. one turn after the veetians showed up, their three massive stacks turned rebel. i had a WTF moment, then sent the emporer himself with his toughest units from constaninople to deal with them. it was sweet.

why the heck did that happen though? just random chance? or was it because i was playing med/med instead of h/h or vh/vh?

[Xamt]

this is what i did while playing byzantines vs the venetians:

i made sure i had at least 5-6 units of varangians inside the city (recruit or hire mercs). get a few (3-4) units of speamen (recruited from castles and not militia). have some heavy/light cavalry (not horse archers) - 2-3 units. and get some greek fire throwers (4-5 units).

in my campaign i got besieged by three sides (had to fight all 3 armies) and each army had its own siege engine. i deployed the majority of my force facing the enemy stack with the majority of the siege engines and sallied my hv cavalry (not the general though) to the two other stacks to take out their siege engines (they moved them ahead of the main army to destroy my walls). i managed to completely destroy the siege engines of one army, but couldnt manage thesecond one.

so my walls were destroyed in two fronts. once this happens you should put 2-3 units of firethrowers facing the gap (angled if possible so the dont get charged immediatelly) and have a couple of units nearby. what should happed is a ton of enemy charging through the gap to get fried by the fire throwers.

once u run out of ammo or if the enemy makes it through, withdraw ur fire throwers and have ur infantry charge. they should have big enough casualties and low enough morale to rout without causing much of a problem to you.