Problems: Teutonic Order

**Astinos** · August 04, 2008, 03:28 PM

Hey there,
First off, I gotta say how much I love this mod.

My only problem seems to be that my favorite faction (Teutonic Order) seems to be very difficult and almost impossible for me to play.
Lithuania is obviously the first to go down (with very little fight), but after that I find myself in a bit of a pickle. I have the Novgorod to the east, Danes to the north, Poland to the west, and Kiven Rus to the south. All of which are much too powerful for me to take on. In addition, my income is so poor that I can't sustain a larg enough army to hold my borders.

Any suggestions? :hmmm:

**htothehh** · August 04, 2008, 07:12 PM

Economy before enemy. That's how I always play...
Capture strategic places / pinpoints / chokepoints and don't attack other people unless they attack you. Try to get alliance with a faction or two and give them a regular tribute. Allied or neutral factions are less likely to attack you when you're still feeding them with 500 florins per turn.

**Aradiel** · August 04, 2008, 07:57 PM

After you have rushed lithunia you must take a break and consolidate your territory. Especially considering the fact that the lithunian provinces need to be convinced to abandon their pagan ways

Danemark is not a problem unless you take gotland, they always fight for it and will send stack after stack there. Did you tarke turku ? The fortress in finnland is totally overpowered and will provide additional recruitment ability, very potential for a campaign against novgorod.

Try to ally with either novgorod or rus, poland is weak and as soon it is either in war with hre or hungary backstabb them.

You should try to get the danes out of estonia, try to sabotage their settlement and as soon as it rebels take it over. It will most likely do so even without intervention.

Novgorod will start fighting the cumans pretty soon, or maybe even the rus. This is also a good chance to take their western provinces.

In early game your christian knights are your best friends, keep your forces together in one stack somewhere you can reach all your citys fast.

Once you have your economy running and you can recruit halbbrueders you are ready to go. The key is to avoid a 2nd war after lithunia and build up until you are ready. If the danes harras you, visit arhus etc. while beeing undefended and sacke the citys. Pretty good income for building up your own towns. As said before the safest way is to expand to the west, as the hre is your best buddy, and poland is the weakest in the whole area, especially if they are fighting the hungarians which are always strong.

**Gorrrrrn** · August 05, 2008, 07:49 AM

The region that the TO start in is generally not very productive.

Once you have removed Lithuania (and that can take a while) and have built up the economic resources, take every opportunity to go on crusade (or call them if the pope likes you enough) on catholic targets (to avoid problems with religious conversion) with mucho economic value (ie big cities.)

Getting alliances in late era seems much more difficult than early era but take a diplomat along with you in case there's a queue to attack the crusade target (if you do call one, call one that's close to you.) Siege artillery will enable you to attack as soon as you get there if there are allies besieging it - get your artillery to blast a hole in the wall and then let your allies do the fighting.

**htothehh** · August 05, 2008, 04:19 PM

OK, here's what I did for my Teutonic campaign... The key is not to eliminate Lithuania as soon as you can, the key is to establish your empire first, and once your empire is built up, the Lithuanians will be no match. In short, conquer the land belonging to Norway and Denmark (along with all the rebel towns in between), and then set out for Lithuania (if they are still alive). Yes, you do have many factions surrounding you, most of which are weak compared to you, but so does Lithuania. Lithuania doesn't have the capability to expand like crazy, so don't worry.

1. Withdraw all troops from Riga and Konigsberg, move them onto a ship, and ship them all to Visby and siege the place.

2. Train some units (not too many) at Konigsberg and defend it at all cost, because it's your door to Eastern Europe. Send a diplomat to get trade rights and alliance (I cannot stress the importance of alliance) with Poland, and alliance with Novgorod (but they will soon betray you, but still get alliance). After that, send the diplomat to get trade rights with HRE (don't get alliance because they're right below your future territory), alliance with France (who will fight the English and Scots along with you), then, as I always do when I'm a Catholic faction, send the diplomat right outside of Rome, and keep on throwing money/map info at the Pope to make him happy (get alliance if you can).

3. Capture Visby, leave your general there as the mayor, take all your units and your King, and ship them to Uppsala, siege it, and then capture it (all these battles can auto-resolved, which will probably be better than if you manually fight it). Move in, don't sack, don't exterminate, same applies for everything you will capture, the population at all these places are small so you're fine. And turn it into a town. From now on, your King should NEVER have a single turn where he's sitting in a castle because a) you need his command to defeat all the enemies and b) you don't want him to become the mayor/duke/whatever of all the towns that you capture because you want to adopt new generals to become the mayors/dukes of places you capture. Train units, but don't go over free upkeep limit. Bring 5-6 top-notch units trained from Konigsberg to here, because the Danes and Russians will be pounding this place in the near future.

4. Move on to Nykoeping, capture it, pull all your units out, attack Kalmar (castle, belongs to the Danes). MAKE THIS YOUR CAPITAL!!! Train units but don't go over free upkeep limits. Now you should be able to call a Crusade on Vilnius. After Vilnius is wiped out, the Lithuanians can't be too big a problem (assuming they're still alive after you defeat the Danes and Norwegians).

5. All troops out, attack Kalmar (Danish castle), capture it, retrain if you can, if not don't bother building stuff just to retrain your units. Turn this into a town/city. Train units here after the conversion but don't go over free upkeep limits.

6. All troops out of Kalmar and go attack Lunch, capture it, retrain if you can. Train units here but don't go over free upkeep limits. Take the King and his troops out and build a fort at the chokepoint between Lund and Roskilde, that way the Danes can't move troops into your newly conquered land unless they defeat the fort first (which they won't try to do for a while) Train 3 or 4 extra militias and put them in the fort. Take your King and his troops (by now should all have silver experience marks) and attack Skara.

7. Capture Skara, make it into a town, and then take all your troops out. Train units here after the conversion but don't go over free upkeep limits.

8. Move your units to Oslo, declare war on Norway and attack it. This will be your ONLY castle (aside from Konigsberg which, hopefully, is still at peace with its neighbors). Riga might be attacked by the Danes, but while they are holding siege, destroy all buildings and disband all but one unit, make the tax rate very high, and make sure as soon as the Danes capture it, rebels will take over =] If not, the Russians will be onto that city very soon, eliminating the possibility of being flanked by the Danes.

9. After you capture Oslo, UPGRADE THIS CASTLE, retrain all your units, make new ones if your full stack is becoming a half or 3/4 stack. Rest a few turns, then march West to conquer Bergen (which might belong to England already) and Eikundarsund (which will most likely belong to Scotland).

10. The Brits don't matter, capture Bergen first, and then retrain your units. Be sure to train 8-10 units there and just leave them in the castle in case later on in the game someone from the English Isles try to take Bergen (or Eikundarsund) Then capture Eikundarsund. Train some units in Eikundarsund but don't go over the free upkeep limits.

11. All the King's troops back to Oslo, retrain, and move on to capture Roskilde and Arhus.

12. If Norway has Hamburg in possession, give them money, regular tribute, and make them vassal. Be sure the vikings are eating and happy. Put half a stack of your experienced troops on the Northern side of the bridge behind Hamburg in case Norway betrays you, or someone attacks Hamburg.

Below are some pics of my current empire, which should be built in 35 turns max. And don't worry because your start off with only 2 generals, once you start to conquer a new settlement every other turn, there will be plenty of candidates for adoption. After you build up your empire, you can decide where to go next...

a) Conquer the English Isles: if you decide to do this, make the Russians happy because you don't want war on two fronts. If you can't make them happy, put 1/3 or 1/2 of a stack on the island that has Visby.
b) Conquer Russia: if you want to do this, make sure you are on the good side of the English factions, because they will send their troops the Western side of your Empire. This is what I'm doing, but I'm attacking and ransacking (with 3 Teutonic Spearman, 3 Archers, and a Christ Knight) because I want to recruit some badass Ritterbruders before I make any serious effort to conquer new land.

Don't worry if HRE decides to attack because you or your vassal has Hamburg, which is enough. Don't worry if Poland attacks, because you have Konigsberg, and if the Poles can't take over this Fortress, they can't advance (via ships) towards your main empire. The French probably won't attack you because you two should have an alliance, and it's busy enough fighting the English, Spanish, Germans, and maybe Genoans as well.