Your campaign pace?

[Staffen]

After a few campaigns of Stainless Steel, I'm wondering what is considered a 'normal' expansion speed. With that, I mean the middle ground between turtling from the start and blitzing with every last spearman you've got. So as for the questions:

[all concerning the Early campaign]

1. Assuming that everybody spends the first phase of a campaign scooping up rebel settlements, how many settlements do you have around, say, turn 30?

2. And, around which turn do you normally seriously start conquering faction-controlled cities, i.e. waging open war with other nation?

3. Around which turn do you usually get your first fortress? And around which turn do you usually get your first citadel?

Remember, I'm curious about what is considered normal, the middle ground between rushing and turtling

[delra]

I usually take 8-10 new settlements in that time. It of course depends on the strength of rebels and my starting conditions.

But 8-10 per first 20 turns is my usual blitzing pace. After that I go bankrupt and try to get out of that bankruptcy for the next 20 turns.

In some areas as some factions you can do even faster than that. For example Byzantine can add more than a dozen of new settlements if you build barracks in Constantinople from the beginning and get good infantry from there very fast.

If you're fast enough, during first 50 turns you can take Balkans all the way up to Zagreb and Grab a big chunk of Asia Minor as well, with Sinope, Trebizond and Caffa around Black Sea. You could even get Acre or another good castle as a foothold in the Levant...

After turn 60 I start looking at grabbing some best toys from AI like Hamburg, Toledo, Smolensk or Caesarea.

Fortress takes usually around 100 turns. But if you have a good chivalry general and sacrifice a good city to be a castle you can do much better than that. For example I like converting Damascus to a castle when I play there so it can shield whole Levant (and I convert all coastal castles to cities to boost trade there). With a good jihad-winning king it can be fortress around turn 60-70... if you're fast enough.

Polish King is a good Fortress-maker too. He has 7 starting chivalry, with a crusade he can pump it up to the max. As Poland I usually concentrate all my starting forces (well, all my peasants ...) around Prague, take it and leave my third general there, then go with King and Prince right to Magdeburg, take it and leave my King there so he can boost it all the way up to Fortress. Once he even lived so long that he almost made it a Citadel. And it was the first Fortress and the first Citadel on the whole map...

[Emperor VI]

Ok... I have my own rules which I do never break. They are:

1) Never attack allies unless they do attack you first
2) Never attack non-ally countries first 100 turns unless they attack you first.
3) Never capture settlement which are not adjacent to yours. (apart from islands and they must be in your sphere of influence. so no ireland invasion as Venice.)
4) Never lower taxes in order to get population boom. (keep taxes at least on the level which makes population contended(yellow face) I decrease taxes to get population increase only in case where 15000 needed and I have 14870 or something like this in order to get promotion to the next level 1-2 trun earlier.
5) Construction is priority


This shall give you general idea how fast or slow I am....

[Stephan de St. Omer]

Ok... I have my own rules which I do never break. They are:

1) Never attack allies unless they do attack you first
2) Never attack non-ally countries first 100 turns unless they attack you first.
3) Never capture settlement which are not adjacent to yours. (apart from islands and they must be in your sphere of influence. so no ireland invasion as Venice.)
4) Never lower taxes in order to get population boom.
5) Construction is priority

I play quite similar and also try to set taxes to the max whilst making high chivalry generals governors. So you get maximum money and population growth. I case I get some decent high chivalry generals...

I try to build more quality troops than massproducing low quality troops. Though I often play the TO with BFTB and they do not have low quality troops but rather good ones from the start.

Kritic Stephan de St. Omer

[Callawyn]

Ok... I have my own rules which I do never break. They are:

1) Never attack allies unless they do attack you first
2) Never attack non-ally countries first 100 turns unless they attack you first.
3) Never capture settlement which are not adjacent to yours. (apart from islands and they must be in your sphere of influence. so no ireland invasion as Venice.)
4) Never lower taxes in order to get population boom. (keep taxes at least on the level which makes population contended(yellow face) I decrease taxes to get population increase only in case where 15000 needed and I have 14870 or something like this in order to get promotion to the next level 1-2 trun earlier.
5) Construction is priority


This shall give you general idea how fast or slow I am....

Once you've blitzed a few times, House Rules IMO are the best way to get more enjoyment out of the game. To each his own, but the main idea is to limit your early game expansion, since the AI sucks at it, limit your DoW's on AI factions to what seems more realistic to you, and not exploit bugs/weaknesses in the game, even to the extent of not taking advantage, ever, of some legitimate features that are imbalanced (like, for me, I think the spy % of opening gates is WAAAYYY too high, and you get a chance each turn he's there, so I have a House Rule to NEVER have a spy in a settlement I'm about to siege).

1. I use this all the time.
2. I use this also, but with 50 turn limit.
3. This should be clarified a bit: point here is to limit your expansion in the early game to only those rebel provinces that are adjacent to your starting provinces, or nearby islands. Again I put a 50 turn limit on this. After which attack rebels anywhere. This is really cool and I recommend people try this. Result is a much more challenging mid-game.
4. This I've never heard anyone promote before and I can't say it makes much sense to me. You're generally much better off with your taxes at the maximum your population will sustain without revolting. Exception being villages/small towns that down have the infrastructure for much pop growth, or if you're trying to get +Chiv on a General for being governor with low taxes.

[Ron Burgundy?]

I like to turtle also. I recently started a campaign with the Templars and it seems too hard for me to turtle in the antioch area. So I bought a merc boat on the first turn and relocated to Carthage (or Tunis probably).
I now own all of N. Africa with easy choke points to maintain, low upkeep, and muchos construction.

BYW, what's with the french voices for the Templars??

[Caesar Clivus]

BYW, what's with the french voices for the Templars??

The Templars were French for the most part

[Ron Burgundy?]

Oh ok. I kind of do remember reading at one point that the Templars were started by some French bard after the first crusade. The voices seem to be more 'manly' then the French in the game so I don't mind.

Ceasar, my first rep is going to you as soon as I hit 50. You've been helpful in every thread i post in!!

[Emperor VI]

3. This should be clarified a bit: point here is to limit your expansion in the early game to only those rebel provinces that are adjacent to your starting provinces, or nearby islands. Again I put a 50 turn limit on this. After which attack rebels anywhere. This is really cool and I recommend people try this. Result is a much more challenging mid-game.
4. This I've never heard anyone promote before and I can't say it makes much sense to me. You're generally much better off with your taxes at the maximum your population will sustain without revolting. Exception being villages/small towns that down have the infrastructure for much pop growth, or if you're trying to get +Chiv on a General for being governor with low taxes.

In the third, I meant that whenever you start to expand do not attack settlements far away which does not have any relevance to you. So no attacking non relevant cities (usually non adjacent) just because it is rich or weakly defended. So no attacking Konstinontople as England or no London as Hungary, Palma as Scotland and etc. (these were just examples)

4. What I meant that some players lower the taxes to reach the next city/castle level faster and earn long term advantage. I do not like it. IMO development should be steady and slow.

[delra]

4) Never lower taxes in order to get population boom.

I pretty much agree with all your other points, and this is similar to the way I play (but my sphere of influence is usually growing way too fast).

But this one doesn't make any sense. AI gets population growth boost and you need to get every single 0.5% of growth you can squeeze from your treasury or you will still have castles when they have citadels.

[Emperor VI]

I pretty much agree with all your other points, and this is similar to the way I play (but my sphere of influence is usually growing way too fast).

But this one doesn't make any sense. AI gets population growth boost and you need to get every single 0.5% of growth you can squeeze from your treasury or you will still have castles when they have citadels.

I am influencing city grows by farm development and governors. And anyway I love to enhance to another level when I pretty much built everything in lower level. (I did forget to say that there was exception . It is when I had already built everything in that level and I require city transformation in order to build further. Then I lower taxes to the minimum in order city to be able to grow further.) And it is also true that I am rearly able to get Cithadel in my own lands, I just capture them from enemy.

[Musthavename]

1. Assuming that everybody spends the first phase of a campaign scooping up rebel settlements, how many settlements do you have around, say, turn 30?

Usually i've conquered my immediate region by then. (e.g. England conquered Britain, Venice conquered Italy, Aragon conquered Spain etc...), plus some more.

2. And, around which turn do you normally seriously start conquering faction-controlled cities, i.e. waging open war with other nation?

Usually within the first 10 turns. Depending on who i'm bordering, sometimes i'll ignore rebels and go straight against another nation. For example, as Genoa/Venice I always attack the other almost immediatly.

3. Around which turn do you usually get your first fortress? And around which turn do you usually get your first citadel?

Not for about 40-50 turns or so. As for Citadels, I don't tend to get them. Mainly because by the time I would do, i've conquered too much for the campaign to be a challenge and I thus stop. Partly because I tend to put Governers in just cities and castles need governers to get to Citadel. The one time I conquered the entire map as Aragon (which took about 130-135 turns), I only had 4 citadels. Inverness (which for some reason had about 16k population when I took it), then Valencia / Pamplona / Toledo (as all my Iberian cities were huge by then and my Governers had nowhere else to go ).

EDIT: One other point I tend to do is put ALL my cities on Low Taxes. Unless i'm really struggling with money. Long term advancement is more important to me than the immediate extra cash. Besides, it builds up skill in knowing you have less troops to use.

[Gnostiko]

It really depends on 6.1 or 6.2 AI. With 6.1, the AI behaving itself, I would have, within 10-15 turns, captured Dyrrakion, Skopia, Bucharest, Nikaia if it's revolted, and Beograde if the Venetians or Hungarians haven't gotten to it. I then tend to strengthen my western border before declaring war on the Turks. With the more aggressive 6.2 AI I tend to be conquering Hungarian and Venetian territory within 5 turns of that because they declare war on me but won't accept a ceasefire unless I'm flinging obscene amounts of money at them (which is daft considering they're losing the war)

[django333]

I play diferently depending on what faction I'm playing. I also never worry about the games winning conditions. I set up conditions for myself based on role playing. Sometimes I like to play peacefully. Really working on diplomacy and advancing my economy. Only attacking when I've been attacked. When I play like this I try to make all my generals chivalric.

Then sometimes I like to play the war mongerer. Attacking all my neighbors. Really bent on global domination. In this scenario it's all about dread with my generals.

At the beginning of a campaign I decide how far I want to advance and in what direction. I try to keep it somewhat historic. ie. If I play as England, the Scots and France are my two main targets.

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

War Turtle: Any Qestions?

[Titus001]

It really depends on 6.1 or 6.2 AI. With 6.1, the AI behaving itself, I would have, within 10-15 turns, captured Dyrrakion, Skopia, Bucharest, Nikaia if it's revolted, and Beograde if the Venetians or Hungarians haven't gotten to it. I then tend to strengthen my western border before declaring war on the Turks. With the more aggressive 6.2 AI I tend to be conquering Hungarian and Venetian territory within 5 turns of that because they declare war on me but won't accept a ceasefire unless I'm flinging obscene amounts of money at them (which is daft considering they're losing the war)

This is what I like about 6.1. I'm playing my first ss 6.1 game as the Byzantines and the Hungarians have not attacked me one time. Venice attacked but I played bunch of turns. Venice actually made peace with me when I took one of it's cities. That is unheard of on vanilla when I'm the east Romans. It's nice to have a war against the turks and not having to fight a 3 front war. Hopefully when 6.2 is finished they are not aggressive and dumb against the east romans like in vanilla.

What difficulty do you play on when you are the East Romans? Hard difficulty and hard battles?

I also fight my battles like Khalid ibn al-Walid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_ibn_al-Walid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Walaja

[delra]

Run!!!

[Emperor VI]

Run!!!

I am already running!!!

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

Guys....don't get me wrong, depending on faction the early to mid-game can be an exercises in futility. Ex. The Rus: Their max out for turtles is 9 provinces and as you'all know those provinces are Dirt poor and devoid of population. Yet somehow the Cumans always seem to show up with their 2nd tier elite stuff while your still sitting their with
Pitchforks...


You really want to be King of the Turtles...park it in Italy and start laughing...

[Aranu]

kwarezmian here fighting cumans is fun!
they come out of nowhere with there large stacks upgraded and all
thank allah that i'm winning ! so he gave me a present ! the mongols

I play similar to Django
have some goals and rest i improvise
fun above all