Short Campaign Guides: A Call for Inspiration

**Viking Prince** · February 12, 2009, 10:38 PM

Viking Prince’s

Short Campaign Faction Strategy Guide to Medieval II Total War:

A Call for Inspiration

Version 1.0
Date 2.12.2009
By Viking Prince

I am writing guides to the short campaigns in Medieval II Total War (M2TW) as I would approach the campaigns. There are many ways to approach these campaigns and I would certainly suggest reading a bit from the other fine authors posting to this site. I was inspired to write these guides because of Rebel6666’s incredible threads such as The Great M2TW Informative Thread.

My style of play will be a more or less chivalric campaign with religion used as an important facet of role playing. Occupation is the normal resolution to a successful conquest of a region. I use a more or less vanilla version of M2TW with the Retrofit Mod patched to 1.05. Regions are only acquired through conquest or as a resolution of a war. No purchasing or trading of regions with factions. I tend to take my time and a typical short campaign will last about 50 – 75 turns. This seems to be a good length of a campaign to have some fun and get the feel for the factions. Even though this is a guide to the short campaign, the play is with the thought of the faction thriving well beyond the end of the campaign and not meant as the quickest means to victory within the game simulation.

These short campaign guides are a follow up to Viking Prince’s Faction Strategy Guide for Newbies to Medieval II Total War: England. I would also modestly recommend a quick read of Viking Prince’s Strategic Guide for Newbies to Medieval II Total War.

The current guides are:

Viking Prince’s Short Campaign Faction Strategy Guide to Medieval II Total War: The Holy Roman Empire

Viking Prince’s Short Campaign Faction Strategy Guide to Medieval II Total War: France

Viking Prince's Short Campaign Stategy Guide to Medieval II Total War: Portugal

I desire that each guide be not just a guide for the faction, but also contribute tactical and strategic ideas that are useful for other factions and also for long as well as short campaigns. I am considering one of the Italian factions for the next guide. Among the goodies that I am considering are.… (Deleted – this would be telling too much: VP) I try to write about 2,000 words to each guide, so I need to use several good ideas to make them worth while.

So now the great and grand appeal!

I am hoping to get some great ideas to include in my guides from the readers and posters to the General Discussion forum. You know who you are. I could name names, but …. So what about it? What ideas can you give to me for the next guide? What improvements can you suggest for any of the prior guides? Your comments are always welcome. As always, if I use your ideas – You will get the credit in the guides when published or updated.

Until next time ---

Regards,

Viking Prince

**zachattack** · February 13, 2009, 12:43 AM

Make a guide on how to install mods just for me

hahahaha

**Viking Prince** · February 13, 2009, 12:48 AM

Originally Posted by zachattack

Make a guide on how to install mods just for me

hahahaha

If you go to the mod sub-fora you should find a how to install guide and all the help from the modders needed. Good luck!

I am looking for ideas to include in my series of guides. I am not looking for sugestions of guides to do. Sorry if this was not clear.

**Conquistatore** · February 13, 2009, 01:44 AM

Hey VP. Loved your Portugal guide and looking forward to your next one. I ask that you please keep the format and Joe Friday's as I enjoy both very much.

A suggestion I have is that you could give some more specifics on your strategies. Perhaps more details on troops and troop types and also movement. You could also talk about using a really strong general aswell and how generals and their traits can make all the difference.

Apart from the above I don't think you should change a thing. Keep up the good work and looking forward to the next faction!

**Viking Prince** · February 13, 2009, 03:00 AM

@Conquistatore -- I appreciate the compliment. I also like the Scritporium note in your sig.

@Conquistatore and others -- give me the story! I want your ideas and experiences. Even the failures are great . Keep in mind that my focus is on the short campaigns, but something that applys to both lengths and to more than one faction is great stuff!

Rather than tell me that you want to hear what is special about Italian Spears -- Tell me what is special about Italian Spears. If you are Venice, do you use castle troops? If so, at what point in the campaign? Tell me why you build or do not build archery infrastructure in the castles? Do you use priests locally or do you oly send them on mission to convert regions not held by you faction?

Tell me what you do and why.

A parable on how you used a specific general in the first campaign attack against a faction other than a rebel settlement would really be nice if we can all learn from it.

**Platomasso** · February 13, 2009, 06:59 AM

Well during my last short campaign as Denmark I decided to do something different then the usual united danish scandinavia approach. I was looking at the starting region and it's vertical shape inspired me to cut Europe in half. I conquered in a straight southern direction (Blitzkrieg style), eventually ending at palermo. Then I only had to conquer the few remaining HRE lands and was done. This is rather challenging actually:
1. Money is a problem at first as you will have more castles then towns.
2. Denmarks early roster has trouble countering cavalry and because of the money issue
mercenary spearmen aren't allways an option
3. The vertical shape of you army means you have to micromanage the logistics of your armies
if you want to effectivly reinforce your armies with better troops which come from you more
developped castles up north.

Would recommend you try this.

**Silent Assassin** · February 13, 2009, 07:35 AM

@ Viking Prince:

You could also have a little read here

Very nice work my friend like always almost perfect, I would say perfect but in this cruel world there is nothing as such. I'm glad that you have the inspiration, makes this board not only

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

I would also like to say a Big thanks to you because

1- You are a great user,
2- You give me credit on your inspirations,I mean that you are fair
3- The most important one you are a great friend

Grats again on become a Citizen you really earnd it, I'am proud to say that you are my friend.

Regards
Rebel6666