Mass Retreats

[Kewpur]

Has anyone here ever tried to do a mass retreat from an area? Was it effective? Did it help you in other areas?


I did once.

While playing as Venice, I took almost all of the middle eastern cities. But then the mongols came. They vassaled with my great ally, turkey, which turned them against me. The mongols were on my doorstep so I decided to retreat probably over 5000 soldiers that were set throughout the middle east. I made the cities riot afterwards. Then I gave the mongols ALL the cities i had in that area in exchange for trade rights and a peace treaty. It worked.

I then started regretting doing this because it gave the mongols the entire middle east. But I used all my retreated armies to help on the frontlines with the war with hungary and byzantium that had been going on for pretty much the entire game. This helped me defeat them way faster than it would have taken without the mass retreat.

I now have all of greece, italy (besides rome), north africa (stopping at egypt), the area around hungary, turkey, etc.

But the mongols are now trying to advance and take over more land. They broke the peace treaty. I'm trying to halt them with stacks of armies guarding all the passages that lead to iconium and constantinople.. the gateways to europe from the middle east.

Currently I am trying to take over Spain, Russia, and all of Egypts land.

Spain is going okay, I need another full army to help me there. Russia sent all of their forces to stop my seiges. I need to rethink my strategy for Russia. And I sent about 3000 units to Egypt to take over Alexandria and the Nile River area. I will then proceed to take over all the mongol area, hoping the timurids dont come and slaughter me.


So again, have you tried a mass retreat? Did it work effectively? And what effects did it have on your campaign?

[D.B. Cooper]

I also did that once as Venice, because of overwhelming pressure from Egypt. Basically, I overexpanded and had an empire comprised of cities along the coasts of the Mediterranean and in Italy: Florence, Naples, those islands around Greece, and even all the way to Antioch. Antioch was captured as a result of a crusade, and that meant I had a single veteran army all the way in the east.

Antioch revolted once, and my forces recaptured it and exterminated the city. This time I built a church and recruited as many priests as I could to make the city as Christian as possible. But in true anti-crusader fashion Egypt besieged Antioch a few turns later. I was initially worried but my mighty crusading general defeated the Egyptians in a bloody urban battle. But I was really only prolonging the inevitable defeat, for the Egyptians would return later with several armies.

At this point I remembered that I had a crusade that hadn't been used yet. So I get the pope to commission a crusade against Jerusalem. Then I take my forces from Antioch and raise some more Crusader units, then blitz through several sieges on the way to Jerusalem. Then I end the crusade and sack Jerusalem itself. I was now strapped for cash with several settlements in the Middle East, all poorly defended and a long way from home. And I had also gotten the initial warning that the Mongols were on the way.

Weighing gains against the future losses, I loaded all my forces and garrisons back onto the local fleet and sailed for home. I also gave the settlements to Egypt, who promptly made peace and trade agreements afterwards.

So that was that. My general, one Doge Cristiano the Crusader, had one last campaign to take Corsica and Sardinia and then he died. What a life he had.

[nimoto]

When I've done so, it's been as part of a scorched earth policy. I used it in Tripoli as England when I had everything West of Tripoli. I destroyed all the buildings in Tripoli (except my Church), and retreated the whole army, allowing it to go rebel.

When the Egyptians sent their army it forever to get there (it's a huge territory, which usually has no roads), they had to fight the rebels, they were unable to retrain anyone afterwards, and they had to spend money building basic buildings again.

This left them in the position where they were far from reinforcements, unable to produce any good units locally, and basically not a threat. The city ends up being a financial burden to the attacker, which you can choose to take back, and re-destroy, at any time you want because you're so much closer to your supply base.

This would also work on a large scale, before giving away a ton of cities like you did. It's a bit of a burden to get a huge city with no buildings, and 100% a different religious faith-

[jsktrogdor]

I dont think ive ever retreated in mass, but a retreat is often the best policy. Whenever I find myself with a territory that I know will be attacked by a neutral faction (Cannes as England, Crete as Venice, etc) I always destroy the buildings for the cash, and sell the territory to whomever in exchange for funds, map information, trade rights, alliances, reputation. Especially early in the game its a great way to forge alliances, make income or drain your potential enemies income.

I dunno if I could do what you did, but it was probley for the best. Far easier to fight the mongols at constantinople than across the holy land.

[Iññsomññi]

On my recent Sicily campaign I have had two mass retreats within a 20 year period. Ill tell you about both of them:

1. The evacuation of Antioch and Adana: Egypt was closing in, and the cities were ready to rebel. All of my generals were hopeless and couldn't keep them under control, so I decided to evacuate and use the troops to invade Rhodes, Iraklion and eventually Corinth. Also a small part of these troops were used to take Kiev from the Mongols, which I certainly regret doing. All in all the soldiers that retreated were around 2000 strong.

2. The retreat from Zagreb: I had whittled Venice down to its last city, but they had some exceptionally strong units guarding their final city, and I only had poor infantry because my main army barracks were in France and northern Germany. I had halberd militia and unmodded pike milita against dismounted feudal knights and venitian heavy militia. The pikemen always stupidly switch to swords as soon as the enemy are in range, and the halberds are just awful. I had to retreat with almost three full stacks because I had some disasterous battles. In all I think around 5000 soldiers in the amount that retreated.