first campaign, impressions and gratitude

**Sarkiss** · July 05, 2009, 04:23 PM

Hi all,

I am not a big fan of vanilla MTW2 or Kingdoms, neither was i ever a big fan of medieval period. as a matter of fact i only bought Kingdoms out of curiosity and so i that would have a platform for upcoming EB2. anyhow, I have tried a few Kingdom mods but wasnt quite impressed by any of them when a friend of mine tried DLV and gave me a good feedback. this is how i decided to give it a try.

the faction i've started as was Cilician Armenia. not the best choice for the gy who never tried DLV i guess. i chosen Medium campaign, Hard battles difficulties. I also went for Historical campaign where you start with only ADANA as a base and said "Yes" to all the options at the beggining of the campaign. the only option i didnt choose was faction money assistance. it said that if i dont choose this option i wouldnt see super big AI armies around. sounded perfect, i like economics to matter and my battles to be as meaningful and decisive as possible. I have also chosen DLV style campaign over retarded TW style. i generally preffer a slow build up type of game play with no suicidal wars and unreasonable agression on a part of AI.

during first few turns i have experienced something of a major shock, there is no money to spend and even no agent or army to be moved without a careful deliberation and planning first! it took some time to get used to, but was a very challenging and a new experience, something i have immensely enjoyed!

my first disappointed came once my fellow orthodox christians,the Byzantines, have betrayed and attacked me. they were already at war with Turks and attacking me, their ally, didnt make much sense, well, at least to me. but well, i guess at the end of the day you can only tweak AI so much and it will eventually go and do something stupid like it always does. never mind that however, i was stubornly fighting stack after stack they would throw at me. once one gets defeated there is another one on horizon to take its place. this unprovoked attack on me, their fellow christian, was something i kind of welcomed though. i was lucky that Turks didnt invade from the East and Crusaders were sticking to our alliance. so for the time being i managed to beat back Byzantine stacks as well as take control of all the Cyprus, Rhodos and Byzantine Attalia. but once i somewhat expanded i realized i will never be strong enough to fight Byzantines on all directions and secure all of my newly acquired provinces. they could afford trowing numerous stack at me whilst i was struggling to forced march my army from one spot to the next in order to defend myself. in the end it all got to the point when the only option for obtaining peace and getting a restpite was to accept Byzantine suzeranity. i have become their vassal getting 10K and map info in return. so from now on i had a chance to rebuild my armies and expand settlements. 3 of my highly efficient flotillas were also rebuild. (sea was the only place where i was in an absolute contol throughout the whole war.) despite that the Byzantines left their armies within my lands i've noticed that it causes devastation in the regions they stationed at. once my forces were rebiuild i sent a diplomat with a declaration of refusing them military access and demanding money as a means of compansation. feeding their armies (and to be completely honest this whole vassal business) was bugging me and so they dissolved our alliance in return for my demands. it was a good thing though for their armies moved away. i spent some time in peace and prosperity until one summer morning their diplomat showed up and demanded back Attalia and Cyprus or else. i have urged them to seal an alliance and thus put an end to this uncertainty. they accepted and we lived happily ever after. but this peace and harmony wasnt meant to last. just when i sent my forces to conquer Africa (council's mission) the black death, the infamous plague broke out. (i guess it is a scripted event.) everyone turned on each other and i immeditely obtained an enemy in all of my neighbors and lost all the trade. it resulted in lossing my income and going back to red and a few Byzantine stacks besieging me all alround. this time around however, Egypt started to invade Cyprus in earnest too and what was more devastating, Crusaders invaded also! i was suddenly surrounded on all sides with no money to retrain and no ally to turn to. black death along with couple of wrong decisions on my part sealed my doom. I brought my kindom to military and financial ruin. i could probably still go on for some time but there is no point. i owe 70K in credit and am over 30K in red. so even if war had ended and i had 2, 3 provinces under my control in would take forever to recover. it is 1259 AD (159th turn) and i officially give up! (i have attached my last save if anyone interested, btw)

I have enourmously enoyed this game! i am no eye candy fan boy, but apart from a few Armenian ships unit cards showing peasants and old vanilla Byzantine sprites (when you zoom out) everything looked fine.
the banking system is awesome. i lost 10K that i have invested btw, but it works in a way i never seen in any other TW mod.
spawning garrisons a great idea too!
the only thing im not sure about is whether i should have turned AI money assistance on. does it also work for big factions going broke? if so than i made the right choice. i've seen a few minor factions destoyed though so that might have saved them.
all the army, agent, city cost are for a human player only, correct?

i had several CTDs, mainly when i open a settlement scrol and start clicking (aparently too quick) on the options within. I have 32 bit Vista

all in all this mod is absolutely amazing and realistic! it is IMHO, along with EB and RTR TIC the best mod out there and certainly the best mod for Kingdoms. this was an experience as no other!
in me you have a loyal fan now.

i wanted to thank all those wonderfull people who created this unique mod and wish them all the best in the future!

I shall patiently wait for 6.2 to defiantly start another Armenian campaign as well as try other factions (i am itching for France but will probably wait for 6.2 to come out for that).

sorry for a long post, thank you for reading this. and thanks once again to all who contributed to the development of this amazing mod!

many thanks guys!

Sarkiss

**Kjertesvein** · July 05, 2009, 04:46 PM

Ha ha ha ha. Mission accomplish! I love that you picked one of the hardest factions to begin with, hehehe. Next, you should try Teutonic order or Flanders

You should def install BB mod (and DLV 6.1).

my first disappointed came once my fellow orthodox christians,the Byzantines, have betrayed and attacked me. they were already at war with Turks and attacking me, their ally, didnt make much sense, well, at least to me. but well, i guess at the end of the day you can only tweak AI so much and it will eventually go and do something stupid like it always does.

How is your reputation?
How is your relationship?
If it's bad, then your bound to get blacklisted.

**Sarkiss** · July 05, 2009, 04:53 PM

i'll check BB mod out, thanks.

i think my reputation was dubious and our relations were amiable or good, IIRC. but some time i noticed i get attacked even when relations are very good (Crusaders attacked me when we had perfect relationship, it was once the black death event occured though). whats amazing is that sometimes you are at war with someone yet relations are still good and go down a notch each time you attack their army/fleet

how can you be at war, or being attacked and yet stay on good terms?

**Kjertesvein** · July 05, 2009, 05:13 PM

Relationship is one thing, and can easily be bought off. Reputation is alot harder.
A few guides:

Your Handy Guide to Diplomacy!
Notes on Strategy and Diplomacy
How to keep a good diplomatic reputation!

**Sarkiss** · July 05, 2009, 06:20 PM

will check those ones out. thank you

**Tokus*Maximus** · July 06, 2009, 04:03 AM

On behalf of our holy Modfather repman, may the crew welcome you to Deus lo Vult Sir Sarkiss! As Backleaf-Wille said 'boy, you really pick the hard faction to start with'. DLV 6.2 is still waiting in the wings before unleashment! It has taken longer between this build than before. I can only surmise that Repman is cookin' up a mean mod to ruin your summer! 6.2 will bring together the best of the sub-mods along with Repman's very own core work. I've reloaded afresh, only waiting for that 6.2 download.

Hope you enjoy playing any of the other factions. Oh, and there's a Vista DLV thread for dealing with CTD's if you look around for it.

Tokus*Maximus

**Sarkiss** · July 06, 2009, 12:01 PM

thanks a lot i found that Vista fix hopefully it'll help.

can only surmise that Repman is cookin' up a mean mod to ruin your summer!

sounds great

**Leonnidas** · July 06, 2009, 01:56 PM

Sorry, wrong thread

**Sarkiss** · July 07, 2009, 04:52 PM

guys before i start a new campaign can someone please enlighten me on whether AI money assistance also works for big factions going broke?

thanks

**Taiji** · July 07, 2009, 06:56 PM

I always take the AI financial boost option. It really helps them to develop settlements, makes the enemy a more tasty target

**Kjertesvein** · July 07, 2009, 09:19 PM

I have this scrip enabled. Im in turn 200(1280) as Norway. 19 regions under my domain, and the AI is as deadly as turn 20.

1215 AD
HRE was the biggest Empire, stretching from Paris to the Byzantine "Empire". From Hamburg, to Sicely.
The first Baltic crusades comes to an end after 20 years, as Lithuana strikes back. Teutonic order abandons their outpost in Acre, but their migrating stacks fails to reach back to their weak Baltic capitol. Kicking Teutonic order around in a state of Hording and pushing me of the main land.

1250 AD
A Political schem tiped the scale of HREmpire and the Great alliance(England, TO, Papal State, Georgia, HRE and me). Now they are but a smoke, left from a fired gun. Black gunpowder smoke last much long, and so does the regin; One region left in the Baltics and one in Hungary.
I took their crown. Killed of their pocket-pope and bought of their alliances and the Papal state. France took back Paris. Milan and Flemish progressed from 1 region each, to the ruling kingdoms. Flemish in the north. Milan in the south. Polen in the East. This became the New world order.

1260 AD
The second Baltic crusade is called from the Scotish Pope, economicaly motivated from the Norse. With France, Scotland, Denmark and Norway grabing the most land. The 2 last is the one to rule together with Poland-Lithuania.
The general misstrust(reputation) among all of europes powers was so was so bad, that every one turned on eachother and only the scots, the frence, me and papal state was friends against Irland, England, Milan and Venice.

1280 AD
Great scotland Kingdom(aka. UK) turned on me when I attacked Lithuania, vassal of the scotish ally, Poland. Gunpowder, Mongols and Huge city units are whaiting to at my gate.
I have finally grabed control over the whole Baltic and it's trade fleet. Novgorod, Lithuania, Denmark, Kiev and HRE all have 1 region left. I will let you know how they work/develop from here, practicaly speaking. If you want to know... theoreticaly speaking...

**Sarkiss** · July 08, 2009, 04:04 PM

Nice one, would be even nicer you if could post the map.

my problem was that after keeping defeating numerous Byzantines stacks for decades they kept coming and coming and coming, as if the problem with money and menpower never happened to them even though AI money assistance wasnt activated. so if the script helps large factions such as Byzantine (they controlled all of Balcans and most of Anatolia) then the game will turn into pure battle fest with nothing else required and no strategy or economy will really matter... they were already sending too many stacks too often IMHO. the problem is that in the proccess i've noticed that a few small factions got wiped out. so the script would have helped them there i guess, and i am willing to activate it but only if its gonna help small countries without assisting the big ones which bounce back (from what i have noticed) even if broke quite quicly.