My taste of humble pie

[Lobster]

(Playing SS 6.1)

OK, so my brief history with SS is that I’m somewhat new to it, didn’t like it at first, and now can’t seem to get enough of it. I love the new/different buildings, the more personalized general stats (education benefits, etc), and the many different areas to conquer. This really is the way the vanilla ought to be.

So, I’m playing my first full/serious campaign as Kingdom of Leon-Castille on H/VH, and I’ve hit a brick wall. I just wanted to hear some of your opinions on difficulty settings in SS.

Battles have been fairly easily so far up until around turn 110. I have half of the Fatimid Caliphate taken over, just took London as well and am working on England, but now it seems like battles have gotten much more difficult. This is not a huge complaint, because I thought it was fairly easy up until this point, and I’m really liking the challenge now. As the years progressed and the enemy got better units, fights became much more interesting, and I’m getting my butt handed to me in a few fights now. The complaint I have is that it seems like my Knight of Santiago can barely go toe to toe with an enemy’s spear militia and even have a somewhat hard time with longbowmen while attacking them on a wall. Is this the consequence of my choosing the VH battle setting? I don’t mind tough fights, but I would think a strong (and expensive) unit like my knights should handle something like spear militia with a little more ease.

Is the VH setting not for me? Does anyone play on say a Hard/Medium setting? I thought the VH setting would affect AI, but it seems like it just increases enemies unit strength by some invisible factor.

Thanks

[Maximus Newbieus IV]

Try being the Byzantines where you are fighting the Hungarians/Venice, you have nothing in your production Que because your flat broke, your population hates you because of your high taxes, when out of nowhere you hear the Jihad horn announcing every Muslim nation is about to get medieval on your ass.

[bigrobbo9]

The invisible factor would be morale. AFAIK on hard the enemy gets a morale boost, and on very hard another morale boost on top of that, making it harder to rout them etc. Pretty sure thats the only difference between the settings for battles. And even if you are pitting your knights against mere spear militia, bear in mind that they do carry SPEARS, and so can annihilate your knights regardless of their ability. You need to use your knights at the right moment, im not sure if you do this but it sounds like you charge your knights directly at the spear militia and wait for them to come out on top, which is a big no-no.

[Salvatore]

VH tends to be more than a little unforgiving, though that's why I've avoided it. Hard is probably something more along the lines of what you want, though that'll probably be obvious after you finish your game as Genoa.

Try being the Byzantines where you are fighting the Hungarians/Venice, you have nothing in your production Que because your flat broke, your population hates you because of your high taxes, when out of nowhere you hear the Jihad horn announcing every Muslim nation is about to get medieval on your ass.

I don't know how you can manage to be poor as the Byzantines- without even giving more effort than putting a few of the important economic structures in Constantinople, I found myself with nearly 100,000 florins by turn 30, and only because I was finally able to build a proper army did my treasury stop increasing at alarming rates.

[luciferleigh]

@ ^ think he means dismounted knights

and although your knights are superior, the militia unit does have more troops

[Lobster]

Yes, they were dismounted, thanks.
I've played the game a bit and know at least that you don't charge spears on a horse

I'm actually trying a campaign now playing Genoa on med/med. Want to see how the battles work on that difficulty, but really won't know if there's a difference until I get to around turn 100 I think.

[campbela]

Are you charging your dismounted KoS at the spear militia and then moving them thru the spear line so you get the max number involved in the fight? Or is it just the default behaviour of front line v front line that's causing the problem? As bigrobbo said it seems that morale is the difference between the difficulties, the enemy doesn't route on VH until they have very low numbers.

[Lobster]

Are you charging your dismounted KoS at the spear militia and then moving them thru the spear line so you get the max number involved in the fight? Or is it just the default behaviour of front line v front line that's causing the problem? As bigrobbo said it seems that morale is the difference between the difficulties, the enemy doesn't route on VH until they have very low numbers.

I recently found out that this tactic works well. That is charging into the middle of a weaker foe to get the maximum amount fighting. That may have been one of my mistakes, just fighting front line vs. front line.

VH adds two sets or morale boosts to the enemy. I'm not sure if it lowers your morale at all, and I'm also not certain about any damage factors. Also, the AI tends to be a lot more agressive, this is because depending on your campaign difficulty, the rest of the world gets bonuses in cash each turn. The harder you play, the more money the enemy has to throw around.

As for your dis. knights failing against even longbowmen on the walls, you need to take into account that defenders on the wall get a HUGE bonus, while you as the breacher gets a big disadvantage. Your strong swordsmen can even have trouble against peasants in this instance. To combat this, don't use ladders, stick to siege towers. This cancels out any attack damage advantage that the enemy has, and will quite easily put the favour of battle back into your dis. knights' hands.

You will find that the Genoa campaign will be very easy. Their huge monopoly on maritime trade gives you an enormous economy. And once you fight Venice in the inevitable North Italian War, you will control the entire Adriatic trade - rivalling only the Byzantines in how much money you can make. With all this cash, you can field huge amounts of militia-based armies (btw, Genoan militia are by far the best in the game, and their city units are even better than their castle units). For more info, I've written a guide for Milan / Genoa, it will help you out immensely.

I didn't know about the bonuses for siege towers. Thanks for the tip.
I guess I may have to fight Venice eventually, but as of right now, I am allied with them to avoid a fight draining my resources in the beginning. I'll do a search for your guide.

Thanks to all for the advice. So far the small fights I've had on medium have been very easy, but I will see how it is when the better units come along.

[Spartan90]

VH adds two sets or morale boosts to the enemy. I'm not sure if it lowers your morale at all, and I'm also not certain about any damage factors. Also, the AI tends to be a lot more agressive, this is because depending on your campaign difficulty, the rest of the world gets bonuses in cash each turn. The harder you play, the more money the enemy has to throw around.

As for your dis. knights failing against even longbowmen on the walls, you need to take into account that defenders on the wall get a HUGE bonus, while you as the breacher gets a big disadvantage. Your strong swordsmen can even have trouble against peasants in this instance. To combat this, don't use ladders, stick to siege towers. This cancels out any attack damage advantage that the enemy has, and will quite easily put the favour of battle back into your dis. knights' hands.

You will find that the Genoa campaign will be very easy. Their huge monopoly on maritime trade gives you an enormous economy. And once you fight Venice in the inevitable North Italian War, you will control the entire Adriatic trade - rivalling only the Byzantines in how much money you can make. With all this cash, you can field huge amounts of militia-based armies (btw, Genoan militia are by far the best in the game, and their city units are even better than their castle units). For more info, I've written a guide for Milan / Genoa, it will help you out immensely.

[Sir Walter]

In my opinion, Medium's the one for me. But don't take that as gospel, I've only played on Easy and Medium (Easy to unlock stuff in vanilla ) and I didn't like Hard or Very Hard in Rome Total War

On the other hand, never use militia is a good rule of thumb, unless they're in massive gangs or you can't afford a proper army. Oh, and don't use mercenaries unless you have to and never keep them, massive upkeeps. There you go, free advice

[meese]

Oh, and don't use mercenaries unless you have to and never keep them, massive upkeeps.

Depends on your income I guess and what faction you play as. The Genoese are pretty well-rounded so mercenaries probably aren't needed but sometimes they do come in handy if you're lacking in a particular kind of troop. For example, as Scotland I love mercenary crossbows and even Frankish knights for a battle or two because I don't get crossbows or a decent amount of good knights. (early on anyway)

[Sir Walter]

Depends on your income I guess and what faction you play as. The Genoese are pretty well-rounded so mercenaries probably aren't needed but sometimes they do come in handy if you're lacking in a particular kind of troop. For example, as Scotland I love mercenary crossbows and even Frankish knights for a battle or two because I don't get crossbows or a decent amount of good knights. (early on anyway)

They're good, I know (I used them all the time as Almoravids taking Italy, so many good Crossbowmen knocking around ) but they have two big problems: really high upkeep and poor morale. This can be sorted by using them as support troops or getting missile ones and then disbanding really soon, but you do need to be rich.

[XICenturionIX]

I tend to play on H/H, because I find the AI on VH/VH harder to approach in diplomatic terms. I view militias as if they were pawns in chess; In the early period, I always field militia unit in with professional troops because not only are they decent at holding the line in support of my professional spearmen, but they're also easily retrained/replaced, and can also be quite effective once you have upgraded their armor. I use them to support my main spearmen on the line while my more elite troops envelope the flanks after gaps have been exploited by my cavalry.

Works like a charm.

[meese]

Lucky for me I'm always rich and have a mediocre military! or at least, until the plague comes along and drives me into really really really bad debt.

Oh what I love using them for are assaults on castles/cities when I don't want my better troops to take too many casualties, and spear militia don't cut it. But yeah, disband right after the battle if they manage to survive. I never find morale to be much of a problem with the archer units, and I know with mercenary crossbowmen, the upkeep's around 200-300 (unless Im' thinking of something else) so it's not too bad. Everything else though...real drag on the economy.

[Tyrenia]

I personally never use Mercs, save with 2 exceptions:
1. A Crusade/Jihad. When they're almost free, why wouldn't you?
2. My offensive stack encounters a few unexpected armies on the way to its target and I need more men, because to turn around would be to lose all I have gained by defeating one of my enemy's field armies. That said, I disband them ASAP after I have reached my destination.

As for difficulty settings, I play either H/E or H/M. I really enjoy the challenge of the Campaign map on Hard, but have extrordinarily difficulty winning battles on H, and sometimes even struggle on M. My biggest problem is that my troops don't seem to obey my orders, or when they do, it is too late and by doing so, get themselves killed. The most common problem is with archers, and getting them to target the enemies that are not engaged in melee with my troops, or getting cavalry to charge the unit I want them to.

[Sir Walter]

Yeah, the problem with Medium, especially with Feudal troops, is they're simply not proffessional... it's not like Rome when they stay in line until told

[meese]

Actually, I'm curious...what exactly does the discipline of a troop do? I've never had troops just completely disobey me nor attack when I didn't want them to. Is this related to the fact that sometimes, after an enemy starts routing, my units will follow without me telling them to and some don't?

[Tyrenia]

Is this related to the fact that sometimes, after an enemy starts routing, my units will follow without me telling them to and some don't?

Yes... sort of, but not always. I have that problem as well, and I often can't get them to stop pursuing an enemy that is obviously doomed to help out another unit. But here is an example of the biggest problem I have (and the reason I play battles on Easy):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Me: "Mailed Knights, charge that isolated unit of peasants!"
Knights begin to charge. A unit of enemy spearmen moves near to my Knights
Knights: "Ooh! Look! Instead of charging the helpless peasents, we'll become suicidal and charge the spearmen that happen to be near us"
Me: "NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"
Me [again]: "Break off combat, attack the isolated enemy!"
Knights: "What's that? Run away from these cheap troops that are slaughtering us and attack the weak people? Never!"
Me: "Well that's several thousand florins down the drain. I don't even know why I wasted the money"

However, the astute reader may have realised that this is to be expected, as Mailed Knights have the "May Charge Without Orders" trait, but I have also noticed this suicidal set of behaviours in units which do not have this incredibly frustrating trait.

As well as this, as stated earlier, once my archers have begun firing, in order to get them to fire at another target (even one within range), I have to make them move somewhere else, otherwise they just ignore me and happily continue firing arrows into a melee, killing my expensive heavy infantry.

Out of interest, has anyone else had these problems before, and if so, how did you solve them?

[Wadey]

I normally play on H/H and I've never had any trouble with units charging the wrong enemy, perhaps micromanaging a bit more during battles will help? Once my HC are ready to charge I often stay with them untill I've ordered them to back off again for the next charge! (Well, untill I know they definately backing off..)

As fo the archers, do you have 'fire at will' on? If i want to target a specific enemy I turn that off and tell them who to kill. If the terrain permits sometimes il put my archers out on a flank to fire at the back/side of the enemy as they engage my Infantry, not always appropriate tho!

[meese]

I've actually never had that problem...they leave when I tell them to leave (though sometimes it requires two double clicks!). But yeah, is it their training or the game mechanics?