6.2 RC4 Strategies

[SaxonRaider]

I been spending past week or two trying out all the factions, and im really struggling down in Spain, the Moors are very strong early on, they seem to have huge armies by about turn 40 and are difficult to beat back.

As Ireland the furthest i can get is conquerring Scotland by making an Alliance with France and England, then Once ive taken over Scotland, (but they are still alive as they grabbed a territory in France), I then have England pounding down my cities, but what makes things worse is William Wallace arrives, in Scotland, joins forces with England, and kicks me back out of Scotland, LOL.
Anyone got a better strategy?

The other factions i've tinkered with, as Portugal i took half of Spain, then got whallopped by the Moors as suddenly all of Spain and France decided to break Alliance with me right at a critical moment.

I love the AI in the campaign, it is brutal and relentless, but i would like to get a faction going fully, im trying for complete map domination. One day i hope i will find a faction capable of it. I have done it before as England on Vanilla but that was too easy, so i am trying other factions rather than England, but i think SS version of England might be harder and worth trying ..?

[Kawee]

England is indeed one of the easier factions. However, compared to Vanilla, there really isn't any "easy" campaigns, especially if you play at some of the harder difficulties.

Good luck!

[SaxonRaider]

Thank you, and if you could shed a little light on what you think the easier factions are that might help.

I tried France a while back, which was a memorable experience. I took the UK, and Spain, and held a huge front line with HRE with full stacks in every city from Denmark to Genoa. Unfortunateley the same time the Moors decides to rush me with many full stacks, Denmark and HRE also declared war on me and pretty much the whole of France and Spain was full of huge armies. It was my second attempt at France after realising that i need to pump out units non-stop right from turn 1, even then, i found myself still not having enough full stacks to defend myself. I gave up in the end when also Papal States declared war on me, and sent another 5 full stacks in, i just had nothing left to engage them, every army was already in fights.

To me, HRE look like they have good strong but expensive units capable of late game, but map position is very hard. And i played a little with Byzantine, but found the early game units were far too weak. Genoa seem quite weak early on, and with the difficult task of Florence early on making relations bad with HRE, and then Milan having a Full stack of Armoured Spearmen in, and you dont have anything that can match them early on, you kinda limited for growth for a while., but i think there may be possibility of taking italy early on to finance the domination of Europe.

[Protector]

I found Sicily not too difficult to play with. (SS 6.2 H/H)

Crusades on Egypt and Moors are busy with the other 3 Iberian faction, so you can easily expand into north Africa. After you built up your economy you are able with 3/4 of north Africa also to take Egypt and Iberia at the same time.

Cheers

[Kawee]

Protector's right, Sicily is one of the easier ones to play as well since your lands are easily defended, and there are many targets in range of strikes. Also, Italy is rich land to base any empire.

The reason I suggest England is because they're up against inferior armies. Longbowmen slaughter the non-shield units of Scotland, and France do not have military advantage until Late Era. And once you've established yourself on the isle, you're pretty much set to strike anywhere. England is a good faction to use to learn the ropes.

[nonnob3]

Protector's right, Sicily is one of the easier ones to play as well since your lands are easily defended, and there are many targets in range of strikes. Also, Italy is rich land to base any empire.

The reason I suggest England is because they're up against inferior armies. Longbowmen slaughter the non-shield units of Scotland, and France do not have military advantage until Late Era. And once you've established yourself on the isle, you're pretty much set to strike anywhere. England is a good faction to use to learn the ropes.

I 100% Agree. Sicily is a good faction to play with in ss6.2 RC4. Always wipe out the moors as soon as you can... Once conquerd all Africa , you have a superpower. Then go for Europe...
Sicily is my number one Faction for SS, MTW...

But I have to admit that SS 6.2 RC4 is hard and a the best mod for anybody that wants a challenge!

nonnob3

[El Jojo]

Mojo : here's SavageAI : http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=228672 It's an alternative AI, with a more stable diplomacy. you still have to be careful not end isolated because then everybody will attack you, but that's more of a compliment to the AI.

I'm playing two campaigns on 6.2 to get to know this new version, France and England. with France I had to war almost non-stop for one century, till I managed to destroy Aragon, Castille and Portugal. I got an alliance with the moors because we had the same foes. They have not betrayed me yet, I keep sending them tribute between 200 and 500 / turn.
I think that securing your southern border is essential with France. That why I focused on Iberia while defending and containing the HRE on my eastern front. Antwerp-Metz-Lyon worked for me as a functionning Maginot Line. Once Iberia is under your rule, go for england and then finally focus on HRE.
I think it's the best road because it allows you to capture many coastal cities, generating much needed income.
The thing is, you can't afford to field as many stacks as the AI, you have to be more efficient, upgrading border fortresses, defending bridges etc. HRE troops are not very good until late, so you'll be fighting lots of spear militia, they rout easily...

With England, I went on unification of the isles first and then Norway / Denmark, lots of sea trade again and it gives you the power base to hit whoever you want. I think I'll go to morocco next, instead of fighting France (in fact my plan is to surround them!)

[Mojo582]

Just installed 6.2 RC4 and like it but for the fact that alliances are constantly broken and never ending ceasefires and declarations of war just seem a little over the top,the scots and french were attacking me constantly and it was i who was losing favour with the pope,im quite upset at the lack of any solid form of diplomacy at all,hopefully these are things i can change myself as they take away to much from the game i enjoyed in 6.1.

[Mega Tortas de Bodemloze]

Just installed 6.2 RC4 and like it but for the fact that alliances are constantly broken and never ending ceasefires and declarations of war just seem a little over the top,the scots and french were attacking me constantly and it was i who was losing favour with the pope,im quite upset at the lack of any solid form of diplomacy at all,hopefully these are things i can change myself as they take away to much from the game i enjoyed in 6.1.

Hmmm... Perhaps diplomacy becomes harder with the higher settings? I play on M/M and sometimes have been able to forge unlikely life time alliances....Byzantine/Hungarian & English/French for example. My question is should there be a consistency to diplomacy irregardless of difficulty settings??????

[Gogolometro]

I play RR-RC so plain SS 6.1 is a faint and distanced memory. Before I was against RR because never imagined i can play without recruiting every turn or espect 150 turns to see the new era begins. In my opinin, even if look wierd, RR is not hard at all if you understand what to do. Sorry about offtopic.
Ireland had bad rooster and that can be an answer. Second, the diplomacy was much improved in version of Point Blank I play. Ideea is choose wisely who you ally and who to be enemy. pope go mad fast also in SS 6.1.
About iberian factions, I played all of them, problem is once moors who got more cities, more money, bigger rooster and this can affect you all your game. After defeat moors, the game will be less trouble. Best thing in Iberia, get fleet, big fleet and close Gibraltar, this mean no reinforcement to hispania. Is an easy solution but always works. Second, dont crusade the iberian cities, go from begining to Tunis, that will cripple mors. Never trust iberian allys, be prepared and if you can hit them first in blitz atack in many fronts. Don't take serious the pope. Even excommunicated go to control Iberia. Never, never trust France and Geonoa. The Touluse and Bordeaux can defend your possesion easy. Never finish moors from begining. Let them live a bit, strike muslims, get papal favor, Santiago knights or Montesa, than reinforce an pay attention on your catholics brothers. When pope became mad, turn back to muslims.
If you not have time for strategys like these, train 3-4 assasins on ussual weak target than send them to Rome. If pope say something curious like "you are excomm frakker", can control a bit his arterial pressure with a nice dagger.
By the way, HRE is a nightmare compared with Iberia, or France.

[Ichon]

Doesn't Sicily almost always take Tunis? Every single campaign in SS 6.2 so far Sicily takes Tunis 1st or 2nd from Cagilari. Moors seems still strong without... easiest solution is like Gogolometro said- close Gibraltar with navy. If you don't want to do that you take navy and land near Granada with spies so you don't need to siege. Leave garrison there and Cordoba and other AI stacks move toward it, land at Fez with the army that took Granada in 2-3 turns when Granada under siege while 2nd army sieges Cordoba. Usually works and even poor Portugal can afford two armies for a few turns if you use mercenaries and go into debt a bit.Defend a few turns and start converting then send the spies to look for poorly defended Moorish settlements. Moors big weakness is every city near the coast. Land and sack in 1 turn with spies. Let it rebel or let Moors retake and rebuild for later.

[Kaledon]

Which factions are easiest depends on playstyle. If you don't intend to handicap yourself and are willing to use diplomacy as a bludgeon, then large nations can be played by giving settlements/large amounts of florins in exchange for alliances, which can lead to them being rather easy since you can focus the awesome might of your nation on a single, much smaller, faction. However, in general large factions surrounded by potentially hostile factions are difficult to play. Sicily is one of the easiest factions, with the advantage of a great starting position, good early units, an easy time with the pope, moderate difficulty units, and no major enemies other than the moors, who are unlikely to be able to concentrate their might upon you, what with the other Iberian factions forcing them to garrison their iberian settlements heavily.

Another easy faction is of course England. Smash Scotland early while paying the pope to make sure that he doesn't excommunicate you for fighting with other catholic factions, then enjoy one of the most secure positions out there since most factions won't attack too heavily from the ocean. If they do try it, you can always use naval superiority to crush them. They are another faction with relatively easy to use units.

Norway has an immensely secure position, and some of the easiest to use units in the game. They have an easy time with sieges what with being infantry focused.

Those are all of the ones off the top of my head. Most factions aren't all that difficult if you abuse the syst... Use diplomacy well, however.

[Caesar Clivus]

Mojo there are other campaign AIs you can install if you so wish. You should be able to find them here in the submods forum.

[Mojo582]

That would be great if there are Caesar,ive been sitting on the fence for quite sometime now deciding wether or not to install 6.2 for just the reasons i gave above,knowing that i would have to completely reinstall SS again if i didnt like it(no biggie i suppose),i do like what 6.2 adds to the feel of the game and love the extra eye candy,but just feel still that the Ai isnt as stable as i would like it to be(my mate attempted the templars for the 5th time today and just gets nailed by the fatimids very early into the game,to say hes rather unhappy that ive made the upgrade is an understatement as hes a templar fan),me and my flatmate are MTW fans going way back into the days when i first bought shogun (even played online with a good clan which i miss alot) so im hoping i dont sound to much like a noob thats complaining over nothing and i do realise that the game dose mean medieval TOTAL war and not medieval TOTAL diplomacy but i do like the fact in 6.1 that i can eventually rely on a solid alliance block with which to defend mine and my allies interests with.

I regularly search through the SS mods pages and must say though caesar that i hav'nt seen a diplomacy mod i can use with SS 6.2(i do remember seeing one awhile back though and useing search never yeilds anything when i use it),i make small mod alterations myself sometimes but have never touched on the Ai's behaviour before bar the descr_strat diplomacy section at the bottom of the page,is that all i have to look at to change this behaviour?,any help would be appreciated caesar as i do like your RC4 release,i just suppose i do want the total diplomacy version of it

[Mojo582]

Installed and useing savages Ai now Jojo and love it,thanks for suggesting it to me as its quite an in depth script,the ai behaves well and is still aggressive and smart,i suggest it to others who are having problems with the 6.2 Ai on steroids.

[dknight237]

where did you find the download link for savaga ai mojo? what's the latest version?

[Caesar Clivus]

where did you find the download link for savaga ai mojo? what's the latest version?

Do a search in this forum and you'll find it.

[bɑne]

There is a link just two posts above his question (El Jojo)

[Longstreet]

I have a question for 6.2 masters. How do you handle/deal with another huge Catholic empire that is right next to you.

Situation:
- Pope is strong, has about 20 cities.
- Hungray is huge, dominating half the map.
- I am Genoa with about 12 cities.
- Hungray, if wanting to can roll over me at the drop of a hat.

What do you do when faced if a huge foe far bigger than you ?

[bɑne]

I have a question for 6.2 masters. How do you handle/deal with another huge Catholic empire that is right next to you.

Situation:
- Pope is strong, has about 20 cities.
- Hungray is huge, dominating half the map.
- I am Genoa with about 12 cities.
- Hungray, if wanting to can roll over me at the drop of a hat.

What do you do when faced if a huge foe far bigger than you ?

Could you provide us with a screenshot of your campaign map? Possibly with diplomatic relationships as well? Without more information I don't see myself able to go beyond general advice such as "fight every battle yourself, use naval invasions to attack settlements behind the frontline..."