i dont want to whine but

[ash874]

ireland has 2 cities and 2 castles and 6 full armies. which are supposed to cost about 20000 each turn from my experience.

but i dont care about ireland since they are not my neighbor
my neighbor is egypt. true it has many settlements. but how exactly am i supposed to beat a tactical column of 12 full armies?

since i updated to 6.2 im getting 3rd age de ja vu like im playing against mordor.

i fought practicaly with my teeth and waited for a crusade and when it finally showed a crusade banner i was so relieved. than i opened the banner and found out the crusade is against frankfurt.
im on turn 43 or so. when are the mongols arriving?
and how exactly are they going to take on the kwarezmians who have about 20 full armies?

[Concrete]

The AI factions do get money when they are broke, as they fail so much at using it.
Tactics beat both quantity and quality. (To an extent.)
Perhaps you should try RR/RC.
Uh, as Mongols aren't there yet, that'd be early era, which is 1.5 years a turn, uhm, not for awhile.
The Mongols get about 12 stacks themselves, and spawn on two of the Kwarezmians big income cities.
Sometimes the K-Shahdom plays poorly, and you'll meet the Mongols face to face.
Some other times, the Mongols capture on half of the Shahdom, and don't do much else. (Then you get superpower Turks who kill the Persians.)
(Unless the Roman Empire is doing well.)
(Which depends on the state of Hungary and Venice...)
Isn't this a fun game?

[sbroadbent]

my neighbor is egypt. true it has many settlements. but how exactly am i supposed to beat a tactical column of 12 full armies?

You beat them one stack at a time, or you find a way to lay siege and sack Cairo/Alexandria/Gaza. Take a look at my AAR Rise of the Temple Knights for a Turn 1-130 "guide" on the Templars. Cairo and Alexandria are their big money producers, while Gaza is typically their best troop producer. Eliminate those, and the Fatimids fall big time. Then you whittle down their forces.

i fought practicaly with my teeth and waited for a crusade and when it finally showed a crusade banner i was so relieved. than i opened the banner and found out the crusade is against frankfurt.
im on turn 43 or so. when are the mongols arriving?
and how exactly are they going to take on the kwarezmians who have about 20 full armies?

You do realize you can call crusades? You shouldn't have a problem keeping your favor with the Pope up, and call one every opportunity you can. You don't got many Catholics around to harm your favor with the Pope, and you got plenty of Muslims to beat up on which the Pope will like. Finally, you have plenty of conversion grounds, which will give you all the opportunity to get your priests promoted into the College, and if you get enough of them in there, you can guarantee one of yours becomes Pope. Don't wait for the AI to call a crusade. Particularly if there are a large number of excommunicated factions, such as what happened later in my Rise of the Temple Knights AAR.

Mongols arrive around turn 95 (1230-ish). You still have a ways to go, and I remember thinking that when I was at the same point in the campaign.

The Khwarez tend to be easy to deal with. Early on they spam a lot of stacks, and most of them are low quality militia, archers and javelins. Recruit lots of heavy cavalry and crush them. As to how the Mongols will deal with massive Khwarez stacks, lots of stacks of their own with both foot and mounted archers. When fighting the Mongols you don't want to stay at range, unless your army can out shoot the Mongols, and the easiest way to get in range is through horsepower.

If you want a secret to defeating a Mongol stack and take only 150 casualties... 1 General, 14 Hospitaller Knights and 5 Mounted Sergeants (minus the MS if you want). Yes, it's an expensive army, but it is effective in what it does

[ash874]

okay so i managed to deal with the fathimids (i came up with the same idea as you told me).
i play with byzantium and am about 6-7 times weaker than them so they wouldnt take peace offers even when i offered them 30000. and their armies are endless. so i sent half a stack to egypt in a boat. caught alexandria off guard, exterminated the population (i really hate them by now) got myself about 10000 from it. sold whatever buildings left. alexandria turned into a village
and now the fathimids have agreed for peace (i payed 20000 )
than i sold the city for 20000 to genoa and made an alliance with them also. all in all the sea is their biggest weakness. i reckon this is a good way to destroy them. once their armies take a little distance from me i mean.

[Ichon]

Yeah the AI does not know how to guard its homelands. Almost any faction is vulnerable. Even once I played as Byz and the K-Shah wiped out the remnant Turks left from my expansion and most of Egypt and were really annoying... finally I marched 2 stacks north of Baku and hire boat to other side, 4 devastated cities later K-Shah agreed to peace and I notice they had troubles after that dealing with rebels and then Mongols.

Playing Poland or some smaller European power if HRE maintains good Papal relations is about one of the toughest opponents because its core empire is all inland and not vulnerable to quick sea raids and most of its cities within 1 turn travel so multi stacks converge when you enter its lands. Turks can do nearly the same if they defeat their rivals in early era... their core regions are middle of Anatolia and Iraq and it takes alot of marching to get anywhere that really hurts them.

Another tactic is pick somewhere in the middle of their march route ( since AI almost always sends most of its stacks overland) if you are Byz in Anatolia then any castle/fortress midway along the route draws their forces into a siege piecemeal which you can defeat with only a few 100 losses vs their thousands until you whittled down their stacks some and suddenly they much more vulnerable. The key on VH is keeping the pressure on. Given a few turns peace those stacks re-appear fast.

[Xanthippus of Sparta]

I had some problems with the Byzantines in my early era campaign I started last week.

I actually lost Constaninople, Adrianople, and Niacea to the a Kwarezmian Jihad for a few turns. While in the Kwarezmians are still #1 in military size in my game, the Mongols have set up shop right in the middle of Persia, plus the Kwarezmians are having serious issues with cities rebelling.

But early on, the huge militia hordes were hard for me to beat as Byzantine militia units aren't great compared to Saracen Militia.

Here's the army mix that I used a lot...

1 General...
Half infantry: Maybe two or three units of Byzantine spearmen, the rest Dismounted Lancers or Byzantine Infantry in the early period. In the high period, use Promoi Infantry they clean house aganist comparable infantry units. Hire any dismounted Armenian Knights you find.
Half cavalry: 2-3 units of Byzantine Cavalry to soften up and harass the enemy. Also, 4-5 units of Lancers. Hire as many Armenian Knights as you can, they kick ass. Once you get a Fortress, replace most of your lancers with Latinkons.

I tend to use the same Alexandrian tactics I used with the Hellenic Sucessor states in RTW.

1. Send out archers, harass the enemy.
2. Move up your infantry battle line. Attack the enemy foot soldiers. Pin them in place.
3. Bring your cavalry along both flanks. Move them behind the enemy battle line, kill any archers that may have retreated there,
4. Form up, and charge the rear of the enemy infantry. Make sure your cavalry have enough space to charge so they use their lances for added effect.
5. You win the battle. Most of your casulties will be your cheap infantry troops killed while your cavalry was moving into position.

Try to get an alliance with the Knights Templar. 10,000 credits over two turns, map Infomation, and giving them military access got it done for me. They provide a good buffer aganist the Fatimids and the Turks. In my game right now, the Templars own four cities (Iconium, Adana, Antioch, and their starting castle) and are keeping all Turkish troops from Edessa and Aleppo busy. They're also aggressively attacking Damascus, which is owned by the Fatmids. This allowed me to first sweep across Anatolia, making Ceasarea my main base of operations. I went on to re-take Cyprus, then sweep into the Levant and capture Acre, Jerusalem, and Kerak, all from the Fatimids.

In my game at least, the Fatimids at some point will begin to get pressured from the West in the form of the Sicilian Normans. The Normans swept across the Sahara and captured Cairo and Alexandria. Along with my attacks and the Templar incursions, the once dominant Fatmids are in serious trouble as of 1250 C.E. in my game.