Making the Kingdom of England harder

[NathanUk]

Hey everyone, hope everyone is enjoying the winter,

I'm in a position now were I love England as a faction, you guessed it, I'm English but it's too easy. Once I conquer the isle, I know I can't loose or even become poor, which is boring and a shame. I'm too stubborn to play a different faction and I'm desperate to make the English campaign a lot harder. I'm open to suggestions, but what do you lot think of these ideas? (some will obviously be historically inaccurate).

- Doubling up every rebel army on the isle.
- Doubling up every Scottish army and settlement.
- Turning Exeter and York into rebel settlements.
- Giving Caen back to France (with increased military units present)
- Removing the spy and merchant (pointless?)
- Halved initial denari's to 5000
- Reduced Kings Purse to 1500

Now I've had a more extreme idea, I've heard of "Migration" campaigns and thought about it, I have some basic knowledge of editing the descr_strat file! ha ha. My proposal is basically to make every settlement except London, rebel and reduce my initial armies dramatically. Either that, or completely make the isle rebel and give Scotland Inverness, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and place my faction at Acre as a starting position.

The idea behind this is, at one point in history, England controlled ACRE, and potentially (a bit of fiction here) in the Kings absence, (I know this sort of happened with Prince John and King Richard) the entire country revolts and becomes a rebel state. Therefore, it my Kings/Generals mission to retake the British Isle and secure lands in the middle east. Potentially this gives the same difficulty as the crusader states (in terms of starting location) but also keeps the faction true to its original start but gives Scotland a lot of time to secure lands and take over the Isle.

Anyway, long post but what do you think?
Cheers!

[Harabec]

migration campaign to CS and eventually retaking of the home islands
sounds interesting
I'd think the english archers would be a good match for the horse archer armies in the east

[SoCCo]

brilliant mate.

i agree with you, england is to easy. got 2 open campaigns with england, one early one late. the early english campaing is even easyer than the later one. my first goal was to take western flandres cause i knew the scots, the french and the germans will go for it. after that i conquered brittany, eastern flandres, sadly lost the netherlands to norway. later i've got walles and the 2 irish regions. scotland was to scared to declare war, the french were at war with the HRE, the HRE was at war with everyone due to a crusade that i skipped. so arround turn 25-30 the french decide to blockade the port in brittany, by turn 56 their last teritory was tolouse. if u can keep your ports safe, the amount of cash you can get from the trade in the english channel can allow you to recruit anything for 20-25 turns and then conquer what i've conquered. i only allowed the scots to survive that far just because i didn't want to kill the game so fast.

in the late campaing i have no mainland starting teritories, HRE captures western flandres in round 2, then they get wiped out by the french and poles. scots start a war with me and i beat them down to inverness and 1 stack of 11 companies ( none of them has more than 50% soldiers ), they are bankrupt, down to 2 generals, a 21 y old king wich is alchoholic and if his stars could go negative he would have -20 command. even without the mainland territories, at war with the french from 3rd round as they controll all france and most of western/northern HRE i mainly trade between my ports except few routes with norvegians and leon&castille. i find the game already boring and it's just round 60. i think asap i get rid of the scots, with the controll over the isles i'll be able to wipe out the french and frankly this game has one goal for me. beat the mongols when we meet in the middle of the map ( somewhere near romania/greece )

i find your solutions brilliant. i'd love to see a york, nottingham and exeter rebelled in both early and late. maybe some events that can spawn rebel armies near those towns + ireland and walles. so every now and then england losses some of the towns and castles it owns. this way it won't be that easy.
or perhaps an event that will excomunicate the english ruler ( happend with Elizabeth I and few others ). so the spaniards, french, scandinavians, maybe HRE will try to conquer the isles.

[Smokey Bacon]

It doesn't really make sense to make them rebel.

[NathanUk]

Ok, I understand that people will absolutely detest this for it's historical inaccuracies, but for those who love England too much to play a different campaign, here is the draft Kingdom of England introduction;

England is in desperate times my lord, with the death of William the Conqueror and the crowning of Henry, barons have taken up arms and revolted! This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the new king is currently occupying Acre in the Middle East with his most trusted generals. In his absence, the barons and rogue generals of the English rebellion have took control of key settlements! The British Isle is no longer under the rule of Monarchy. Moreover, the stubborn and barbaric Scottish have vowed to take advantage of England’s state of corruption and separation. If news makes it to Paris, it is only a matter of time before the French seize London and bolster their forces on the isle making it impossible to recapture our beloved capital. Take the lands from heathens, ensure God’s will is delivered and reclaim the lost holy lands, but more importantly we must ensure that England is reunited and the Scottish and French armies are decimated!

I have successfully moved every general and agent to Acre (may seem trivial to most). Moreover, I due to the fictional story, Made London,Exeter,Winchester, Nottingham, Caen and York all rebel settlements - (this is extreme and a lot of people will ask, why bother, just play as CS?) I have also given Acre to the English.

I am now debating whether or not to make Acre a castle and allied England with the crusader states. Moreover, I'm going to now test whether or not to reduce initial denaris for England, and the kings purse. Finally, I'll deal with Scotland and make them richer and stronger to give them a chance of capturing the English rebel settlements (which all have a name general who are very strong). Recapturing england will be a mid game objective, a difficult one at that.

[Tears of Destiny]

/Tries to resist the urge to tell the Rome Total War fan that it is now Florins, not Denaris/

This sounds like it would be a very interesting After Action Report, and I am looking forward to how this Migration Campaign turns out!

[NathanUk]

This is my first TW game! So I have no idea where I got denari from, maybe after watching a friend play RTW lol

[Smokey Bacon]

This will be a fun and intresting campaign but isn't a viable suggestion for inclusion in the next SS. It could make a good sub-mod though, reduce starting regions for all factions to 1, it is sacrificing historical accuracy but the people who arn't bothered by that would probably like it (unfourtunatly it would bother me too much to play it lol.)

However increasing the scottish and rebel forces in Britain is a good idea.

[SoCCo]

i don't want to travel half the world just to get to london and find it under the rule of the french, or worse the HRE.
just make the cornish lands rebelled ( exeter ). make york and nottingham rebel as well. reduce the king purse, reduce the initial army and the amount of pounds. just leave england with wincherster casttle and london. it will be alot harder to try to capture the islands while the french and scots are behind you.

[Ichon]

Would be more interesting to start England as Caen only... or Caen and Edessa with Scotland having the rest of isles. Then try to expand both places. Having isles rebel means it will be essentially unchanged by the time you get there. Maybe Scotland get 1 or 2 regions. I doubt it will be more than that.

[Smokey Bacon]

I like the idea of re-counqering England form Normandy especially using Rolling Wave's sub-mod as I could use Norman knights. Gonna try it as my next campaign.

[SoCCo]

Would be more interesting to start England as Caen only... or Caen and Edessa with Scotland having the rest of isles. Then try to expand both places. Having isles rebel means it will be essentially unchanged by the time you get there. Maybe Scotland get 1 or 2 regions. I doubt it will be more than that.

in most of my games, the french kings have fun counting the florins they get from the HRE regions. i belive england could have serious problems if they had less regions from start. their economy is to strong and they can outbeat the french who get enough trouble with genoa, aragon and hre. i've seen games with moors going cross sea in turn 5 to capture marseille and then get all southern france because france was very busy in the north with england and hre, while the iberian christians were to busy fighting eachother.
in all my games, once england controls most of the islands they get huge amount of cash and they start to push the french from the north. once they conquer france nobody will stop them, not even the pope, a crusade, a jihad and the mongols

[Ichon]

Are you talking about ways to make AI weaker or human player have more challenge playing England?

England is probably a bit too strong I agree, but more of the problem is that France and HRE are exceptionally weak vis a vis their historical strength and their neighbors power in game. I rarely see France or HRE successful. Most often its England, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Venice, or Genoa. Occasionally Aragon or Moors.

[RollingWave]

If we're not talking about players and simply talking about overall setup... here's the issue and i'm already tackling some of them anyway.

1. the main problem is that ocean trade is essentially the biggest trade factor right off the bat, which is unrealistic at best, river trade were just as important and probably (a lot ) more important than early sea trade , the first easy key would be to better utilize the river resource, since France / Germany obviously have much bigger rivers flowing through them they'll obviously benifit more than England.

2. script so that Wales is much more of a problem, this part isn't hard, just have descr_rebels pop up more often with bigger stacks, including raids poping into adjencent territories. rebels can be a problem if they do pop up numerous enough with big enough stacks.

3. reduce the replenish rate of their knights more... which is kinda historics.

4. probably up the starting population and/or base farm factor of the French / HRE area more. both historically accurate.

[Ichon]

All good ideas there... I'm curious how upping river trade will impact because I'm not sure how much its just a money issue for AI.

[Rhavanna]

The British isles have far too much economy going on, and the AI often isn't smart enough to land troops over there. I don't think I've ever been invaded at all as England.

And in my current Aragon campaign, the British are at war with the entire world, and doing seemingly alright. They have 0 allies, and are at war with basically everyone... and then out of the blue they attack me as well! And STILL have stacks to spare to fight me! So rude!

[philipjd]

So rude!

Are you sure they were English, we're renowned for our good manners

Seriously though:- the issue is that if england is too easy for the player, is it too easy for the AI also.. in most games I;ve seen AI England get smashed by the french/scots, and that is the true difficulty for the designers, to make a viable faction for the AI to control and not one that is too easy for the players...

[NathanUk]

Just to get back to you all, I'll post a 60 turn campaign diary to let you know how I did.

On the note of Scotland; they took every settlement other than Exeter and Galway, they even took Dublin!. However, I had to dramatically reduce each settle Garrison to about 5 units and one general for Scotland to not loose to Rebels. Exeter was taken by Leon & Castile, they love that town, but have done nothing since. Scotland is happy with it's Spanish neighbour and looks like it is fielding an army to attack Galway (speculation). Moreover, I have noticed that due to the large number of settlements Scotland now owns, it is very spread out and if I genuinely wanted to recapture the isle, it doesn't look difficult, no major garrisons other than Edinburgh. I had given them a large military boost to.

Here's the diary, nothing really surprising (long list warning! lol):
Edit: non = nothing of note
the symbols are there to help me identify key events.
This is not an attempt at an AAR or anything Roleplay wise, just random notes taken of important events.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Turns:

1) Armies march on Damascus
*Alliance*: Between England & Crusader States*
2) Armies besiege Damascus
3) NoN
4) Non
5) Damascus falls
6) Trade rights gained with the Seljuks.
7) Fatimids declare war via naval blockade
English Navy destroys blockade
8) **Death** Stephen De Blois (Father) dies of natural causes
10) =Ceowulf= Born, Baghdad discovered (large Seljuk armies nearby)
11) Non
12) Non
13) Non
14) John of Winchester beseiges Tortosa
15) =William Born= and Tortosa Taken
16) Duke Robert marries Drueta Aton
17) First crusade against Medina rejected by Pope
Bribe of Adana Rebels rejected
18) Roman Empire gaining territories close by
19) Fatimids request ceasefire and pay 10.000 Florins (accepted)
*Ceasefire*: Between England & Fatimids
20) *At war*: Kingdom of England and Seljuks
21) $Stephen De Blois (son) Comes of Age$
=Agnes Born=
Tribute of 100 gold for 20 turns to Crusader States
22) Non
23) =Udeline Born=
Stephen De Blois (Son) Becomes prince of Acre
24) *At War*: Kingdom of England & Roman Empire
Rebels blockade bridge at Tortosa
25) Nicosia taken by John of Winchester
Roman Empire requests ceasefire and offers 17500 florins (accepted)
26) *Ceasefire* KIngdom of England & Roman Empire
John of Winchester recieves **HOLY PREPUCE*
27) Non
28) Duke Robert named as Count of Tortosa
=Edward Born=
29) **Death** Robert De Mowbray dies of natural causes in Damascus
=Fulcard is Born=
30) King Henry suffers from Pneumonia
Pope Accepts Crusade of Gaza
*At War* Kingdom of England & Fatimids
Duke Robert destroys rebel blockade at the bridge in Tortosa
31) Stephen De Blois (Son) Marries Margaret Stanley
Gold trade lost to Fatimids
King Henry joins the Crusade
Robert beseieges Gaza
Roman Empire lands an army at Nicosia (Does not attack)
32) Duke Robert killed by a major Fatimid Army
**Death Duke Robert**
=Catherine De Blois Born=
Stephen De Blois now crowned as Heir/Duke
Seljuks request ceasefire and offer 15.000 Florins (accepted)
Offer added; Map Info & Trade Rights for 2015 Florins (accepted)
33) Anselm of Canterbury dies
34) Non
35) HRE Crusading army arrives first to attack the fatimids, luckily.
Rebel Army outside Damascus bribed, re-inforces Damascus garrison
Crusader States Jerusalem under seiege from fatimids
King Henry saves the Crusaders and achieves a Heroic Victory.
All Prisoners (value of 3596) executed.
36) =Coenburg De Blois Born=
Henry now beseiges Gaza in revenge of Duke Roberts death.
Kingdom of Sicily's crusading army arrives.
37) English Heroic victory at Gaza
$Ceowulf comes of Age$
Crusade Ends as Gaza is captured
38) Another Heroic victory at Gaza, fatimid CALIPH is captured and released (Ransomed?)
John & Henry now Hospitallier Knights and Templars
39) John of Winchester acquires **Black Stallion**
King Henry becomes Duke of Gaza
40) Ceowulf marries Marian Dunbar
41) Fatimids beseige Gaza
King Henry sallies forth and gains a Heroic Victory
42) Fort outside Gaza massacred by Fatimids
43) **Death** Pope Paschalin dies
Pope Cause IV Elected
$William comesof age$
Duke Stephen acquires **Bridle of Constantine**
Englands largest naval fleet disbanded due to costs.
Victory for King Henry against small insurgent Fatimid force
44) =Gladys Born=
2 small victories against Fatimids for Duke Stephen and one Heroic Victory in Al Aqaba
45) CONCORDAT OF WORMS
Duke Stephen beseiges Al Aqaba
46) Theologians guild in Al Aqaba to convert population
47) William & Beatrice married.
Rioting in Damascus
Due to fear of loosing; Black Stallion and Holy Prepuce handed down to Duke Stephen.
48) Non
49) Pantokrator built
First Laterna Council funded
=Horsa De Blois Born=
William becomes Lord High Marshall
Fatimid spy found in Al Aqaba
King Henry destroys stragglers at Fatimid camp outside Gaza
50) =Ellen Born=
51) Crusade against Medina accepted
King Henry beseiges Medina
St Johns minor chapter house founded at Gaza
52) 2 priests become Herectic after trying to convert a heretic.
William beseiges Tayma
King Henry defeats the Fatimid army at Medina, however in a 1 vs 1 duel,
henry is bested, but his archers take revenge and kill the enemy general.
Duke Stephen now crowned as Regent. Successful crusade.
53) First Artesan well dug
Jane de Blois Born
Rioting in Medina
Tayma taken by William
54) Rioting in Tayma
Cardinal Promoted - Ricbert
**Death** Adela dies
55) Treatise on religion completed
$Edward comes of age$
Gaza seige destroyed by John of Winchester
Minor English victory against small Fatimid force
56) **Death** Pope Caus dies
Pope Silveries elected
Gaza & Medina beseiged by Fatimids
Crusader States request assistance against Seljuks (accepted)
57) Fatimids take Medina
$Fulcard comes of age$
3 priests convert to Herecy after trying to convert heretic
58) HRE Excommunicated
59) Fatimids beseige Tayma
St Johns Chapter House in Acre
=Catherine Born=
Fulcard achieves Heroic victory outside Gaza
60) St Johns Chapter House in Damascus

Set up: SS 6.3, VH/VH, Meneths Compendium; Savage AI, Istanbul mod, Longer Assimilation, 2 TPY.

Initial territory; Acre
Starting Florins; 10.000
Kings Purse; 3000

Army: one major army consisting of; 3x Crusader Knights (4 vet), 5x Pilgrims (1 Vet), 2x Dismounted Crusader Knights (4 vet), 3 x Mercenary Crossbowmen (1 Vet), 3x Generals (1 vet), 4x Crusader Sergeants (3 vet).

I now know that the Army is too strong, too many generals and money wasn't an issue (first ten turns were in debt however). Either way, hope this helps anyone trying to improve England's difficulty, I found it a fun campaign (so far) but a little bit easy so I'm going to tinker about and see if by giving them a territory in each part of the map will make things more difficult; I.e. Caen and Acre or Acre and London (regards to whoever suggested starting area of Caen). Also the two Crusades made a huge difference, so excommunication (Xanthippus of Sparta) would make it a lot harder.

Thanks everyone

[Mihajlo]

I usually spice my Eng camp. like this: conquered isles, and north France, then open two fronts: Scandinavia and holy lands-there you have something to play with, constant war

[DeMolay]

England is my favourite faction too , i played it more than i played France because i'm just in love with archers and the Longbow , also the speeches and atmosphere is awesome with this faction .


When i play England nowadays i use these rules :

- i use BGR IV ss 6.3 wit RR/RC
- i never get more than 10 settlements
- Military expenses should never go beyond 15000 florins (even that is a lot , it's 2 full stack of high quality units + extras like a small navy , a few non free upkeep garrisoned units ) , but more reasonably , don't exceed 10.000 when you 're at peace , ideally use less .
-never hit Scotland too hard
-never hit France too hard (otherwise you don't get your epic 100 years war campaign later on )
- once you achieved your main obective of seizing you desired 10 settlements , fight for your allies in Iberia for instance or help the poor HRE who gets often sandwhich-ed by mulitple factions , usually after the infamous Frankfurt Crusade , help them to defend
- Don't be the Pope's friend , too easy otherwise (factions will not dare to attack you )
- Try to be Europe's policeman , sort of kingmaker in Europe by supporting the factions of your choice (send a full stack with your king ) , i often happen to conqueer some lands for my ennemies (like France , sometimes i get them back Toulouse or Rheims ) so that they remain a challenge later on
- don't adopt family members , make your royal line as "pure" as possible , try to marry your ennemy's princesses ( then pay them a fee to break the alliance honourably )
- Fight only with your King and Prince until late period and make sure nearly half your stack if made of longbowmen like Edward's armies .
- Only keep 2 castles , Notthingam then one of your choice (since you usually have only 2 war councillors , it doesn't change much anyway but will still force you to plan in advance ) , otherwise it is my eyes too easy and unrealistic to be able raise multiple armies at the same time . Having more cities is good for business .
-don't use more than 2 units of heavy cavalry in your full stack
-Release prisoners as much as you can and crusade actively (don't send just one full stack , send mulitple stacks to make it epic ) . that's it on the top of my head , but my last England campaign was really fun , i played nearly 200 turns over a month of play

This said i agree the economy of Britain is a bit over-estimated , i think their settlements should earn less and the sea trade benefits should be nerfed slightly , well IMHO .