Tears in the Caucasus

[Vaynakh]

Oh Dear Georgia!

They're my favorite faction in the game. IMO, a mix of heavy hitting cavalry, good horse archers, and what I think are the most solid infantry in the game make them a great martial faction. But they are so screwed

My first time playing BC after a year I'm 70 turns in. Took the Caucasus and hunkered down, trying to build up as much as possible. Georgia's surrounded by empires. The fact that you cannot recruit any sword/charge cavalry early game doesnt help either. The Kypchaks invaded and a long bloody war followed. Just as I was about to deal them a severe blow and more/less win the war, the Seljuks invade. A well timed ceasefire later I'm invading Iran. It's 1200 and the Kypchaks invade again. I turn my attention north while sacking the Seljuk capital of Rayy. A few years later, the Seljuks were so attritted from fighting me, their last region is taken by the Khwarezmians.

Didn't realize it then, but that was the beginning of the end for me.

At this point, "David Lord of Terror" is my 55 yr old king and top general leading an army group of three stacks in the north. I am invaded by the Arab Khilafe (sp?) and the Khwarezmians. Georgia is cut in half. One army in the south is fighting two kingdoms and my northern army group is down to half strength after a dozen 6000+ unit battles. But it's clear now I'm stalling the inevitable. Georgia is 15k in the red and getting worse every turn. Only sacking and ransoms alleviate the debt, but a rating of "dubious" makes diplomacy impossible. I have to wait for others to make proposals - and they only want me as a vassal.

Alas keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I'm allied with Rome and Armenia and they haven't done anything to help. I thought the Seljuks were the prime power of the East. Maybe before they went to war with me. But one thing's sure: they were a buffer against the Arabs and Persians.

Here's what I like about BC. You have to think. If you're playing a small faction, you have to think far down the line because you may have the most hard core army, the best generals, you yourself may be an excellent commander: in the end no ammount of good tactics will make up for flawed strategy. Numbers will raw you down and your economic disadvantage will be the end of your little campaign; regardless of how great those little swordsmen are.

The only thing I don't like about BC as it is now (Im sure changes are in the works) is that the way diplomacy is atm, it is prone to have big showdowns between powers. This is a problem because 1: loooong campaign and losing any one faction is a problem down the line. 2: the small amount of factions means that the balance of power is very tricky. Example; after I weakened the Seljuks, the Baghdad Arabs and the Khwarezmians became regional superpowers.

But I digress.

Back to the drawing board!

[Dago Red]

Nice write up!

The only thing I don't like about BC as it is now (Im sure changes are in the works) is that the way diplomacy is atm, it is prone to have big showdowns between powers.

I agree, I've seen worse but diplomacy is lacking. Most of that is the engine, vanilla MTW2 I think. Hopefully some improvements can be made.



In my last campaign I paid the Kypchacks 15,000 precious florins to fight the Seljuks. 15 turns elapsed and they did NOTHING. That is a real burn and broken diplomacy. If they meant to stab me in the back, our relationship should be trashed now with some event pop up, but we're still great friends even though they took the money and ran.

[Zaale]

Well, Kypchack usually did this hystorically, keep the money and run. They're still laughing at you from their northern villages.

Georgia is an interesting faction to play (BTW I fixed the bodyguards giving the general Monaspa lancers b/c the heavy horse archers was a very frustrating general unit and general tend to disappear on melée). Playing it now I always try to take as many settlements on the first turns as I can. Majar for instance is fundamental. You go away with the King, buy 2 units of cavalry mercenaries and with a little chance Majar is yours -not always, once I got the king dead and my ass kicked

Next, alliance with Kypchack, also fundamental because the long distances and the huge bonuses for snow fighting for the Kypchack makes war extremely frustrating (The only time in my campaigns I was forced to kill every prisoner I took is in the wars with Kypchack).

Next, trade. For Georgian merchants I identified 3 things that work: cotton, sugar and carpets.

And next, armies. Taking Ardabil from the Seljuks is fundamental b/c you can create some of the best horse archery there (the Turco-Persan cavalry) and hire good mercenaries around Ani, with this, some spearmen, archery and melée troops you can defeat any army.

Chose your enemies carefully, b/c if in Vanilla ALL the entire world declares war on you after a few turns, in Broken Crescent things are a lot more complicated. You seem to be in friendly terms with everyone, your economy is giving you 10k for turn and suddenly the Seljuks attack you

Abbasids and Kypchack were allied with you but broken alliances when you go to war with Seljuks cause they were more friends with them than with you. And they attack you next turn or 2 turns after sacking all your towns.

And the Turks make peace with Byzantines to go to war with you, and also the Byzantines come with 2 spearmen and 27 archers to besiege Kutaisi and you didn't get and invasion for the Rajputs because they are on the extreme East of the map.

So you have the choice, screaming all the evening like if you were watching King Kong 2 on the TV or you left your campaign and go to find your girlfriend

[trollface]

georgia is one of those factions where diplomacy is very important due to your position... also see armenian cilicia. You need to trade an irrelevant region (perhaps the region to the west of kutaisi) for an alliance with the kypchaks. You can form an alliance with the ERE right at the start and for free. Expand quickly try and take as many rebel settlements as possible... Majar is important as it can be surprisingly wealthy when the surrounding regions are trading with it. Baku is, hilariously enough, your most important recruiting centre (occupy do not sack or exterminate!!!) once you develop the military facilities.

Change your bodyguards to lancers... Georgia has no access to heavy melee cavalry and I find this unfair so change the generals guard. It's what I do

Now pick an enemy to destroy... either of the turkic factions will do. Remember to garrison risky borders with at least one unit of medium archers as their stakes can devastate annoying heavy cavalry/horse archers

here is my mongol holocaust save if you want to try your hand at defeating the mongols with georgia

[Vaynakh]

Interesting strategies here. Cool to see I'm not the only one playing Georgia.

I played out the rest of my first campaign to the end. I can't believe I actually lost haha. The Arabs took all my southern provinces and the Kypchaks took every city I liberated. My David "Lord of Terror" died of old age before a final battle with the Arabs to take back Kutaisi. The secondary general in the stack wasn't up to snuff Another defeat and My last army is camped in Sokhumi. Kypchaks on one side, Arabs on the other. What's funny is M2TW keeps crashing when I go to next turn. Guess it doesn't want to see the end.

So I tried again, this time auto resolving to save time. Lesson I learned: it's the economy stupid. With Georgia it is vital that you develop your farms FIRST. Then markets, roads, and whatever else. The result? 1197 Georgia is the richest faction without cheating. Kutaisi makes 4000+/turn and Ani 3800+. This helps a lot.

Also I've been doing the last campaign with the 3.0 edu. TBH, I love the changes in unit abilities and formations. I just hate the change in armor values. Idk about other people, but my favorite play style is to hold down the enemy with infantry, and use horse archers to inflict the most casualties from behind. This strategy fell to pieces against the Seljuks. 1 unit of heavy bowmen could sustain all the shots from 3 or more Georgian horse archers with less than ~20% casualties and then decimate the unarmored horse archers.

I used this edu 80% of the way through my new campaign. Then I fought a very phyric victory against a seljuk army. A cavalry army lost 90% of its numbers due to the inability of archers to inflict casualties on seljuk foot-juggernaughts. So I went back to the old 2.02 edu and the fun times are back. No more putting speed to 6x and walking away from the computer to wait for some infantry to finish with each other. Now I just put it to 2x

edit: more on economy, I only control the Caucasus and Georgia is among the top 5 most populous countries in the game. Looks like you can't have a sound defense without a sound economy. In the campaign I lost, most of my cities had no improvements on farming.

[trollface]

>I played out the rest of my first campaign to the end. I can't believe I actually lost haha. The Arabs took all my southern provinces and the Kypchaks took every city I liberated. My David "Lord of Terror" died of old age before a final battle with the Arabs to take back Kutaisi. The secondary general in the stack wasn't up to snuff Another defeat and My last army is camped in Sokhumi. Kypchaks on one side, Arabs on the other.

Nice, I have always wanted to lose a campaign. Much more exciting than the usual blitzkrieging

[Iguanaonastick]

Economy and diplomacy and strategic position are very important, I find.

In my current Eastern Roman campaign the Ayyubids control half the known world, from Egypt to beyond Baghdad, plus the entire Arabian peninsula and half the Caucasus. My Romans just rule Anatolia. (And a little bit of the Crimea) They have over twice my military rating, far more stacks of troops, including full-stacks of gold-chevroned mamluks. And a war just broke out.

But I have a better economy, better reputation, complete control of the sea, and allies protecting my borders and aiding me in the war where they just have more enemies lurking on theirs. It's going to be a hard fight but I'll win the war because I can dictate when and where and how it'll be fought. If the worst comes to the worst I can always retreat to my nicely protected homelands and rebuild, but if they lose I'll take all their AOR regions.

I always focus on the economy even at the expense of an army, unless my empire truly is about to be destroyed. In the long run it pays off in almost every game. BC is no exception.

[trollface]

>In my current Eastern Roman campaign the Ayyubids control half the known world, from Egypt to beyond Baghdad

I find it interesting how players sometimes take their time and expand slowly... personally I blitzkrieg the map. The strict economy makes me want to get a decent income quickly. I would have the ayyubids defeated... well forced out of the levant, before the crusaders are overwhelmed. The easy way the ayyubids blitz through the crusaders always annoyed me. Makes me feel like I have to be their protector

[Iguanaonastick]

If you expand slowly, enemies get the time to become truly powerful and the game stays challenging. I generally quit campaigns once no stronger power remains. Maybe I'll wait to use some high-end units if I'm interested enough, but after that there's just little of interest to do.

Income is very important, but keeping your army as small and cheap as possible and blitzing some rebel settlements generally ensures you have plenty funds for economic development. Of course, if you're attacked it'll be a challenge to fight the enemy with a small army, but again it makes for an interesting game.

I also fought some wars on behalf of my allies, saving the Armenians from the Abbassids and aiding the Georgians in destroying the Kypchaks. In Broken Crescent there are very real benefits for doing this: it is hard to protect distant provinces if you control them yourself, because you can only recruit crappy local troops and need to rely on very long supply lines to reinforce armies of your native troops. An allied state can recruit their own troops and gets free AI reinforcements. This makes for good cannon-fodder. And it saves you a lot of money because you don't need big garrisons. All you lose is the income from those additional territories.

[Zaale]

Nah, I don't Blitzkrieg the map because the AI don't get the time to develop and its behaviour is erratic.

As an old player of Medieval I I mostly go along with the old Ironman rules, that were a set of rules to make the campaign more difficult (in Medieval I) and consisted basically in 1) never attack another faction except if they're becoming too powerful or they are attacking an ally of yours 2) use the General's view for the Camera (so you actually goes with your general back and forth to see what in the hell is happening there) -this one, with Horse archery is impracticable- 3) Autocalculate battles with captains instead of generals 4) never reload if you lost an important battle and so on. For instance I never go with ballista and catapult to take another town, always let the AI the time to defend their towns.

On the other side, I never never never expand too much. Let's see 44 regions are, I think, my top-expansion, playing Abbasids, usually I go through late game with 25-32 regions. Actually playing georgians I've been attacked by Seljuks and Turks and I control some 20 regions, just conquered Sivas to link with Armenians and trying to capture Kirkuk from the Seljuks (first try I was ambushed ), Turks have 15-16 regions and Seljuks about 20+. My bigger concern is although Ayyubids who are coming north with huge armies, some 12-15 stacks massed on the Armenian borders, and Crusaders are their vasals.

If they declare war on Armenians (my allies) and I go war with them, Abbasids will probably broke their alliance with me and crazy like they are they will attack me in 2-3 turns, and they are allied, at their turn, with Kypchack who also got huge armies. It's the way to get a decent and fair campaign and yep, guarantee, you can lost. I lost myself some campaigns on late game because Seljuks, Egyptians or Kypchak expanded very quickly, got the plague on some town, my income dropped drastically and they crushed me.

[trollface]

I don't have the patience for long campaigns. one of the reasons I like TA is because the enemy comes at you fast and hard... well in some of the campaigns i.e. rohan and gondor. I can't be bothered with waiting around for the AI to become massively powerful... that being said I wiped the mongols out with georgia, alot of fun but damn their units are hard to kill, even harder to rout. I lost alot of armies to the plentiful mongol stacks and their super soldiers

[Zaale]

Well, you're not supposed to win against Mongols. In my first campaigns I see so many times Mongols become a protectorate of Seljuks that I changed this. All mongol troops except Khan Guards have now 150 guys per unit and improved drastically Qarachu huntsmen and basic horse archery in attack/defence. In the first campaign I went through, Mongols were still in force as late as 1280.

For the Lord of the rings mod, I liked the films but as a mere fantasy, cannot really play hobbits and Elfes against Trolls and monsters see the pics of the mod and the guys did a wonderful job, but it's not my cup of tea.

[trollface]

I had a massive empire, thorough preparation and yet it was still a bloody struggle. They even managed to advance into my heartland regions conquering telavi before I could finally stop the tide (I had been fighting them at samarqand and the bridges in the khwarezm shah to give an idea of the scope of this struggle). As such they present a firm but fun challenge to a well prepared player... who has the distance to be able to afford heavy territorial loss

[trollface]

Delicous tears in the caucasus