Opening moves + Dealing with the Garrison Script

[tanathos]

Howdy! I've just reinstalled M2TW after an immense long time and seeing as how my main problem of past, that is installing mods with the steam version, has been corrected, I'm now able to enjoy this mod. NOW a few questions:

How does everyone generally open the first turns in this mod? My first observation is that, with all the tweaks, it is much harder to make money and be rampaging left and right in the first few turns. Am I correct in assuming, then, that the only option at first is to build up your economy for the first 10-15 turns?

Secondly, and this somewhat regards the first question in a way, how do you deal with the Garrison script? I know that you can mod it away, but I'd like to find a way to deal with, since I know that if I can get over the first problematic siege it would make for much more enjoyable city sieges (since let's face it, stomping an AI in 6 turns in vanilla because they just wouldn't garrison their cities properly became old fast, especially since I would just auto-battle anytime the AI had 4 or less defending units). So how do people usually deal with it at first?

The script seems to generate mid to late game units in ample quantities, making any one stack attack with early troops a folly. This also means that, if you've picked a country without many provinces and few rebel cities to attack, you could very well be facing defeat since unable to successfully mount any kind of successful force.

As an exemple of a game that turned sour quite fast : As Danemark, I conquered the rebel cities in Sweden. I then made my way over to attack Lithuania, as since they're pagan I knew the Pope would not be excommunicating me any time soon. Their first castle was quickly conquered (the garrison script didn't fire, for some reason), and I then went for Kiev (I think it was), as I had gotten the message of which cities I needed to conquer if I wanted to form the baltic trading union. This is where I encountered the script for the first time. As I was sieging out Kiev in order to famine the defending forces, I was pinced between a second Lithuanian stack. I did my best to decimate as many Lithuanians as I could, but was overrun by their sheer numbers. I retreated, broken, to the recently conquered castle... and that's when the Teutons declared war, besieging the recently conquered island city.

Anyway, I kept defending from the Lithuanians (they did not manage to take back anything they had lost), and am now besieging Konigsberg. Things look grim though : again the garrison script fired, and I'm not sure I have the technology to properly fend of the Order spearmen and other deadly teuton units that were spawned. I also can't seem to make enough money, despite having concentrated solely on money making structures so far (except in my castles), thus I can only support one full proper stack. Oh, and if anyone was wondering: I'm playing on H/VH, which I find is a nice middle ground without the dogpiling on the player that comes with VH/VH

Well, that's the story. I enjoy the changes brought on by the mod so far. Small changes and to the point!

[tanathos]

Erratum: I meant Riga, not Kiev. Sorry for the double post, I could not find an Edit button.