Campaign Stalemate due to Endless Stack Spam

[HawkyTom]

I'm currently playing as England in the early era on VH/VH with BGR IV-E, RR on and Gracul's AI. [Turn 135], I'm about 40 turns away from Longbowmen becoming available I believe.

I control 17 regions, including all of the british isles, Rennes, Clermont, Caen, Angers, Bordeaux and Toulouse. (scottland is dead of course and I've almost killed off France, they on have 2 cities left...no castles; Paris and Bruges.)

-My reputation is "Immaculate"

-My only ally is the HRE (45 turns, marriage alliance): 'Perfect relations'...these guys were suppose to be a buffer/safe front while I took out France, but they are nearly destroyed and hated just as much as me...Genoa dominating their lands also.

-Papal States I've been maintaining a perfect relation through gifting them between 1500-10000 florins a turn, depending how low I drop each turn. (so I can only become excommunicated via disobeying a 'cease hostilities' order.)

-All other catholic factions have 'abysmal or terrible' relations because of endless war with catholics (even though I only have ever done 'occupy/release'...and 99% of my battles are on my soil
-All muslim/orthodox factions range from 'so-so to perfect' because I'm constantly slaughtering catholics.

ENEMIES:
-France[abysmal] (at war 73 turns): They send a stack to Caen every few turns. I've nearly killed them off, but every time I get close to taking Paris the pope orders me to stop attacking for 7 turns and don't have the supplies to wait it out in their territory so I'm forced to fall back to help defend against Genoa's heavy-spam assault...I've taken all their castles so they basically just have urban spear militia spam with mercenaries.

-Genoa[abysmal] (at war 23 turns, had a ceasefire at one point): They put 3-4 full stacks every turn territory near clermont and toulouse and never get excommunicated, even when they continually start sieging my settlements during a 'cease hostilities' order from the pope, causing me to sally out. These endless battles with Genoa is starting to make me bored of fighting so much! (these guys have 14 alliances so I can't count on anybody else's help...and having to defend myself against these goons is what's making me abysmal with everybody)

-Kingdom of Aragon[abysmal] (at war 1 turn, we had a ceasefire for a short time), I get 1-2 stacks every few turns from these guys...they are weak like france, but I've never attacked them outside of my own soil near Bordeaux/Toulouse...they only have 3 cities and I will probably try to take them out next if I can ever finish off France. I will be up against a much stronger Leon shortly after taking their cities I'm sure...who are much more powerful, so it might be better to leave them alive. (use them as a buffer)


-I have three 10 star generals(my 80year old king who recently died was 10star also because of so many victories) and one 7 star general because of winning these constant battles, never going above 1:1 odds to avoid 'overconfident traits'.


Conclusion:
Basically I'm starting to get bored of the non-stop battles (about 3-6 a turn). It seems that I've reached a stalemate with the AI and I'm not making progress fast enough to remain motivated to continue. I really want to reach Longbowmen being available because they might help me break out of this stalemate, BUT I can't imagine having to suffer through 40 more turns of tedious battles.



Any suggestions??

I'm tempted to abandon the mainland of Rennes/Clermont, Caen, Toulouse, Angers, Bordeaux(4 of my 5 fortresses!). I'd probably gift all the regions on the mainland to the HRE because they are just as hated as I am, so they can tediously fight genoa/aragon for me...or maybe give them to the Papal States keep Genoa from taking them!
I would move all my forces to blitzkrieg/smash the final 2 France cities (Paris/Bruges)...probably getting excommunicated in the process and then give those cities away and then jump onto ships and invade norway and eventually denmark and then try to break onto the mainland again afterwards.

Anybody got a better plan??

[Duck of Death]

If youre going to gift all your french territories to HRE, they should be able to take out the French for you.

You can sail down to west Africa and start destroying the Moors.

Once youve swept your way across to/through Egypt, you can invade the holy lands with a re-supply train at your back (in Egypt) instead of having to sail reinforcments all the way from England.

After that, you should have alot of income from your african territories you can use to invade Iberia. Take out the Spanish and Aragonesse until you run into your HRE allies in France.

At that point you'll have a nice big empire and can afford to start spawning multiple stacks yourself. Then invade Norway.

Since Norway and Africa only need to be defended from one direction (not to mention Iberia and the easily defensable British isles), you can send wave upon wave of stacks at whoever you decide your next victim should be

[Ichon]

Taking out Aragon would give you a port on Mediterranean which should allow to ravage Genoan Italy but would require peaceful relations with Castile to make it worthwhile. I'm not sure why you are struggling so hard to keep high relations with Pope? Just for roleplay or trying to avoid Crusade?

More important than your 10 star generals whose skill does not really matter unless you auto calc are how many stacks you have. With 17 regions you should be able to afford 3-4 stacks and some garrisons at least. With 3 strong armies at least you should be able to defend your lands and launch an attack from Toulouse against Genoa at Marseilles if not going after Aragon.

Ideally I would take out Aragon and then gift their lands to HRE with perhaps 1 even given to Genoa or 1 of Genoa allies whom Castile is not allied with trying to break up those alliances. On VH your relations will go down no matter what over time without maintaining but you can still play AI factions against one another without spending money every turn to placate them.

You need spies or siege artillery to take Paris before Pope can issue an order which shouldn't be hard to accumulate, I'd wait for next wave of Genoan attacks around there while preparying your invasion from Toulouse and immediately after you defeat majority of Genoan armies in the north, take Paris and send the other 2 stacks to invade Italy- bypass the remaining French unless they are very easy to capture. If you move fast before Genoa can rebuild its armies (so under 3 turns) you should be able to capture 2-3 regions from Genoa, hold Marseilles long enough to build fleets and then abandon it if Genoa sends army there and sail down ravaging Italy.

[Valandur]

Your problem is obviously the Pope.

Burn Rome. Kill him.

[HawkyTom]

Thanks for the input guys. My relations with the pope is due to winning 3-6 battles against catholics every turn(on my soil), however I'm the one that gets the blame.(plus VH difficulty makes that natural I believe, plus gracul AI further makes the AI hate you)

About me being able to afford 3-4 stacks+Garrisons...well I have a huge economy (rank #1), I just can't spend it fast enough because of the RR on + BGR IV-E...(only 3 war councilors/PTS) so I can only recruit quality units from Toulouse/Angers/Bordeaux...other than that I can only recruit peasants+militia.

Here is what my production basically looks like with BGR IV-E + RR on. (will never achieve higher than 3 actively recruiting castles max...less if my WC is marching to try and capture a city)

-Dismounted Feudal Knights (At best I can get a total of 3 per 9 turns)
-Feudal Knights (3 per 6 turns)
-Light Men at Arms (3 per 5 turns)
-Spearmen Sergeants(3 per 4 turns)
-Archers (3 per 3 turns) [maybe once Longbowmen are active I will pack more punch]
-Mangonel (3 per 12 turns) [these guys can be amazing vs large stacks of urban spear militia]
-rest is all militia/peasants

So 20 turns worth of non-stop recruiting would result in

~6 Dismounted Feudal Knights (Heavy Infantry)
~10 Feudal Knights (Heavy Cavalry)
~12 Light Men at Arms (Light Infantry)
~15 Spearman Sergeants (Spearman)
~20 Archers (Missile)
~5 Mangonels (Siege- Anti-Infantry)

During those 20 turns I will probably end up fighting at least 50-100 battles. It's rough finding any additional forces to manage a trek over to Paris and try to make ground. Whenever I try I have to kill multiple France Armies to make it to the gates and by then the pope orders me to stop!! and I don't have enough supplies to hunker down in their territory for 7 turns while I need the forces back on defense ASAP.

I've also been ferrying down massive amounts of Urban Spear Militia + Merchant Cavalry from my british isles cities trying to break the stalemate, but it's getting tedious! This is probably the key to success is getting more bang for buck with my higher quality units by supplementing them even more than I already am with these guys. Also getting 2-4 mangonels per army would probably help immensively

This is my first campaign coming back after a few years break and I guess I basically signed up for this campaign by choosing gracul AI with bgr IV-E / RR on & VH/VH. I thought since I was choosing england it would be a walk in the park...I guess I underestimated the AI's ability to stack spam!!

I read that BGR V 'reduces ai stack spam', but makes each army more scary...that's what I'm looking for, less quantity of battles and more quality! I might try that whenever I start my next campaign! I basically didn't play today, so hopefully tomorrow I'll have a renewed vigor to fight the stack spam again!

Any more input would be greatly appreciated!

[HawkyTom]

I almost forgot...they also have that BGR feature that lets them revive a huge portion of army after they withdraw or when I release the prisoners I think, something like battle-surgery...can't remember, so they basically get free retraining after even after my victories they maintain anywhere from 25-40% of the stack.

All my recent kings have been enforcing "Chivalrous rule" so any general who disobeys the order of only releasing prisoners will be banished!! (Eventually want to go from fortress to citadel so I've been working towards high chivalry)

[Byg]

I almost forgot...they also have that BGR feature that lets them revive a huge portion of army after they withdraw or when I release the prisoners I think, something like battle-surgery...can't remember, so they basically get free retraining after even after my victories they maintain anywhere from 25-40% of the stack.

All my recent kings have been enforcing "Chivalrous rule" so any general who disobeys the order of only releasing prisoners will be banished!! (Eventually want to go from fortress to citadel so I've been working towards high chivalry)

The ai won't be getting nearly as much bonus via auto healing only after successful battles as the player gets from always, subject to availability, being able to retrain any army.

You can counter the "chivalric code" feature by altering the behaviour of your king. If he starts behaving ruthlessly then he will eventually end the code and if you continue in that manner then he will insist that you kill everyone.

[HawkyTom]

I waited out the 7 turns of pope demanded ceasefire with France and was waiting on their doorstep to launched an assault on Paris! They had a full stack inside of 1000+ men and 3 half stacks stationed on nearby squares. I had my WC attacking with a full stack of elite troops and 1:1 odds, including a trebutchet to topple a wall, I busted down 1 wall and then had an epic battle inside there walls where both sides killed 1000+ men and I BARELY managed to pull out a victory with heavy losses...it took about 30-45minutes of real time to finish this battle!

VICTORY at last...finally some progress after this major stalemate. Unfortunately after trying to return to the campaign map I got an 'unspecified error' and had my first CTD at the end of a battle, EVER!!

I didn't have the energy to fight that battle a 2nd time, so I ended up doing 'night attacks' and killing off 2 lesser armies of France outside it's walls and was going to bring in a 2nd stack so I could just steamroll the city...unfortunately the following turn (after 1 turn of 2 battles with france) I got another 7 turn mandatory ceasefire from the pope!! I think he realized that France wont survive without him intervening so he wont let me attack him more than 1-turn at a time! If only I didn't get that dang CTD.

PS...I only have 6 generals across 17 regions and only one of them is less than 40, but not married!! All my other generals are between 55-70...with only 1 son and 1 daughter between them all. Another general will come to age in about 9 turns, but he's from my only crappy general (the slow guy who lugs around the supply train). My family tree is very close to dying out, I might have to actually start accepting adoptions or recruiting them from castles.

The ai won't be getting nearly as much bonus via auto healing only after successful battles as the player gets from always, subject to availability, being able to retrain any army.

You can counter the "chivalric code" feature by altering the behaviour of your king. If he starts behaving ruthlessly then he will eventually end the code and if you continue in that manner then he will insist that you kill everyone.

I don't dislike the auto-healing, I think it's a good to help the AI out. The combination of BGR IV-E WC/PTS limited recruiting + Real Recruitment limited recruiting + auto-heal of AI elite troops for free is what's hurting me! I also don't think I would be having this issue if I wasn't using gracul's AI on top of all this, because the aggresiveness of this 10+ faction alliance determined to erradicate me and my ally the HRE from the map! (such a huge alliance block preventing anybody else from getting in alliance with me)
Basically I've gotten myself into a very difficult situation with very hard difficult settings(especially for my first campaign in m2tw in years), which is more fun than steam rolling the AI, so I'm not complaining. (a lot of things I would have done differently if I were to start again!)

I knew I should have invaded norway/denmark before trying to conquer France, but I thought my ally the HRE would be able to hold their front and be powerful...I should have paid more attention to the diplomacy tab and realized that they were at war with 10+ factions, just like me!

My main problem is the 'subject to availability', I have the funds, but every time I retrain say a unit of 45/78 Sergeants Spearman it reduces the 'turns until available' counter by an additional 2 turns or so...dependant on how large the retraining is. Retraining doesn't actually give you more troops faster from my experience, it just lets you keep some of the veterans/survivors of the battle and re-man the unit at a lesser cost.

I might have to start countering my chivalric code as you suggest, that's good advice! I was hoping to maintain a "Chivalric Legacy" passed onto my sons for +2chivalry, but that will have to wait for another generation when things aren't as chaotic! (although looking at my family tree they haven't produced any sons anyways!)

Alors, those frog-eating moustache-bearers must be stopped! Hmmm... let me think...

I find it strange that Catholic factions continually attacking you are not excommunicated. Try something different: Do not counterattack, even on your own soil. This should make your continuous gifts to the Pope unnecessary. Turtle in your "outer" settlements and let the Genoese and French do all the attacking. See if they get excommunicated then.

Also, try to get an assault commando with siege engines past their stacks, conquer their unprotected settlements, and devastate them. Maybe by ship. Soon, the stacks will stop.

As Byg says, get rid of your leader's high chivalry by having him kill some prisoners etc. Your king does not need to be your city-builder. Soon, your other generals will be able to plunder and kill again without being punished., which is sometimes handy.

If I don't attack the stacks on my soil then they will siege my castles and my generals start getting some negative BGR 'Neglect' traits for allowing myself to get besieged which can prevent them from being War Councilors and being able to actually recruit troops! Also I'm not sure if I could survive if I wasn't picking them off 1 stack at time (via night attacks), if a full 3 stacks hit one of my castles it would be captured or they would force might try to force me into an unsuccessful sally.

I agree I might need to start killing off more catholics via Execute, although this will make my favor with the pope fall faster and also destroy my "Immaculate" reputation(not like it helped anything though).

I was able to get an attack off w/ siege engines on Paris which you can read about near the top of the post.
I might have to do as you suggest and assault Genoa on some of their Italian Coastal type cities, to hopefully weaken them...but then it will just be a turn or two before their other allys; Sicily/Venice are also attacking me over there!! Further complicating things is the fact that only my War Councilors can lead an attack on foreign soil or face banishment...and currently I'm in dire need of them to hunker down and recruit/defend at the 3 castles that are under constant siege. While occasionally trying to launch an attack at a nearby city; (quicker than longer journey)

[Strengelicher]

Alors, those frog-eating moustache-bearers must be stopped! Hmmm... let me think...

I find it strange that Catholic factions continually attacking you are not excommunicated. Try something different: Do not counterattack, even on your own soil. This should make your continuous gifts to the Pope unnecessary. Turtle in your "outer" settlements and let the Genoese and French do all the attacking. See if they get excommunicated then.

Also, try to get an assault commando with siege engines past their stacks, conquer their unprotected settlements, and devastate them. Maybe by ship. Soon, the stacks will stop.

As Byg says, get rid of your leader's high chivalry by having him kill some prisoners etc. Your king does not need to be your city-builder. Soon, your other generals will be able to plunder and kill again without being punished., which is sometimes handy.

[Ichon]

By turn 80 you can have built up one or two high quality stacks even with BGR and then you can afford a new stack every 30 turns even with reinforcements. So by turn 135 you are almost to 4 high quality stacks. That requires keeping at least 2 War Councilors in castles most of the time though. I usually use my FL and Heir as the attacking forces where the FL doesn't need WC or the other ancillaries as he is the FL. So your Heir gets 1 and 2 others for recruiting(usually retired generals but sometimes just anyone with decent loyalty I can find). With a good economy you can also afford to supplement with mercenaries. Generally I try to make my invasion armies about 3/4 high quality on attack and 1/4 easily replaceable to take the most casualties. Raiding from the sea though you can often afford to go with less than 1/2 high quality.

Sending in your cavalry or high quality first also means they will get healed at the end of the battle so try to make a quick cavalry strike without getting caught then withdraw and send in the cheap units with your better units flanking or at least try to only set up 1 unit at a time to take high casualties so if you rotate it back to be retrained it is only 1 unit at a time. Also of course try to pick castles as close to the front with enough building tiers to make it worthwhile. With England and Nottingham likely being your most build up castle that can work as reinforcements in the area of France you are operating in only take somewhere 4-8 turns round trip.

If you want to change the flow of enemy stacks you have to hit them at home- be Hannibal or Scipio and take the attack to their home regions. AI even with the bonus of VH still has an economy- it might be able to produce 4x the player but if you sack a few of its cities and blockade its ports you can reduce its income by half which greatly increases your own capabilities because most players single stack is worth 3-4 times AI stack so a stalemate is turned to players favor.

If you can get a port on Mediterranean or even send 1/4 army under your Heir he can land in Italy and buy mercenaries enough to sack the cities if you can't afford to divert enough from other areas. Italy and other lands with lots of mercenaries are the most vulnerable to those sorts of attacks- it doesn't work as well in Russia or East but Italy, central Europe, Balkans, Levant, and Andulusia have more than 1 mercenary AOR and several units available in each AOR which means you can sometimes recruit over 20 units within 2 turns travel.

Defense I find is best accomplished with armies using about 3/4 cheap militias as they get free upkeep and 1/4 higher quality units as the hammer of each army. This reduces cost both in upkeep and having elites as a smaller share of the armies fighting lots of battles means less cost in replacements. Breaking down Genoa alliances so its current partners start attacking is the final step- sometimes you can turn a 40 region AI superpower into a 10 region power in under 10 turns with well timed raids, embargoes, and turning AI alliances against it. Also remember you don't need to keep your WC in your own lands except to recruit- you can attack enemies within your lands without WC and only worry about relations and the only orders you might disobey are dread or chivalry if your FL is high in either.

[HawkyTom]

By turn 80 you can have built up one or two high quality stacks even with BGR and then you can afford a new stack every 30 turns even with reinforcements. So by turn 135 you are almost to 4 high quality stacks. That requires keeping at least 2 War Councilors in castles most of the time though. I usually use my FL and Heir as the attacking forces where the FL doesn't need WC or the other ancillaries as he is the FL. So your Heir gets 1 and 2 others for recruiting(usually retired generals but sometimes just anyone with decent loyalty I can find). With a good economy you can also afford to supplement with mercenaries. Generally I try to make my invasion armies about 3/4 high quality on attack and 1/4 easily replaceable to take the most casualties. Raiding from the sea though you can often afford to go with less than 1/2 high quality.

Sending in your cavalry or high quality first also means they will get healed at the end of the battle so try to make a quick cavalry strike without getting caught then withdraw and send in the cheap units with your better units flanking or at least try to only set up 1 unit at a time to take high casualties so if you rotate it back to be retrained it is only 1 unit at a time. Also of course try to pick castles as close to the front with enough building tiers to make it worthwhile. With England and Nottingham likely being your most build up castle that can work as reinforcements in the area of France you are operating in only take somewhere 4-8 turns round trip.

If you want to change the flow of enemy stacks you have to hit them at home- be Hannibal or Scipio and take the attack to their home regions. AI even with the bonus of VH still has an economy- it might be able to produce 4x the player but if you sack a few of its cities and blockade its ports you can reduce its income by half which greatly increases your own capabilities because most players single stack is worth 3-4 times AI stack so a stalemate is turned to players favor.

If you can get a port on Mediterranean or even send 1/4 army under your Heir he can land in Italy and buy mercenaries enough to sack the cities if you can't afford to divert enough from other areas. Italy and other lands with lots of mercenaries are the most vulnerable to those sorts of attacks- it doesn't work as well in Russia or East but Italy, central Europe, Balkans, Levant, and Andulusia have more than 1 mercenary AOR and several units available in each AOR which means you can sometimes recruit over 20 units within 2 turns travel.

Defense I find is best accomplished with armies using about 3/4 cheap militias as they get free upkeep and 1/4 higher quality units as the hammer of each army. This reduces cost both in upkeep and having elites as a smaller share of the armies fighting lots of battles means less cost in replacements. Breaking down Genoa alliances so its current partners start attacking is the final step- sometimes you can turn a 40 region AI superpower into a 10 region power in under 10 turns with well timed raids, embargoes, and turning AI alliances against it. Also remember you don't need to keep your WC in your own lands except to recruit- you can attack enemies within your lands without WC and only worry about relations and the only orders you might disobey are dread or chivalry if your FL is high in either.

Hello thanks for responding, a lot of great suggestions here.

I do have a lot of elite troops like you mention, although not as much as I would have if I were to play through this campaign a 2nd time. I now realize a big mistake I made early in the campaign was not including 'fodder' type units into my armies because I wasn't under as much threat when I was just dealing with rebels/scotland and a rare French army at Caen.
Not until I recently got access to 'urban spear militia' in cities was I really starting to use peasant/militia type as fodder from my better troops. I really should have been doing the same thing with Fyrd Spearman/Spear Militia all along, I don't think a single Fyrd Spearman saw battlefield on the mainland during the first 80 turns at least!

I didn't know the 'casualties healed' worked that way, good info! Fortunately all 5 of my fortresses are fully built up, so I don't even use Nottingham anymore (however I've had to resort to ferrying over large amounts of Urban Spear Militia & Merchant Cavalry from my large cities on the island to reinforce the mainland). I've been producing mainly out of France's fortresses....Angers, Bordeaux and Toulouse.

I've been using some mercenaries to supplement my armies as much as I can. About launching an attack with one of my WC towards Italy, I might have to look at doing this soon. Like you say I need to figure out how to supplement more and more peasant/militia into defense so I can free up more elite for attacking. Although I'm hesitant because of then only being able to produce 2 castles instead of 3 trying to hold off france/genoa/aragon. Then it will only be a matter of turns before I have any other factions nearby(sicily/venice) constantly attacking me as well, because of the mega-alliance which includes basically all catholic factions except me and the HRE.

I don't see how I can possibly breakup that 10+ faction alliance!

We shall see!!

[Ichon]

I don't see how I can possibly breakup that 10+ faction alliance!

We shall see!!

The raid into Italy accomplishes 4 things ideally- hurt Genoa economy and troop production ability, give money to yourself, recruit a powerful mercenary army free of WC constraints, and lastly give a couple of the captured regions to the Genoa ally who is most likely to turn on Genoa. Then on the return trip(Marseilles, Genoa, Pisa, Naples, Palmero can be hit on way down) try hitting Sardinia and/or Corsica and then Aragon.

Set some of the allies into Spain so now some of Genoa former lands and some of Aragon former lands are in hands of other factions. Not only can the gift of lands turn AI relations towards you a bit, but Gracul AI is aggressive enough to try and capture nearby easy targets which an isolated allies lands will be- that should fracture a couple of alliances while you can give other lands along your border with Castile to HRE, just don't sack those cities first so HRE will have some production capability right away.

Alternatively you could make Sicily a base to then advance up Italy eastern coast in a few turns and really mess with the faction alliances. If you keep giving Pope money you shouldn't need to worry about relations there and by attacking several different factions in raids the Papal interference with cease orders is less likely to be a problem.

[HawkyTom]

The raid into Italy accomplishes 4 things ideally- hurt Genoa economy and troop production ability, give money to yourself, recruit a powerful mercenary army free of WC constraints, and lastly give a couple of the captured regions to the Genoa ally who is most likely to turn on Genoa. Then on the return trip(Marseilles, Genoa, Pisa, Naples, Palmero can be hit on way down) try hitting Sardinia and/or Corsica and then Aragon.

Set some of the allies into Spain so now some of Genoa former lands and some of Aragon former lands are in hands of other factions. Not only can the gift of lands turn AI relations towards you a bit, but Gracul AI is aggressive enough to try and capture nearby easy targets which an isolated allies lands will be- that should fracture a couple of alliances while you can give other lands along your border with Castile to HRE, just don't sack those cities first so HRE will have some production capability right away.

Alternatively you could make Sicily a base to then advance up Italy eastern coast in a few turns and really mess with the faction alliances. If you keep giving Pope money you shouldn't need to worry about relations there and by attacking several different factions in raids the Papal interference with cease orders is less likely to be a problem.

Wow I see what you mean now with the possibility of gifting the regions to somebody besides Genoa!! That is a fantastic idea that even if it doesn't make genoa break out of their huge alliance block it will at least take away more and more cities from them to weaken them. Also giving them to other factions who are too far away to be an issue for me right now!

Going to try to start building up a coastal raid on genoa, I'll have to send a spy down their and scout things out to see who I should try to work against them!