The funnest campaign you've ever played!

[Jhattoy]

What is the funnest campaign you have ever played? What faction were you? What were some turning points and importan wars you got into? How far did your empire stretch?

So far in my short time of playing Medieval 2, my funnest campaign was/is Turkey. I'm still playing as them. I'm currently in the year 1326 and I have destroyed the Byzantine empire and the Egyptians, and although I've recaptured my cities that I lost to the Mongols, they are still a massive threat in the east of my empire. I'm in a war against Venice and Hungary and it's epic. Constantinoble is the center of attention, as everybody wants it for their own so there is siege after siege and contant open field battles just outside of the city. The Great Wars for Constantinoble haha!

[Consulo]

Oddly enough, the current campaign I'm in is the funnest so far. At least of recent memory. I'm playing as the Byzantines in Chiv II: SV. I've been working a campaign of chivalry, which I don't normally do. I'm usually a middle of the road kind of person. Anywho, I've made peace with the Turks at their request, and force them to give up Smyrna, Ikonion, and Mylasa (those may be for the mod's map only, not entirely positive). I've also made peace with the Sicilians and gained trading rights with the Egyptians. There's an odd stability currently, which isn't always the case playing as the Byzantines. I'm curious how things will go forward as my two main enemies are currently trade partners and peaceful. I may expand westward a bit if I'm not harassed to much in the east.

[Larkin]

Byzantines in vanilla, probably. I blitzed the beginning and by 30 turns controlled my half of Anatolia, Greece and the Dalmatian peninsula, Italy and North Africa.

Then it went down hill and economic depression ensued and a brutal war in the Alps lasted decades. Eventually I cracked through and conquered the world but it took forever, took me until the in game year of like 1750. Got me thinking that technology was still a bit archaic by that point.

Had a good one with Venice too, where I held Antioch against every single Mongol army one after the other. That was fun. Then the Timurids came and we couldn't deal with cannons

[shikaka]

I think the campaigns I remember were mainly "set up to be great" from the start, because of the great starting position. These were: Sicily, Byzantium and Turks.
What is great in these countries is that:
- they have a kind of "sworn enemy" which will go after them soon
- they can face different kinds of enemeis
- they can face the hordes


Out of these the best was the Byzantium campaign for me!
- battle against different factions (the dismounted knights of hungary, the heavy cav of Sicily, the skirmishers of the TUrks)
- war on at least 2 fronts the whole game (balkans and the Holy land, later Italy too)
- successfully stopped the mongols


In the campaign I was thinking I started with a revenge for Manzikert, and kick the Turks out of Anatolia completely, so I reconquered the breadbasket (is it a word in english?) of the empire. Meanwhile I made good relations with Hungary, who surprisingly were trustworthy allies all along, and helped me against Venice at crucial points of the game.
The next step was an "orthodox crusade" against the Holy land, which was very easy, as Egypt was spending time in the arabian desert instead of conquering wealthy cities. Fortification of the lands were quite late, as when the mongols arrived, I didn't even have ballista towers.
The mongol invasion was stopped with mostly militia spearmen and militia archers, I had nothing else basicly, but the quantity won as usual. When the mongols were repelled, I had about 4 full stacks of experienced milita, and I decided to put them to good use: 2 of these conquered the Nile delta, 2 conquered Sicily and South Italy.
Because I spend mainly on that front, the venetian attack came as a surprise, and their stack with 12 knights and 3 family member was very hard to deal with, with the cr.ppy spearmen of Byzantium. When I did defeat them I realized that the hungarians are holding up about 3 venetian stacks at Zagreb, so I rushed for Ragusa and Venice itself...
Restoration of the Justinian empire almost completed: I need Carthage, Granada and Rome.
At this time the game became boring, because at every front I had about 4-5 spare stacks and as noone could stop me, I stopped here.

The early days with the wars against the Turks and keeping the Mongols at bay (with underdeveloped cities) was quite challenging tho.

[Bryce Caron]

England. Carved out a Holy Land kingdom, with Hospitaller help, but I hate that the Danish have been relentlessly sending small stacks against me, and that I have no possessions on mainland Europe. At the peak of this Campaign one of my priest's was Pope, and I was calling Crusades left and right, gaining territory and sacking cities. But now things are at a standstill. I'm facing the Turks from Antioch and Aleppo, but can't go on the offensive. And of course, everyone hates me.

[Snakes]

The mod: Stainless Steel, early campaign.
The faction I was: Kingdom of Aragon
The turn number: 25
My active wars: The Moors, Genoa...

Oh, and uh... Novgorod.

[Tuscan]

Currently having the funnest campaign I've played yet. Playing as the English and throwing all caution to the wind. I've already been excommunicated, destroyed Scotland, have allied with France and Spain (who are both having a hell of a fight against Milan) and plan on taking on the HRE next. Milan is going to be a major problem until I can field some Dismounted Feudal Knights to deal with the Italian Spearmen. Oh I should mention I took both Brussels and Antwerp and converted Antwerp to a castle, which is on the brink of being upgraded to a fortress. Once that happens, HRE better watch out cuz baby this is an antichrist king of England with no cares who he takes on lol. Should mention this is in vanilla.

[FountainGuard]

Probably the funnest campaign for me was the first campaign I ever did, Rhun, in Third Age Total War. Actually it might've been my second, if that's the case then England was my first. But anyway, I think it was mainly because it was the first campaign I ever played, and Rhun is a pretty easy faction so it made it fun. And then England is probably the second most fun in my opinion, because it was my first campaign on M2TW, and like Rhun, is pretty easy, comparatively speaking.

[Steward Denethor II]

Not sure if this is my absolute funnest but I remember doing a Byzantine campaign in Vanilla in which I restored the Eastern Roman Empire. Then the Mongols came, but they went North. Probably because it was on E/E. It was fun because it was my first really succesful Campaign in any TW game.

Another great one was when I still didnt really understand the game and how important it is to build structures and stay advanced but I did really well for a while. I was Spain and I was extremely aggressive, attacking the Moors & Portugal & The Holy Land. I had North Africa, Iberia, Egypt and Jeruselum under my thumb. Then I made the mistake of attacking Milan because the Pope excommunicated them. The French didn't appreciate my trespassing and they attacked my Northern border. The Milanese stacks fought hard and weakened my offence so much that they eventually repelled it with reinforcements. The Holy Land was attacked mercilessly by angry Egyptians. The riots didnt help. But the worst thing that happened was Cordoba rebellling against my low infastructure and high taking government. They got a FULL STACK. The Mongols destroyed my chance of going farther east and my Empire started crumbling. Cordoba made my money, and without it there was little I could do, or at least with my limited skills at the time, because I went 6000 into the red. I saw that I had made so many mistakes that I gave up. I so much wish that I still had the save.

[Maxattack76]

One of my funnest was the Holy Roman Empire, in vanilla. It was my fourth or fifth serious attempt to 'rule the world.' I didn't end up doing that, my soldiers got a little fidgety being lead into defeat after defeat, but it was still a great experience.

[Aeratus]

Scotland in Britannia campaign for me. I liked the feel and environment.

[Wumbologist]

Anything that include the milan attacking my capital with crossbowmen after I allied them.

[IronEagle79]

I would have to say that my current campaign is the funnest I've played too date as well.

The Mod: Expanded Americas
Faction: Papal States

This is not my first time playing either the mod or the faction so I decided to try things a little differently. Instead of the usual expansion into rebel territories I immediately launched the first full stack I could muster at Constantinople, and since it was too early in the game not even I could convince the pope to crusade. From there on I decided that this campaign would be about capturing the historical five Patriarchal sees, I already had Rome and now Constantinople. I'm up to three currently with sacking of Jerusalem, and my allies The Principality of Antioch and The Kingdom of Jerusalem(based out of Cairo, ha) hold Antioch and Alexandria respectively.

Not sure where to go from here though, perhaps war with my allies so I can control the five holiest cities in the early Catholic church. Or perhaps go to america or the UK and really spread my self thin. It's certainly interesting playing with pockets of territory all over the map, instead of a more congruous expansion.

[lolIsuck]

My first SS campaign, instead of taking it easy I immediately picked Venice on VH/VH with the most agressive and treacherous AI. I was just chilling and expanding slowly into rebel territory when within a few turns (turn 25-30) I got attacked by Sicily, Byzantines, HRE, Hungary, Genoa and the Pope. At some point I had both my cities besieged by superior stacks and 2 60 year old generals as my only family members, the only campaign I almost got completely destroyed. I had lost Ragusa and Bari fairly soon to Byzzies and the pope, my doge, over 50 already, was put on a boat to Crete to save the line. Fortunately I survived both seiges on Venice and Zagreb, which have both been beseiged at least 10 to 15 times in little over 50 turns and I have over 50 victories, almost 1 per turn. I was lucky to get a new general who later became doge, Morosino, he's now the Conqueror even though he has never left Venice. The big problem this campaign was that I had no money and because of the constant seiges I couldn't even build, retrain or recruit anything.
When there was a little break on the attacks on Venice I launched a counterattack and sacked both Bologna and Pisa, what was left of the army got destroyed in one of them. (had to keep them there, big stacks everywhere). After this stuff went better and I expanded in the Aegean, taking Rhodes, sacking Smyrna and trying some stuff in Greece.

I even posted that map in the who am I thread, on one got it right I believe.

[Aetees]

Decided to conquer the world the first time I played, using England naturally since it is home sweet home. It actually went really well on the military front, one huge (for the early game) battle outside Paris more or less put France out of it. Denmark kept attacking me with armies of about 100 men at a time and eventually I got tired of it and destroyed them piece meal. Spain attacked me so I conquered them. This did make the pope quite angry so even though I did most of his quests and never attacked a catholic faction before they attacked me (except for France and Scotland, got to expand somewhere after all) I spent most of the game excommunicated until I decided to just take Rome, kill him and elect my own pet papa. Even that didn't work so I had to keep killing and replacing them to keep in the good books (fortunately I had a super majority on the council of Cardinals due to having wiped out most of the other Christian factions).

Eventually I had an empire over all of western and most of eastern Europe, a few Hungarians held Hungry and a bit of Greece; I also had Africa and all the port cities of the holly land. Only thing left were Mongols in the holly land (who I didn't have the numbers to push back but who had no chance of taking my cities despite many atempts) and Timurids in the North who were threatening most of eastern Europe. I never tried landing in Anatolia is god knows what was going on there. Unfortunately with these hordes of horsemen my crappy old laptop was having trouble and I got tired of jerky battles taking two hours when it should take twenty minutes so I quit. Still the most successful game I ever played on Med 2 though.

[Janisssary]

Russians against mongols my cossacks and halderdiers crush them

[rileyplays]

I was playing as France and I was at war with the English and then they asked for a ceasefire and I took London and Nottingham in the Diplomacy it was funny as heck.