Peasant Challenge - Video series and discussion

[totalwar_legend]

Hey Everyone,

I've finally sorted through the majority of the mountain of footage from the Peasant Challenge I took on in February and have uploaded the first episode to youtube. I wasn't going to release it yet, but I've been getting so many messages that I though it was time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCLjAMEGo4k

I've still got 10 more episodes of my Blitz Campaign to edit and then I'll be working more on this series. I'd like to keep this an open discussion about peasant strategies, and even hear feedback on where you think I could have done better. This was by no means a perfect campaign. I lost over 100 battles by the end of it. Many were simply times that I withdrew after being attacked, as that counts as a loss.

Also, let me know if you intend to give the challenge a go. Although I'd have to admit the campaign was extremely painful to do, I don't really want to be the only person to ever attempt it.

In this first episode I get my economy going and start building my peasant armies. The Byzantines declare war on me and I take the fight to them.

[totalwar_legend]

Part 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYjdxbjaP1g

Peasants are only useful in a swarm. Otherwise they break. I put this to use against Byzantine horse archers.

[PrestigeX]

"Trow anoder Shrimp on da Barbie Mate, cuz we're going to England!" -- just kidding.

Seriously though, that is one outlandish accent you've got there. Despite the claim about Muslim Peasants being 'lowest' -- I have my doubts -- I think because they are "knife men" they have an animation that is better / more effective than the 2-hander pitchfork peasants. I'd wager that they get far more hits on enemy with their knifes than the 2-hander does.

Top notch job with video editing and showing the tactics / battles.

[totalwar_legend]

"Trow anoder Shrimp on da Barbie Mate, cuz we're going to England!" -- just kidding.

Seriously though, that is one outlandish accent you've got there. Despite the claim about Muslim Peasants being 'lowest' -- I have my doubts -- I think because they are "knife men" they have an animation that is better / more effective than the 2-hander pitchfork peasants. I'd wager that they get far more hits on enemy with their knifes than the 2-hander does.

Top notch job with video editing and showing the tactics / battles.

All accents are outlandish to someone. I just hope you can understand what I'm saying.

It is an interesting point about which kind of peasant is the worst, and was something I researched before attempting this challenge. Although the knife wielders are a bit faster than the pitchfork type their attack and defence stats are so much lower that the bonus is lost. The real challenge in this campaign was dealing with cavalry - and knife-wielding peasants are far worse at delivering a blow than a pitchfork-wielding one. Many things to weigh up, but I stand by the claim that Muslim peasants are by far the worst. In addition to that, I found the Egyptian initial position to be terrible in that the crusades and mongols posed almost immediate threats to any expansion. Taking control of scotland, for example, would not have had such difficulties.

Thanks for contributing to the discussion.

[Highlander of Scotland]

but as scotland you dont start with a castle, so you have to convert edinburgh.

[totalwar_legend]

but as scotland you dont start with a castle, so you have to convert edinburgh.

I had to convert Alexandria too. Inverness isn't that far away and doesn't take a huge force to take it. Also, once you've got the British Isles you're pretty much safe. Also, scottish peasants have above normal morale, which is the most important stat for infantry, in addition to better attack and defence. You could conquer cities with less peasants than muslims ones. I still stand by Egypt as being the hardest. Maybe the early game would be slightly harder, but the end game would be much easier. The middle to end of campaign is where it got really hard for me.

If you'd like to put it to the test then give Egypt a go and see how hard it is. However, at this stage I am not doing this campaign ever again. This stole about a month from my life.

[Highlander of Scotland]

I had to convert Alexandria too. Inverness isn't that far away and doesn't take a huge force to take it. Also, once you've got the British Isles you're pretty much safe. Also, scottish peasants have above normal morale, which is the most important stat for infantry, in addition to better attack and defence. You could conquer cities with less peasants than muslims ones. I still stand by Egypt as being the hardest. Maybe the early game would be slightly harder, but the end game would be much easier. The middle to end of campaign is where it got really hard for me.

If you'd like to put it to the test then give Egypt a go and see how hard it is. However, at this stage I am not doing this campaign ever again. This stole about a month from my life.

yep just pointing that out, seeing as u have no army england could take you very quickly.

[Vipman]

So what... that would be just a minor delay of a few turns. The start would be a bit hard, until you destroy england, then it'll be rather easy.

Edit: ninja'd I started writing this some minutes ago but I switched to viewing other threads

[totalwar_legend]

Ok, I've given it a bit of a go with scotland. I will concede that it is probably the same difficulty as Egypt. I was able to establish myself with Inverness, Edinburgh, Dublin, Caenarvon, within about 30 turns and not really trying to be too efficient. The highland rabble handle a lot better than middle eastern peasants, that's for sure. The two factions have completely different strengths and weaknesses which make it hard to assess exactly which is harder. If anyone was to match my time with Scotland I would accept that as my equal or better.

[Dr. Conquest]

Ok, I've given it a bit of a go with scotland. I will concede that it is probably the same difficulty as Egypt. I was able to establish myself with Inverness, Edinburgh, Dublin, Caenarvon, within about 30 turns and not really trying to be too efficient. The highland rabble handle a lot better than middle eastern peasants, that's for sure. The two factions have completely different strengths and weaknesses which make it hard to assess exactly which is harder. If anyone was to match my time with Scotland I would accept that as my equal or better.

This discussion has been interesting to follow and I thought I'd give the start of the Scotland peasant campaign a go. I won't have time to play through the whole thing so I'm stopping where I'm at for now. I played by the same rules and not all battles were successful the first time they were fought. I didn't use any exploits, but this is simply because it never came up. My economy is stable thanks to numerous missions from the council that kept rewarding me with florins for taking settlements, athough I started to dip towards the red pretty severely at one point. I ended up with five generals for a while, who all spawned from the family tree. Their upkeep was an unnecessary drain on my resources. By turn 25 I had Edinburgh, Inverness, York, Dublin and Caernarvon and find myself in a decent postion to start ejecting the English from the British Isles should I choose to continue. I consider taking York something of a bonus. While the diversion to capture it delayed my progress towards Dublin, I was able to take advantage of England's failure to lay claim to it already, which meant it was still rebel controlled by the time I had built up some usable forces.

Start of turn 2. First end of turn report. All existing troops have had to be disbanded. Generals and agents have been sent to an isolated fort. Edinburgh is being converted into a castle.


Start of turn 16. Took Inverness in a sally battle. Had to wait this long to pool and recruit my first army of Highland Rabble.



Start of turn 20. Took advantage of England's failure to secure York. I had enough numerical superiority to where I could directly assault the village. Surround and destroy.


Start of turn 24. Sailed a mix of new and retrained troops down to Dublin. Captured it in another sally battle.


Start of turn 25. The army from Dublin take Caernarvon in the next turn when the enemy sally forth once again.

[totalwar_legend]

Well done. You might be able to actually complete the campaign. Scotland is certainly harder than the Byzantines.

[Dr. Conquest]

Well done. You might be able to actually complete the campaign. Scotland is certainly harder than the Byzantines.

Thanks. I still have the savegame, so I may pick it up again down the road.

I recently started a regular hotseat campaign with a buddy. Coincedentally, I am playing as Egypt. I haven't dabbled extensively in that arena before, so it's interesting to see the comparison. I would have to agree that Egypt are probably more difficult to play a peasant campaign with than Scotland. Firstly, Highland Rabble fight better than Egyptian Peasants. Second, all the rebel settlements in the south east corner of the map are much more heavily fortified than those in northern Europe, and more spread out. Having a castle at the very start does very little to offset this situation.

[totalwar_legend]

Thanks. I still have the savegame, so I may pick it up again down the road.

I recently started a regular hotseat campaign with a buddy. Coincedentally, I am playing as Egypt. I haven't dabbled extensively in that arena before, so it's interesting to see the comparison. I would have to agree that Egypt are probably more difficult to play a peasant campaign with than Scotland. Firstly, Highland Rabble fight better than Egyptian Peasants. Second, all the rebel settlements in the south east corner of the map are much more heavily fortified than those in northern Europe, and more spread out. Having a castle at the very start does very little to offset this situation.

Exactly. But the difference between Scotland and Egypt isn't that much.

[PrestigeX]

Hadn't considered the point about regular Pitchfork peasants being slightly better against Cav -- wasn't aware they had any advantage in that sense. As for the Highland Rabble - they are a very good unit considering.

It will be very interesting to see how you will deal with the Mongol situation - My guess is that it will involve some intricate alley way battles in cities.

[Highlander of Scotland]

yep but once u fight em they can counter. Also ur economicy sucks basically i reckon it is the hardest campaign on total war. seeing as you can not attack england unless you improve your economicy

[totalwar_legend]

I didn't seem to have much trouble with them. It's a good thing when they send their armies against your castles. With some good tactics you can wipe them out without much loss. Their economy is not that bad. Like I said, I managed to expand at about the same rate as with Egypt. With Scotland you only need to worry about England. With Egypt everyone attacks you constantly.

[Highlander of Scotland]

yes but by the time you take out the spanish or portugese invasions, the danish invasions and the english you will be far into the campaign. A stack of peasants cant defeat an english stack if it has even the basic longbows and cav.

[Highlander of Scotland]

equally the mongols would be established by the time you face em

[totalwar_legend]

and with Egypt they establish themselves on top of you.

The mongols are much easier to face later on than earlier. It's those mega condensed experienced stacks at the beginning that are the real worry.

[Vipman]

Oh indeed and as they have troops with 0 upkeep... Still, you would probably own half of europe or more when you near them so you'll just have to spam infinite peasants...

@totalwar_legend I was wondering, wouldn't Turks actually be harder than Egypt? It's true they have one more region but they're very poor, except Iconium but I had to turn it into a castle to defend against Byzantines... On turn 10 they attacked there. Besides being in debt now, 3 rebel units spawned then besieged and took Yerevan from me! I only had 1 peasant unit in it... I had to send peasants from Mosul to take it back, it delayed my attack on Baghdad... Now I'm sending units to take Nicosia before Byz recruits more units, pretty scared of those Vardariotai's...

I think when the mongols will spawn I'll be finished with Byzantium but exposed to Venice-Sicily-Hungary's attacks and in full war with Egypt that will be darn rich... Possible wars from every side... This won't be good...