'always happens' or 'never happens'?

[Rupertel]

hey, hope nobody has started a thread about this.

have you noticed, as i do, that in most of the campaigns, things tend to go the same direction? for example the danes and miland raping the HRE? turks getting vassals of byzantines, only to get destroyed by mongols? portugal going to war with france and taking bordeaux?

is it only me or is there anything behind france being to :wub: stupid to hold paris? jesus, as HRE i took paris and dijon from the milanese, gave them to france, 10 turns later, they had lost it to the english, who by the way NEVER EVER seem to lose caen....

i somehow miss the randomness of MTW when it comes to producing powerhouses - strangely, it's always the danes or milan who come out on top... and everything that happens in the east until the mongolsarrive is just not important, as the mongols crush any nation in that area anyways...
i feel like that could get boring some time soon

[dearmad]

Milanese bought it bigtime and early in my h/h campaign.

Sicily is tough now.

Scots kicked England out of... England entirely....

HRE is strong, but maybe overextended.

Egypt kicked Turkey's butt...

So, I had a very different experience from yours.

And, playing as Hungary, and the recently proud possessor of Constantinople, I resent your last remark about the Mongols owning all of us. I will hold the Bosporus, and save all you piddly Europeans from the big boogy man, don't you worry.

[Oracle]

hmm, in my English campaign the dominant forces are: Portugal, the Danes, Venice and the Timurides. I guess it's cos they got some of the best units around and are in a good defensive position to start off with.

[(insert clever name here)]

Yea in my Portugese Campaign before I quit it about 80 turns in, Venice, France,Poland, and Egypt, and the Byzantines were the Main powers.

[lawngnome]

For me it's been anything but predictable....

In my French campaign the two other world powers were... Poland and Portugal?!?!! Yeah, that's right, the Portuguese kicked Spain's ass and then almost completely conquered northern Africa before we went to war.... Poland annihilated the Russians and Hungarians and controlled the whole east, essentially...

In my Danish campaign the English got their asses stomped by France/Scotland and were elminated by 1120 (1yr/turn) and the two world powers were Milan AND Venice?!?! The two were at war, but somehow managed to both become powerhouses. Milan extended into France and Iberia while Venice took Hungary/Greece...

In my Turkish campaign it was the Byzantines and the HRE... the Germans kicked some Danish arse and controlled the far north and central Europe while the Byzantines migrated westward with my aid. I pushed them out of Constantinople eventually, but the just displaced and eliminated Venice, so now they hold most of Italy and the Balkans... comforts me that a 'defeated' faction resurges like that, as I only left them with Greece after a long war (in which they nearly got the best of me)...

[freekyjason]

in my former hre campaign, i lasted about 80 turns before i started again. that one was m/m, this one is vh/vh

first campaign, milan got killed early, but they kept upsetting me , but everyone else was still alive. england and france were at war, but all the catholic nations were allied with me.

this campaign however, spain has killed portugal and started war with the english. england have attacked france and scotland and a nice war is brewing there, only now they have the spanish out to get them too

france pecked at me, but has since abided by a ceasefire. venice hasnt stirred and the byznatines are starting to encroach.

this one is shaping up to a beauty

[Shaio]

in my current campaign the byzantiens had both thr hungarians and turks on the ropes, till i came along and took away there military supperiority... and then the turks managed to take constantinople with a jihad.. it took 3 crusader armies before they were dislodged.

now byzantines are pretty much finished i dunno what the turks are up to.. last a checked thy had a jihad on iconium. wich is still in byzantian hands. i dunno what othr palces the byzantines still have.. but they have antioch still so maybe there not quite as screwed as i think.. but as iv turned my forces against them they wont last long... i just hope moingols wont turn up to inerupt my little war.

[SPARTAN VI]

Nope, in my buddy's French campaign, HRE seems to be kicking ass.

In my HRE campaign, Milan and Venice kept up the pressure. Lost Vienna to Venice today with a sudden attack by their crusading army. Just after a successful crusade, Venice still had their crusaders in Italy.. and my crusaders way down in Israel.

Wiped out Milan in a glorious 1500 HRE vs 4000 Milanese (mostly crossbowmen). He sallied out with a small garrison (what was left of a 9 turn siege) and about 3000 reinforcements. I got to defend a hilltop that had to be steeper than 45 degrees! Sicily was taken out early, don't know who did it.

[Chiron202]

i've played quite a few campaigns, because i'm a college student with waaay to much time on his hands, and what was descibed in the first post was like a weird deja-vu experience. Denmark is always powerful, (absurdly powerful i might add), Caen is always english (yes the scots and england go back and forth on sucess, but still france never takes caen.) Portugal gets southern france, milan smashes HRE and france, Hungary is huge, etc. The only difference is that in every game i've played, the turks have gone the way of the dinosaurs in about 40-50 turns. I've taken to using toggle_fow to see what the heck is going on.

Also i've tried giving vast sums of money to factions getting kicked around, like 100,000+ florins. I have no idea if this helps. (Use add_money 40000 to get that kind of money)

[Rupertel]

heh, so maybe it has to do with us being college students?

[Reiver]

I've played 3 campaigns so far (i'm turn in 90 in my 3rd, as the Scots) and in each one France has been wiped out before turn 100, never by me.

Portugal also go quite early and Spain has always managed to take the whole of the Iberian and move up into south of France.

The Danes seem to always expand South quite rapidly but get held up by the HRE and end up moving west the north of France driving out the English.

The Milanese seem to expand north and west. I think in my Venice campaign the hundred turn war I fought with them neutered them a bit as they didn't expand as far as they did in my other campaigns.

So far every campaign has seen the HRE battered from all sides yet i've never seen it destroyed. It always seems to shrink to 2-3 provinces and thn hold its own.

To the East i've not seen any real patterns due to the random appearance of the Mongols affecting the factions there. For example my Venettian campaign saw the Hunagrians trampled under their hooves. Now, in my Scots campaign, the Hungarians are eating into the Byzantine empire and have just taken Constantinople.

England seem to be driven back to Britain and then stay there with big armies.

Powerhouses:Always the Danes and Spanish every other time has been variable.

Edit: I did love the random way the power shifted in MTW. I still have fond memories of an English campaign where the Pope went power crazy and conquered all of Italy, Spain and south of France. Excommunicating everyone who tried to fight him. Weird!

[Garnier]

So far Ive seen denmark and milan as the powerhouses every time, also poland seems to do well also. when i play as france I try to kill milan VERY FAST by sending a crusade and using it to take genoa, then milan.

[Rosacrux redux]

I've only played three (all inconclusive, of course) campaigns, two as Byzantium and one as Spain. My findings:

- The factions that were wiped out in all three campaigns: France, HRE, Turks, Portugese.
- The faction that always becomes top dog: Denmark (they are vikings on steroids, methinks...)
- The factions that 2/3 get wiped out: Milan, Egypt, Poland
- Milan or Spain or Sicily (the three factions bordering the English in the respective campaigns) or the French (that start out) NEVER take Caen
- Sicily is always there, and even became #1 contestant in my latest Byz campaign
- Hungary is VERY strong. If the player has Byz, they are stemmed to the south, but continue building up in the north, east and west. In my last campaign they share the continent with Denmark, Sicily and Spain (and a marginal Russia).
- England in 2/3 got relatively strong but not much, in the last campaign they ended up with Caen only, while the Scots had the isles for their own.

So, I think M2TW is not nearly as random as MTW... this super-Denmark is quite annoying I might say...

[the_mango55]

The Poles always seem to reach crusade objectives first, and thus have high papal standing and huge numbers of cardinals.

At one point in my portugal campaign, the pope died and there was one french cardinal canditate, one of my 2 cardinals was a candidate, and one of poland's 7!! cardinals was a canditate. No other nation even had one.

[Mikelus Trento]

The Poles always seem to reach crusade objectives first, and thus have high papal standing and huge numbers of cardinals.

At one point in my portugal campaign, the pope died and there was one french cardinal canditate, one of my 2 cardinals was a candidate, and one of poland's 7!! cardinals was a canditate. No other nation even had one.

So who won the election?

[Preskinn]

Ok. after playing on both VH/VH and H/H with Denmark, England (two times), Scotland (two times), I have seen this happen:

Milan - Allways Strong as hell. (one time they were kicked out by Sicilians)

Danes - THEY NEVER LOOSE! They are allways owning every body.

France - They Allways die or get very very small.

England - They seem to focus on the mainland rather than England itself, (playing as scotland, i took iverness and ireland before going down into england... they had not taken any settlement, and had a very small army)

Portugal - The expand north it seems, but in my games they are most of the time allied with Spain.

Spain - Once they posed a "threat"

HRE - Allways get killed down to 2-4 settlements, never see much of them.

Poland - They seem to own alot sometimes, and sometimes not...

Hungary - They allways report as one of the strongest factions.

Russia - In one game they went all the way down to poland, but then they were pushed all the way home again by our beloved (suuuper overpowerd) danes.

[Scazar]

I'm still in the midsts of my first campaign as the English. Currently I've taken all of England, Ireland, France, and I've started to take some of Spain. France and Portugal were both out with 100 turns. The Danes, Milan, Venice, and Poland all ganged up on HRE until they were down to about 3 Castles. Since they had been my ally (the only ally to help me at all and not attack me) up to that point I helped them out a bit. I sent 2 of my Full Stacks over to fight the Danes for them, take the cities HRE had lost to the Danes, then give them back to the HRE plus taking the Danish Capital and in the process pretty much crippling the danes. (Plus it got my Generals some stars, and my troops some chevrons) I've kept Milan in check myself by controlling all of france. The Russians were completely owned by the Mongols.

[pmpt]

The Poles always seem to reach crusade objectives first, and thus have high papal standing and huge numbers of cardinals.

I always suggest the Pope start a crusade. That way I can determine where and when they'll be. Plus it helps me keep in good standings with the Pope, that way anyone that attacks me will get excommunicated.

[d.noronha]

a little advice,the danes in my campaigns used to be obnoxiously powerhouses so i decided to take matters in to my own hands!
i kind of hated doing this.i went i made the polish,french,rus(i was HRE)hate the danish guts.they still managed to expand to northern france but not a powerhouse anymore

[jimbob]

The only thing that seems consistant is the HRE gets smashed into pieces and the Danes are overpowered.