How to Conquer 50 provinces in 50 turns.

[EmperorJulian]

So after reading yet another post about how some of the more elite members of this community have beaten M2TW before 1150 AD (one year per turn) rolls around, I'm really curious to find out exactly how this is done. I've been playing on Hard/Hard or Medium/Hard and in my last two campaigns I was able to secure a grand total of 10 provinces in 60 turns (in one case) and 10 provinces in 50 turns (in another case). While I may be no wizard on the campaign map, I simply can't see ANY way to take so many settlements in so little time. In effect a person would have to be laying siege to a city (and taking a city) every turn.

I'm not one for blitzing as it is, but with my campaigns as Turkey, Egypt, Portugal and Milan I never have enough men early enough to embark on such an ambitious scheme for conquest. How exactly does one protect their shores, garrison their cities, defend against invasion from other directions, and field enough armies to make it all work? To say nothing of funding such adventures either. Am I just missing something in the blitz technique department? I'm very curious to hear just exactly how this is done.

[Arceus]

i agree, i just don't see how its possible, and im a total war expert,since i have played all total war games

[Premaximum]

I don't find it enjoyable to blitz as that, but I figure the main thing would simply be not caring about your own borders. Blitz as fast as you can, take as many settlements as possible, and move on quickly. A lot of extermination, try to take out other factions before they can build up a defense.

Kind of defeats the point, in my opinion, but I'm sure it's not too difficult. I, personally, have yet to beat a campaign...I'd rather play the game slowly.

[EmperorJulian]

Well I like to take things slowly, but it amazes me how quickly some people get things done. I guess you have to essentially denude your cities of troops and hope no one decides to attack, or if they do to accept the losses until later. I guess being a tactical genius would help, i.e. using Peasants to defeat Chivalric Knights. On the other hand the suicidal AI makes me very weary of leaving ANY of my frontiers even moderately undefended.

I've read many of the strategies over at the org and they're pretty good, but I haven't really seen any regarding how to, as I said, blitz to a crazy degree, perhaps only a few players actually go through all that? I don't see the appeal of bring the whole map under my control either. I find it frustrating that factions INSIST on being destroyed, I find it removes the variety from the game. Oh well, just wondering over here how the masters do it, might be an interesting if somewhat contradictory strategy to employ.

[badapple]

So you want to blitz the game eh? Well after playing all the total war games for more than two thousand hours I think I can give you a few points.
1) Don't waste your money on fleets. They cost too much to maintain and you can get just about anywhere in Europe without them.
2) Don't waste your money upgrading cities. Upgrade only two or three castles and pump out all your combat units from them.
3) Hold your cities with as few units as possible. Never worry about defending a city if you lose it all the better because you can sack it again.
4) Attack constantly and in the same turn you capture a city move most of your army out and go after the next fort or city.
5) Don't overbuild your armies. With three good generals and armies you should be able to capture most of Europe. Remember quality always beats greater numbers.
6) When experienced units suffer loses build them back up using the same type of other experienced units.
7) Protect your generals and only have them attack routed units to gain experience.
8) Never Never Never give any money to another faction. It will make you weaker and them stronger. Feel free to ask for money from them.

There are other points that when I think of them I will add later. For myself the game is far too easy even on VH/VH and I wait for a mod that will make it much harder.

[DSword]

OR

you can use auto_win and destroy every living creature in Europe with 5 units

[Sitarus Originalus PM-30+]

my last game as HRE i won in 66 turns on VH/VH ...

sure i blitz... it is not really a secret anyway.

1) listen to what badapple said (post #5), cos he is right
2) dont be afraid of the Pope! (being excomunicated only helps you spreading cross the world) =)
3) use spies to open gates so you dont waste turns on seaging cities
4) dont trust any faction... after they see you growing fast, even your allies will try to stop you!
5) if you have money and you need army... buy mercinaries!
6) when attacking faction and you wish to destroy it fast i suggest that you take castles first so you can make bigger and better armies in his lands. Anemy faction will have less units to fight you that way as well and you will have little problem with them.

will ad more when i think of it =)

[EmperorJulian]

I'm not really wanting to blitz the map myself, just to understand how these people do what they do, blitzing IS, I should think a great strategy if your in a position like Russia, Poland, The Sultanate of Iconium or Egypt as your surrounded by a great many rebel regions. Thing is factions often start out with an initial troop strength that can not be replaced immediately. And Rebel settlements often come with armies that are, at least in the beginning difficult to deal with.

One of the reasons my expansion as The Fatamids was held up was my need to produce better units that would be capable of taking down Edessa or Damascus or Jerusalem. Jihads help but a person still needs money to keep things going. It is possible to starve out stronger garrisons and destroy them, like say with Horse Archers at Baghdad, but that could mean waiting 6 or 7 turns and certainly if you've got less than 60 turns to take 50 provinces that's not going to cut it.

The points made on avoiding overbuilding, small to non existent garrisons, and keeping Generals safe all seem pretty logical to me. I find the game to be pretty difficult myself, and I never play on Very Hard as it simply doesn't fit with my style of diplomacy and conquest. Also I don't really care much about it being challenging, I'm more interested in teching up cities and units and economic domination. That said, it does still puzzle me about how the inevitable losses of territory are made up. Rebel armies may not be very aggressive but they wont hesitate to beat down a lone peasant unit guarding a city.

Furthermore I take significant casualties in any siege that doesn't involve me starving out the garrison. taking the walls can be a brutal prospect and typically 20% losses or more can be expected, at least for me. I simply can't maintain the strength of an army such that it can take one city, then another in succession, especially without troop replacement. And its not like in the early game one can buy tons of mercs either. I also have trouble seeing how 3 field armies could take over Europe. I've "lost" a number of campaigns in which my lands were invaded by 5-6 elite full stack AI armies from every direction. I suppose the entire method of blitzing would be geared towards preventing those situations from cropping up at all by eliminating all opposition immediately.

It's fascinating stuff, I just wish I understood the mechanics a bit better, well thanks for the replies.

[Leatherpenguin]

This was my first campaign ever playing this game (VH/H). Didn't even try to complete it fast in any way. The only thing it comes to though, is to move fast and attack with whatever you got, and then you rely on the craptacular AI to win. A full stack town milita with a decent general in the hands of the player can beat almost anything the AI throws at you that early in the game. Later, you can move on to better units and just move them in half stacks.

Edit, just read previous post: Avoiding being invaded isn't actually that good of an idea if you want to blitz. I found the strategy of defending and counter attacking very effective here as HRE. At one time, I got excommed and was attacked by Denmark, France, Poland and Sicily. I defeated them on my turns and then swooped in and took their near empty cities with ease.

[Sher Khan]

The real trick, highlighted above, is to play a faction that is in the thick mass of territories known as Europe proper.

You won't have an easy time blitzing as the Russians or the Egyptians unless you get yourself into the Rhinelands and Western Europe. All those provinces are in walking distance from each other and will enable you to literally siege another city right after sacking the last one.

I, for one, really want to see as many vaiance in provinces for the East and Northeast, but hey, European game for the Europeans, lol.

[EmperorJulian]

You make some good points Sher Khan, both in the taking of small, densely packed provinces and the relatively paltry territories available East of Asia Minor. The map certainly could stand to have an extension to the east, in my mind anyway.

That said I can see why blitzing as Russia, or in the East would be tough. The walk from Yerevan to Trebizond to Nicaea is a long one. And getting from Sarkel to Vilnius is no small walk either. it looks like, at least from what I'm hearing the best blitz factions would be those clustered around the mid-map region and wtih a good cluster of starting territories (like France or the HRE) or a high degree of safety (like England in the British Isles). It certainly seems blitzing is also much more doable when one has a good starting economy already in the bank.

This would mean that the factions I usually take, Milan, Portugal, Hungary etc are, for various reasons, probably not as well suited to the blitz mentality then factions further to the west or more centrally located or with more starting provinces and armies. Hungary can field a large force right away, but it's a long walk from Budapest to Bran, or from Bran to Constantinople and one can expend 5 or 6 turns just getting to the target and laying siege. To say nothing of taking the walls with few casualties. It also seems prudent to start out where the existing rebel provinces are lightly garrisoned and are thus easy prey (i.e. not Jerusalem). Am I getting this right so far?

My main interest in blitzing applies mainly to the early game, and to factions that MUST blitz to survive in the early goings. I'd much rather have a wide variety of surviving factions than a map covered in my standards alone. Anyway, very interesting stuff, hopefully this will help me have more competitive campaigns as time goes on. Cheers!

[Sitarus Originalus PM-30+]

EmperorJulian - Milan is good for blitzing... it has same strenghts as HRE and France ... and in start good misile units on start are just great to defeat others early armies.
and yes... blitzing as Hungary and Russia would probably be hard...

[EmperorJulian]

Well, as Milan (a faction I like) wouldn't it stand to reason that at the start, if I send off all my units to take say, Venice, and then head down to attack Bologna and then Naples that I will lose Milan, Genoa, Florence etc. to the Inevitable counter-attacks from the factions I rushed? I'm still fuzzy on how you defend those positions or make up their losses in blitz mode, since Milan is in a very central position and quite exposed to attack from all directions.

I guess at this point I'm just not understanding how one avoids losing all of their starting provinces while they're blitzing with a faction that has only two regions to start with. Cheers!

[Lmagus]

I like playing slowly, blitzing takes all the fun out.

[Ippius]

I agree, blitzing does take the fun out but winning the game in such a short time is such an achievement. Of course it helps playing as a central European race ie. HRE or Milan.

[Commander_Vimes]

I prefer lengthy campaigns and battles and i do enjoy economic domination, blitzing seems to be alright if u want to win as quickly as possible but then you will probaly miss things like gunpowder , aztecs and such so not for me

[jaklei]

Haha!
You've forgotten the golden rule of total war games since ROME.
The CA suck at AI programming. (Or they are just not fond of details)

dont read if you do not want to know this... its... very dissheartening

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The ai retracts all (Every single one) sieges (sometimes the blockades aswell, if it is a port city) if you besiege them, no matter how small your army could be.

And they take their time to attack again

[heimdhal]

Im not sure if its the settings, game type, or some random generator within the game that dictates things. but 1) never once has any AI faction rectracted ALL sieges when i have besidged one( or any number for that matter) of their settlements
2) considering the AI in this game is basically still broken, people base their entire game play on using the dumb ai to win at crazy uneven battles, which is basically exploiting the game and not playing a challenge.
3) to the OP, people lie and people cheat, not everyone that finishes the game in 50 turns and says "hey, i did this on Vh/Vh and walked through the game" neccesarily did that on VH/VH or without using auto-win on every battle. Even screen shots dont really back up claims. Just like the one guy on totalwar.com forum who keeps showing screenies of him holding ever region at turn 200 with some 500,000k in the bank and boasting its cause hes good.
4) blitzing is cool if your are challenging your self to take the game in a certain amount of time, thats what single player RTS is, all about challenging youself. However, the game was not designed that way and not even the AI really goes on a blitz spree, thus its not programmed to handle them very well. I've seen people in one post show they've blitzed the whole of europe in 80 turns, and then in another complain that at turn 170 they are loosing everything and have no money.

Basically taking 50 settlements and dominating the game requires mad blizting that others have explain to do, relying on a broken AI to NOT counter attack your settlements as long as you are puttin the hurt on them and exploiting and/or cheating.

[EmperorJulian]

So blitzing seems to be learning all about the AI's inadequacies and then exploiting them to the fullest. Honestly I've never won a campaign in RTW or M2TW. I did back with the original Medieval Total War, mainly with Sicily and Aragon but that was quite a while ago. I'm just not real good at expertly managing cities and armies. I tend to lose money and more often than not in M2TW I do "Lose" by not having enough advanced armies, enough money, or the capacity to repel 5-6 elite AI armies when they do decide to attack.

I've often lamented my inability to win campaigns when I almost never lose in the field. It all comes down to management, which I'm not very good at, but apparently others are. I'm looking at the blitz aspect simply from the fact that I need to find a strategy that doesn't result in my being overwhelmed 100 turns in by a 6 faction attack on my lands. And, ironically the factions that blitzing would help the most seem to be those least suited towards it, that is the Turks, Russia, Hungary etc.

I find it all pretty enlightening though, I may as yet achieve victory. Though I'm not sure how exactly one takes a full stack of town militia and wins any battles against anyone. I suppose that's a question for another day, cheers!