[SS 6.4 / BYG V / No Mercy / No Cheating / VH / VH / the Most Difficult Campaign in TW] Great Lithuania

[Ostlich]

This first post will outline the technicalities of this campaign. The second post will outline a story for immersion.

My Past Experience with BYG V

I've played BYG V extensively as the Turks. In my third campaign as the Turks, by exploiting the Turkomans and the relative advantage of ME Bodyguards, I expanded as far as Urgench and Vienna. I recreated some combination of the Achaemenid and Ottoman empires. Then I experienced a sudden reversal, losing Baia and Kassa and Vienna and Zagreb to a combination of two Novgorodian stacks, two Polish stacks, two Holy Roman stacks, three Venetian stacks, and a Crusade declared on Antioch. I had to slowly withdraw to Adrianople and Constantinople. I couldn't levy enough manpower to create a field army that could retake Rumelia and Greece. I hired mercenaries to retake Antioch, and was relocating them to Constantinople when, midway, the Moors suddenly collapsed and a Portuguese stack took Tunis, and I had to divert the soldiers to Benghazi. My economy which was generating more than two hundred thousand per turn in gross, because of BYG V mechanisms, could barely turn out more than five thousand per turn in profit. My nobles alone were generating between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand in costs.

Then the Novgorodians captured Caffa and Tmutarakan from me, and Astrakhan and Sarkel from the Timurids. I had to raise 8 Turkish Archers and 4 Naffatuns in Sinop, Kutaisi, Tbilisi, and Baku, to bolster the garrisons that until then were only expected to deal with the Cumans and the Timurid remnants. My economy could only break even, and the Russians were advancing on Urgench. I slowly disbanded all my mercenaries, and could only just raise a garrison in Urgench.

The next Crusade came for Jerusalem, and I could only just recapture Jerusalem from the Holy Romans by dismantling enough buildings in my interior to raise several mercenary armies for two turns, one from Adana, one from Nicosia, one from Alexandria, and one from Damascus, but the devastation was too much and now I was in debt. My nobles began to pay off the debt, but I had no more buildings to dismantle for the nextnext Crusade.

The nextnext Crusade came for Jerusalem, and I let it be captured. I gathered all my nobles that were governing the interiors to create a stack of heavy cavalry, and lay siege to Jerusalem until it sallied and was recaptured. I lost Edessa to a rebel halfstack. I retook Edessa by a siege of just three nobles, the governors of Aleppo, Edessa, and Diyarbakir.

I could only repeat this. I could not break the stalemate. I was in the position of the Ottomans in the 1900s, plus Egypt. I gave up.

Understanding the Difficulty of BYG V

In BYG V, expansion is crippling.

Recruitment in BYG V requires both money and manpower. Militia units and agents typically require [1] manpower, whereas elite units typically require [4] manpower. You can disband [1] manpower units to get back [1] manpower, [2] manpower units to get back [0.5] manpower, [3] manpower units to get back [0.75 manpower], and [4] manpower units to get back [1] manpower.

Every 12 turns, you can decide to levy [14], [24], [32], or [40] manpower, which is distributed throughout your settlements. So if you have 7 settlements, and you decide to levy [14] manpower, then each settlements gets [2] manpower. Levying [14] manpower costs 200 per settlement per turn for 12 turns. Levying [24] manpower costs 400 per settlement. Levying [32] manpower costs 800 per settlement. Levying [40] manpower costs 1600 per settlement. Practically speaking, this means you can only work with [14] or [24] manpower every 12 turns.

So, expansion is very difficult as a small faction and almost impossible as a larger faction, and your precious units are actually precious, and missions that give you units are extremely important. Your troops will be mostly militia, and your armies will be extremely varied in composition, while your enemies in BYG V will spam heavy cavalry and heavy infantry, (which is actually good for roleplaying late era Lithuania, b/c Lithuania never fully standardized to the same degree as other European armies.)

BYG V also nerfs player economy in many ways that I won't mention here. But once your settlement count reaches the double digits, you can expect to rack up unexpected costs in the order of tens of thousands and which don't show up in the treasury overview.

Also, only your Faction Leader or your two War Councillors can lead attacks in enemy territory, and you have no merchants.

Read the BYG V manual. It's pretty amazing how difficult it is.

Criticism of BYG V: BYG V overemphasizes battles b/c of how difficult the campaign is. The only way you can survive is to win victory after victory and with minimal casualties.

Allowances: I've decided to use the descr_mercenaries file in vanilla SS 6.4, and not the one in BYG V. I've also decided to use Permanent Watchtowers, which BYG does not recommend.

High Era Strategy: Seize Scandinavia before turn 84, and the British Isles before turn 132.

Late Era Strategy: Guard the river crossings at Hamburg and Southern England.

Endgame Strategy: ???

Overall Strategy: Bribe rebels in Lithuania for extra manpower, and keep Denmark, Norway, Teutonic Order, and Poland alive so that they can get Master Explorer and Theologians Guilds, which I will capture for extra economic and religious benefits.

Cons:

1. no friends, only enemies
2. get Crusades and Jihads
3. religion is isolated, public order in conquered lands is hard to keep
4. lands are poor
5. troops are mostly militia
6. late era

Pros:

1. AP troops that frighten_foot and will not rout
2. Serpentines

[NorseThing]

I will watch this. I was interested in the mod but kept away because of what you described.

[Swaeft]

This is interesting. As a fellow SS 6.4 player, I can say that when deciding which BGR to choose, I almost wanted to choose BGR 2 instead of BGR 4. I didn't like the unaccounted funds missing from my treasury (a real pain when you think you have 3k florins to build something as the Crusader States and next turn you're 3k florins...in the red), the "war councilor" feature (come on, if I'm the King I should be able to pick how many war councilors I want, plus war councilor-ship suddenly makes them amazing generals?), and many others that I won't go into detail here. I eventually picked it for roleplaying purposes and the added level of difficulty.

So to see you start an AAR with BGR 5...damn! Best of luck man, I know it's going to be a wild ride, you know it too, and I'm eager to see how you ride it out.

Putting your past experience with BGR V was helpful, as well as the understanding the difficulty of BGR V part. I don't think many people play with BGR, and this sort of explanations help them to grasp the difficulties we are coping with in the campaign.

Great start, good luck, and if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask

P.S. If you have some spare time on your hands, I would encourage you read these two posts: This one deals with the Writer's Study and this one deals with the basics of being a member of TWC.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

It's great to see you back with us, Ostlich! I'll look forward to your story.


(Swaeft, my friend, I think Ostlich knows what he's doing. He's posted two previous AARs. )

[Ostlich]

Update: I've conquered Scandinavia at turn 86. This wasn't as difficult as I hoped.

I'm thinking of turning this AAR into about the Cumans or the Persians or the Holy Roman Empire. I want to be in real danger of being crushed, no matter how cleverly I play. In the first case, everything is . In the second case, the starting conditions are b/c of one extremely overpowered enemy. In the third case, the starting conditions are b/c you're surrounded by enemies and are at war with the Pope.

https://imgur.com/a/2ki9dhe

So, as Lithuania, all you have to do is levy [24] MP, disband all your soldiers, and sneak your faction leader and other generals to the coastline at Riga, then sail for Visby and Turku. Then, trade two of your provinces with Denmark for Kalmar. This slows down Danish expansion into Nykoeping and Uppsala, so you have two provinces essentially for free in addition to Visby and Turku. The [24] MP is enough to hold the new provinces, but only just. You'll probably have to spend 12 or 24 turns developing them before launching an attack on Denmark proper. Then, all you have to do is hold off Novgorod at Turku, and the Holy Roman Empire at Arhus.

Lithuanian [1] MP units are actually very good. More so in the high era than in the late era.

I guess I need to find a faction whose [1] MP units can't carry the day.

[Swaeft]

(Swaeft, my friend, I think Ostlich knows what he's doing. He's posted two previous AARs. )

Update: I've conquered Scandinavia at turn 86. This wasn't as difficult as I hoped.

I'm thinking of turning this AAR into about the Cumans or the Persians or the Holy Roman Empire. I want to be in real danger of being crushed, no matter how cleverly I play. In the first case, everything is . In the second case, the starting conditions are b/c of one extremely overpowered enemy. In the third case, the starting conditions are b/c you're surrounded by enemies and are at war with the Pope.

https://imgur.com/a/2ki9dhe

So, as Lithuania, all you have to do is levy [24] MP, disband all your soldiers, and sneak your faction leader and other generals to the coastline at Riga, then sail for Visby and Turku. Then, trade two of your provinces with Denmark for Kalmar. This slows down Danish expansion into Nykoeping and Uppsala, so you have two provinces essentially for free in addition to Visby and Turku. The [24] MP is enough to hold the new provinces, but only just. You'll probably have to spend 12 or 24 turns developing them before launching an attack on Denmark proper. Then, all you have to do is hold off Novgorod at Turku, and the Holy Roman Empire at Arhus.

Lithuanian [1] MP units are actually very good. More so in the high era than in the late era.

I guess I need to find a faction whose [1] MP units can't carry the day.

I myself have had this problem, with the AI being easy to beat even on the most difficult settings. That's one of the reasons I don't play vanilla anymore, and installed SS. It's great to see that you're beating the AI soundly even with those difficulty settings!

You might want to consider implementing some house rules if you think it is too easy, because no matter how difficult the AI is (and I say difficult, not smart), a human will always have the advantage. For example you say that you have to disband all your soldiers and sail away, the Lithuanians in the past would most likely not have done that. I also found the trading provinces feature to be rather weird. If I was England and I was trading Caen with France, for example, that might make sense. Trading for far away settlements always felt like an exploit to me, and I try not to do it if I can't think of a plausible reason for the AI to do so.

Anyway these are just suggestions to make your life more difficult and I'm glad you're having fun. I think a Cuman campaign would be the most difficult out of the three you have mentioned, from my experience with the HRE all you need is some quick diplomacy at the start, and the whilst the Persians face the same problems as the Cumans they have a stronger economy and a better unit roster. Whatever you choose, I'm eager to see how it goes

[Ostlich]

Hey Swaeft,

I've realized that the difficulty isn't in the beginning but in the end.

I'm 90 turns into a Byzantine campaign in the same settings, and I've taken Anatolia, Rumelia, and Italy. The Acritae are reusable [1] MP units that double as line infantry and bodyguard killers. They make it very easy to hold onto a settlement once you capture it, hence my rapid expansion. However, this won't last.

I'm going to try to recreate the borders of the Roman Empire. The SS 6.4 campaign map features the Roman lime system implicitly. They're abstracted as river crossings. Try tracing out the rivers on the campaign map and you'll see what I mean. So I'm going to try to take all the provinces that are responsible for these river crossings, or at least most of them. Then set up forts and small armies of musketeers and ribaults at each river crossing.

What's great about this is that there are roughly 15~ river crossings in Europe alone, so I probably won't be able to hold them, and whichever one breaks, that'll be the beginning of the Barbarian Invasion.

It won't be like Skantario's AAR that's for sure.

-

Can you rename this thread to "Second Rome"?

[Swaeft]

Hey Ostlich!

Okay, that's rather interesting. Personally, I always find the difficulty to be in the beginning. I find that once you hit a sweet spot in the number of settlements you have, everything goes easier from there. I usually get bored of my campaigns around turn 50 onwards, because once I achieve that stable foothold everything else seems repetitive. As such, I always find the starting to be the most exciting part of the campaign, and that is the reason why I've played the Byzantine Empire the most - so many options at the start!

I'm not exactly sure what you want me to rename it to (just Second Rome without the rest of the tags?), so I don't want to take any chances. In the link I linked before, scroll to point 5 and it'll tell you all you need to know about renaming your threads.

So...a byzzie AAR eh? Hmm...

[Alwyn]

I'm sorry to hear that the campaign wasn't as difficult as you hoped. I hope you'll find a campaign which you'll enjoy more and that this will lead to a great AAR.

(As Swaeft said, you can rename your thread, if you'd like to. You can find out how from Swaeft's link).