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Thread: Genoa VH VH strategy Gracul

  1. #1

    Default Genoa VH VH strategy Gracul

    Figured I would post this in case anyone still plays this mod and wants to try Genoa

    I recently re downloaded this mod to play and decided to play as Genoa as Italy is a cool spot with lots of different things happening in the center of the map. This is for Gracul AI.

    When you start a new game with Genoa you have to go all out in the first 30 turns or your hooped. I probably failed at least 20 times before I got passed turn 30 and turned my game into an eventual win (currently At 30ish regions with Venice finally almost toast). When you start you have to be calculated and do some siege tricks causing the AI to sally forth to their peril, plus keep good with your neighbours and especially the papal states.

    First turn you should have the general in Ajaccio go with 2 units to the castle island below and only siege it with the general alone. Next have your diplomat take a calculated route via ship to Rome and get an alliance. Personally I like to let my Leader get the Lord of Genoa Ret and have the prince with 2 Calvary militia and 3 spears sail to Pisa and lay siege. Next get your army near Pisa as its off to Venice right after. Before you end your turn sell everything in Caffa, send the merchant to the silk at Constantinople and then have your troops sent to Sinope and only siege with the general. Also from here on out, prioritize barracks and armour in all cities besides Genoa, go for economy there. You can only use militia but at least their not bad. On BGR IV real recruitment this is really tough, I took it off to get better troops as the AI can just totally mess you up while it takes you forever to spawn anything good. Oh btw, make sure you build at catapult at Genoa. You can now end your turn.

    You will most likely trigger 3 AI rebel Sally froths. For the two with solo generals, hit 6x and run off to a corner of the map, the AI will chase and then run all the way to the city center and wait out a 5min victory. For any critics who say this is lame, piss off lol. You'll have to fight a tough fight over Pisa but it can be done if you kill the general early. When you take Sinop sell everything in it and then use it for trade bait with the HRE.

    Next turn send the general at the other island castle to Marseille while leaving those 2 units in the castle to avoid a rebellion. You may not get there in one turn. Next have your diplomat go to Siciliy and give up Caffa for an alliance. You will have to trade in the early game as the AI will no longer form alliances straight up on balanced deals once your at war (Turkey). Don't worry about taking back Caffa as if Sicily holds it, the Mongols will eventually take it around turn 100ish. Next things next, march for Venice with the entire army.

    Next turn sell Sinop to the HRE for an alliance and do your best to never have your troops in Bologna's region as it will cause AI HRE to hate you. By this time the general should be laying siege at Mariselle. Position your army so it can attack Venice right away. Sale the troops for Sinop near Cornith, Athens and Thesconnia as these will provide good trade bait plus good loot money. End Turn.

    AI battle with Mariselle, just run to the corner and back. Afterwords loot it, sell everything and then you come to a tough choice. Two possible routes here, either DOW Venice and take Venice with a decent battle. OR gift Mariselle to the pope, ask for a crusade on Ciaro, wait for the Vencie army to scamper off, then take it. Both options will break the alliance with the Papal states. The best option is option two as it give you time to buy a merc galley, park your army by venice, take it when no one is there, then sail down to Acrona and take that place too in one turn. This allows you to avoid the whole ceasefire or excommunication. All the while you do this, you want your general near Greece to watch for the AI rebels to leave one of those three cities/fortresses and take it for look and a little base. Try to hold Cornith and Athens. Once you take Thesconnia, if your relationship with HRE is good you can trade it straight up for Bolonga. Also send some folks to take Milan before HRE does.

    After this you'll have a nice little set up. Try to get alliances with Hungary, Poland, France, Aragon, Spain and basically anyone else Catholic. Build up defences around Italy and do your best to regain the alliance of the Papacy. After you implement this strategy your biggest threat is the Papal States for the time being. Basically if your relationship plummets and go to 0 crosses they will DOW you and kick your ass with their better units. You will loose. To avoid this, do your best to get a cease fire against Venice, ally the Papacy and then only DOW Muslim factions. The catholic AI's will increase their relationship status with you the more you take these settlements. Don't stretch yourself to thin as with VH VH Gracul, the AI will backstab.

    From here on out its all statecraft until your powerful enough to DOW anyone straight up. What I personally did was this. Keep a good relationship with Hungary, Venice and HRE. Take regions like Benghazi and the rest of North Africa east of Tunis and sell them/trade them for settlements. I traded these straight up Innsbruck, Gergen and Ivaness which soltified the alps causing me to only go to war in the north around turn 150 by the English.

    I would recommend keeping good with catholic factions and accumulate Muslim and the Greek regions. Youll loose alliances and have to choose sides but go about it smartly and pick off different factions.

    Follow this guide and get good at fighting professional armies with Militias and you can win!

    Good luck as this has taken me over a few months.

  2. #2
    Jurand of Cracow's Avatar History and gameplay!
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    Default Re: Genoa VH VH strategy Gracul

    Interesting and useful.
    Do you think it's possible to achieve your result without exploiting the deficiencies of the M2TW engine?
    Mod leader of the SSHIP: traits, ancillaries, scripts, buildings, geography, economy.
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    If you want to play a historical mod in the medieval setting the best are:
    Stainless Steel Historical Improvement Project and Broken Crescent.
    Recently, Tsardoms and TGC look also very good. Read my opinions on the other mods here.
    ..............................................................................................................................................................................
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    Thrones of Britannia: review, opinion on the battles, ideas for modding. Shieldwall is promising!
    Dominant strategy in Rome2, Attila, ToB and Troy: “Sniping groups of armies”. Still there, alas!

  3. #3

    Default Re: Genoa VH VH strategy Gracul

    Quote Originally Posted by jjson212 View Post
    For any critics who say this is lame, piss off lol
    this is bs

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    as is the campaign with that AI and it's bonuses, throwing stacks of units at you like zombies in a zombie survival game

  4. #4

    Default Genoa VH VH strategy Gracul

    Possibly but it would be tough. You can take Sinop by seiging it as Turkey only has a GB comprised of spearmen and 1 archer unit, I did the run away trick to save my toops for taking Athens, Cornith etc. Mariselle is crucially needed to prevent France from recking your western flank, gives you a pass from having to have a full stack in Genoa constantly so I would recommend doing that trick. You truly don't need to take the castle on the island south of Ajaccio but its better to get it before Sicily does IMO.

    The biggest challenge was always having the Papal states wrecking me around turn 30 if I didn't upkeep a solid relationship, plus by taking North Africa it opens you up to overstretching causing Venice and Sicily to take advantage of you. HRE wasn't a bother if you keep a good relation.

    Agreed lol, I'll take every advantage against constant professional armies being sent my way
    Last edited by Abdülmecid I; September 15, 2019 at 04:35 AM. Reason: Merged.

  5. #5

    Default Re: Genoa VH VH strategy Gracul

    eh i guess it's just not my thing

    btw something else you can do is to place your armies in certain mountain places, you have to zoom in on campaign map and make sure that your army has the high ground since that usually leads you to have the high ground on battle map too, this is incredibly effective in mountainous areas, often the enemy army is completely exhausted by the time they get to you and forced into a small dense mass making them excelent targets for archers/xbows, better than even bridge battles til you get ribaults
    also unlike bridge battles the AI wont be able to just push in with his massive numbers and still murder a lot of your men, the other thing is your missile units will have insane range being at the top of the mountain allowing you to snipe any enemy unit you want

    missile units also deal significantly more damage when they have the high ground and i think melee units are more effective too but not sure about that

  6. #6

    Default Re: Genoa VH VH strategy Gracul

    Quote Originally Posted by Dekhatres View Post
    eh i guess it's just not my thing

    btw something else you can do is to place your armies in certain mountain places, you have to zoom in on campaign map and make sure that your army has the high ground since that usually leads you to have the high ground on battle map too, this is incredibly effective in mountainous areas, often the enemy army is completely exhausted by the time they get to you and forced into a small dense mass making them excelent targets for archers/xbows, better than even bridge battles til you get ribaults
    also unlike bridge battles the AI wont be able to just push in with his massive numbers and still murder a lot of your men, the other thing is your missile units will have insane range being at the top of the mountain allowing you to snipe any enemy unit you want

    missile units also deal significantly more damage when they have the high ground and i think melee units are more effective too but not sure about that
    Yup that definitely works, only trouble is when the AI on VH runs away and goes for the high ground and then waits for you lol.

    I find in SS6.4 a winning strategy is having stacks comprised of mostly pikes plus good arches and Calvary. With the high charge bonus basically ripping into all early and mediocre spear units your pretty screwed without pikes or halberds. By disabling real recruitment you can recruit pike militia as the Italian factions with the 9600 dollar barracks. Before then always try to counter their horsemen with your own horsemen on the flanks.

  7. #7

    Default Re: Genoa VH VH strategy Gracul

    that's when you're attacking yea sure, but even in that case i found that if you send some cav behind their army many times they will abandon the hill and start attacking, sometimes you might have to do quite a bit of skirmishing to get the AI to attack

    or you can bug their charge with units running away from their cavalry charge, cheap militia archers and crossbows are a pretty good bait for AI cav, but that's just the charge and you're still kinda screwed because cavalry is crazy good in melee too, often better than even their dismounted version (let that sink in)

  8. #8

    Default Re: Genoa VH VH strategy Gracul

    Just wanted to post a couple of screen shots showing that long sought after WIN on a SS6.4 game. I started this game months ago and with only being able to play seldom and dealing with the genuinely difficult Gracul AI.

    The photos are screenshots prior to the final battle to put me at 50 regions and knocking out Venice. I also added a couple to show I got Jerusalemm, a decent shot of the entire empire and my financials cause moneys awesome.

    The final battle had to be played at low video settings to avoid the crash so I never got a photo of it.

    Any suggestions on a next faction to play as, was thinking Grande Duchy, their units are trash but historically they are the origins of Russia.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Medieval 2 2019-09-22 2_22_11 AM.jpg   Medieval 2 2019-09-22 2_22_45 AM.jpg   Medieval 2 2019-09-22 2_22_56 AM.jpg   Medieval 2 2019-09-22 2_23_25 AM.jpg  

  9. #9

    Default Re: Genoa VH VH strategy Gracul

    Why not just cheat engine and then expand like crazy? But doing so may just make u enemies with everyone eventually. Genoans do have good militia but good enough horsemen like france or england.

  10. #10

    Default Re: Genoa VH VH strategy Gracul

    You could hypotheically "cheat" every seige battle by attacking with a single calvary unit and then run away however as your game processes, this bascially becomes pointless. It will be a rare occurence and by the middle game you will have decent units at your disposal. On gracul VH VH, the game is won or lost in the first 30 turns. Go big or get demolished, with any faction you choose besides an odd few.

    I call bs on it being a cheat. VH VH Gracu. The AI has so many bonuses that you need to take every advantage you can.

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