Crusade to...Timbuktu ...for the one and trully God - the gold.

[todorp]

It is a Crusade for the one and truly God - the gold. Timbuktu has mines which make $1,000/turn, while elsewhere in Europe few make more than $100.

In short I was playing as Scotland on Vh/Vh with the unofficial v1.2 and 1year/turn. I captured England, Scotland and Bruges and then got stuck. Everyone as far as Venice declared a war on me and started landing in England. It was a stalemate for a good 10 turns, I was barely fending off the attacks using all my 6 generals as the sledge hammer in my militia spearman army. The treasure was $0 after each turn with essential buildings and troop retraining being postponed. I was dreaming of the mines of Timbuktu sent a merchant, but it took him 30 turns to get there and by the time he went there he had only 10 turns to live. Then the Pope announced a Crusade to Tunis and suddenly

"I have a cunning plan, my Lord" - said Baldric in my head
"What is it now, Baldric" said the Blackadder

I packed 3 generals with a full stack of militia spearman and… and all my 6 merchants, 10 priests and 3 spies and sent them to the “holly” land. In 4 turns instead of about 20 the fleet reached the start of the road to Timbuktu. I offloaded half of the troops, half of the priests, one general, one spy and all the merchants. The fleet continued to Tunis and the landed force went to Timbuktu.

When I entered the Timbuktu I offloaded the priests to start converting in 4 more turns I sieged Timbuktu and offloaded the merchants and sent them to make gazillions of $$$. On the 4th turn I bought 6 units of mercenary Sahara infantry, because I had desertions. Then I stormed Timbuktu and occupied it, it had already had a market and a hippodrome, so I started daily horse raises until I raise the faith. There was one problem there, it was occupied by a crusading army…

In the mean time the other fleet proceeded to Tunis and landed there and offloaded the priests. I sieged Tunis and bought mercenaries. On the nest turm 1 general left the army, bought all the pilgrims available, because they are cheap to hold cities. That general rejoined the sieging army and took Tunis. The crusade ended. I moved the newly acquired pilgrims and part of the army in Tunis and with the high end troops went to capture the next castle.

The game went smoothly after. My merchants stared to bring in $1.200 to $1,500 per turn each or more than $8,000 and this turned the game around. Now I have 25 provinces and crush all the opposition.

[gr33kp1mp777]

wow!
scotland????
i didnt expect that but OWWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!!!!
thats tight +rep in a few minutes
what provinces did you take after timbuktu???
i would prefer to keep that as a city state and abandon all other provinces but thats just me!

[Black Francis]

Isn't this simply to do with the fact that the further a resource (such as gold) is from your capital the more it is worth.

Values for resources depend upon you faction location.

I think!

[5h@\/\/|\| [TNT]]

Isn't this simply to do with the fact that the further a resource (such as gold) is from your capital the more it is worth.

Values for resources depend upon you faction location.

I think!

this is true! playing as Scotland any trade resource that you dont have there is worth lots of money the further it is away.

[Pizza de Oveja]

Cool man! Thanks for the tip.
I recently discovered too the power of merchants. There are two silver spaces around modern austria and a silk space near constantinopla that give you pretty good income too. Check them out, at least they do playing france on 1.1
I recomend those two. I will try yours as soon as I can cause I currently control tunisia after a succesful crusade.

Beware thou of the others factions merchants. They are always better than mine and almost everytime mannage to get me out of bussiness. You can hardly do anything about that cause it's not considered a casus beli, your merchant will have like a 25% of doing the same to them (like winning the lotery and having a BJ by claudia shiefer on the same day kind of odds), and your assasins cant even flog a dead horse (what good are they anyway?¿?¿?) So the only viable option is to replace them with new merchants right away. Sometime the mechanics of this game seem to be made in black and white but perhaps thats why I like it...

[todorp]

wow!
scotland????
i didnt expect that but OWWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!!!!
thats tight +rep in a few minutes
what provinces did you take after timbuktu???
i would prefer to keep that as a city state and abandon all other provinces but thats just me!

After Timbuktu and Tunis I took Angier. Then the AI started sieging the castles of Tunis and Algiers. It was funny the AI troops from Spain, Portugal, Moors and Venice queued for their turn to siege me. In North Africa I destroy 2 sieging armies every turn. It become somewhat boring, because I have to fight minimum 2 and maximum 5 siege defences every turn.

I took Paris and Antwerp from Milan. Thanks to this my status with the pope fall down to zero and he forbade me to attack any Catholic faction. Except Denmark, which was excommunicated. I formed an army and send it to Norway and took Scandinavia and Northern Germany. Funny after I took a castle with Teutonic Guild I was offered the Teutonic Headquarters, when I can’t make Teutonic knights. I am forming an army to take the Mauritania, which is left of Timbuktu and then Morocco. I don’t want to risk excommunication and the wrath of the Pope and the Catholics. It gives a healthy drop of the order across all settlements and my towns are in the low green or yellow order. The strategic direction is to take North Africa and Grenada from the Moors, produce a lot of Cardinals and win the Papal elections, then I can take on the Catholic factions.

I am in war with ALL AI factions. I don't know why some posts claim that the campaign AI is improved in the unoficial v1.2.

[aion2006]

Aww no screenshot

[Ali_the_English]

Your reputation with the pope goes up if you give him lots of money. Then you can attack catholic factions and he won't care as much.

[Chola_Kingdom]

Your reputation with the pope goes up if you give him lots of money. Then you can attack catholic factions and he won't care as much.

wow i dont know that

[romanfool]

Timbuktu is a crazy insane place to take and hold. but its worth it from all the gold and other resources down there. just recently i went down there wiht an entire stack of englishmen and i encountered heavy resistance from Sicily in Tunis, Moors also on their way, and an entire stack of rebels inside the city. i had to bring in more men, then i had to transport merchents down because in the fighting most of the city was destroyed. it was tough to take.

[todorp]

Timbuktu is a crazy insane place to take and hold. but its worth it from all the gold and other resources down there. just recently i went down there wiht an entire stack of englishmen and i encountered heavy resistance from Sicily in Tunis, Moors also on their way, and an entire stack of rebels inside the city. i had to bring in more men, then i had to transport merchents down because in the fighting most of the city was destroyed. it was tough to take.

That is why I took plenty of priests with the army. You need to occupy the Timbuktu, if you sack or exterminate you risk loosing the two key buildings: the market and the hippodrome. If you have the market, you will make merchants in Timbuktu.

In my view Timbuktu plays the same role in MTW2 as Rhodes in RTW. Without holding them there will be massive money shortages and on Vh/Vh is almost impossible to win. Early in a RTW game I always assembled an army, put it in a fleet and sent them to Rhodes.

In MTW2 the movement of the normal armies is so slow that it takes ages to get there, Crusades/Jihads are about 3 times faster and are the perfect vehicle to get fast to Timbuktu. I think of using a Crusade to get fast to America as well.

[Cadmium77]

I find that if you go past the 10 or 15 year mark in this game and you go to a siege without at least ballista if not catapults, that you're asking for military disaster. You simply don't have the luxury of sitting there for even one turn in siege...you need to bust your way in to the city as soon as you arrive at it....

[Coko]

on VH/VH it is still the rule that the Ai Dogpiles you apparently.