Old MTW Question

[Peteyboy]

Hi peeps, first post away from Civ - but a while ago bought MTW (not MTW II) on the cheap, and wanted to see if any pro's of this series could help with a few problems I encounter when trying to win as certain teams.

PLEASE IF YOU ONLY WISH TO SEE THE SUMMARY OF POINTS SKIP THE BELOW TO THE QUESTIONS AT THE BOTTOM - THIS IS TO GIVE AN IDEA OF A GAME AND WHAT GOES WRONG - THANKS



Brief Background - I normally play on Normal

Have won with England, France, Spain, Almohads, Danes, Egyptians & Byzantines

My most recent challenge which i've tried 3 times is to win with Germans (Holy Roman) but find I have certain difficulties.

My last attempt started fairly well - built up, had a solid non trade economy, upon getting feudal knights, expanded to the rich French lands, taking advantage of them whilst they crushed the English. So French died. THen continued establishing decent army - as well as building useful trade network (esp via Flanders)

Then through no obvious fault of my own - the game went wrong for me.

As per usual at some stage for no reason the AI attacked me at sea. In 1 turn Both Spanish & Italians DOW'ed me, for the purpose of 1 sea fight - whilst this hurt my economy - it only reduced me from +3500f to +1300f.

The Italians unusually never built anything significant and I quickly crushed them. The Spanish were stronger - but weren't militant on ground - I had them covered.

Took me 7 turns to kill Italians - however all teams cancelled alliances with me cept Byzantines & Novo. after 3 turns Sicilians attacked me, after 4 turns English attacked me, after 6 turns Hungarians attacked me.

I was still strong enough to Crush the English back and they became insignficant - then disaster - they ceased to exist - and re-emerged 10 or so turns later with a massive army of billmen & hobilars - making them a larger froce.

Hungrarians got smashed (1 fight 2500 vs 500 - I won with 500 killing king & all heirs) and Sicilians hit me to get provinces.

Sicilians I allowed to have a few weak provinces - no major threat.

Spanish got hurt attacking me, and were destroyed by Almohads who DOW'ed them.

So at this point - 25 turns after the first DOW by Spain & Italy

I'm at war with a Weak Sicily
English have re-emerged with a ridiculously strong & large army.
Spanish have 1 weak province left (Aragon)
Almohads have strongest army in game.

Over next 5 turns Polish DOW me - moderate strength - my army is strating to hurt but i keep them at bay - however soon the English invade Wessex with Billmen & Hobilars - I don't have enough non Cavalry to stop the army - in fact the army is too advanced (they re-emerged 1206 - so got good units!) I can bearly keep my provinces together as they attack Flanders.

Spanish Die, and critically Almohads DOW me - despite heroic wins it's all falling apart. Even with Spain Re-emerging with a large army they die in 1 turn to Almohads lol

At this point my army is too small to survive Almohads and Economy is smashed (even tho I have significantly more sea ships - I can't kill the 5-6 Sicilian ships cos they have 4 movement (so stupid!)

Note: I couldn't get ceasfires

Basically from 1 bit of AI random stupidity - I had no way to save the game


My Essential queries are:

1) How can you stop silly sea battles? (or what causes the computer to do them?)

2) How do you stop the computer a) mass cancelling alliances (I read somewhere its about the 1st fight - but thats a load of rubbish - I've tried different permetations)
b) Mass DOW'ing you. - Especially when I never see that happen to the ai?

3) Is there anyway to encourage wars - as a weak team (I.e Aragon) you need wars to get started. Perhaps more importantly - I've found no way to guarantee victory even if you play virtually perfectly as most teams - as often a team like Egypt with the AI gets an insane expansion & army and there's been no wars allowing mass build up.

4) How do you kill sea ships with 4 movement - when you have no ships with more than 3 movement?

5 & Final) This might seem silly - but what is the use of Spies - I've heard there are things to do with Vices but how do they help - It may explain why I always by 1200 get really biting economic Vices (i.e -30% Trade & Agriculture)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[W|M]

Did you fall out of favor with the pope? If that happens then pretty much every catholic nation will end up invading you. Spies can sometimes open enemy gates when you besiege them (I think). To kill ships with more movement than you, try trapping them in a bay or something (E.g. the sea between Italy and the Balkans).

 

[Maeda Toshiie]

My Essential queries are:

1) How can you stop silly sea battles? (or what causes the computer to do them?)

2) How do you stop the computer a) mass cancelling alliances (I read somewhere its about the 1st fight - but thats a load of rubbish - I've tried different permetations)
b) Mass DOW'ing you. - Especially when I never see that happen to the ai?

3) Is there anyway to encourage wars - as a weak team (I.e Aragon) you need wars to get started. Perhaps more importantly - I've found no way to guarantee victory even if you play virtually perfectly as most teams - as often a team like Egypt with the AI gets an insane expansion & army and there's been no wars allowing mass build up.

4) How do you kill sea ships with 4 movement - when you have no ships with more than 3 movement?

5 & Final) This might seem silly - but what is the use of Spies - I've heard there are things to do with Vices but how do they help - It may explain why I always by 1200 get really biting economic Vices (i.e -30% Trade & Agriculture)

1. Stack 2 or more ships in the same sea "province". Never EVER leave a single ship in a sea "province" with AI boats. That is an invitation for an attack.

2. By being a weak power. No seriously. The AI in MTW is geared towards aiming for the biggest kid on the block. Anyway, TW plays differently from Civ. You can only win by conquering, UNLESS you play a very strict GA (eg. with Ironman rules) and even then, you will most likely lose in points due to a runaway AI opponent.

3. Just invade! Aragon is one of the harder factions in the game. If you start in Early, many recommend bribing for El Cid in the first turn. Aragon has to go on the offensive pretty soon, since the Almohads will tend to dominate Iberia in MTW 1.1 or the Spanish will in MTW VI 2.01.

One question, do you personally command the battles? If you don't I strongly suggest you do, UNLESS you roleplay and only fight battles where your king is present. Firstly, personally commanding battles tend to result MUCH better results. Secondly, the tactical battlefield is the reason why most of us play TW in the first place.

If you want to improve on your tactical skills, there are many resources available. There are also other resources on the strategic map.

Personally, I have played and won with most factions, except for the Italians, Scilians and Aragonese (too much time necessary). The most fun are the Turks and Hungarians (VI 2.01). Some love the Danes with the additional VI Viking units.

4. Dromons nagging you? Simple. First of all, I assume you have ships in the naval "province" where the irritating dromon is. Pull a ship out of your stack so that it stands alone and use that single ship to attack. It doesn't matter if the speed of your ship is slower (eg. 3). Having a single ship to challenge the dromon will tend to see a fight. To improve the chances of winning, get a ship with some stars, if possible higher than the dromon (but not your best admiral!). Unfortunately, the naval battle resolution is annoyingly random at times, so some may resort to reloading for the appropriate result.

Otherwise, just kill off the royals of the faction that own that boat.

5. Spies have 3 main purposes: catching enemy spies and assassins, increasing population loyalty of friendly provinces (and lower when in enemy provinces) and spy on enemy provinces. I don't have much success with gate openings. In fact, I don't use much of spies in MTW, though I use hordes of shinobis in STW (due to different formula on loyalty).

For V&V issues, this has to do with the bloat effect. As your empire grows (most say starting at about 40%), all the negative vices start coming in droves. There is nothing much you can do without it, other than killing off your governors and then reappoint new ones. Some people would train tons of peasants and then use those with high acumen (and preferably with high dread as well) as governors. Since they are peasants, it cost little to have them disbanded if the leader (and governor) has some nasty vice. Disbanding the unit pops the governor title back out without the issue of stripping titles or the need to use an assassin. If you are catholic, you can use inquisitors...



Some additional points:
a) Reemergences: Keep the provincial loyalty ABOVE 120% and you will NOT have any reemergences in your territory. The auto adjust tax with VI installed can be very useful (in MTW 1.1, the adjustment tries to keep above 100%, not 120%). Add this with the use of the shift button. Note however that this does not apply to the Papacy. The Pope will continually reemerge every 10-20 years. Kick the Pope out of Rome if you wish to get hold of the King of Rome title but don't let him be destroyed or you will have to face him again a decade or two later.

If you have problems in keeping the populace toeing the line, keep your king in the center of your empire and build the militia line of buildings. Also, raise the authority of your ruler (by conquering provinces or successfully completing crusades).

b) If you are playing a Catholic faction, the following rules apply to Papal behaviour:
i) If you attack another Catholic faction that has less than half the number of provinces as you, you will be given a single turn to stop the fight and not invade (or even attack to recapture province with your castle that is under siege!) for another 10 turns. This applies to both you AND the AI.

ii) Fortunately, the Pope is rather short on memory, so he only keeps one warning per offending faction at any one time. It is a little exploitive but it is used by some to first declare war against faction A, get warned, and then wage war for the next 10 years against faction B, the intended target.

The other option is to a) kill off the royal line and turn them into rebels (free game) or b) invade every single of the faction's province in one, win all fights, (pray for no sally) assault and capture all castles in the next.

iii) Attacking the Papacy will result in instant excommunication.

iv) Note that if the Pope is allied to a non Catholic faction, you will not be able to call for a crusade against that faction. You can, however, war against them without excommunication. If you are at a state of war with the Papacy (even without excommunication), you still cannot declare a crusade.

By the time you approach High and conquering a substantial proportion of the map, your royal line should be groomed (and/or with pruning), as well as generals loyal enough to be able to shrug off any excommunication and steamroll the map (except the Papacy, which should be kept to the last). By then you should also be fighting with strong High era Catholic units.

Oh btw, Feudal Knights are a waste of resources unless you train them and use them in the next turn to fight. They are only topped by Proniai Allagons in support cost.

Personally I played the HRE quite a lot. Some tips (too tired for a detailed guide):
1. Try to keep those iron provinces.

2. Learn how to maximise the use of Mounted Crossbows.

3. If you have VI, you can try to get hold of Swabians Swords (I know the building requirements are a bit steep), OR knock out the Danes very fast and train Huscarles.

4. (In VI, ) The first challenger you will tend to face is the French. They will either target you or the English. The second tends to be the Danes if you don't wipe them out or if they don't target the rebels in Sweden first (deter them!). The third will either be the Poles (with their massed Slav troops) or the Hungarians with their devastating Szekely. Thereafter it tends to be the Italians with their militia units and sailors.

5. Learn to fight with weaker units, especially with Mounted X-bows, Feudal Sgts and Militia Sgts. For cavalry, use some Royal Knights and/or Mounted Sgts.

You will often fight outnumbered. However, the human will invariably fight (much) better if the armies are even. It is always nice to accumulate the Skilled Defender or even the Last Stand line of virtues in your generals.

6. The mines can be an important source of income. I hope you know how to plan infrastructure for the early part of the game while being cash strapped. You have to squeeze out every single florin's worth.

 

[Peteyboy]

Wow - and I thought my post was long - heh in the 3 months sinnce first posting this I have played a fair bit and had some much better successes - funnily enough as I was playing more I learnt a lot of these features. Certainly I learnt to dump units like Fedual Knights cept for quick fire attacks.

I have since won the game with a few more factions, Italians which was a bit frustrating as its so slow at the start but easy once you get going

My best being with the Polish where I did very little for 150 odd turns - mainly waiting to pick off territories from warring factions - even though my 2 neighbours - French & Italians were very powerful. Took me to the point of having 9 years left when taking the final province.

Fighting I find reasonably elemntary often winning nigh on impossible battles vs the stupidity of the AI, or just plain exploitation and out maneouvring. I had noticed the pick on the top player thing - cept the Eyptians who always seem to end up massive before taking on the GH (Though I enjoyed a 1300 vs 9000 victory over them on their 2nd turn and killed the king with the poles)

I would say I'm dire with Mounted Crossbowmen - Normally use to lure as best as possible - Though as commented above - I'm normally pretty good at the battle part - although have never quite got good at dealing with killing the pesticidal Berber Camels

Will try again soon with a different team. Only got a few to go till I've done it on normal with all teams... Still determined I will be able to win with the Germans some time!!

But thanks for the really thorough reply

 

[Maeda Toshiie]

The Catholic factions tend to be harder in Early due to the quality of their units. Once 1205 rolls by, the appearance of Chivalric Sgts, CMAAs, Halberdiers and foot crossbow units, a decent collection of >=4 star generals, there is a tendency for the player to easily steamroll the opposition. This is especially true when you employ Pavise Arbalesters. They are almost overpowered in the human hands.

Don't worry about being slow. Depending on the faction and situation, phases of turtling is very normal. For certain factions, there are blitz strats initiated in the first turn to carve out a better living (eg. French). Some may not like them but a number of factions do need to start early war in order to improve their situation or risk getting left too far behind.

One thing about knightly units, I mainly use Royal Knights due to their ease of replacement as a Keep level unit, commonality with my heir-turn-generals (I also anticipate the appearance of ranked generals and have them appear in RK units), ability to upgrade through the ages. The downside is that they are small (and their unit size actually means higher support cost on per man basis) even when playing at normal unit sizes, so I use them practically only in flanking attacks, chasing routing troops or in pairs to charge at (weaker) foot missile units and peasants.

The main issue with FKs is their support cost and the corresponding lack of florins in the early part of the game to build up the infrastructure to get them. Personally, I'd rather spend the florins to get cheaper foot units, especially Feudal Sgts to form my main infantry line. By the time I have the spare florins to burn and build up the infrastructure, it is almost High and I usually continue building till I have access to Chivalric Knights. Meanwhile, my foot-heavy Chivalric armies are capable of decimating enemy stacks (except in desert, where I switch to different stacks). Chivalric Knights just become icing on top of the cake.

The Mongols are actually very easy to face as a Catholic nation, as long as you mass PAs, CSs and Halbs. Even at Expert, the Mongols tend to be a tedium. Facing them as the Turks and Egyptians are slightly more challenging, since the Turks have Saracens and can race for a small number of JHIs before 1230 but lack of PAs while the Egyptians have PAs but only Nubians, no polearms or heavier spear units. If you play the Novgorod (with slight modding of text files), the unit roster is only a slight issue while the bigger issue is with time and money. Practically from the first turn, you need to plan a rapid conquest of the Steppes (with its 2 famously rowdy provinces) and prepare for the Mongol appearance.

The Italians (and Sicilians) rely mainly on trade to build up a fund for future adventures (the time needed somewhat bores me). The other slight issue is to share borders with his Holiness. Worse is when someone destroys the Papacy and the Papacy reemerges later with a big honking army. I have once seen the Papacy (while playing as the HRE) reemerge, expand out of the Italian peninsula, to the Balkans and only to be stopped outside of Constantinople.

On the tactical map, if you come from STW, note that the battlefield is slightly more complex compared and unit types have somewhat different roles (especially spears). Due to the different unit rosters, different fighting styles are needed for the non Catholic factions. I noticed that you haven't tried the other factions.

The use of Mounted X-bows is similar to the other horse archer units (Spanish Jinetes are yet another ballgame), with some differences. HAs are primarily used as harassers of enemy infantry, to wear them down and whittle them down in numbers. They are at their best when they draw enemy units out of formation, surround and charge to rout (especially for HAs with strong melee ability).

For Mounted X-bows, first note their difference from HAs. First is the AP bonus against units, so it is more efficient to use them to target heavily armoured units. The second factor is the reloading time of (all) crossbow (which include arbalesters who are even slower) armed units. Note that if the unit moves while reloading, the reloading sequence is interrupted and the unit has to restart reloading process when they stop again. This is inconsequential for bow units but important for xbow types. All the more micromanagement is necessary for Mounted X-bows (to a slightly lesser extent, HA units).

Regarding Berber camels. Like their Bedouin cousins, do not send horses against them. Instead, kill with projectiles. When you get hold of crossbows, use them to target the Berbers.

If you are stuck in an archery duel, use your arrows/ bolts wisely. Fire only at stationary units.

Sometimes, I try not to kill kings, especially if he has low command (conversely, I tend to target high ranking commanders and kings). Instead, I make the bugger run. I once inflicted enough routs (and losses) on the Egyptian Sultan (as the Turks) for the Coward trait (-9 morale) that his troops practically rout the instant they get within melee range. This was on normal difficulty, so it might not have been as effective at Expert with the +4 AI morale bonus.

I tend to turtle with the HRE for most of the Early age, while focusing on building up mines and some farmland, while developing Bohemia, Franconia and Bungurdy as my initial infantry training depots. Swabia is my source of RKs and maybe Baravia for other cavalry units.


Personal ranking of difficulty in the Early campaign
1. Byzantines (Jedi generals in Katanks and easily accessible good infantry to steamroll)
2. Egyptians and Almohads (The Almohad AI is set to be too passive in VI)
3. English (but the English AI is screwed up and tends to be beaten by the French peasants in VI 2.01)
4. Spanish
5. French, Hungarians (VI) and Turks
6. Danes, HRE and Poles (some swear by the javelins)
7. Italians
8. Scilians (marginally worse than the Italians)
9. Novgorod
10. Aragonese (and Papacy? Never tried them)

This is not a plug, but at .com and .org, there is quite a bit of information and stats on STW and MTW. A few old fogies still hang around, still playing.

 

[Quinn_Inuit]

Some are still modding, too, or were until recently. How cool is that? I imagine some of those mods are pretty well-tuned by now, if you're interested.