Total War Discussion

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I have and it is no real problem. Considering you can play successfully as Russia or Scotland tiny factions with limited expansion potential you can easily move. I moved the Poles to the British Isles once and it was no problem.

 

I've asked this before, but how do you do that? When I was playing the HRE, the English attacked Bruges, declaring war, and I retaliated by taking Caen from them. The next turn, they sent a diplomat over that offered me a ceasefire if I paid them around 900 florins. Of course I told them to sod off, and the next turn they offered me a ceasefire if I paid them 2300 for 3 turns(!). What. The. F*ck.

I just don't get this logic. Is it just like trying to trade map information from other factions in that it only works very early game? On the other hand, I was only at around turn 35 when that episode with the English happened, which is still pretty early game as far as I'm concerned.

I haven't, but I could see it work for the Egyptians or Turkish quite easily. Just gather all your troops, call a jihad on Rome or something and then set them all off on a merry journey.

I wouldn't just give up on the settlements you already have, though. As long as the Mongols don't appear, there's not really any reason to lose those settlements. And if you take Rome early enough, you can probably avoid any crusades on Jerusalem completely. They will just focus on Rome first. But I can see this work as a different direction for expansion early game. It would make you less vulnerable to getting overrun by the Mongols too, when they appear near Baghdad.

 

If you're beating the crap out of them in the war, all you have to do is counter their ceasefire offer with the demand of a settlement. If you're really beating the pants off them, sometimes you can get two settlements.

Didn't play much last night, but I did take Zagreb and Ragusa.

 

Meh, sometimes I couldn't get peace from a nation with 3-4 settlements even if I offered them some . I think it may also have to do with your relations with them.

 

I have an atrocious reputation now and I do not understand how I got it. I have never broken any treaty, never attacked anyone who didn't attack me and never had armies stopming around the territory of nations I am not at war with.

 

Well, if you're trying to get a peace treaty from them, naturally the current relations are "at war". In fact, they couldn't be anything else. I actually think it's the first part of your statement that is telling - that the faction in question only had a few settlements left. The fewer settlements a faction controls, the less likely it is to give one of them to you in exchange for a cease fire.

And the range you list (3 or 4), is exactly the range where factions start getting very stingy with trading a settlement for a ceasefire (understandably so, I might add). The capital is never able to be offered. So a faction with just 3 settlements left would only have 2 on the list of settlements it could give. And you are almost certain not to get either of them. I suspect that it has something to do with an odds calculation, and that when a faction only has a few settlements, it's odds of a recovery by giving up one of its few remaining ones decrease drastically.

Is it possible that you've walked through another nations territory briefly? The game doesn't seem to differentiate passing through versus attacking. Even if you begin and end your turn on your territory, if you passed through another faction's territory (even if it's just cutting a corner), you take a reputation hit. Sometimes I do this inadvertently. I click on a stack and tell them to go somewhere, and the pathfinder in the game picks the quickest route that actually routes them through another nation's territory.

Other than that, there's only one other way to decrease your reputation, and that is unsuccessful spying/assassination missions with nations you aren't at war with. Successful missions don't give you reputation hits, because they don't know about it. But when your spies or assassins get caught, it's a global hit on your reputation. (And when you think about it, that makes sense.)

Milan isn't really doing it for me - yet another faction that relies heavily on missile units, pretty much just like England. Doubt I'm going to finish. Maybe I'll give France a go. With cavalry as their strength, perhaps I'll finally develop that part of military tactics. (Typically the only cavalry I field is in the form of generals, with the exception of when I'm facing the Mongols.) I also may attempt a slower-paced game so I can fight the Timurids, as I've never really done that. My initial impression is that an all-cavalry approach to the Timurids won't do particularly well, simply because I feel cavalry charges into elephants is a fundamentally flawed approach.

 

Artillery takes out elephants nicely. I guess it is the hundreds of failed spy and assassination attempts that kinda put a blemish on my reputation. Most of them have been against enemies but can't let an agent finish a turn without doing something!

 

Yeah that's my experience too. No matter how few settlements an opponent has, they usually still won't accept a ceasefire. And no Aldeth, I'm not even trying to get a settlement from them, even just offering a ceasefire without demanding anything will not be accepted. The diplomatic screen even shows it as very demanding. The only way I can usually get anyone to accept a ceasefire is if I pay them copious amounts of money. I never do that, so in my games I tend to be at war with a faction until they no longer exist.

It would match with my experience if the likelyhood of a ceasefire being accepted would depend on the relations between factions, but that would usually mean that after any prolonged conflict it would be basically impossible to get a ceasefire. Since any attack from them or you would reduce relations, it's pretty much impossible to get a ceasefire if this is a parameter.

France's cavalry is nothing special when compared to for instance Spain. If you want to play more with cavalry rather than using your generals, then just force yourself to play that way.

And anyway, if you want great cavalry, play with the Russians.

Reputation seems to go down no matter what I do. None of my spying and assassinations fail (yes, I make sure of that), I can play without ever being the first to attack and never coming into another's territory if I'm not at war with them and still I will end up with a very bad reputation.

 

Then I have no explanation for this. While it is true that if an opposing faction wants to be at war with you (in other words, if on the diplomacy screen, it lists "Priorities: War" - and you'll only see this listed as anything other than "Unknown" if you a spy in their capital), then you will not get a ceasefire, and offering one will be listed as "very demanding". However, in my games, after kicking around the AI for a while, you'll see a switch, and it will be "Priorities: Peace". This is when they'll give you settlements. Even better, you typically won't even have to send a diplomat over to negotiate this. They'll immediately send one to you as soon as the switch happens. They'll offer the ceasefire, and it will be described as "very generous". That's the time to ask for a settlement.

As to why this never happens for you, I don't know. In my experience it is a fairly common occurrence, which is to say it happens at least once per game. Sometimes multiple times per game. It's the number one reason I have for not continuing a war with someone. If I get to expand my empire, and consolidate my forces, and as a bonus simultaneously weaken my opponent by getting one of their settlements, and get all of this basically for free, why wouldn't I? Sometimes, if you throw in "trade rights" as part of the deal, you can even get them to agree to two settlements. My personal record is three settlements, but that required my to kick in a few thousand florins for the AI to accept.

Because of the jinetes? Otherwise them seem very similar.

From my experience the only time my reputation is seen as "reliable", "very reliable", or occasionally "trustworthy" is when I play nice. It also seems to help if your faction leader has a high chivalry rating.

 

Never really noticed this, will have to pay closer attention to it next time.

That was my point - to chose France in the hopes their strong cavalry will help you play more with cavalry units instead of general units, is kind of pointless, because their units are no better than what you might get with most other factions. They just have more of them.

Maybe that's why I never get a good reputation, because my kings never have high chivalry. And that's fine with me.

I started a game with the Milanese and expanded with Bern, Florence and Ajaccio. I just managed to beat the Sicilians to Cagliari too, which I'm currently besieging and Dijon will be next too. The Italian spear militia makes early game expansion a lot easier already, and now that I can train Genoese crossbow militia the ranged department should be well covered too.

Sometimes the game likes to throw you a curve ball, though. Like last turn a rebel army appeared just outside of Florence, with one unit of Men at Arms, 4 Italian spear militia and one peasant crossbowmen. Quite a sizeable army for this area in the game, and they were blocking the path between Genoa and Florence. And since I tend to move militia around quite a lot - training them in Genoa and Milan and moving them to were they're needed - I had to remove them.

 

Spain? You have a decent light cavalry in the jinetes, and iirc you have the bullfighting ring eventually, but other than that I don't see a big difference. And while the Russians eventually get good cavalry, iirc at first they are nothing special - no better than the westerners, Byzantines (Vardariotai FTW) or Egyptians.

 

You're completely right. The Russians don't start out with anything special. In fact, Hungary, Poland and the Byzantines all have missile cavalry from the very start of the game that you will only have an answer for by the very end of the game - Vardariotai, Hungarian nobles, Polish nobles are only slightly inferior to your end game Dvor cavalry.

On the other hand, the best heavy cavalry the Byzantines can field is not much better than feudal knights - at least the Polish and Hungarians get their variants of chivalric knights. But few enough other factions can field cavalry that you can use as normal infantry. With late game Russians, you're completely justified in making an army of just cavalry.

And even though the Druzhina unit of the Russians gets overshadowed by the good units from Hungary and Poland early game, it's actually better than what most other factions get at that time (mailed knights).

 

Hmm, I apparently thought the endgame Byzantine cavalry (Latinkon and Cataphractoi) were better than the game says they are. Still, I'd say in Russia using all-cavalry armies might be due more to necessity than choice .

By the way, I just finished my first medium-length campaign in Shogun 2 with the Shimazu. I wanted to try how they'd work as a Christian faction - the answer is "quite well". You lose out on the warror monks, but you don't really need them that much; the improved trade due to the Nanban trade post/quarters compensates somewhat, as do the dirt cheap imported matchlock ashigaru (cheaper than spears, in fact). Oh, and you get arguably the best artillery unit bar none - European cannons - from a port upgrade instead of developing the siege army tree. Yari samurai handle cavalry well enough, and the Shimazu Katana Samurai can mop up pretty much any infantry. Naturally, I went for full sword research almost asap; unfortunately, if you go for sword or bow research you have to also develop the horse research too. Not necessarily a bad thing, considering you have a province with horses on your doorstep and another one right on your end of Kyushu. Despite the realm divide and its massive penalties to diplomacy, I managed to preserve a crucial alliance/trade pact with the Mori and controlled all trade routes, which did me a lot of good in terms of the economy. I needed it, too, bribing those piratical scum every few turns to keep them from breaking the trade pact and turning on me. What probably helped me a lot is that I invested a lot in sprouting rebellions all over the backside of my potential enemies; apparently it's easier when your faith is in the minority. At the end of the game, there were still a few neutral provinces which I hadn't yet mopped up. Actually, one of my vassals started eating them, which triggered the victory conditions .

OTOH, the penalty for religious differences in the game is fairly serious - iirc -40 at that level, so be prepared to have issues with neighbors not sharing yours. Also, while on paper the missionary can have better impact on your chi research than the monk, most of his bonus (18 out of 21%) only kicks in on a 6th level upgrade.

I'll probably play the game a bit more so I can unlock the maximum level missionary achievement (I have one that needs just 2-3 more successful missions), then maybe start with a different faction - Takeda, Ikko-Ikki, Hojo or Uesugi. The Date sounded fun at first, but their position is somewhat of a mirror image of the Shimazu - one end of Japan, with a trade route (as in, "single" trade route - the Shimazu have several nearby). Plus, I'm not sure just how useful their no-dachi samurai are, although their mini-DLC unit (very heavily armored spearmen) does sound interesting. I'll probably try the Hojo for a more chi-oriented approach.

 

Now I'm more appreciative in Shogun than I otherwise would be.... and more interested in playing it if it was ported. Though I think I'm still more interested in M2.


I've actually been having a frustrating time in one of my Barbarian Invasion games.

I'm trying to do something unusual in that I was to save some of the smaller factions.

I'm been beating back repeated Roman invasions and can likely keep doing so.

But some of the other barbarian factions have been reduced to just a couple family members left out of an entire Horde. And the Lombards in particular have been reduced to their king. I don't mind wiping out the Huns (I did because they opted to pick fights with my troops) but I've tried to save the Lombards with little success. Emptied a town of mine of soldiers when the remaining King came to it and instead of taking it he moves on. He may fight some of my soldiers if I put out a single unit or two for him to pick on but he won't do anything that would save his faction like take the town (and give himself a new homeland where he could adopt kids and let his faction continue). Now the guy is old enough he sometimes dies and kills his faction without a battle. Trying to preserve a rival faction can be frustrating.

 

Well, there's that too Although the dismounted druzhina are quite decent in attacking because of their armour piercing trait, they're also quite fragile. Dismounted dvor are very good for a ranged unit and would even be able to stand in a melee for a while. Even if only to deal with units with the bonus against cavalry trait, I'd add at least some dismounted druzhina and dismounted dvor. Cossack musketeers are the boss, though.

Well, and for sieges you need some units that can go up the walls and carry siege equipment - unless you like to have to wait out every siege.

But for roaming armies, I would certainly use only cavalry. Preferably a mix of Tsars guard, Dvor cavalry and Cossack cavalry. The latter mostly to chase routing cavalry because of their fast movement.

Shogun 2 sounds quite different in setup than M2 does. It sounded almost like you were playing a more streamlined Civ game or something with all the research

 

I still plan on starting France, but I didn't play at all this weekend. The Byzantines also are a potentially intriguing choice. If you don't want to deal with Mongols or Timurids, you can just limit your expansion to the west. (Well, you'd probably want Smyrna, just to have a castle somewhere in the general area, but don't go further than that.) The only way you'd run into serious Mongol trouble would be after they wrecked the Turks, or unless something crazy happened like them joining a Crusade against Constantinople, and having that be the first settlement they occupied. Granted, that happened exactly once in all the times I've played, so I don't consider in common. (Especially considering that they are relying on another faction to call the crusade, as they don't start with any imams.)

 

Well, I didn't manage to play much either lately, but I did make some headway in my game with the Milanese. After taking Cagliari with a Sicilian army standing right outside of the gates (I guess they wanted to take it too, but for some reason they didn't besiege it straight away so I beat them to it), the Sicilians apparently decided that they wanted Cagliari no matter who was the current owner.

After repelling them, I marched whatever I could muster straight for Palermo, which was only occupied by their Prince. Apparently, this was not what they wanted after all, so they offered me a ceasefire. Them getting excommunicated probably helped too. No outrageous demands for money in return for the ceasefire this time either. Intrigued, I decided to see how far I could push it, and it appeared that them offering me Tipoli was still generous, so I added Tunis as well. With a bit of haggling, I got Tunis and Tipoli from them in return for a ceasefire and around 2000 florins.

Not that bad of a deal, and a very rare occurrance to boot.

With that out of the way, Venice now decided to march a nearly full stack army for Milan. I stopped there, so now I have a hard battle on hand to drive the Venetians away. After that I will probably move to take Venice from them.

Then I only need Bologna to complete my dominance of northern Italy. I'm actually surprised the HRE hasn't attacked me yet, but once they do, Bologna will be the first to fall.

 

Finally started France, although I've only played like 15 or so turns. (And given that the first few turns can be completed in about 5 minutes, that's not a whole lot a game time.) Anyway, I think henkie is starting to rub off on me, because I've definitely quickened my early game pace. This is partially due to France starting in a particularly strong position. Not only to you start with five settlements, you can double your holdings almost from the word go. To the north, I've claimed Rennes, Bruges, with Antrewp under siege. Bordeaux to the west, Zaragoza to the south, Dijon, Metz, and Bern to the east.

Zaragoza actually wasn't on my list of initial targets, but I got a mission to take it several turns into the game. I found that very odd. Whenever I played the Moors or Spanish, the Portugese typically laid siege to Zaragoza on turn 1, and had it in their possession by round 2 or 3. They either didn't do that this game for whatever reason, or the siege failed. I currently have peace with everyone, and I'm just waiting for someone to try and screw me over. The short list is Milan, Denmark, and of course the HRE. England is a possibility, although I do have a peace treaty with them (and the Spanish), and so far both have played nice.

 

After an abortive attempt with the Ikko-Ikki (the different religion means people hate your guts, and you have next to no samurai) where I overextended myself and got into near-Realm Divide before I was ready, I started with the Hojo. It's a bit of a pain specializing in siege units (before that I never used a single siege unit except for the European Cannons with the Shimazu, and I never felt that I missed much), but you get cheaper castles, and a second starting province with a gold mine.

The starting position is a bit weird. You start with good terms with two other large players-to-be - Takeda and Imagawa - and there may be some temptation to ally with them early on. At least on the difficulties I've played, the computer doesn't often stab you in the back when you are allied to them, so I decided to give it a try. Right now I've gotten part of the Japanese north, but a Takeda assault on the Uesugi means that the two parts of my territory are divided. OTOH, I think I can cross over allied territory well enough - we'll see how things go when the Realm divide works. For now I'm making decent enough cash, but I'm thinking of developing my market network a bit further this time - the provinces I have are only mediocre in terms of agricultural yield, and there is only one reasonably secure trade route I can use.

Edit: after a late-nighter (good grief, I should stop starting to play so late), things are looking quite good. My relationship with the Takeda and Imagawa was solid enough that 15-ish turns after the RD both are still allies, and quite helpful. The Imagawa hit the Hattori (the major clan near Kyoto) pretty hard, and the Takeda also expanded south. I joined in the fun, which triggered the RD. With two near-full stacks, taking Kyoto was no biggie. Let's see how several upgraded markets work to preserve my poor economy now the RD has hit.

 

I'm currently playing Rome Total War as the Julii. Is there absolutely nothing that can be done about squalor? I'm building the core buildings as fast as possible, but especially Patavium is suffering massive squalor. I'm at the end of mid-game (Gaul, Carthage, Greece, Numidia, Macedonia and Dacia extinguished, Spain and Britain almost) and I'm suffering a massive uprising. I've placed spies there to root out existing enemy spies, I'm also constantly building ships to reduce population growth, etc, but to no effect.

What can I do short of evacuating the army and burn it to the grown when retaking it?