Well, I'm continuing to slog through my campaign. I now have 7 armies rampaging across the countryside. About 40 turns left until the end of the game, but I'm sure I'll be able to win this time around.

The long campaign ends after 250 turns right?

And I don't have a lot of time so I won't do the entire story right not, but some remarks:

- landing in the New World with 3 general's units, a lot of cavalry and 3 basilisk cannons is FUN! They just stood there waiting at the town square, I bombarded them from waaaay out and just about halved their army (thunder of the gods!) before charging in with my troops. I actually used my band of mercenary indians to clean out the square, with the odd cavalry charge in the back. No need to get my own hands dirty.

- the mongols and timurids are HARD bastards. The 3-4 times I've been in a large battle with them they raped my ass mercilessly. On the bright side: the Mongols are easy to repell during a siege, because they don't tend to have cannons and only crappy infantry. So you can easily fend off ladders and siege towers, and with a combination of luck and some phalanx-style units at the front gates even a battering ram is a laugh. I love watching them impale their cavalry unto my Tercio Pikemen. The Timureds otoh are just general allround badasses....They're rapidly becoming this campaign's Egyptians.

- there's tons of richess in the South of the desert, deep into Moors country. Goldmines, ivory, you name it, merchant field day! I only really bothered marching all the way down there late into the game, but it was worth it...and no enemy merchants around cos it's the middle of the desert.

ah, nice notes on the southern desert. I may have to check it out. I'm still beating around blasting people. Haven't had any real attles with the Timurids (just took one of their lightly-held towns), but I've enjoted beating the crap out of the mongols. They're extremely missile heavy, but they don't have the range of my crossbows, so I just whittle them to death. I'm at probably 25 turns remaining, with 4 more territories to own. Of course I'm now excommunicated, but blah. I may actually continue playing after the game ends just to lay the smack-down on humanity. I haven't even bothered with the new world.

btw, fielding armies of riflemen can be quite rewarding. Their range sucks, but they cause some mad damage in close quarters. I'd love to see them defending a town. I also bought a mercenary rocket launcher unit..that's quite a bit of fun too. I hope the mongols are playable....fielding a dozen of those would be cool.

I think the factions that "arrive" later in the game are by definition non-playable but you can always try and make everything playable by editing the .ini and just see what it gives. In RTW you could play most non-playable factions that way, but selecting some of them would make the game crash to desktop.

Anyway...to pick up where I left off: I had my waterloo in the desert Not that they managed to drive me out or let alone exterminate me, but I spent SO much time sieging and fighting in the Gaza-Jerusalem-Antioch area that I lost the game there. Well, that and because i thought I still had a lot of turns left, which i didn't....so I didn't expand fast enough North and around the mediterranean. The result was a movie of the monk saying that the reconquista had failed and that Spain would never be united (wtf? I held the Iberian peninsula for 200-300 years without any wars, right until the end), and that with a leader as incompetent as me it's no surprise.

But after taking Alexandria, Cairo fell easily too. It took some time to stabilize the Nile delta region and rebuild the army to tackle Jerusalem and co, but I sorely underestimated it...so many factions want to get their hands on Jerusalem it's insane. I first had to fight through hordes of Gyppos, which was tough but not impossible...then I stumbled upon the outpost armies of the Mongols which proved a worthy opponent in the open but easily dispatched of during siege battles. But then the nightmare started: the Timurids captured Antioch and marched on with several armies, including one with a 10-star general. Being extremely cavalry-heavy they absolutely slaughtered my first armies with vanilla heavy infantry and cavalry. =( The next army I dispatched was more suited for the job featuring pikemen (spearwall!) and hand gunners (like Satis mentioned, these guys are allround tough bastards), but the first one was beaten by a hairlength in an open battle as well.

So, I just decided to only engage them when defending or attacking during a siege. The cities/citadels make their armies (80% cavalry) a LOT less dangerous,especially if you can bottleneck them at the main gate and stop them with 4-5 units of pikemen in spearwall formation. A few successes later I had Jerusalem and the nearby city, so I was feeling cosy. But the armies just kept coming...up until the point where I was confronted with the cannon elephants. I was like...oh fuck, elephants...oh FUCK, they've got cannons on their back. Check it:

http://clankiller.com/stuff/Rinox/Movie_0019.wmv

(cannons fire at the start, maybe play it back to 'see' it)

Luckily, the calibre of those cannons is only so-so...afaik they can't breach walls. So they were still bottlenecked at the main gates, I just kept my infantry away from the walls (and the elephant artillery) as much as I could. After pwning their little infantry at the walls the Timurids breached the gate and stormed in, straight unto the pikes...hilarity ensued. The elephants panicked and ran out the gates, stampeding through the enemy cavalry...I don't know if you met any of the stampeding elephants yet but they pretty much kill heavy cavalry on contact. After a while the yard in front of my main gate looked like a graveyard, but I hadn't even left the city walls, and I didn't have any archers! Just the stampeding elephants and the city defenses. Little video of the stampeding massacre:

http://clankiller.com/stuff/Rinox/Movie_0020.wmv

A vid of elephants/general running gleefully into the pikes

http://clankiller.com/stuff/Rinox/into_the_fire.wmv

Still...the timurids proved the toughest bunch of bastards I have faced in any total war game so far (granted, I didn't play them all but you know ). I blame it on the middle eastern region that I didn't make the timelimit. Think I'm just gonna reload an older save and start kicking some ass in france etc...get to those 45 regions and leave the timurids alone as much as I can.

On another note: had great fun in the new world, but some aspects of it are just stupid...NO WAY an army of 1900 naked indians with clubs and bows can come even close to defeating a well-trained, armored army with cavalry, cannons and proper steel weapons. Yet the battles are all pretty balanced. IIRC Cortéz held off thousands of Aztecs with nothing more than 200 men. So, yeah...but it's fun. I took on two full stacks of Aztecs just now and only barely won, but took over 1500 prisoners including their faction leader. Ransom worth 6500 gold!

Another video of the merchants down in Timbuktu...the mouse pointer is on the income they have per turn...650 gold with no upkeep, yeah baby.

http://clankiller.com/stuff/Rinox/Movie_0021.wmv

Victory! I reloaded an older game with about 40 turns left and about 20 regions...objective was to control a total of 45 regions including Granada and Jerusalem.

This time I didn't make the mistake of running into the wall in the middle east, just kept a huge army under decent command near Jerusalem to take it in the last few turns. Instead I expanded into the European mainland, rapidly obliterating France and pillaging and burning through the (apparently huge) Holy Roman Empire. I had to move fast because it's no small thing to have to more than double your territories in 40 turns...so I was overextending at a certain moment (the classic error) with full stacks of Germans and English running amok. The English even took 3 Spanish cities (!) with a bizarre landing attempt...I mean I was wiping out London etc and they're sieging my capital with a large army. Not very smart.

With only 5 turns to go it looked like I was gonna fall just short and my best armies were wearing out and breaking their teeth on the (fresh) Danish and Polish settlements behind the Holy Roman Empire. Also, I had to really scrap to take back my cities in Spain from the English. A last-ditch blitzkrieg effort with everything I had left was the only solution...marching up through Jerusalem all the way to Antioch in two turns (extermination ftw), but most of all: a mass landing on the Italian mainland with everything I had left on Sicily and Sardinia, to attack the papal states' cities. Not part of the masterplan, I know, but it was an emergency

In the end I only needed to take one of the papal cities to get to 45, but gotta love the Blitzkrieg effort...in 1 turn all of the papal states' cities were under siege. And then...victory! (check the pic)

Only thing left now is to smack some aztec ass, I'm mass producing conquistadores and have about 3 full stacks. Should be enough to take one city, I suppose. Then it's off with another faction, maybe an islamic one...no fucking pope to worry about.

hey, congrats. I beat my venice game too. My final battle for that final, 45th city was pretty wild too...ended up being the Hungarian capital. I had one of my good, conquering armies, but the enemy managed to bring in a second army that was nearby, including their prince.

Anyway, they basically piled all their units into their square. After some playing around and whatnot, I blasted my way into their city and it just became a massive free-for-all in their town square. I ended up winning, thankfully, but it was pretty brutal. Anyway, some piccies.

Nice pics Lol @ the Hungarians withdrawing to the town square...moronic as that tactic may seem, it's often a very effective way of holding off attackers in my experience, so doesn't surprise me that things got so brutal. Of course, if you brought a few basilisks along you could try and wheel them up to the square to blast the shit out of the piled up troops. That's how I owned most of the (non-aztec) indian tribes...just shot them to pieces from way out.

Congrats with the victory btw! Any plans for a second campaign? I started a game with the Turks, and it's been good fun for now. They start with a lot of territory and tons of nearby rebel settlements, so there's a lot of room for fast expansion. Military speaking they don't seem to be extraordinary but they've got superb horse archers and good cavalry, and (supposedly) a few good elite infantry units later on. After 25 turns I had a little trouble with byzantium, but that's about it (think they lost 5-6 family members in battles with me already). The Turks probably have it easy at first because the Mongols and the Timurids 'land' in that region. Let's hope I can build up a strong kingdom before they get there.

(I also liked the look of Hungary, but I wanted to play a muslim faction so the Turks had the edge over them)

I kinda started (and abandoned) a couple games, including the French and Spanish. I dunno....I may take a short break while I play NWN2. I'd really like to play a non-Catholic faction...maybe Byzantium. I just want to kill the pope.

Ok, I'm playing the Moors. I think I'll be sticking this out. I own a nice chunk of western Africa (including Kathmandu with all the nice merchant drops) and have a nice foothold in Spain. The Spanish and Portugese are bastards and have been giving me hell from almost the start...I've had some really whack battles.

Valencia:
Killed El Cid, took the castle, built it up a bit
Defended against several attacks
Spanish attacked with overwhelming forces...I completely wiped them out except for the general unit which slaughtered me to the man... lost Valencia
next turn marched an army over, slaughtered the general and a nearby army and retook it
fought several battles since then without losing it again

Cordoba:
I've been besieged several times, but I came closest to losing a few turns ago when a huge army of Spanish assaulted me (1000+). Both my generals died in the defense, then my archers ended up routing the enemy army with hand to hand combat. At this point it's max size and has ballistas, so I'm probably safe until gunpowder is invented.

Anyway, I'm still buildiing up all my cities and whatnot...when I've more or less stabilized, I plan on taking Toledo and more of West Africa.

The most glorious battle in history. The Byzantine empire utterly smashing rebel hordes.

1 turn = 16,000 enemy rebels massacred with just 1600 Cataphracts.

pardon, but did that game show you've been playing for 1300 turns?

No, thats a mod i installed that shows the year, not the turns.

lol @ moses.

I only just got these guys but...Naffatun FTW!! This is freaking hilarious

http://clankiller.com/stuff/Rinox/lololol.wmv

After a relatively easy start of the game I've run into a little crisis: the Mongols have landed! Taking back the rebel settlements surrounding my lands was easy enough, and even smashing the Egyptians to the South and holding off the Byzantines to the West was child's play. I had a large chunk of land including present-day Turkey and some areas below and above it, and Constantinople.

They appeared somewhere below Baghdad with their stacks of silver-chevroned armies led by 6-9 star generals. Baghdad and Mosul were not very well defended as border towns so they were exterminated quickly enough. I already had been building up an army or two in my heartland to counter the Mongols when they arrived but the plan wasn't complete yet, so I had to let them come up a bit further. They marched up to Antioch and claimed it as their capital, then took a few cities South of it (Gaza region). They even bribed Jerusalem into their bidding!

Funnily enough, I got a request from the Mongol faction heir to assassinate the Khan (in exchange for 5000 gold and improved relations) and it actually worked. 5% chance with an assassin but bingo. I tried to take advantage of the boost in relations by arranging a ceasefire or even some sort of vassal-ship (me being the vassal) but they wouldn't have it. If I was gonna get out of it I was gonna have to fight.

In the deep South my MONSTER general was slaughtering one Egyptian army after the other and sacking cities at will, so the income of that campaign kept my economy up as the Mongols were crippling it North. I swear, the guy is insane to the nth degree...his bodyguard has 3 gold chevrons (!) and he's got 10 stars, 10 dread and 8 loyalty. He's so feared that most armies will break after fighting him for a while, and I mean fighting his bodyguard, he rarely has an army. I've seen his bodyguard take on army of 400 peeps, including the Egyptian sultan (51 men in bodyguard) and 4-5 units of heavy and missile cavalry....he killed the king in no time and then broke, routed and slaughtered all other units. Good times! He's been Masud the Brave, the Horseman, the Mighty, the Mauler and now...the Tyrant. Muahaha.

Anyway; the Mongols sieged and took one more city past Antioch, but behind it were my largest city and my main army production citadel. That's where I made my stand. It took a LOT of my armies and empire to hold them off, but we did. At the end of the game last night I even pushed back, taking back one city and getting ready to siege Antioch. Masud was moving back up to use the ol' waffle iron tactic on the Mongols (pushing from both sides) with an army of mercenaries; but at that moment a Jihad was called on Constantinople (which had fallen to the Byzantines because I couldn't afford spending troops to defend it during the Mongol crisis) and I couldn't let the opportunity pass to have Masud raze it to the ground, now could I?

I'm having a lot more fun with the Turks than with the Spanish so far at any rate. No pope whining etc. Added a series of pics about THE last ditch batte against the Mongols. A full stack of them had penetrated deep into my heartland and was getting ready to strike...so I threw anyhting I had left at them, including 5 (yes, five) bodyguards. I won by a narrow margin, losing 4 of the bastards...but thankgod, not the one leading the battle. He was 16 at the time...was one of the most promising generals I have ever seen at 18, then got killed in a rather idiotic fashion. Ah well.

lol - why doesnt that surprise me!