Yeah, I meant 125 but I typed it wrong. so, to repeat my conundrum: 8 lvls of XP for killing just over a hundred enemies? Wtf?

My Cibinarii Immortals once singlehandedly slaughtered over a 1000 (!) enemies (not all peasants mind you) and didn't get 8 freaking lvls of xp.

well, those generals almost singlehandedly routed the enemy army and killed the enemy emperor. Maybe that counts for something.

I think youve set the game on 'tard' mode.

hehe...sometimes it feels like it...up until the enemy shows up with all these advanced archers and enough heavy infantry to slaughter my cavalry. Venice's units just don't seem to have the punch that England's did.

Isn't that their entire point? That they're money-grabbing little backstabbers that have others (mercenaries) do their fighting for them?

Can't wait to go kill some Aztecs with Spain.

I might try conquering the world with the Aztecs once im done with my Byzantine campaign, just for kicks.

Are they a playable faction? I know in RTW some extra factions became 'playable' after destroying them/beating the grand campaign, but many didn't (usually the more exotic ones).

If you fiddled around in the .ini you could set all factions to playable, but even then only some actually became playable, selecting certain factions just crashed the game.

I'm starting to seriously own with Venice. I'm about 100 turns into the game and own a good chunk of the Med ports. Finally making money. And Pavise Crossbowmen kick some serious ass....the crossbows tear up even heavily armored foes.

I'm currently tearing up Milan, Hungary and the Byzantine Empire. I also own Constantinople. The pop really pisses me off though...they've forbid me from attacking Sicily, but Sicily has one of my cities under siege.

This was awesome. I sent an army to scout some territory ahead to see who it belonged to, and before i got to a city, 5 full stacked rebel armies pouced on me. Each had about 6x Boyars Sons, 5x Archers, 5x Woodsmen, 5x Peasants. I thought this was going to be tough trying to retreat to friendly soil, but i smashed 4 armies and the other ran away. It was strange, butchering so many in one battle. I counted about 8k enemy KIA's and about 600 KIA's on my side.

lol...wtf is a notorious berserker? Does he just go crazy every battle and start bashing crap?

Well, sadly you dont see him in battle. I think he just adds +1 or something to the moral of troops.

Ok, you whores: I started playing MTWII, because everyone abandoned me on GW and finding a good group for the Domain of Anguish is hell.

I picked Spain and set out to become a papal whore; oh yes. I played til 4 AM last night so you can imagine I've advanced quite a bit already. =) After some initial struggles with the Portuguese and some rebel movements, I firmly established my foothold of power in central and northern Spain. I hold about 5 cities so far; not exactly a miracle but you start surrounded by a lot of factions and without any real power so it's ok.

My king (Alfonso) was a 1337 sux0r that kept falling over his own feet so I just kept him stationed at the capital. His (only) son Prince Rodrigo, however, was a fucking hardass who didn't mess around. He led the first great battle, an siege defence against an overwhelming Portuguese force. 'Twas his first step as a rising military star.



Most of the rebel towns didn't pose much of a threat, but there was one that smashed one of my (granted, make-shift) armies in a horrible fashion. Turns out that the little rebel city valencia was led by the legendary El Cid! Bastard had 8 command stars His bodyguard was horribly hard to kill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_cid



Anyway, after assembling a larger army and a little more patience with the sieging I brought him down as well. Meanwhile I took my time building out the infrastructure in the more easily defended parts of kingdom and becoming a devout dude by building chapels and training priests. Oh and I sent my 'best' priest down to Africa to do a long march towards Jerusalem and the like. Figured he could become a famed missionary or something. It doesn't seem to have hurt his cause though, because before too long he had 8 or 8.5 rings of piety.

The French started to move South and took Zaragoza, after some skirmishes. I sent Prince Rodrigo over with the first thing that resembled a balanced army, and destroyed the French forces occupying the city. By then the Pope had called a crusade against Toulouse, which is only a few steps away from Zaragoza. So I decided to march on (after a quick retraining at Zaragoza) to Toulouse and to please his Holiness with my swift and terrible wrath! Unfortunately, I kinda misunderstood the crusade concept...apparently you have to "designate" an army and shit. I just assumed I had to march up to the city and take it. Anyway, no harm done...the crusade just ended when I took the city. Too bad though, it would have been sweet if I could have taken it under the actual banner of the crusade.

The French begged for a ceasefire after Rodrigo's little Blitzkrieg, and I accepted because I wanted to expaned West and South first. The Portuguese are still holding a city or two and the Moors are starting to whine about me becoming their vassal. So high time I brought Christianity to those godless swines. Oh, king alfonso croaked (naturally) so Rodrigo became the new king (yay), but best of all: my super-duper converter has been elected as the new pope! Yihaaw! I didn't even need to bribe anyone in the election...I was the most 'reliable' faction of the three candidates and I have a lot of diplomatic friends. It feels good having a homeboy in the Vatican, hehehe. Unsurprisingly, he loves my faction and everything I do. I present to you, pope Ranerius I of Spain!




Stopped playing after that...I'll report later on more MTW2 fun. Btw, I have my doubts about Rodrigo's sexuality. For all his pwnage, he doesn't have any kids and 'adopted' two young men. Mmm.

lol - Oh the twists, the turns, and finale... Rodrigo is gay.

How many command stars does he have.

In my campaign, the Mongols keep spawning 3 silver-chevron armies with 7x star generals. I think ive beaten the last of them, but the battle was costly indeed. I always end up in a dirty melee with all 19 of my byzantine cavalry, and theyre not very good at melee.

Some turns ago I tried to replace my byz cav armies with a heavier missile cavalry unit, which is decent at melee, but it was unsustainable. Price per unit would have been 250 gold, instead of 175 gold. But the main problem was that the heavier kind was scaresely available and difficult to retrain.

I have capured ukraine after that glorious massacre against the rebels and initiated dialogue with the russians. In that diamond shaped peninsula (you know, the old greek colony) I can see another 6x full stacked rebel armies just hanging around by their town. I am building a special army to deal with these guys, and the result should be comical. 19x Kataphractoi, 1x bodyguard will eventually pile straight into these some 12,000 rebels.

well, I'm still plugging away with Milan. The black plague just hit, but I was thankfully able to weather it without losing any regions or anything. The Pope is a bastard (obviously not mine), but I'm slowing whittling down Sicily and Milan, after which I'll own Italy and a chunk of southern France. I've fortified Constantinople about as much as can be done (cannon towers and all), so that should be mine pretty permanently. But for the next little while I'll just be retraining all my units across the world, thanks to the stupid plague. Once that's complete, I'll probably finish wiping out Sicily and go on a rampage around the Med. I'm finally making 10k+ / turn, finally allowing to do the mass-infrastructure improvements I need to support a massive military offensive.

Some notes.... Venetian archers are ok as archers, but suck in melee despite their stats. They break too easy. I'm also working on fielding an army with a number of monster ribaults. That should be fun.

What are ribaults? I assume cataphractoi are the medieval version of cataphracts.

Are you guys actively playing the religion card or just sticking it to the pope? A friend of mine says he had a crusade called on one of his cities, and that it sucks. Couple of full stacks of enemy armies sieging your city and all.

As you will have guessed by my policies in my previous post, I try to be holier than the pope himself. It seems to me that being in good standing with the Popemast0r has a few very neat benefits and very little negatives.

Anyway, to continue my little story where I left off...

After capturing Toulouse I moved the army led by king Rodrigo towards Bordeaux and layed siege to them. I kept the siege going for a couple of turns before agreeing to a ceasefire in exchange for a large financial tribute. Capturing Bordeaux wasn't really in my plans anyway so far, so I moved the army back to Spain to clear out some wandering rebel armies.

Meanwhile I sieged and captured Lisbon in the West and eradicated the Portuguese. After regrouping I started working on an army to engage the Moors. Because I was at peace with the French in the North and had a good natural 'wall' there (pyrenees) I could afford pulling troops from most of my cities to the South and made a rather formidable army to tackle Cordoba. At the same time, Rodrigo was going the long way around to the Southernmost city on the Iberian peninsula (granada I think).

Even though I was definitely moving up in the world, cracks started to appear in my power: 'my' pope died and a new one was elected by a narrow margin - and I voted for another candidate. Bit of a blow for my relationship with the pope, but me and the papal states were still in "perfect" agreement. Then I noticed that the heartlands of my kingdom were only 65% or even 50% Christian anymore. Turns out that Moorish Imams were travelling my kingdom and converting stuff everywhere! I never really paid attention to them...and I had very few trained assassins or priests. I was clearly losing my grip on the cardinal college too. So, I started mass producing priests and assassins and I'm slowly regaining power. I even have two cardinals again! Oh and purging the lands of heretics with my clergymen as often as I can, of course.

I captured Cordoba with little effort and started erecting chapels and churches, while Rodrigo started sieging granada. In my hinterland I converted a few castles to cities (weren't in any immediate danger anyway) and moved my capital to Toledo. While I was doing all this, the treacherous French sieged Toulouse with a full stack army!! I had forgotten about Toulouse for a while so it was poorly defended, but...it's a citadel! Those things are freaking impressive I held off a vastly superior army by just withdrawing to the inner courtyard and trying to hold them off right there. The AI commander wasn't too smart (just a captain) so he let his troops split up in the large city making them an easy target for my cavalry while my heavy infantry kept the gates. See the pic for the outcome....I love the new castles, hehehe.



So, the French ran and I was ready to bring down Granada, but then I went to get a bite. More later.