You too, senor. Ludovic, you want to start up a new one?
Just letting y’all know, I’m out of this round. I’ve put away my game until “Kingdoms” comes out.
I’m up for a new one. Which one do we want to do? I guess I get to pick, I think I will probably choose Russia, since we haven’t played an Orthodox faction yet, and the Byzantines in any competent hands is no-brainingly easy, even at harder play levels. I think I’ll try Normal campaign and Hard battles to make early expansion harder.
We should make another list to see who is still in and base it off of their old place in the old list. I’m up for it for one.
Come to think of it, I think I will try Hard campaign and Hard battles. Isolated so far from everyone will make it boring if the other nations aren’t cut-throat as well.
Whoever signs up over the next few days will keep their place in the list we were running for the HRE. I probably won’t get my turn done until the weekend, though, as I am finishing painting my Necron army for Warhammer 40K for a tournament on Saturday.
I’m still down for crushing things.
Well, Hard/Hard made things–interesting. The King fell in a closely-fought battle for Kiev, but not before his lieutenants took all the Baltic states east of Prussia. Our bishops are even receiving accolades for their conversion work in Riga, and we are about to conquer Smolensk and Ryazan.
Sending to LOUNE: the castle your Council wants you to reinforce has already been increased by 1.
So as it stands now the list is:
LOUNE
Ludovic 
Mmmkay. I got the file, so I’ll be playing it tonight, kind sir.
…This is going to hurt, isn’t it?
I’m still in, but I’m not a very good strategic player so I can’t guarantee much land-grabbing under my reign. I’m a right devil at the tactical game though 
But did the King win his battle for Kiev, or was his death in vain?
…
All death is in vain.
Okay, list now is:
LOUNE
Gokumatz
Ludovic
No, Kiev was not taken. The battle was going our way up until the king died, and still we would have prevailed had the units not turned and run several times each, and if it wasn’t on Hard tactically we definitely would have won (we outclassed them in cavalry and had 2 more units and a 6 star General.)
Well, I expanded the empire. The Mongols have just arrived. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that you don’t have to be in a hurry to get there.
The Polish are gone. I thought I was going to have big time money problems, but diplomacy ended up getting us some scratch. Actually, it got us a LOT of money. There are a lot of troops to command for the next war. Currently, there are no enemies, but Europe is begging for it…
Gokumatz
Ludovic
LOUNE
Passing along the save game I got without doing my turn. I’ve got some tips, further down, if you’d like to read them but you’ll discover them in turn anyway.
Unable to play because of a mostly broken GFX card at the moment, but I did get a look at the situation and play a few turns before giving up. The mongols are to the east, proceeding northwards. Your kingdom is largely unscouted, so I’d recommend setting up a overlapping watchtower system once you get a few thousand gold to spare and a bored general.
Secondly, the Turks are about to declare war on Hungary, but don’t fall into that trap; With me, only a very few turns later, they’ll turn around and make Hungary an allied vassal state. (I wonder how they do that, Hungary is huge) When I kept attacking Hungary for my land-grab, I swiftly got my eastern and southern arse kicked by those two-timing twice-damned turks.
Milan will also attack your sneakily grabbed castle in Germany in about six turns, but I held them off with two extra units of spearmen and some Bovyer sons. (The trick is to destroy the tower but not the ram and make the gate entry into a two-sided crossfire deadzone of crossbow bolts, while holding them off with your spearmen. Killed 540, lost 150 with this tactic)
Also, send a good general to Moscow, it’s close to open revolt because of the taxes.
Update: well my King is still alive and playing, but here’s the turns so far:
Milan did attack me but I had time to not only make two spearmen and a Kazak like you mentioned, but also a unit of Dismounted Dvor. All that firepower combined with a devastating counterattack in such close quarters made it a walkover. And they tried a couple more times too before I could reinforce it, and up until I captured their Counselor they were a walking money bank with all their Crossbow Militia I would capture and ransom. I’ve taken their French holdings, and am about to finish off their Italy holdings so I can outflank the Germans when they declare war on me (the HRE is marching toward my relatively unguarded Krakow after I refused to their money demands, but that too should be easy if that army’s all they’ve got, and I must say that the sneak peeks I’ve seen when going through their lands to reinforce my besieged castle don’t impress me with their military might either.)
The Mongols were thwarted from a sneak attack on Ryazan by my fence of scouts (mostly peasants and archers), who not only wanted to see where the Horde was, but also wanted to make sure that if they declare war on me it would give me a turn or so to reinforce. Plus, I was trying to delay them several turns to have full stacks in Ryazan and Moscow.
Well, it worked very well: my 4 armies of only 1 unit apiece turned back the entire Mongol horde of nearly 7 full stacks, since they couldn’t get past my Zone of Control without attacking me and declaring war (I guess the AI wanted to start off with a sneak attack on a city, as I feared they would.)
YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
So they doubled back onto Volga-Bulgar, which they had just bypassed 2 turns ago in favor of the richer lands to the west, and attacked my nearly full stack of defenders. I lost Bulgar, although I traded kill 2 Mongols for every loss I took, and the loss increased my income by 3000
Does anyone know how the Mongol reinforcements work? I see that they don’t have to pay maintenance on their troops, but do they have a Kings Purse they can draw money from to purchase more Mongols? If so, how many units can they purchase a turn without even having any territories? I want to know how long it is before they are back to where they were before their semi-Phyrric victory.
Oh, and I had a chance for a decapitation strike on their leader, too! Their current Khan is only 1 star, and was in only a 3/4 full stack. So my fence-sitters coalesced into one army and attacked a rebel group resulting in a crushing victory and…NO Adoptive Son :mad:.
If I did get an adoptive son out of the battle I could have bought all the available mercs and killed the Khan right off the bat
I was under the impression that the Mongols simply walked on from the east with seven full stacks and a treasury and worked from there. Watching their armies carefully might show what really happens, I suppose.
Huh. Wish I could answer that, but I really haven’t rumbled with the Mongols much in this version.
I remember the first one. The Mongols came into town once and then you remembered that date.
I still have a heck of a time beating them in the open field. Assaulting a town, though, they’re not nearly so scary.
Update:
Well, the Grand Duke is still alive, although he is beginning to feel the rumors of winter in his mid-50s. In his growing restlessness, he decided on a sneak attack on the Holy Roman Empire to unify our Piedmont, southwest German territories with our western Polish territories, and the Germans had been threatening us with war several times in the last decade. But as they were too afraid to start it, we decided to attack first backed by our catapults: one German and Italian city fell immediately and I have two full stacks to go against their four full stacks guarding Venice…but all is well since my armies still have movement left so I should be able to divide and conquer them down to parity by the end of the turn.
The Mongol horde is fairly indecisive, leaving Bulgar behind for my trailing fence to mop up once they left, and turning around before sacking south Russia to instead haul toward Ryazan. I ambushed one of their armies and routed it, even killing one of their 8 star leaders, but they destroyed me in turn with their army behind it. It does appear they are down to around 6 1/2 full stacks.
Russia is desperately waiting for her scientists to unearth the secrets of these things called “rockets” the Mongols have been shooting at us: does this happen to the Russians later than the other races, as I always win before turn 101 with them?
Never used the Russians before, so I don’t know.
Do we want to continue with the expansion pack now? That could be fun.