Custom Battle - Open Field Conflict #1

Whenever I'm fed up with campaigning and organizing entire cities, peoples and various armies, I just submerge myself in some simple, classy belligerence with custom battles. This is an individual battle documentary that will explore the subtleties of warfare. This was actually the only thing I did when I didn't have the guts to begin a grand campaign, so I can say I'm fairly experienced in designing and forming different variants of army groups using the many factions and troops that are available in MTWII. Unfortunately, all these battle tactics are rather one-dimensional and may turn a strategically inclined campaigner into a blunted fighter of assorted kinds. However, if you usually tend to complain about the simulator tool in the campaign, and how it functions rather awkwardly, and if you want to prove your true worth on the battle field this is a great way to improve yourself, because when campaigning, even if you do not possess savvy as a governor, keeping your enemies disquieted on the battlefield will make you a mighty, resistant foe. So - improve yourself as a commander! This is what Total War is for.

Venice vs. Milan

I chose Venice since I found myself immersed in formulating strategies for the Italian merchants, and because I always found their particular brands of soldiers to be some of the best in the game. However, I will play as Milan on this game, because I find great pleasure in withstanding against a great brickwalled assault of Venetian heavy infantry, while holding the lines with a patch of troops. Milan is situated as the defenders this game, because having a defensive stance always gives you infinite sight over the entire map, in contrast to the attacking side who can only scroll over to territories that are in the surrounding on the troops. This is a tactic that you should apply to campaign battles as well. Even when you have a vast army looking upon the enemy lines, try to convince you're enemy to strike first so that you'll have the advantage of sight. Additionally, defeating a belligerent and attacking opponent in his/her own game is quite a victory, and quite a heavy defeat for the enemy. Coming back to the game, I have stationed each faction with the following troops:

Venice

General's Battalion - Venetian Heavy Infantry, full silver experience

Venetian Heavy Infantry, 14 Battalions, no experience

Peasant Archers, 2 Battalions, full bronze experience

Pike Militia, 2 Battalions, full bronze experience

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Milan

General's Battalion - Knights Templar, fully experienced

General's Bodyguard, 1 Battalion, fully experienced

Sergeant Spearman, 4 Battalions, full silver experience

Musketeers, 2 Battalions, full silver experience

Genoese Crossbowman, 3 Battalions, full bronze experience

Dismounted Feudal Knights, 2 Battalions, full bronze experience

Catapults, 2 Battalions, fully experienced

****************************************

Location: Scottish Glen


As you can well see, the Venetian host is a mighty singular structure of steel and hammers, with a minor boost of pikes to repel any feral cavalry incursion, whereas the Milanese force is a rather patchwork army of different sorts, particularly relying on the ranged troops to deal a sufficiently strong blow before the opposing horde clashes with the thin line of defenders. Catapults help a great deal, especially if they can actually hit their designated targets, however, I'm more reliant on the crossbowman who will undoubtedly pepper the enemy with bevy of arrows, and the musketeers who are well inclined to fire from a great distance - unlike arquebusiers. What I want to do as the defending host is to simply lure the gigantic enemy horde towards my front flank using that single piece of general's bodyguard, does drawing my net around the Venetian armor with the piercing superiority of my crossbows and muskets. Muskets are excellent ranged implements in the short-run, and later on they will also serve as a light fore-layer to hinder accelerating Venetian infantry, because with their penchant for not being able to fire behind allied lines, they're practically useless when the armies engage. Instead, I used them as a sort of meat wall...

Before the battle commences, I arrange my troops. The spears from a chunky front line, fairly lengthy and thick, while my two knight battalions, form a thinner second line exactly behind them. You see, even when there's no need to guard your side flanks from brisk flows of heavy and light cavalry, - equally dangerous and bewildering at a position like this - it's obligatory that you extend your line to a certain degree, so that the entire wall of enemy troops don't come pummeling in from only one destination. However, especially when facing against a host that rather lacks diversity, your column of troops shouldn't be too long, for they may possible never get attacked. And don't want to form a homogeneous line with my spears collected at one spot and my knights at another. An adequately allocated, heterogeneous line formation is the quintessential formula to victory. We need to block them, exhaust them. And if the spears aren't backed up by anything the Venetian heavy infantry will rip through them like cutting butter with a hot knife. My crossbowmen, who are fairly apart from my melee column are positioned perfectly so that they can bloody the enemy's troops before they even get there; without doing much unintentional damage to my ranks. The musketeers are, as I said, positioned right in front of my spearmen so that they'll as much damage as possible before melee engagement. My general's unit is behind all these columns of flesh, my catapults are placed alongside my crossbows, and finally, my one bait cavalry unit remains towards my right flank, ready to intercept, and, if possible, lure the enemy.

The battle begins, and the Venetians instantly send forth their two peasant archers, their formation dispersing briskly as they plod along. This is a common mistake all NPCs make, to their great dismay. Sending the missile troops right away before the melee forces even intercept is not a genuinely genius move, and I tend to find it rather expedient, hindering the enemy's advance. For some odd reason, NPCs are always disillusioned on this certain subject. They think they can inflict a good deal of damage on us, and while this may be true if they had a large mass of ranged units, their current ranged offensive consists solely of two ragged peasant archer battalions, so they don't stand a fucking chance against my own array of muskets and crossbows. My musketeers fire before anything else, spontaneously festooning the archers' bodies with bullets and gunpowder.

One minor note on the usage of musketeers - never direct them to attack a particular enemy battalion: For some reason they procrastinate their bullet barrage when they are directly ordered to aim, so I just leave them untouched and they automatically start firing. The series of ranged attacks that my muskets can conjure are deadly. Before even contenting themselves with a proper position, about one third of the peasant archers are dead, they're fleshy bodies no match for blazing bullets. Soon enough, the crossbows enter the foray, and arrows begin to sharply pierce through the air. The enemy archer are so perpexed by the sudden bombardment that one battalion starts to route, having lost nearly half of its original numbers. The second battalion is more persistent, and manages to bring down a handful of my own, closely grouped men before eventually forfeiting. At the same time, my catapults are raining blazing boulders upon the gleaming metal masses of Venice, doing chocks of damage.

As my single cavalry division clashes with the Venetians' flank, they manage sever the Venetian heavy infantry greatly, tearing down about a hundred men almost instantaneously. However, my cavalry gradually diminish and finally perish and the clobbering mass of heavy infantry - ultimately becoming successful in luring my opponents. The routing archer battalion eventually gathers its courage and starts taunting me with bevies of flaming arrows - nothing of great concern, but I was occasionally frightened by the prospect of losing my catapults to the flames. That, thankfully, never happened. Instead, my fire-spewing machines tossed away rocks right into the middle of the Venetian army. By the time, the Venetians had left their original position of stance, the ground was littered with charred corpses. Once the Venetians were close enough I had to use one of my musketeers (who was not firing because of a hill that hampered their aim) as bait to ascertain the Venetians' offensive. My plan works. I quickly gather my muskets (which inevitably diminished in numbers following my distraction tactic) to form their original line in front of my spears, and the two armies become so close that collision becomes imminent.

I order my incendiary boulder barrage to cease, because I can't risk burning my own troops in the catapult barrage. The Venetian heavy infantry are hugely prestigious from the start, despite their loss in numbers from the previous arrow and bullet bevies. The massive charge bonus these guys have proves their worth - the tinny column of musketeers are completely smashed, and many heavy even infantry even manage to filter through the first line and onto the spearwall. My spearmen suffer huge losses in the initial phases of the battle, though I had been expecting this. In fact, I'm not too worried with my knights forming an equally impenetrable wall of steel as the Venetian heavy infantry. However, things are starting to look rather grim for me. An immense stack of pikeman and heavy infantry are piled in the middle section of my line, and my spearmen are melting away fast, with my musketeer meat wall reduced to mere scraps. Panic encompasses me, and I'm forced to focus all my crossbow fire to the middle so that they don't breach the line. In vain, my troops struggle to keep their formations thick and solid, but the Venetians are so abundant in number that they're smashing through like an iron maw bludgeoning a stone block. However, the Venetians forfeit quicker than I anticipate. Tired and beaten from the prolonged stalemate, they start to route, and it becomes visible that most of their numbers have been reduced to less than 70 men per battalion, one or two pieces completely eradicated during the foray. Ultimately the rapid, exhausting onset takes its toll for the Venetians and within less than a minute, the entirety of the enemy troops are routing, back to their equally berated general. Some of the fleeing battalions show that they have lost their will to fight entirely, and the majority of them, to my surprise, is able to regroup and form a line of their own. With seamless victory in my reach I order my whole army to charge at the enemy lines, hoping to route them promptly, but not before another shower of arrows and fiery rocks. The Venetian line lasts longer than I expect, but succumb easily nonetheless. The left side of their force instantly routes at the sight of might charging spear/knight combo, and I'm able to divert those unused troops towards the right flank, which proves to be more resistant. However, their faith is sealed. The 200-something force in the right grows weary and eventually submits to defeat like their friends, and a befuddled general is captured during a moment of triumph.

Unfortunately I forgot that battle replays don't reveal stats in the end, so I don't have the exact numbers of deaths at my hand. I will, however, supply you with a proper battle statistics in the next custom battle I play. For now, I'm afraid the only numbers I can provide with utter accuracy are the starting numbers.

Milan - 1641 men - Clear Victory

Venice - 2341 men

The Venetian Diaries #2 - Mercenaries Save The Day

I would have chosen to play as a less diverse faction than Venice - the Italians are proving to be real difficult, especially since over the course of the first 20 turns that this series of the diary will be infatuated with, I have come across certain hindrances which sort of opposed to the strategies I formulated in the previous series. You see, MTWII, or any Total War game for that matter, is not particularly random, like an MMORPG, since after a considerable amount of time you feel that game's flow is perceptible and uninteresting, and , being limited to Europe and some part of Asia, you're certainly never enthralled by a sense of randomness that RPG games can conjure so easily. It's just so easily to get lost and find obscure things in games like Skyrim or Knight Online, and in a game like this it's quite easy to get bored because the gameplay is based on logical thinking and using available information more than anything. Nevertheless, I will try to make these diaries as fun and vexing as I can, adding fictional stories here and there to invigorate and brighten the tactical, political and economic development of an empire, (well, no yet, but soon to be) so bear with me here. Sometimes I get entangled in such gruesome situations that I find it hard to rid myself of these sprouting troubles and create a convincing fictional story line based on these rather serious events. One final note: I usually conduct all battles with the quick-simulator, so there won't be many detailed depictions of bloodshed, I'm afraid. Some of the most epic battles, though, will be transferred to you directly the way it was on the battlefield, so don't be in vane, dear friends.

Summer, 1080 A.D.

I found the faction leader Doge Dominico to be rather lazy man, with little command and chivalry. Not that I haven't commanded him before, but this time, focusing a little more on personal details, I found him to be less shrewd looking than other faction leaders - the Holy Roman Emperor, for example, seems like a truly cunning man, in great contrast to our snobbery Italian ruler. East of Venice, marching along the narrow strip of land that connects Italy to Eastern Europe, we have Councillor Bartolomeno, who has been affixed with a fairly large group soldiers. The Councillor seems suitable enough for battle, a seasoned, yet virile stalwart of the Venetian rule, so ambitious that in fact he seeks to conquer all with his own small army. Ragusa is garrisoned minutely - we have Alessandro Selvo with a handful of archers and spearmen, more keen to stay fixated atop the grand and muscular walls of the castle than actually engaging in battle, like our rather lazy friend Doge, however, as much as he dislikes blood, and all things carnal, he will do whatever he can to provide his country with the best of services, so that Venice may grow into a mighty empire. Last, but not least, Iraklion is inhabited by the less reluctant Christiano Selvo, who is an absolute sucker for the sea and all things Mediterranean. That's probably why he chose to govern Iraklion. Considering his position, he is the most potentially dangerous general out of Venice for the moment being, for is he builds up a force in Crete over time, he will be a great threat to the island of Cyrus and its capital, Nicosia, though failure during brazenly conducted conquest will give birth to egregious results.

My first move is to send our ambitious Councillor over to Zagreb, currently being a village inhabited by a bunch of rebel rabble, hardly more than 400 men. Though, knowing that the battle might not conclude entirely well for me, I spare some florins to hire two Slav mercenaries, who actually prove to be very useful. Zagreb falls rather quickly, though the damnable people (some 600 inhabitants) fail to deliver any funds even when I try to sack the settlement, so I just wipe them off the face of the Earth. I don't they weren't very pleased by my sadistic actions, but shit people, any action is acceptable for the good of the country, right, Machiavelli? Anyway, I am well conscious that Durazzo, the third of the three Adriatic settlements I mentioned before, is under threat by the Byzantine, who have enormous geographic reach thanks to their possession of Sofia, so I quickly start mustering my troops over at Ragusa. I damn the Byzantine for things they had no relation with - for example, the fact that Ragusa is completely susceptible to an invasion, and because, despite being a castle, it can solely train light cavalry and fucking peasants. Yes, I'm aware that it's extremely early in the game, but you have to give me some credit here, peasants are the absolute worst troops you can have in the game, and they're even worse than a dispatched catapult battalion - and trust me, a dispatched catapult battalion is pretty damn weak. Peasants just never seem to be good for anything. They melt away in the slightest heat of battle as if they were a bunch hay sacks being demolished in the convulsive fray, rushing and chanting with their crappy tridents and pitchforks as if they were just an illiterate bunch of villagers trying enforce the strength of a professional Venetian army, (what am I saying - they probably are just like that!)  their purposes unknown. Well at least we get 150 (on the largest scale) men per battalion. That's good enough for now.

Without procrastinating military growth, I decide to to enter and take Durazzo, because it guarantees my naval dominance in the Adriatic Sea, soon after building some farms and roads along my cities, and what do you know? It's the Byzantine Empire. I'm not entirely befuddled, but I still found it surprising that they acted so quickly, (it was something like turn 6) but thankfully the idiots encircled the village with such a tiny force that I could send them spinning back to their damned city Sofia before they have a chance to recuperate in a matter of seconds. And I did. I sent slightly more than half of my troops in alongside our reluctant general Alessandro and it's actually a closer battle than I would have anticipated, but I emerge victorious anyway. I quickly establish a motte and bailey, but later on I decide to morph the wooden castle back into a village, then to a town. I need money, and money comes best from cities. At first I tax them heavily, but when the people grow tired of my avaricious desires they decide go all mad so I have to impose lighter taxes on them. People always seems to be trouble. Thus, my punitive and greedy desires go to waste. Strangely enough, after I take Durazzo, some Byzantine general decides to besiege the whole settlement (garrisoned by a bunch of peasants, spearmen, archers and a general's unit) completely on his own, without any aid whatsoever, and I'm actually shocked that our chance of victory is marginally higher than a draw. Nonetheless, I win and the frightened bastard is sent spurring back to his homeland. I'm safe.

My financial situation isn't good at all, despite all the taxes imposed. Army upkeep constantly drains your florins. I build a Merchant's Wharf at Venice which I believe is fairly beneficial to my economic cause, and I expand the farms built on Venice and Iraklion. Many trade requests come pouring in by turn 5, as I expected, and I am only positively predisposed to accept all these generous offers with fervent grins and smirks. My merchant, some guy by the name of Tusco Delogu, is a standard man of trade at best, and with the best resources in Venice's vicinity being textiles (14 florins per turn), I send him over there to set up trade links. Meanwhile, Hungary takes me very much by surprise and decides to ambush me! Not quite an ambush really, but a  massive siege assault that I thankfully foresee before I actually encounter. I have no aid to be transferred over to Zagreb, the apparent destination of siege, and my troops and tired and reduced to lesser quantities, so I urgently decide to use my general to gather a whole bunch of mercenaries, Slavs and archers, and them re-inhabit Zagreb so that now I have stronger force. When the Hungarians come rushing over, I fend them off, and get a handsome sum of money thanks to the ransom, but I only win by a sword's edge.

My next target is Florence. I've been mustering troops in Venice for some 15 turns now and hopefully, if the Germans don't intervene, I can exterminate the rebel scum in Florence. Its garrison is a small and feeble force by any standards, so I send my army - around 1600 men, solely comprised of spear militia and peasants, sans our lazy faction leader - and to my surprise, the Germans stay confined to Bologna and do not interfere with my military affairs, though I'll confide that they would have probably attempted to attack me if I hadn't sauntered near Bologna for only a short amount of time. Florence falls, and to the victor goes the spoils. I get some 3000 florins from sacking the city, a much needed sum of money, and I promptly start imposing fairly heavy taxes. I build some farmland, some roads and some spears, and stop there. The strategical prestige of having Venice and Florence at the same time in undeniable. Together with the more distant city of Milan, the three form a Bermuda Triangle of some sort, completely engulfing Bologna, which should fall after a succession of forces arriving from all three cities. However, I don not yet possess Milan, and a Milanese conquest must wait, because I fear the Papal States will be soon knocking on my door. At the moment being, I have only 90 florins, having spent these vast sums I earned from sacking the city of various trade-oriented investments, but I regret nothing. I am currently the strongest faction, (yay!) and it's turn 21, and I have a hulking Byzantine army only a days' march away from Durazzo, so, yeah, I'm pretty much screwed. Until next turn, dear friend.

The Venetian Diaries #1 - So It Begins...

Ah, the Venetian Republic. A personal favorite faction of mine, Venice is the articulate, finance driven empire of Northern Italy that will use its financial and naval strength to indoctrinate the areas and factions in its vicinity, and, eventually, Italy and the majority of Europe. Playing as these Italians makes you realize the importance of your economic development in MTWII. Not only that, but the faction boasts of some superior military strength too...

So I started a new game, as these fellows obviously, for the sake of commencing a diary from the very start. The options are as follows;

Difficulty: Medium
Battle Difficulty: Medium
No Battle Time Limit
Campaign Length: Long

Basically your default settings for a standard campaign. Anyhow, first, I feel obliged to provide some information on the Venetian Republic. We start with three cities: (or provinces, or areas, I choose to refer to them as cities for clarity's sake) Venice, our capital, which is very much an island city that can only accessed via the bridge that connects it to the rest of Italy, meaning that so long as you can fend of a single army, you're pretty much impregnable since the bridge only allows the entrance of one army per siege assault. Venice controls the Adriatic Sea like no other city, once you have a sufficiently strong armada and once you have established a prosperous trade route, you'll have wealth and strength pouring into your veins. Second up, we have Ragusa. Strangely enough, the game does not grant us Zagreb from the very start for unknown reasons, despite being adjacent to Venice itself. Either way, Ragusa is situated in the middle of two other cities (Zagreb and Durazzo) across the Eastern European border of the Adriatic, granting a little more safety to your dominance of the Adriatic. Finally, we have our little island city of  Iraklion, which to me is godsend because you can literally set sail and disperse your armies to anywhere from there. Just build up your armies there, enlarge your navy, and there's not much left to do, really. Acquiring Cyprus with a force from Iraklion is a great early start if you do it in the first 20 turns, which will thus enable you to expand your empire towards Jerusalem and Anatolia.

Of course, such rapid expansion will not be able to be of our essence for a rather long period of time, considering the fact that we're confined to Italy at the moment, and completely encompassed by foes. The Holy Romans (Germans, as I will refer to them from now on), who possess the nearby city of Bologna and who pose a great threat to our capital, for one. Although Bologna does not pose enormous threat on its own, its links to the German powerhouse of Innsbruck, and the less proximate Nuremberg and Staufen make conquering it a perilous and debilitating task. So instead, we should keep our relations with the Germans cool until our military force is sufficiently strong to invade Bologna, thus shrewdly eradicating all German existence off the face of Italy. Equally frightening, the Milanese. We are of the same kin with Milan, yet we are face to face, and war could easily erupt out of nowhere. So, we are forced to use diplomacy to prevent conflict from occurring at all costs, because the sheer proximity of the two default Milanese cities make the probability of bloodshed all the more real, and all the more devastating. Here's the golden rule; unless you possess the strength to take both Milanese cities in Italy, do not attack. They are just as confined to Italy as you are and will retaliate promptly. The Milanese have the advantage of spreading towards the southern French border, and gradually towards the Iberian Peninsula, just as we have the potential to expand towards designated destinations I have listed above, so never underestimate them. Speaking with the experience I earned through and extensive and fatiguing Russian conquest - the Milanese are real bitches. When I sent two separate ships loaded with fresh troops - all the way from the Russian capital of Novgorod - and when the second one (which also contained two generals) failed to arrive in Italy due to serious naval rapes, my whole Italian campaign nearly bit the dust. I took Genoa easily enough. Though when I strained to send a third of my war-beaten troops to acquire Milan itself, I blundered terribly, having been squashed by multiple Milanese generals that drained my entire dominance over Northern Italy shortly after a failed siege attempt. I did eventually manage to push the bastards out of Italy entirely, (though still inhabited the nearby pre-French city of Toulouse) but I could not have done so if wasn't for my incessant transfer of troops from Bern and Staufen, and, later on in the war, Innsbruck, which I acquired from the Germans with sheer luck. Translation: Italy is one of the most damnable regions in MTWII, laden with forests suitable for ambush for both sides, and its such a tight strip of land that once you engage, it's going to be very difficult to fully compose yourself. And Milan is there to make things even worse. Our third nemesis is the Papal State, a faction that is actually initially quite tranquil but later on in the game gets tired of being imprisoned between Sicily and us/Germany, and starts building up massive armies to devour both us and the Milanese.

Perhaps not as convincing as the Germans or the Milanese, but still, you need to keep an eye for the Pope if you want to ascertain victory in Italy. Plus, you'll likely get excommunicated by Pope if you start bashing the Papal States too frequently. Our last, and least potentially dangerous adversary in the Byzantine Empire. I don't even regard them as one of Venice's direct opponents, since they choose to clash with Turkey and Hungary more often than anything else, however, do try to invade Durazzo, the nearest of the three Adriatic cities before they do, because no one is more spry and devilish in taking Durazzo in the first 10 turns than these bastards. Be wary of the expansion of Eastern Europe, as their inquisition of cities bordering the Adriatic will form a series of interstices that will eventually burgeon and threaten the existence of Venice.

However, Venice is not renowned for its tactical intelligence and military strength but for its trade, commerce, and success in financial conquest. Iraklion can be initially used to form trade links with the Byzantines, the Turks, Egyptians, Sicilians, and, if you're lucky, with the Hungarians, but the centrality of your capital will make merchants and diplomats cascade in for trade rights from the first couple of turns, that I guarantee. Merchants' Wharves, ports and other structures to be utilized for trade are essential for your growth, so always but a little more weigh on the construction of those particular buildings when you're financially in a rather bad situation. Farming and mining are also viable tools to generate income, but international trade remains as a mandatory field of progression that Venice must absolutely practice with immaculate diligence.

Finally, though you only get to use them very late in the game, the Venetian Heavy Infantry are totally worth owning. Seriously, these mother fuckers are some of the strongest melee fighters in the game, packing a wallop with 16 Attack and 5 Charge Points, and shielding themselves just as well with 16 Defense. Seriously consider upgrading your castles as quickly possible, because once you have these men, you have near-invincible army in the open field and in siege assaults, especially if they're assisted with crossbowmen and cavalry. Thus, I end my brief introduction of the Venetian Republic. Venice is one of the most enjoyable factions to play as, being deliberately assaulted from each and every side for the entire duration of the campaign. Conflict will be aplenty, but you must ensure that you're economy is always better than the opposing factions. I will officially start my diary with #2, so, until then, farewell.