FUCK YOU STAINLESS STEEL!

[Panos]

After a long time I decided to play some SS again as BE


I Start by doing the obvious, take Constantinople and regain Greece

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My empire has been dogged by continuous attacks from the Seljuks, the Venetians, the Sicilians and the Hungarians. Plus I have had the Papal States, the Crusader States and Kievan Rus blockading my ports. None of these factions have I attacked first, they have all declared war on me. At the end of Turn 25, this is what they threw at me.

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they blocaded Arta

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Hungarians besieged Adrianoples, in which I have some really shitty units

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The Turks have sieged me at Trebizond  no General in this settlement, but some good units of spears and Mouratai Archers  and I expect to hold. Also note the Kievans have blockaded my port also here. I MEAN HOW FUCKED UP IS THIS , KIEVANS U ARE FUCKING CHRISTIANS, HALP ME!!

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Also they are ready to attack Sinop, in which I have some mediocre infantry, including a half force of varangian guard..

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The Crusader States have blockaded me at Isparta Port. With my Navy decimated in many attacks from many differing factions I do not have enough fire power to counter attack. You will notice my Garrison at Isparta is also particularly weak. It is also very weak at Ankara, so if the Turks decide to invade at any of these locations I will be in big trouble.

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On Turn 26 I had to make a few hard decisions. Before I was seiged at 3 settlements all at once, my original intention was to build a professional army, sail it to Naples on the Italian coast, invade and sack it and then gift the city to the HRE OR the Egyptians in exchange for an Alliance to try and get someone on my side for a change. My army had sailed from Constantinople & Canakale to the outskirts of Thessalonica and undocked them there to avoid more naval disaster. They were to then move accross Greece to the West coast and then board more ships and begin the invasion.

But since the AI decided to fuck me up I changed my mind

I  splitted my professional army and given half to my old FL Basileus Theodoros - aged 70. Although very old, he has decided that the sacrifice of his own life may well preserve the life of his people, and he has moved on the Hungarian Fortress of Scopia. I could not get any of this elite force to Durazzo on time so I thought the best form of defence was going to be offence. If he is successful here, even if I lose Durazzo I will still have a solid border.

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The second half of my elite force has invaded the Rebel held Athens. Here I hope to succeed to gain a foothold over the sicilians who own Corinth right next door, Although I`m pretty sure I`m gonna lose the whole army, because of Superior Rebel forces..

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And on top of all that, I went bankrupt..

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and to sum it up, I think the AI is gonna beat me.. 

[BASNAK]

Good

[Teeth]

What are you on about? You have enough troops defending to defeat every single one of those attacker armies, 2 of them don't even have generals. If you hold out for 5 minutes -> mass route. You are at war with half a dozen faction, afraid of losing provinces, and yet you send half your professional army without a general to besiege a strong rebel city? Don't see any strategic problems in that?

You can easily pull through here. First of all, disband your navy, it just costs you money and you won't be able to take on every single factions navy in a while, just look at the Sicily one, you can't compete with that. Give up besieging Athens, quickly finish up Scopia and gather those two armies and start shitkicking every enemy army close in field battles, I would start with Sicily and then move on to Hungary. However bad it looks on the campaign map, battle AI is still retarded and getting 5 to 1 or 10 to 1 kill/death ratios is the norm rather than the exception. Don't besiege anything until you reduce the number of factions you are at war with. AI factions usually chicken out if a war has been going on for a while and they start taking losses.

Just make sure you have cost effective armies. I always have cheap infantry and a few units of expensive cavalry. Cheap infantry on guard mode, playing anvil just long enough to let the charge damage of the expensive cav do its work. In Stainless Steel some units are like twice as expensive while being 10% better. Disband any mercenaries you have, they drain income. Maximize no upkeep units. 18k army upkeep seems a lot for what you actually have.

Structural problem you have is having too much castles, converting a few which are far from borders early game nets you a lot more income very soon. I usually have 1 castle for every 4 or even 5 cities.

[Tavuk_Bey]

lol panos, you end up being banktrupt i guess this is what happens when you let the greeks run a state 

byzantine empire, pay your debts..

[Tot.]

 

Leave a Greek in charge of an empire for five minutes vs retarded AI. 

[Turboflex]

Turtle in your cities and beat off their big waves with cheese siege defence vs crappy AI is about all you can do for a while. try crusader states you basically spend first 50 turns doing that vs. egyptians, turks + jihad.

[Panos]

What are you on about? You have enough troops defending to defeat every single one of those attacker armies, 2 of them don't even have generals. If you hold out for 5 minutes -> mass route. You are at war with half a dozen faction, afraid of losing provinces, and yet you send half your professional army without a general to besiege a strong rebel city? Don't see any strategic problems in that?

I may have the numbers, but I lack the quality, and we all know that quality beats quantity.
I send my army to take Athens in order to exterminate and then destroy every building in order to gain some gold, and then attack the sicilians in corinth. From my POV it`s a fine strategic move.

You can easily pull through here. First of all, disband your navy, it just costs you money and you won't be able to take on every single factions navy in a while, just look at the Sicily one, you can't compete with that. Give up besieging Athens, quickly finish up Scopia and gather those two armies and start shitkicking every enemy army close in field battles, I would start with Sicily and then move on to Hungary. However bad it looks on the campaign map, battle AI is still retarded and getting 5 to 1 or 10 to 1 kill/death ratios is the norm rather than the exception. Don't besiege anything until you reduce the number of factions you are at war with. AI factions usually chicken out if a war has been going on for a while and they start taking losses.

Disbanding my nave was the first thing to do after I landed my army to athens, and no I wont stop the siege, I`m gonna risk it, either win, or lose everything.
Stainless Steel`s AI is a really pain in the ass, have you ever played the mod in VH/VH ??
Because I really doubt it.. .

Just make sure you have cost effective armies. I always have cheap infantry and a few units of expensive cavalry. Cheap infantry on guard mode, playing anvil just long enough to let the charge damage of the expensive cav do its work. In Stainless Steel some units are like twice as expensive while being 10% better. Disband any mercenaries you have, they drain income. Maximize no upkeep units. 18k army upkeep seems a lot for what you actually have.

Most of the byzantine army constists of high income mercenaries, while on the other hand, the militia units are really really weak.

Structural problem you have is having too much castles, converting a few which are far from borders early game nets you a lot more income very soon. I usually have 1 castle for every 4 or even 5 cities.

Constantinople if you have trade agreement with Russians, Kievans and Egyptians, brings more than 7000k gold per turn, and also Nicaea bring good income. And both of the cities have good resources to put traders *silk, marbel, dyes* So i see it pointless to spend 10k gold to conver a castle to a city

@ Tot, have you ever played SS in VH.VH mode??

[Paul]

spit split split

Also ally with the Serbs. They are good kebab removers.

[Teeth]

I may have the numbers, but I lack the quality, and we all know that quality beats quantity.
I send my army to take Athens in order to exterminate and then destroy every building in order to gain some gold, and then attack the sicilians in corinth. From my POV it`s a fine strategic move.
Destroying buildings of a city located in the heartland of Greece? Greatly reducing structural income for a bit of temporary cash, that is that Greek economic insight I guess. Now in my opinion and experience offensive sieges are the one type of battle where your brain isn't going to help you all that much and you just need a better army. I don't know what kind of troops there are in Athens and Corinthe, but that army is not going to get that far. Far better use of an army that size is beating armies twice its size in the field, and get a friggin general in there. Then come back later to Athens and Corinthe with a stronger army and when you are in a better spot diplomatically. It just makes a lot more sense to me that if you are under attack by different factions, that you would not tie up half your offensive army besieging rebels.

As long as your army is big enough to not start routing immediately, beating AI armies twice the size is hardly undoable, but only in field battles or siege defense. Provided you have a general.

Disbanding my nave was the first thing to do after I landed my army to athens, and no I wont stop the siege, I`m gonna risk it, either win, or lose everything.
Stainless Steel`s AI is a really pain in the ass, have you ever played the mod in VH/VH ??
Because I really doubt it.. .
Yes, I can't remember playing much else. Although the AI is not retarded and very hostile towards you, it is hardly brilliant.

Most of the byzantine army constists of high income mercenaries, while on the other hand, the militia units are really really weak.
Byzantium has pretty good and cheap to upkeep core troops, the Skutatoi and Skutatoi Swordsmen if I recall correctly, and the Mourtatoi don't cost much either. You don't have to rely on mercenaries all that much. Also that Stradi something light cavalry, awesome when fighting Turks.


Constantinople if you have trade agreement with Russians, Kievans and Egyptians, brings more than 7000k gold per turn, and also Nicaea bring good income. And both of the cities have good resources to put traders *silk, marbel, dyes* So i see it pointless to spend 10k gold to conver a castle to a city
Implying that there is such a thing as having enough money. I think it costs less money when you do it at an earlier stage, you convert your smallest castles to cities. A lot of the small castles will grow so slow that they are hardly going to be that useful anyway, as soon as you turn them into cities you can build a lot more growth improvements, allowing them to develop to usefulness much quicker. What is 6k or even 10k when these cities get you 2,3 or even 4k more per turn than if they had been castles. That is why I called it a structural problem, you can't do anything about it right now, but you should have earlier on.

I always like to have 20k or 25k surplus money so that I can develop my provinces non stop until you are an unstoppable economic and military powerhouse. All of that without ever putting taxes higher than the lowest, because you need population to develop quickly.

[Berserkadin]

SS VH.VH without Byg Grim Reality = ezmode. BGR IV for the ultimate challenge.

[Teeth]

SS VH.VH without Byg Grim Reality = ezmode. BGR IV for the ultimate challenge.

There is a difference between making a game more challenging and making it tedious as fuck.

[Turboflex]

Yeah I don't like BGR

You're just throwing all kinds of crap / obstacles at the player but it's the same bad AI against you, both on campaign map and battle, and to overcome the huge resource deficencies the player mostly has to resort to borderline gamey tactics with win overwhelming victories on map (siege defence, moral shock stacking, etc.)

[Nukkel]

I lol'd.

[Cyber]

I have played all TW games since shogunate TW and tryed all the possible mods and settings that are supposed to make the game harder and I always end up roflstomping the enemy. Even if they bring 10 full stacks as soon as I end up with just one army every battle ends up a heroic victory because of the braindead battle AI.

And I'm not even good at the game, i'm shit. Any time I play TW multiplayer I get absoloutely destroyed because I have no idea what i'm doing.  Not an ego post, i just don't fucking understand how people can have fun with these games in SP, I am jealous 

[Turboflex]

The AI has gotten better. I tried a bunch of STW2 campaigns on legendary difficulty and actually got my ass kicked on a lot of them especially harder clans like Ikko Ikki. It's a lot more difficult in STW2 to get basically flawless siege defence wins and heroic field victories when outnumbered like in MTW2.