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Old 03-01-2007, 12:48 AM   #54
Memnoch
Ironworks Moderator
 

Join Date: February 28, 2001
Location: Boston/Sydney
Posts: 11,771
Just to update - I managed to get my budget under control using these mechanisms:

1. Cut down my navy. I think I managed to save about 10K florins just by doing this. I have one half-stack in the Black Sea, one in the Central Med, and one in the Atlantic. That's it. None of this British Navy bollocks.

2. Interior provinces have JUST militia troops, up to the limit. Interior castles have one defender max. (This did come back to bite me though.)

3. I dumbed down a lot of my army. Where I had expensive troops (eg Sipahis, Ottoman Infantry, etc) I replaced them with a next-level down troop type (eg Sipahis --> Turkomans, Ottomans --> Turkish Archers, etc). I tried to leave "frontline" troops (eg the ones involved in my European expansion) at the top level if possible. (This also came back to bite me.)

4. Focus on population and economic buildings. I stopped making things like ballista makers and focussed my building efforts wholly on economic and population buildings (eg farms, warehouses, etc).

5. Merchant trading costers. I used the fort trick (justified it as a corporate "office") and put one on the ivory resource in Dongala. I now have about 10 merchants each making about 700 florins/turn inside this fort.

As a result I was (until recently) "netting" about 20-30K a turn for discretionary (recruitment & construction), which meant that I could construct many more buildings than I could. I still ended up spending pretty much all my discretionary income per turn as buildings get more expensive as your cities grow. I did manage to build a "war chest" of about 80K florins though.

However, my timing in terms of my cost-cutting strategy was impeccable; my wave of retrenchments, redundancies and sackings came just a few years before the Horde arrived. They came in around Yerevan and Baghdad (like they did in my Danish game). In my Danish game they ambled around for many turns without attacking anything; in this turn they went straight to Mosul, about seven or eight stacks, and sieged it.

This was not good as I'd gutted Mosul of its defenders - it was as far away from my frontline as could be, after all. I'd had about a couple of turns to frantically churn out some javelinmen, naffatuns and Turkish archers to try and man the walls - I think I had about half a stack in total. Unfortunately I went overboard on the missile troops and ran out of time to build any infantry. The Mongols attacked - they had built a couple of rams (good for them, as I destroyed one with my archers and naffatun), broke down my gate, and took my city square while I rained arrows down on them. They didn't even need their second army as their first routed me fairly easily once I had to demount from the walls. The castle succumbed with a whimper to the loss of all defenders.

They didn't hang onto the castle, but sacked it and moved on to Baghdad - a huge city with many defenders. I'd had some forewarning after the Mosul fiasco and had recruited some Janissary Heavy Infantry, Halberd Militia and Spear Militia, as well as a number of Sipahis and Turkomans. So I had a full stack army defending the Round City. Unfortunately I had no missile infantry (I couldn't recruit Janissary Archers yet and could recruit no other missile troops in the city) and my sole missile-recruiting settlement in the area (Mosul) had been sacked, but I did have ballista towers. The Horde attacked after building a couple of rams and a siege tower - two full stacks, the Mongol van led by the Khan himself.

The first Mongol army deployed before my gates in full battle array. It was comprised heavily of cavalry, with heavy horse archers, horse archers and lancers on the wings and missile infrantry in the vanguard. They took their rams and their siege tower forward towards Baghdad's walls. I managed to destroy the siege tower with my ballista towers, forcing the Mongols to come through the gates, where I had all my infantry. I routed the first army (led by the Khan, no less) by placing all my Janissaries in front of the gates, supported by halberd militia and my horsemen clustered around. I had my weaker spear infantry manning the walls so that the towers rained death on the Mongols as they clustered before the gates. The Khan shamed himself by turning tail and fleeing like a frightened goat after his horsemen had destroyed themselves on the halberds of my infantry but I took some pretty heavy losses as well, particularly the priceless Janissaries. As a result when the second full stack wave of the Horde came the infantry defending the gates were composed largely of conscripted spear militia, of questionable temperament. I hoped that the presence of pockets of battle-hardened Janissaries and halberd militia would stiffen the backbone of my defensive line, but routing the Khan's first army had come at a high price.

Unfortunately for me it was too high. The morale of my militia troops was found wanting in the crunch - I looked like I was holding my own against all odds and was still holding the line just behind the gate (my Turkomen and Sipahis had run out of arrows and were throwing their bodies (and that of their horses) into the line to repel the invaders from the east, when one moronic spear militia unit decided to rout even though they still had 63 men in the unit! (And it was ultimately fruitless as all they did was rout to the square where they were cut down by the Mongol heavy cavalry that poured through the gap - I'd have killed them myself if the game would have let me.) This created the hole which the Horde desperately needed, and I just couldn't contain them after that - they overcame me in a battle of attrition. My last soldier (a Janissary, believe it or not) died trying to fight the last 5 Mongol Horse Archers that had taken the city square. I'd never seen so many bodies piled up behind the gates. If that bloody spear unit hadn't routed at that particular time (and they were cut down running away anyway, may they burn in Hell), I'm sure I would have won! They were down to FIVE men.

As a consequence, the humiliation of losing Mosul and Baghdad in quick succession has galvanised the Sultan to decisive action. I've now thrown my budget out the window, executed all the accountants and beancounters who contributed to this fiasco, and have been raising armies in my heartland with total disregard for cost (Janissaries and Hashashim from Antioch and Damascus, Sipahis from Aleppo, Ottoman Infantry and Javelinmen from Caesarea and Acre, Sipahi Lancers from Gaza, and Saracens from Adana and Edessa. I've had to put a temporary halt to my efforts to destroy the Portuguese to get rid of these Mongol pests.

Bloody Mongols. [img]graemlins/madhell.gif[/img]

[ 03-14-2007, 05:27 AM: Message edited by: Memnoch ]
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