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How to do win England as William? And how do you keep it?

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Apr 30, 2007
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So yesterday I tried to do the Norman conquest, playing as William the Bastard.

I thought it would be easy - he is a kickass commander, he's healthy and has great stats, and he has a ton of gold.

My strategy was to siege and take as many provinces as possible, since I knew that I would get control of each province upon winning the war. I wanted to get rid of the Saxon dukes that way.

The war itself went ok - militarily it was never a problem, since I hired the best merc company right from the start, and wiped the floor with the Saxons. The Norwegians also weren't such a big problem, I basically defeated them in between sieges and then let the Saxon leftovers fight them.

Halfway through the war, I realized I didn't need to siege ALL the baronies, though, since I thought taking command of the counties would be sufficient. The sieges took bloody ages anyways.

Even so I never got around to siege more than the southern half of England. Somehow even after crushing the Saxons there were still too many little armies running around, counter-sieging, so one of my three stacks had to be constantly on the move to chase those little Saxon stacks away.

When I finally did get the peace offer from Harold, my money had run short (~150 left) and all my armies but the mercs were depleted. (Shortening a siege by pressing the "assault barony" button is a great way to throw away 1000-2000 soldiers in just a few days :eek:)

When I became king of England, the north (mega-Lancaster who had inherited Northhumberland) and Cornwall didn't even become my vassals. All I got were the counties I controlled - lots of them but all with the nasty -100% levy modifier !!!

A month after winning England, King Philippe declared war on me. I had maybe 800 men left at that point. He had ~5000 men and claims not just on Normandy but also on England. :eek:

My mercs deserted me, my little army was crushed, and after Philippe took the crown from me I was left a Duke of Bedford with a levy size of 250 max.

HOW ON EARTH... do you win this war and KEEP England?? Do you siege just the lands Harold holds? How do you keep Philippe off your back? (Betroth someone to his family?) How do you work with the Saxon dukes, after victory?

I am totally flabbergasted by how powerless you are after "winning" that particular war. Yes you can fill England with Normans who love you, but the land is worthless post-conquest!! :(
 
Leviathan07 said:
So yesterday I tried to do the Norman conquest, playing as William the Bastard.

I thought it would be easy - he is a kickass commander, he's healthy and has great stats, and he has a ton of gold.

My strategy was to siege and take as many provinces as possible, since I knew that I would get control of each province upon winning the war. I wanted to get rid of the Saxon dukes that way.

The war itself went ok - militarily it was never a problem, since I hired the best merc company right from the start, and wiped the floor with the Saxons. The Norwegians also weren't such a big problem, I basically defeated them in between sieges and then let the Saxon leftovers fight them.

Halfway through the war, I realized I didn't need to siege ALL the baronies, though, since I thought taking command of the counties would be sufficient. The sieges took bloody ages anyways.

Even so I never got around to siege more than the southern half of England. Somehow even after crushing the Saxons there were still too many little armies running around, counter-sieging, so one of my three stacks had to be constantly on the move to chase those little Saxon stacks away.

When I finally did get the peace offer from Harold, my money had run short (~150 left) and all my armies but the mercs were depleted. (Shortening a siege by pressing the "assault barony" button is a great way to throw away 1000-2000 soldiers in just a few days :eek:)

When I became king of England, the north (mega-Lancaster who had inherited Northhumberland) and Cornwall didn't even become my vassals. All I got were the counties I controlled - lots of them but all with the nasty -100% levy modifier !!!

A month after winning England, King Philippe declared war on me. I had maybe 800 men left at that point. He had ~5000 men and claims not just on Normandy but also on England. :eek:

My mercs deserted me, my little army was crushed, and after Philippe took the crown from me I was left a Duke of Bedford with a levy size of 250 max.

HOW ON EARTH... do you win this war and KEEP England?? Do you siege just the lands Harold holds? How do you keep Philippe off your back? (Betroth someone to his family?) How do you work with the Saxon dukes, after victory?

I am totally flabbergasted by how powerless you are after "winning" that particular war. Yes you can fill England with Normans who love you, but the land is worthless post-conquest!! :(
Click to expand...

Don't go overboard with mercs, 2 of the 60 gold ones is enough. Wipe out the Norwegians and Saxons big armies immediately and then start seiging. You don't technically need to fully seige every city/temple etc but it'll make your life easier if you do (otherwise you'll have units spawning behind you constantly). If you don't do this however, its very important to make sure you capture the castle in each province not just the county level holding if its a temple or city.

Grind your way through the country keeping a close eye on your money and being ready to stamp on any hostile force that gets above a few hundred men. Don't let them build up. When you capture people, ransom them back as soon as possible. You should be able to hold steady above 600, if you're efficient you can finish the conquest with 900+ gold. It'll give you a stable England and enough cash to fight off the French if they decide to attack.
 
kentonio said:
Don't go overboard with mercs, 2 of the 60 gold ones is enough. Wipe out the Norwegians and Saxons big armies immediately and then start seiging. You don't technically need to fully seige every city/temple etc but it'll make your life easier if you do (otherwise you'll have units spawning behind you constantly). If you don't do this however, its very important to make sure you capture the castle in each province not just the county level holding if its a temple or city.

Grind your way through the country keeping a close eye on your money and being ready to stamp on any hostile force that gets above a few hundred men. Don't let them build up. When you capture people, ransom them back as soon as possible. You should be able to hold steady above 600, if you're efficient you can finish the conquest with 900+ gold. It'll give you a stable England and enough cash to fight off the French if they decide to attack.
Click to expand...
Hmm okay, so you're saying I should plan to rely on gold to fend off France?

And what about the siegeing? Do you just siege what you need to take to force Harold to peace? Or do you extend it to siege all across England, and dispossess as many Saxon dukes as possible when you sign peace?
 
Here's how I did it:

Split my army into 2 equal parts. Siege the 2 provinces closest to home. Don't settle for the initial siege, wait for the whole province to be occupied (awesome feature). When Harold finally sends his doomstack down to deal with you, quick-hire a band of mercs and reinforce your armies just long enough to totally route them. Then you can disband and get back to the siege. He'll constantly try to raise a new army that you can easily run down with one of your remaining levies. This also helps your score.

I had enough warscore with only about 5 provinces totally occupied to demand terms, though I made the mistake of not dishing out my realm to vassals quickly enough and found myself in a hopeless war with them - though I did manage to become 'William the Conqueror'

I probably could have gotten my realm under control, but the other posters are right, you start with way too much money to spend it all on mercs, and once you complete your goal it will take some cooling off time to be in a good position to defend your new nation. So the more you have in your reserves, the more mercs you can hire if the French decide you've become too large. You will most likely not be able to fend them off without them, though you could probably abandon Normandy and keep them at bay with your navy.

Edit - and no, that land is not worthless by any stretch of the imagination, it's just highly volatile when you first conquer it. Make sure to keep the best for your own demense and dish out the more destitute provinces to your vassals.. like I failed to do.
 
You really don't wanna be marrying any of your children to Philip I, unless you want all of his heirs to have claims on the Kingdom of England as well...
 
Leviathan07 said:
Hmm okay, so you're saying I should plan to rely on gold to fend off France?
Click to expand...

You have no choice. When you take England your provinces are all under the 'recently conquerered' flag for 10 years. Until that lifts you're getting basically no money or troops from anywhere but your Normandy holdings. If France mobilizes against you, that just isn't nearly enough. You need to be able to field a big army and do it quickly enough to smash the French armies before they organize. If you're lucky though, France will leave you alone anyway. They don't always attack.

Leviathan07 said:
And what about the siegeing? Do you just siege what you need to take to force Harold to peace? Or do you extend it to siege all across England, and dispossess as many Saxon dukes as possible when you sign peace?
Click to expand...

All England, take every county. If you hold all the counties then you get the lot when peace is called.
 
kentonio said:
All England, take every county. If you hold all the counties then you get the lot when peace is called.
Click to expand...

That's an incredibly tall order as you get constant events that take 5-10% of your armies at a time, and your king seems destined to die before the task is seen through. My experiences so far is if I wait out for a better situation than the one I described above, the Saxons can manage to raise enough troops to crush your dwindling armies. You might start with a nice chunk of change, but even 1 small band of mercs will run you dry in no time flat. That and it's very hard to keep a positive income with all your levies raised. I had to disband my fleets just to stay at an even income.
 
kentonio said:
You have no choice. When you take England your provinces are all under the 'recently conquerered' flag for 10 years. Until that lifts you're getting basically no money or troops from anywhere but your Normandy holdings. If France mobilizes against you, that just isn't nearly enough. You need to be able to field a big army and do it quickly enough to smash the French armies before they organize. If you're lucky though, France will leave you alone anyway. They don't always attack.
Click to expand...
Hmm, I guess that makes sense. The english provinces are just so much dead weight until those nasty modifiers are lifted.

All England, take every county. If you hold all the counties then you get the lot when peace is called.
Click to expand...
But that takes bloody ages :eek: (Doesn't it?)

I would like to finish the war in under 10 years, so I can see the day the -100% modifiers are lifted from my precioussssss lands..
 
The Blood Eagle said:
That's an incredibly tall order as you get constant events that take 5-10% of your armies at a time, and your king seems destined to die before the task is seen through. My experiences so far is if I wait out for a better situation than the one I described above, the Saxons can manage to raise enough troops to crush your dwindling armies. You might start with a nice chunk of change, but even 1 small band of mercs will run you dry in no time flat. That and it's very hard to keep a positive income with all your levies raised. I had to disband my fleets just to stay at an even income.
Click to expand...
Okay, but you do not need the fleets at all after younhave ferried your armies across the channel.

The merc upkeep gets me, though. Sieging until I control all of England would last so long that I'd be out of money by the end of the war.
 
The Blood Eagle said:
That's an incredibly tall order as you get constant events that take 5-10% of your armies at a time, and your king seems destined to die before the task is seen through. My experiences so far is if I wait out for a better situation than the one I described above, the Saxons can manage to raise enough troops to crush your dwindling armies. You might start with a nice chunk of change, but even 1 small band of mercs will run you dry in no time flat. That and it's very hard to keep a positive income with all your levies raised. I had to disband my fleets just to stay at an even income.
Click to expand...

You can keep your income up by ransoming back all those prisoners you get, even a mayor gets you 25 gold. It adds up and helps you keep afloat. Try it, you can seriously end the war with a very large treasure chest.

As for your troops dwindling, just don't spread them too thinly. It's tempting to try and seige as many provinces as you can at once, but in fact fewer but larger armies can seige quicker and wipe out any small opponents much more efficiently.

Leviathan07 said:
Hmm, I guess that makes sense. The english provinces are just so much dead weight until those nasty modifiers are lifted.


But that takes bloody ages :eek: (Doesn't it?)

I would like to finish the war in under 10 years, so I can see the day the -100% modifiers are lifted from my precioussssss lands..
Click to expand...

As I mentioned before, you don't have to take all the holdings for each county, but it can actually work out easier in the long run because then they can't keep raising levies from those counties.
 
kentonio said:
You can keep your income up by ransoming back all those prisoners you get, even a mayor gets you 25 gold. It adds up and helps you keep afloat. Try it, you can seriously end the war with a very large treasure chest.
Click to expand...

Didn't even realize you could. I have a feeling I'll be saying that quite a bit in the next few weeks.
 
Dunno I have won battles all over and taken lots of cities, but no peace and no victory. Vassals keep crying their levies have been active for too log.
 
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