What is with Seville?

[mr_hormiga]

I am playing with 1.05 normal / normal settings

I have noticed that in all of my games the Emir of Seville dominates the Iberian region....

I decide to take them down a notch and started as the Duke of Braganza (Portugal). Immediately I had problems: an old Duke and Duchess with no heirs... sadly I had to kill my wife and marry a 16 year old (she produced one heir). My next duke died young, leaving one heir.... never really did get past the bottle neck.

Anyway,
After a minor war I became embroiled in a massive war Seville. The king of Castile was basically toe to toe with them so I swooped in to turn the tide.... I managed to capture all of modern day Portugal plus alittle more but had to call for peace (my ruler died and I was in debt).

Castile and Seville continue to war... I notice that Seville (which gets reduced to 4 provinces) manages to produce MASSIVE armies and have a positive income. Ok figure it is a freak event. The war drags on between them.

Eventually I decide (again) to enter the war (the Castile / Seville war went on for like 10+ years). At this point Seville has made an amazing come back and has Castile on the ropes with only like 6 or so provinces.

I manage to capture most of Seville, but yet again a mysterious 5000 man army comes out of no where! At the same time I check the Seville provinces and notice that almost all troops are fully charged! (this is after long war with me and Castile beating him).

After another long slug match we are about even.... than Castile does the unimaginable and declares peace! I than find my nice kingdom rapidly eaten by massive armies.

So what is going on??? Is there some event that fires for muslim Spain (specifically Seville) to make them insanely strong???? Seville managed to crush me and Castile even though he was repeatedly beaten down to very few provinces and army after army was destroyed.


Can some one please explain this?

Thanks!

[Puritan]

I'm not sure what my difficulty is, it must be Normal or below.
I can offer no explanation, only sympathy.
I've seen Seville do things like you describe, but I'm not too sure of the details. I'm in Italy, and don't look at spain often, in fact if it wern't for the burgoes crusade, and my conquest of North Africa, I'd be ignorant of the regions strife. Sometime before the Burgoes crusade (1090's or early 1100's, I don't remember), there was no christian presence in Iberia. Now I am the only effective christian prescense in the penisula. Crusader states will be be periodically established, but eventually they do something stupid (DOW seville) and die. I established three duchies there during the crusade: The Marches, Austeries, and Navarre. Navarre and Austeries broke away, and Austeries was annexed by the Monster of Seville. Between Navarre and I (King of Naples, NA, Mau. Jer. Egp.Tun.) we paritioned Toledo's domains out of existense.
I'm suffering from realm duress now, and am frankly not interested in Seville, because they have never DOW me or my vassal. I am curious about thier tenacity, and the Seljuk's seeming immunity to Realm Duress.

[Silvanus02]

I've noticed, Muslims and Pagans get mercenary events too, and they can never go into debt so almost always have gold. Therefore, they'll accept it every time, no matter what, that's why some of the same provinces produce the same units - they are mercenery units.

[CSK]

They have a mercenary event. This gives them around 2000 or more men to fight you when they are nearly dead.

I always take them as the evil Jihad events.

[Ar7]

Seville is a major pain, it has very rich provinces and nobody usually touches it in the beginning. So everytime time things look similar: Toledo, Bajadoz and Zaragoza begin a fight among themselves and the Christians. While they all wear each other out Seville grabs the Republic of Cordoba and the Emirate of Granada and becomes a superpower almost not touched by war. It then proceeds to swallow what is left from the other Christian and Muslim states.

I hate it!

But I kicked their ass!

[Veldmaarschalk]

In my game, Sevilla, after conquering Spain, Anjou and Normandy is now busy establishing itself in England.

[cuchulain]

in my current game, leon and navarre conquered most of spain, but then after a very long war, they both got destroyed by the king of mura.. (the ones from morrocco)

but seville or toledo even badajoz usually conquer spain in my games, then france or someone may conquer it back after the burgos crusade.

[Shad0w]

they rich, they are damn rich,, they control the richest provinces in Iberia, just a little kick on door and all petty christian kingdon will fall

[Ar7]

Originally Posted by Shad0w

they rich, they are damn rich,, they control the richest provinces in Iberia, just a little kick on door and all petty christian kingdon will fall

Besides that, all of those rich provinces are mountains and have small castles in the beginning! So it takes a load of time and thousands lost to attrition to bring Seville down.

[mr_hormiga]

Seville is way, way WAY to strong than. I mean I seriously beat the hell out of it for several years (as did Castile) and the one mercenary event I observed they got 5000 mercs (which is just plain silly!). I am sure they had other merc events that I did not observe.

So even with me actively going after them, they still took Iberia (thanks to the repeatedly convenient merc events).

I understand they should be tough but come on, they are just plain monsters.

[Puritan]

Originally Posted by mr_hormiga

Seville is way, way WAY to strong than...I understand they should be tough but come on, they are just plain monsters.

Maybe this is to make the Reconquista take SOME time, like the real one did. But then again, it wasn't the same group in charge resisting the spanish tiode in moorish spain, and I belive that it was Granada that held out until the end. sooo, I'm sure that SOMEONE here has modded seville down to size, but hasn't posted yet.

Originally Posted by Veldmaarschalk

In my game, Sevilla, after conquering Spain, Anjou and Normandy is now busy establishing itself in England.

A routine happening in Medieval Total War, but there I think those spunky alomahads reach the north pole!

[BurningEGO]

This is totaly off-topic, but, uhm, in MTW, the spaniards usually go on a Word Conquest rampage, conquering all of north africa and turkey. That is, after (and if) they crush the all-mighty turkish empire that stretches from bagdhad to prussia.

[Hamanu]

I just started playing the counts of Veglia and conquered Sicily, but the ever so mighty Seljuks managed to take all of England. Now they're chewing Byzantium (which didn't take advantage of the Seljuk D-Day strategy) and I'm wondering idf there's a point in playing further. France and Germany seem to be completely disinterested and don't mind that the Turks are in London. Bah

Those Stupid Seljuks and Fatimids really need to be toned down a bit. In each game I started one of them conquers England unless I'm playing England or France to stop them. No fun playing a little count if you'll end up seeing a gigantic muslim empire across Europe while you're trying to become a duke or something similarly local

[Puritan]

Originally Posted by BurningEGO

This is totaly off-topic, but, uhm, in MTW, the spaniards usually go on a Word Conquest rampage, conquering all of north africa and turkey. That is, after (and if) they crush the all-mighty turkish empire that stretches from bagdhad to prussia.

As long as we're off topic, I've seen one MTW draw, two spanierd conquests of the middle east, and once I took both of them out as England. THe tac. battles in that game take way too long, especially when you have twenty a turn. Hence my love of CK's logical, lovely, hands off approach.

Originally Posted by Hamanu

I just started playing the counts of Veglia and conquered Sicily, but the ever so mighty Seljuks managed to take all of England. Now they're chewing Byzantium (which didn't take advantage of the Seljuk D-Day strategy) and I'm wondering idf there's a point in playing further. France and Germany seem to be completely disinterested and don't mind that the Turks are in London. Bah

Those Stupid Seljuks and Fatimids really need to be toned down a bit. In each game I started one of them conquers England unless I'm playing England or France to stop them. No fun playing a little count if you'll end up seeing a gigantic muslim empire across Europe while you're trying to become a duke or something similarly local.

Those guys almost never get realm duress do they? In mine Seville is strong, and the Seljuks just quite can't seem to make any gains against the Byz in the balkans, but have gobbled up the rest of the empire. I'm the monster, and I'd be happy to have a strong temperate seljuk there in 100 years to absorb both mongol hoards... but they'll probably need some pruning.

[Ericus1]

The biggest problem you're seeing has more to do with the martial rating than anything else. Now that the martial rating of the monarch and Marshall are tied into regiment regeneartion rates, and since many of the Muslims, especially Seville have good ratings in that area, I've noticed that they can regenerate an entire regiment in less than four months. So, what happens, is the mobilize, and go fight. By the time the regiment is either killed off or demoralized until they disband, the entire regiment is back up to full strenght, so they can continue to fight indefinitely since they never go into debt. That's why they always seem to be able to field huge armies non-stop, even after continued war for the past 10 years.

I like that the Marshall rating is tied into regeneration, but it needs to be toned down, a lot.

[The Impaler]

I'm playing the 1187 scenario, and the Seljuks of Rum are not that impressive at all. It's not because I've done them any harm as Georgia, either - in fact they're currently my allies - it's Byzantium that has held them off plus a period when, after the Mongols were defeated in Persia, Azerbaijan became very strong. As usual, the Muslims are too far north (threatening Paris) but because of the first Crusade target, have been thrown out of Spain and Portugal completely and have lost most of North Africa. This is the third game in a row, in fact where the Crusaders have overwhelmed the Maghreb, in spite of it never having had a crusade target.

[Puritan]

Originally Posted by Ericus1

I've noticed that they can regenerate an entire regiment in less than four months.
I like that the Marshall rating is tied into regeneration, but it needs to be toned down, a lot.

I kinda figured martial had an effect too, but wasn't sure of how exactly it worked. I've seen regiment strength go up and down with in a province, for no apparent reason, where I didn't change anything, no change in martial skill or martial, no events in the province, and no recent war.
I've also seen instant regeneration. I had my capital regiment in the field for at least a year, and when I demobilized it, it was down to 400 men. When I immediatly re-mobilized it, it was up to full strength, better than 2800 men. I figure that recruiting goes on while the unit is away, but the newbies cant join the regiment until it comes home. Is that typical, or a fluke?

[grallonsphere]

Originally Posted by mr_hormiga

...Is there some event that fires for muslim Spain (specifically Seville) to make them insanely strong???? ...

That's how the game was designed... Don't get me started. In my last game the Golden Horde had a domain of 209 provinces... yes you read that correctly - and was running a -2100/month deficit - with no problem whatsoever. To test this further I edited the save game and put the mongol king's stats at 0 for everything - a walking corpse if you will. I also gave him real duress. The game completely disreagrded all these obstacles and the mongols kept pouring massive armies with no sign of either disafection/attrition/rebellion etc.

In the end I got tired and edited out all their provinces except their home base - which I then invaded and conquered. I understand the difficulties in modeling the Horde's behavior and apparent unstopability but this was just absurd.

In any case in all my games with 1.05 I've seen Spain overrun by the muslims - except once where Castille unified the peninsula.

The AI is so braindead there's no use to try to make sense of its erratic behavior.


G.

[Nick B II]

Originally Posted by Puritan

I kinda figured martial had an effect too, but wasn't sure of how exactly it worked. I've seen regiment strength go up and down with in a province, for no apparent reason, where I didn't change anything, no change in martial skill or martial, no events in the province, and no recent war.
I've also seen instant regeneration. I had my capital regiment in the field for at least a year, and when I demobilized it, it was down to 400 men. When I immediatly re-mobilized it, it was up to full strength, better than 2800 men. I figure that recruiting goes on while the unit is away, but the newbies cant join the regiment until it comes home. Is that typical, or a fluke?

That's typical. Ussually when you disband a regiment and immediately remobilize it you'll gain men. As long as you disband in your own realm every soldier, and every commander magically reappears in your capital (or his home province) the second you hit disband.

Note that Stewardship is very important for regiment strength. It affects your income, which directly affects the maximum size of a regiment. So if your Steward dies your military is in trouble until the steward's replaced.

Nick

[lwarmonger]

I think that part of the problem is that the Muslim states seem to remobilize their troops, to take advantage of the larger regiments they can gain. Christian nations don't do that, and so they have a dozen or so regiments of 50 men wandering around doing nothing, while the Muslims are regenerating.