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Completed Let us RECLAIM THE HOLY LAND

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,405
Location
Djibouti
CHAPTER XII - UPPING THE ANTE

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Needless to say, we deny the baseless accusations against our royal person.

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Which gets us a new healer that I give the elite cavalry. They have somewhat high mortality and reinforcement costs, so they might need him.

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Also, the previous mishun gave us this pathetic relic that I forgot to present. As funny as it sounds to give Rick a +1200 HP boost, heroes are already unkillable enough. I send it to the pope instead.

We are now a king of satisfactory (5) faith. This lets our heroes equip 2 relics at a time.

If only those rerics weren't so worthless.

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Anyways,



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The map is fairly different from what we've seen so far.

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First, there's this huge gorge in the middle that can only be crossed by the pictured landbridge

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And this little pass here at the edge of the map.

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On the other side is the oasis we're supposed to cap.

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and only these two visible regiments of saracens... so you can be sure there are shittons of them hidden all around.

However, one of the regiments begs attention.

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Saladin has decided to field his very own uncle Asad Ad-Din against us!

(nevermind that at the time of the Third Crusade, ol' Asad had already been dead for nearly 30 years)

A Saracen hero unit on the field is all we need to know to deduce that all bets are off.

But actually

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The hell is up with his bodyguards? They look like the immortals from 300.

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We get closer to the gorge, and still no one's coming out. This is like Hillary Clinton's victory party - empty, listless and silent.

Smelling a trap, I send light cavalry ahead to scout

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And there you have it. TURKS HIDING IN THE FORESTS INSIDE THE GORGE :argh:

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Retreating the cavalry, I then notice they get engaged in combat and start rapidly losing dudes, which leaves me very puzzled.

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Until a closeup reveals ASSASSINS' CREED!

Assassins may not look like much. 8 offence, light infantry, just 12 dudes. But they are some of the MEANEST UNITS in the Saracen roster.

They can hide in plain sight, they are extremely tough for a light infantry unit, and they SHRED everything they get into contact with.

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As if that wasn't bad enough, two Saracen heavy cavalry units spawn in the north.

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Also, assassins are the primary reason why you want to have Styrian Infantry in your army. A single javelin volley brings them down to 6 men at critical hp, which lets us finish them off safely with other units.

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Also2, for some reason the arab knights decide to take the long way around (or join up with the rest of their folks?), so fortunately we don't have to prepare for their imminent arrival. Das ist gut.

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I try to scout for more assassins, only to get caught in hidden turk bowman crossfire...

Well, at least that revealed that there's 2 regiments of them, and let me remember their range.

ofc our cavalry is reduced to 20/36 dudes cuz of the barrage. For them, this battle is largely over.

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Still, it was actually very profitable, because it triggered the turks to leave their cover and move towards us. The saracen knights are also approaching.

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But this long trip across the desert has left them very tired. Our cavalry will stop their charge with no problem.

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Note the huge discrepancy in power. The saracen horsemen at 25% fatigue were attacked by our fresh knights templar. The saracens are now at 8/21. The templars lost just one guy.

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But our job is not yet over.

The way they march across the landbridge sets the table for a GLORIOUS cavalry charge.

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unless assassins appear, of course... Fortunately, I can just run past them and--

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:rage:

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This requires some extended manoeuvres, so I pull back everyone and shoot the assassins to death with archers.

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Then turn against the turks once more.

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The fucking assassin roadblock is still A PAIN IN THE ASS however

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But nothing that good ol' bumrushing won't fix, although we might lose some dudes cuz of it.

The second turk regiment is chased down with haste and taken down in a matter of seconds.

We can finally advance.

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Haha, yeah, no fucking way I'm going there through the front. There's probably caltrops up the ass everywhere or something to that effect.

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The long way around should be safer, but I still send cavalry first to scout for assassins.

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Looks like the coast is clear.

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WHEN SUDDENLY CAVALRY IS HIT BY MISSILE DAMAGE

WUT

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YOU SNEAKY FUCKING ASSHOLES :argh:

Get this trebuchet out of my face immediately!

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Knowing that their jig is up, Asad's troops leave their hiding. Fortunately, they aren't particularly numerous, and they are still pretty terrible. A bunch of seljuk archers and nubian warriors. We'll want to look out for the nigga space marines, but still, it's nothing our archers can't handle.

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HOW MANY OF THESE SHITHEADS ARE STILL HIDING IN HERE?!

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This time it's just seljuk warriors, so we can murder them easily with cavalry. Also, that trebuchet is now officially out.

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In the meantime, I also cap the oasis.

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However, the rest of our army is slow as hell on the approach, so I gotta pull back from it fast.

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Our archer regiments arrive to the scene first, and just in time too.

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While the nubians are sent running, I flank the seljuk archers with the knights templar.

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And then trample the fleeing noobians before they can rally and stuff me with javelins.

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Once the other infantry starts retreating as well, the archers are perfectly exposed.

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Asad might still be a problem, but

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It's nothing multiple cavalry regiments can't handle.

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Herding the seljuks into the oasis effectively corners them. They continue trying to run from the knights while our archers decimate their ranks.

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Until there's barely anything left.

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And even the Saracen commander turns and flees!

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Run him down, no prisoners!

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And thus, the mighty Lion of Faith has met his demise.

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AVE MARIA!

that was fun

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Ding ding.

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I have so much cash, I might as well reinforce everyone for a change.

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The knights get a new skill. Picked Disciplined, heavy cavalry can get tired very quickly in the desert, and the effects of that may be dire.

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Also, I forgot to mention before that denying the accusations pushed us over another rep threshold for the French. It's not particularly useful at this point.

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While Al-Jazira got us that Paypal best deal on recruitment costs back.

Now, finally...

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Since we have SO MANY DUCATS, I do something Radical.

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And change Richard into a heavy cavalry regiment :smug:

+100 damage boost (as well as a bunch of other things) for the meagre price of 10k geld, oh yeah baby :smug:

Rick and the Templars (this time as knights templar) are now going to become a ridiculously destructive force.

But enough of that, we have matters to attend to.

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Who and where the hell this caliph might actually be, I have no idea. Still, our options are many, and all of them fairly attractive:

- Letting the Templars parley with the heathens will get us rep, a relic and a kaptin.
- Letting the French slaughter the heathens will get us rep, a priest and a light infantry unit.
- Letting Kingcomrade settle the matter will net us 5k ducats, a healer and 2 weapons.

As for our next conquest.

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REMOVE KEBAB FROM THE PREMISES!

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Seems like we'll be getting lots of free cannon fodder. Das ist gut.

Two plans:

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The French... you guessed it. They want to give the Seljuks a glorious open field battle.

Assets include: Spread rumours, sabotage, scouts and destroy trap. Having both sabotage AND destroy trap in one mission says a lot about how prepared the enemy will be for our arrival.

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The Papists have a bit more elaborate plan. Our attack will proceed in three phases:

1st, we must double time it to wreck the Seljuk fortifications and kill the local garrison. This will let us strike before the main Saracen army is assembled, but at the same time, we won't initially have the support of Prince Humphrey and the Templars.

2nd, once we've killed the defenders, we should take over their siege weapons and build some of our own.

3rd, we must withstand the approaching Saracen reinforcements with our entrenched positions. Humphrey and the Templars will arrive then as well.

Assets: Stonemasons, sabotage, scouts and destroy trap.


Seems like we have a lot of choices to make, ye Codex.

- How do we proceed in terms of Caliph diplomacy?
- How shall we stop the Seljuks?
- How do we proceed from there? Shall it be the Caliphate of Cairo or the Caliphate of Baghdad?
 

Reinhardt

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2015
Messages
29,236
Behead all saracens including their women and children.

Use french plan for mission. It's time for us to see large battle.

Next stop - Baghdad.
 

Erebus

Arcane
Joined
Jul 12, 2008
Messages
4,763
Richard finally gets his ass on a horse ! Having him on foot was rather silly.

Let's give the caliphate to the Templars and follow the papist plan.

Capturing Baghdad gives us chevaliers, and they sound a lot more entertaining (though not necessarily more efficient) than english spearmen. So let's do it.
 

oscar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
8,036
Location
NZ
Let the Templars have it there way and French grand battle plan baby (Papist one sounds like our units will do the bleeding until reinforcements come to steal the glory and is too finnicky in general, a good Gallic charge it is)!
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,405
Location
Djibouti
CHAPTER XIII - KEBABISTAN

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We let the Templars have their way with the caliph.

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Which puts us over the penultimate rep threshold for them. One that is super super useful.

Once I get the geld, I'll make sure to spam all units with kaptins.

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They also give us this worthless relic. Eh, better than nothing.

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The time is nigh! I sold some garbage item we had in the stash to get sabotage and remove trap, just in case.

At the time of the Third Crusade, the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum was ruled by Sultan Kilij Arslan II. The old ruler is no doubt fearsome and experienced in warfare, but perhaps he might also be senile enough to underestimate our army!

latest
I've watched the stars, and they do not look kindly down on you!

Also, presumably the "Prince Humphrey" sent to aid us is Humphrey IV of Toron, an ally of Richard's during the crusade. He was a baron, though, not a prince, but this game is a bit funny with its historicity, as we've already seen numerous times.

TO BATTLE!



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Funny fact: this is, I believe, the first time we use a French plan for anything. All the rep we got with them so far was through politicool events.

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Some Roman ruins here and a guard post. In the background, you can see two guard towers hidden among the trees. I'd wager a bet they're protecting hidden trebuchets.

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A short trek from the ruins, there's another guard post, with two catapults on top, as well as a bunch of seljuk spearmen and warriors. Nasty.

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Further to the west are more seljuks on a hill. Horsemen, swordsmen, archers. Probably more of them hidden in the forest.

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And the Seljuk commander himself, Suleyman bin Arslan, with a retinue of two regiments of turk palace guards!

Not a whole lot of enemies visible on the map, so there's definitely more to it than meets the eye.

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We get a LOT of REALLY FORMIDABLE volunteer cannon fodder for the mission. A regiment of knights templar, and a regiment of chevaliers - given their big numbers (12/14 vs templars' 11/11), I think it's safe to assume we've just received the best unit in the game for free. Only for the duration of this map, though :negative:

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A lone archer regiment starts close to us. A trap, surely.

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I send the volunteers to deal with them and see what happens.

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well... turns out nothing happens!

That's okay, I guess.

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This valiant attack triggers Suleyman's units, however.

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The camels are restless. A bad omen for you, I think.

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And it's just 4 of them? Seriously? :lol:

Also, I assumed they'd stop within the range of their catapults to draw us into their fire, but nope. They just keep going lol.

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In which case, we show them some French hospitality. CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAERG!

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:lol:

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The sky was not bright for the sultan today...

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This done, we shift our gaze to the dudes in the west.

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CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAERG!

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oh, hello there

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The serpent bites those who wear no shoes!

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Well, thanks for leaving me these two humanitarian corridors open, o sultan.

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turns out these 3 seljuk regiments here are completely alone

no one is hidden in the forests

WTF is this map? :lol: Pathetic as hell.

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Now for our next trick.

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we get rid of one of the floating catapults with sabotage

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Poof! It vanishes as if taken away by a magic wand.

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CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAERG!

Naturally, I let the volunteers lead the way. No point in having our own dudes get smashed by boulders.

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The red sky approaches the sultan's fortress!

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Oh, finally some hidden enemies.

and its a single seljuk warrior regiment are you kidding me :prosper:

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Our templar friends run straight into two spearmen regiments. They actually take hell of a lot of damage and losses from this. Guess they weren't joking when they said spearmen are extra effective against cavalry!

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No point extending this engagement.

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We can just lead the idiots back to our archers (note the random-ass patch of caltrops)

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Dove is resting, the falcon takes flight!

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:rage:

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Sayonara, scumbags

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latest
The olive branches weep at the sultan's loss ;_;

...

...

...

No, seriously, what was this map? Even Al-Jazira was TEN TIMES harder than this. They had only 12 regiments in total, ffs! And two catapults, a few inconsequential patches of caltrops and two guard towers STUCK IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. This almost feels like a bug of some sort where half the enemy army didn't spawn

Let's hope the remaining 'big' missions are harder.

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Equipping Richard's unit with horses naturally also doubles the reinforcement costs of his bodyguards...

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We can now recruit these Garcon Knights. Heavy cavalry, but more or less inferior than the knights templar - they have worse defensive stats but theoretically better offence: I say theoretically, because they have 200 damage/4 sec attack rate, while the templars have 150/3sec, so it's largely the same thing.

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We also got a unit of inglese spearmen for free. Now these guys are pretty neat. They are basically heavy spearmen - much better in all ways than the regular ones, particularly in defence. A shame it's so late that we get 'em.

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Given how much geld I have, I assign kaptins to all regiments that aren't trash light infantry or lvl 2 light cavalry. I still have one spare captain after doing this.

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Then I spend another 10k to put Ray on horseback. I was considering upgrading some of the crusader elite into knights templar instead, but I think this is a better deal.

Also, it appears that the Caliphate of Baghdad will have to wait, because... polotix!

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Well, you sure have been taking your sweet time, Freddy!

We never miss out on a battle, so this is obviously a non-choice, even if it means losing our Papal recruitment cost bonus (again).

and then there's...

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:abyssgazer:

I detect a certain temporal anomaly at work here.

The deal is simple: Either get +rep and an armour piece, or -rep and a unit of Langschilde (heavy infantry). IMO the second option is largely not worth it, since our army is already at cap, and we'll be getting Langschilde from the rescue battle anyway.

after which I try to exit the game and get visited by an old friend

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Fancy seeing you here!


So I guess you may now decide what to do with Barbarossa's men.
 
Last edited:

Jaedar

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
9,838
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Might as well decline the soldiers, our HRE rep is gonna get a big boost like this. Probably useful!
 

ore clover

Learned
Joined
Mar 25, 2017
Messages
171
The Kaiser has arrived. Long live the Kaiser!

Hmm, what's that? Oh...

The Kaiser is probably dead. Long live the Kaiser!

I fifth the motion in question. Those soldiers are probably trying to shirk their duties back home by shacking up with the crusade.
tenor.gif
 

oscar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
8,036
Location
NZ
"Funny fact: this is, I believe, the first time we use a French plan for anything. All the rep we got with them so far was through politicool events."

We used some French plans to great effect getting near bloodless victories. Sometimes the best plans really are the simplest.

Tell the Jerries to pack their bags.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,405
Location
Djibouti
"Funny fact: this is, I believe, the first time we use a French plan for anything. All the rep we got with them so far was through politicool events."

We used some French plans to great effect getting near bloodless victories. Sometimes the best plans really are the simplest.

Checked again, turns out we did use a French plan before. Once. In Antioch :M
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,405
Location
Djibouti
INTERLUDE VI - OPERATION BARBAROSSA

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GERMANS LEAVE, REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

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Sending the Teutons away gives us this armoire. Not a bad deal all things considered, this is one of the better pieces available to light units.

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And now that we've been informed of Barbarossa's death, we march to his rescue... :M



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Looks like the tables have turned!

The enemy is separated into two mobs.

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These 100% seljuks here

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As well as these guys here. Some light horsemen, some knights, a few bombardiers.

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And, uh, two regiments of "ayyubid bowmen". Either these guys are the bestest ninjas around or SOMETHING IS WRONG :M

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We double time for the hill where last time the Seljuks placed their catapults.

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While also capping the roman ruins for the heck of it. Not particularly useful this, since the saracens will just recapture them right away.

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We've got the enemy surrounded with cavalry both heavy and light. Dis gon be gud.

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But then I remember they have 5 archer regiments, and these ayyubid bowmen are, at least at level 0, supposed to be better than our crusader archers, so I send the light horsemen ahead to do some herding.

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Meanwhile our bowmen start raining fiery death upon the heathens.

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The saracens put their cavalry against ours, which spells unnecessary losses, so I take our knights out of the forest.

Also, high level archers (especially crossbowmen) with captains and overwhelming charge melt everything they can target lolz

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Templars spring into action.

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Rick and Ray follow suit shortly.

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Meanwhile these fags think I don't see them coming in all the turmoil. I feed them some javelins and they reconsider.

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hoho, look at all these juicy, unprotected archers.

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But before our knights can reach them, they manage to keal a few of our crossbowmen :argh:

Also, the Seljuk horsemen have engaged some super elaborate long-detour flanking manoeuvre that now has them charging into our archers!

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... until they suddenly decide to just turn right, away from the battle...

wat :M

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Raynald the Dumbfuck King however is much braver than the saracens and decides to charge into a bunch of seljuk spearmen :abyssgazer:

needless to say I order him to gtfo on the spot

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Then it's just mopping up.

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Victoly!

Many items, but apart from the elixir it's p. much all just vendor trash. A sword with +2000 selling price, a +2 morale armour, a +1 morale elixir, really? We've had our units break morale like twice in the entire game.

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The last two events gave us a huge Teuton rep boost. We can now recruit Langschilde.

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These dudes, to be precise, a regiment of whom we got for free.

Langschilde are a stupid unit, to be honest. Most of their stats are just slightly above crusaders (like 100 damage vs 95). Except ranged defence, of which they have a whopping 220! Crusaders, otoh, have 65.

But riddle me this: what's the point of stacking SO MUCH ranged def on HEAVY INFANTRY, which barely ever even gets targeted by archers to begin with?

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Still, no reason not to upgrade our crusaders into them. Which also gets them to redistribute their abilities.

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Apart from the stuff we know, Langschilde have access to Counterattack

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and Holding the Ground.

I honestly had to laugh at shield wall (+50% ranged def). Because 220 is just not enough :M

Picked holding the ground and open field fighter for them.
(I can't shake the feeling that lower tier units have much better skill sets too, because the crusaders' skillz were considerably more useful...)

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The new level 0 regiment we got I just sell. No point to have them around.

Also some other level-ups

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New skill tier unlock for the knights templar. No point in toughness, so I obviously pick arms-bearer.

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The new ones for archers are completely useless (morale and stamina refills for archers, REALLY?), so I retreat to masterwork armour.

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Raynald, otoh, gets something very cool. Run into the middle of an enemy mob, pop this, watch the fireworks.

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While Richard finally gets access to Despair. This can be devastating when used right before a cavalry charge.

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Given how much cash we have, I also upgrade one of the crusader elite into Gascon knights, for diversity. I even have a p. cool -30% attack rate sword in our stocks that will profit them immensely once (if) they get to level 5.

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Their first skill tier, however, is 100% useless. I'll just hold on to the point instead of wasting it on shit abilities.

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We're running out of people to piss off, it seems.

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Next stop, the Caliphate of Baghdad.

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Our good friends the Templars are the only ones to grace us with a battle plan.

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This ought to be interesting. Three-phased plan:

Phase 1 - Rush through the two fords and overwhelm the Saracen defenders.
Phase 2 - Build up defences and a barrel bomb airbase.
Phase 3 - Brace for the Jihadi counterattack.

Assets include bonus engineering points and poison the wells. I'll sell another trinket from our item stocks to get the well poisoning for sure, it's just too good to ignore.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,405
Location
Djibouti
CHAPTER XIV - EUPHRATES SHIELD

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Our target for today is the Caliphate of Baghdad.

At the time of the Third Crusade, Baghdad was ruled by the Abbasid caliph An-Nasir li-Din Allah, a mean sonuvabitch who would later on crush the Seljuks and become the top dog of the Middle East.

200
What? You dare to invade my lands? You will pay dearly for this!



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Let's see here.

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The two victory locations are guarded by top-tier Saracen units. Nubian warriors, turk palace guards, turk bowmen.

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Also mameluks.

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And these circassian horsemen. Strong heavy cavalry.

Now, pay attention to how absurd this game is: this is the 4th last mission on the map, and WE STILL GET TO MEET NEW ENEMY UNITS. Where have these circassian horsemen been when we kept trampling seljuks left and right? Or fuck, even the turk palace guards?

Eh...

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Anyways, these guys decide to move forward and ditch their bowmen. We shall soon teach them the error of their ways.

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Turns out they were waiting for the horsemen. No matter.

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We bring our arrows to them before they can regroup.

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Then ride out the knights to crush them.

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Damned niggas managed to get some javelins into my bowmen before getting routed :argh:

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The dumbfuck Gascon knights were supposed to chase after archers, but instead rode into the palace guards. Lost 4 men before I retreated them, so I guess the guards are actually more beefy than meets the eye.

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Da-da-da-ding!

200
Bah! You test my patience! I will crush you yet...

The remaining two regiments want to flank us (lol)

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I send light cavalry their way to do some herding.

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After which the archers finish the deed.

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Mameluks carry no shields, so their ranged def is pretty pathetic for heavy infantry.

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Da-da-da-ding!

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Phase 2 beginneth.

We're gonna have to protect both the fords, so splitting the force is required.

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The defences I set up are identical at each point: one catapult + one guard tower + a bunch of caltrops.

I suspect there will be less enemies coming through the north, so here I leave mostly the weaker units, supported by a few elites (styrians, spearmen, 1 templar reg, crossbowmen + bowmen, Raynald, Gascons)

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This will probably take the bulk of the enemy charge, so I leave the big bois here. Knights Templar, Richard, elite cavalry, templars, langschilde, 2x bowmen.

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The remaining 2 light cavalry units I leave in the middle to act as quick emergency support.

Let us go!

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The enemy army is p. formidable. Palace guards, bombardiers, nubians, turk bowmen, circassians, you name it. Only the odd two seljuk archers and two seljuk light horsemen.

200
Prepare to die, infidel!

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Obviously the cavalry goes first to deliver a kamikaze strike.

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And they zig-zag between all my fucking caltrops :rage:

200
Do you take me for a fool, infidel?

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Gotta back off the archers and brace for impact.

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Note the difference in defence between the langschilde and the templars. They both take on the same seljuk light horsemen charge, but langschilde lose only 1 guy, while the templars lose 8. The templars are even in diamond formation, which is supposed to be extra-good vs cavalry charge!

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Once the initial charge is absorbed, I flank and surround the enemy with our knights.

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Meanwhile the rest get in range of our catapult.

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And since the only ones going for the other ford are light infantry

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I reposition the auxiliary cavalry back south.

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Enemy horsemen are history.

200
So, you can fight. Well, fight a little harder!

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Now it's time to get these out of the picture.

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Two archer regiments can't really do much against all this heavy infantry, so I quickly pull them back to avoid getting shot up by the turk bowmen.

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Now to get into formation.

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The bowmen still have considerable protection here from two infantry regiments, so I can't ride into them with the light cavalry just yet. However, they are taking insane damage from standing in caltrops and getting shot by the guard tower.

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:hero:

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Meanwhile in the north, the light infantry finally gets within range of our catapult.

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And this is the opening we needed.

CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAERG!

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Meanwhile in the north, this happens. Lolwut.

Those are smoke grenades deployed by the saracen bombardiers, to give them a ranged defence boost. I had no idea the AI was actually even using them.

200
Watch and learn, infidel.

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Back south, we engage in great tramplung.

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While in the north, they deploy even more smokescreens :argh:

We may want to pull back to avoid surprise javelins from behind the smoke.

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The south is no longer a concern :hero:

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And so is the north. Once they emerged out of the cloud, I tossed some javelins into the first regiment I saw, which resulted in all of them breaking :mrpresident:

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Then it's just stragglers.

200
You have not seen the last of me... infidel!

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Relatively big losses for this stage of the game!

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Replenishing them costs a bit, but fortunately we don't have to worry about cash anymore.

Also, that last mission got us a regiment of Chevaliers for free. Checking their stats, it turns out that they are by far the best unit in the game. They out-stat even the knights templar on all fronts. I swap them in for the Crusader Elite light cavalry unit.

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Langschilde can pick a new skill. All of them are completely useless :prosper:

After that I splurge 5k geld on armour and weapon upgrades for various units.

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Crossing the Euphrates has unlocked the city of Baghdad itself. But we aren't going there just yet, no. This one we'll be leaving for last.

For now, we'll be marching towards Cairo!

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BUT THEN SUDDENLY!!!

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Trouble finds us along the way in Jerusalem. And as we never skip a fight, it seems Cairo will have to wait. Especially since embarking on this will put us over another Teuton rep threshold and give us YET ANOTHER hero
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(and of course another worthless level 0 unit of longshields to sell)
 
Last edited:

Erebus

Arcane
Joined
Jul 12, 2008
Messages
4,763
What determines whether an enemy unit will avoid caltrops ? Do they have a random chance of detecting them in time and not step on them ?
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,405
Location
Djibouti
INTERLUDE VII - DEUS EX MACHINA

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It's like Richard has to do nothing but babysit the goddamn Germons and their dead emprah all the time.



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Oh, this map again.

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... are you shitting me...

this is THE EXACT SAME BATTLE that we fought in Interlude I, where we had to stop Traitors in Tripoli.

And that was also for the Germans.

I guess picking Christ ist Erstanden again for the soundtrack (although this time it's the real one from the Teutonic Order) is only appropriate.

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oh well, this will be a slaughter.

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Actually, to make this at least slightly more exciting, I decide to just go full retard with the cavalry.

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The results are predictable, although we still want to avoid the seljuk spearmen. They are very no bueno vs our knights.

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:hero:

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Enjoy the fireworks.

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The Disco Crusade.

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Afterwards it's mostly cleanup.

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Although somehow, somewhere, the knights templar actually managed to lose 8 dudes. I think they had an unfortunate accident with spearmen.

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Final archers get trampled.

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These losses (all knights) are going to be somewhat expensive to replace, but on the flipside we got a lot of really good loot in this level. Chevalier and garcon knight levels are also very useful.

when suddenly

error3.png


:what:

:rage:

Goddammit I DON'T WANT TO GO THROUGH THIS BATTLE AGAIN.

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Okay, whatever, take two.

This time I skip the cavalry tardo and just do regular archer spammingness.

Pictured: kebab smokescreens.

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The end result is still a knightly charge, though.

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Pulling back for reasons, mostly spearman avoidance.

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Victaly!

Still p. good loot and level ups, also much better losses (10 of those are spearmen that were caught in the crossfire).

error4.png


...

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FFS RICHARD FIX YOUR SHITTY SOFTWARE

(also, hello comrade Pumilius)

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THIRD TIME'S THE CHARM

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Mostly full retard cavalry charge again, but this time a little more considerate.

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This time we get the shittiest loot and less cool level-ups. At least the losses are low.

And of course this time it works and we get back to the worldmap. Sigh.

I wonder if there's something superborked in the code of that one specific map that produces all the runtime errors.

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Selling the trash langschilde.

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Notice how this suddenly causes our reinforcement costs to RISE? :what:

There is something very b0rked about that counter as well, because Rick and Ray's refills are 5k+ on their own, while there's also a chevalier and a gascon knight to replace. Oh well.

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Last mission put us over a German rep threshold and got us this dude. "Followed his king", I think you mean "his emperor" :rpgcodex:

Also, I guess it's not this Wilhelm of Cologne.

Anyway, he's got a lot of skillz we haven't seen, including Last Stand

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Rally

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Military Engineer.

Military Engineer is p. neat, each point gives us a free ballista or guard tower, basically. I pick two points of that and one of last stand, cuz why not.

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Next stop: Cairo.

(nevermind that the Fatimid Caliphate ceased to exist 20 years before the Third Crusade, but we'll leave the history lessons for the next update)

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Three plans, mein Codex!

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The French are as vanilla as ever. "Get in there and keal them all!"

Following their plan, we'll first have to storm Cairo's ports, then move on to a fortified hilltop that's defended by trebuchets. Trebuchets are always bad news, so if we take this, we'll definitely want to get the extortion asset to get rid of at least one.

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The German plan is, in our situation, completely suicidal :M

Using only light infantry and archers, we should sneak up on the Saracens from the rear and occupy the hilltop before they manage to build their trebuchets. Given that our archers are OP, this doesn't sound *that* bad, but the part that follows is the kicker - once we storm the hilltop, we should withstand a Saracen cavalry charge... :M and then wait for the rest of our troops to arrive so that we may capture the ports.

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Finally, there's the Templars. Their plan is similar to the German one, but much more sensible.

Here, we shall also start before the Saracens have built their trebuchets, but instead of light infantry and archers, we'll stop their construction effort with our cavalry. Once the hilltop is secure, the rest of our units will arrive and we'll go down to take over the ports.


What shall it be?
 

Jaedar

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
9,838
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
The knight templar plan seems the most reasonable, but I feel like this is turning out all too easy. So we'll go with the german plan.
 

oscar

Arcane
Joined
Aug 30, 2008
Messages
8,036
Location
NZ
French plan.
 

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