Games: Gettin' medieval on it
I took a break from Medieval 2:Total War a couple of weeks ago when my watchtowers to the southeast of Zagreb showed the Mongols just cresting a ridge in some mountain pass in the direction of modern Romania (their generals bristling with command stars). I figured such a development would require more attention (especially with Venice and Denmark hounding me at the same time :/) than real life was going to allow me to devote to it at that time. With the kids freshly off on a trip with their mom for a week, however, I expect I will get back into it shortly.
I have toyed with handing Zagreb off to another country, improving my relations with the unsuspecting beneficiary and buying myself time to build up, but I think that is just delaying the inevitable. And, really, Venice is about the only country that could make good use of a province in that area, and the young Doge hates me entirely too much to accept such an offer. I think my best bet is to send a spy back over that ridge to collect some more information on the Mongol holdings, while rerouting the assassins I have in the area to see if they can winnow down some of the Mongol leadership before we meet on the battlefield. I also need to beat down Venice so they are off my back. I don't really want to get involved in wiping them out completely, but I may have to take at least one more province from them to keep them away from Zagreb and the Italian peninsula while this is going on.
From everything I have heard, the Mongols will be a pita with all those nice mounted archers. They'll do a lot of damage if left alone, and they'll scatter when you charge. That part is pretty much like any archers... except I can't just run them down with my cavalry since they are mounted themselves, the wily so-and-so's. I'll 'speriment with devoting some cavalry to keeping them churning, with catching them between two sets of cavalry, etc., etc. It is going to be messy for a while. ^_^7 I can take a wait-and-see approach to a certain extent, since I don't expect that they will be effective against my cities, but I can't really leave them roving around my provinces... they'll hurt production and force me to keep more forces tied up in defensive positions than I like.
If my spies can identify some of their cities to the east, I'll see if I can get the Pope to call a Crusade on one of them. That might get the nations around me off my back since they would end up at war with the Mongols, as well.
I have toyed with handing Zagreb off to another country, improving my relations with the unsuspecting beneficiary and buying myself time to build up, but I think that is just delaying the inevitable. And, really, Venice is about the only country that could make good use of a province in that area, and the young Doge hates me entirely too much to accept such an offer. I think my best bet is to send a spy back over that ridge to collect some more information on the Mongol holdings, while rerouting the assassins I have in the area to see if they can winnow down some of the Mongol leadership before we meet on the battlefield. I also need to beat down Venice so they are off my back. I don't really want to get involved in wiping them out completely, but I may have to take at least one more province from them to keep them away from Zagreb and the Italian peninsula while this is going on.
From everything I have heard, the Mongols will be a pita with all those nice mounted archers. They'll do a lot of damage if left alone, and they'll scatter when you charge. That part is pretty much like any archers... except I can't just run them down with my cavalry since they are mounted themselves, the wily so-and-so's. I'll 'speriment with devoting some cavalry to keeping them churning, with catching them between two sets of cavalry, etc., etc. It is going to be messy for a while. ^_^7 I can take a wait-and-see approach to a certain extent, since I don't expect that they will be effective against my cities, but I can't really leave them roving around my provinces... they'll hurt production and force me to keep more forces tied up in defensive positions than I like.
If my spies can identify some of their cities to the east, I'll see if I can get the Pope to call a Crusade on one of them. That might get the nations around me off my back since they would end up at war with the Mongols, as well.