Can't you just carry along a cannon with every army to blast open gates? Makes everything a LOT easier. Gunpowder age ftw.

And the Aztecs may be primitive but they kick some ass man. They pretty much destroyed 3-4 full stacks of badass Spanish conquistadores armies when I was playing Spain. Of course, those were 'only' melee infantry and heavy cavalry but still, those are elite units.

lmao @ your band of camel gunners of doom. I have a few elephant gunners in my armies and they're pretty much the same, just bigger and harder to kill, and they are pretty devastating with their guns too. probably even more than when trampling stuff. So I can imagine what so many camels would do.


I've finally learnt how to use musketeers to their full potential btw...a good, well-organized long line with heavy infantry in front of them: mayhem. They decimate entire units of armored opponents like it's nothing. Really good stuff.

I reached the Aztecs with my armies and completely obliterated them this time around. I KNEW the key was in gunpowder and shock troops...but with the Spanish I never brought a good army. I'll post some pics, info and movies tomorrow. I enjoyed the Aztec campaign tremendously.

The goal now is to conquer the rest of the world. I'm slowly assembling a nightmare army filled with mercenary rocket launchers (can be recruited in Russia) and elephants. Methinks that a full stack of elephants would TOTALLY rape enemy armies.

So, a slightly more detailed account of the conquering of the aztecs...after a long trip my fleet landed and dropped off about 4 full stacks of units, including mercenary elephants, camels, a shitload of cavalry, artillery, elite units and about 5 family members.



Apart from virtually any type of (elite) unit I also took a boatload of agents along: imams, spies, diplomats, assassins...you name it. The imams started converting from day 1 obviously, and the spies were very useful in uncovering the fog of war. Because of the thick forests you can't move fast (at first) through the woods, so...but what was even MORE fun was that the Aztec generals and family members are extremely vulnerable to assassins. I had a 25% chance to kill off the faction heir with an assassin of only 2 subterfuge. later I discovered that even killing their faction leader in their capital had a 15% chance of succeeding. Naive savages eh?

So, I assembled my primary army, with the idea of giving them the initiative (ie I'd siege but not attack) and killing them off using gunpowerd and all sorts of ranged weaponry from hell. Soon enough a second full stack of savages (with their prince, who never even made it to the battle thanks to my assassins ) comes and attacks my sieging army...so it's my elite army vs. 2 full stacks of Aztecs. It was glorious.

I set up in a forest clearance and let the savages attack me...they were in the woods and had to cross the plain to get to me, heh. I set up the army in a few lines and rained down death and panic on them. Starting from the front, this is what the lines looked like

Janissary Heavy Infantry (melee frontliners)
Naffatun + Monster Ribaults (short range but extremely effective both)
Janissary musketeers (long range, devastating effect but slow reload)
Ottoman archer (firing flame arrows just for the morale effect)
Elephant gunners + elephant artiller (muhahahah)
general and some cavalry that I didn't even use

The bastards start coming out of the woods and get pounded like nothing they've ever seen. Their skirmishing units break and rout before they even reach my front line...the elephant artillery is causing mass morale problems in their troops and the musket line floors about 50 guys with every salvo, while the flame arrows, the Death Machines (monster ribaults) and Naffatun cause mass casualties and morale problems for anyone venturing near my army. After a few failed skirmishing attempts they charge their elite troops right into the fire and unto my front liners...they're fierce and in great numbers but my troops can hold them without too many problems. All the while, they're still being fired on...after some mass casualties in a short time they invariably break and rout, with my artillery and ranged units slaughtering them as they run away (cause the range is so long).

then army nr. 2 comes on the scene...these guys were slightly smarter and stayed in the woods, so I had to go and take the fight to them. I was kinda worried about this - Aztecs are hard to fight in the woods- but I just moved up the army and the lines without messing anything up and positioned the artillery and gunners well...what followed was pretty funny: after every salvo and severe casulties, they retread a little but further in the forest. So I just moved my lines about 20 metres each time as well. Pretty much Napoleontic warfare tbh. In the end they were pinned down to the red battlefield edge line and tried a frontal attack, which suffered pretty much the same fate as the other army's attack. Great fun.

In the end, my use of shock+gunpowder tactics proved to be very succesful. I only lost a few hundred men in the process and slaughtered 2300 savages. And believe me when i say that the Aztecs are hard bastards, even if they lack horses and gunpowder. And these were some of their elite armies. We showed those savages how we fight in the civilised world.



Some general vids of the battle showing the lines and/or tactics...

-this should give you an idea of how the lines looked (from a distance) and the bastards' feeble attempts at pwning me...their troops are already "wavering" 3 seconds after impact

http://clankiller.com/stuff/Rinox/Movie_0025.wmv

- The aftermath of the first army...aztec bodies littered everywhere on the open field. Major piles in front of my frontlines.

http://clankiller.com/stuff/Rinox/Movie_0023.wmv

-Moving into the woods, with my musketeers going in and out of position shooting savages

http://clankiller.com/stuff/Rinox/Movie_0024.wmv

-A short clip that summarizes the Aztec campaign well

http://clankiller.com/stuff/Rinox/Movie_0026.wmv

lol at the elephants crushing the aztecs.

a few piccies of my continueing Moors campaign. The timurids finally kicked my ass in Acre...but they took alot of casualties. It took them 4 assaults with full stack armies before they finally annihilated me. My ~1000 men for ~3000 of theirs seems like a decent trade off. Plus I now have half a dozen imams in the area to act as spies for my next assault. :p

btw, hashishim kick some massive ass.

What are Hashishim exactly? A sort of heavy cavalry? And lol @ Timurids pwning the camel band. What was it that really did it for them, the elephants?

And some pics of the (awesome) crusade battles against Constantinople this afternoon...before my box crashed. So now I don't really dare to play anymore until I take a close look at things.

Anyway, I was holding all sorts of armeis from Christian dogs off with a ragtag band of shraps and the all-powerful janissaries. Behold. I think I decimated the English and Spanish bloodlines considerately...they sent a lot of armies over, that all died one by one.

Well, just by "feeling" it already is making a big difference. But we'll see when i start playing games etc.

lol @ Timurids taking towns...I had a similar situation against the Spanish, bet in my scenario I'm the timurids. I can take a few settlements like Algiers and Marrakech each time but a few turns later they throw full stacks at it and I lose them again. Now I'm assembling an elite army or two that will make short work of them, but takes some serious time.

Ok, after some LONG playing yesterday I destroyed Spain, except for one or two cities of theirs in Western mainland Europe (Dijon etc). I now control, more or less:

-Everything below and on par with the Mediterranean; so Spain, Africa, the East
-Greece
-Italy
-most of the shorelines of the mediterranean
-The New World

It sure wasn't easy though, if I look now at the area they controlled they must have been pretty damn strong. And as an Islamic faction (Satis will know this) it can be a bit of a bitch to move fast in Europe as you need to crank out Imams like there's no tomorrow to make the areas free of religious unrest. But anyway, I just pushed on Spain from three sides:

-a band of 3-4 full stacks moving from Cairo to Marrakesh etc
-a few very experienced diplomats and some bribed generals and local mercenaries coming out of Italy (bribing work well as I'm rich anyway)
-last but not least: the armies that were stationed overseas and were no longer required there, invading the Iberian peninsula from the sea. I would have liked to see their faces when a ship dropped off elephants, monster ribaults and a shitload of experienced units in their hinterlands, haha.

After the Spanish campaign there was a moment of relative peace but then the weirdest thing happened: the freaking ENGLISH appeared out of nowhere with full stack after full stack of HARD armies. They don't even have that much land afaik! I don't know where the fuck these guys keep coming from....was mightily frustrating. They took back city after city of mine, pushing up as far as Rome and the North of Spain. I was overextended because of the previous campaign, but still. Their armies are really absurd...they win battles in which they're ridiculously outnumbered and everything. (at this point I don't feel like playing EVERY battle anymore, just the huge ones)

My bribing attempts weren't working either so, even though I managed to bribe and dissolve the occasional army, most of them just kept killing me. I had just signed a ceasefire with Danmark so I could destroy the English, when the pope called a crusade on Rome. So all catholic factions hated me again, gah. So I just stocked up on Jannissaries in Rome, which should hold it just nicely.

Before hitting the sack last night I commenced the counter offensive on the English whores. I finally used my Elephant Band, and it's GLORIOUS. It took me a long time to save up for them (mercenaries that appear only sporadically) but in open field they're pretty insane. I'm thinking of adding my score of mercenary rocket launchers to them, that should REALLY turn anything into mincemeat before even reaching me. Movies of that to follow, of course. But the elephants are doing a good job owning the English so far, I started taking back Northern Italy already. I had three armies RUN before the end of the fight...not rout, just run away. lmao.

Oh, and another idea I have for showing the English who the true master is: create armies in the New World and then ship them over to the British isles. See how they liked that, bunch of suckas.

I made this clip of the elephant band yesterday, forgot:

http://clankiller.com/stuff/Rinox/Movie_0027.wmv

Muhhahahaaha!! Run fools!

Funny thing is that the gunner elephants are a lot more effective than the artillery phants. I mean they do damage and have crazy range, but they're mostly good at breaking morale...they don't make that many casualties and aren't very accurate. The gunners, otoh, slaughter entire lines with every salvo. Can't wait what they'll be like at golden chevrons.