Part 13: Turn 11: Tediousness at its finest

Update 11: Tediousness at its finest


The major issue I have (and has been touched on) seems to be morale. I had 120 swordsmen go bandit on me because of morale in this update.

The big challenge with morale is building an army and coming to grips with the enemy before morale dips so low that I need to disband the army. This is made much harder by having to move armies of 600 people across 7 counties (12 turns or so) and then finally siege a castle.

Anyway, on to the update.


The Countess continues to throw armies of 100-150 at me almost every other turn. They are usually 50 archers and 50 peasants, but she mixed it up a few times and put 50 swords with 50 peasants.


She continues to get beat every time.


But the bitch retreats, so she keeps these little 20-30 man armies that are an annoyance.


Unsure if I showed this castle in the last update. It's the countess' near my starting county on the right.


And now the bitch is asking for an alliance.


You can see how she took my county in the middle from me. The cursor is kind of pointing to the castle I'm going to hit with a few trebs.


I want my county back, bitch.


Down south the earl attacks, desperate to stay alive.


His army.


My army.


His tactic of leading with the knights does not work well.


Only when the knights are dead does he send in the rest.


And then he retreated, leaving an 88 man army.


Now I need to wait to kill that army and move onward.



Up north the Baron is asking for trouble, just sitting there looking all Barony.




He attacked, I shot him with 3 arrows, he retreated and disbanded.





This is my northernmost county on the left side. You can see my armies moving to the Countess on the right, and a two-pronged attack of the Baron on the leftish side.




Countess continues her shit armies.




Again.



Taking the Countess' castle is going to be a slow process.


Earl talks some shit.


Countess changes her tone from one season ago when she wanted to play nice again.


Baron is gearing up for war. 3 armies on the move.


I sent my knights ahead to see what he has.




I managed to circle around and kill his archers, but then died horribly.


Down south the Earl attacked with that 88 man remnant. They immediately begged for mercy after the battle started. I never even fired an arrow, so I have no idea how I lost 2 men.


I beefed up my siege army with more peasants. Thats why it says 250 out of an initial 150...


That army from the Baron was pretty good. Luckily I had some swordsmen up there to combine with this army I am raising.



Look at all these stupid castles I have to siege. The things I do for you guys....





Countess again tries to break the siege... Axes and Archers! Then she retreated, luckily there were too few to stay together as an army.


Hitting the countess' castle.




I decided to get my small army some exercise against the Earl down south to keep morale up.


A few more seasons of this and we might crack it.



Countess had a castle that wasn't finished, so my Knights attacked.


... and won me a county. Actually they just took my own county back.


Remember how I was lucky to have some swordsmen I could combine with my peasant army? This is them.


Perfectly healthy, just pissed off.



They started in a mud pit which allowed me to mop them up pretty easily. It could have been much worse if they were on solid ground.


**************** Intermission *************

9 attacks by bullshit armies of Baron and Countess. Yes, NINE.

*************** Show is back on! ************




Time to raise a nice army and kill Countess and then move on to Baron. The problem is that this army is aaaaallll the way bottom right. They need to fight in less than 10 turns or chances are they'll revolt.



I dont even know. Bottom left.


This either. Maybe dead-center of map.


Oh my god this is going to take forever.


Thanks for the heads up.


The Baron combined those 3 armies I pointed out earlier and moved down to attack. Luckily he hit my good army.


It's all peasants, and they were stuck in a mud pit again. Easy pickins.


He retreated, then disbanded.


I moved to finish off the Earl who is bottled up with nowhere to go. 2 more counties and he's done.


His army was peasants, easy to kill and I took the county. One left for Earl.

Then he did something smart. Smartish anyway.



He dodged my 1000 man army and attacked the 150 swordsmen behind them. He had 50 knights, 100 swords, 50 maces.

Luckily he led with his knights again, so they were almost all dead by the time the rest of his army attacked.



He would have won if he attacked all at once.



This is bottom left, the Earl is completely bottled up. Should be done in 3 seasons. But now I have a choice. Do I send in the big army, then have a looooong walk north where I might lose them to morale, or do I move them north now and try to finish the earl with 114 swordsmen?


Countess tries to stop the inevitable.



Archers and peasants get destroyed by swordsmen.


Oh good, I get to siege another one of these fuckers.


This is dead center of the map. The army up top is the 33 knights that are left. Using them to sniff out large armies.


And the Baron has a castle too. yay.


That is where it is. Middle-topish.



And here we are again.