Playing with the upgraded artificial intelligence in version 1.2, it is still possible to get a very fast win. Here’s the play by play to win as the Holy Roman Empire on turn 8 with one to four regions to spare.

Turn 1

Strategy

Strategy is in many ways driven by backward inducting from where you want to be in 7 turns. The most forces are sent along paths that are rich in targets. These paths can be summarized (the question marks signifying that these cities might be taken a turn early if there is a unit adjacent) as Hamburg, Arhus, Stettin/Oslo, Stockholm, Thorn; Frankfurt, .., Antwerp, London/Bruge, Nottingham, Caernarvon/York, Dublin/Edinburgh; Staufen, Metz/Bern, Rheim/(Dijon exc. for French attack)/Paris?, Paris/Angers?, Angers/Caen, Rennes/Burgundy; Frankfurt, .., Madgeburg, .., Stettin, .., Thorn/Stockholm; Nuremburg, .., Prague, Breslau, .., Thorn/Krakow, .., Riga/Halych; Vienna, .., Budapest, .., .., Bran, Bucharest, Iasi/Sophia; Innsbruck, .., Venice, .., Ragusa, Durazzo, .., Corinth/Thessalonica; Innsbruck, .., Milan, Genoa, Marseille/Ajaccio, .., Toulouse/Cagliari, Tunis/Palermo, Burgundy; Innsbruck, .., .. Venice .., Rome, Naples, Palermo/Cagliari, Corinth/Tunis; Bologna, Venice, Ragusa, Durazzo, .., Corinth/Thessalonica; Bologna, Venice, Rome, Naples, Palermo/Cagliari, Corinth/Tunis; Bologna, Milan, Genoa, Marseille/Ajaccio, .., Toulouse/Cagliari, Tunis/Palermo, Burgundy; and Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, .., Corinth/Palermo/Cagliari.

The most fruitful paths are to Edinburgh, Tunis and Rennes. Edinburgh we can’t really stuff extra units too easily because of the distances involved (two extra long horse runs on the first move). Fortunately, there isn’t enough money to spend if we could.

Money needs to be tightly husbanded in the Early game.

Army movement

• Army near Hamburg: four ground units should be plenty to take Hamburg with ladders. The horsemen are a problem. They’re expensive, they can’t get anywhere to disband, and they don’t speed up capture of anything but Stettin which is mostly a dead end. I send one southeast to Madgeburg and the other west to join the attack on Bruge in three turns. Sending both southeast is reasonable, but a smaller force from Frankfurt will more likely revolt. Also, you will likely be forced to combine the units when losses exceed 50% of cavalry. It’s a tossup to send one to Hamburg to catch the runaways before they get back to the square or to send it west to Bruge or north to Arhus. Build ladders.
• Army in Frankfurt: the general Dietrich von Saxony if traveling alone can just make Antwerp in two turns and will find two crossbow mercenary units to hire there. This will be a tough battle, but it will open up the way to Bruge, England, trade with Scotland and if you execute well, Scotland and Ireland. The other portion of the army should hoof it for Madgeburg. I sent only archers and had them rebel. Two archers and one infantry did not rebel the few times I tried that. They will meet the cavalry coming from near Hamburg next turn. Liquidate the rest of the units except for one or two. The peasants stay because they are cheap. If you look at the city revenue, it is higher with two garrison troops than with one. I’m not sure I get the whole ‘free unit’ thing. It might make sense to leave all three of the remaining units garrisoned as an option for later if they really are free. Or is ‘free unit’ just an adjective for free-unit recruitment slot, but you still have to pay. Anyway, I just left the peasants in charge in Frankfurt and let two of the spear-men militia go. The case to liquidate is fairly straightforward. At Au125/season, the spear men have to be needed in three turns to be cost effective not to recruit later at 310. And that’s with no capital constraints or investment return rate. Money will be tight next turn. Auf Wiedersehen.
• Spy: it’s worth trying to get the gates open to Madgeburg as this will save a turn getting to Stettin, Stockholm and Thorn, but the chance of success is so low, that it’s worth sending your spy on a suicide mission to Prague to save the Au100/turn. If you open the gates to Prague, it’s kind of pointless since they are going to attack you on their turn anyway. Trying to get the spy to save a turn in Bran, Nottingham or Angers/Caen seems like a poor investment.
• Army in Nuremburg: send the archers and one unit of spear men toward Prague. The General (Maximillian Mandorf) you’ll need to put northeast of Prague next turn to support the attack, but have enough movement to take Breslau in turn three so you might separate the forces now as a reminder.
• Your princess will probably not make it to any faction before it finds one of your generals or before you declare war on it. It’s probably best to marry her off. For this reason, move your capitol to the front.
• Your cardinal probably won’t have to face any heretics. Look around for less Christian areas of your realm to send him to. I just send him toward Vienna because the mine makes it a good spot to have a good economy with a happy populace.
• Staufen: Here are some options for Prince Henry. Bern and Metz can both be attacked on this turn and Rheims and Dijon can be attacked on the next except that the French will attack Dijon so you can pass on that until they get pulled away (or they retreat to attack you!) Metz is a palisade village so you will need four units to build a ram. If you are very careful with the movement, you can send Prince Henry to attack one of Bern or Metz and a mercenary to lead the attack on the other both on the same turn. The tactics for that pair of fights might be pretty challenging. Bern is armed to the teeth with two cavalry, but you may be able to pull off a victory with Prince Henry, some crossbowmen, spear mercenaries and potentially support from the rear next turn. I prefer saving the money for the mercenaries for better choices and using Prince Henry as the spearhead of the siege of Metz. I send two spear-men units and one archer. The other archer I send ahead to the bridge to help take Rheims turn two. I build an archer unit in Staufen and a mustering hall. This is an extravagant purchase, but avoids using cavalry for garrison duty until they are needed and affordable. Bern and Dijon I bypass until later because they are dead ends. Build a ram.
• Vienna: Send your troops on the northern, clockwise route to Budapest. Send General Lazlo ahead so that he can support the attack on Budapest from the Southeast corner. If you leave Lazlo on the border, you can bring mercenaries out of the Vienna region. This will give you an extra mercenary melee unit against Bran when the time comes. Since it’s the difference between 7 units and 8, I just buy a cheaper unit next turn in the Budapest region.
• Innsbruck: I head the foot soldiers South toward Vienna to take Ragusa. The general I place one square ahead of them which is a balance between forward movement to get to Rome and blocking and luring the diplomats to try to bribe him instead of a city or another army.
• Bologna: Emperor Heinrich the Chivalrous has even more choices than Prince Henry in Staufen. He can attack Venice, Milan or Florence, or two of them, or even all three! I prefer this, but it takes expert tactics in defending against the Venice sally and win-at-all-cost tactics against the Milan sally. I send five units to Venice: one archer (best for captain), one spear-men, one crossbowmen-mercenary, one spear-men-mercenary, and one peasant. Take care to get war started and initiate the sieges and spend the building money so that Emperor Heinrich becomes more likely to win a mercenary captain. Florence: I send another crossbowman-mercenary unit to besiege Florence and another archer unit. Finally, I send two spear-man militia units with the Emperor to besiege Milan. The Milan force is closest to a fair fight and can kill both cavalry, the archers and sometimes the ground troops before running to take the square. Another choice would be to have the spear men units in a separate group. This risks their bribery. But it makes them a good, attractive, nuisance to use as a diversion while the Emperor takes the central square. This latter tactic worked better in 1.1. Don’t forget to build ladders everywhere except Metz where you need a ram. One variant in Vienna is to not besiege Venice, but put the troops on the bridge hemming them into Venice. This will elicit an interesting battle where you can defend the bridge against two different armies crossing the river to fight you first on one side, then the other.

Production

• All regions will produce roads except for Frankfurt and Staufen.
• Frankfurt already has a road and you can consider a brothel, land clearance or nothing. I usually choose land clearance. By turn 3, the front is pretty far away so a spy won’t have much hope of affecting play and will cost Au1500 by the time he gets to the front and 400 can go a long way in other uses on turns 1-3.
• Staufen will not produce a road because it is already on the edge of the region and the road will not make travel shorter and there is a better build. Staufen will produce an archer. Another choice is to produce cavalry in Staufen and destroy the bowyer. I think bows are the best unit for the money so I don’t. It will be useful into the late game due to the bypassing of Bern and Dijon.
• Bologna will build one town militia and one ship.
• If you have the money, Innsbruck can produce a peasant on the first turn. Destroy the bowyer in Innsbruck–it’s irrelevant to the rest of the campaign. Consider destroying the mustering hall in Innsbruck, perhaps after producing a peasant (which stays in the queue if the mustering hall is destroyed, but can’t be recruited afterwards).
• It doesn’t make sense to produce an extra unit in Vienna. These troops won’t get to the front after taking Budapest until turn 6, 7 or 8. Considering that, it’s worth liquidating some or most of them in Budapest.
• In Frankfurt, we’re liquidating units.
• That leaves Nuremburg which like Vienna, won’t see its troops on the front line for three turns after taking Prague. Just leave a spear-men unit there.

Tactics

No battles–yet.

Turn 1.5

Tactics

• Venice: you face two experience-one archer units, Doge Domenico’s 41-soldier (on huge unit setting) experience-one heavy horse, and four experience-one spear militia. I had recommended you face them with one spear and one crossbow mercenary, peasants, archer- and spear militia. You might prefer six or even seven units until you get the hang of this battle. I split my troops in half sending two or three units left and two or three units right. Best results have come from having the peasant head for the wall third from the right and one archer and the spear militia to the other two. The crossbowman- and spear-mercenaries, I send left. I keep the spearmen on the inside, but they can cross over each other early or late in the run without losing the battle. I got the Venetians confused so that everyone made it to the wall. With a slightly different layout, you may have to sacrifice one or two of the melee units. Consider the retreat flag. This can be recovered from. If your troops get captured, you will still get to keep them if you do not get routed by the sallying troops. If necessary, I send the archers or the crossbowmen to open the gate around the corner for retreating melee troops. More usually, the Venetians retreat all except their archers to the street from the west gate to the square. Sometimes they put two, three or even four units there. This is an opportunity for a turkey shoot. You will need wholesale slaughter with easy shots for your archers and crossbowmen to kill enough of the enemy for your melee troops to win in the square. A high value target is the enemy general. This will make it very hard for the enemy troops to have enough morale to attack you on the wall. After about 50% casualties in one of the spear militia units, the Venetians will retreat their horse and spear to the central square. Don’t rush the archers with your spear troops. They crack. Use your archers. Once the Venetians see this, they will retreat for the central square and they can be routed along the way by all your troops. There are a few places to set up kill zones. They correspond to the streets and avenues approaching the west, north and south gates. Once the enemy has stopped rushing you with its spear men (Ok if a few archers are), get into close range with your archers and crossbowmen. I like to put a unit of spear men next to a unit of crossbowmen. I put the archers behind that. Even if you can’t kill all of the enemy, if you get close, they will still cede you the city. I am not sure, but perhaps it’s half a unit.
• Milan: Here you face a general, two spear militia, crossbow militia and another unit of heavy horse. I had recommended you face them with two spear militia units and your emperor. Initial dispositions are quite bad for Milan. The heavy horse unit rushes out and can be surrounded by your spear men and Imperial guard and routed. Next comes the enemy general’s heavy horse which will face some attrition from your spear men. At this point, the rest of Milan’s troops arrive. I can’t quite figure out a way to complete an orderly withdrawal and reorganization of the spear men. I tend to sacrifice one unit at this point. I keep the emperor’s troops fresh. I withdraw to the steep hillside and await the enemy. The enemy general tends to make a head-on attack up hill and gets nearly destroyed. If I make straight for the enemy square (the gates being inexplicably left open), I can capture it and prevent the enemy general’s horse from retaking the square. The enemy melee troops sometimes can’t get back to the square in time, but sometimes are stopped just outside the square for just long enough.
• Florence: You face three rebel melee units and one archer unit. If you walk uphill remaining in range of emerging units, then stand your ground at first with the crossbowmen and archers I recommend, you can kill half or more of the enemy archers before you are rushed. If your two units are separated by arrow distance, you can steadily kill the enemy with your missiles while retreating around the town. Eventually, you will face either only one unit. At that point, standing your ground might be sufficient to rout the enemy troops. The archer unit can increase this by firing fire arrows. Once the single enemy routs, they can be run down by your troops and captured. At this point, you may have the enemy spaced out enough to shoot them down unit by unit as they try to climb the hill to the northern gate of Florence. If not, retreat and repeat. They don’t know when to quit their unsuccessful sally and will keep throwing themselves against you until they let you kill them all or capture their town. They should not have sallied against you in the first place given your faster troops. It’s really tough to use four spear units to create a cordon between the map edge and an archer unit to box them in and have enough troops left fresh enough to attack without breaking.
• Prince Henry can win in Metz alone via the same run away, kill the fast unit, capture the square tactic, except I can’t get Metz to routinely sally and unlike Venice or Milan, I can’t then climb the walls because I won’t have a ram. If they do sally, don’t waste Prince Henry against spear men or archers.

Strategy

It makes sense to pillage Venice, Milan and Florence. I could never get them to sally from Hamburg. Metz might be worth leaving intact as this will be a decent source of troops. They don’t typically sally out of Metz though.

Turn 2

Now it’s time to mop up the craven troops in Hamburg and Metz that did not sally and head forward to lay siege to Rheims, Genoa, Budapest, Madgeburg, Antwerp and Prague while making preparations by positioning troops to take Breslau, Bran, Arhus, Rome, and Ragusa, and building troops to take Caen/Angers and troops and ships to take Durazzo or Corinth. Tactics will be fairly standard.

Strategy

The strategy theme is similar to turn one where we are building mercenary forces in a careful packing problem, expanding in almost all directions, and carefully preserving the movement points of the vanguard. We are building very little in the way of infrastructure. We continue to liquidate troops in part of the empire, while recruiting them heavily in the south and west.

Unless the adoptee for the emperor is really, really bad, I take him. We sure could use the help on the roads to Tunis and Toulouse. If you find a prince, take him too unless he is terrible. Good choices for capitol last turn were Staufen and Bologna. This turn, Florence, Metz and Hamburg are good choices if the princess is still unmarried. Otherwise, move the capitol back to the center of your empire.

I tend to agree if the French or Danish decide to offer trade rights. So what if I am going to attack? At least there is a little trade. This might be bad for future diplomacy.

Sack Hamburg (and Milan and Venice if necessary), but probably not Metz.

Army Movement

• Venice: Take Venice if you didn’t already. Send the ship to pick up the four best units to get them on the road to Rome.
• Milan: Take Milan if you didn’t already. Consider using one unit from the Innsbruck force. Send the rest to besiege Genoa.
• Dietrich von Saxony, east of Antwerp: Besiege Antwerp and recruit two crossbow mercenary units. If you chose to send a horseman from Hamburg, position it to invest Bruge next turn. Build ladders.
• Hamburg: After you capture Hamburg, move your melee units and a supporting reinforced archer unit toward Arhus.
• Staufen/Metz/Rheims: This is tricky. Send Prince Henry to Rheims before taking Metz. Send your new archer build to storm the palisade at Metz. Invest Rheims with Prince Henry, your prepositioned archer and the crossbow- and spear-mercenary units you buy in Rheims. Build a ram at Rheims. Move the troops that took Metz (except for the archer from Staufen) forward to support the attack on Rheims next turn or Dijon or something.
• Nuremburg/Prague: Time to put Maximillian Mandorf northeast of Prague without participating in the siege, but supporting it. The general will be positioned to take Breslau next turn. The rest of the foot troops will lay siege to Prague. Build ladders.
• Frankfurt/Madgeburg: Invest Madgeburg with four units or more. Build ladders.
• Innsbruck/Venice: move one unit if you haven’t already to Milan. The other 3 move toward Venice. They will sail for Ragusa next turn. Otto von Kassel should also hoof it to Rome. He actually loses movement points if you send him via ship with Venice’s fleet in the way.
• Vienna/Budapest: This is tricky. Have Lazlo buy a melee mercenary (if already in Budapest territory) or consider a spear-man unit if still in Vienna. Send the mercenary to lay siege and have it joined by the militia and regular troops coming from Vienna. Send Lazlo southeast of the city so that only two long rides will be necessary to take Bran.

Production

• Build roads in Florence and Hamburg.
• Build a wooden castle in Staufen if you have the cash (more horses, roads a turn sooner than converting to a village and building a palisade).
• Build land clearance if you like, but it’s a bit of a tossup. There are only 6 turns left. A brothel in Milan is pretty much useless because it will only be useful in Bern where the units needed are probably a bigger problem than producing siege equipment.
• Build a ship in Venice. Depending on the kind of unit you left behind and how poorly reinforced it is, consider retraining it.
• Build town guard and ships in Bologna and send the prior round Bologna build to Florence so the Florence town guard can head for Rome.
• Build troops in Staufen. I prefer archers and peasants, but some like cavalry.
• Consider building mines in Vienna. They pay Au660 per turn, but cost Au2000 to build. It barely pays off. Probably best not to, but I did.

Tactics

• Hamburg: The AI gets confused if you move your ladder men back and forth before going to the wall. Also, if you look like you are going to get met at the top of the wall, retreat and wait for another unit to attack an open wall. The AI will guard walls with ladders even if there are no troops to climb them. This is a fairly standard siege attack.
• Metz: Don’t try to take the ram to the gate, but choose the southern wall near the east corner. The AI behaves differently when you are attacking with the ram or not so consider dropping the ram to change the AI behavior. The enemy cavalry is the only threat. Keep peppering them with your archers and keeping at least one spear unit close to the archers between the archers and the cavalry. Keep your troops out of range of the enemy archers until your archers have nearly run out of ammunition. Fire into units that overlap other units. Don’t use fire arrows until you are nearly out of arrows. Shoot the fire arrows in preparation for attack. Use your archers primarily to support your infantry after they have run out of arrows. Don’t put them in the front line until all your other troops have routed. If possible, have your infantry attack together.

Turn 2.5

Here are some tactical challenges that will solidify your finances and industrial base.

Tactics

• Genoa: Retreat everyone up hill. Your two generals should be able to defend as the enemy cavalry makes an uphill attack. Kill the enemy archers for the experience, then take the central square like Milan. Bye bye Milanese. As a bonus, rout the rest of the enemy troops. Pay attention to where your two generals are in relation to the rest of your units. Ideally you want one to take Marseille and Toulouse, the other Adjaccio, Cagliari and Tunis.
• Budapest: Sometimes Hungary will attack in force, other times simply sally. A sally is a race to get your archers to the walls and use your infantry to stop the enemy general while Lazlo rushes to the rescue. You should be able to win a heroic victory by putting your archers where they can fire into the square while still on the walls. If Hungary attacks in force, Lazlo will have some difficulty routing the enemy ranged cavalry. Since you didn’t buy the archer mercenary unit, they will probably only sally.
• Prague: This is a real turkey shoot because Prague doesn’t have any cavalry. Retreat your foot units until Maximillian can take down the enemy archers. After that, it’s a straightforward matter to rout the enemy units as they engage your foot units by attacking them from the flank or behind with Maximillian’s cavalry.
• Antwerp: This is a tough one, but after a couple of tries, pretty routinely winnable. Use your crossbowmen to fire at the enemy cavalry. Intercept the enemy cavalry with your cavalry before they mow down your crossbowmen. Retreat your armies to the hill keeping one crossbowmen apart from the other so they can cover each other. You should be able to rout the cavalry, cut down the crossbowmen with your general and steadily cut down the melee troops with your crossbowmen. It’s a big blow if you lose your general, so I usually replay it if I do.

Strategy

Accept the trade offer from Denmark unless you are feeling particularly honorable. Accept the trade offer from Poland. Trade with the Pope? Up to you. Sack Budapest. Sack Antwerp. Sack Prague. Sack Genoa. If you are given the opportunity to ambush the French, refuse.

Turn 3

The mid-game is here. Now it’s time to capture Breslau and Madgeburg, lay siege to London, Marseille, Paris, Rome, and Arhus and position troops to attack Stettin, Bran, Thorn or Krakow, Cagliari, Ragusa or Durazzo, Naples, Nottingham, Bruge, Angers or Caen,

Strategy

Builds are less of a packing problem than a linear optimization problem. You can afford plenty of troops. The question is whether they are worth the money or not. Continue to liquidate troops in less useful places. Start to take fewer risks by building some forts. Consider switching the focus of your production centers from financial to military or growth.
Don’t sack Madgeburg or Breslau, and it’s a toss up whether to sack Rheims. Save the attack until you see how much money you have/need. Mercenary ships are 1000 each.

Army Movement

• Arhus/Hamburg: Invest Arhus.
• Madgeburg: Take Madgeburg, then advance on Stettin. Consider building a fort this turn or next if you have a general nearby (would have come from Frankfurt in turn 2 or be a man of the hour).
• Prague/Breslau: Move Maximillian Mandorf to the border of Breslau and Prague. Buy crossbow mercenary. Move in to lay siege on Breslau. Buy one more mercenary unit. I like another crossbow unit. Take Breslau. Move the general out of town along with the crossbow unit with movement points.
• Venice: Move the four units southeast in the boats toward Ragusa. If you are attacked, you might be able to take Durazzo or invest Corinth.
• Florence/Rome: Invest Rome. This may be tricky. If the main army is west of the Tiber River, consider building a fort next to the bridge over the Tiber and manning it. If the main army is in the way, save movement points by attacking the army from the hills off the road by a detached force with the main force on the road to Rome in support. This battle will get you excommunicated and your generals will lose loyalty, but disloyal generals still need to be bribed or get uppity to leave. Rome has lots of money so if you face and best the main force (see tactics) you will have to kill the prisoners to have a chance of capturing Rome next turn.
• Genoa: Take Genoa if you have not already done so. Buy a mercenary ship and take the Emperor to hire mercenary troop outside Marseille and invest Marseille. The rest of the troops should get ready for another ship to be built to take Adjaccio. The Marseille troops will be able to move on to take Toulouse (and Burgundy) or Adjaccio and Tunis.
• Antwerp/Bruge/London: There are no more mercenaries in the low countries. Time to cross the channel. Take Dietrich von Saxony across the channel. I like London Bridge, but you might do slightly better with the general northeast of London if roads have not been built yet. If you are out of money, you can take Bruge by stratagem with your general, heavy cavalry and one crossbow unit. You can also take Bruge with mercenary units from London. I ran out of money because the army southwest of Prague defected so invested and took Bruge by strategem. To win in 7 turns, you probably have to take London this turn. Experiment with where your troops, your ship and how many spear units you buy in order to make investing Nottingham on Turn 4 feasible. If you invest London, you will have to take Bruge from Paris cavalry and Antwerp crossbowmen and possibly town militia later.
• Rheims/Paris: After you take Rheims, if there is a unit outside of Paris, try to take Paris by destroying the support units coming from Paris. If they “melt away”, you can march into Paris unopposed. Remember only the support units need to be utterly obliterated. The main enemy can just be beaten. Then move Prince Henry forward. If you attacked the enemy outside the gate with Prince Henry only in support, you will get a new general unit. These units can take an empty Paris even if they don’t have sufficient movement points to move to any non-road square.
• Budapest: Move troops toward Bran. Have Lazlo build a fort for them. Move Lazlo to near the Southeast border of Budapest and Bran.
• Staufen/Metz: Move troops forward. Consider setting up a fort on the road to Rheims.
• Milan/Venice/Bologna/Florence: Build another ship and raise another army of melee units comprising town guard and spear militia. This will take Ragusa if your previous ship is attacked or possibly Durazzo if not.

Production

• Build roads in Staufen, Rheims, Madgeburg, Prague and Genoa.
• Build a port in Antwerp.
• Build a tanner in Paris if all goes well.
• Build land clearance in Budapest, Florence and Hamburg if desired.
• Build a grain exchange in Frankfurt if desired.
• Build troops in Staufen, Metz, Milan, Venice, Florence and Bologna. Build a ship in Genoa and Venice.

Tactics

• Breslau: I recommended two crossbow units and a spearman if the Prague army defected and two crossbow units and the general if not. This is fairly easy with two crossbowmen and a general. For a challenge try to use one crossbow unit and a spear man unit in addition to your general. Tactics are the same. Position crossbow for a direct shot (west side of village), then retreat them out of range if archers move up. Rout whatever units approach your strong units unsupported by attacking them from two sides or more with all of your units.
• Madgeburg: I recommended heavy horse, spear militia and two archer units. This is a tough battle with a ram, but straightforward with ladders. Do not use you cavalry as shock troops. I tend to put ladder units on three sides. I tend to finally open the fourth gate and let in the cavalry. The cavalry usually massacres the archers. Next, I go the long way around to open the other gate. With the archers on the walls, I can usually make a number of kills before the enemy retreats to the square. At that point, I use what’s left of the infantry to screen the archers from direct attack. Then when the enemy routs, I use the cavalry to capture as many as I can before they get back to the square.
• Rheims: After moving up the rump of the army from Metz, this battle is lopsided. Ram to the west of the south gate to the west of the tower on the high side of the small ramp just inside the palisade. Use archers to kill the troops waiting inside the wall. Once the wall has been rammed (I choose one of the spear militia veteran rump units), position crossbow to fire directly at troops. Do not use all of your arrows and bolts. Save arrows for morale attacks later. Save bolts for better shots. Once enemy troops strengths are down in the forward units, shoot fire arrows at them and rush them with Prince Henry, the mercenary spear men and the militia spear men. Once they have routed, set up a perimeter with the mercenary spear men protecting the rear and the militia spear men on the hill to the north of the alley and the other militia spear men in the corner at the turn of the palisade from east to north. Then position crossbowmen on the hill and open up. You should be rushed. Use Prince Henry and fire arrows to rout these troops. I then go after the troops in the central square. This involves firing the rest of the bolts. The last battle is grinding, but you should be able to win a heroic victory easily and take many of the light losses on the militia units whose movement points are exhausted.

Turn 3.5

Strategy

Turn 4

Strategy

Turn 4.5

Strategy

Turn 5

Strategy

Turn 5.5

Strategy

Turn 6

Strategy

Turn 6.5

Strategy

Turn 7

Strategy

Turn 7.5

Strategy

Turn 8

Strategy

Coming soon: Turns 3-8. Then, surviving as a single region to colonize the new world.

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