County Of Edessa
Objectives
| Kill Enemy Lord |
‘March the enemy eastwards and reinforce Bira. Cripple Duc Beauregard’s economy to prevent him from hiring more mercenaries before moving in for the kill’
| Trade | ||
Notes
This mission is more or less dependent on the initial few years and the approach you adopt if you are to succeed. It took me a few attempts before I was able to work out the best approach.
Duc Beauregard uses fairly lightly armoured troops but uses them in numbers and to devastating effect. As soon as the game starts I would consider walling in the keep but leaving sufficient space to build a marketplace and mill as well as a few fletchers’ workshops, barracks and mercenary barracks. Use the initial stone supply wisely and the starting gold (4,000 on normal difficulty) to buy and recruit troops. I built three woodcutters’ huts just outside the castle walls to the east of the keep. A combination of normal archers placed on walls and as many horse archers as possible seemed to work well for me. You will have frequent invasions in this map, a combination of slaves (hence the need to wall in and protect key buildings) and spearmen, along with a few slingers and mercenary archers. They can be wiped out with good coverage and seemed to head for either the keep or my farms, which I placed as soon as I had sufficient wood stocks on the fertile land across the river to the east.
One problem I didn’t foresee initially were the catapults which were used to great effect by the enemy AI to pummel the walls and provide entrances to the keep. I tried to ignore these at first, rebuilding the walls when they had run out of stone. This needs to be addressed though. With the fletchers’ workshops in place and churning out a decent supply of bows I lined the walls as much as possible. The best option here is to build a large square tower as far from the keep as placement will allow. Place a ballista and 30+ archers and they will not only stem the invasions but allow the catapults to be fired on, thus saving rebuilding work later.
The food supply was all bread, with a few dairy farms placed shortly after the first invasion to supply cows for use in leather armour manufacture. I decided to pace an iron mine fairly early on to allow maces and macemen to be recruited. Increase iron mines when wood and peasants allow. Fairly quick and potent in large numbers, macemen were to be my main attacking force.
I wanted ale coverage as early as possible here to allow food consumption to be turned off, or at least reduced by half, with bread again being sold at the market to raise much needed gold. From the mercenary barracks I recruited as many horse archers as I could. The aim here was to use these, again in numbers, to assault the castle and remove the archers that were present and growing in the towers there.
Losses were fairly minimal but the key here is to ensure your defences are tight and be patient, attacking the enemy castle only when you have the numbers you need to make this a successful siege. I only raided Duc Beauregard’s castle when I had 60 horse archers and in the region of 45 macemen. I also moved all my archers from the walls to the assault force below. Horse archers are a quick and useful unit to have. Combined with the archers they removed much of the threat from the enemy archers and the macemen forced themselves into the castle and duly killed the Lord.
A tricky map, but if you set yourself up with the right approach initially the win will come before too long.
* denotes a former staff member.