Lords of the Realm 2 - Most of Your People Are Fed By Dairy, My Lord

[tigerusthegreat]

I've been playing a lot of Sierra's Lords of the Realm 2, beating the main campaign except for Germany.

Germany is giving me oh so many headaches. Either the computer is a cheating b, or they are getting stupidly lucky in a lot of ways. I'm considering turning on Armies Eat just to see what happens to their economies (but even wrecking them, they manage to keep everyone fed somehow without revolts. Not sure how, since each of the starting counties get a merchant wagon once every couple years).

I got a lot further in my last playthrough, eliminated both the Baron and beat the Bishop back into a corner, but then the Countess and the Knight just kept sending huge armies into my territory. I have no idea where they are getting so many crossbows, but each army had hundreds (and even my bow-heavy armies couldn't handle the sheer volume of troops they sent).

It doesn't help the starting counties don't have iron. That and limited wagons means bows are about all I got.

[Thomas Cardew]

Well if I remember correctly Germany is the last mission so it's probably a good thing that it's hard.

Part of is RNG. Starting right next to the Countess or Bishop is actually much easier than start farther away from them since you can rush one of them down and have much easier game. I don't know how good at sieges you are but it's very possible to take a fully defended castle from the AI with Burgandian macemen.

As you noted there's little iron, grinding down your enemies by offensive turtling is very viable. Stock enough stone for a Royal, take a county. Build it. Rince and repeat. You can also abuse the AI by fighting their large armies with multiple small ones. They tend to just mass charge if they outnumber you enough. With some practice you can move so that you catch the archers/crossbows as they are running towards you. With fast attack troops like maceman or knights it's very easy to completely wipe their archer corps.

Stone sells for a large amount as well. Don't be afraid to mine and sell stone to buy iron to make weapons. Maces are ridiculously effective to the point of being down right broken. They excel at killing things very quickly so you can easily smash peasant armies and archers with them. They are very good at taking castles. It's very easy to trap enemy archers with catapults in towers and then capture the flag.

And for the record I find grain to be far superior to dairy.


EDIT: Pulled up the map. From what I remember you can start in 1-3 spots. Lotharingia, Carinthia, or Silesia. In reverse order, if you get Silesia try to take Bohemia and Carinthia as fast as possible. Build at least a Stone castle in Bohemia. It's very easy to take castles even if you're outnumbered. Be sure to move your army OFF the road when you siege this way. The enemy won't go out of it's way to attack you but will move through you. These three counties give you a solid base my lord. Take Bavaria as soon as you can hold it.

( It can be worth letting the AI build castles so you can siege and have on already built. Also you can garrison a 600 army in a motte and bailley. Build or take the motte and baily first. Then build a Royal castle. You can garrison the 600 troops right away. )

If you start in Carinthia take Bavaria right away. Build a Royal. You can try for Franconia right away to eliminate an enemy but you'll be fighting constantly. You seem to be struggling so I wouldn't suggest that. Instead take Lombardy. This gives you a solid base milord. (Couldn't resist). A royal in each of these counties is solid. Most attacks will be at Bavaria though. From here pick a direction and start conquering. I suggest west. Taking Franconia and Lotharingia means you get Arles, Swabia for free and don't have to focus on building them up. You can then grind your way north.

If you start in Lotharingia decide who is more threatening between Frisia and Franconia. Take this as soon as possible. You should be able to this with a one man army <500. If you took Frisia Take Brabant. Build up and push out. If you Franconia, try to get Arles easily or just push for Bavaria and Carinthia.

[Cespenar]

Hah. I remember playing this one some 20 years ago (?), but upon reading the strategies I realize that I remember nothing of its intricacies. Does it still hold up to this day? Is there a compatibility/resolution fix somewhere, or is DOSBox the way to go?

[Thomas Cardew]

GOG has the royal edition for $6. There's also a DOSBox version so pick your poison. One of them (can't remember which) had problems with the game speed setting, where max speed was ungodly fast. (actually rather useful for besieging, waiting for catapults can be tedious.)

[tigerusthegreat]

I have the steam edition. The graphics are ****, but mechanically it is interesting. It takes a lot for the AI to be a real challenge

[tigerusthegreat]

So, made some significant progress on Germany after restarting until I was next to the countess (and the Baron, so double bonus).

Managed to siege her royal castle with 150 archers and 200 peasants (thankfully she only had about 250 archers at the time). I have gotten good at exploiting the AI's poor combat skills in sieges, so won pretty handily. She managed to nab a second county and throw up a motte and bailey. My remaining troops from the royal castle siege managed to take it easily enough.

The Baron was harder, as he had a chance to get his castle full of troops (well, 500ish, about half archers). However, I busted apart all the tower and wall ramps, dug into the moat at the top left tower, and with a siege tower got all my archers up there. This knocked out the peasants that were squatting in the top left through a series of actions (moving a handful of archers into a bunch of random spots along the wall to kill off as many enemy troops as possible) and by exploiting the AI's penchant for retreating everyone into the central keep if any of my troops was in the grounds of the castle (however, they don't mind me being on the walls). Through a very long meat-grinder, I eventually got to the point where I could rush in with melee, break down the keep door, and grab the flag. He only had one county so he was eliminated.

After a bit of conquest, I am now in command of about 6 counties, the knight has 1 that has no fields (not sure how it hasn't revolted yet) and the bishop has 4 counties, with decent castles, but I've done a lot of field damage to him and they all are low on pop (however, he does have a couple big armies roving around). THere's still about 6 unclaimed provinces (but Bishop doesn't seem interested in them, and I have to keep big armies to fight them off atm to go claim some, but that's my next target).

[tigerusthegreat]

Finally beat Germany, and found some cool bugs.

If you have an army sieging a castle with some equipment built already, merging a new army with it will some times duplicate siege equipment. In one battle I had 16 catapults.

If you control enough counties (5 seemed to do it) and you set them to max taxes, the county's happiness might underflow from 0 and become 100. I haven't been able to isolate exactly how to make this happen, but it is definitely an underflow error of some sort (and if it could be figured out, it would make stalemates with big opponents easier to handle.