The poor general is now known far and wide as a coward.

As the army was full of spear units and had heavy cav, I high-tailed it off the field immediately.

Out of frustration, I auto-resolved-and lo and behold my general won! Later, however, I sent a different general with a couple of cav units north of Cordoba on a watchtower mission and they were ambushed by a wandering Moorish army on jihad. Before I could get my army back into the boats, I was attacked by this army and another half-stack that was sitting nearby. To my surprise, this middle-of-nowhere castle was packed full of troops. Then I sailed a small contingent across to North Africa, whereupon I found a castle that is new to the map. I caught them off guard with a quick crusade on Granada, taking Cordoba soon after. I have a feeling the Moors are faring just fine without these more southern settlements, as they seem to be amassing a decent number of troops. Your words of comfort are very welcome, Meph, as I mourn the loss of Timbuktu. One thing you can do if you're playing as a faction like France (and need your castles upgraded faster) is to convert high population cities into fortresses, the disadvantage being it costs a ton to convert in SS. You can probably improve things by camping a high-chivalry general in a castle-mine tend to be in the cities for population growth + tax revenue.Īnyhow, the practical effects: factions with the best militia units (e.g., Genoa and Venice) are at an even greater advantage than usual in terms of pumping out high-quality troops-even though I reckon the free upkeep allotment in castles tends to even out their cash advantages. This is the case even when I max out the farming and chapel buildings at the castle level, which means the population growth is at its greatest possible level. I'm building a huge stone wall at Paris around turn 60, which would not be that impressive on vanilla but by contrast I've yet to have a castle get the population growth necessary to build a fortress-I think the closest is Pamplona, which may have reached 6,000 out of the necessary 7,500 at this point. One thing I've observed is that cities grow at about the same speed as in vanilla, time-wise, but castles are slower due to the difference in the years-per-turn ratio. Alright, I'll keep this sucker going by posting the second reply.

Stainless steel 6.4 units