Any ideas for a strategy to play as The Knights?

[Tabbel]

This has to be one of the harder countries to play as. Venice historically will be your ally so you have one semi power that tends to get swallowed up by Austria. The Ottomans have a mission to kill you that they may take and then game over. The Mamluks nearly always take out Cyprus, to the point when I have to wait for them to declare war on Cyprus and then I declare war on Cyprus too . Venice also will get greedy of your lands too if they end up taking Cyprus. Plus you start out as a Catholic state with an orthodox people [meaning raising stability is incredibly expensive until you convert your state which you can't do without an inquisitor]

I keep getting squashed as them - furthest I have been able to get was vassalizing Byzantium and Athens, taking Sardinia and Cyprus. Any ideas how to play these guys?

[Alex]

I had a grand time conquoring India as the Knights. A strategy you can try is to start a "War of Agression" with Urbino, move your capital there and try and join the HRE. The value in this you are now able to conquor the OPMs without Austria getting in a ♥♥♥♥ fit about it. Also Italy is rich, so Urbino is a good place to be.

If you don't care about Inflation and monarch points, you can conquor Granada pretty easily and have fun playing diplomacy with the Iberian Super Best Friends. It took me five or six tries until I didn't get wiped out by the Ottomans or the Mamluks. If Venice allies you, then they will revoke their guarentee, and Venice is a fair weather friend, so you need to be careful about that. Most strategies that I've tried involved running to Africa, Asia, NA, SA and "All Ins" on a war against an OPM.

Good luck.

[Rex]

Ally with Venice and any other major power you can convince to shield you from the might of the Ottoman Empire. Enact harsh treatment on Rhodes, set military and naval maintenance to low, and build two more cogs when you get the chance. Be sure to stockpile every diplo point you can while rushing to Admin tech 4. Choose Exploration for your first idea and quickly acquire Quest for the New World. Create an explorer, attach it to one of your cogs and quickly said down to the Ivory Coast. Now just sail around a bit until you find both the Hausa and Benin.

Once you've found both of them set your maintenance back to max pick up your 3 soldiers from Rhodes and sail them down to Ivory Coast. Once there immediately declare war on the Hausa, land your troops and send your boats home. Defeat their soldiers, conquer the two coastal territories and take Calabar when warscore allows. Once it's in your hands start fabricating claims on Bonny and Benin. Take Bonny from the Hausa after the treaty has expired and declare war and vassilize Benin immediately. Raise their opinion of you, ask for fleet access, core Bonny and Calabar, change your Capital and viola! You are now far removed from the Euroasians and free to colonize and conquer Africa as you see fit.

[Tabbel]

Interesting strats :D! Just got squashed in my current game with a 3 way war. Venice took out Cyprus and I took Byzantium and Athens as vassals as before, Crete rebelled and then I proceeded to take it out. I saw Naples end their royal marriage with Aragon so I thought this would be my perfect shot to try and get some iberian culture provinces (since they are part of the Maltese group) and along with Venice I proceeded to take Sardinia, Malta, Baleares, and Alicante with Venice ending up taking Rousillon in a separate peace. Turns out taking Alicante was a big mistake, I was going to try and do an Iberian Super Friends game and started raising my influence with Castille, only to have the Ottomans declare war on me [to take Southern Greece], Genoa to declare war on me [to take Sardinia], and then when I moved out my diplomat from Castille in order to see if I could peace out Genoa quick, Castille declared war on me (didn't get a chance to raise relations high enough with it :( and it had gotten the iberian wedding just a little before. Long story short my chain of Meditteranean islands got squashed :(

[Alex]

[quote=Stray Penguin;666825524834615548
Once you've found both of them set your maintenance back to max pick up your 3 soldiers from Rhodes and sail them down to Ivory Coast. Once there immediately declare war on the Hausa, land your troops and send your boats home. Defeat their soldiers, conquer the two coastal territories and take Calabar when warscore allows. Once it's in your hands start fabricating claims on Bonny and Benin. Take Bonny from the Hausa after the treaty has expired and declare war and vassilize Benin immediately. Raise their opinion of you, ask for fleet access, core Bonny and Calabar, change your Capital and viola! You are now far removed from the Euroasians and free to colonize and conquer Africa as you see fit. [/quote]

I did that pre 1.3, but it doesn't work anymore. Those guys don't have "ports" so you can't get feet basing rights from them for another 50 or so years. What I did to colonize my way to Ceylon (and crush India!) was the same thing, except I conquered Kongo (Cape of good hope is easier to colonize early on with the natives and you can't afford to reinforce at this stage). I would take their coastal teritory and demand money, then vassalize them the next war after fabricating a clain. I then DOW on ottomans, let them take Rhodes and your capital get's moved to Africa so I can colonize. The territory you took from Kongo will become your capital, and you can make it a core since you should have no other territories. Also after the patch, you can't annex your african territories in a short (<20) year period, (You will get -.5 for "over seas" so it will take a LONG time...)

Matupa is also nearby and they are pagans so you can ♥♥♥♥ them up for some money and guarentee them after so Swahilli doesn't eat them up after you take their thousands of duckets. I mention this because your finances will be in ruins until you can get four or five colonies established. Your vassals will be the largest source of your income.

[Jonas]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Stray Penguin:

Ally with Venice and any other major power you can convince to shield you from the might of the Ottoman Empire. Enact harsh treatment on Rhodes, set military and naval maintenance to low, and build two more cogs when you get the chance. Be sure to stockpile every diplo point you can while rushing to Admin tech 4. Choose Exploration for your first idea and quickly acquire Quest for the New World. Create an explorer, attach it to one of your cogs and quickly said down to the Ivory Coast. Now just sail around a bit until you find both the Hausa and Benin.

Once you've found both of them set your maintenance back to max pick up your 3 soldiers from Rhodes and sail them down to Ivory Coast. Once there immediately declare war on the Hausa, land your troops and send your boats home. Defeat their soldiers, conquer the two coastal territories and take Calabar when warscore allows. Once it's in your hands start fabricating claims on Bonny and Benin. Take Bonny from the Hausa after the treaty has expired and declare war and vassilize Benin immediately. Raise their opinion of you, ask for fleet access, core Bonny and Calabar, change your Capital and viola! You are now far removed from the Euroasians and free to colonize and conquer Africa as you see fit.

Would be a bummer if Ottomans never declare war on you though lol. Interesting gameplan, I think I will do something similar if not the same thing as my next ironman game.

[Antiblitz]

i wouldnt follow any of these ideas, simply because they are crap. Its all about conquering the Mamluks, you must defeat the Mamluks, simple as that, you have to catch them while they are in a war with both Venice, and the Ottomans. I know this because well, i did it, have the proof, and know what to do, if u need more detail, ill post it later, either pm me, or ask in here.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/505821920427656586/B676BCA5D38EF3B72EBF68B4934291FF5338B705/

[Xandurz]

Początkowo opublikowane przez AntiBlitz:

i wouldnt follow any of these ideas, simply because they are crap. Its all about conquering the Mamluks, you must defeat the Mamluks, simple as that, you have to catch them while they are in a war with both Venice, and the Ottomans. I know this because well, i did it, have the proof, and know what to do, if u need more detail, ill post it later, either pm me, or ask in here.

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/505821920427656586/B676BCA5D38EF3B72EBF68B4934291FF5338B705/

A better alternative is to go for the Africa as a whole (think of all the gold you will get your hands on).
Leave the Mamluks alone! lol

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=193427965

[Alex]

I took Africa too, but I thought it would be the most fun to do Master of India as an OPM...

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=195023490

[Antiblitz]

Yes but im talking about playing the game how its meant to be played, not meta gaming like a fool, if u want any country to survive that is too hard for you to play, well then yes you can pack up and go attack natives like a child. But where is the enjoyment in that, besides that, not that the game follows any sort of historical accuracy, but atleast following the thought of conquering your way to Mecca, Judea, or defeating the push of Muslim and Turkish nations sounds a lot more sound then boating to Africa or Asia to run from your problems. Not to mention also though, that none of those screenies say Ironman, therefore the possibility of cheating or quit saving is a possibility.

[DemonicSquid]

Day one DoW East Frisia (It's the only non-HRE province in that area). Take on loads of debt, build cogs and mercs. Annex it, move capital. Join HRE. Colonise the Americas...

Essentially, standard OPM strategy applies.

For flavour, ally the Papal states, and expand into Italy.

[kingofthesewers]

How do you get someone to conquer Rhodes and demand it for a peace condition?

[CapitaineGateau]

When I allied with Venice, Naples, and Mamluks, they all ended up breaking their alliances with me in a matter of years :/

[Exohobbit]

Old thread, but still interesting I think. I've tried a few times as The Knights -- I can't ever seem to *really* do well, but I've avoided getting squashed a few times, without doing "game-y" things like moving your capital to the Bahamas or whatever. :-)

For me, what seems to work well is to immediately (and I mean immediately) do a non-CB attack on Theodoro, to get a foothold somewhere that's (a) within coring range, and (b) not immediately next to the Ottomans. As a bonus, I think it's in-character for the Knights to protect the last Christian cities of Crimea against the heathen hordes. You have to really hurry to get there before Crimea, but it's doable.

Then expand around there as opportunities arise. Always, always, look for an opportune moment to take Cyprus, at least if you're playing for the Jerusalem achievement. If you ally Venice, you can take Cyprus in a war, since Venice will keep the Mamluk navy away, and eventually the Mamluks just won't care any longer.

Owning land adjacent to the Ottomans is pretty much a death sentence, at least until you ally someone more powerful than Venice. If there's a trick that makes it safe to take Achaea/Morea, I haven't found it. That said, taking Morea early is useful, as it'll let you get enough Development in Greek provinces that you can raise Greek to an Accepted Culture without spending a ton of monarch points on Rhodes.

If you're lucky, Venice will implode early and get stomped by Austria/Hungary, and end up releasing Crete as a perfectly neutral, undefended, friendless one-province nation that's conveniently close to much of Egypt... Same thing may happen to Genoa: If they get stomped early, they can end up with Azov and Corsica as their only territories, and then suddenly you have a presence in the Western Mediterranean. The key is to be an opportunist, always ready to pounce.

Even if you do everything right, it's chancy at best. Fact is, there are a lot of things that can make a Knights campaign really, really challenging. Sometime in the first 30 years or so, Crimea gets an event where they can choose to become an Ottoman vassal. If you're using Theodoro as your away-from-Ottomans base, you really really want them to choose the other option.

And if the Ottomans make an early alliance with someone big, like France, things will be tough. And if you want to go for Jerusalem, I suspect it'd be easiest to get them from the Mamluks while they're fighting the Ottomans -- but I've never been able to. The one time I got Jerusalem (in Ironman), it was extremely complicated and ugly, with Ottomans allied with Russia and France, and Knights/Austria/Poland/Lithuania on the other side. I think Castille and Tunis were in there too, somehow. I know some people have made it seem really easy/obvious to just waltz in and get Jerusalem from the Mamluks, but I've no idea how they'd really do that. :-)

[Cabbage]

Ottoman/French/Russian alliance? That's just plain unfair.

[eye81]

if commonwealth forms then ottoman russian french alliance is pretty common ive found