Spain

[Melancholic Ghost]

Anyone have tips for spain? espacially opening moves? The councill tells me to take a fort to the south east but even with as much as i can master its very difficult to take. If the moors dont reach it first ill get slaughtered there.

[Dark Angel]

Against the A/I, smash through to Cordoba, take it and start improving income. With this taken it should be easy to drive the Moors out of Grenada and secure their Spanish possession.

Make an alliance with England or France; isolate Portgual and then at the first opporunity mop them up, this might take a couple of Papal warnings and a bit if time biding while you build up superior forces. With Portual destroyed you can them move into France or North Africa. I recommend North Africa, waiting until France is Excommunicated. You should be able to drive south and take Marrakesh then turn and roll East along North Africa until you reach Tunis. From here it's a matter of variables. You will likely encounter Sicily next, possibly Milan. Milan can sometimes make a good ally and counter-balance to France on it's eastern side.

By this point you should be strong enough to devise your own strategy.

You know how to handle the heretic crisis.

[Jaugernut]

more easy to try and keep peace with the Moors and take out Portugal as soon as you can, Zaragosa is also a crucial town to capture. (in the east south of the pyrenees)

Valencia is not as important tho, you already got a Castle stationed at the perfect strategic position on the iberian peninsula, anyway.

When you have conqured Zaragosa and taken out Portugal (should be easy they start divided and with limited military capacity) your next target is the Moorse start out with taking Cordoba and Marrakesh, these are the only towns who the Moorse can easily obtain and if you take them it will cripple their economy and thus all their castles are useless. They will almot always agree to beacoming vassals after this or you could just eliminate them. Next your target should be the Holy Lands, constantly sacking and pillaging around that area will fill your coffers to the brim untill you are powerful enough to take on the rest of Europe.

Recommended allies should be England, Milan, Sicily and HRE. tho you probably going to murder everyone anyway.

Spain is one of the easiest factions to win the campaign with on any difficulty.

[Gunther von Rittersburg]

Originally posted by Dark Angel:

Against the A/I, smash through to Cordoba, take it and start improving income. With this taken it should be easy to drive the Moors out of Grenada and secure their Spanish possession.

Make an alliance with England or France; isolate Portgual and then at the first opporunity mop them up, this might take a couple of Papal warnings and a bit if time biding while you build up superior forces. With Portual destroyed you can them move into France or North Africa. I recommend North Africa, waiting until France is Excommunicated. You should be able to drive south and take Marrakesh then turn and roll East along North Africa until you reach Tunis. From here it's a matter of variables. You will likely encounter Sicily next, possibly Milan. Milan can sometimes make a good ally and counter-balance to France on it's eastern side.

By this point you should be strong enough to devise your own strategy.

You know how to handle the heretic crisis.

Whenever Im needing to eliminate or deliver a crushing blow to a Catholic faction and I want to avoid being excommunicated, I try to set multiple armies up right outside their cities. Get a loyal general, a good sized army, and siege units. Ballistae's work, but catapaults, trebuchets, and/or cannons are better. Then, once in place, just besiege and assault the enemy in the same turn. The Pope can only have a tantrum down in Rome, while your enemy is destroyed!

This works best if your not already at war with this faction. Less chance they'll attack you first.

[TheButterflyComposer]

Spain is a good beginer faction or one for a laid back play through because once you get the Iberian Pennsula sorted you can simply place a mass of forts and armies at the French border, turn your back on Europe till the end of the game and simply do a lap of the map, conquering all of Africa, then the Middle East, then the orthodox Byzantines and Russians and then finally taking out western Europe from both sides.

If you want a greater challange, ban yourself from expanding out of Iberia untill you own every island in the game. Including Great Britian [good luck ;) ]. As long as your navy is capable of defending Iberia and your border with France is shut and locked up tight, no one can touch you but the Muslims, whom you are going to horribly murder.

[Melancholic Ghost]

Thanks for some solid advice

[I am Goyim]

make portugal a vessal an wipe out moor's then head north to take on france

[Steve Irwin Croc Hunter]

milan always screw me over i would never recommend trusting them france are more of the same sicily are reasonably solid though

[Lie Chen Zhou]

Units advice :
Almughavars has armor piercing capacity but limited range. Watch out for archers, they will lose in range duel.
Basically their javelin are anti (dismounted) knights weapon, but beware of cavalry since Spain lack spearmen in early game. consider using Almughavars just behind your line of infantry and have them stand their ground. 1 on 1 in melee they are strong.
Jinetes are fast. use them to fight cavalry. if AI throw archers at you, charge Jinetes