The Total War series is one of my all around favorite franchises. It's engaging, complicated, and exceptionally difficult if played on the hardest settings. The number of options on any given turn are astounding. So I decided to write about my experiences playing it.
I decided to start a Maratha Confederacy Grand Campaign, basically feeling sort of bored of the usual European Nations. Now I know upfront, Maratha's are a bit handicapped in the end game. They lack any form of real, hi-powered artillery. They do have mortars, but let's face it, howitzers will always beat mortars any day of the week. Add in the fact that your do not benefit from Fire By Rank, and you realize that the only way to win is to change your tactics. Cavalry in Empire are useful, up until enemy troops learn square formation. End game more or less becomes a combination of using cav to disrupt enemy lines from destroying you, and mass infantry to just out number them.
Now first, I wanna start out by saying, managing an empire is rough. I love Empire, I've sunk 100+ hours into it, and enjoyed every second of it, but good god sometimes I want to set my computer on fire because of it. I can't help it, every time some rogue nation declares war on me, for no reason other than to knock me down a few pegs on the global scale. The way the invading armies will find any hole in your borders, and ruin every structure that is left undefended.
So first turn, I started just as I usually do, consolidate my forces, train as many line infantry as I can, and get rid of any enemy armies in your territory. That's no problem, I've done that a thousand times, but something I've found that you have to do, is make sure your fucking destroy that army. It's not enough to just defeat them, because this just causes them to run deeper into your territory. That causes your to have to chase them, which causes you to leave your boarder open, which just results in anything in range of the Mughals being destroyed and needing repairs.
Something important to remember, is that the first few turns of any game can dictate how the rest of your campaign goes. Any time or money spent repairing buildings, suppressing rebellions, and eliminating small enemies, is time and money not being spent on wiping out your main problem, the Mughal Empire.
This time, my first few turns went surprisingly well. In the course of three turns, I eliminated the foreign armies on my territories, had two schools going, and had a decent amount of trade agreements with some more powerful nations. I was making a decent amount of money a turn, so things were looking up. The main problem I was having was keeping my armies together.
After an army take a number of casualties, you have to retrain the units to get them back to full capacity, but it takes a bit more time than just training new units, because retraining units lets them keep some of the experience they've gained. This basically requires me to have two armies on any front I plan on expanding in, leap frogging them as I go. This wasn't a problem until about twelve turns in, when Britain decided I needed to declare war on me, block two of my trade ports, and drop a gi-god-damn-gantic army right on my doorstep.
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