The game features two campaigns - Crusader and Saracen - and a bunch of single missions. Naturally, we choose to embark on a CRUSADE OF THE RIGHTEOUS.
The Saracen campaign might follow in the future. Who knows?
The warriors of Christ know no fear, and also no difficulty other than Very Hard.
(this might be a bad idea because I barely remember anything about this game, I mostly played King Arthur to death back in the day, and Lionheart IIRC has much different (better) unit balance.)
The last bastions of civilisation in the Middle East lay in ruins.
And all because of this fucker!
Fortunately, the pope was wise enough to call in reinforcements from back home.
Thus the Kings' Crusade had begun. And we, in our royal person, king Richard I of England, Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes, and Overlord of Brittany, The Lionheart, naturally decided to participate.
After conquering Cyprus in a tutorial (actually, I didn't play the tutorial this time around because it's boring. But I do remember it was Cyprus), we prepare to make our landing into Jerusalem.
But we'll probably need a better army because we only have a handful of dudes.
Informative
This is where we buy new units. Only basic ones are available for the moment, and these are heavy infantry such as Crusaders...
and foot knights.
Heavy infantry pack a punch and can take a beating but are slow as snails and get tired easily on terrain that isn't paved and flat as a pancake.
Then it's light infantry:
Spearmen, your weapon of choice against everything quadruped.
And vassals, who are massive scrublords and good-for-nothing cannon fodder.
Then comes the light cavalry. Useful for fast capping of points, harassing of archers, and not much else, because they melt when glared at.
And of course archers. Though nerfed compared to King Arthur, they are still some of the deadliest troops to have around.
Also, The Man himself, leading from the front. Richard is a hero unit that comes with a bodyguard detachment of heavy infantry. Later on he'll be able to massacre armies singlehandedly.
Also2, Rick starts with some free points to spend to spend on attributes - attack, defence, ranged (N/A), morale, stamina. Obviously, I assigned both to attack.
The 12k starting ducats isn't much, and our army is pathetic - Richard, foot knights, cavalry, vassals and bowmen. I splurged the geld on a squad of crusaders and another bowman regiment.
After buying units, we can upgrade them.
Richard can also pick a skill right at the start. We get to choose from 3 which are Overwhelming Charge...
... Sound of Courage...
and Swift Attack.
We'd have to be retarded to pick anything other than Overwhelming Charge. There is no mana in this game, only cooldowns, and typically you have enough time between engagements to use it each time you fight. Sound of Courage is only useful if you're losing, and losing is for faggots. Swift attack is meh.
The rest of our fresh recruits don't get shit.
But we can still buy them some stat upgrades or special characters. For each unit, including heroes, you can start buying attack and defence upgrades (the shield and sword). You can also assign special dudes to them, such as Priests (+morale), Healers (less losses post-battle) and Captains (mini-hero basically). Heroes can also be upgraded with horses into cavalry, which is doubleplusgud.
But min-maxing doesn't end here, since there are also items.
Heroes get to equip powarful rerics, like this here horn. They can also be sold for $$$ or given away for Faith points (I don't remember atm what that does, I think they add a bunch of general bonuses). Faith points are measured by the red gems in the cross on the lower left.
Richard is a king of barely adequate faith!
Regular units get to equip various items. For the moment we have some arrerz (+3% damage; -16% fire rate), sum swords (+7 damage; +3% damage), sum leather armour (+18 ranged defence; +6 armour), sum consumables (+16 damage/60 sec potion; -16% attack rate potion), and an elixir that permanently increases a stat (this one does +5 damage).
Didn't give the elixir to anyone, because I couldn't remember who'd profit from it the most (and I'd also hate to see the guy who got it die in the first battle).
After general army management, there come reputations.
Informative.
The more we suck up to all these fags
The more bonuses we'll get.
Each faction has its own set of bonuses.
And IIRC you can't max more than 2 of them out, so we'll have to choose wisely.
Finally, we're done with the preparations, so... to conquest! There is only one place we can attack atm. Ze kingdom of Jewrusalem.
Informative.
In this screen, we typically choose a faction's battle plan (that determines how a mission will play out). But, as comrade protip told us, for this first mission we are bound to the plan of the papal states. Which is as follows:
Hold out -> build siege weapons -> REMOVE KEBAB FROM THE PREMISES.
As you may notice, our army is split into two categories. The first two units are what we start with. The rest will be gradually coming in.
We can also buy 4 assets for the battle - weakening walls by 50%, +5 engineering points for siege weapon deployment, spreading rumours to lower enemy morale globally by 10%, sabotage to freely demolish one enemy defensive structure.
For this battle, I didn't pick any. We are strapped for cash as is already.
Now, TO BATTLE!
Unfortunately, comrade loading screen did not save itself, so we start right in the thick of it.
The two crosses indicate where our reinforcements will spawn.
Acre, our long-term objective. For the moment, blocked, as we have to wait for dudes to land.
Atm we only have richard and crusaders. And our beachhead is under attack by...
SLEAZY SELJUK WARRIORS!
They are as trash tier as you can get. Roughly the equivalent of our vassals.
We bumrush the turks, waiting for new units.
But what is this? Kebab Kavalry incoming! Three regiments running down from the hills! (one is offscreen)
Reinforcements arrive, fortunately, although they are all scrublords (cavalry and vassals).
We divide our forces and engage the horsemen.
When an enemy regiment routs or dies, this Circle o' Doom appears. Any units inside who are allied with the ones that died take huge morale penalties and may rout as well. Routed regiments run and get run down.
Curses! The turks get reinforcements of their own!
Also, our units may get various accolades during battle. Like here, someone got "swift fighter", which increases attack speed. Dunno how you get it though, but for example you can also get "battered" for permanent bonus ranged defence if you eat enough arrows to the face.
Finally we're done with the horsemen, and Richard's army is reinforced with two archer regiments.
But the arab reinforcements are dastardly kebab ninja archers, and another regiment of seljuk warriors!
Are we doomed to become turk pincushion?!
Not really, because we just massacre the swordsmen with our own archers.
And then Richard and the newly-arrived crusaders charge the enemy archers. Their pitiful arrows cannot penetrate our ARMOUR OF FAITH!
Killing the seljuks unlocks the rest of the map. This gathering of smelly muslims next to a strategic point is the closest to us. It even has a guard tower!
The other strategic point is guarded by another tower,
And then in the corner there are some other random dudes, chillin' like a villain.
AND OF COURSE OUR PRIZE.
We open with archers upon the horsemen and warriors. They don't like being shot at, so they charge us.
Let them come. We are ready.
This is relevant to our interests, because we can slaughter them far away from the range of the guard tower.
Still, the crusaders are getting way more losses than I'd expected.
Anyway, with the horsemen out, we somehow have to get rid of the tower. Buildings can only be destroyed in melee, which makes our archers useless. A shame, really, cuz they outrange the turret.
However, Richard is a master of many clever stratagems, so he knows what to do to minimise losses!
He rushes forward first, spread out, to aggro the tower, while quick-moving cavalry slams down into it, completely undisturbed.
SOON THE BANNER OF CHRIST FLIES ABOVE THE CITY WALLS
Capturing this point gives us a new set up phase. We can now deploy siege weapons, and these are: trebuchets, catapults, guard towers and ballistas.
I have no idea what the practical difference is between catapults and trebuchets (maybe I should RTFM... nah!), but they decimate regiments and crush walls, Dark Omen style. Ballistas turn heavy units into mincemeat. Guard towers are short-range arrow turrets useful for defence, so not particularly useful for us atm.
These aren't all siege weapons, too. In future scenarios we'll get to deploy burning oil fields, caltrops, siege towers, etc.
What we can field is also limited, alas, both in numbers and in placement. I got 2 ballistas, a trebuchet and a catapult in the end.
Pressing "start battle" reveals many dots of red-hot kebab on the map, well-prepared to drive us back with double spicy sauce!
Among them, kebab heavy infantry.
BEGIN THE BOMBARDMENT.
LET NOTHING STAND.
As their defences fall, the heathens decide to bumrush us.
From both sides!
Fortunately, unlike in say, Stronghold, all your siege weapons have unlimited ammo. So you can just target the incoming suckers with everything you have.
Look at 'em run!
On the other front, we pepper the rest with our archers.
Red banner means critical morale failure. These dudes will run to the edge of the map and leave the battle.
Remaining seljuks regroup inside the city.
And we take the fight to them.
I'm not sure if it's the very hard difficulty that adds more punch to the pathetic seljuk light infantry, but the fact is, they are much more beefy than I'd remembered. Additional time spent in the gym lets them heavily batter our knights.
And what is even worse, we now have to take a hike down this street, while getting shot at by archers from all sides. To the north is a full regiment that we can't approach or we'll get into the range of city defences. To the west is the victory point and two 15-men archer squads that previously ate a few catapult boulders and are thus weakened.
IT'S A PERFECT HOME RUN!
Foot knights almost die to the archers, what the fuck.
Phew, we reach them before losing any full regiment. That would be muy no bueno.
And finally...
KEBAB STATUS: REMOVED
Look at all them bonus XPs and accolades and shieeeeeeeet I can't wait to upgrade all these...
What.
WHAT.
ARE YOU SHITTING ME.
...
naturally, there's no saving in battles.
and autosave didn't trigger before crash.
so I'll have to siege Acre again. Maybe this time with a bit less losses?
STAY TUNED FOR MORE SLAUGHTER OF HEATHEN SCUM SOON!
