Picard Must Suffer: A guide series

You literally with no doubt just repeated my question

You can't do it with NO generals, because you have a starter general (Amadeo III) and to toss him away for a no-generals condition is absolutely stupid.

 Amadeo is on double-level guards (hit 2-7, health 189) with 1 inf, 1 cav stars, 54 rank, 4 nobility, and has three trade stars plus Architecture and Nobleman (the latter of which probably doesn't work on a starter general). You have a small fortress, light artillery, a privateer ship, 200 gold and tech, and 600 food.

Corsica is to your north, and Napoleon with an escort of line infantry are at sea to your northwest.

In my opinion, the only hope for survival is to take your infantry and cavalry, run south, and take as much as you can from Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco without them turning on you, while you spam single-unit militia in Sardinia to keep Napoleon distracted for as long as you can.


In Tunisia, your problem is that Kahia is a stronger general than you are (2 inf, 1 cav, 64 rank, 3 nobility); your possible advantage is that he only commands double formation militia (hit 2-5, health 154). He also has a second battalion of single formation line infantry (hit 1-6, health 80) and a privateer just like yours.  Your best hope is to take your artillery to sea, wear down his privateer, occupy the port of Tunis and then kill Kahia, and use Amadeo's Architecture ability to upgrade your new assets (port, city, artillery factory) cheaply. Whether you can then spawn enough resources to kill Napoleon before he destroys everything of yours is the big question. You may want to send at least a single-unit militia out of the way somewhere to give you a presence, and try to reach friendly territory to at least survive.

What happens next is determined by whether Napoleon wants the territory of Sardinia more than he wants to follow you into Africa and kill you. If he is content to take Sardinia and then head across into Naples, you will probably survive. If he follows you, you might want to consider fleeing to the island of Sicily and make him Palermo's problem, or across Africa to the Straits of Gibraltar and see if you can get to Portugal. If you flee east, then Nelson is in the Ionian Sea. If you can drag Napoleon across Nelson's path, there is the possibility that Nelson will shoot Napoleon off your back for you. If Nelson wins, you can then land in Naples and think about at least surviving off their farms until they starve and can be destroyed. Go too far east and you will face the Ottoman Empire. Good luck with that.

If one is allowed to use purchased items and you bought Armoured Carrier, that might potentially be useful in helping your artillery defeat Kahia's privateer more quickly and also wear him down from the sea; alternatively use it in a last-ditch stand to kill the line infantry accompanying Napoleon while you run towards Nelson and hope he defeats Napoleon for you.

Any way you slice it, I suspect the first order of business in a no-extra-generals game is to sacrifice Sardinia itself and take your chances elsewhere.

I might actually give this a go in a couple of weeks, for fun - I will have a VERY long airplane trip with power available on board and nothing else to do, and it would be a good use of my time in between grinding.

If I made the 99-turn cutoff on my Kindle and any of my units were still alive, I would regard that as a success. Actually beating anyone would be a bonus.

Okay. On kindle, 99 turn limit, I survived to the end. Napoleon specifically wanted to kill me, and although the Tunisian thing worked, it wasn't enough. I took Amadeo and fled via Sicily and Naples, but he pursued me into Hapsburg territory until he got entangled with Russian and HRE units around Budapest. There he stayed for quite some time and I had breathing room to steal some Allied cities and build back up.

By the end, I had knocked Denmark and Sweden out of the war, all but annihilated Prussia, killed Napoleon and was starting to attack the Ottoman empire and turn HRE neutral. On the Samsung tablet with its 999 turn limit, I am sure I could kill all enemies and achieve victory.


That's SURVIVAL AND VICTORY as Sardinia. As for trying to win Princesses from a standing start as Sardinia with only your starting general, forget it. I do not think it can be done.

No Princesses, no bought items, no own generals used. I did however use more powerful units than militia as soon as I could afford them.

What about playing as Sardinia 1809, no gens, and having to betray all your allies (steal until they turn against you)?

You of back as well!

Back on topic, what about playing as playing as Switzerland 1806, doing the same thing, but starting to move only at turn 50?

I did it once. It was massively relying on tavern gens and took >100 turns.