Medieval 2: Total War

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Nice to see you're having good fun, Aldeth .

I say it again, the battles make this game what it is! Breaking the strategy and politics up with a big mad arse battle really makes the game addictive. it's pure quality.

I'm not that fussed about ballistas to be honest. when I attack a city, I just maintain a siege until they come out to meet me.

The only artillery I use are culverins. That's the only time I directly attack a city, and bugger the siege. Culverins really demolish city walls. Big time.

 

Bah! Sometimes they have enough food to hold out for 8 turns. I'm not waiting that long! Although before you have a means of destroying the walls, it may be in your best interest to wait them out. One problem I have with seige equipment is that your troops get bottlenecked trying to all get through the gate a once. A relatively small enemy force can prevent you from getting all of your infantry into the fight.

I don't have the ability to make culverins yet. In fact, looking at the units sheet, it doesn't appear that the HRE even have the ability to make culverins. Regardless, I wouldn't have them yet anyway, as I don't have the proper buildings for any gunpowder units at this time. I'm limited to ballistas and catapults as the only siege units currently available to me.

I'm sure culverins are more effective in taking down walls than ballistas, but my ballistas get the job done. Just one ballista unit is sufficient to punch 4 holes in the enenmy's walls. I find that multiple entry points are desirable because the enemy typically retreats to the city square when you do this, and even if they don't, it prevents the bottleneck effect I referred to earlier.

 

Sieges > new settlement + 0 losses = happy Barmy Army!

I don't like attacking castles as you're almost certainly going to leave the fight with more losses than kills as it's easy to plug gaps in city walls with a few troops of spearmen. I wait them out . You can often beat a garrison force much bigger than your invasion force, just by holding out a siege (as the enemy take losses each turn). If they come out to meet you early on and you can't win, leg it and come back with a bigger force. But there's been more than a few times where an army of 300 has beaten a big 800+ garrison just by waiting them out.

You think armies are big now. Just wait till your empire grows big and gets spread about. You need many armies of 1000+ to make sure you can quickly react to attacks. Invasion forces end up needing to be 3/4 full stack armies by the time you meet the Timurids, Mongols and that gang. Usually by the end of the game, there's one faction who've grown massive as well. Love the game .

 

I had no idea it worked that way. I thought that when you lay siege to a settlement, that the garrison remained at full strength until they exhausted their food stores, at which point they would have no alternative but to attack. However, if they take losses every turn, it may be worth while to wait a turn or two just to thin out the ranks a bit. Thanks for a very good tip!

I kind of figured that was an eventuality. My army sizes have been increasing steadily as my income increases. Unfortunately, I'm still at a point in the game where the amount of money I'm taking in is the limiting factor for army size. I've established trade rights with as many people as I can, and I am building as many revenue increasing stuctures as I can, but it's still not enough to have the war machine operating at peak efficiency. I've even tried to garrison some of my more established settlements with only a few stacks of troops, figuring that they would be unlikely to be attacked.

I've also found that being excommunicated sucks. You get a substantial penalty to civil order (or more appropriately civil disorder) which forces me to either A.) increase garrison size or B.) lower taxes, both of which cost me even more money.

No one in the HRE has even seen a Mongul or a Timurid, much less got into a battle with them. With any luck, I won't have to. Given the way the current game is going, the empire's expansion has been primarily to the west. If I end up conquering the French, that should take me up to about 30 settlements, meaning that I won't have to expand far to the east to hit the 45 settlement mark.

I've been thinking more about the math when a general says that your army or the opposing army makes up more than 1/4 of the faction's troops. I'm thinking that the soundset activates whenever it's over 1/4, but it says "over 1/4" even when it's way over 1/4. They'll never say "over 1/2" for example. To use my previous battles against the Milanese as an example. After that epic battle, I took another city, and that garrison of just 200 or so men made up over 1/4 of the remaining Milanese military, meaning in total they had less than 800 soldiers. That means in the prior battle in which they lost 1,000 men their total army size could not have been more than 1,800 soldiers, and possibly significantly less. However, even with 1,300 out of their maiximum total of 1,800 troops on the battlefield, my general still said the force we were facing "represents more than 1/4 of the enemy's troops." Technically, it's true as 1,300 is more than 1/4 of 1,800 - but it's seriously understating the case. I was actually facing nearly 3/4 of the entire Milanese military forces. I don't like that because it makes you think the enemy is more powerful than they really are. Before attacking the next garrison and getting the same 1/4 message, I was under the impression that the 1,300 men actually represented a little more than 1/4 of the military, meaning that prior to that battle the Milanese had somewhere around 5,000 soldiers, only to find out after the fact that in fact it was much less.

[ November 29, 2006, 20:37: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

That's why it pays to be heathen

 

OK, major problem. The Milanese gave me a going away present (they were the ones going away when I took their last city). Dijon is plague infested. And the plague continues turn after turn after turn. Every turn, my town's population and garrison size decreases. Bringing new units in also seems pointless, as they end up getting the plague too. I've reviewed the game manual, and there doesn't appear to be any way to stop a plague (which I suppose makes sense, as they didn't know how back then). So does it eventually go away, or do I just have to eat it, and say that city is basically lost to me?

 

It'll eventually go away. It's probably just a localized plague for that city. Just wait till the Black Death comes rolling into town, now THAT is a nightmare...

 

Well that's good. I have decided to go buy the strategy guide. According to the description it's 320 pages long, and gives detailed information on all the games functions, military units, building, and all status effects on cities. I still don't understand the order in which to build things, or what units/effects they allow. Basically I just upgrade when they tell me I can, and build what sounds good. It's not so much a problem for the early stuff, because you can look up the description of the buildings by right clicking on the picture in the build queue.

My problem is planning a long term strategy. There's no function like a civilopedia to look up build paths. For example, say I want to work towards getting Teutonic Knights. I know I need to work on acquiring Teutonic Knight guildhouses, but I have no idea how to pursue that avenue. Or for example, say I want to get a gunsmith as soon as possible. The only thing that the manual tells me is that it's a Level 3 building, meaning it can be built in a City or Fortress. However, it doesn't give info on prerequisites - in other words, what's the fastest way to get to a level 3 building, and are other buildings required to be built in order to get teh option of building a gunsmith.

 

Building order...

Roads, ports, traders, farms, churches, barracks. After that, get whatever you want, you should be pretty stable.

 

You might consider going by the www.totalwar.org forums first (er, I hope linking to the website and not the forums doesn't break BoM's rules?); the TW community there is rather knowledgeable about the game, and in my experience, rather helpful.

 

I'm sure they are very helpful at the forums, but for an additional $17, the strategy guide seems like a valuable resource. With strategy games like this, I find it much more enjoyable to develop my own strategies rather than get help from others.

Things have calmed down a lot in my empire. I'm taking the slow road in the war against France. I initially planned out a three-pronged strategy for taking over France, with one army hitting the southern cities of Marsailles and Tolouse (I know I'm butchering the spelling, sorry France), and two other armies taking Paris and the other two cities directly north of where the Milanese used to be. The southern army got bogged down in Marsailles. They took the city, but had insufficient remaining troops to garrison the city and press onward. Especially considering Marsilles lacked the necessary buildings to retrain the units that took losses. The northern armies are doing better, currently sieging Paris and Metz.

Conquering France is definitely a necessary next step on the road to world conquest. Once that happens, I'll be much more comfortable with the empire. At that point, I'll have a pretty large sized interior to my empire that could be more lightly defended. The biggest problem I have now is almost every single city/castle in my nation shares a border with some opposing faction. That similarly means that almost every city in my nation needs a respectably large garrison, which is costly. Once I take France, all I will have to do is fortify border cities, and keep the interior cities with a few garrisoned units, just in case. At the very least, I will not have to foritify interior cities with any kind of cavalry units, and they are the most expensive. Missile and infantry should be sufficient.

I am as of yet undecided what to do about the English. Obviously taking over their cities in France would be useful to the strategy, and allow me to have even more interior cities. The probelm with the English is I don't know if I get into a war with them if they'll make me take it all the way and eventually conquer England. Conquering the English cities in France is one thing, conquering the actual islands is another. I will need ships, it will take several turns, and there's only like 5 settlements on the whole island of England. It will be a big fight with little payoff in the end.

Oddly, the Sicilians declared war on me as well. WTF? They have two cities? What can they possibly due to me? They came up from southern Italy and launched an attack on Bologna (one of my largest cities). They had an army of about 500, while I had an army of about 800. I didn't even bother sending in the reinforcements from nearby Florence. Their attack failed miserably, and I haven't seen them since. I can't even be bothered to conquer them. I'm busy with France at the moment.

 

Sicily are in a no-win situation. I tried a campaign with them before, it's well hard. To expand, you've got to declare on one of your neighbours, each of which are about twice as big as you. The only 'gettable' rebel settlements are islands, which makes expansion tricky. Really tough. Similar reason why it's tough being the Danes too. You start with 1 settlement, 2 rebel ones near you are easy to get but have crap trade resources and low population and the only way to expand is to hit the HRE. If you like a challenge, it's good.

 

I've completed my campaign with 60 turns to spare. My Empire has 50 something settlements including Jerusalem. I've also got an expedition to North America although it took absolutely donkey's to sail the Atlantic. It's not that far across just you move really slowly. I think if I'd have set off from Spain I would have got there alot quicker. I cant find anywhere to disembark at North America it seems like the whole coast is a cliff for some reason but I've reached a single settlement in South America. I don't know if I can be arsed to carry on with this campaign now seems pointless now I've completed the victory conditions. I was a bit dissapointed with the victory movie it was a bit of an anti climax after all the blood sweat and tears I've put into it.

 

I've got too many fronts going at this point. France is down to one city (the one all the way on the northwest coast - forget the name). Actually, I think they succeeded in taking Antioch in the Crusade, so they won't *technically* be eliminated when I take their last European settlement.

Other than that, the war goes poorly. I got excommunicated AGAIN. This time it wasn't even my fault. One of the Danish princesses took a liking to one of my generals, and ran off with him, leaving her kingdom in disgrace. The Danes, as a result, attacked. Getting into a war with the Danes was definitely not part of the plan. Three lousy cities that serve no practical purpose, other than counting towards the 45 total I need. The Pope, being Danish, promptly excommunicated me.

So at that point, seeing as how I was excommunicated anyway, I decided to take Rome - one of my victory conditions. Big mistake. While I took Rome, my actions caused both the Venetians and Portugese to declare war on me, plus I still have the Sicilians at war with me to boot. So my army in southern France is racing back to Tolouse (which I nearly lost to a Portugese attack) to regarrison the city and launch an attack from there. The northern France army, after taking that last city, is going to have to turn around and immediately head east, picking up recruitments in towns as it goes. Attacking the English is right out at this point.

However, this is the strangest thing. Despite taking Rome, there is a HUGE Papal army on the map between Florence and Rome. They have over 1200 troops, lots of heavy cavalry and siege units, two generals, and get this - the Pope is one of the units in the freaking army! His portrait appears just like the generals, so I assume he has a heavy cavalry unit too. That army just absolutely pwned one of my armies, a fight in which I lost over 400 men, including one of my promising new generals. Of course, now I have the problem of where the Papal army is going next. They only took about 100 casualties in the battle, so the army is still very strong. They can basically take their pick between Rome and Florence - neither garrison is large enough to stand up to that onslaught.

Another odd thing I've noticed is that half of the "casaulties" in a battle are actually captured troops. When you win, you automatically get all of your captured units back. Conversely, when you lose, the enemy gets all of their captured units back. So not only did I lose to the Papal army, since over half of the casaulties I inflicted were captured men, they only ended up taking about 100 casaulties from the battle.

All told, despite being the most powerful faction on the board, I'm getting into a lot of wars. I'm currently at war with 6 nations. The Danes and French will be eliminated shortly, so that at least will take it down to 4. One positive is that the Venetians, Sicilians and Papal states are all coveniently located together along the southeast border of my empire.

[ December 04, 2006, 16:06: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

The AI attack anyone they have a border with so it's really hard to not be at war with a faction you border. A prime example of this is that I was allies with Spain for most of the campaign, with a perfect relationship. We shared a border for between 10-20 turns before they betrayed me with 3 or 4 full stack armies. So only expand into areas where you will be comfortable going to war with your new neighbours. A strategy I use is to expand into a faction but do not completely wipe them out, leave them a city or two at the end of your border, that way they will be too weak to perform a successful counter attack and will act as a buffer between yourself and the nearest neighbouring faction. I did this with Poland by leaving a Danish city between myself and them and they never attacked me.

 

I see what you mean, but my personal experience is sometimes different from this. With the HRE, I share a border with Hungary and Poland as well. We have co-existed peacefully for the entire game. Granted, Hungary has been at war with the Byzantines, and Poland has been at war with the Russians, so it is possible that their other conflicts are a reason I haven't had any problems. Then again, I've also shared a border with England for a long time now (they still hold Caen), and we have never come into conflict either.

That being said, what you say appears to usually be true. I didn't have any problems with Portugal until I took Tolouse, which was the only city the French held that bordered a Portugese territory. Some other times, it just appears random. The Venetians just decalred war on me recently, but they shared a border with me from the first turn of the game without resorting to hostilities until the last few turns.

 

What unit size do you and Barmy play on? I finished my first campaign on normal but I'm thinking of playing with a large unit size for my next run through. Makes the game a little more realistic as your largest armies only have around 1,000 men on normal. I'm also undecided on which faction to play with next, I want something a little more exotic than the English, I was thinking of Venice or possible Spain or Portugal.

We should have a few games online, possibly a small tournament or if theres only the 3 of use we could each choose a faction to play and play at a set time every week or so and create a league table.

 

How can you modify unit size? Does it change the number of people per unit or the number of units per army? Does it effect the cost it takes to build said units?

 

I usually play on normal but I've taken to playing on huge scale lately. The only problem is then is that my 3D card cripples up like a little girl in big battles.

 

You do it in options but you can't do it in-game. On the main menu screen go into options, game options, unit size. Unit size changes the number of men per unit. It does'nt have any affect on unit cost. Basically its just scales up the game, it has no strategical affect other than just making the armies bigger and the battles longer.