Medieval 2: Total War

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Got the hint book, and it is a monster! I never realised the number of traits, items, and other characters that travel with you are available for leaders, generals, and even other character types, such as heretics, assassins, thieves, and even the pope! There are literally hundreds. Although contrary to what I have observed there do seem to be a lot more positive than negative ones. I suppose the biggest help is it gives you all of the unit types, how you get to them, and what their attack and defense ratings are, which is useful.

 

You couldn't tell me how to get musketeers with either Portugal or Spain could you? I finished my game with England but never even saw an Arquebusier (sp?).

 

What year will you be able to go to America? I'm in the 13th century now with Russia, with a complete dominance over eastern Europe and I'm closing in on the egyptians on the other side.

 

It's not a year. It's when you get your first deep sea boat built.

 

There is an event when you can first build the carrick. It says something about now the technology is available to sail west to establish trade roots with the far East. I cant remember exactly when but its about 1410-1420 give or take a few turns (a turn is 2 years). You have to then build a naval drydock, which allows you to build the carrick then you just sail west, it can take a while to get there though.

 

@Duffin - according to the book, only the Venetians and Spanish can get musketeers, and they require a royal armory to recruit them, so they are certainly late-game units - you need a citadel or large city to construct to royal armory.

And what nation has elephants? I can't find them in the hint book. I want elephants!

 

You guys seem to love this game. Maybe I should get it too. But how to find the time to play NWN, NWN2, plus other games like this and Civilisation IV?

Surely the elephants are for either the Indians or the Carthaginians?

 

I know the Timurid's have them. Not sure who else has without looking at the units...

Just go into a custom battle and have a looksie. Custom battles are great fun!

@ Aldeth - Musketeers are just another kind of arquebusier, jannisary (but probably slightly better, being later period units). Gunpowder infantry are available quite early, they're just pants straight away. Archers are way better in my book (for my style of fighting at least).

 

How is this game different from say Civilisation or Age of Empires?

 

It combines the qualities of RTS style games and empire building games and brings them together in the same game.

It's basically like a game of Risk / Civilization, but you also take control of your battles (which make this game something special, the battle engine is superb) like in Age of Empires (except there's obviously no resource collection on a battlefield).

It's amazing how they can make the battles so realistic yet so fun at the same time. Often, game developers sacrifice a bit of realism to make the game more fun to play.

The French invade you as England and lay siege to London? You hastily make a few units of troops, drag the troop stacks around the map and take them where you want them to be. Then meet the French in battle and lift the siege. You'll need to decide how best to deal with their armoured knights. How best to counter their crossbowmen. What about that annoying catapult over yonder protected by a troops of spears, how're you going to put that out of commission?

That kind of stuff.

 

@ Aldeth - The only faction I have encountered with elephants are the Timurid's which dont appear till about 2 thirds through the campaign. They arent just elephants though... they have cannons strapped to their back

@ Barmy - Yeh I tend to agree longbow's are the best missile weapon in the game but I'm playing through with Portugal and the units are turd particuarly missile troops. My mate told me they have good late technology though so I was thinking of building my armies round a large gunpowder base. I played a few custom battles and handguns are very good for scaring the enemy, they troops are heavily armoured aswell so you can get them right upto an enemy line and unleash a volley of lead.

@ Harbs - Theres a demo you can download here. You won't be disappointed, pure quality.

 

I found that NWN bogged down too quickly. I could do some of the earlier stuff, but eventually, I just couldn't get any further...

ANd I think that point was embarrassingly early...

At least with Civ IV and I assume this, you learn by getting your butt kicked then playing again (Repeated until you get it right)...

 

@Barmy - I agree that gunpowder units aren't that great, espcially the early ones. However, it appears that musketeers are the last type of gunpowder infantry unit you can produce, which suggests that - at least relatively speaking - they are the best gunpowder infantry unit available. One big advantage with gunpowder units is their shots can penetrate armor. I'm to the point in my game where just about everything is armored, so my archers are useless, and I build exclusively crossbowmen now. Of course, if you're playing the English - and you usually do - longbowmen are the bomb.

And the Timurid's aren't a playable faction, are they? That stinks! No war elephants except in custom battles.

I've spent the last two days (and about 20 turns) consolidating my position. In the first 50 turns of the game I quickly expanded out to 29 settlements. That was too fast, I got into too many wars, and I had some significant money problems. So I've gone for more internal improvement and army shuffling, despite facing repeated attacks from the Venetians and Portugese.

The last attack was particularly tough - the Venetians almost took the city. It was actually two battles. As soon as they laid siege to the castle, I sallied forth and met them on the battlefield. The battle ended in a draw, after about an hour. Both sides had heavy losses, and I lost almost my entire infantry. However, since it was a draw, my settlement was still considered to be under siege - the enemy army did not withdraw. Strangely, after the battle, the Venetians offered to ransom back the troops they captured (mostly infantry units), which I readily accepted. On their half of the turn, they attacked (now that their siege equipment had been built). This battle was considerably smaller, with me having only about 120 troops, and the Venetians having 150 troops (the first battle the Venetians had about 600 troops, while I had about 450). I won the day with about 50 troops left in the castle. The thing that is humorous is if the Venetians had executed their captives instead of ransoming them back to me, I would have lost. There were 65 captured troops in the first battle, which exceeds the number I had left after the second battle.

When I get home tonight I have two goals - finally deal with the Papal Army and finish off the Sicilians. The Portugese and Venetians will get theirs eventually, but that's for another day.

I'd like some advice on the Papal Army battle, as it's going to be a tough one. In terms of absolute numbers, we're about even. The Papal Army numbers a little over 850, while my army is at 826. Both armies have about 15 full stack units, or very nearly so. My army attacked a rebel army on the way to the battle, in which we took a very small number of losses (something like 24).

However, the composition of the two armies couldn't be more different. My advance spies tell me that the Papal army has 3 "general" units, meaning that those three units will all be heavy cavalry. They also have 2 other units of heavy cavalry to boot. They also have three units of pavaise crossbowmen, with the rest being armored seargents and dismounted knights.

My army only has two heavy cavalry units, 3 crossbow units, about 5 infantry units (a combination of just about everything - spearmen, dismounted knights, even a town militia unit), and three siege weapons (two ballistas and one catapult). I'm obviously going to try my best to take high ground for this battle to maximize the effectiveness of my missiles. However, I'm concerned that I don't have enough good infantry to withstand a 5 unit cavalry charge. Any suggestions here? I really only have one unit available for flanking, as my general is going to have to stay near the front line to keep up troop morale.

[ December 06, 2006, 14:26: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Question: do the merchants bring you any money in on their own, or must you take over other mechants's business to make money?

 

Are they attacking you, or are they defending?

Whatever, you're going to want to use your artillery on the cavalry. Preferably, for an extended period of time. Hopefully you can get into a skirmisher fight (the Pavise Crossbowmen will destroy your ordinary crossbowmen but at least it will buy you a bit of time).

The front line of their infantry VS your infantry can easily be turned your way by repeated cavalry attacks into the sides and rear and their line (charge, hit, run away, rinse and repeat). However, you can't do this if they have more cavalry than you do. So somehow, you'll have to get rid of them.

To be honest, I think you'll struggle to win that . They've got better cavalry, better infantry and better ranged. You'll have to use your artillery to best effect. Don't know how you'll do that

If I were you I'd fill your army out with whatever mercenaries you can buy before fighting them.

 

I will be defending in this battle, but it is going to be an open field battle. I'm not in a castle or city. As such, it's imperative that I get the high ground. My ending army position is such that I should be on a hill. If not, I can always retreat and hope the backup position involves a hill.The one advantage I have is if their infantry has to run uphill to get to me, they will be fatigued.

I'm thinking of a semi circular formation at the start of the battle and maintaining that for as long as possible. The siege units will be in the center of the semi circle, and as far back to the rear of the map (or as close to the top of the hill) as possible. Immediately in front of them, I'll keep my cavalry units. I'll need them centrally located as I don't know where they are going to be needed most. In front of them I'll put my seargent spearmen, in case of a direct cavalry charge, with my two dismounted knights on the left and right flank. My crossbowmen will be in the front line to get the most use of their height advantage, and I'll place them on skirmish mode - making sure to leave enough room between my infantry units in case they need to get out of dodge. My single town militia unit isn't going to be useful for much of anything, so they probably will be assigned to siege weapon guard duty. Not that I expect they'll be good at that either, but they may be able to buy me some time if nothing else.

Hiring as many mercenaries as possible is definitely a good idea. I think I have three or four unit slots left in my army, and really regardless of what is available (infantry, missile, or cavalry) it is going to be helpful. Obviously, I'm rooting for either more infantry or more cavalry.

I agree that the only way I'm coming out on top of this battle is with a bit of luck. The entire strategy hinges upon having my artillery deal as much damage as possible to the advancing troops. I absolutely have to target their heavy cavalry units, and more specifically the general's bodyguard units. Unfortunately, there are going to be three general's body guard units, so there's no way to know which one is the actual field commander. I'll place my crossbowmen on skirmish mode, and just accept the fact that with a lower attack and defense rating than the pavise crossbowmen, they're going to get owned. I will have to resist the temptation to target my artillery on the crossbowmen, as that's not the part of the battle I can reasonably hope to win.

EDIT: Bahir - you don't have to take over another faction's business to make money, but you do need to have your merchant on a resource. Personally, I don't build merchants, but I will use the ones I get to start the game. They generally only bring in a few florins a turn, meaning they have to stay on a resource a large number of turns before they start to turn a profit.

 

I have to get this game!

 

Aldeth, I don't know if they changed this from Rome (though I suspect not, given CA's track record), but see if you can stick your guys in a corner. I mean literally in a corner of the map, where on one flank you have the map edge and on the other you have another map edge.

Should make their cavalry less decisive, as it won't be smashing into your flanks. Yeah, it's 'gamey', but...

 

Can you smell the cheese?

 

Hey, when my 500 man army got pounced on by a 1500 (or was it 2500?) man army, you bet your ass I did that. If the game's not gonna let me retreat, I'm gonna exploit it