Medieval 2: Total War

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Actually, I find those pretty good odds. For instance, a typical Mongol faction leader will give a fully pimped assassin + spy 12% success ratio. Except for this latest incarnation of theirs. Which gave me a success ratio of 16%. Took a bit of patience, but after they lost all but a single royal family member (again) against Jerusalem (again), I managed to kill off the last one with an assassin too (again, again), which destroyed the Mongols (yet again, again). It does make one wonder how many times they will keep on coming back.

Had a rather productive last turn this evening. First attacking a half stack army of the Moors off of Granada with my own half stack army (I rarely, if ever, have any full stack armies; it just seems like so much overkill most of the time). Got them routing fairly easily, then turned that army upon Granada and took it. Then I fended off a spanish siege on Marrakesh, leaving none alive to tell the tale. And then I still had some time to break the siege the Mongols were laying on Jerusalem (see above story), and assassinate the last of their royal family.

All that's still left to do for this turn (but another night), is to assault the walls of Baghdad, which was left to the rebels after the last advent of the Mongols.

About Jedda: It's one of those small towns that is just too far off for anyone to bother with, like Timbuktu, just on the east side of the Red Sea, at about the same height as Dongola. It has a huge area that comes with it, though, from the Red Sea to the Jerusalem region, all the way to the north to the Baghdad region.

@Dalveen: If you want fast expansion, you might want to turn to the settlements in France. There's an uncommonly high density of settlements in that area. Taking too much here will almost certainly get you excommunicated, but you need settlements fast, so you can't be too picky, right?

/edit

What many of us wouldn't give for that same scenario. Not me at this point, though. Rome and Sicily have been allies from the very beginning and at least Rome is not likely to betray my trust by attacking me.

 

Well, I was allies with them (and everyone else that had sent a diplomat to my cities) in the beginning of the game but decided to stop the usually crafty Danes early while their troops were in Norway and Sweden, so they broke the alliance and excommunicated me.

NEVER excommunicate the Holy Roman Emperor. >=/

Also, is it on purpose that every single HREmperor have a thing for male lovers?

EDIT: Oh yeah, gotta rape Sicily too. Sure, they're my allies, but I'm gonna make sure no buggers attack me in the back while I move north to take out the French and Poles that are going a *bit* deep into my territory. I am sure one French army was about to attack my capital but I was saved by an intervention of an Inquisitor that killed their general and they didn't dare to attack without him.

[ February 15, 2007, 23:47: Message edited by: Register ]

 

The 3:200 odds was the result of attrition really. I was attacked by army after army with the only respite being when I managed to sally and rout the enemy. In the second last battle I torched the enemy ram and barely held the walls against the ladders but only 11 spearmen and 4 archers survived. It returned to the main map screen and what did I see but another army march up and take up the siege. As a result I couldn't train more defenders and the results were pretty predictable at that point.

For the assassins - 42% success rate isn't bad really considering it was the emperor. You would expect there to be pretty tight security around him. The same combo of thief and spy had a 95% success rate on the last normal general.

Oh and the peasant girl also makes appearances in the dagger throw assassination movie and the creeping up behind the guy with a dagger movie.

I love how a king has the same snake video as any other male target but a princess gets a fancy curtained bed.

 

Now I remember. In fact, I should have remembered from another game I had played in which I couldn't figure out why Egypt wasn't eliminated - and it turned out their last settlement was Jedda - a city I had not even noticed on the map up to that point.

Regarding Timbuktu, I have taken it in one game, and based on that, I can say that it is worth it to send an army down there if conquest in Africa is in your plans. It's not worth the trip if you have no plans to take any part of Africa, but if you're taking on the Moors anyway, Timbuktu is a very lucrative settlement. The reason for this is it is loaded with valuable resources. Four golds, two ivories and one slave resource. All of which are worth over 20 gold per turn even with a low level merchant on them. As your merchants develop, they all start producing huge amounts of revenue. One of my merchants got to skill level 10 and he was generating 95 florins per turn trading ivory! I don't typically bother with merchants. At 550 florins each, you're typically looking at 30 or 40 turns before you see a return on your investment. But obviously, if you can get your hands on valuable resources like that the equation changes. As an added bonus, it's in such an out of the way location that you don't have to worry about foreign merchants attempting to seize your assets. About the only problem with Timbuktu (and its neighbor, Arguin) is that they are rebel motte and baileys, and thus need to be converted to cities in order to get the most value out of it's resources.

If time wasn't such a factor, then the Mongols would be your most obvious target. The Mongols can be defeated, but not quickly. I agree with others that picking on some of the European territories (especially the tightly spaced once in France) are still your best bet. I still say you're going to be hard pressed to get more than three Aztec settlements.

I have never even got close to having no Cardinals. There have been several games where the rate of Cardinals dying exceeds the rate of Cardinals being promoted, but I don't think I've ever seen a situation where there have been fewer than five Cardinals in the college. One thing I do notice is that the biggest Catholic faction usually has the most Cardinals as well, meaning even if one of your Cardinals isn't up for Papal election, that you usually can decide who is going to be pope, because whoever gets your votes usually wins.

I hate when that happens - and why do you lose the entire bodyguard unit when the general dies? Are they shamed for surviving while the general died? I agree that there's no point in trying to spare the remaining members of the unit, because they are gone after the battle anyway, but you would think that even with the general dead they would still accompany the army - especially if you had another family member in the army - they could join his body guard instead.

In my game, the Mongols have finally picked their target - Kiev. It's a level 4 city (so that's a large stone wall, not a huge stone wall), armed with ballista towers and a full stack army inside, with a combination of everything from general units, archers, crossbowmen, some high level infantry, and cannons. The Mongols are in for a tough fight.

Too bad they couldn't have held off for a few more turns - the city was about to reach the population threshold for level 5, which would have meant added defenses, as well as cannon towers. Still, I can't complain. The Mongols wandered around Russia for the better part of 100 years, not attacking anything, so they've been more than fair in allowing me to get my defenses in order. One thing I don't know is what their army composition is. Since all of their army stacks are commanded by generals, my spies only tell me details on the general, not who is in the army. Given that all of the armies have full banners, I know they are full stacks, but I don't know what kind of units they have. Obviously, in terms of holding a settlement, it would be helpful if a significant portion of their defenses were cavalry, effectively taking them out of the first half of the fight.

 

Can't you see the army composition by double left clicking it after your spy has scouted it? I think that has always worked for me.

 

I'll try that JSSB, although it ultimately doesn't matter. You can easily see the attacking force in the pre-battle screen, and it's not like I'm going to have any say in which army(ies) from the Mongol hoard lay siege to Kiev. Ultimately, I think Kiev is doomed, even with the full stack reinforcement army on the way that I intend to use to cycle out damaged units with fresh ones. My hope is that the soldiers fight the good fight, inflict serious casaulties on the opposition, and that I can get a crusade called in response to losing the city.

 

Yeah, the Poles now had three priests promoted so they have monopoly in Popishness. After that, Poland declared war on me to aid their allies, Venice and Milan, after I had taken both their capitals. So, now I'm excommunicated, but I responded with an attack on Genoa, Milan's new capital, while their Duke were inside.

Gonna take Rome next. I'm already excommunicated, so I got nothing to loose.

 

Well, you said it would be hard, but I'm at 40 provinces with 38 turns to go. My economy is down the pot, and I'm only just staying out the red by sacking every Christian settlement I take, an exterminating the Muslim ones. I stormed the Turks, taking Edessa, Caesera, and Iconicium (sp?) Im currently putting together an army to head to Baghdad. Ive taken Bern off of HRE and waiting for the pope to let me attack HRE again, then Innsbruck will fall. Got another full stack heading to Rheims to take out the French. Also, ive taken Sofia, and have another full stack heading for Thessalonica, after taking out Durrazo. I said straight west and reached Brazil, so that fell and my other full stack is about to land in Thaxcala, with an almost full stack 2 turns behind it, and i finished off the Moors by taking Cordoba. So, i think i can manage 5 settlements in 38 turns

 

Wow, there are currently 12 Cardinals in my game and half of them are English! The one who would be a candidate in a papal election has a perfect 10 in piety compared to the second best having a nine so that means that I can't lose!

Hmm, where is my perfect 10 assassin right now?

 

This is not fair, im at 43 settlements, i have a full stack crusading army one turn away from Constantinople, and 1.5 full stacks at the first aztec city. I was seiging it, and they brought another full stack to help them, so, its 800 men from my full stack, against 2000+ aztecs, i crush them both, and am about to break the last unit, when my computer restarts...

 

Ouch. Well, if you did it once you should be able to do it again but better this time around.

 

After taking Baghdad, I had planned to send the army that took it back to Acre to retrain it, but then decided it was too far away. So I set the army on the war path again, and left for Yerevan and then further on to Tblisi. The latter one is another fortress, so I'll retrain my army there.

On the other side of Europe, I just send my king to Cordoba, because if the pope isn't going to excommunicate those spanish bastards for attacking Marrakesh time and again, then I will make sure that Marrakesh isn't bordering the spanish anymore.

The other factions seem fairly complacent, since only the scottish ever seem to get excommunicated. I was hoping that either the French or the HRE would get themselves excommunicated so I could get to conquer me some more in Central Europe itself. And those golden chevronned cavalry units are practically screaming for some action, so I think I'll just do some provoking. Like parking an army outside a city of theirs, that should work.

 

It is beyond me why the pope loves the HRE so much. In my current game they were attacking other Catholic coutries almost non-stop and they were sitting with nine or ten crosses - until I assassinated them all.

My top assassin is currently over inflicting a little punative damage on Hungary for taking Bucharest. Given that the rest of my empire isn't near any Hungarian settlements I think I can spare them for long enough for my assassin to go pay the papal states a visit.

Edit: After the pope's unexpected encounter with a snake an English cardinal was elected and England's papal standing went from poor to perfect. A couple cardinals died before I got there so I actually had six of ten votes.

On the negative side the Mongols decided to go the southern route which puts them far too close to my little cluster of Adana, Aleppo and Antioch. None of those has a large enough population for me to be able to upgrade them to the point where they actually could have a chance against the horde so I doubt that they will be mine for long.

I actually managed to persuade France to give me Valencia in exchange for a ceasefire. I have been too busy taking down the rebel cities that used to be part of the HRE to bother with France anyway. Also, just before that Spain double crossed me and attacked Cordoba so getting a free castle that is well positioned to help flood Spain with troops is nice.

[ February 17, 2007, 08:14: Message edited by: JSBB ]

 

While I had earlier send an army to Cordoba, the spanish managed to get excommunicated and get a crusade called against them in a single turn. Seizing the opportunity, I immediately took Cordoba, set my king out of the ports of the city again and joined the crusade for Leon. Good thing I'm this close too, as nearly every other christian faction jumped to the crusade as well. But unless they manage to get there within the next turn, I'll arrive first, and I'll be all set to conquer the Iberian peninsula in it's entirety (the portugese got themselves annihilated earlier).

At the urgings of my council, I send an army to Adana as well, to expand my border at the cost of the Byzantines. Adana is a fortress, and while they attacked my infantry units, I had my cavalry circle around, effectively trapping the byzantines between a proverbial rock and a hard place. Some of their units had escaped my pincer movement, by routing toward the inner keep. Sadly, they weren't fast enough, and I could slip a unit of chivalric knights through the gates before they closed. After that, it was a simple matter of rounding the last survivors up and claiming victory.

 

Oookay, the Mongols showed up right next to Aleppo with five full armies, I got the "The Mongols are here to exterminate you" message - and then the Mongol armies just turned around and went wandering off into the desert! WTF?

Edit: Oh I just had my funniest victory ever. I had two groups on route to take Innsbruck and the smaller of the two which was just three units of cavalry meant to reinforce the main army made it there first so I decided to start the siege with them. The enemy sallied so I decided to see if I could pick some of the enemy off before running away. The enemy sent their entire force out after me - they had one unit of cavalry plus a ton of spearmen. I took out the enemy cavalry before the spearmen could reach me and then I started running. The spearmen were chasing me when I noticed that the castle gates appeared to be open. I circled my cavalry around the spearmen and ran for the town square. The three minute timer ended just as the spearmen were approaching the square so I won despite being outnumberd 10-1. I don't think I have ever managed to take a defended castle with so few casualties.

[ February 18, 2007, 20:34: Message edited by: JSBB ]

 

Lol JSBB, nice victory.

I wont with Milan, with 38 turns to spare Now starting with Denmark if anyone has any tips for them?

 

Yep, the Mongols are definitely idiots. They came back and are all standing around while the first Unit besieges Damascus. They could be besieging some (or all) of my other settlements in the area at the same time given how many armies they have but instead they have one besieging my city and the rest just standing there looking stupid. Meanwhile my maxed assassin has taken out three of their generals.

Edit: Well, I figured that Damascus would be toast as soon as they attacked and sure enough two armies at once attacked. I killed off all their infantry units but the ram managed to take out my gate - I took out the troops on that side of the city (including killing the Khan) and the ones around the other two sides are just sitting there uselessly pelting my walls with arrows while my towers very slowly take them out.

Seriously, at this rate I am going to win the battle in around 20 hours real time. I suppose I could send my troops out to die to end the battle but you would think the dolts would be smart enough to circle around to the wide open gate.

While I have been sitting there my towers have taken down 12% of two full armies including an enemy general. That makes two dead generals from this battle plus the three I assassinated. At this rate I may actually be able to reduce them to rebels before they take all of my Holy Land settlements.

I finally killed off all the enemy within tower range so I went out and did the suicide sally. I managed to wipe out another 4%. Oh, my God - the results screen just came up and there were actually three full armies attacking. I eneded up killing 52% of three full armies while defending an undeveloped city!

Edit: My assassin took out another general. Either I am getting really lucky or the success percentages are really messed up. At a 44% success rate the odds of taking out four generals in five attempts are pretty low (10% I think).

[ February 19, 2007, 04:00: Message edited by: JSBB ]

 

The mongols and Timurids are just plain weird, their programming leaves much to wish for. In my game the mongols arrived in the north east, spent 20-30 turns moving westwards slowly and another truckloads of turns conquering Russia leaving the mongols with a few pretty crappy and uninteresting territories far to the north. They havent made a move for a lnog time now.

The Timurids showed up around Bagdad and spend their first ten turns just moving back and forth, I sent out diplomats, spies and assassins to feed them with one hand and kill them with the other. The caught one of my assassins and declared war, after they did that they proceeded to quickly move north towards Turkish land.

 

Head south and east and take Madgenburg, Stettin, and Hamburg at first. If you can get another settlement down there before the Poles or HRE, do it. I'd also reccomend trying for the north-west settlements of continental Europe, the two cities in the region there, but it's very possible the English or the French got there before you got the chance.

Then, head north and take Stockholm and Oslo, and then take a ship over the sea and take Helsinki and if it's still not taken, Riga.

Then, close in your armies and wipe out the Poles. You can also take out the HRE but then you'll have the Poles as a constant threat while you deal with one of the largest factions in the beginning.

 

First some replies:

I had the same thing happen in my game with Poland. I actually had a majority of the council - 8 out of 13 Cardinals. I also was getting steady priest promotions to Cardinals so I was able to maintain that through nearly the entire game. I alone decided who was Pope. Sometimes, I wouldn't have a Cardinal up for election, but even in those conditions, I had enough other Cardinals to always elect an ally, or at worst, at least prevent an enemy from getting elected. However, since the faction the Preferati are from always vote for themselves, having six Cardinals always guarantees you the most votes. Since each of the three other factions always vote for themselves, there is only a maximum of 10 undecided votes. If you get to cast six of them, there's no way you can lose.

I'm assuming Marrakesh is no longer in possession of the Moors. The Pope will never excommunicate anyone for attacking a Islamic settlement.

As for other factions getting excommunicated, it happens in my games all the time. More often than not there is at least one faction that gets excommunicated. It does seem to happen to the Scots and English more often than others, but in my current game Milan got excommunicated, and in other games I have seen France, HRE, Sicily, Hungary, and Venice all get excommunicated as well. The only factions that I have never seen get excommunicated are Denmark (except when I played them) and Poland (ditto).

I agree whole-heartedly with everything Register said, and I'll just add a few more tidbits of info. I agree that you want to get as many of those settlements as possible. The northwest settlements he is referring to are Antwerp and Burges. While getting Olso, Stockholm and Helsinki is nice, it seems to AI never goes for them, so they are lower priority settlement - you can get them whenever you want. Your first order of business is getting as many of the rebel settlements into your faction as possible.

WTF? The Mongols just kicked my ass. Why weren't they stupid versus me? They showed up with three full stack armies. I sallied forth to attack them, drove off one army, but on the very next turn they attacked without laying siege with two full stack armies. They were armed with rocket launchers that made Swiss cheese out of my walls. While cannon towers are nice, you can't tell them what to attack, and since they failed to target the rocket launchers, I had multiple holes in my walls in no time at all!

Then they did an all out charge on my city. I don't understand at all how they made minced meat of my defenses so easily. Their heavy cavalry (not general's body guard mind you) went right through my spearmen like they were nothing. I specifically defended the settlment with archers (for the walls) and spearmen and heavy infantry (to handle the cavalry), and I might as well had peasants defending the city for all the good it did me. I don't know if the Mongols are set up in such a way that they can't lose, but armoured spearmen and dismounted chivalric knights should have put up a good fight against heavy cavalry, and they just melted away.

I was so frustrated that I started a new game with the French. I intend to go back to the game with Poland, but it's not fun when you think you have a perfect battle plan set up and it doesn't amount to anything.

The Froggies are great however. Gunpowder hasn't even been invented get, and I already have kicked the English off Europe, eliminated the Spanish, have the Portugese down to one city, and Milan's last two cities will fall as soon as the timer runs out on the Pope's mission to stop attacking them. I already have TWO citadels that are pumping out dismounted chivalric knights, which are the freaking bomb. Attack rating of 21 takes down anything that isn't fast enough to run away. They cost a ton but are well worth it. I also have two chapter houses of Hospitaller Knights in my kingdom, which are producing the lion's share of my cavalry. I was surprised to see that one of my cities got offered to build a chapter house, as I was unaware that mounted units could be produced anywhere other than castles (the other chapter house did go to a castle).