Medieval 2: Total War

Remove all ads!

Valencia is an anomoly. Unlike most rebel settlements which are very poorly garrisoned, Valencia has over 500 troops, a lot of cavalry, and El Cid as a nine star general unit, so it's certainly no easy target. In fact, given the starting power of most factions in the game, Valencia is better defended than most of the faction's capitals. All told, Valencia is a very difficult first target. The only time I've been able to take it semi-early is as the Spanish, where you can send a general over there early, place it under siege, and then bring in reinforcements during the seige so that you have enough troops when El Cid rides out to meet you. I'd say it's impossible to actually storm the walls early and take that settlement.

I'd also advise you to take Timbuktu and Arguin as soon as practically possible. My merchants in my current game are standing on resources of gold and ivory (five or six in all), all of which are generating in excess of 80 florins per turn, and some as much as 120 florins per turn (and none of my merchants have maxed out finance ratings yet, so their earning will likely improve). For an expenditure of about 3,000 florins in merchants, they will net you (as a very conservative estimate) about 25,000 florins throughout their careers.

As for my game, my crusading army got crushed. My force of 1000 was met by two full stack Mongol armies, consisting entirely of heavy cavalry and foot archers, and completely routed me. I only inflicted about 300 total casaulties on the Mongols, and lost all but 200 of my men.

Also, since my general died, the now leader-less Crusading army was set to disband the following turn. Evidently, when the general dies, the remaining troops are considered "out of the crusade" and the only way you can prevent them from disbanding is by assigning a new general to the army within one turn. Well, I had no other generals anywhere near that area, so there was no way I was keeping those troops.

So I had one turn left to do something with those troops before I lost them. I was between heavily garrisoned Jerusalem, but just to the north was Acre (a citadel) that was garrisoned with just three units (two archers, one missile launcher). After merging the remnants of my army, I had one almost full unit of knights, two full and one partial unit of adventuriers and one almost full unit grand bombard. So I took my chances on Acre, knowing I'd have to use my bombard to break through all 3 levels gates. I won the battle, sacked Acre and got 10,000 florins in the sacking.

I had a diplomat in the area, and I sent him to talk to the Mongol leader right after taking Acre. There was no way I was holding that citadel, as it would have a garrison of no troops the following turn, so I needed to deal. I noticed the Mongol wealth rating was "meager" while I had over 150,000 florins in my coffers. The deal I made was to trade Acre and 60,000 florins in exchange for the Mongol settlements of Cairo, Alexandria, and Aleppo. So I traded one citadel and 60,000 florins for one huge city, one citadel, and one fortress.

As it turns out, it may be that I end up losing Alexandria to the rebels. The fortress and citadel are OK. There are small garrisons in each of them, but given the high order in castles, it is enough to maintain things. Within a few turns I'll have chapels and priests going that will quickly bring things in order while I build up the garrison. No such luck with Alexandria. Even with daily races and a low tax rate, the best I can do is get the public order to 70%, and it immediately started rioting. More likely that not, I'm going to lose it. However, I do have another full stack army trained in Tripoli on the way. This army is far from spectacular, as Tripoli is only a castle. Thus, the army consists mostly of fuedal knights, light cavalry, peasant archers, and some catapults. It is more than likely that by the time they arrive, it won't be to bring order to the city, but to reclaim it from the rebels.

I'm not sure how I feel about this deal now that it's made (which is a little late to realize this). I like the fact that I have a fortress and citadel on Jerusalem's doorstep, meaning I am well-positioned to train troops right there. And also, trading three settlments for one that I wouldn't have been able to hold anyway seems like a pretty good idea. However, one bad thing is that the Mongols were pretty much out of money before we made the deal, and I just dumped a ton of much needed money into their coffers which I'm sure they will use to train more troops, which in turn will be used to attempt to reclaim my purchased settlements.

Still, the citadel already has ballista towers, and I'll definitely build cannon towers (they are already under construction) so I'll take my chances if the Mongols try to take them back by force. Fortunately, Alexandria is relatively protected - the Mongol army must travel through Aleppo or Cairo to get there, and I doubt the Mongols will pass up either of them on the way, meaning the Tripoli army will be able to reclaim Alexandria unimpeded. I'm already training a new and improved army back in France. Between that army and what I can train in the Middle East, I should be able to wear down the Mongols. The biggest problem I may have is the Black Death is going to start up any turn now, meaning I may have some problems maintaining my garrisons.

Some questions for the Mongol experts out there: Am I better off going for well armored missile units or artillery, or some combination? For artillery, should I be looking at grand bombards, mortars, culverns, or serpentines? For missiles, should I be making arquebusiers or my best crossbowmen (the adventuriers)? I'm also thinking about bringing along infantry to protect the archers and artillery - it seems that I am incapable of competing with the Mongol cavalry, so some type of spear/volgue/pike may be the best option. Any advice will be much appreciated.

 

My only real success against the Mongols has been in defending cities - their relatively small numbers of infantry meant that my heavy infantry was able to hold the walls and let my longbowmen and towers go to work on their cavalry that was stuck waiting. Canon towers really worked well against them. Personally I think assassins is the way to go. The Mongols seem particularly easy to assassinate.

I absolutely agree about Timbuktu and Arguin. The army that I used to take Tunis and Tripoli is heading back to pick up some troops to replace those I left to garrison Tunis and Tripoli and then they will be heading south.

[ March 01, 2007, 16:13: Message edited by: JSBB ]

 

Well unfortunately I didn't get to touch my campaign at all yesterday, as I had to get a emergency appendectomy(sp?) But now, I really have nothing to do but sit here and wait for it to heal enough to try getting back into baseball shape, I plan on Finishing my Venice campaign. I think i'll take Tunis and Tripoli after taking the Sicilians last settlement, and from there move on taking over the moors.

 

Get well soon illusion! Of course, this does mean more time for M2:TW!

I agree that the Mongols do seem rather easy to assassinate. I had a maxed level assassin in the area who recently died of old age. Against normal family members and generals (everyone besides the faction leader and faction heir) he was routinely getting assassination chances of 75%. In a few cases, the chance was as high as 93%, which is practically assured success. Now, I do not frequently get skill level 10 assassins, but from what I remember, their assassination percentages rarely got into the 70s for family members and never got as high as low 90s.

As I said previously, I'm not too concerned with defending my fortress and citadel - heck the citadel has three levels of defense - I should certainly be able to hold off a siege even if by a time victory if nothing else. Unfortunately, offense is going to be required so long as the Mongols control Jerusalem, as that is a required territory for my victory condition. In fact, it's the ONLY one I need now since making the trade. After the trade of territories, I have 44 settlements, meaning there is no reason other than feeling like it to try and conquer anything other than Jerusalem at this piont.

One potential solution to this problem is to bring two full stack armies instead of one. A consistent problem I am having with the Mongols is that I'm never fighting just one army - it's always two full stack armies, and I end up getting overwhelmed. The Mongols are not at all opposed to rushing you with 2,000 soldiers, knowing that you can't possibly kill more than about 10% of them while they are getting in range, at which point their superior melee units will cut you to ribbons.

As a side note, I think the Mongols are pure cheese. Every unit they have is a dual-use missile and melee. Their cavalry is as good as any missile cavalry in the game, but also doubles as a heavy cavalry unit that can charge troop formations. Their archers have melee ability as well. Granted the archers don't have the melee ability of the heavy cavalry, but it far exceeds the melee ability of any other missile unit in the game.

 

I think im gonna go back to my Milan game and try to conquer the world. Either that or i go back to my French short campaign that i beat the game with and try to take over everything with them.

 

You could just tortoise in your settlements until your assassins manage to eliminate the Mongol faction for you and then take Jerusalem from the rebels. That is what I did.

 

A perhaps equally arduous process. I currently have no assassins above level 4, so even getting an agent capable of taking down a leader is going to take some time. My best option may be to spam assassins out my master assassin guild. However, that's in Oslo - so they have a long walk/boat ride, and I'm not sure which way would be quicker.

However, your mentioning assassins does bring up a viable alternative. I could theoretically turn Jerusalem rebel without actually killing anyone. A combination of spies and assassins could trash a good chunk of their public order structures - spies by creating disorder in the settlement, and assassins by destroying order increases structures, with a particular concentration on masjids. Also, since they are a muslim faction, with the masjids out of action, spamming priests into the area will start converting the population generating even more unrest. Good thing Jerusalem is a city - not a castle.

 

Yeah and if the security around their leaders is that bad the success rate for even a level 1 assassin to sabotage should be pretty high.

 

Yeah, I'm now at the level of grinding - now may be a good time to go back to the old game of Poland and finish that - I'm fighting the Mongols there too. Of course, winning at this point is a formality. I can't lose at this point, and the only question being how long will it take.

 

Due to a bad winter storm coming through right now we have been told to go home and work from home tomorrow. That means I should be able to spend all day tomorrow playing Medieval II on my desktop while scanning for incoming e-mail on my laptop.

 

Spies in a settlement cause unrest? I didnt know that, maybe that explains the high unrest in some of my cities, even tho i have builts a ton of public order buildings.

 

Year is 1796 now, and some new developments.

The old Pope, from my HRE off course, excommunicated me for continously raping the Portugese. I have now taken all but three of their cities, plus a forth I made go rebel with the aid or a spy and an assassin. I had him killed in battle(actually, I captured him and then executed the prisoners, got the Dread Knight routine for that, first time I got it.) and another one of my cardinals elected as the Pope. Full rank again.

On the other side of Europe, Venice have started to pull out more troops to try to take me down. That stupid crusade is still going on down in Jerusalem, with one unit with Poland's king being the only thing left, but the Tirumids refuse to attack him and finish it. I attacked Poland and took Karkow, but they seem to have at least two more castles that I've noticed.

I bought Riga from the Russians for 10000 Florins and then traded map information. After that, I found out there is actually six or seven settlements east of Novgorod. With that Knowledge, Russia have now surpassed Poland, Venice, Portugal, Byzanthine, and the Turks in power. I will have to wait with that conquest for a while, or I'll just buy all their settlements instead.

Hungary got wiped out but not by me, which show that the Mongols are drawing near. The Tirumids are all but exhausted in Florins but still have four or five full stacks of units but they should be manageable when I go down there. But, first it's time to handle the Portugese and Poles, and after that it's Venice-whopping time!

 

1242 for me and the mongols just showed up a few turns ago. I had to change plans on going south unfortunately, because about the time i got my armies set up to go the Byzantines, Milan, and HRE all decided they wanted Venice, so I have spent my last 30 years taking care of the 3 most powerful factions. I have Milan down to 2 settlements....Antwerp a Buges(i think).

HRE is down to 5 from 17, with Poland helping me out on the far side, and the Byzantines have 3 left, but only because they moved a good ways out into Africa.

I have to take Constantinople from the Turks, as they won it in a crusade about a turn before my army made it to the city.

I think that once I finish off HRE and Milan, I'll take care of the English(who have all but destroyed the French). I have 8 Cardinals, so hopefully soon the Pope will die and I can vote myself into office, as I am near excommunication right now.

 

Hopefully the Pope will die? What a passive attitude. Sounds to me like you should send a man to arrange for the Pope to meet a snake.

Edit: Yikes, I just had pretty much the closest battle possible. I ended up with only my general left. I was just sitting here completely stunned after the general single handly took out the final 10 enemy archers.

In a couple of turns I should capture Leon at which time I will have the entire Iberian Penninsula plus all of Western Africa. I must say that this is turning out to be a lot easier than my game as England. At this point in my England game I had Denmark, France, Milan and the HRE sniping at me. In this game I have pretty much been left alone due to my isolated position.

Milan just eliminated France by wiping out the royal family so I guess I will try to scoop up some of the formerly French rebel settlements next.

[ March 02, 2007, 07:26: Message edited by: JSBB ]

 

Lucky for you.

Spies do cause a small amount of unrest in enemy settlements through the spread of propoganda. However, given that it is a small amount, that probably isn't the biggest reason you have unrest in your settlements unless you have several enemy spies camped out there.

I have found that the hardest point to maintain a high level of public order in your cities is when you get to "huge city" size. At that point, you have a lot of factors working against you, with squalor probably being the biggest. The problem with squalor is the only way to deal with it is by raising public health, and there are very few buildings that do that, espcially if you are playing the Catholic factions. The Moors, Turks, Egyptians, (which get hospitals)and Byzantines (which get aquaducts) have structures that improve public health. So unless you have a governor with a trait that reduces squalor, you could run into public health issues that eventually bring down public order.

For me it is not unusual at all to have a settlement that has well over 100% public order while simultaneously running a very high tax rate during levels 1, 2, and 3 of the city (castles are never a problem). It becomes much more difficult once you hit level 4, and very difficult once you hit level 5. At those points, several of my cities have to be lowered to at least a high tax rate, and often times a normal tax rate. There are only rare instances where I have to go to low tax rate.

Of course, eventually even your level 5 cities will be able to go back to a very high tax rate. In addition to squalor, it's low because the public order/happiness increasing buildings for a level 5 city are very expensive, and take a long time to build. So the city is growing but you can't build things/afford things quickly enough to keep up. The huge cathedral structure will set just about everything right in a low public order settlement, but at 10,000 florins and 10 turns to construct, it's certainly not a structure that can be spammed everywhere.

I cheesed my way to a win vs. the Mongols. I have noticed that whenever a crusade was ordered against a city, the Mongols moved the bulk of their forces to that city. So by trying to take down Jerusalem by getting a crusade called to it actually made things worse. It caused the Mongols to station MORE troops in Jerusalem. So on the next attempt, I got a crusade called to Acre, which caused them to move out of Jerusalem. Then my crusading army hit Jerusalem which was (relatively speaking) more lightly defended than usual. I brought all heavy cavalry and infantry with the exception of 2 grand bombards to blow holes in the walls. The Mongols do not defend settlements well at all. The way their units are set up, they are much more effective on the open battlefield. You can't really charge cavalry in cities, and arrow fire is much less effective.

 

Oh this is just great. I just looked through my faction heir's attributes and about half of them pretty much say that he is as mad as a hatter. Despite that he has an eight command rating so I guess the men are really inspired by the lunatic.

 

Well as I've said before I am very bad at raising assassins for some reason. Good with spies, diplomats, princesses, and merchants but assassins kick my ass for some reason.

Eliminated Milan last night, and now i've got a crusade called on HRE, so i'll start sending my "crusading army" through their lands to get as many of their settlements as possible. The Mongols decided to take the lower route, and so I won't have to deal with them at all. I finally got sick of all the other factions decided my ports needed blockaded, so I made myself a 1500 man navy and am currently detroying all other ships.

 

Interesting, my faction leader just died and the heir went from being referred to as Ayyub the Mad to being Sultan Ayyub the Chivalrous. You have to love it when your faction leader has the traits Seethes with Anger, Skewed View, Introverted, Feels Unappreciated, and Utterly Insane. Somehow he has a 10 authority despite the fact that when I add up his traits I come up with an authority score of -2.

 

I have no explanation for your leader's authority rating. The only other thing other than traits that can modify the rating our your retinue members, but having 12 points worth of authority from retinue members would be extremely unlikely.

I started a game as Venice last night, a faction I have never played up to this point, and one I wanted to add because I have so little experience in fighting the Byzantines, which will certainly be required given the victory requirements.

A couple of unusual things have happened already. Sometimes when you have a spy or assassin complete a mission, your faction leader gets some trait modification, becoming a "master of assassins" or something of the like. I had that happen last night immediately following my assassin FAILING a mission, which I find humorous to say the least. It's like saying, "Thanks to the incompetence of your agent, your king's (or in my case doge's) skill has improved.

The other odd thing is that I opened up the hostilities in this game. I usually wait for someone to attack me, and concentrate on taking rebel settlement before then. The thing is, with the Venetians, there's only two or three rebel settlements that are reachable. There are certainly more than 3 in the immediate area, but all the others are much closer to either the HRE, Hungarians or Byzantines which gobble them up before you get the chance. Florence is still a rebel settlement, but I am hesitant to take it, as I will have to send an army into another faction's territory (namely, the HRE) to do so. I'd rather avoid a fight with one of the most powerful starting factions in the game, despite my being fairly confident that Venice is adequately defended for an attack.

I started my attacks against the Byzantine in modern day Greece, laying seige to two of their cities in the same turn. While under siege, the Pope declared a Crusade against Nicea, which I guess is OK given that I'm at war with the Byzantines anyway, although Nicea can hardly be considered to have been my next planned target, being on the wrong (as in eastern) side of Constantinople. I suppose my eight unit army that just took Thasinwhatever-its-called) will become the Crusading army, although I would prefer to get a few ballistas to join the army if time permits.

Other than that, the only other territories I've claimed have been a few of the surrounding islands. My next planned target will be the pair of rebel settlement on islands on the other side of Italy. After that, I'm not sure. I'm sure by the time I'm at war with the Byzantines for a while, I'll eventually get a war going with someone else, which will likely go a long way in determining my next moves.

 

I think Loyalty also adds up to that, as Authority replaces Loyalty.

Also, I've never seen the Pope call a crusade on an Orthodox nation before, didn't know it was possible.