Medieval 2: Total War

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I've never had any crashes with this game but I am running it on a new snazzy system. I have noticed a number of gameplay bugs though. Placing stakes with your longbowmen sometimes wont work, changing targets and switching to flaming ammunition with artillery is also a problem occasionally. Movement on city walls can also be a pain and getting cavalry to perform a proper formed charge (like the ones in RTW) will only work sometimes. Apart from this there arent any major bugs, nothing to detract from such a fine game anyway. Although a mate of mine told me he kept getting a papal election every turn so he had to restart his campaign, I havent seen it for myself though so it may or may not be true.

 

I finished my first campaign a little while ago with Russia. http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b127/Sarevok00/med2.jpg?t=1165759597

Great game, but one to many bugs.

 

Bloody hell thats a huge empire. I tend to lose a bit of interest when my empire gets too big as it takes lots of micromanagement and bogs down the game. Also when your rolling in the cash it gets a bit easy to just roll over all the other factions.

 

Okay, the Pope can eat me. Seriously.

I'm still getting my feet wet, so I've been sticking to England thus far. But whenever the damn Pope declares a crusade, there's no way for me to possibly get to Jerusalem in the timeframe he allots. it takes at least 8 turns to sail there, and about 12 to march there - yet he only gives you 8 turns to comply with this wishes and join the crusade. What the hell? That stupid hat is to blame, I'm sure.

Also, in the short England campaign, I can only win by eliminating France and Scotland. But everytime I start thumping them, since they're both Catholic nations, the Pope intervenes and orders me to stop hostilities with my "christian" brothers (even though they've been striking first). Double-ya, tee, eff.

It is getting a lot more fun, I have to admit. Still not blowing my socks off or anything, though. I'm wishing I'd picked up Company of Heroes instead. But hey, there's always Christmas...

 

The 8 turns isn't the limit to reach the holy land. It's the time limit to get involved in the crusade (which takes like, 1 turn if you use troops you have already).

 

So then what do you do to get involved in the crusades? Is there a button to click or something? For example: once the quick window pops up, and I already have an army in place to march, what then?

 

Yeah you'll need an army of 8 units (doesn't matter what, make them peasants if you want) and a family member in charge. Then right click on the army and you'll notice a little button "Join the crusade" or something along those lines. As the army moves through Christian lands, it'll grow.

 

And once you join a crusade you gain access to special mercenaries, I often just create a crusading army with the minimum of 8 units then hire the rest. Crusading armies dont cost any upkeep however once the crusade ends they cost as normal so its a good idea to disband all your mercenary units as soon as you complete the crusade. Even with England you can get to Jerusalem before other Christian armies if you join on the first few turns after the crusade is declared. Just march through France, down into Italy then hire some ships to take you from the end of Italy across the mediterranean and just drop off next to Jerusalem or wherever the crusade is. If your finding it difficult try holding your own crusades against the Moors, its quicker than going to the middle East but Spain or Portugal might beat you to it.

 

To add to what others have said, another advantage is that Crusading armies have double their normal movement rate, so even if you are going by land, it won't take you that long to get there.

However, there are some words of warning with the crusade. It is true that you only need 8 units and a family member to join a crusade, and that mercenaries can be hired for a pittance once you join, so it's possible to get a 20 unit stack army for next to free. However, as soon as you click "join crusade" it is essential that you make steady progress towards your target goal every turn. As soon as you start taking your army away from the target goal, or attack other Catholic factions, you'll start losing people in your army to desertions. It's OK if you attack a non-Catholic faction, as long as you made progress towards the crusade city. So if you're at war with the Moors, and you happen to run across a Moorish army, is perfectly fine to stop and kick their butts.

@DR - The Pope pissed me off at first too. I couldn't understand why he would issue that order to me when the other faction started it. I have found a way to turn that directive to your advantage however. In my game, he ordered me to stop attacking the Venetians for six turns, so I halted hostilities. What I had not realized was the warning applied to BOTH of our countries. I left a sizeable army inside Venetian territory, and the Venetians ended up attacking my army, and THEY were the ones who got excommunicated. Once they get excommunicated, you can attack them as much as you want and the Pope never stops you. So the best strategy to use when the Pope directs you to stop attacking a faction is to cease open hostilities, but provoke the other faction into attacking you.

 

I have a couple more questions that I can't seem to find answers to - not even in the strategy guide.

Is there any way to find out when your daughters come of age and are eligible to become princesses? They give you a notification whenever one of your male children hit the age of 16, but they don't this for the daughters. As such, most of the girls get married off before I do any type of diplomacy with them. To build on that question - are all unmarried daughters in your family tree considered princesses? Or is it only the daughters of the faction leader that become princesses upon reaching 16 years of age?

Question 2 - What do you do when you take command of a new settlement? I'm not completely aware of what all three actions do in terms of how the populace reacts, specifically with the second choice of pillaging the town.

As I understand it, the three options, Occupy, Pillage, and Exterminate work as follows:

1. Occupy - Peacfully take command of the settlement. I know that you get the least amount of money going this route, and that most of the buildings are preserved, so you pretty much take the town intact. The only damage caused is by whatever you happened to damage during the battle. I do not know how the citizens react when you do this. I imagine you probably get a boost in chivalry as this is the "nice" thing to do.

2. Pillage - About the only thing I know about this option is that it gives you the most money, and it will destroy a lot of the buildings in the town. This seems to be a good option to take if you plan to convert a castle to a town, as many buildings won't survive the transition anyway. I have no idea how the populace reacts to your rule, although I imagine it won't be good.

3. Exterminate - This will order your troops to kill off a sizeable chunk of the people in the settlement. It instills fear in the populace, and makes the more likely to accept your rule through fear of reprecussions. This seems to be a good idea if you are occupying a settlement where the religion is completely different from your own - it might be easier to start over than trying to convert a large number of people to your religion. It gives you more money than if you occupied the settlement, but not as much as if you pillaged it. I imagine this option increases your general's dread rating, as it's not a very nice course of action. I have no idea what happens to the surviving structures.

So I guess my question is what specifically happens to the populace's reaction to your rule when selecting one of these options and what happens to the surviving buildings. I know that exterminating makes the surviving people more accepting, but I don't know what effect occupy or pillage have in that regard. I know that occupy retains buildings, pillage destroys buildings, but I don't know what effect exterminate has.

 

You seem to have understood occupy well enough as for pillage and exterminate unless things have changed since Rome you actually get the most money when exterminating. You know all gold teeth and such from the people you just slaughtered.

If I had the troops and the time and I needed a larger city I would always pick occupy it gives you a more whole settlement. Pillage I rarely chose cause if I was in such need of money and I cared so little about the settlement then I would exterminate it and work it up from the ground with a me loving populace.

 

Pillage gets most money. Do that if you don't really plan on spending money to hold the settlement. Raise buildings to the ground and get some boola for them.

Extermination I use if a city is constantly rebelling, some cities are just bad eggs. Occupy is usually most useful, but it can be your worst enemy in some cases. Fear is a good weapon for keeping unrest down.

 

Yeah, in my first game I screwed things up a bit. I didn't really understand how the population would react to you, so I usually chose pillage as it gave you the most money. Now though, I see that's probably the least worthy option. However, I can see some sense in pillaging a castle if you plan on converting it into a town, as most buildings wouldn't survive the conversion anyway.

What about princesses though? How come I have all these unwed adult female family members, but I can't send them all out as diplomats? Is it only the faction leader's daugters that qualify? Not his nieces and such?

 

Those princesses usually automatically become brides of one of my generals, it never takes longer than a turn or two before they are snatched away by one of my horny officers.

 

While it is true that the female members of my family are usually married off rather quickly, the point is that I should have a princess as a playable unit. That's why I'm asking if it's only the actual daughters of the faction leader. Seriously, I had all of two princesses in the first game I played.

I started another game last night as the Moors. I'm probably not going to play this out. I liked the sound of camel gunners at first, but just looking at the map, I don't like where I'm starting and where I have to go. I'll either have to conquer most of Europe or most of Africa to get to Jerusalem. Since my first game had me fighting exclusively western and central European powers, in my next game I wanted to get more into eastern European/Middle Eastern/African powers. The main problem with the Moors is if I go through Africa, Egypt is forever far away. It seems like it would just be so much easier starting with Egypt, and going from there. Plus it seems that the game is set up in such a way that the best starting strategy with the Moors is to fight the Spanish and Portugese, and I've already been there, done that in my first game.

So I'm considering either the Egypitians, or possibly the Venetians, as they have Constantinople as a target city, so that would necessarily get me into eastern Europe and the Middle East. Or their Muslim neighbors the Turks would also accomplish that. I can even take an usual country like Russia (which might be very challenging given their location - I imagine they get hit by the Mongols too). I guess the point is the Moors weren't a very good choice, although I'm certainly taking suggestions with the rest of them.

 

Egypt are a very easy faction to play, you have a great starting position and the towns turn in loads of income. You don't have any decent rival factions near you either, a huge desert to the West means you only have to defend one border. For me easy campaigns get boring. Venice sounds like the best of the factions your considering, they get a tricky starting location, but the late gunpowder units and heavy venitian infantry look good. Also if you want a more Eastern styled army you could try the Byzantines, they have Christian and Muslim units so that could make an interesting game.

 

True, but given their location, and I'm quite likely to expan northwards, it means I'll have to deal with the Mongols, which can't possibly be fun. So there is an element of a challenge that the more western options don't have to deal with (at least not immediately).

 

Just to let the Medieval 2 faithful know, the first patch has been released. Haven't played much with it yet, but it fixes a major battle issue where the enemy would just line up opposite you and let you shoot them to bits even on very hard difficulty. It appears now they engage only at distance until their missile units suffer so many casualties before they move into close combat. I used to be able to walk every battle with superior missile troops (longbowmen ) but this new patch makes things much more interesting, I was actually beaten by the French a few times! Shame on me. Find out more about it here.

 

I have managed to install this game and it seems to be just like Rome but with knights instead of legions. I generally prefer legions and I miss the more "aweinspiring" feeling of legionnaires of hoplites compared to rowdy peasant spearmen, cumbersome tercios or snobbish dismounted knights. The troop system and differentiation between different soldiers and factions was more clear in Rome. I also find it amusing that in the age where foot soldiers reigned supreme, cavalry was incredibly powerful in the game while in the game based on the age where cavalry ruled its power is greatly diminished. This speaks more of how overpowered cavalry was in Rome than anything else.

Another thing I have noticed is that it is much harder to annihilate your enemy with little losses to your own armies. All factions have so similar armies that it is hard to out tech the AI which is generally my strength in games of these kind. I am a good administrator and empire builder and only a an average tactician and thus I generally rely on making sure that I win any war or battle before it has started. Gold is, contrary to what Macchiaveli wrote, the sinews of war, not soldiers.

I am playing with the Spanish now and the Iberian peninsula is finally mine after the Portuguese stabbed me in the back together with the Moors and French. The French is truly annoying and I cant clobber them without the pope dabbling in my affairs so I reckon my next target will be Moorish North Africa. I overestimated the value of cavalry and now have almost two full stacks of very expensive knights whose upkeep is severely draining my treasury. I am able to build tercios in a few cities now and if what little I know of Medieval military history they were a dominating force on the battlefield for a few centuries so I hope that they can live up to that reputation and giving me any worthwhile footsoldiers.

My general tactic relies on having very stable asnd strong footsoldiers to line up and hold the center with ranged behind them and cavalry on the flanks running back and forth harassing the enemy and hopefully driving htem into my waiting infantry. I do miss my legions though, so versatile and mobile and able to both hold the line and charge themselves. Spearmen are so static and vulnerable to being outmaneuvered and I just dont generally like the idea of dismounted knights and other sword bearing infantry. Doesnt seem "proper" so to speak. Infantry should be "peasantry" with uniforms and acting as a unit. Not single fighters.

 

You might want to try the patch Ragusa, one thing I noticed is that it seems to significantly increase the effect of cavalry when used properly. To get the most out of your cavalry you need to do the following. Line up your cavalry into a straight line directly facing your enemy. If you charge at an angle they wont have the same collision impact that can be devastating. Once you have them lined up you have to give them room to charge, don't just expect them to be able to smash their way through a unit from only 10 yards away. Once you have lined them up and gave them a long run up, don't change their target at the last minute, this will disrupt your charge and the result will be an unformed charge where about 10% of your men will carry out charge, the rest just walk into combat after. Again I can't stress enough how important it is to line up your formation to gain a maximum impact, otherwise they sort of just spin round and charge in the formation they are in. These tips seem to take maximum effect with the new patch, it takes a while but when used properly the cavalry can be as devastating as in Rome. Hope that makes sense and helps a little.