Total War Discussion

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As joacqin mentions, just load several spies into one settlement and watch the unrest rise. I also don't know if there's a limit, and if so, where that limit lies, but 3 or 4 spies is a significant amount of unrest.

If an assassin destroys a building, that building no longer functions. You don't even have to destroy it up to 100%, just a little bit of damage is enough to make it stop. At least I know for sure that it works that way for unit production. If you damage your barracks even a little bit, you won't be able to build any militia units anymore. It seems to work the same for order and happiness bonuses from buildings.

This can also be used if you want to convert a region to your religion by destroying churches.

Other factors are of course the generals and the amount of militia in a city. Luckily, the AI has a tendency to leave only a few militia units and park the rest outside in a field somewhere for some reason, so that makes it easier to raise the unrest to a high enough level. Generals can of course be assassinated.

It may take a while (usually too long, so I don't bother using this method too much), and while it could theoretically work on a castle, it's very difficult to pull off.

 

henkie & joacqin

Thanks for the advice on spies & assassins. I may put it to use next week (my best chance to).

That religion idea makes me think of using diplomats with a religion and assassins to damage temples to create agitation.

Other than that there are a few places with really large temples that are surrounded (or nearly surrounded) by regions with different religions-leading to a similar situation.

At the very least I now know of a way to further chip away at a faction larger than my own if my armies are busy.



Aldeth

Artillery sounds like it should work but would flaming arrows work as well?

Like I said before, I play Rome & Barbarian Invasion (more the latter currently), and flaming arrows really seem to do the trick when an enemy army fields elephants.

Granted in Barb Invasion & Rome there aren't any castles so it may stand to reason that in M2 may not have an option to make arrows flaming but if you do have archers that can light up their arrows I would encourage trying the on elephants and seeing how well it works.

 

Most missile units can light arrows. Any archers on foot can light their ammo, and the larger artillery pieces can fire flaming ammunition in addition to regular ammunition. Any type of mounted archer cannot light their ammo, nor can crossbow units regardless of whether they are on foot or horseback.

As for their efficacy, it is hard to quantify. I did fight them with english retinue longbowmen using flaming ammunition, but I don't know if they seemed effective because the ammunition was flaming, or because retinue longbowmen are the bomb. (They can even rip apart horse archers, mainly because their range is so great that they can't be kited.)

 

The good thing about flaming arrows is not the damage output, but the damage to enemy morale they do. Sustained fire by fire ammo will make any army rout quite easily - it makes sieges significantly easier. It seems to me that flaming ammo does somewhat more damage, but it's hard to be sure. According to the game description, they are less accurate than normal arrows, though.

As far as infantry archers versus horse archers go, infantry archers will make short work of any type of horse archers. They can kite, but that won't help against against archers. It seems that any type of cavalry is quite vulnerable to missile fire, much more so than normal infantry.

 

Exactly - the description for flaming ammunition is less accurate but more damage. They don't say how much more though. And seeing as how most of the stuff you are up against has a single hitpoint, it won't matter anyway, as regular arrows do one hitpoint of damage.

For the discussion at hand however, it means a lot as elephants have six hitpoints. This is easily testable. All you'd need to do is go to multiplayer, and have the second player be unassigned to anyone and make them the Timurids loaded with elephant units in a nice straight line. Control the second army filled with archer units. Have each of the 20 archer units specifically target an individual elephant unit, 10 firing regular ammo, 10 firing flaming ammo.

That sample size should be sufficient to give you a good idea about the damage differential - if any exists. In theory, reduced accuracy should not be TOO big a deal, as you are targeting a unit of elephants, which have a sizable footprint.

 

Its the effect on morale that does it. Elephants seem to have a lower morale and a larger size.

Having an extra bit of damage thanks to the flame helps but setting an elephant unit amok while it is in the midst of the an enemy army is can be quite a bonus.

As for the test.. I if you want to try it that way go for it-but I recommend trying 2 or 3 archers with flaming arrows on the same unit of elephants (ignore neighboring units and then hit them one at time after getting the one in the middle to go).

 

I thought it had to do with there being fewer elephants in a unit than anything. Since there are fewer of them, you don't have to kills as many for them to rout/run amok, as you would with other mounted units. Then again, I haven't faced many elephants in the game, so it could be that my anecdotal observations are not the typical way the unit operates.

You wouldn't think that flaming arrows would be too scary for an elephant - hell some of them have freakin' cannons mounted on them. That's the job I'd want if I was in a Timurid army. What's cooler than riding on an elephant with a cannon strapped to it's back?

 

Aldeth, how had you imagined testing this in a custom battle without the elephants attacking your archers and thus ruining repeatability? I tried to set it up as a LAN game, but then I would need to have someone (or me from a different computer) log in to play against myself and not do anything to upset the measurement.

Or is there a way to break the AI so it just sits there and does nothing?

 

Different issue.

How does one make diplomacy work?

In normally I would figure that if a diplomat's influence is high enough he would be able to talk other factions into ___.

However when negotiating with members of another faction (ranging from 2 to 0 in influence depending on which one the diplomat speaks with) the faction turns down offers-including that of free land.

Now why is it that if a faction only has one area of land it will still turn it down? (that doesn't seem to make sense)

 

Are you still talking about Rome TW?

I can only speak from my experience with Medieval 2: TW, and even there I don't have much experience with diplomacy. Except to note that the AI seems to operate on some kind of moon logic.

They will usually accept settlements, though (although I don't normally offer anyone anything, unless I want to screw them over by giving them Jerusalem or something when the Mongols are marching straight for it.

 

Gobs and gobs of money usually work well too. Usually you can get a ceasefire if you really want one if you're willing to fork over somewhere on the order of 15,000 - 20,000 florins. Of course, the counterargument to that is if you have 15,000 - 20,000 florins to spare, you could certainly purchase an army to combat the invading force.

 

Yes, or at least Rome: TW Barbarian Invasion.

Though I figure M2 is an improved engine so some of the things will be similar.

Also how long does it take a city to rebel if you have spies in it? A different faction took Rome as its new homeland (the only piece of land it holds which means-depending on how the computer did things-there may or may not be local resentment based on them being foreign). I'm at Neutral with the faction but I really want to kick them into Horde form which means kicking them out of the city.

I currently have about 7 spies (just recently added the latest one) in the city but I've seen no sign of insurrection.

 

Maybe it works differently in Rome or in Barbarian Invasion, but in Medieval 2, you see the unrest rise, and when the happiness drops below 50% or something for a couple of turns, the populace will start rioting. Then, if this continues for a few turns, the city will turn rebel.

But getting the happiness that low may or may not be impossible, depending on what buildings, tax rate, garrison and general. Especially garrison can do a lot for (or against) you. Buildings and generals you can use assassins against.

But again, this is all for M2, not Rome.

 

Also don't forget that there are different settlement types in M2. There is a huge difference in getting a city to revolt as compared to castle. In the case of the latter, it's almost impossible.

 

In Rome Barb Invasion you can see if a city currently has plague or riots but, unless your faction controls the city, you cannot see the amount of unrest as opposed to order-even if you have spies in the city.

You get an indicator of contributors to order (such as buildings in the city) and the total bonus to order they provide but not much else.


EDIT:

HURRAYYY!

It worked. I had to send an assassin down and felt really bad about one of the buildings I sabotaged but after I successfully sabotaged 2 different buildings which promoted happiness/order in the city then the city revolted. The upside to this is that now that faction is healthier (it had 1 family member-the king-left and he was old enough to to kick the bucket any turn). The downside is that now Rome belongs to a faction I'm currently at war with (Western Empire) and the bulk of new family members a for the faction I just saved opted to appear within my border which is 2 areas away.

I figured one of the pluses of trying this would be (besides preserving a faction) that I would've made a horde appear reasonably deep within the territory of what I think is my current strongest enemy.

 

It's been a while since the last activity here, but I just picked up where I left with my Milan campaign.

I was already at war with Venice, Spain, the Moors and France before I stopped playing and now we can add the HRE and the Byzantines to that list. Bizarly, the Byzantines did the same thing they did on my last playthrough, and attacked Cagliari out of the blue. Which is weird when their closest settlement is Durazzo. Well, I have to get Constantinople anyway, so it's not that bad of an idea to start retaliating on them.

My empire's shape at this point is actually kind of odd. Since the Sicilians donated me their northern African settlements in exchange for a ceasefire, I decided to expand a bit further into northern Africa and take the fight to the Moors. And since the Spanish got themselves excommunicated, that gave me a good reason to further expand into the Iberian peninsula. So I have most of northern Africa (except Makkaresh), some settlements on the Iberian peninsula and then northern Italy with some expansion into France.

So the spanish and the moors are down to a single settlement each at the moment, though the spanish are slated to lose theirs quite soon, with the Moors shortly afterwards.

And after the HRE declared war on me by attacking Venice, I retaliated by taking Vienna from them. I got a cease and desist from it from the pope, but since Vienna seems to be a magnet for trouble, at least I know where the trouble will be coming from for the coming time.

Interestingly, I managed to hijack a general/family member from the HRE by marrying him to one of my princesses. However, he was too close to the stack that he was initially travelling with so I wasn't able to move him away and into safety. Or maybe his movement points were depleted on the previous turn, who knows. Anyway, he got attacked by another, smaller, army. Which lead to a little game of hit and run and the loss of one mailed knights unit, one armored sergeants unit and one peasant crossbowmen unit for the HRE. Generals: still overpowered

As for France, I've got an army underway to Toulouse and once it gets near there, I'll send out another army to take Metz in the same turn. I'm synchronising my attacks here in the hopes that if the pope gives me a cease and desist for France, at least I'll have been able to get these two settlements before that.

Even though dismounted feudal knights are appearing in armies know, I'm still finding that italian spear militia and genoese crossbowmen hold their own very well and make most fights quite easy.

 

Continueing my game with Milan, I just managed to assassinate the french out of existence, then took the last settlement of Spain so they're out of the picture now too. The sicilians are down to their last family member as well, so hopefully they'll not spawn many more family members and then I can continue conquering the rest of Italy.

In other news, it would seem the Byzantines have an enormous hard on for Cagliari. So far they've landed 4 separate stacks and besieged Cagliari 3 times. None of them have left the island. This of course requires some response, which is actually underway as we speak (or as I type). It stopped for a short pause in Ragusa to reposses it from Venice, which netted me a cease and desist from the pope on the one hand, but also a noticeable increase in trade revenue in cities with harbours on the Adriatic Sea.

The Byzantines are actually the second most powerful and advanced faction in the game at this moment (after me, of course), and of course they have lots of armies running around with missile cavalry. While these are usually a cause of grief for me, at least Milan has a proper counter for all these missile cavalry with their spear militia and genoese crossbowmen. Also, Constantinople is an objective for the milanese so this is a benficial development, I'd say.

It's actually surprising that I haven't been excommunicated once so far. My relations with the pope couldn't be any worse, but he hasn't seen fit to excommunicate me so far. And I'm still trying to get him out of Rome, but apparently the amount of unrest my spies can cause is limited by the number of inhabitants in the city. Meaning that my chances of success will be increasing as the game progresses, though sadly also meaning that I was unseccessful in inciting a revolt in the city in the early game.

Speaking of religious matters, the college of cardinals currently has eight empty seats. This happens more often, but surprisingly, this time I had nothing to do with it. Or not a lot and not recently, at least. The cardinals of the other factions were just dieing of old age left and right for the past few turns. Probably the destruction of two factions had something to do with it. Come to think of it, if I manage to get the Sicilians the next turn, only milanese cardinals will remain.

 

I've been noticing some interesting things regarding how trade affects the income of my cities. For instance, after taking Ragusa from the venetians, I noticed that Venice suddenly got a 300 increase in income, as did Bologna. Then a few turns later, when the sicilians lost the last of their family members, I noticed a decrease in Venice and Genoa incomes - again of an order of magnitude of 2-300 - as Naples and Palermo became rebel cities (who don't trade with anyone else). For reference, most of these cities are large cities.

I wasn't aware that the differences could be that big - and indeed for most other regions they might not be this big - but it certainly shows why you want to establish trade agreements with as many factions as possible as early as possible.

I also managed to establish a land based connection between the part of my empire that was formed by the Iberian Peninsula and norther Africa and the part of my empire that was formed by most of modern day France and Italy. This happened after the last of the Portugese family members died under tragic and mysterious circumstances and I could take Pamplona with impunity. Though I had to rush to beat the papal states to it, as they own Zaragoza - which they took from the spanish when they were excommunicated.

On the other side of my empire, the Byzantines have lost Durazzo and Thessalonica. Interestingly, Thessalonica had garrison consisting almost exclusively of artillery, and had another army with similar consistency standing outside it's walls. Luckily, I managed to take them out without too much grief, but these ballista and catapult units can be quite nasty if you don't manage to engage them in close combat quickly. And even then you need to be sure to engage all of them, or they tend to fire whether their own units are in the way or not.

 

Decided to continue with my Milan game, which (according to my posts here and the dates on the savegames) I started more than three years ago and last played more than two years ago. Only played something like 10-15 turns so far, which puts me at turn 74 now, I believe.

The HRE, venetians, moors and hungarians all passed out of existence in the space of about 3 or 4 turns - with some assistance, of course. Then the danish also went the way of the dinosaurs - they only had a single settlement at that point in time, which made it rather easy to assassinate them out of existence.

Before the hungarians disappeared, I actually started a war with them. Which I don't normally do, but for some reason they loved to put only a single general in a settlement as garrison, and then when these generals died mysterious deaths, they wouldn't even put any units inside as new garrison. Seriously, they left Bran unoccupied for two or three turns, even marching an army over, but not putting the army into the fortress. There is only so much temptation I can withstand.

The polish seem to have a tendency to do this too, it appears, as they just lost Stettin to the rebels after leaving it empty for two turns. And since I now own whatever the HRE left, I'll be taking it from the rebels soonish.

As far as catholic factions go, only the polish, the english and the scottish are still in the playing field. It doesn't seem like the english or the scottish will attack me any time soon, or I would've expected them to have done so already.

The scottish landed an army next to Antwerp right before I took it (still rebel at turn 65 or so, together with Bruges), which has been standing there ever since but has taken no action. Similarly, the english still own Caen and have an army roving around inside that region, but have been disinclined to attack me ever since I took all those settlements around it from the french and portugese.

I might assassinate the english out of existence at some point in the future, just to take Caen from them, and possibly to get one (of two) settlement on the british isles, but first I think I'll take the fight to the polish. They are fairly large at this point in the game and seem much more likely to attack me. Also I have something like 7 or 8 settlements bordering them.

I also took Constantinople a few turns back, with which I'd actually gotten the official victory since at that time I already had more than 45 settlements. Funny thing is that a jihad was declared on Constantinople a few turns before I took it so I just finished beating back the turkish stack that had joined that jihad. The egyptians also joined in last turn, though I expect they will take some time before they actually arrive.

The interesting question is whether the mongols will decide to join as well, as they entered near Baghdad at around turn 70. If they do it would definitely be interesting, though I have doubts that they will actually join in.

 

When I quit playing with the HRE, I had 45 settlements at turn 51. So I thought I'd continue, see if maybe I could at least see some citadel and huge city units. I don't have any huge cities yet, and the citadel level units so far are fairly underwhelming, but at least I've mostly wiped out the competition in Europe.

I'm now at turn 64, with 66 settlements. Venice is the only catholic faction left and the Russians are down to two settlements. Even the Byzantines seem to have only four settlements left, after predations from both Venice and Turkey. The only factions I'm not at war with are the islamic factions (for now), though at the moment that's half the factions, so that's a definite improvement over being at war with nearly everyone.

Still at war with the pope, though, and he's back to being parked right outside Rome.

And people were still picking fights with me. Russia attacked Thorn, and a spy opened the gates to them, which could've been bad if the AI had actually pressed forward instead of just parking themselves in random locations. Also they had pretty much only cavalry, so my archers on the walls were having a field day.

The scots attacked me in a fairly logical attack on York. I'd left it rather lightly garrisoned for an attack on Caernarvon and they capitalised on the situation. Though with some extra cavalry reinforcements from Nottingham I managed to beat them back. They seriously lacked some ranged units. But since they only had Inverness and Edinburgh, they are now so much ancient history.

The spanish also laid siege on Ajaccio, then immediately bargained for a ceasefire the next turn. I would only have to pay them around 25000 florins for the next two turns. Right. Oh well, at least I could feel justified in starting to take the Iberian peninsula from them. Then the portugese upped the ante with 25000 florins for three turns in return for a peace treaty. What with them only having two settlements left at that point, you have to wonder at the logic behind that. The russians tried, too. Also around 25000 florins for three turns.

So now I have all of the british and irish settlements, and after chasing down the polish I now also have Ryazan, Kiev and Novgorod on the other side. There's still four rebel settlements left in the Iberian peninsula, and I'll have to rush to beat the moors to Cordoba and Granada, I'm guessing.

There's still some settlements left before I can rightly claim to hold all of the european settlements, but I'm getting there. And the mongols haven't even been sighted yet.