Total War Discussion

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Also shows how overpowered "jedi" generals are.

Now I remembered why I posted here in hte first place, it is to basically spit on Empire and Shogun2. They are such hugely inferior games to M2 or even Rome and the simple reason is that all factions are identical. The huge draw for me in M2 and Rome and what made me come back again and again is to experience the different factions and the completely different gameplay each faction gives you. Not so with the two newer versions of TW, same units for everyone a faction might get a bonus to some units but meh. I will not buy hte next installment unless someone convinces me that there is actual differentiation between the factions.

 

The only time I do an all cavalry army is against the Mongols. And I'm willing to change my strategy depending on what faction I'm playing. Obviously, if I'm playing England I'll make greater use of missile units. I'm not particularly impressed with the missile units of Spain, and so I hardly build any of them. I have a couple of crossbow units (but not pavise crossbowmen) and almughavars lying around, but my full stack armies are pretty much even splits between infantry and cavalry, with 2-3 units of artillery thrown in. As for how many of them, let's see, I have one in Tunis marching towards Tripoli, one between Florence and Milan, one between Staufen and Metz, and one that just took Nottingham. So four, presently. And I could certainly afford a fifth if I so desire.

I'm making money every turn. I tend to start with one army that consists mostly of generals and some basic units for early expansion. Then I split the family members to make two armies. After that all new armies are headed up by family members who come of age or marry into the family. I generally like to have a minimum of two family members in each army, although I will go with one if I want to launch an offensive and there isn't a second family member handy. (Although there have been times when I saw I had a 15-year old boy that I waited for a turn or two to come of age.)

Now obviously, I wasn't able to afford four full stack armies early on in the game. I don't have hard and fast rules of when to build another army. It's done based on need and feel. You sort of just know on your income tab every turn if you're taking in enough cash to afford more units. It's rarely a problem for me after turn 40 or so. After that, it just comes down to wise selection of what to build, and what order to build it. I will only garrison my cities with units that give free upkeep by the way, with a few exceptions of settlements that are likely to come under attack, so my armies are the only military upkeep I have. Also keep in mind that I have a merchant on every resource on the Iberian peninsula and northwestern Africa. I'm making several thousand florins per turn just from resources.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time - as we've seen my guide book includes units that didn't even make the final game.

Reiters are the "I win" button. With cost and upkeep about the same as what it is for any late game cavalry unit, once you can train them there's little reason to train much of anything else.

What about losses? I mean, for settlements that don't have walls, (and there's a fair amount of them early) it isn't an issue, but it would seem like as soon as you run into a settlement with walls that you have to storm without the aid of artillery that you're going to lose about 10%-15% of your force with each settlement you take, even if you're really good. Out of curiosity, if the settlement just has a wooded palisade for defense, how to the ladders work? Do your guys just jump from the top of the ladder to the ground?

That's not all that unusual, especially with Antwerp. For whatever reason, those two settlements stay rebel for much longer than any other settlements, save for those in really out of the way, hard to get to places. Their garrisons are larger than other rebel garrisons, and they do have good early game units (pikemen and mailed knights), but they still last much longer than you would expect.

On the other side of the empire, Milan predictably attacked. Fortunately, they chose to try for Bern, which, equally predictably, ended in total failure for them.

But then it's game over for Milan. Fortresses bring Feudal Knights (both mounted and dismounted) as well as Pavise Crossbowmen online, and since Milan doesn't have a castle, they're toast.

It was more of a rediscovery. I know I have taken those settlements before, I just forgot how profitable they were. My next target is England, and seeing as how once you conquer it you have free reign of all of the resources there as well, that will be the next place for my merchant armada. This may become the first game where I reach 1 million florins in my treasury. I already have well over 100,000.

Well what good is that? It also makes no sense. While it is true that in medieval times it was not known how far south Africa extended, but that there was a western coast was certainly known.

I thought they were castle only as well. I would have taken the offer. To get one early in the game would have been extremely useful, as you can't even build feudal knights just yet. That is was a city instead of a castle wouldn't have bothered me.

I don't know if the damage scales with unit size (I suspect it doesn't), but you still only get two. Of course, against troops the potential damage increase would be meaningless, because even a measly ballista will kill whatever it hits - even a general unit. And even though walls get tougher as you advance settlement sizes, the artillery seems to keep up just fine. There's nothing bombards can't blast through.

The pope is such a frontrunner. He likes whatever the strongest faction is. As soon as you power grows to the point where money starts flowing in and you have a lot of priests, you start getting cardinals promoted, and eventually popes elected and then all is fine. Also, building a cathedral is by itself worth a one point relations boost from the pope, so by mid game once you're building cathedrals you'll always stay on his good side.

That is hilarious. I've never seen that trait either. I looked it up in the guide, and it says: "Calm when outnumbered", level 1, +1 command when defending, "Does not panic at the sight of a larger army bearing down upon him, instead choosing the best spot he can make a stand." The level 2 attribute for this is "Determined in Defense", which gives +2 command when defending, with the description "Is astute in his selection of defensive terrain, and how to hold it against waves of attackers." Finally the level 3 trait is "Fears No Odds". He is given the title "The Steadfast" after his name. The level 3 trait gives +3 command when defending, and +1 morale for troops. The description is, "This man does not mind if the odds are stacked against him, as he has stood in defiance of those odds many times before."

What is the newer version? I was only aware of Medieval, Rome, and Shogun. Is there M3:TW?

 

Speaking from Rome: Total War-Barb Invasion that sounds like many a mounted archer. They are great against infantry armies but have some trouble with light horsemen. A different defense I'm sure others have tried is to shoot it out with mounted archers with longer ranged (generally) archers on foot.

Speaking, again, from Barbarian Invasion I usually don't have artillery when attacking a town. I usually take some looses but, if I do it right those are few and far.

Don't know how ladders work with palisades but siege towers cannot be built (cause the computer decides for you they won't work). However I tend to use both battering rams & siege towers in a similar manner.

I put the one I intend to break through away from my main army so most of the enemy army isn't anywhere near it. If that isn't enough I sometimes have a secondary decoy. Once you've taken a tower or made a hole in the palisade then enemy army either rushes you or backs off. Either way you have an entry point and if you have 2 of them on opposite sides of the town the computer is likely to miss one of them until it is too late.

When dealing with walled towns I tend to have the 1st unit it focus on grabbing towers and gate houses (I'll take a hits but not many if I plan well and don't march troops directly in from of a tower window). With a few towers under my control and archers on a high stone wall overlooking the town I can often use the defenses to my own advantage.

I also tend to have my main army wait until I take the closest gatehouse or march around the side of a city to a different gatehouse only after I've taken it and a nearby tower or two.

In Barb Invasion I've recently seen "the Kind", "the Cruel", "the Cunning", "the Killer" (or Assassin-one of the two), "the Victor" (+s to command and influence), "the Conqueror" (more +s to command and influence), "of the Eagles" (+s to command), and "the Morbid".

I have characters that have gotten long lists of attributes "None Shall Pass" +3 defense with walls, "Merciful Judge", Debauched, Womanizer, "Philosophically Inclined", "Miserly", Inspirational Christian, Dislikes Christians, Christian Teacher, Conversion by Force, Sacrifice (as in do this to people who aren't pagan), and a bunch more that I'm not thinking of at the moment. Where is this guide and does it have a list of not only what they do but how you get them?



How does it determine the difference between heroic and clear victories? I was able to defend a spot against an army rated something like twice as large as mine (it had 3 reenforcing armies) where I routed it after killing each of the 4 opposing generals. My calvary took the bulk of my casualties-each half strength or less-but I pulled it off. That rated a clear victory.

When I wiped out a near equal rated army (1 unit of mounted archers) with one of my own (2 units of light horsemen) and few casualties I got a heroic victory. My rating was slightly lower but I outnumbered them where before I was both outnumbered and outrated.

 

Newer versions = Empire and Shogun 2. From Shogun1 up to Shogun2 they are all really part of the same Total war game series.

 

I don't know the exact formula, but the first condition is you must be have the power bar at the beginning of battle against you (doesn't matter how much even 10:9 against you is enough). It also takes into account both the number of enemies killed, and the number of casualties you take. So you won't get a "heroic" victory even if you drive the opposing army from the battlefield if you get a decent chunk of your army killed in the process. Likewise, if you have the superior army, it's impossible to get a heroic victory even if you win without taking any casualties at all. What I do not know is the actual ratio you need to achieve to go from "clear" to "heroic".

There does seem to be a line of demarcation between "average" victory and "clear" victory. Specifically, it happens whenever you rout the enemy from the battlefield. That always seems to get you the clear victory.

Although average victories are a rarity for me. The only time I get them is when the enemy tries to take one of my settlements, and I manage to hold them off, but not rout them from the battlefield before the time runs out. In that scenario, they've usually taken more casualties than what they inflicted, but since I didn't rout them it's an "average" victory.

 

That's quite different from what I usually do. I almost never use more than one general unit per army. I prefer to spread them out and let them make settlements grow faster and give me more money through higher taxes.

At the start of the game, it won't always be possible to retrain your units anyway (you regularly get units that you have no possibility to retrain until you build the relevant buildings first), so I just take whatever losses I might incur. And being good has little to do with how many losses you take. It's mostly a function of troop balance. Of course I try to rig the game by trying to make them rout or just position some archery units and let them take pot shots. In the worst cases, I take maybe 50% losses. Still, if I retrain them or not depends on whether or not depends on if I think I can take the next settlement with what I have or not. I have no problems to send them to the next settlement even if there's only half the unit left.

And if I didn't take very heavy losses, which is most of the time, the loss of units is just a good way to lower upkeep. Especially in the very early game.

As for wooden pallisades, when besieging them, you can't build ladders. The only unit you can build in these cases is the battering ram, the others are not available

And Damascus. In my last game with the Moors, it was still rebel by turn 100.

I love the rebels in Antwerp, though. The English attacked them with a sizable army but got immediately beaten off again. They sent a second army their way by now, so we'll see how that'll pan out. In the mean time, I sent an army of mine that way as well, just in case they again lose or become indecisive.

In the mean time I sent a small army into Scandinavia to take Oslo and Stockholm. It takes a while for them to walk over, though, so I'm just building a few ships to escort them over. Hopefully Oslo and Stockholm don't have large garrisons, or I'll have to wait them out.

Well, it's game over for the Milanese anyway by now. I took Milan and Genoa from them after they threw away their extra units against my walls and then they threw away any extra units in Dijon by attacking that one general (who, incidentally, got adopted into the royal family because of his feats), so I have an army besieging that right now. They have only Ajaccio left besides Dijon. but even that is under siege (I think by Sicily, but I can't be sure).

I've got offers for crusader knight chapter houses in cities before, but that was only in cities that used to be castles. As far as I can recall, anyway. Even so, I refused it because I didn't like the location - pretty much right in the middle of my empire. I have good hopes that in three turns, when Bern finishes building the fortress walls, I'll be offered another Teutonic chapter house there. I've had a general with at least four stars in chivalry in there since I conquered it, so it should have gathered quite a few points for the Teutonic chapter house.

Well, I've been the strongest and biggest faction since the start of the game. I'm also the richest faction, now that the money making machine has finally started up.

Still, I didn't have that many priests up till now, so my influence should start getting bigger from now on. Still, I have to take Rome at some point, and the fact that the pope is still trying to maneuver his armies through my areas is kind of annoying me. Maybe I'll just wait till I have a fortress and then wipe his armies off my lands and kick him out of Rome for good measure. And if I kill him while taking Rome, I can get reconciled straight away too.

I actually got a retinue member I hadn't seen before last night, Hildegard von Bingen. She gives that general +2 piety, +1 authority and +3 to popularity. I suspect it's a HRE only retinue member, given the name and the fact that I haven't seen it before.

 

Is it true that there are faction-only retinue members? I got Amerigo Vespucci and Vasco de Gama playing the Danes last game. I got Peter the Hermit this game, even though I'm Spain, not France. There are a great deal of special retinue characters that I've never seen. None of the Renaissance artists supposedly in there - Michaelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael. I also haven't seen (beyond his omnipresent quotes) Niccolo Machiavelli. And some other interesting ones including Jeanne D'Arc, William Wallace, and Simon de Montfort.

There are even some people I've never heard of on the list - Aldus Manutius (?), George of Antioch (?), Ibn Khaldun (?), Jan Zizka (?), Meister Eckhart (?) Niels Ebbesen (?), Roger de Moulins (?), Vlad Tepes (?), and the aforementioned Hildegard von Bingen.

 

I have no idea, I just theorised based on the fact that I only saw this german sounding character while playing as the HRE.

I have just done something that may have been not the smartest thing to do.

I was besieging Dijon when the pope inconveniently gave me a cease and desist again. He seems to always do that. As usual, I completely ignored him and took Dijon anyway.

Given the fact that the pope and I weren't exactly on the best of terms, I of course got excommunicated. Not that this was unexpected, so my assassin was already in place to get reconciled. Funny thing is, the pope was the only unit in Rome, and after he was assassinated... well, I couldn't resist the empty city so I took it quickly. Of course, this put me at war with the papal states and now even assassinating the pope won't get me reconciled. I'm pretty sure I can buy a ceasefire, though, so it's not that big a deal. And then I can assassinate the pope again to get reconciled.

I found it funny that my king just got the trait "Religious" with the description that he has had some dealings in religion. Yeah, quite a lot of dealings even, but not necessarily of the kind that would make you more pious

 

As I said, a long time ago I played the HRE, and since the victory condition includes taking Rome, I obviously got excommunicated along the way. Even if you eliminate the Papal States from the map, there is still a pope, and at worst, you'll get reconciled upon having your leader die. You also correctly point out that with the Pope still wandering around the game board, you should be able to broker a cease fire with a diplomat.

 

Aldeth, your lack of knowledge is disheartening! I don't know of most of those people either but Vlad Tepes is extremely famous. He was a Transylvanian warlord who fought the Turks and enjoyed to impale his prisoners of war. He was also called Vlad "Dracul" (dragon/devil as I have understood it) and some people claim that he was the inspiration to Bram Stoker's Dracula and be that as it may but the fact is that the historical Vlad Tepes had a lot in common with the fictional count Dracula.

Not sure where to expand in my HRE game, seems like I am taking out Denmark but after that I do not know. Poland? France? Venice? Or maybe I should expand in the Middle East to gear up to play with the mongols who recently showed up and will probably mingle around in the Caucasus for a century or so.

 

I'm guessing Aldeth has heard of Vlad the Impaler, as I hope any educated person has. He just didn't make the connection between Vlad the Impaler and the lesser used Vlad Tepes.

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Definitely reinstalling MTW2 by the way, after reading the thread. You don't half get the 'bug' back!

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It's actually not necessary to get into a war with the papal states to get to Rome. You can just load several spies into Rome, blow up buildings that increase public happiness with assassins and eventually they'll rebel. Then you quickly move in and take it before the papal states can get it back.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the way this game is going a lot, so I'll probably just roll with it and figure out how to deal with the pope as I go.

 

Barmy had it mostly correct when he said:

I never heard of Tepes as his surname. I certainly have heard of Vlad the Impaler, and the only other name I've ever heard him referred by is Vald of Wallachia, or sometimes Vlad, Prince of Wallachia. So I wasn't lying when I said I never heard of Vlad Tepes - but I had heard of the person the name referred to.

The thing with the HRE is that the decision usually gets made for you. With so many borders for expansion, the decision is made by whomever tries to bring the fight to me. An early alliance or two usually helps with the fight. For that I'd recommend Poland or Hungary.

I would not be in any rush to get to the Mongols. Simply put, at the time that they show up, there's not a hell of a lot you can do to stop them. Unlike the Timurids who just show up with such high end units that it's hard to do anything to them, the Mongols are beatable, just not when they first show up, and not with the level of technology you have at your disposal when they show up. Their units are very similar in quality to a lot of the late game units other factions get, but they have access to these late game units around turn 70 when they arrive, when you are just getting into mid-game units.

There's also the matter that the units they show up with don't have upkeep costs. All the new units that they train have upkeep just like your units, and once they start taking cities they actually have to spend money just like everyone else. But really the only powerful unit that they get is the heavy horse archer. The HRE doesn't have an answer for that (or really any other missile cavalry) until late game when you get mounted crossbowmen (who aren't as good as the Mongol Heavy Archers, but better than nothing), and eventually, Reiters.

About the only thing I did in my game last night was fight off sieges. The Danes lay siege to Antwerp, and the Milanese laid siege to Milan, twice. I had hoped to turn my attention to the HRE next, as I thought the Milanese were sufficiently humbled by the beating I had laid on them, but evidently, they still have some fight left in them. I'm also marching on York and Tripoli. Oh, and I took Metz to finally have a straight line border in my empire (I already had Staufen).

I'm pretty much done already, even though I have half of my turns left. I already hold 30 settlements, and that number will grow to about 40 once I take over the rest of Britain, and at least a few territories from the HRE. At the very least, I'll have to take Frankfurt and Hamburg. If I hold those two cities and garrison them well, I shouldn't have any issues holding off any siege attempts there. And I really have no desire to push further into Europe. I really want to finish the expansion by going through Egypt.

The only reason I want to pick up a few more settlements at all in Europe is because I presently have too many border settlements, that are requiring me to place many more troops than I'd like in garrisons. Once I take a few more key territories, many of those other settlements will become core settlements that I'll only garrison with militia troops I get for free. Hamburg should capture the attention of the Danes of the HRE, although I may also have to take Innsbruck to make sure the HRE doesn't have access to a castle so close to the territories I captured from Milan.

 

They are all attacking me. I got a cease and desist from the Pope cause I had been rude enough to attack Polish armies besieging my cities. I want to create something that somewhat resembles modern day Germany to start with so I think after the Danes I will take Metz and the castle south of Metz from the French. They are part of the Vaterland!

 

How dare you! Here's the thing - the way the AI works is that each faction considers a certain number of settlements that are rebel at the start of the game to be "theirs". If you take one of these settlements before they get to it, that faction will attack you eventually. (They try to get all the other ones on "their" list first, but once they are exhausted, they come after you.) Many settlements are on two factions' lists, and some are even on three factions' lists.

Metz is one of those seettlements on two factions' list. Both France and the HRE consider it "theirs". That's why, regardless of what faction you are playing, that the HRE and France are at war with each other fairly early in the game. With so many early expansion opportunities, you can definitely tick a whole lot of factions off early in the game. Hamburg is on the Danes list. Stettin and Breslau are on Poland's list. Bern is on Milan's list, Florence is on the list of both Milan and Venice. So no matter where you expanded, you invariably angered quite a few people.

 

Actually, Metz is French and Bern is Swiss nowadays

And it always seemed weird to me that sallying forth would count as an attack. Aren't you just defending yourself?

In my game I was wondering what to attack for a turn too, then the French and Hungarians decided it for me. And since I just got Hamburg and Bern to Fortress level, and the council gave me 3 units of dismounted feudal knights for assassinating a rebel general, I had at least one army ready to go, which I sent for France. For now just one army, so I'll have to see if I can assemble some small armies to take the fight to the Hungarians and possibly attack the French on other fronts as well.

I also want to take Thorn and Krakow from the Polish, because at present I have Prague, Breslau, Magdeburg and Stettin sharing a border with them, so by taking those two settlements, I'm effectively halving my border settlements in that area.

I managed to take Antwerp before anyone else did, and Oslo as well. One small army is on it's way from Oslo to Stockholm to annex that as well.

I'm still excommunicated, and it appears that I can't get reconciled unless I get a ceasefire first. It still annoys me how the diplomacy works in this game. I'm the strongest and biggest faction by far, and I'm being very demanding if I offer someone a ceasefire? They should be down on their knees thanking me for the opportunity to stop hostilities, because if they annoy me sufficiently, I can just steam roll straight over them. Even when I make the pope an offer that's considered generous by the game, he just tells me he doesn't want it.

I figure that maybe if I annihilate that one big army the papal states have left, they'll be more inclined to listen to a ceasefire offer. Actually, that's a lie - I expect the pope to still be his uppity self even after I have taken his city, his army and everyone he's ever employed. I've been assassinating him every turn for some turns now and the college of cardinals currently has 7 or 8 empty seats. I'm half considering just leaving it as it is. Sure, I can't leverage as much tax at the moment, but I can offset it by expanding aggressively and just taking many settlements.

I figure that if I continue at the same pace as I did for the Moors, I think I can manage the 45 settlements in at maybe turn 70 to 80. It's quite enjoyable to play the game as your are not really supposed to play it as a catholic faction - just ignoring the pope completely.

 

Yeah, it will get you a cease and desist order, but it won't get you excommunicated. Here's another weird thing that happened, and it did nearly get me excommunicated. I attacked the Moors in Tunis. I had an order from the Pope to not attack Milan. There was a Milanese army camped out next to Tunis. I attacked Tunis, and because the Milanese were allied with the Moors they joined the fight. That counted as an attack, a failed mission, and a "your reputation with the Pope has suffered significantly".

That's key - especially in keeping a healthy economy - you spend too much heavily garrisoning multiple settlements.

Is it relatively early in the war? I've noticed the same thing, that if it's early in the war, even if you handed the AI its ass in first couple of confrontation, they won't even take a "generous" proposal.

I think the HRE is one of the instances where going against the pope is an effective playing style. While I agree with your assessment that it is possible to acquire Rome without attacking it directly, I think the game kind of intends for you to not take that route. In fact, why stop there - you may as well take all of Italy at that point - the Sicilians can be a pain in the ass.

Hopefully I'll make some more progress tonight - didn't play at all yesterday.

 

That can be quite a pain in the ass, yes - allied troops joining a fight where you didn't really want them to be involved.

Well, not really in this case. I don't have any kind of special garrisons there, but it makes these borders rather vulnerable, especially because Breslau, Magdeburg and Stettin are quite small settlements. So I'd rather take Thorn and Krakow to end up being less vulnerable.

Yes it is. We'll see if it gets easier later on, but I'm pretty much beyond caring. If the pope doesn't want a ceasefire, it just frees me to attack whomever I please whenever I please.

You may be right in that it's intended that the HRE will end up at war with the papal states. And I was certainly planning on taking the rest of Italy and those islands off the coast. They're essential to making the Italian region into a money generating machine with all the trade.

 

As far as money-making machines go, I really am interested in what I can get out of the British Isles-Timbuktu combo. Once you have control of Britain, you pretty much get free reign of the resources there - I've never had the AI land a merchant on the shores once I have control of the island. And while there are relatively few good resources on the island, there are quite a few total resources, with some decent mining opportunities in the Dublin and London region.