Medieval 2: Total War (Cont.)

Remove all ads!

I think it's a bug. For some reason, when your factions STARTS with a princess (or two in the case of Spain), those princesses do get their charm rating increased by completing diplomatic missions. However, any princesses you get after that do not seem to get charm boosts from diplomacy. I also have noticed that whenever I get a mission to marry a general to one of my princesses, they always get a "wife is a wretch" or some other negative attribute.

 

Well, I guess I know not to bother trying to do any more diplomatic missions with my princesses then. Oh well, I guess I will just have them try to pull off low % chance marry an enemy general attacks. Even if they have a wretch of a wife it is better than having them work on the other side.

I actually had a mission to have a princess marry one of my generals. I received three free units for doing it but I seriously have to wonder if it was worth it as it naturally also give the poor guy the wife is a wretch trait.

I read somewhere that if you manage to get a princess' charm rating to be high then you don't get the wife is a wretch but instead get a positive trait and the wife turns out babies like hotcakes. Next game I will have to try it out.

 

Well, you absolutely should use any princesses your start with for such a purpose. Have them exchange trade rights, boost their charm, and snag a decent general from your enemies.

That's the only kind of mission I ever get regarding marrying princesses - I've never got a mission to marry a princess to someone from another faction. Well, I get the "suitable husband" popup, which I guess could be considered a mission.

There may be some truth to that. In a recent game playing the Sicilians, I had a princess that I started the game with get up to a six in charm rating. When I eventually married her to one of my generals (who had great starting attributes with the exception of questionable loyalty) he got "wife is smart" attribute. Now, that attribute doesn't make her churn out more babies, but it does give you a bonus to tax income, so it certainly qualifies as a positive trait.

 

The thing that makes shrewish princesses even more useless is that last night my 0 charm princess had a 16% chance of charming an enemy general that I had a 95% chance of assassinating. As a result I decided to just kill the guy.

Oh well, next game I will have to see what I can do with my starting princess.

I wonder if anyone has come up with a bug fix for this?

 

I never bother with Princesses. I use them to get generals (but maybe saving them for high command generals or specific traits that would be useful), or the hope that they will mother male members that could be the generals I need.

I never thought of poaching other generals from other factions. I'll have to keep my eyes open this game.

Now onto Venice. Venice, the city is a rich cash cow that will finance an economy very well. It will also produce militia units on the border with Milan and the HRE (Milan has already made an attempt at Venice and it's not much past 30 turns in). Ragusa will be well placed for the unavoidable conflict with the Byzantines (and perhaps a castle can be siezed in Asia Minor, I'll have to keep my eyes open when my crusaders move through). Iraklion is in interestingly placed city. While not likely a cash cow like Venice, it has potential to be developed. Zagreb is easily taken the first turn. Again, not the cash cow that Venice would be, but a convenient place to train Spies. Durazzo was taken early at the behest of the Council of Nobles. It may be a place to train agents to harrass the Byzantines.

I have a Crusade force headed for Antioch (currently still in Rebel hands), and the Council of Nobles wants Milan captured (Milan did siege Venice to start the war). I believe that the treasury will dip but not crash, and will recover quickly as Milan (and likely Genoa soon after) will be really nice cash cows. I'm also playing around with Merchants again. The Idea is that I have a couple of "safe" resources near Rhodes and Iraklion. If the Merchants gain skill on the cheap stuff, I can send them to the mainland and the more profitable stuff like the gold in the Zagreb region. If the Merchants get the higher degree of skill, then they will generate more cash and will resist attempts to eliminate them...

More tomorrow night...

 

It is kind of anticlimactic but I bought five settlements including Constantinople in one turn which gave me the win. For some reason the computer just seemed unusually willing to sell settlements to me for dirt cheap in this game.

I started again as France and did my little experiment with the starting princess. After I boosted her charm up to eight but then had it come back down to seven due to a secret lover I had her steal me a HRE general. His traits included "Wife is fair. When one's wife is fair so is time at home. Increases the chance of having children." Hopefully they will start churning out children soon. Compared to my games as the Moors or Milan the birthrate of my royal family is pathetic.

Before I married my princess off I managed to use her to persuade one of Denmark's princesses to marry my faction heir. Hopefully the marriage alliance will actually stop those wacky Danes from attacking me due to their obsessive quest to conquer Antwerp and Bruges.

 

Now I see where things get difficult with Venice. The Council of Nobles will ask you to take Durazzo before you can train any decent infantry or missle troops. The Militia units cost significanly more then their counterparts from the previous four factions I have played, and in three games, all 5 neighbours have been at war with me at least once (only once at my instigation. With Milan and Germany using Agents to harry you (or even blockading ports), it's even harder to get any form of economy, and the precarious position of your empire means that you could easily face a multi front war before you have the economic clout to deal with it...


Current question for you guys:

1: If the militia units available are more expensive, would they be capable attackers?

2: Where to you look to put a second/third castle? I was thinking that Ragusa could suffice for a campaign against the Byzantines, perhaps making a run at Acre by sea with the militia to defend the city. I'm not sure how much hassle I'm realy going to have with the Middle East though. Constantinople may be as far as I need to more east (Sicilly, HRE and Milan are almost guaranteed to act up).

Would Innsbruck be a serviceable target (but would need two full stacks to get through there, at least one with a Siege weapon).

3: Why is the Pope so eager to interfere in Venetian foreign policy? I usually had some leeway with th other four factions, but almopst none as Venice. That seems open liscence for Milan, Sicily and HRE to hammer my economy by trying to cause unrest in my cities with squat I can do to retaliate.

 

1. I have not played as Venice but generally speaking with unit prices you tend to get what you pay for. If the prices are higher than most likely the militia units are better. I know that their pavese crossbow militia are downright nasty.

I have played as Milan who is the other faction with superior militia units and I can say that for most of my game I was using militia units offensively.

2. In my game as Milan I used only cities. I don't know if that makes sense for Venice but given that they are also supposed to have strong militias I suppose it is a possibility.

3. I really can't say. I have not had any problems with the Pope in my last couple games. As a Catholic nation I only attack non-Catholic or rebel settlements. If I want a Cathloic settlement I send a diplomat and buy it or send a troop of spies and assassins to bring down their public order until the settlement rebels.

On an interesting note I had a princess come of age yesterday and when I used her for a diplomatic mission (a simple map sale) her charm went up. Given that in my game as Milan I had my princesses do many diplomatic missions and they never had their charm go up. Is the princess charm featured buggy for Milan but not France? This is weird.

 

Well, the first thing I'd recommend is changing your capital. While one would naturally assume that the capital is Venice, it's actually Iraklion, which is kind of annoying because all of your new family members come to age there, and you have to ferry them over to the mainland. So changing your capital to Ragusa or Venice is advisable. Despite being one of the big five, Venice is actually one of the more challenging factions to play. Certainly the most difficult of the five available starting factions. Onto your questions:

I don't know if I would say they are *capable* attackers, but they are better than similar units you get from other factions, so your extra money is going for some benefit. You didn't specify which militia units you were talking about, so I'll use spear militia in this example, as that is a unit that nearly every faction can build. Most spear militia units have an attack/defense rating of 7/12. Venetian spear milita have an atttack/defense rating of 9/16. So that's about 25% better in both areas. So they are superior to other spear militia units, and in fact have the equivalent stats of sergeant spearmen.

As far as how capable they are in attacking, that really depends on if you think sergeant spearmen are good enough as your base infantry units. They are great for city defense because they still get no upkeep in cities, and are quite capable of defeating superior enemy units trying to take your walls. Remember, Venice's strength is infantry, and you should plan your armies accordingly. Because of this, Venice is definitely a faction where you can play defense for a long time, and pick and chose your targets.

It appears my strategy was significantly different from yours. I decided that my initial expansion would be east, to fight the relatively weaker factions of Hungary and the Byzantines as opposed to the likes of HRE, Milan, and inevitably France. Sophia was my second castle, and I made an early push against the Byzantines to take Corinth. Venice and Zagreb fended off many sieges from Milan and HRE with relative ease. (Seriously, with 5 or 6 spear militia and 3 or 4 missile units - and maybe one heavy cavalry/general for when they breach the walls, I was capable of defeating full stack enemy armies.)

You're correct in that there really is no reason to expand beyond Constantinople, especially if that turns out to be the last Byzantine city and you eliminate them with that city's capture.

Innsbruck is an acceptable choice if you chose to expand to the north and west, but that seems likes a more difficult option than east, but hey, it's your game. However, if you are likely to take out Milan, than the next closest castle would actually be Bern, and Stauffen is just north of that. Now that I think about it, I don't like Innsbruck as the second castle. It's in the middle of the Alps, and while that's good for defense, it means some serious walking time in getting your troops that are produced there to where they need to be.

I don't think that it's so much that they like to interfere rather than there are so many Catholic factions nearby that you are likely to come into conflict with. The exact same things happens with the HRE for pretty much the same reason. Another reason to play defense is if they pick on you enough, THEY will be ones getting excommunicated, and then it's open season on that faction. One other thing - you did send a diplomat to the Papal States ASAP offering an alliance, right? That simple act gets your reputation with the Papal states to "outstanding" and is definitely an early priority in any game if your playing a faction in that area.

Another thought that has occured to me is that it may actually be better to take on the Sicilians first. They are undoubtedly the weakest of your current rivals, and eliminating the Sicilians will be relatively easy, as they probably only have their two starting settlments. You'll get one very good cash producing city, and that second castle you want to boot. The Sicilian castle is actually very conveniently located for both expansion into Africa or for getting troops into central Europe. It's a two-turn boat ride away from a lot of places.

Edit: JSSB posted while I was. I only played France once, and that was one of my first games, so I honestly cannot say with certainty if the princess bug is confined to certain factions.

However, I have also noticed that when you start the game with a princess she has a charm rating of about 3, while most princesses that come of age have a charm rating of zero. Perhaps it works like it does for assassins? That the first point is the hardest to attain? Maybe if you get lucky once and get a charm boost you are likely to get additional ones as the turns go by. Heck, just park her outside anothre faction's city, and have her enter diplomacy every round, and just repeatedly offer the faction 100 florins as a gift. That's what I do to get super influential diplomats, and I imagine the same thing would work for princesses if they are capable of increasing their charm. However, I do agree that generally speaking your own princesses are lousy charm ratings that do not increase.

[ April 23, 2007, 15:57: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Hmm, I will have to give the gift idea a try. My princess was at zero charm and went to one for such a silly transaction that I have a hard time believing that my Milan game princesses would not gave gone up in level but it could be that I was structuring the transactions to be too much to my benefit.

Actually it probably wouldn't be a bad idea for me to try to win some favour with Portugal. My princess is just outside of Valencia which I conquered. It is completely surrounded by Portugese settlements, my armies are busy elsewhere, and the Portugese have a huge navy compared to my pathetically small one so it probably wouldn't hurt to butter them up a little.

 

Oh, the benefits of offering 100 florins every turn far outweigh the costs. If you are even semi-competent in running the economy 100 florins are NOTHING. One word of warning - it won't work if you are at war with the faction. They will actually turn down the gift. The opposing diplomat questions your motives in offering a gift, and refuses to accept it. I've actually had diplomat's influence go DOWN when making such a proposition. So it only works if you aren't at war, but even if you have abysmal relations, so long as you aren't actually at war, they will accept the gift. In fact, if you do something like offering 100 florins a turn for 5 turns, the opposing diplomat is elated. He says, "You truly have our best interests at heart and we accept this gift." or "You would agree to this? We humbly accept this gift!"

 

I didn't realize that Iraklion was capital. I also never thought that Palermo would be useful as a castle. That could be the forward base against the Moors, Spain and surprise the hell out of Milan when they act up...

 

Palmero is arguably one of the best places to have early in the game, because of it's location right in the middle of the Mediterranean. It starts as a castle, and is capable of upgrading to a fortress very early on. So unlike the other nearby island settlements, it's actually well enough developed to remain a castle. Also, it is so close to Africa that you don't need to have Tunis or Tripoli remain a castle as reenforcements are just a couple of turns away. Best of all, you have the Papal States between you and the rest of your enemies, meaning those settlements are relatively safe from attack.

 

Given that I have never actually seen the computer attack ANY of the island settlements I would have to agree that you are very safe from attack.

I ended up having a superb general presented as a potential husband for my princess so I married her off without trying to level her up. I gave England a 100 florin gift to start leveling up my lame duck dilpomat. The loser started as being religiously intollerant and thus had a zero (or possibly negative) diplomacy rating. I have him up to +1 now after only a single gift so there may be some hope for him.

 

I will probably get my next attempt in tomorrow. I'll likely try to get some cities and as I can support this, I can sail a "Surprise force" to Palermo to try out your suggestion...

 

I've once had a "wife is charming" after marrying off 5-charm Anna Comnena to a general. Usually "wife is a wretch" happened on 3- charm princesses.

Has anyone managed to get a 9-charm princess? I wonder what would they get to a general if they marry her to him .

"Wife is a babe", would be a nice Easter Egg trait (Actually, the content rating of the game allows for a few more poignant phrases)

 

From the strategy guide, here are the positive wife traits, what they do, and the game's description:

Wife is Fair - Increases chance of having children - When one's wife is fair, so is time at home.

Wife is Charming - +1 to popularity, increases chance of having children - The man's wife is a true treasure, something that endears him to her.

Wife is Lovely - +2 to popularity, increases chance of having children - Most any man would be in rapture with his own wife were she as lovely as this man's.

There are also traits your general gets concerning the wife's number of children. The description of each one is increases the chance to have children. They are:

Wife is Fertile - Is known to have a healthy wife of good breeding.

Wife is Very Fertile - This man's wife is of excellent health for producing potential heirs

Wife is Ripe - The man's wife is so fertile that children are a certainty.

These same traits (with different names) appear as princess traits before she marries:

Attractive - Nothing helps ensure a husband's eyes don't wander than a beautiful wife.

Head Turner - Nothing can disarm a man so easily or swiftly as a woman as distractingly beautiful as this one.

Vision of Beauty - This creature's visage is so stunning most men that meet her are unable to think of little else.

As for children:

Fecund - Nothing wrong with this lady's ability to produce heirs

Ferocious - Understood to be in perfect health to bear children

Always Ripe - Could fall pregnant at the whiff of a sweaty man

 

I think I will have a good lock on the Holy Land, with Jerusalem taken from a Crusade, Antioch taken by re-enforcements after Egypt gave me Acre for a Ceace fire. I'm likely going to finish off the Byzantines tomorrow, and from there, I don't know yet. I have Constantinople, and I doubt that Egypt is in any hurry to act up again. Maybe I'll wait for an excommunication in Europe and see whether I can gain a settlement or two that way. I also expect that Milan, Sicily, Hungary or the HRE will act up...

 

I briefly played as the Milanese last night, and I must admit that it was an odd beginning. First, the HRE empire offered a princess to marry my faction heir in exchange for an alliance. I ended up talking them into giving me Stauffen as well. Then, I offer my map to them to see what I could get for it, and I ended up agree to give them military access in exchange for Innsbruck. Two consecutive French attacks on the rebel fortress of Metz failed, so I quickly shot a small army up there and grabbed it. I had already taken Bern and Florence, so I actually held (very briefly) 4 castles before turning Stauffen, Metz, and Innsbruck into cities.

Then the Venetians declared war on my be sneak attacking Genoa. That was easily defeated, and I sent an army to Venice, resulting in a very strange heroic victory on my part. It was strange, because I didn't think I did a particularly good job fighting the battle.

I placed Venice under siege with an army that contained 3 generals and about 5 units of spearmen/spear militia (I had three of one kind, two of the other but I don't remember which). While Venice was under siege my plan was to get a few units of peasant archers over there to join with the army. The reason I started the seige early is that there is a river crossing just outside of Venice, and the AI tends to stick an army on the far side of the bridge, so you have to fight a bridge battle to get to Venice. The army wasn't there, so I jumped at the opportunity.

However, the very next turn, my seiging army was attacked by a little 3-unit Venetian army (one spear milia, one seargent spearmen, one peasant archer) and the 700-man garrison in Venice arrived as reenforcements. Now, here's the strange thing: because the little army was considered the attacking army, and I was on the far side of the bridge, the little army was in a position where they had to try and get me. However, the large reenforcement army started on my side of the river. So, I had to try and get as many of my forces across to the other side of the bridge to have the better defensive position against the large reenforcing army. I had no missile units, they did, and they outnumbered me, so I needed an advantage.

As soon as the battle started I ordered everyone over to the far side of the bridge, with infantry leading the way. However, the Venetian king and a general that was part of the reenforcing army charged immediately. I saw there was no way I getting my foot soldiers across in time. So I sent a single unit of town milita back to sacrfice themselves for the good of the army, allowing everyone else to cross the bridge. I quickly defeated the small attacking army, and then set up lines on the far side of the bridge to face the brunt of the Venetian attack. However, with four infantry and three cavalry units against a 700-man enemy, things looked bleak.

But never underestimate the stupidity of the AI. One would think that since I had no missile units and the enemy did, that using your missile units would be a good idea. Instead, the AI decided to send their king and general in a cavalry chrage across the bridge, right into the waiting hands of my spear militia. The king and general were killed. The army didn't break, but phase 2 of the attack was to send all the cavalry over the bridge. Even with a superior defensive position, that one did a number on me. We finally after sustaining significant losses were able to beat off the infantry attack, mostly due to my generals getting involved early - I had them engage as soon as I was certain the enemy infantry were tied up attacking my infantry units. They routed, and my remaining cavalry mopped up the fleeing infantry and missile units.

I got credited for a heroic victory though, and I don't get it. I only had a little over 400 men in my army, and I lost 240 of them in the battle. Granted I did kill or capture about 800 or so enemy troops, but I don't think I ever got credit for a heroic victory in which I lost more than half of my army.

 

I've given up another attempt with Venice. I have determined that 4 to 5 fronts is too much for an economy to sustain. I did not get a chance to finish the Byzantines, could not expand my influence significantly in the Middle East, I got the Crusade target in Hungary, but no further, Got Bologne away from Sicily, but could not press the attack, and then Milan attacked a second time...

Monday is likely the next attempt...