Medieval 2: Total War

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Agreed. But Gnarff is in the very early stages of the game, and heavy bill militia aren't available yet. Even if you are very good at city building, you're probably looking at the early 1200s before you can get them.

This might seem like the completely obvious answer, but in order to have your ballista towers fire on the enemy, you need to have at least one unit of ballistas garrisoned within the city. Otherwise, they just fire arrows. Same thing goes with cannon towers. You need cannons in order to have cannon towers function.

Yep - that's a definite downside. I still use exterminate with great frequency. In my current game, I own 39 settlements, but only 12 are castles. Cities give far more income than castles, and so most captured castles get turned into cities. Since the majority of a castle's buildings will not survive the conversion into a city anyway, plundering or exterminating is definitely the way to go. Cities with a religion that is different from your own should also be immediately exterminated. The only dilemna comes when you have a large city that is the same religion as you.

 

You sure you need a unit of the appropriate artillery to get your towers to work? I thought you just needed to have a unit, any unit close or inside the towers?

I am playing a bit with the English and I must say, they are stupidly easy. Nothing to challenge at all. Easy geography, extremely good units and good finances. Started a game with Byzantium as well, going to try to rebuild the Roman Empire for real.

 

Well, I can say for certain that you don't need a ballista unit in your town in order to get the ballista towers to work. They did work in Alexandria, and I didn't have any ballista units. At all. And following that, they didn't work again when I was besieged in Gaza (with a general present, so that isn't it either). They work perfectly in a quick battle and in a previous game with the English.

The only other thing I can think of, is that the enemy army was simply standing outside of range of the towers. If that is true, though, then the range must be buggy or something, because I've seen ballista towers shoot at stuff well beyond the range of my mortars, while it doesn't at the moment.

On a different note, despite the economical disadvantages, I have to agree with Aldeth about exterminating populaces. I tried to replicate what I did with Alexandria when I took over Cairo. Except for that the rebellion led to an all out revolt, ejecting me from the city. And now the minor egyptian garrison in Cairo has turned into a full fledged 2400+ army of rebels.

I couldn't reload again, as I'd overwritten my save prior to taking the city, so now I'm planning on total obliteration of Cairo. I'm going to send in a full stack army of infantry and cavalry, backed up by another full stack army of artillery. Every wall with infantry on it and every ballista tower will be shot to rubble. And yes, I do love overkill. Victory celebrations will of course include the total annihilation of the populace of Cairo. Yay!

[ January 08, 2007, 21:17: Message edited by: henkie ]

 

That is one annoying aspect about the TW series. If you leave a small garrison in a city and the city revolts, the new rebel army is huge with some of the best units available! Even if you only had 2 groups of peasants in the garrison to begin with. It's makes the game more challenging, which is good, but it's vexing when your main armies are in the middle of an invasion and you have to pull forces away to deal with a new 2000+ strong rebel army. All part of the fun I guess .

 

I tested this last night, and you are correct. I had a castle beseiged by an enemy, and my ballista towers didn't fire either. It definitely sounds buggy, and I'm struggling to come up with an explanation. Are there only specific towers that are ballista towers, or are all the towers supposed to be ballista towers? When they talk about the "towers" I always assume they are talking about the two that are right next to the gate of the castle. However, there are other towers all along the walls of the castle as well.

Like Joacqin says, whenever you move a unit nearby a tower your faction's flag appears on it, indicating it is active and will fire at any enemy within range. You don't necessarily have to be on the wall either. A group of spearmen standing at the base of the tower inside the castle wall will cause the flag to pop up on the tower as well.

I've never had cannon towers fire on me, but that's because I've never had a game go long enough to get to that point. I've had cannon towers on my castles, but by that late in the game, no one really attacks me. So I've never attacked a castle and had cannons fire on me, nor have I ever had a enemy attack a castle with cannon towers. Regardless, if it doesn't work with ballistas, it probably doesn't work with cannons either. Anyone have an explanation for how to get these things to work?

 

When they say towers, I do believe they mean every single tower on your walls. You can see that when you zoom in on any tower during a siege (or an attack), every tower is in fact a ballista tower.

 

Somebody asked if it was possible to assassinate the pope. Yes. I've done it but it required my level 10 assassin (getting a level 10 assassin was another matter entirely) and three spies all at least level 5 required to 'camp' the city the pope was in.

I pulled it off and my assassin reached level 11 (and earned the title 'The Killer'). Eventually the turkish heir requested me to assassinate his own father since I'd become so renoun for my spy/assassin network. Eventually I waged wars with spies and assassins managing to wipe out the Holy Roman Empire via assassinations alone knocking off the lower family members, building up assassin skill then eventually offing the heir then faction leader.

That'll teach those bastards to declare war on me.

 

Wait a second - you can eliminate a faction entirely by killing all of the family members? I will acknowledge that there is some sense in that, but how does the game handle it? Say the HRE had all of it's family members assassinated, but it still held 3 settlements - what happens to those settlements? Do they become "rebel"?

 

Yep. Unless you married a princess into the faction, in which case you 'might' inherit some of the land. It's very, very difficult to eliminate each family member with assassins though. You'd need huge slices of luck.

 

Or a few high level assassins and a network of spies inside your intended targets settlements.

Spies increase an assassins chance of success at all endevours and you should always pair an assassin with one or two spies.

 

From Barmy:

And From Abom:

I don't know about that - I'm inclined to go with Barmy on this one. By the time you get 50 turns or so into the game, it is quite likely that the royal family will consist of dozens of members. And it's virtually impossible to get this process started early. In order to recruit spies and assassins, you need an inn, and that is rarely a priority for me early in the game.

While inns do provide a small public order boost, I'm usually more concerned with getting my economy up and running and my cities growing early in the game. I'm going to first get all of the revenue building structures - things like roads, markets, and docks. Mines are built in the few settlements that can get them. After that, I usually go for farm improvmenets to get the growth of the city up. Then I start looking for structures that make the people happy.

I will admit that inns are pretty high in the list of these types of structures, because they allow the recruitment of special characters in addition to the public order bonus. They are much better than say, a brothel, which gives a public happiness boost, but nothing else.

Even if you make a point of getting assassins in the early going - you'll need at least a few turns - it seems like the strategy of eliminating all faction members would only work well on small factions. That you did it with the HRE is particularly impressive, as that faction starts with 5 or 6 family members and/or generals, and likely had many more than that by the time you went to war with them. I'm assuming that generals count as family members too, even if they technically aren't members of the royal family. I'm assuming any general or "Man of the Hour" works if there are no blood relatives left.

In my last couple of games, I've actually made a lot of progress in utilizing agents to their maximum extent. Especially in regards to merchants and diplomats.

I've discovered that merchants are probably the easiest characters in the game to advance in levels. Simply by making them stand on the resource, they get trait increases. It is not unusual for a merchant to have a rank of 8-10 by the time he dies of natural causes. Merchants with that high of a level bring in a huge amount of gold per turn, and easily pay for themselves over the life of the unit. England is an especially easy faction to utilize this strategy, as you rarely get foreign merchants on the isle itself, so all the resources there are yours, and there are never hostile takeover attempts by foreign merchants.

Diplomats of high level are also extremely useful. Obviously, you're going to want a few diplomats in the early going anyway to get trade agreements with as many of the other factions as possible. I make it a priority to get three or four diplomats early in the game and usually have trade agreements with everyone within the first 20 or so game turns. I've also discovered that you can raise your diplomat's traits by offering cheap/low value gifts to enemy factions. Offer them tribute of 100 gp/turn for two turns. The cost to you is minimal, but your diplomat will likely earn a diplomacy point. Having a high-ranking diplomat to negotiate a cease-fire is always useful when you find yourself unexpectedly in multiple wars.

[ January 11, 2007, 14:47: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

The problem with obliterating a faction by eliminating all royalty is that the royal family seems a lot more prone to adopt new members into the family if there are only a couple of family members left, than if they have a fast number of family members.

At least, it seemed to me that way when I tried to put the Portugese out of commission once. Every time I thought I had only the King left, some family member would pop up again. Eventually, I managed to eliminate them all, leaving only rebel settlements, but it would probably be a lot easier and faster if I'd done it with 3 or so assassins (with accompanying spy, of course) than with the single assassin and spy I did it with.

@ Aldeth: You do realise that the brothel is the forerunner for the inn? And that it allows you to recruit spies?

 

Ok, bad example - the point is that structures that allow you to recruit a good unit AND give a boost to public order are much better than structures that give you only a boost to public order or allow the recuitment of something crappy, like town militia.

EDIT: I'm totally addicted to this game.

In my current game with England I now have either 41 or 42 settlements under my control, and I already have the army I'm sending to Jerusalem assembled. I'm just building a full navy to carry it over so I don't lose troops to enemy attacks. I'm not even done with this game yet, and I'm already considering my next one.

Has anyone played Spain at this point? I'm actually considering playing a game where I stay on the Pope's good side for the most part. With Spain, it seems like the Iberian Peninsula is an easily defensible position, as the AI almost never uses ships in their attacks. That means if I contol the two settlements along the French border and garrison them well, I should be able to hold off the entirety of the rest of Europe.

After that I would concentrate on going south, eliminating the Moors, take control of all of Africa (along with those two rebel settlements off the coast of Italy), and arrive in the Middle East sometime shortly after the Mongol invasion. If everything goes according to plan, the only Catholic faction I would need to wage war on would be the Portugese. Alternatively, I could play the Portugese, in which case I'd only have the Spainiards to deal with.

[ January 11, 2007, 19:24: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

In my first game I played Spain and I found it to be rather similar to England. You have your well defined area, you take it, you start teching up and then you do whatever you want. The AI doesnt really force your hand ever. They also to my experience seemed to have pretty boring troop selection. Nothing to rival the English longbow. I would say Spain and England are the two "newbie" factions where the map itself strives to make it easy for you.

I am playing Byzantium now with my own objective of resurrecting the Roman Empire. I am having a ball and boy do I tell you, horse archers are ACE against European armies. The Venetians never went off my back and more or less forced me to conquer them. They kept sending big stacks at me but even though pavise crossbowmen rip infantry to shreds it is no match for cavalry and Italian spears do not like my horse archers. The Verdatoiroi or however it is spelled got superb missile rating and can hold their own in melee, very good unit. My infantry is somewhat limited though but I enjoy all cavalry armies and their superb mobility. Generally prefer to wait out settlements anyway as scaling walls tend to cause a bit too much casualties for my taste.

The problem with Byzantium though is that they have enemies on all sides. I crippled the Turks fairly early and didnt really want to go west until I felt I could sweep down upon it like a, well, mongol horde while having a pacified eastern border. No can do, the Venetians were on my case from the get go forcing me to reduce them to one single city (Vienna) which is now under siege and while this has been going on I was stabbed in he back by the Turks and Egyptians at the same time forcing me to wage a two front war. Lately the Hungarians and Sicilians have joined the fray but with them we have mostly avoided bloodshed. Seems like the AI dont mind declaring war and blockade a port or two but when ti comes to actual fighting they are not so keen. Sicily are freaking huge now though and I dont fancy tangle with them just yet. The only up side is that Rome apparently is now a rebel settlement and the pope wanders around the Italian countryside with nothing but a unit of spear militia as protection, sadly this is only something positive in the long as it means my most powerful ally is alone and powerless. I had befriended the pope and given him gifts and he kinda liked me and now the rabble has driven him out to the countryside.

I could really use some of your high level diplomats now, all my offers of a cease fire to Hungary, Sicily or Egypt has been rebuffed. No dice. I can only hope that the Mongol horde I am supervising with my spy will sweep down on the Turks and Egyptians soon and bog each other down. Having studied the Mongols with a spy I doubt it, they look freaking mean and I fear they will annihilate both factions and then turn to me.

Aldeth, you are aware that the higher happiness you have in your settlements the higher you can tax them right? So a brothel or a mayors house not only give order but in the extension also cash. Do not worry too much about the growth of settlements. In my experience they grow fast enough even at highest tax rate and no farm upgrades nor do you want them to grow too fast as it will cause disorder and force you to garrison your cities with many expensive troops. Another reason to not ignore for instance the city barracks line of buildings is that at the high end you get the very best units for most factions from them and they are the ones that build gunpowder units. I also think they decide how many free militia units you can have in your cities.

 

Tax money is good. I also noticed that if there are rebels near your cities, you can send an army with no family member to deal with them. there's a chance that you'll get to adopt the commanding officer. I'll have to remember that if I want to fight France early in the game (still playing England for now).

 

The problem ive found with sending armies without generals to deal with rebels, is that there is a high chance they will side with the rebels, leaving you minus one army, and that rebel faction far better guarded.

 

Given the force the Mongols show up with, I really don't think it is possible for anyone to stand up to them in the early going. So I have to agree with your assessment. Regardless of whether they go after the Turks, Egyptians, or both, they are going to win. I have never seen the AI successfully hold off the invasion of the Mongol horde, and I don't think it's possible. I suppose that a human opponent could adquately hold them off in a well garrisoned settlement, but because the AI for all the other factions works the same, the side with better troops and more of them typically wins, which is always going to be the Mongols. You have to beat them through attrition, and by making them go through another faction or two before getting to you helps in this process.

Of course, but there are so many structures that raise public happiness, I'm in no rush to get them early in the game. I'm not saying I never build brothels and the like, it's just that they aren't priorities.

Or garrison them with cheap troops. I hardly ever throw a unit away. It seems like the bonus you get to public order from stationing troops in the city is based only on the number of units you have stationed in the city, and has little or nothing to do with the type of unit. Therefore, in terms of maintaining public order, cheap peasant archers or town militia work just fine.

Correct - you definitely need some of these structures. However most of your late game special and heavy infantry units come from castles, not cities. Generally speaking, I produce my gunpowder units in castles, and then send them off to a city with an alchemist for their upgrades. (For some reason, both settlement types can produce the structures needed for gunpowder units (gunsmith, cannon maker, etc.) but only cities can produce the structures like the alchemist that allows gunpowder units to be upgraded).

Perhaps we just play very differently. I do not have a goal of getting all of my cities and castles up to maximum troop production. Each settlement specializes in something. Certain castles do archery units, other castles do cavalry units. I have a couple of cities that handle armor upgrades and weapon upgrades. Some of my cities do none of the above and just concentrate on being economic centers. While income is rarely relevant by mid-game, I find that by specializing different cities to different tasks, you can greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to get the economy going, simply by not building duplicate structures in many cities that don't do anything special. For additional examples of things I don't build in many places, I only have a few cities build the various buildings that upgrade armor, as they do nothing other than provide the upgrade. Just move your troops to a different city for the upgrade. Ballista and cannon towers are quite pricey for settlements that are away from the front lines and are very unlikely to be attacked. (However, I always pay for the next higher level castle upgrade and city wall upgrade, as the lets you build the next higher level buildings.) Also, like I said before, castles do either archery or cavalry, not both.

Actually, it's the level of the settlement that controls how many free militia units you get, so it's actually the wall upgrades that do this, and you obviously want to build them regardless to get to the next building tier.

Generally speaking you want to do this when they get very close to your city, to avoid the issue Dalveen describes below. You don't want to be travelling around the countryside trying to hunt them down. Wait until they get close enough to one of your cities so that you can attack them the same turn that your units leave the city. That way, you either get the new general, or the very next turn you can ship them back to the city, minimizing the opportunity of them betraying you.

In addition to what I said above, there is a reason this happens. When you have a group lead by a captain, he has a 0 ranking in all of his traits. Zero command, zero chivalry/dread, zero piety, and most importantly for this argument, zero loyalty. So they are extremely easy to bribe to swtich sides. If they get promoted to general, they get a set of starting traits common to most other new generals (generally two to three in most areas), which is why you want to wait until you can attack the rebels the same turn you leave the settlement.

 

Well, I tend to only have 2-4 castles in my entire empire and have these spread out and I aim to have each castle being able to build everything so it can crank out a decent army in a few turns, a decent fully upgraded army even. I find myself using very little siege equipment partly because they arent a priority in my cities so I tend to get the ability to build them fairly late and because it just takes ages to lug that stuff around.

 

Wow! 2-4 castles in the whole empire? I fully agree that you need cities way more than you need castles, but I never got the ratio to this extreme. In my current game, I currently control 43 settlements, and the breakdown is typical for my games: 29 cities, 14 castles. I typically shoot for a 3-1 ratio, but it usually works out to be more like 2-1. The problem that I have is a lot of my old castles would be greatly hurt if I converted them to cities at this point, because they would lose many structures that are castle-only. I no longer need castles in Britain, but I did when I was first expanding into Europe. By the time I had enough operational castles on the European mainland, the castles in Britain had already upgraded to Fortress level, which is pretty much beyond the point of no return.

There are certainly advantages of having 3-4 castles that can produce everything, but I find it is more efficient to specialize. Instead of building 3 infantry this turn, 3 cavalry next turn, 3 archery the turn after that, and 3 siege weapons in yet another turn, I build them all in the same turn and then combine them. (Not that I use castles for siege equipment - there's no need as cities can produce seige equipment too.)

 

I'm with Aldeth. I prefer to be able to recruit loads of good level troops from quite a few different locations.