Medieval 2: Total War

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Yup my ratio is near 3/2:1 partly because after so long you can't change back to a city. But having castles spread out is handy. Anyhow when your getting drowned in gold the extra gold from a city is of no benefit so why not have those extra castles. However if your building lots of gunpowder units many cities are helpful not to mention covering the extremely high gunpowder upkeep cost.

 

Well, I only got to that level in ym Spain game and that was just a practice run. In my current game I am much smaller and I tend to change the castles I capture into cities unless they are very well developed or in a very good spot. You want your castles at strategic positions so they can fast reinforce your armies in the field. I usually have two field armies doing my killing and I continually send troops back for retraining and fresh troops to e bloodied. I am very wary of having too high upkeep so I dont build much troops during the running of the game. Instead I decide to go to war and spend a few turns to build up an army of conquest that I then use to blitz through 4-5 settlements before going back to a bit of rest.

I think I would aim for a 4-1 ratio on the castle issue. When I spoke about 2-3 I meant in the 10 "core" provinces you get fairly early.

 

I just started my second game, and wow, does it make a difference. First off, I am much more aggressive; I have sacked a number of rebel settlements that in my previous game I allowed to fall into French and Danish hands. The whole game is going to play out differently as a result.

Steep learning curve, but once your past that, this game is a blast!

 

First @LNT,

It is definitely essential to grab as many rebel settlements as possible early in the game. I have found that even if you can't take all of them early, send an army with a few units and put the settlements under siege. Once you start a siege, it prevents any other non-allied faction from laying siege to the settlement. It also buys you a few turns to actually get some more troops there when they come out and fight after their food supply runs out.

I started a game as Spain this weekend, and actually, you can get away with very few castles in the beginning. Toledo is centrally located smack in the middle of the Iberian Penninsula, and as a result, that is the only castle on all of Iberia. I can get units from Toledo to any other settlement in Spain in no more than two turns, so I have converted all of the other castles in Spain to cities.

I decided to play a game in which I do not openly attack any other Catholic faction. Portugal went and got itself excommunicated (somehow) in the first few turns of the game. So I quickly pounced on the opportunity and eliminated them. After conquering the entire Iberian Penninsula, I have now started to expand into northern Africa, taking the area immediately south of the Straits of Gibraltar, and the area to the immediate east of that. (I think the settlements are named Marrakesh and Algiers, respectively, but I could be wrong.) Anyway, I kept Algiers as a castle, so out of about 10 areas, I currently have only two castles. Toledo was fine for the Iberian Penninsula, but supply lines are starting to get pretty long, and another castle was needed. The Moors are now down to one last city, which should fall quickly enough. After that, I'm going after the out-of-the-way African territories of Timbuktu and the other one - although that's a job that doesn't need a full invasion force.

Not attacking Catholic factions is going to be difficult. I got the map out and started counting territories last night, and assuming all of the rebel settlements are conquered by one of the nearby European powers, there are only about 55 total settlements available to me, even counting all the ones I own in Spain. So it appears that I will have to conquer the Moors, Egyptians, Turks, and Byzantines (and by extention) the Mongol hordes. Even that may not be enough, and I may have to take some of the Russian settlements to hit the total of 45. I also am planning on taking out the two rebel settlements off the coast of Italy (Ajacco and something else I can't remember), as the other European powers never seem to to bother with them, and they are conquered easily enough.

The other thing I am finding out is that while I will not openy attack Catholic factions, it appears that I will always be at war with France. The two cities southwest of the Pyrannes Mountains are heavily fortified with lots of troops, and they've already repelled one attempted French invasion. I am quite confident that those two cities will hold up just fine, as I have large garrisons in both of them, and units can go between those cities in the same turn (thus allowing me to use forces from one city to break a seige of the other city). Plus Toledo can send reinforcements in just two turns.

EDIT: The other challenge I am finding with this strategy is that nearly every settlement you capture has to be exterminated. The first and most obvious problem with taking Muslim settlements is that the population is entirely or 90+% practicing Islam as their religion, leading to high amounts of social unrest. The other problem that factors into the decision to exterminate is a lot of the buildings don't survive the conversion anyway. It seems that the Moors take to building things like caravan stops and racing tracks, which are faction-specific buildings and don't convert. Obviously, the same thing goes for all of their religious structures (for example, mosques do not convert to churches). So you don't lose that much more by exterminating the populace. All of the identical structures (such as leather tanners) will convert if they survive the extermination, but they still retain their Muslim appearance as icons on the city screen. Roads also convert just fine.

[ January 16, 2007, 15:12: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Heh that reminds me on my current game as England the Moors requested a ceasefire, I demanded Timbuktu so they just handed it over, I know have my empire over the British Isles and a far away African province , the amount of territory that comes with Timbuktu is large though, probably doubled the total land area of my empire overnight. I've gained 3 provinces this way so far so it just goes to show you the military aspect isnt everything.

 

Hmmm... I don't think the Moors even got to Timbuktu in my game. I went after Portugal first, and initially I traded world maps with the Turks (anything to boost diplomatic abaility scores). It is possible that they took Timbuktu after trading maps with me, but AFAIK, those two southern most settlements on Africa's west coast are rebel, and not owned by any faction.

My initial impression of Spain is that I am pleased with their cavalry and missile units, but their infantry suck. The Jinetes are very mobile and can inflict decent casaulties on enemy archers compared to the hits they take in return. They are also excellent for running down anyone fleeing the battlefield. As far as I can tell, they are among the fastest units in the game, capable of running down heavy cavalry when necessary. About the only thing I haven't seen them be able to outrun is other light cavalry. I also have already developed the ability to recruit pavise crossbowmen, which are extremely effective over any other missile unit I have encountered thus far. They do fire slowly, but their excellent armor makes them take very few hits, and their attack rating is superior to anything I've gone up against.

 

I bought this game yesterday, and started a campaign with the Scots last night. Things were going well, I captured Inverness, York, Dublin and Wales, and (foolishly) made an alliance with the English. About 30 turns in, two enormous English armies appeared just outside York, which was held by my King and 32 men, 8 mailed knights, 12 border riders, 120 spear levy and 60 town militia. I then had to levy troops quickly in Edinburgh, and marched some Knights south from Inverness. I met the two full stack English armies with my 200 defenders in York, and around 600 reinforcements. None of the English returned home. I then swept south, and seized Nottingham, killing the English king, and then London. I was ordered by the Pope to cease hostilities, or face excomunnication, but my nobles asked me to blockade the English port of Rouen. I moved my ships towards the port, which were then attacked by the English, who were promptly excommunicated, so I then blockaded it, making the nobles happy, and am now considering making an invasion force to take northern France, and add it to my realm.

 

I stopped playing the Spaniards. I somehow got my economy totally screwed, and I'm not even sure how I did it. I got into trouble about 60 turns into the game, which is normally around the point where I start having excess cash, so I'm not sure what I did wrong. My queues completely stalled and all of the sudden I started having negative cash flow. The ports weren't blockaded, and I didn't suddenly increase the number of troops I had in the field, so I'm not sure what happened. All I know is that I was hamstrung, and the game got not fun in a hurry.

Anyway, I started over playing the Portugese this time. Despite starting with a divided country, the Portugese are actually in a pretty good position. You can take the rebel town of Velencia in the very first turn of the game (well, you can get there in one turn, you then have to build siege equipment). And I got to the Moorish capital (with the king and no other units inside) on the second turn of the game. Too bad I'll have to exterminate the populace, as it's already a level 3 city.

I have two questions for those here:

1. It says that a major factor of civil unrest in a settlement is the distance the city is from your capital city. Given this information, is it smart to be constantly shuffling your capital around to ensure it has a fairly central location in your empire? It does not appear that there is any downside to relocating the capital - it doesn't cost any gold or time AFAIK - so do other people do this?

2. Upgrading cities and castles - do so immediately or only after you have already built everything you plan on building at a given level before moving on to the next level? It seems like with each level upgrade, civil unrest increases. I don't really notice it so much with castles, but it definitely appears to be a big factor in cities. It seems like you lose about 25% of public order every time you move from one city level to the next (for example, moving from a town to a large town). Therefore, I was wondering if the best strategy is to build everything (including public order increasing structures) so that you can maintain a very high tax rate after moving to the next level of settlement.

The other thing I noticed is that the public order drop seems to occur as soon as your population hits the target number for the next settlement level whether you decide to upgrade at that point or not. As soon as you get the message stating "town ready to upgrade", the public order drops. So at first it would appear that you a screwed no matter what you do, but here's the thing - if you do not purchase the upgrade when they tell you, then the population growth rate slows down dramatically. (I'm assuming you need the new walls to accomodate the expanding city radius.) With a slow population growth, you can build the remaining structures you wanted without having the population get out of hand.

The problem I have run into regarding public order in the past is that I always purchased the upgrade as soon as it was available. The thing is, there were usually some structures I wanted to build to raise public order, but then skipped because I was on the next level of city. For example, I would want to build a town hall, but as soon as the city upgraded I saw that I could build a fairgrounds, and that was more attactive. The problem was that it caused a chain-reaction. There were level 2 buildings I didn't build before moving to level 3, and then there were level 3 buildings I didn't build before getting to level 4. This caused me to have many cities with a low tax rate. It would appear that by holding off on the upgrade, you can automatically ensure that public order stays more under your control.

AFAIK, the upgrades themselves do not in any way directly lead to an increase in public order. However, every time a city upgrades, you are allowed to garrison 1 or 2 more additional units in the city without having to pay upkeep on them. Since larger garrisons increase public order, it does seem that upgrading indirectly helps in public order, provided you're willing to pay a few hundred more gold for the couple of extra units.

[ January 18, 2007, 14:29: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

How do you change the location of your capital? Cause, my Danes got a ****ty position, really.

 

On the settlement scroll where you can change tax and stuff, go into trade details (theres a little icon at the bottom) then at the bottom theres a little icon with a horseshoe on I think and that sets the currently selected town / castle as your capital. In Rome the distance to capital could cause major unrest. However in Medieval II I can easily have settlements in the far East and Africa with London as my capital whilst only suffering a small damage to unrest.

@ Aldeth - I think your primary concern when taking Moorish settlements should be the religious unrest which can deal a big blow to public order, much larger than that of the distance to your capital. Public order also drops when your settlement reaches the next level due to squalor. If your having real trouble with some places you could consider converting them to a castle as they have naturally higher public order.

 

Oh, the major factor with unrest in taking any Muslim is definitely due to religion. As I said in a previous post, Moorish settlements are typically over 90% Muslim. So not only do you not get the bonus for religion, but you get a penalty that subtracts from the public unrest. What I typically do is try to get a priest (or ideally a cardinal) to go into the area ahead of time, and start the conversion process before I even take the settlement. Then, depending on whether its a castle or city, the first builidng I construct is either a small church or a small chapel.

The combination of a church or chapel, along with a priest or cardinal in the city gives you a total conversion to Catholicism of 5% per turn, so it's not that bad. One of the main problems you have in playing next to the Moors is that very early on in the game they start sending imams into your territories, and since many of them already have a decent sized Muslim population, it really hurts your conversion efforts.

This biggest hits I'm taking are also because I prefer cities to castles, and as you pointed out, it is not unusual for castles to have over 200% in public order, never mind 100%. However, because castles generate significantly less income than cities, converting cities to castles would be my least favored option. Distance from the capital is no big deal in regards to the Moors. They aren't that far away really. I was just thinking to the future. I suppose the most central location would be on one of the islands initially held by rebels in the middle of the Mediterranean. I have never seen either of the settlements occupied by the AI, and once I take those settlements, they never seem to get attacked either.

I'm still curious as to what others do in upgrading their cities. I'm not sure if the additional garrisoning of troops outweighs the decrease in public order.

Actually, the Danes have a pretty damn good starting position. Provided you take Hamburg early on, holding that settlement guarantees you control over all of Scandanavia. In addition to having an easily defensible starting position, the initial expansion can be exclusively rebel settlements, located in both Scandanavia and modern day north Germany. If you're quick, you can even nab a couple of the rebel settlements on the north coast of France. The Danes also have an excellent mix of units, and are particularly strong with the heavy infantry, which are typically armed with axes.

About the only negative thing you can say about playing the Danes is that after the initial obvious conquest, there are few other easy targets. It is likely that you will share a border with either the HRE, France, or possibly both if you were quick and grabbed some of the more western rebel settlements. Neither of them are factions you want to mess with early in the game, plus being Catholic, you'll raise the ire of the Pope. So the best bet with the Danes is to sail across the Baltic and take on the Russians, and not taking on any of the western powers until your own empire expands a bit.

All in all, the big 5 of Spian, England, France, Venice, and HRE are definitely the easiest factions to play. However, the Danes, along with the Portugese and the Polish probably form the next tier in terms of ease of play. They are all more difficult to play than the big 5, but are probably easier than any of the other options.

[ January 18, 2007, 18:52: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

OK, the Portugese are a challenging play, but not too bad. Other than having to deal with repeated French attacks on my northeastern border due to their alliance with Spain, I'm in pretty good shape. However, taking over Iberia is taking much longer than expected. Spain starts with quite a lot of troops, and a few warnings from the pope have stalled my attempts. The Moors haven't been much of a problem, and I've recently signed a ceasefire with them, with the plan being to take out the two remaining Spanish cities first. Then I'll be onto the Moors (meaning my reputation will be in tatters again).

The biggest problem I have with Medieval 2 is that after completing the game a few times, I keep thinking of new challenges and ways to play. This version of the game the goal is going to be to take on mostly rebel and Muslim factions, but I'm already thinking about the next game. I'm strongly considering Denmark for my next run through, and instead of concentrating on Muslim factions, concentrating on Orthodox factions. Granted, there's no way that I can get anywhere near the 45 required settlements for a long campaign if I only attack rebel and Orthodox factions, but at least it's a good starting strategy. In fact, assuming I get a few rebel settlements, the only two Orthodox factions are the Russians and Byzantines - so that's no where near 45.

 

Have I thrown a spanner into your marriage here Aldeth?

 

Aldeth, if you are playing the Danes, with a quick expansion you'll get Oslo, Stockholm, Hamburg, Marieburg, Helsinki, and Prauge. After that, just take out the russians and the rebel cities below them. The rebel cities are often too far away for Poland to take early, so either rebels have them, or Russia have them. Then, you can continue your expansion south, and start attacking the Muslims.

The problem with this strategy, however, is the Mongols and Tirumuds. When they arrive, you're in a load of trouble.

 

How much should you pay attention to the Pope really? I've been excommunicated twice (and the Danes, French and Spaniards all paid the price), and am still at war with Milan, HRE and Ploand. The current pope is HRE (who are currently excommunicated), and the next pope will be from Poland (they have half the College of Cardinals). Do I risk excommunication and punish my enemies or onloy punish the Excommunicated ones and wait for the Pope to get riled at the other two?

 

The biggest problem with the pope is that an excommunication seriously hits your public order in your cities. I managed to get excommunicated with Spain and all my cities went from green to blue/yellow and even red. I will have to say that you have no problem with expanding and still keeping on the popes good side. The AI will keep attacking you and you can just retaliate and take a city or two before the pope asks you to stop and then you can send in a single unit into enemy territory to lure the AI to attack you which will make big papa much angry with the AI allowing you to annihilate him at will.

 

Yeah, if you get excommunicated, it's usually because you screwed up - like I did this weekend. The Pope asked me to stop attacking the HRE, and I forgot that one of my armies was besieging one of their cities. Since sieging is considered a hostile action, I got excommunicated, and I'm paying the price now with public disorder. I'm considering having my king attack the largest HRE city, and hoping he gets killed. As soon as you get a new faction leader, you can usually reconcile with the Pope.

Also, through a lot of play testing I can definitively answer the question of whether or not you should build upgrades to city/castles as soon as they are available, or wait until you build some other structures before expanding. The answer is, with the exception of structures that directly impact trade (so we're talking roads, mines, marketplaces, ports - or any of their equivalents), upgrade immediately.

The biggest factor that effects how much money you make is the population of your cities. Therefore, by building the next level settlement, you allow your population to grow faster, and by extention, you make more money. In fact, I played a trial run with the Spaniards to actually build everything available from one settlement level before upgrading to the next settlement. The result is that your queues constantly stall, and after the first several turns you discover that you don't have the financial resources to build anything at all!

I have also confirmed that the squalor penalty to public order kicks in as soon as you hit the population necessary to upgrade, and you get the penalty regardless of whether you go ahead and get the upgrade or not. Since the higher level wall upgrades also give you a bonus to public order (in addition to allowing your population to expand), and you also are allowed to garrison at least one (sometimes two) more militia units in a city for free, after upgrading and adding the extra militia units, you usually come out a little bit ahead in terms of public order. All of the stone walls add to public happiness (I guess it makes them feel safe), and that alone usually makes up for the squalor penalty. Being able to add another militia unit or two with no upkeep cost in the city never hurts either. You're less likely to be attacked, and even though town milita are less than great defenders, they do help clog up the entrance way if a battering ram breaks through.

 

Is there any way of getting your cardinals to become Preferati? I've had lots of cardinals, at one time I had three with very high to maximum piety, yet none of them were eligible for becoming Pope.

I'm currently on my way to Jerusalem, again, on the Fourth crusade. If I succeed, it will be the third time that the Scots have captured the city. What makes it interesting is that the Timurids have just arrived. My original reason for leaving Jerusalem was the arrival of a massive horde, so I gifted the holy city to the papal states, and starting bringing my troops home, though my soldiers never got back, since just outside Constantinople, the Pope declared this current crusade, so they hid in the mountains from the Mongols until my new crusade arrived.

We recently had the Black Death, which wiped out large numbers of my people, and killed three of my characters, all of whom were particularly good, and will be missed. On the plus side, the English have been wiped out completely, and Scotland is the most favoured nation in the world in terms of papal approval, finances and population. My alliance with the Danes is continuing fine, and I'm looking to expand my Kingdom, which is currently the isles of Britain and Ireland, by either taking settlements in the Middle East, or heading to Moorish Spain, or possibly both.

 

I think the Preferati is based on how long they have been in the council - not on what their piety rating is. The piety matters in terms of becoming a Cardinal - the higher the piety the better chance of being promoted to Cardinal - but I'm pretty sure the Preferati are the three Cardinals who have been Cardinals the longest.

 

Another thing I noticed is that any one faction can only have one preferati at a time.