Medieval 2: Total War

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That is true. I never thought about it until you brought it up, but in one game when I was playing HRE, I eliminated most of the Catholic factions. By the end of the game, the only Catholic nations left standing were the HRE, Spain, and Hungary. As Hungary didn't have any Cardinals, the one Papal election consisted of just Spain and myself. Since I had the vast majority of Cardinals at that point, whoever I had up won every election.

It is also possible for there to be fewer than 13 Cardinals. If Cardinals die, and there is not a priest anywhere that has enough piety to make it to Cardinal, there will be empty seats. In that same game, there was only a total of eight Cardinals, of which six were mine.

 

Another thing I found helps the economy is to sack a city and abandon it if you have no hope of keeping it. It reduces the deficit big time...

I did that when my army was returning home from a crusade when Poland decided to pick a fight. I sacked Krakow and then abandoned it to the rebels and was moving on another settlement when they paid me 100 florins in a ceasefire. That also helped me out with the crusade against France...

 

Actually one particularly dastardly trick is to sack a city, abandon it, let the enemy re-take it, and then sack it again. It really gets the economy going, provided the re-conquering faction doesn't sack the city too. (If they do, you'll lose most of the money you gained.) However, if the conquering faction is the same faction you took the city from, they usually just occupy the city, so you lose very little money.

It seems that the value you get from sacking a city is governed by several factors, but the main two seem to be city population, and the overall wealth of the faction. Since every time you sack a city, both the population and the overall wealth of a faction drops somewhat, there are diminishing returns with this process. You can do this a few times for a city, but after about the third time the amount you get starts getting pretty small.

My Danes campaign could be better. I'm currently at war with the Russians (planned), HRE (forced into), England (not planned), and Milan (not planned, but it seems like no matter what, I always get into a war with the Milanese, so I guess it was expected, even if not planned). I am allied with the Hungarians and Venice, both of which are at war with HRE, and the Venetians are also at war with Milan, so those are definitely alliances of convenience. Plus, since I don't share a border with either of those factions, I'm not too worried about them betraying me anytime soon. I am currently ranked 1st in all areas at the end of turn report, even though I only control 15 regions. My military is currently spread paper-thin (all of my inner cities are garrisoned only with militia troops, and they all have only the number of units they get for free), and any break in the line could cause me major problems.

EDIT:

The more I thought about it, it makes perfect sense. It would actually be against a faction's best interest to have more than one Cardinal up for election, as you would split the vote. Unless you have a majority of the Cardinals and can elect whoever you want, anyone who would not vote for one Cardinal from your faction, won't vote for the other one either. So if you had two Cardinals up in one vote, the end result would be to funnel all votes against your Cardinal to a single individual, instead of two different individuals. Going on that same premise, anyone willing to vote for your Cardinals could conceivably split the vote. Some nations would vote for Cardinal A, others for Cardinal B, which also would lower your chances of victory. So I think that having two members of the Preferati would actually work against you more than for you.

[ January 24, 2007, 15:33: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Just updating for those interested (and who doesn't like talking about Medieval II?..), it is now the seventy-second turn, and London rules twenty-one regions. My cavalry have smashed the French, leaving their cities graveyards to be put under the shovel. Their last hideout, Zaragoza, will soon burn. The Danes are retreating to their cursed snowlands. Hamburg is now flying an English flag, and from that fortress an army shall head to the North. The northern region of the Milanese, Bern, is next, as the Milanese are a weak and treacherous people. Armies shall be raised in Caen and Toulouse, and their combined might will spill over the mountains, turning the rivers yellow with Malinese blood.

The Church, corrupted by agents of Milan and her cohorts, has been slow to recognize the Divine Right of England. God's Will is plain to see for all, for what Hand but His could wield the English so mightily? Our arrows fly guided, this is true.

The Crusades confirm God's Will, that His Cities no longer be places of profane moon-worshipping, in that Jerusalem is now held by the Catholic Portugese, and Antioch is under the control of the Imperial Roman Empire. The English army, arriving too late to participate in the fight for Antioch (the fault of the devils, Milanese), is now entering the Holy Lands. With God's Grace, they may bring the Cross to His old foe, the Egyptians.

 

It's getting close to the end in my campaign. Scotland currently rules the whole of Britain and Ireland, the Holy Land, and is beginning to colonise the New World, after being the first to discover it. I'm thinking about sending forces North and South from my provinces in the Holy Land, to capture parts of Africa from the Moors, and Russia from the Timurids, as well as sending men west to crush the Mongols.

Our of curiousity, how big is the New World? Sailing due west from Dublin, I reached the Caribbean, which was a bit odd, and I haven't yet sailed south to explore.

 

I cannot answer your question definitively, because the New World doesn't become available until late in the game. I can honestly say that I have never bothered exploring the New World in its entirety. However, if the map you get with the game is accurate, then there only appears to be a handful of cities. It's not like you can explore all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The true value of the New World lies in the lucrative trade routes that develop from those cities. Plus, if you already have about 40 settlements, then you only need a few more, and the New World can get you up to your goal of 45.

The other thing I have to say is that the map you get with the game is accurate in the sense that what is shown on the map actually appears in game. It is not georgpahically accurate in that the continents aren't lined up at all. It is true that (in game) if you sail due west from the UK, you'll wind up in the Carribbean. Also, while some of the settlements you can take over are in South America, and even south of the equator (in RL), all of the settlements in the Old World (in game) are north of the equator. So it appears that they shifted everything northward in the New World to make it line up better with the Old World. It should also be pointed out that you can't even get to the northern areas of the Americas. You can't, for example, replicate the pilgrims' voyage and get a settlement in New Enlgand. All of the settlements in the New World are in the Carribbean/South America area, and there's only about 4 or so.

EDIT: In my game with the Danes, I've finally reconciled with the new Pope, meaning civil disorder is not nearly as big of a problem as it once was. Even better, the Milanese were excommunicated, so they're going to get theirs. In not as great news, the French have now also declared war on me, bringing the number of factions I'm at war with to 5. However, the Milanese and HRE are down to just a couple of cities each, so they pose no real threat. The French, in typical French fashion, sent a single 3/4 stack army to one of my cities, got an arse whuppin laid on them, and fled with their tails between the legs never to be heard from again. I also do not think that the French hold many territories (unless they've conquered areas of Portugal/Spain) because the English are in control of most of the typically French cities.

[ January 25, 2007, 14:32: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

After a few weeks of not playing the game, I picked it up again and decided to restart my Sicilian campaign. After a far more agressive start, I now hold about 15 regions, most of which is in the middle east and northern Africa.

The Sicilians have a pretty good starting position, being shielded from the agressive HRE, Milanese and Venetians by Rome, with free expansion to northern Africa and those two isles that no AI-player ever seems to bother with. After having defeated the rebels in Florence, there's plenty of opportunities for expansion into Europe as well. Currently, I have only captured Genova into this direction, because the Milanese were excommunicated anyway and it was at the time defended by their duke and two units of crossbow militia. I'm at somewhat of a standstill at the moment, as both Bologna (HRE) and Milan (Milanese) have a rather large standing army in or around the cities.

Then came the crusade. With an excellent starting position and many opportunities to send an army through the seas, it was too easy to be first to Jerusalem. With a still large army, I promptly took over Acre as well, providing me with a free Fortress in the hostile middle east. At the urgings of my council, I took over Damascus and Gaza as well.

Then came the second crusade. The target was Antioch this time, and I had my army (in the same turn as conquering Damascus) join the crusade, to stand at their very walls by the next turn.

The egyptians have suffered greatly under all this waging of war, and are now isolated to Alexandria and Cairo (and perhaps one of the more isolated settlements). Soon they will suffer even more, as my army descends upon the walls of Alexandria. With only a general and two catapults defending the city this should be a walk in the park.

Everything seems honky-dory, but I am a bit concerned about the advent of the Mongols, as I have many settlements in the middle east, and would suffer greatly from the Mongolian hordes (if I can't get up my ballista towers first, that is). And so I find myself wondering: at which turn do the Mongols appear?

 

The Mongols show up shortly after the year 1200. Their first apearance will be by Baghdad, around 1210. However, provided you don't hold Baghdad, you usually have a little more time. For cities like Jerusalem and Acre, you're probably looking at around 1250, when they have already expanded considerably.

For the first time ever I have joined a crusade. I hear the rewards for actually taking the targeted city are great (increased chivalry and command rating for all generals in the army, not just he who was the commanding officer). Since the current pope just recently reconciled me back into the Catholic fold, I feel that I owe him one. Besides, according to the strategy guide, even if you don't complete the crusade and some other Catholic faction takes the city in question that you still get a decent increase in how the Pope views your faction. The army I assigned as the crusading army is only half full. I'm hoping that I can pick up some mercenary units on the way at a relatively cheap cost to fill it out.

[ January 25, 2007, 21:32: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

You can. Remember, when you join a crusade you get new, experienced, and cheap units to help you out.

 

Aldeth: Crusade armies are pretty nifty. Not only do you not have to pay any upkeep for as long as you are on the crusade (this goes for the mercenaries too, who are dirt cheap to recruit to boot), you also get an experience boost for every unit in your army and a small monetary award, even if you didn't take the target city yourself (I believe).

My present king (prince at the time of the first crusade) got at least 3 new traits after conquering Jerusalem. All the chivalrous stuff was kind of counter-productive, as he is the incarnation of dread (assassins and extermination of every conquered city will do that for you), but the boost to command was huge.

In the mean time, my campaign in the middle east is going well. I've taken over the poorly defended Aleppo as well, making the turks my new enemies in the process. And even though Aleppo was only defended by their crown prince, he got aid of a full stack army of about 1900 units. Against my king, a unit of mounted sergeants, a unit of peasant archers and a unit of the early variant of spearmen.

I'm not sure what it was, but after killing the captain of the turkish full stack army, some pelting with fire arrows from the highest place on the map, and a charge from my cavalry, the turks were all routing. Few made it to safety.

Which left only the prince's bodyguard. A full scale attack killed the prince too, and the rest of his bodyguard scattered in panic. Leaving Aleppo undefended and ready to be taken over.

On the european side of the front, however, the Milanese decided throw a full stack army (of mostly various forms of militia) at my walls. Again, my ballista towers weren't working. Seeing as I was heavily outnumbered, I really needed them too. So I looked around a bit for and found a fix. Apparently, there is some error in the file describing the walls (and their armaments), which makes ballista towers on large cities shoot normal arrows, and makes the same towers on huge cities shoot cannon balls. And something equally buggy was going on with a citadel's cannon towers.

After setting up the fix, I was pleased to see my ballista towers actually work, although, being used to the cannon ball shooting variety, I was mildly disappointed in their destructive powers. Still, it should help in the oncoming siege, especially since I killed the count in the sortie leading to the siege.

 

I'm still playing as England. I want to learn how to run a war machine more efficiently. I think it best to have the 45 territories quickly and then go after Jerusalem to seal the game.

I think I've stumbled onto a way to make gains while still staying on the pontiff's good side: Have a siege weapon or two in your stack and then assault settlements directly. I suspect this way, when a "good Catholic neighbour" decides to mess with me, I can directly take a city then play nice while getting the next stack ready. Repeat until either they pay me off or they die.

My current problem however is inquisitioners. They have been torching my merchants and family members. I think part of their campaign on the French front was to protect three members of the College of cardinals (who died when the last French settlement fell). Despite their excommunication, they still got two priests promoted to cardinal...

The bad news is that the two remaining excommunicated factions are also my allies...

 

The game is so easy with England. It spoils you big time playing with them. I nearly always play England, and it really makes it hard when you choose someone else.

I've just started a game with the Moors and it's quite difficult. You can either expand north, in which case you end up having to fight both the Spanish and the Portuguese at the same time. Or, you can expand east and take a few rebel settlements. The thing is, you get to take 2 or 3 rebel settlements then you hit the Egyptians. I firmly believe that with your main cities being a dozen turns away, it's impossible to beat the Egyptians early in the game with the Moors. I'm currently at war with Spain and Portugal, I 'was' winning comfortably but I've just been hit for six. The Portuguese brought in a full stack army to take Cordoba, which I beat off quite easily. The Spanish then brought down a full stack army full up with feudal knights and dismounted feudal knights. Those guys pack a punch when you've got mostly spears and light cavalry. I lost, badly. How I wished I had a dozen units of retinue longbowmen for that battle...! So now, the Spanish have taken Cordoba which was my capital and main city. The worst thing is, I hurt their army enough that I can retake the city within 4 or 5 turns, BUT, the Spanish exterminated the city which means I've just lost my main income city. Ouch. I was struggling for cash enough as it was... I might knock the game on the head and give it up as a bad job .

 

Well, I'm getting the idea that filling up build queues is not a good Idea. Leaving them open lets you focus your settlements quicker and build more economic buildings to generate more gold. You still need to sack settlements to give you that boost. In my current game, Milan, Scotland and HRe have bit the dust, Denmark paid me off, but I may have gotten Hamburg first, and Sicily is my only enemy. The Pope is not thrilled because he was from HRE originally and his supporters in the College of Cardinals bought it when I finished off the HRE...

 

@ henkie - good fix. I have a question: what is the difference between the second and third instruction numbers? I don't have any mods on the game, so I'm doing #3 then? What is an unpack user?

Getting the better towers will be good, for the few cities that actually need them. One of the few advantages that a sieging army gets is that you can usually have your siege weapons hit the wall without having to take enemy siege/arrow fire. I'm assuming that ballista towers fix this. Even though ballistas don't have the range of other siege equipment, since they are up high, I imagine that greatly increases their maximum range on the battlefield. Also, it seems like this fix will help out with cities much more than castles. I don't know about you, but fortresses/citadels (pretty much anything with at least two layers of defense) are virtually impregnable. As soon as you see you are going to lose a wall (preferably before they get a battering ram or siege tower at the gates/walls), retreat into the next layer of the castle. I've lost the outer walls plenty of times, but I've never lost the inner walls.

The one exception to being able to use siege equipment while inside the city seems to be trebucets. In one of my settlements that was attacked, I had a trebucet, which quite easily shot over the settlement walls. This was inside a large town. I don't know if the same would work with the bigger/larger city with a huge wall, or if the walls of fortresses/citadels are also too large to shoot over.

You are almost forced into going north and fighting the Portegese/Spainiards. I would definitely recommend you try to take them out one at a time. You start with one castle and one settlement in Spain, and you should be able to get a third settlement from the rebels as well. There are two rebel settlements, one small city in northeast spain, and one rebel castle, with a named leader (Sid the Chivalrous) on Spian's southeast coast. The one in the northeast is probably out of reach - both Spain and Portugal are closer to it than you, meaning it is unlikely that you'll be the first to get there. However, you definitely should be able to take the castle. That would give you two places to build decent units on the Iberian Peninsula early in the game.

Like you said, it's way too far to go on foot early in the game to get to the Egyptians. At the very least, you'd have to build some boats to get them there. Actually, regardless of whether you are playing Portugal, Spain, or the Moors, the first thing you have to do is eliminate the other two factions on that list before going anywhere else. At that point, you have a decent sized area of control, and it is all extremely defensible. You only need one castle on the entire Iberian Peninsula (I usually keep the one that's right in the middle) and all the rest can be garrisoned with just zero upkeep militia units.

I struggled with this for a long time, and it took me several play throughs to determine the best thing to do. It's fine when you first gain control of a city to fill your queue with everything that generates extra revenue. What you don't want to do is indiscriminately build everything that is available in every settlement, or you will run out of money. Money problems are going to happen early regardless, but with some fiscal control you can minimize them.

In order of priority, the way you maximize your income is: (1) roads (only applicable on level 1 - dirt roads - and level 3 - paved roads. (2) Mines - very valuable, but they only can be built if there is a nearby metal resource. Mines should be a priority after roads for the few settlements that can build them. There are only two versions available, at level 2 - mines - and level 3 - mining network. (3) Market. There's five available, one at every level of city, so that's always an option. (4) Ports. There are several port structures, but you want to concentrate on the ones that increase revenue. Once you hit level 3, some of the sea structures reduce the cost of ship building or give naval units bonus experience points. The revenue ones are great, the other types should be built sparingly. (5) Farming improvements. There are four of these, but the first one can be built at settlement level 0 (i.e., before there is any wall defense), so the last one is available at setllement level 3. I overlooked farms early on, because I thought that all they did was increase the rate that the city grew. What I failed to realize is that farming income is a considerable percentage of city income, so farms improve income directly by producing more crops, and indirectly by increasing your tax base.

So at every settlement level there are at least two, and frequently more revenue increasing structures that can fill your queue early. The other thing I have discovered is there are only two times you wish to deviate from this build plan:

If the settlement has a large population that is of a different religion than you, it will cause huge unrest, so build a church and then recruit a priest early. Even just a small church and priest can convert a few percent per turn, which will add up quickly.

The second reason to deviate - and I've found this is essential - when you get an info box telling you that a city is ready to upgrade, do so immediately. Let the city finish whatever it is currently working on, but then empty the queue out and get the next level city. It is always more valuable to get to the next settlement level where you can build the higher level revenue structures than continue building the lower level revenue structures.

The final piece of advice I would give you is don't try to build everything in every settlement. That's probably the biggest mistake I made in the early going. It's perfectly OK to have a city buildilng nothing, when there's only a few choices left until you get to the next settlment level, and none of them are going to do anything for public order or revenue. For some examples, all cities have the ability to produce the various armor upgrade equipment, but those structures don't do anything beyond that. You need a few, but one for every five or six settlements is more than enough. Don't build ballista/cataput makers either - let your castles take care of them. The same thing goes for all of the gunpowder buildings. However, for some reason only cities can construct the alchemy buildings that upgrade your gunpowder units - so have a few cities make alchemy structures, but don't build the cannons in the cities. Brothels/churches/town halls/town guards improve public order, and in the case of town guards also allow the recruitment of better militia units, so it's OK to build them if you already have all your revenue increasing improvements done. NEVER build ballista/cannon towers unless the settlement is on the front lines. They are very expensive, and are a waste a money if that settlement is not likely to be attacked.

[ January 29, 2007, 15:31: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Yay, just finished my first complete game of this. Was only a short campaign with France but still gives me the option of using every other nation now. I found France to be quite easy, its not hard to take the rebel settelments early and own most of modern day France, apart from Caen. Then that gives you 3 castles and the rest cities, provides a good income if you manage it right. After that i moved on England quickly, and took Caen before they could get Longbows, after that they begged for peace cos Scotland was kicking their ass up and down the UK. After that it was just a slow progression, took Milan and Genoa, then finished off England, lost a couple places to HRE but i took them back. Then just for a quick finish i took Portugals northern two settlements and that was me done.

 

I think the hardest part of the Long campaign with England is dealing with Rome. Other European powers will declare war, but the Pope will not approve of you retaliating against them. Eventually, you'll get a pope that believes that Eternal Damnation is too good for you. Then the inquisitioners will target your merchants to cut your economy, target your family members so that you lose out on generals available, and anything they can do to interfere in your business.

I guess that you get what you can from Catapults and build military units on the front lines (and rotate your defence units towards the front where the obselete ones will die, but take some of the enemy with them...

 

Well, kind of. More often that not, someone is excommunicated by the Pope, and it usually isn't me. Another thing I have discovered is that if an enemy army is in your territory you can attack it without penalty. This is true even if it isn't beseiging one of your cities. As soon as they cross the line into your territory, the Pope will not excommunicate you if you attack them.

Generally speaking, I do not find it all that difficult to keep my Papal standing at least at "Reasonable". In fact, in my latest game, my relations with the Papal states were briefly listed as "Perfect", although they have since declined to "Good". The easiest way to do this is by playing defensively at first. If you let an enemy army attack you in your own territory, it is likely that they will be the ones who get excommunicated, and that's when the gloves come off. The problem you are having seems to be that you are getting into protracted conflicts with European powers that are on the Pope's good side. It's unavoidable in the case of Scotland, but usually the French can be provoked easily enough into attacking you.

I find that there are very few units that become obsolete until well into the game. Most of the time, a cheap early unit will still have some use as extra troops for a garrison. The bigger problem IMO is that a lot of units have very little use at all. For example, everyone is going to build town militia units in their early cities because of the public order boost and the free upkeep. The thing is, town militia units suck, even in the early game. Without an armor upgrade or two they can't hold off a force trying to breach your walls. Still, in established parts of my empire that are unlikely to be attacked, I will keep the same town militia units for the entire game, never upgrading or replacing them, because I like the free upkeep.

In fact, the only time I buy different/better militia units is when I get to the next level of settlement and a new militia unit becomes available. Of course, those have free upkeep too. That's another thing that I didn't realize during my first few play throughs - it doesn't matter how much it costs to recruit a new unit. What matters is the upkeep on those units. I initially thought that upkeep was pretty cheap, only to discover that some units have upkeeps of a few hundred florins per turn. That means that within a few turns the upkeep cost of a unit exceeds the initial purchase price.

On units becoming obsolete though, I hardly ever disband them. Like I said, there are very few units that ever become truly obsolete. Ballistas and catapults do, although trebucets remain useful well into the game. All the gunpowder units are useful throughout the game, even the basic bombard. Peasant archers become obsolete fairly early, but pavaise crossbowmen and other improved archery units are good for a very long time. And that's about it. Even basic spearmen are an improvement over town militia if you have a few hanging around in your armies that are now doing nothing since you have heavy infantry. Once I start replacing spearmen with heavy infantry, I usually keep a few units of spearmen in the army, even if I know I probably won't use them in combat, because if I'm taking a city, I will leave the spearmen behind to start the garrison.

For me, when a better unit becomes available, all I do is stop upgrading and retraining the old ones. If my army has 5 units of peasant archers, I won't replace them with 5 units of pavaise crossbowmen immediately. Instead, I'll gradually purchase the improved units. However, as my peasant archers die in battle, I'll just merge the units, and eventually, I'll have fewer and fewer units remaining, replacing as I go with newer units.

EDIT: I can't get the ballista tower fix to work. When I click on the download, it opens up a notepad. Do I copy the contents of the pad a set it up as the txt file?

[ January 30, 2007, 14:48: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

The only units I actually disband are the mercenaries I hired after a crusade. The rest will serve as garrison in my inner most cities. Some I will keep in my conquering army, though, (especially if they're cavalry units) simply because they're battle hardened veterans, and I just happen to like the idea of veterancy. And in fact, even peasant archers are quite valuable in city garrisons of cities that stand a fair chance of being attacked, simply by merit that they can shoot fire arrows (and thus can torch siege equipment), whereas crossbow units can't.

As for the fix, Aldeth, simply right-click on the link and select "Save Target As...", and then save it as a text-file. When you've done that, move it to your data folder and create a file in your Medieval 2 directory. (I'll assume you're a total newb at this, so forgive me if you aren't.) Just right-click in your main Medieval 2 directory, go to New -> Text Document. Now open it in Notepad and put the following text in it:

medieval2.exe --io.file_first

Save and then rename the file to medieval2.bat. Now go to your desktop and right-click on your link to Medieval 2 and select Properties. In the Shortcut tab, go to Target and change the last bit of medieval2.exe to medieval2.bat.

I'm actually fairly certain that adding the '--io.file_first' to the path in your link should work too (thus negating the need for creating a .bat file), but I haven't tried that yet. If you want to try, go back to your link to Medieval 2 on your desktop, find the target again and make it look like:

...\M2-TW\medieval2.exe --io.file_first

Where the ... depict whatever path you have installed Medieval 2 to.

There, you're all set to go and enjoy your (now working) ballista and cannon towers.

 

Your assumption is correct, and I'm still not sure how to do this even with your detailed description. Here are my questions (I'm not particularly IT savy if you haven't figured it out yet).

I'm not understanding. When I click on the link, it opens a new window, with a yellow "download" button. You're saying I should right click the "download" button?

OK, I move it to my data folder, but I create a new file in the main folder?

Anywhere in the file - not under a specific heading or the like? Top? Bottom? Doesn't matter?

Save it in the main directory or the data folder?

I actually think I understand and can do this part!

Um.... I'll try the first way initially before going for an alternative.

 

I'm saying that you shouldn't left-click on the link, you should right-click on it, then select Save Target As... (or whatever Internet Explorer puts there, I'm using Firefox m'self). Alternatively, you can, once you've left-clicked the link and you're watching the text-file, go to the menu of your browser and go to File -> Save Page As... (or its IE equivalent) and you can save it too.

If it's still not entirely clear, just fool around for a bit. It's hard to do anything really wrong with just a text-file.

Exactly. Downloaded file to your Data folder, new file in your main folder, which will point out to the game that there is, in fact, a new file in it's Data folder which it should use.

Anywhere is fine. It will be the only text in it anyway, so you might as well put it on the top line.

You created the file in the main directory, so why not leave it there?

Yay!

With this fix, and my ballista towers in Genoa actually working, I'm finding it easier to repel the Milanese, or at least torch their ram and siege tower. However, they always manage to get their ladders to my walls. And after their first ram is destroyed (they have a second ram, which is completely ignored after the ladders have reached the walls), they decide they should all climb that single set of ladders.

And this is where it all falls down. For some reason, having almost 2000 units trying to fight their way up the ladders, with the superb aid of their poor pathfinding, will slow my computer down to a snails pace. In fact, I've had the game come to a complete stop because of this.

What I wouldn't give for a single unit of catapults, though. Each fired shot into that massive crowd in front of the walls would easily kill 50+ units, if not 100+. That single unit would be able to reach that nifty silver veterancy thingie in a single skirmish, and would strike fear into the hearts of the attackers (with its fire projectiles, of course). Combined with a well timed cavalry attack (preferably some time shortly after the catapult unit would be out of ammo) I would have been able to rout the Milanese army.

As it stands, though, it looks like slow downs and possibly even crashes await me, should I choose to continue opposing them. Is there actually a way to push ladders away from the wall? Or is there no way to repel them once they're on the wall?