Medieval 2: Total War

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I'm curious, how long is the cool down period for a crusade? Or, in other words, how long before I can call another crusade after a successful one?

/edit
I just had a suspicion being confirmed. As you might recall, I had earlier annihilated the Mongol faction. At the time I was already suspicious at the apparent regrouping the regrouping the Mongols had done after suffering their first defeat at my hands. It seemed a bit odd that the Mongols, who are known for not splitting up their forces, had apparently split up their forces.

And just now, I was just minding my own business, killing off a few turkish spies and merchants in the Baghdad region when all of a sudden at the start of a new turn: Poof! Four full stack armies such as we've become used to by now from the Mongols appear out of nowhere. A turn later and they're besieging Baghdad.

I wonder where they'll be going next. And I wonder if they will attack me again. I'm actually hoping so, since I really don't want them to go roaming about and go and settle somewhere beyond my grasp.

[ February 14, 2007, 14:18: Message edited by: henkie ]

 

Indeed. Poland was picked for two reasons. First, I wanted to try to avoid getting into fights with a bunch of Catholic factions. Based on previous experience, it seems like no one attacks Poland much. Needless to say, based on what I've been writing, that part of the plan hasn't gone too well, but I have not started a single war with the other Catholic nations. Secondly, I wanted to fight the Mongol Hordes. However, I didn't want them to show up at my doorstep with little notice and just start wrecking things. So I wanted an eastern faction, but not TOO eastern.

OK, I never noticed that before you mentioned it, but it seems entirely reasonable based on exactly what happened to me last night. After Venice attacked me, I sent an army down towards Milan (held by Venice). While Milan was my official target, the last city of the HRE was Florence, so I decided to finish off the HRE on the way. I laid seige to Florence, and they sallied forth, where they were defeated and I got the last settlement. On the SAME between turn action, Sicily attacks Florence. (And the buggers nearly took the city, and cost me a general in the process!) So now I'm fighting Denmark, Russia, Hungary, Venice, and Sicily.

Now that I think about it, if 5 is the limit, then this is something that can be easily exploited. After you get an AI opponent down to one or two settlements, call off the dogs, and focus on one of the better opponents. Needless to say, had I known this previously, I would have left Florence alone for the rest of the game. The Russians are down to one settlement at this point, and the Hungarians have just two. I will have to think carefully before I eliminate either of them, because that will take me down to 4, and either Milan or France would be the most likely one to take their place. Regardless, Venice is currently excommunicated, so they will be suffering the brunt of the beat downs.

I usually put the battle time limit on to avoid such battles. In particularly long fights, the time limit typically works in your favor. In real time, battles are limited to about 45 minutes, assuming you have the speed set at 1X (normal speed).

In the aforementioned Sicilian attack, I would probably have lost Florence without the battle time limit. I had lost the walls, and my remaining forces had retreated to the city center. I only had the following forces remaining: one stack of spearmen at about half strength, a badly hurt general's body guard unit that was already minus their general, and six nearly full stacks of Lithuanian Archers (the Polish equivalent of longbowmen). Because the enemy kept trying to attack down the same street, they were not able to get many units into the battle at once, so my lone spearmen unit was able to hold off the remaining forces with the archers as support.

Eventually, I got the enemy casaulties up to 80%, while I had lost about 50% of my force. However, by this point, I had virtually no infantry left, and just my archers who were almost out of arrows. I earned a "clear victory" when the battle time limit ran out, but it wouldn't have likely happened if I didn't enable the time limit. I would have had to try to rout the enemy using my archers in melee combat - never a good idea.

On the subject of running out of ammo, I think ammo is only a limitation on YOUR forces. I don't think the AI ever runs out of ammo. In one siege fight, the enemy had a single catapult unit, and using that unit, it blasted four holes in my walls and destroyed two of my towers. Now, while I've never bothered counting how many shots you get out of a catapult, a single unit certainly should run out of ammo long before accomplishing all of that.

Again, I can attest that the Mongols do get bonus armies appearing out of thin air. In my current game, I still have a spy trailing the Mongol army to keep an eye on them. When they initially showed up, they had six full stack armies. A few turns ago, they suddenly doubled that number to 12. Freaking 12 full stack armies! Are you kidding me? That's probably about half of the total of all other units in the game! In other news, it appears that the Mongol Horde is mobilizing for an attack - they appear to be heading towards either Kiev or Smolensk - which would be my top two choices in the case of an attack. Kiev is a large city with cannon towers now, and Smolensk is a Fortress with ballista towers. I like the 2nd layer of defense in Smolensk, but I think I like the cannon towers of Kiev more.

10 turns. And it is 10 turns even if the Pope dies and a new one is elected. The Pope's traits actually have a big effect on how frequently crusades are called too. If you get one with the title "the Warmonger", he'll start a new crusade almost as soon as he's elected, and keep calling crusades every 10 turns. The current pope in my game is "the Peaceful" and there have been no crusades called during his tenure.

Couldn't agree more. As I've said many times, you need way more cities than castles. One castle can support several cities, especially if it is centrally located. An island castle is particularly useless, as I've never seen the AI attempt an amphibious assault, and if you wanted to use the castle for troop production you'd have to dedicate a navy to shuttling troops back and forth to the mainland.

In my current game, I own about 30 settlements, and I there are 6 castles - which may be down to 5. I just captured a Hungarian citadel (Sophia) but there's another castle really close by it. Normally, it would be a no-brainer - it would become a city, but you get screwed on the changeover between citadels and cities because of population requirements. A fully mature citadel only turns into a mid-sized city.

All told, I've turned a ton of castles into cities, but I don't think I've ever gone the other way. In fact, I have to find a very good reason NOT to turn a castle into a city - and there's only two possible reasons not to: Either you don't have any other castles in that area, or the settlement is sure to come under attack and you want the extra castle defenses. That said - when capturing a castle, I usually hold off converting it until I've retrained my army.

[ February 14, 2007, 16:25: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

I am a little miffed at how things worked out with Milan.

I beseiged the first settlement with my first army while waiting for my second and third armies to show up with my artillary. Milan brought in a relief force but the two armies were individually too small and I managed to wipe out the relief force before the sallying defenders managed to reach my army.

When I attacked the second settlement and the troop numbers popped up I found that it was almost undefended presumably because all of the defenders were stripped off to make up the relief force that I had previously wiped out.

Normally I wouldn't complain about a battle where I outnumber the opponent so badly but it turns out that the only unit that was left there was the king and his royal body guard. Sure enough the results were one dead king and a reconciliation with the pope which has basically stopped my invasion after taking only two settlements.

Now I am sitting here wondering if this was intentional. Did Milan sacrifice its king to get a reconciliation with the pope in order to stop me from attacking? That is something that I would expect from a human opponent who is exploiting the rules of the game but not the AI.

 

I doubt is was intentional. It is more likely that you killed off the vast majority of the Milanese force in the first attack, and they had few remaining forces. However, I have noticed that the computer does a lot of general shuffling so it's not that unusual to see a general or family member on the map as a lone unit.

Personally, I have never sacrificed a king to get reconciled. Furthermore, I have had the same thing happen to me. I've even killed the opponents faction leader without knowing it was the faction leader. Sometimes, when the leaders don't have the title "king", you don't notice that it's the faction leader. And it does tick you off because they get reconciled. Still, a two-city expansion is not too shabby! Unless Milan is already a fairly large nation, taking two of their cities is going to significantly take a chunk out of their income.

 

Milan had six settlements so I basically took out a third of their empire. I grabbed Dijon and Bern and they have Milan, Genoa, Florence and Bologna left so effectively I trimmed off the exposed bit and left them with a tight core.

Oh well, I have been focusing my city development on money making and Dijon was all set-up for me to train assassins there so I have been having a little fun with that.

 

If you are going to go the assassin route, you have to train spies as well. Spies get additional ability points easily, but assassins do not. A low level assassin typically has less than a 50% chance of successfully performing an action. However, their chance improves if you have one or more spies in the city where you attempting the assassination/sabotage. There is also a cumulative effect of spies, so I usually dedicate at least two spies to every assassin I create to improve his chances of success. Once you get an assassin's subterfuge level up to around 5, he can start going solo, but it will take you a while to get to that point.

 

I already had a bunch of spies so I am good that way. I just managed to get in a fluke assassination (on a 25% success rate) of the French heir and the assassin's subterfuge jumped from two to six.

 

Hmm, I rarely have more than 10-15% on captains and the like on a fresh assassin after a spy has reconed. Everything above 10% on an enemy general is seen as a must kill. The only thing that seems easy to kill are princesses. An assassin with almost full subterfuge has about 50% on a weak enemy general without paranoia. I reckon it is a balance issue seeing as they are already very useful but it tends to cram up your map with 40-50 assassins running around and it is hard to keep track of which are good and which are crap. Sabotage is very useful, 3-4 spies and a few assassins taking out all order producing buildings in a city can transform a blossoming cash cow for hte enemy into a rebel infested stronghold.

 

It's true that sabotage has a much greater success rate than assassination. The only problem I find is that when I succeed in a sabotage attempt, I am much more likely to get a +1 bonus to sabotage than an overall (and much more desirable) +1 to agent skill. I have never thought of targeting only public order buildings, but it makes sense that if you can greatly reduce public order that you can likewise cripple a city. If nothing else, it will require a great lowering of the tax rate.

Stangely, the AI doesn't make much use of assassins. In all of the games I've played, I've only lost a few characters to assassination, and I don't think I've ever had a building sabotaged.

 

Under the category of "A funny thing happened to me on the way during the crusade" - a crusade was called against Jerusalem so I sent a minimum size army off to keep the pope happy and thus declared war on Egypt. On the way my crusading army ran into an Egyptian diplomat who wanted a ceasefire. I figured that would mess up the crusade so I made a counter offer and asked for Egypt to give me Jerusalem in exchange for the ceasefire. Much to my surprise Egypt actually said yes thus ending the crusade!

My six subterfuge assassin has taken out an enemy captain who was beseiging one of my cities (which apparently does absolutely nothing) and then took out another French royal family member so his subterfuge is now up to eight. My other assassins have been pretending that they are those Scottish Warcraft 2 dwarves i.e. they have been going around blowing stuff up.

 

Well, i dont think im gonna win my game with Milan. I own 30 settlements, but there is only 50 turns left. I have 2 full stacks on their way to the new world, but i dont think im going to get 20 settlements across there. And i still dont have Constantinople. I need to raise an army and take the grrek provinces, thus killing off Venice, and leaving the way clear to take Constantinople.

 

According to the map that I got with the game there are only six settlements in the new world.

 

Well, I'm not surprised that the Crusade ended (after all, Jerusalem was now in the possession of a Catholic faction), but what does surprise me is that you were able to get the AI to trade a settlement. I've never even seen the AI willing to trade a settlement for another settlement. You didn't have to kick anything else in? A ceasefire in exchange for Jerusalem? Also, when you say the Crusade ended, did you get credit for successfully completing the Crusade (i.e., reward from the Pope, chivalry and command boost)? Or was it just called off?

If you mean in terms of your settlement still being beseiged, you are correct, it does absolutely nothing. A captain is just some Joe Smoe from the ranks of the regular soldiers who is elevated to a captain for the duration of the battle. So if you assassinate him, one of the other 800 men in the army takes his place. You don't even reduce the enemy ranks by one as the captain is an "extra" soldier. If the stack he comes from normally has 75 troops, the captain stack will have 76 troops. However, captains are relatively easy targets for a moderately skilled assassin, so it may be worth it to farm captains to boost your assassination skills to even higher levels. So while it does nothing to the enemy army from a military perspective, you can increase your assassin's skill level, and that does count for something.

Taking 15 settlements in 50 turns is difficult, but not impossible. Which of your settlements is the closest one to Constantinople? I would normally assume since you have Constantinople as a requirement that you are playing Venice, but you said you're playing Milan, and you'll have to kill Venice. How much of Venetian Emprie is left? If you have 30 settlements, that has to put you reasonably close to Constantinople, unless your expansion was entirely westward and northward.

Six sounds about right. However, it unlikely that you'll be able to take all six of them. Battling the Aztecs is no easy task. To make matters worse, you will have few units to recruit to counter your losses, and the way the map is set up, you are going to have to take multiple boat trips to get to all six settlements.

I have no idea what the names of the settlements are called, but there is one in Florida, one near modern day Havana, Cuba, three on the Yucatan Peninsula, and one more in South America. However, since only the eastern most portion of the American continents are explorable, you can't walk to those locations. You have to take a boat to get to the South American settlement from the Yucatan Peninsula, and that wastes turns. Similarly you can't walk from the Florida settlement to the Yucatan Peninsula either. About the best you can hope for is taking the three middle settlements on the Yucatan Peninsula, unless you are taking multiple armies over there with you.

All of this means that you will need to take about 12 more settlements in the Old World to hit 45. Obviously, you should focus on getting Constantinople, as nothing else matters if you don't get that. The other thing I would then recommend is getting an army or three over to the region occupied by modern day Israel, as there are a ton of settlements in that region. Adana, Antioch, Aleppo, Damascus, Acre, Jerusalem and Gaza are all only one or two turn movements away from each other. There are also a fair number of castles in those regions, so after taking it, you can retrain/recruit your army for a turn or two before moving on.

So figure on 3 from the Americas, Constantinople and seven more bunched together settlements will take your total to 41. You only need to figure out how to take 4 more. Without knowing which territories you currently hold, making further recommendations will be difficult. The thing is, you are going to have to multi-task. You have to raise 3 or 4 full stack armies, even if this cripples your economy from building anything else, because there isn't enough time for one army to do all of this. I would recommend one army to Constantinople, then proceeding east into Turkey. One army to Adana, proceeding south along the bunched settlments, and a third army sent to Egypt, proceeding north through the bunched settlements, with the second and third army meeting somewhere around Acre.

 

Right now, i own all of Italy bar Rome, i also have Marseile and Dijon, All of Africa from Marakesh to Jedda, then i own Jerusalem, Gaza, Antioch, Addana, Damascus and Acre. Going for Allepo next. I also have Ragusa and Zagreb, about to make my move of Thessalonica in Greece and work my way across to Constantinople. I have 2 Full stacks of Dismounted Broken Lances, and Famigalia Ducale (i know they said dont take cav, but these guys can hold their own in melee unless its spearmen) on their way to the New World. Unfortunaltey, i was hovering around 100k, but i decided to experiment with my level 10 Diplomat, and bribed Adana and a Turkish family member to join me, costing me around 70k. Ive built up my money abit since then so i have around 50k, and gaining 16k each turn if i dont build, so i may stop building and start making as many armies as i can.

Edit: Forgot to mention Granada, and the 2 Islands south of Genoa. About to make a move and finish off the Moors at Cordoba.

 

Yeah, all I gave the Egyptians was the ceasefire and I got Jerusalem in exchange. The city rebelled almost instantly so I really didn't end up gaining anything out of the deal. The crusade ended without me getting any credit for it.

I have one maxed out assassin and another who is almost maxed out and they have been having a field day. I just eliminated the Holy Roman Empire by assassinating their entire royal family. Now I have six rebel settlements to pick on.

When I assassinated the captain I was hoping that would disrupt the seige and force them to start rebuilding their seige engines but it doesn't work that way. Also, I never get trait increases from assassinating captains so it seems to be pointless.

On the -ve side my other assassins are pretty much useless except for sabotage. I would really like to be able to order my assassins to take out that peasant girl who is constantly shown spotting.

My crusading army took over Bucharest on the way towards Jerusalem before settling down in Adana when the crusade ended. Bucharest has withstood wave after wave of attacks from the Hungarians but it looks like they will finally take it. Oh well, at least it looks like I will be able to hold Adana.

Edit: oh and according to the map the new world settlements are
Miccosukee in Florida - located due west from Edinburgh
Caribbean - on a large island directly south of Florida
Tlaxcala, Cholula, and Tenochtitlan on a large chunck of South America located due west from London but seperated by water from
Fortaleza which is due west from Cordoba.

[ February 15, 2007, 18:05: Message edited by: JSBB ]

 

Jedda? Where is that? I know Marrakesh is the most northwestern settlement in Africa, but I don't know where Jedda is.

Regardless - you're not in good shape. I had assumed that a good chunk of your 30 settlements were in Europe, when in fact, it seems that most of them are in Africa and the Middle East. In fact, you have already claimed a good chunk of the recommended settlements I listed, and I guess they were already included in your list of 30.

While it is possible to reach 45 settlements with only a few European settlments, you need to conquer pretty much everything else. Like all of Africa and all of the Middle East, including all of Turkey. I honestly don't see where you can pick up 15 more settlements in the alotted time without taking on a European faction. Any excommunicated neighbors nearby? You need another war in a hurry. It's OK to take a few turns to build another army, but you've got to find some poor sap to pick on - preferably one that won't tick off the Pope too much. However, given the settlements you listed, it sounds like France and the HRE are still around, and they are probably among the most powerful factions.

Well, it's not like every time you assassinate someone you get a trait increase. The more skilled you are, the harder it is to get a trait increase. That's why a brand new spy frequently gets a trait increase after performing his first successful mission, but may have to sneak into 4 or 5 cities to get a master spy rating. If you already had a subterfuge rating of 6 or so when you attempted the assassination, it is more than likely that you wouldn't get a trait increase for knocking off a lowly captain. I know I have got trait increases by killing captains - in fact, I look for captains and low level merchants and diplomats as "training material" for my assassins.

While I have eliminated factions by killing off all their family members, all of them happened while on the field of battle. I've never gained an elimination through assassination. What was your chance of success for the faction leader? Are the odds at least decent? Especially considering the last two faction members you eliminate have to be the heir and current leader, the possibility exists (depending on the order you did it) that you had to assassinate several people who were heirs or leaders.

Peasant girl? The only females in the game are princesses, and they certainly can be targets of assassinations.

 

My odds for successfully assassinating the emperor were 42%. The assassin in question has a 10 subterfuge and he had a nine subterfuge spy in place. The faction leader was in the furthest settlement from my empire so he ended up being last on the hit list.

If you watch the videos for the assassinations there is a peasant girl who keeps spotting your assassins and screaming thus alerting the guards if you fail. I really should turn the assassination videos off - they are really getting repetitive.

Edit: Well I think I can kiss Bucharest goodbye. They are starting the attack and the balance of power is 3:200.

Edit2: Yep, it ended just like you would expect. I actually managed to take out the ram but I just didn't have enough defenders to handle the ladders.

[ February 15, 2007, 19:47: Message edited by: JSBB ]

 

That is not particularly reassuring. You would think that a top-notch level assassin and nearly top-notch level thief would give you better odds than that.

I get it now - I didn't understand you were talking about the assassination video. I think the one you are referring to is the one where he pops up out of a barrel and the woman screams and the guards chase you. The assassination video I like the best is the one where he has the snake and as he attempts to place the snake in the bed, it turns around and bites him.

Holy cow! I've never seen such terrible odds - what are you trying to do - defend with a town militia unit against a full stack army?

 

Aldeth, Portugal own Toulouse and Bordeaux, England have Caen, Bruges, Antwerp, Angers and the other one beside Caem. France are left with Rheims and Paris. So i could take them out, although they have 2 full stacks sitting around those cities. Gonna go for Portugal next as the 2 citadels are there last settlements. And HRE are also weak. The major powers in Europe and Hungary and Denmark. Although the Mongols are tearing Denmark a new one, they have all of Russia and Prussia. Im gonna make a move of Turkey aswell.

Jedda is the town across the Red Sea from Cairo.

 

Turn 80 now. Milan and Venice tried to backstab me, and after a long struggle both of them are completely without any decent army and I took Milan as well. The Mongols arrived too, but it's not like I need to be worried by that. I'm humored that they still haven't taken a city yet though, maybe they'll die trying to take one and the whole menace is gone.

Oh, and the popes never promoted new cardinals so now there's no pope so I'm gonna take Rome to expand my Italian territory a bit more.

EDIT: In fact, I'm gonna take whatever I want until someone gets a priest promoted to cardinal and therefore a pope. And if he don't like it, I'll send down an army there and kill him bad.

I also had a kickass battle earlier south of Milan after I had taken it. Two 800+ armies, one being Milan and one being Venice, against my 600+ army, meeting on the open field. However, I had three things going for me.

1. I started on a very high hill.
2. My army had really good ranged support, veteran troopers all of them.
3. The enemy was newly trained peasants, militas, and catapults mostly, it was both of their last attack armies.

I started at the top of the hill, let my back be open(if they went up that way, it would go really slowly and I could retaliate with my cavalry) and then started to pelt them with arrows. Before their peasant archers and catapults got in range, I had killed off between one half and two thirds of them so they were severly crippled. I would've charged down, but they had spear milita so I waited until my archers had weakened that one too.

Meanwhile, they sent both their general bodyguard units towards my flank and was met with one of my generals and a 40-man frankish knight unit. I kept my spearmen to be able to pin down their spearmen in case too many lived from the arrows. The battle against their generals went well, no enemy survivors, but I lost my own general by a damn stray catapult boulder(still had one left though) so the bodyguard unit were now my suicidal hit-and-run-their-damn-catapults unit.

However, being computer AI and not humans and therefore able to do a thousand things at once, they had used it as a diversion to assault my ranged ranks. Fortunatly, skirmish and a spearmen counterattack combined with my other 40-man frankish knight unit and most of the enemies were left running and free pickings for my men down there.

Soon, close to nothing were left, and I ran everything I had down at them. 5-1 killcount, so I was kinda glad.

[ February 15, 2007, 23:25: Message edited by: Register ]