Medieval 2: Total War

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The tower bug is that in a huge city the ballista towers acted as cannon towers, in a large city they act as regular arrow towers, and in the largest castle size the cannon towers act as arrow towers. So basically it is great if you are in a huge city but otherwise it sucks. I just installed the fix yesterday after seeing my cannon towers in Toulouse think they were arrow towers. The last thing I need is my cannon towers not working when a crusade has been called against that castle.

Oh and I can confirm that capturing a Knighly Order chapterhouse does not allow you to recruit the order's knights if you don't belong to the correct faction. I though it would be amusing to have my Moorish armies using crusaders after capturing a chapterhouse but it wouldn't let me do it.

 

Oh, so the bug just isn't with ballista towers but cannon towers too? In other words, regardless of what type of towers you have built a level 5 castle (citadel) will always fire just arrows? That does suck. And even having them remain as arrows in a level 4 city sucks too. Given that I don't have many level 5 settlements of the front lines, it seems that I would rarely see the benefit of this.

 

You should be able to change the faction heir in either the family tree window, or on the person you want to be heir's character card.

 

In my game as the Sicilians I only get Hospitaler and Templar knights in my retinue after a successful crusade, though, if what Aldeth says is correct (and it certainly seems that way), what kind of knights you get in your retinue after a crusade might depend on your faction.

That might very well be it. I captured a Spanish castle with this chapter house in it. So I guess this means that I won't be able to recruit Teutonic knights either once I conquer Hamburg. Sort of a bummer, but I guess I'll just demolish them to make room for something a little more useful.

Regarding my catapult towers: it's no longer the bug that's causing the catapult towers to shoot as cannon towers, but my shameless editing of the file that came with the bug fix. It's a blast to watch the Timurids get blown to pieces by cannon towers, which shoot at the same rate that catapult towers do.

 

Not quite, a citadel with ballista towers will fire ballista bolts - it is only in the cities that the ballista towers don't work properly.

In my case Toulouse had ballista towers that worked just fine and then I upgraded to cannon towers and watched in dismay as the towers started shooting arrows.

I am quite impressed by the Hashashins. Capable of hiding to do surprise flanking and they are pretty damned tough SOBs.

I wasn't sure how their hiding worked - my guess was that they would be hidden on the map screen like a spy or assassin so I walked an army containing only three units of Hashashins into HRE territory to scout. Suffice to say I was wrong about how their hiding worked and I was attacked by a large army.

I probably should have run but I decided to experiment instead and I manage to use the first unit as a lure and left the other two to sneak attacked the enemy general as he went past. Unfortunately I moved the hidden units to the attack a bit too early and the enemy managed to call back their heavy cavalry in time to intercept one group before they could hit the general. Still, I inflicted far more casualties than I expected on their heavy cavalry and wiped out most of the general's bodyguards. If I had managed to hit the general with both units of Hashashins I can only imagine that there would have been one dead general. As I said, they are damned tough SOBs.

Edit: Fixed the quote so that the quote box actually shows.

[ March 05, 2007, 19:25: Message edited by: JSBB ]

 

OK, I think I got it now. To review:

Level 4 City - ballista towers fire arrows (wrong)
Level 5 City - ballista towers fire cannon balls (wrong)
Level 4 City - cannot build cannon towers
Level 5 City - cannon towers fire cannon balls (correct)

So without the fix, any tower upgrade will fire cannon balls if the city is level 5, but will only fire arrows if the city is level 4. In other words, the cannon towers work properly, but the ballista towers never work properly.

Level 4 Castle (Fortress) - ballista towers fire ballista bolts (correct)
Level 5 Castle (Citadel) - ballista towers fire ballista bolts (correct)
Level 4 Castle - cannot build cannon towers
Level 5 Castle - cannon towers fire arrows (wrong)

So it's the exact opposite, in that cannon towers function incorrectly, but ballista towers function properly.

As far as I know, you cannot change the heir without getting the current heir killed, or obviously, if the king dies in which case the heir assumes the position of king and a new heir is assigned. Furthermore, even if you do get the heir killed, I do not think that there is any way to control who gets picked as the next heir, and it seems quite random the way the computer picks it. Sometimes, a brother of the heir is appointed (but not necessarily the next-oldest brother) and other times it was the former heir's son if that person has already come of age.

 

Yes, that sums up the ballista/cannon tower situation perfectly. It makes defending a huge city a heck of a lot easier than defending a citadel.

Edit: Yikes, 28 of my last 50 posts have been in this thread. That is even worse than when I was monopolizing the quote game a while back.

Edit2: OK, 23 of Aldeth's last 50 posts have been in this thread too. I guess I am not too bad then. Either that or we are both nuts.

[ March 05, 2007, 21:32: Message edited by: JSBB ]

 

This seems alright, except for that a level 4 castle (a fortress) does not have the option to build any kind of special tower. As far as I can see in my game, you get the option for both once you've got a citadel.

And if you check mine you'll find an even higher percentage of posts in this topic

 

Or do the same with mine.

 

I see 31/50 for henkie and 27/50 for Register. I guess that puts us all in similar ballparks.

Oh and I checked the tech tree and you are correct that you can not build any towers in a castle until it has reach level 4/citadel status. There is no such thing as a level 5 castle.

According to the tech tree the levels go as follows.

Level 0 Village/Moat & Bailey
Level 1 Town/Wooden Castle
Level 2 Large Town/Castle
Level 3 City/Fortress
Level 4 Large City/Citadel
Level 5 Huge City/N/A
Level 6 Advanced/N/A
Level 7 Very Advanced/N/A

I don't think I have ever seen a level 6 or 7 city before.

 

The tech tree is screwed up - or at least it's deceiving in the way the information is presented. While they list level 6 and level 7 structures, there's no such thing as an "Advanced" or "Very Advanced" city. Cities are upgraded by purchasing wall upgrades, the last of which is the huge stone wall, which allows for the contruction of level 5 structures. The only reason those levels are listed is because there are level 5 prerequisite buildings that need to be constructed before you get the option to build these additional "level 6" and "level 7" buildings. For example, the only "level 7" building is the royal barracks, which cannot be constructed without first constructing all of the other barracks upgrades. So the level 5 militia barracks has to be constructed, as well as the level 6 army barracks.

Of further note, all level 6 and 7 structures (there's not that many - just one at level 7 and four at level 6) are categorized as (L) meaning they are available to only a limited number of factions. I do not think factions beyond the Big 5 (England, France, Venice, HRE, Spian) can construct these buildings, and even the Big 5 are limited in which ones they can construct. For example, the HRE cannot construct a royal barracks, and therefore has no unit equivalent to the musketeer.

However, your castle ratings appear correct - I had not realized that the mis-spelled "moat and bailey" was level 0 - I assumed it was level 1. You are correct that it is listed as "moat and bailey" in the tech tree, but the proper term is "mott and bailey". In this primitive castle, the mott and bailey describe the central, castle-like structure, and the surrounding area enclosed by the wooden walls, respectively. Such structures never had moats surrounding the walls as far as I know.

Furthermore, in real life, moats surrounding castles seems to be more fiction than reality based. It wasn't uncommon to dig ditches around the castle to hinder cavalry and land troops from getting through, but it was never like the classic moat filled with water around the castle. It would take a great deal of engineering and work to get a continuously water-filled moat around a castle - and would be nearly impossible if the castle wasn't built in swamp lands. Further, that engineering would be put to much better use in irrigating fields.

EDIT: OK, history lesson is over. I didn't get much done in my game last night. I successfully fended off a siege on both Venice and Florence, by the HRE and Milan, respectively. The HRE went and got itself excommunicated for their part, and I have an army heading to Vienna as we speak. Also, my force that took Sophia has finally been retrained sufficiently to try to take on the Byzantines. Sophia had a blacksmith and swordsmith guild present, so my army was held up there quite some time for retraining. I'm not thrilled that you have to train everyone to the max or not train them at all. Taking a spearman and upgrading his weapon and armor simultaneously was pretty costly.

How do most other people do upgrades? I always will get any and all available upgrades for my heavily armed troops - they see a lot of combat, so they need the upgrades. Militia troops are also upgraded whenever possible, as it's a one-time expense with their free upkeep. The one unit I'm on the fence on is missile units. They shouldn't see a lot of hand-to-hand combat, but yet, the armor upgrade can help if they are trading missile fire. Although I must admit, peasant archers in plate mail looks kind of strange.

[ March 06, 2007, 16:28: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

I'm not too sure about that. Sicily, for instance, can build up to the Army Barracks, which build Arquebusiers and can build Armour Factories. And if those factories aren't level 6 or 7 buildings, they should be. Even in a huge city or a citadel I find myself building plenty of upgraded armour producing buildings. The same goes for the Army Barracks, of course. It's too bad there's no overview of this in the manual.

It all depends on your location. For instance, here in the Netherlands you would have to try really hard to dig a moat and not have it fill up with water. In fact, the water seeping in might have made digging a moat fairly difficult in medieval times. It's not called the nether lands for nothing, after all.

Saw an interesting example of an alternative approach in England recently, where Leeds' castle does have a moat of sorts. It would probably be more accurate to say it was build smack dab in the middle of a small lake, but it served as a rather effective moat nonetheless.

As I tend to keep the same armies together for a long period, building new troops inside a city once taken over, these armies get all the upgrades I can provide them with. With these tactics, it pays off to upgrade some militia units as well, and send those along with the main army, as you can move on to the next target faster with some militia already in place. Militia born and bred in the towns themselves get any armour upgrade I can bestow them within that city, but I won't send them to another town to get more upgrades.

 

Well I finished my game as Spain, was pathetically easy. I took over the English Isle, and then Eliminated HRE and Milan for my 45 and took Jerusalem with an army of dismounted feudal knights.

I have now started a game as the Danes. These guys have the best early game units that I have had so far, and are extremely cost effective. I took all the Rebel settelments in my area, and then spent about 5 turns setting myself up financially, and then moved down to eliminate HRE, excommunicating myself 3 times during the process.

I then decided to jump over to England and help out my Scottish allies, just for the hell of it. I got over there, took London, Nottingham, and York, and then my allies turn on me. I beat off their first army and they send 3 more, I beat them and they send two more. I guess some people just don't learn. England only has one settlement left, Caernavorn(sp?) So I will go take that over, and then take over Scotland.

Milan has also decided that they want to fight so I guess I'll take over their 3 or 4 settlements as well.

 

I just realized last night that I have been a little stupid in one aspect of managing my war efforts this game. I have not been paying enough attention to the availability to call Jihads in order to quickly complete them and scoop up the completion bonuses.

I called one a while back but chances are I could have called a couple more by now if I had been paying proper attention to this. As it turns out Dijon was on my Jihad list and it was going to be my next target anyway so I called a Jihad as soon as I had a suitable army ready. Tonight I should be taking over Dijon in my first turn.

The one thing that I have been surprised by this game is that I have managed to take over so many Catholic settlements with so little rioting/rebelling. I have not exterminated the population on any of my conquests but I have not had that much trouble maintaining public order.

Basically my pattern is to take over a settlement, set the tax rate to low, and leave the army and its general there for long enough that I have the first few public order buildings up and running. The first up is the small temple and then I crank out an Imam or two. A few turns later and I have enough public order that I can move my army out to the next conquest without the population being too unhappy. It doesn't take too long before the population is happy enough for me to start raising the taxes.

 

Yes, Armour Factories and Army Barracks are both level 6 buildings. And yes, I worded my previous post poorly (oh, check out the aliteration). What I was trying to say was that not all of the Big 5 can construct all of the level 6 and level 7 buildings, and that outside of the Big 5, none of them can construct them all. The easiest example to site is that the Royal Barracks are only available to factions that get professional armies in the late game. So that's France, England, and Spain. The HRE doesn't get them, and I'm not sure about Venice. None of the other playable factions can build the royal barracks either.

Of more interest to me is that you mentioned Sicily. To me, that seems like a pretty difficult starting faction to play, and I'd be interested in hearing about your experience with it. To me, it seems like Sicily is pretty screwed early on. You can't expand northward without running into the Papal States (not a good idea early), and any expansion is going to have to be by sea, meaning you'll be ferrying new units back and forth a lot until your newly acquired settlements are on their feet.

I have never tried playing Sicily, but I'm thinking my early-game strategy would be to try and take a few rebel settlements on the mainland early - Florence and Durazzo seem like two prime canidates - and then perhaps expand into Africa.

Of factions I have tried up to this point, Scotland is by far the most difficult, as it appears you are given a 20% recruitment penalty on mounted and missile units. Instead of the typical 40 unit size for mounted units, and 60 unit size for missile units, purchasing a unit as Scotland only nets you 32 and 48 respectively. I didn't like that at all.

 

I thought Scotland was rather easy to begin with. You rush down and take York, this will stall the English unless they have luck in Europe, also meaning you can take Inverness and Dublin when you want without worrying about another faction grabbing them. Next i take Caernarvon, and then take out the English, you have much better infantry than they do, Highlanders and Highland Nobles rule. Kinda weak in cavalry and missle units, but with England out the way you dont have to worry about Longbows, and if you need Heavy Cavalry then you just wait until you get either of the Knight orders.

 

Oh, it's definitely nice having only England to worry about. In fact, until you build some diplomats and ship them over to the mainland to get some trade agreements, most of the rest of the world doesn't even know you exist. The strategy I tried was very similar to yours, although I took Caernarvon prior to taking Dublin.

I think my main problem is with my playing style. I don't have much luck using infantry offensively. Generally speaking, I use infantry for two purposes - fending off cavalry/infantry charges against my missile and artillery units, and when taking a city with cavalry, I always send the infantry ahead of the cavalry to deal with the AI cavalry charge.

Basically, I use infantry predominantly as a defensive unit, or when I know I'm going to have to deal with cavalry charges in a predetermined area - like a city street. I never had much luck with infantry charges in regular, open field battles, because the enemy units you're trying to target - enemy cavalry and enemy missile units - simply run away. Infantry are, of course, useful in combating other infantry troops, but I'm content to let them come to me rather than running my infantry across an open field, taking missile fire the whole time. Because of this, infantry usually makes up a rather small percentage of my total army - typically not more than 20%.

 

Check out most of my previous posts, I'd say
Actually, they're not that hard to play with. You do need some aggressive expansion at first, especially since every rebel settlement will be taken quickly otherwise. However, Florence and Durazzo are difficult targets, in that they need a fairly decent garrison to dissuade any of the neighbouring factions from attacking you. I ran into trouble in my first game when I took Durazzo, when Venice attacked both Naples and Durazzo at the same time, while both were woefully undermanned. Therefore, in my current game, I decided to stick with just Florence, since that effectively plugs up any attacks further inland from the other factions. Plus it has excellent expansion potential with four other towns just 1 or 2 turns away.

However, Florence wasn't my first target. For my first rebel settlements, I actually took whatever excess units I had and sailed off to Cagliari and Ajaccio, in that order, and converted both from castles to cities. They make for excellent money producing cities, as they require no defending at all. Then I'd take whatever units the council had awarded me for taking Cagliari (I've found that the council will normally choose Durazzo as it's first target, unless I have an army sailing towards Cagliari first, so it's a good idea to have an army sailing for Cagliari in the very first turn), and set sail for Tunis. Typically, if you take Tunis early enough, the Moors won't bother you there.

By then, I had assembled a decent sized army and set off for Florence. It might be that I was lucky that it wasn't taken by then, though. It might also have been that I had send that army for Florence a bit earlier, I can't recall exactly anymore. Anyway, avoid walking through the Papal states region, as you don't really want to be on their bad side. Once in Florence, sit tight and wait for any neighbouring faction to get excommunicated. Normally, this shouldn't take long, as you're bordering the HRE and Milan.

After taking Tunis, I took my army south to Tripoli and took it as well. My next target was Algiers. This got me into a war with the Moors, but they were not too much of a problem to deal with, mostly because the distances are so vast in that region.

By this time, I had only Palermo and Algiers as castles, though in hind sight I suspect that I would have been better off having Algiers turned into a city as well, as it never did much troop producing anyway. Although I must admit that having the next castle in that direction be Toledo is a long way away. Palermo has a wonderful central location, both as a castle and as a capital. From Palermo, you can get units to any of the afore mentioned towns (except Algiers and Durazzo) in two turns at most, making it a great centre for retraining units and for sending out reinforcements. If, for example, Milan gets excommunicated, you can build a decent army in a few turns in Palermo, in the mean time recalling a fleet to Palermo, and then have it on Genoa's doorstep in two turns.

Regardless, by this time the pope called a crusade for Jerusalem, which is an ideal target to take and keep for Sicily, since it will be expanding mostly into Africa and the Middle East. This is also the best thing for Sicily: they have a central position on the map that allows for easy expansion into Africa, and thus you'll never need be in the Pope's bad graces.

As I'm writing this, I'm starting to think that taking Durazzo early on isn't such a bad idea. It presents an excellent alternative direction to expand to, other than the African route, since you can take on the Byzantines as well, providing an alternate route to the east. But, as I said, it's a difficult settlement to hang on to, more so because you are also fairly isolated from the rest of your kingdom. And, contrary to the West-African settlements, you are very much in the middle of hostile territory.

As far as units are concerned, I find that they are pretty much comparable to the English early game. Their Muslim Archers are actually a match for the Longbowmen, only lacking the ability to set up spikes, but matching them in range and fire power. Mid-game, they are a little underpowered, as they only get their good infantry units once their castles reach citadel level, and until that time you're stuck with two varieties of spearmen and Dismounted Norman Knights. It's rather disappointing that the barracks option you get from a fortress only gives an experience bonus to the Sergeant Spearmen and Armored Sergeants.

On the other hand, the Dismounted Broken Lances and the Sword and Buckler Men you get are the bomb. I'm especially enamoured of the Dismounted Broken Lances, who are great for taking a city. I usually mix them 50-50 with Sword and Buckler Men for budgetary reasons, though.

On the archery side of things, the Pavise Crossbowmen are great, though I still prefer Muslim Archers for their ability to fire fire arrows. The final stage of archery for the Sicilians are Mounted Crossbowmen, which I find only so-so. They're no good in attacking a city, and in the field they're no match for my normal cavalry. Their greatest use seems to be in countering any enemy variant of mounted archers, or for running down routing cavalry. Currently, I'm using them in conjuncture with normal cavalry to chase down any rebel armies within my boundaries, in which they only serve a minor role.

The normal Sicilian cavalry is almost completely comparable to the English in strength, as far as I can tell.

Edit:

Then you're missing out. Granted, I don't use infantry much in the field, but for taking cities they rock. They're slow in killing their opponents compared to a cavalry charge, but at least they won't get butchered in the narrow streets by spearmen, where cavalry charges are pitifully ineffective. When attacking a city, cavalry serves a back up role only, attacking the enemy in the back once they're engaged in melee with my infantry, and running down routing enemies.

In the field, though, I use cavalry almost exclusively, since that's where they're brutally effective. And the times I do use infantry is when they have large numbers of spearmen, and even then the enemy normally routs almost as soon as my infantry reaches them, due to the combined effect of the frontal attack by infantry and the cavalry charge on their flanks and back. And in pursueing a routing army infantry is, sadly, mostly useless.

I actually find that I have little use of missile infantry, and I usually have no more than two stacks of them in an army.

Edit2: That is one long-assed post.

[ March 06, 2007, 23:10: Message edited by: henkie ]

 

I'm back here on SP. I've been taking a break from M2:TW as well. I think I'm going to go back to it, and Maybe try some of the short campaigns, as the Long ones seem to be a pain in the butt...

 

Really? Wow, we have different playing styles. Missile infantry usually makes up close to 50% of my army. In a full stack army, at least 8 will be missile infantry. Most of the time, the AI is content to trade missile fire with you for quite a while, and so if you're going to be trading missile fire, logically, you're going to want a lot of missile units.

My strategy is pretty pathetic now that I think about it. It kind of goes like this: Stick missile infantry in the front line with infantry just behind them. Exchange missile fire with the enemy until they realize they are taking more losses than they are giving (which surprisingly lasts longer than you'd think) and they bring up cavalry and infantry towards your archers. As this is happening, I reposition my cavalry to the sides. Take the cavalry/infantry charge with my infantry - preferable spearmen. Then have my cavlary hit the enemy flanks shortly thereafter. I actually try to time it so that my cavalry arrives just after the they have engaged my infantry.

Yeah, you need them for taking cities, and as I indicated that is one of two places where I use them. However, if you lay siege to a settlement with the intent of waiting them out, a sally battle (where you are defending) is a lot like an open field battle, so archers are still worthwhile. I agree that missile infantry are worth virtually nothing when trying to assault city/castle walls. You can try, but you usually have about a 1:5 kill ratio between your troops and the troops on the walls, with your troops being the 1.

I got tired of my game with the Venetians, so I've abandoned it. I still have a game saved, but I'm probably not going to return to it. I started a game as Egypt, and all I can say is the Pope sucks man. We're about 20 turns into the game, I just captured Jerusalem, and the Pope goes and decalres a crusade against the city. He can eat me. The only other cities I have at the point (other than the 3 you start with) are Jedda, Acre, and the one that's several turns march south of Cairo - I think it begins with a "D" but I'm not sure.

Anyway, the only positive of this is that Jerusalem is already a large city (level 4), and I've already constructed ballista towers in it. Other things in my favor is that I also have a fotress just a little while away that is working on the next level of missile units - I already have three different types I can make, and I think the next step is Nubian archers, which are supposedly pretty good to go along with the Desert archers I can already make. Also, Cairo is capable of producing Saracen Spear Militia. In terms of their attack rating, they have a 7 - just like all the other kinds of spearmen, but in defense they boast a rather beefy 14. The plan is to get 12 spearmen, 6 missile and 2 generals in the city - that should be capable of holding off whatever gets thrown at me. Still, I think it sucks that I have to put up with this crap so early.

After the crusade was called, I finally got a diplomat over to the Papal States, and I got them to agree to an alliance - I was hoping that would cause the crusade to get called off, but no such luck. So far, only the French and HRE have joined. I suppose the other thing I have going for me is that because it's so early, the other factions don't have a lot of cash, and so they will be fielding armies consisting of mostly cheap infantry.