f13.net

This game is pretty rad but Jesus, second hard reboot and I have a glorious comp.

Seems fine here.

Not one crash yet.  AMD processor, ATI GPU, Turtle Beach soundcard.  I'd start looking to my components being the problem.

Too much hot?

I have noticed that this game is a hellofa lot piggier than rome ever could be.

Too much heat you mean??

Anyways, the game is big (two DVD's), but I think that's more to do with the campaign length.

Turn off Automatic restart on system failure if you haven't already so you can see if there's a particular program or DLL that's causing a BSoD.

Dude I'm not getting BSoD's.  My entire computer just powers down.  I think it may be overheating.  I don't know why.


nvidia 7800
amd x2 4200
2 GB Ram


I mean, I feel like I should be handling this game and making it my bitch.  I don't even have the settings turned all the way up.  I hate my life.

Someone tell me how to check the temperature of my cpu before I kill myself.  And tell me what my danger zone is if you know off hand. 

Oh, you said reboot, not power down. If it's shutting off then it's likely to be a power supply issue or a problem with your heat sink/fan on your CPU.

What's your motherboard? Many come with utilities for monitoring that sort of thing. Or you can try something like SpeedFan (http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php).

Edit: for your CPU 65C is the upper end of the safe operating range. When it's idling it should be around ~40C (depending on ambient temperature, quality of heat sink/fan, etc.). 70C+ is like DANGER DANGER SHUT OFF COMPUTER NOW.

Just for reference, your hardware probably is owning the game specs...before something overheats on you.

Are you fans spinning? Are they clogged with dust? Is you cpu HSF mounted correctly (can sometimes be hard to tell if it's not seated right)? Do you have all kinds of cables and shit messing with airflow in your case? Do you keep the case in a very closed-in area?

Yep, there's usually a temperature monitor in your BIOS, or you could download a copy of SiSoft Sandra (http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/).

I don't think it's a PSU problem because I have an Antec SLK3800B case which includes a 400 watt PSU.  From what I've read, that's overkill for a rig like mine. 

My mobo is Abit KN8-Ultra. 


PS. sorry for the gaffe, I'm getting system shutdowns, not reboots or BSoD's.



edit: Sounds like I'm overheating from what you gents are saying.

It may be your video card.  I've had computers just reboot out of the blue from dying GPU's in the past, but it's hard to say.  Could also be your power supply.  If you have spare parts laying around I'd start switching stuff around one by one to rule out specific components as the problem.

You should have the ASUS Probe software which will show you and graph your CPU and MB (typically the primary chipset) temps. If it isn't the power supply then it's possible your heat sink isn't attached properly or the fan has stopped spinning or is spinning too slowly. When an AMD 64 gets too hot it'll shut itself down to prevent permanent damage to itself.

Dude I think I figured it out.  Opened up my case and one of the wires had gotten sucked into the mobo fan, I tugged it out and it started spinning again.  CRAZY.  I'm guessing that was the problem.  Now I'm looking for something to tie back this cable with.  I got my software dev friend to build this baby for me and we drank a bottle of rum while I watched him work on it.  I think by the end he probably didn't give a shit about the cabling.



edit: christ i hope i didnt ruin my gear, who knows how long my crap has been running without  a fan on the cpu.

As it has been said, the newer CPUs will shut themselves down to avoid damage. If you haven't been gaming much, and this is the first time it's started to happen, you're probably fine. I have a similar situation with my video card at the moment, except the fan is simply dead instead of being stuck.

Luckily, the heatsinks on the card work well enough to passively cool the card enough to do anything that doesn't involve heavy 3D work, such as web browsing or watching videos. The only game I have that I can play with no problems is Baldur's Gate. Even Planescape has too much going on, and will shut my card down.

I'd like to just say that this is probably the most stabile "new game" I've played in awhile.

Twist ties.  Easier to remove than zip cords.

Right on man, that's exactly what I ended up doing.  Thanks to everyone who responded.  I definitely would have freaked out and called a tech guy to come down and he would have been here 5 seconds, opened my box up, removed the offending cable, and then charged me 75 dollars.   WORD.


By the way, after I tied back the cable, I gamed blissfully for four straight hours with not hiccups.

I'm finding myself playing the TB map game more often than before. The only battles I've opted to play were against a few rebel cities and a crusade (zerged Antioch with a bunch of crazy pilgrims heh).

I think crusades are way overpowered.  It's so easy to get awesome cheap guys that are unlimited, you have double movement speed, and you are sacking orthodox/muslim cities for like 10-40,000 florins a pop with no fear of reprisal.  Game over.

The Middle East starts getting hard and expensive to maintain afterwards though.

Hey! It's just like Iraq.

Nah, I just sack them and move on to the next like a horde of locusts.  They have no defense for this hge 20 unit army of crusading badasses.  Nobody can compete with it.  When you're hiring mercs on the go that are better than anything else out there and far cheaper there is nothing they can do.


Maybe its different on very hard difficulty.

Ah, see, I stopped short of Jerusalem and Antioch..,,Then tried to maintain them, send priests out into the land to convert people, and tried to build up Jerusalem's garrison well enough so I could access the Templars.

I just ended up getting assassinated for it though.

Not sure how the Templar works actually. After I took Jerusalem, it said I had them, but since the city was torn to shit, I had nothing to work with.

Exactly.  I just assumed it was still the same as Rome where actually having population leads to nothing but headaches, so I sack every city and then tax the holy piss out of 'em to keep them unhappy and not breeding.

It's not that bad.  That actually doesn't work because one of the main concerns for a town is public order.  Buildings boost this and things like taxes and paganism and population lower it.  If your public order dips, it can spiral out of control especially with enemy priests/imams preaching against your or stirring up heretics.  They usually sned assassins too.  So you have to keep them happy, and you won't make any money if you don't have any people  The reason is, you need a certain amount of people to uprade the city walls (village-->town, town-->small city, etc.) which gives you acces to better shit.  So population is a necessity, although less so for castle settlements,


Stray, next time you go on a crusade,  stay on the defensive in your main base, then hire crusader seargeants and crusader knights on the way to the Holy Land.  You should be able to get 20 by the time you get there.  Then just go from town to town sacking them and moving on.  You can usually start with Constantinople, just watch out for desertion.  If you start getting desertion, book it to the Holy Land and get Byzantium on the way back.


I think I found a bug, in that I sacked every middle easternl city on hard difficulty with ease, then brought my army back 100 years later and I still wasn't paying upkeep on it because it was a crusade army, but the crusade was long over.  Good way to make money to build up infrastructure of your core empire though, and as an added benefit, you basically leave all the factions in your wake in tatters, and rebels basically slice up the remainders.



At any rate, IMO it is definitely not worth it to try and hold your gains unless you're trying to play how you think a real army would, or if you're playing a long campaign with England or someone who needs a Holy Land province for victory.

I eventually held on to Jerusalem, and ended up doing the hit 'n' run thing this time now. Looks like everything from Gaza to Antioch is under control. Problem now is, the homeland (France) is being shit upon by Milan, Spain, and Germany. I'm just spread too thin and/or don't have the right alliances.

Well, being spread thin shouldn't be a problem if you're sacking every city and moving on.  Crusade armies don't count towards your army upkeep costs so it's all free money minus the chump change it costs to hire some replacement mercs now and again. 


Essentially what I'm saying is, a crusade army should be self sufficient, it should at least be paying for itself.  Now if you get bogged down with trying to build up the infrastructure of all these middle eastern cities and econ them, that would hurt you.  Pretend like it's the fourth crusade and start by sneak sacking constantinople.  Be dirty about it and you funnel the money to your home provinces.  Apply the same principle to the New World when that opens up. 


It's kind of cheap almost, I'm gonna try playing on the hnardest campaign difficulty and see if it changes.  Reminds me of being Spain in Colonization where you just made a colony by the Aztecs and one by the Incas and then raped their asses for like 15-20K a pop.  Only this is worse.

Word on the street is a new patch is coming very soon which should adress this and some small concerns about battlefield AI.  It's a sweet game though, to be fair, it's only incremental over Rome, but I'm a slut for this series since the original Medieval War 1. 


Another thing I like about this game is that the campaign AI is pretty ruthless. I mean, if you're the Moors, and you have all the pretenses of a sweet relationship with Spain and Portugal, don't be fooled.  They will strike at you as soon as they perceive an opening.  All the while they are undermining you with assassinations and religous unrest.   They will put your merchants out of business and spy incessantly on you.  It can get pretty hardcore and it can be difficult to keep an empire together when you start having rebellions and then your neighbor gets ballsy because they just allied with your other neighbor and decides to attack. 

True dat.  I'm playing as the Holy Roman Empire, and had a pretty sweet arrangement set up; marital alliances with France and Poland to secure my two big borders (I'd already removed Milan from the game after they attacked me), and a non-marital alliance with Byzantium since hey, a two emperors league sounded cool.  I figured since I had my main problem borders on Europe taken care of I could concentrate on taking the war to the infidel Moors down in N. Africa.  Wrong.  Byzantium shows their true colors and besieges Zagreb.

But they're paying, my friends, they're paying.  They only have 3 provinces left and I've allied with the Turks just to further twist the knife in.

You go girl.  But if I can be serious for a moment, what difficulty are you playing on?

Medium for the campaign, hard for the battles.

Hilarious. One of my cities got swarmed by a big German army....I have barely any troops in the city (something like 400 of mine vs 1500 of them). The moment they started laying seige, I decided to preemptively attack (before they could build siege equipment).

It first started off with my archers picking their archers off at a distance. I then ran out of ammo, and couldn't think of what to do.

Figured since the archers were useless, I decided to open the gate and lure their army closer so my castle's built in artillery could start picking them off. It became this cat and mouse thing for awhile, my archers finally sacrificed to the full....So I then decided to kite with my spearmen. For some reason, that brought their entire army closer. My spearmen made it back inside the gates, and now the enemies are just getting pegged by the castle's artillery.

Been letting it run at 3x speed for about an hour now. I've killed 60% of their army so far, while mine is down 30%. Maybe in a few hours I might win this battle.  :lol:

That is perhaps the only thing I disliked about the series - if you cuold not win a battle (manually) quickly, it could be drawn out for hours.



Oh, I hated how rebel armies would just pop up all over the pace late in the game. After I went through the trouble to free eastern Europe/Asia Minor from the Mongols, they rebel against me.

There is an option to put a time limit on the batles but when I check it, it doesn't seem to have any effect.

Drawn out battles can get annoying, but I find the battle time limits even more annoying.  I always turn that off.

I knew about the time limits, but I don't like them either.

=========

Pretty sad, considering I didn't even step outside of my castle at this point:

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v231/lonestar627/Games/fortress.jpg)

Damn.  I've been playing on medium battle difficulty and I seldom lose, might need to bump it up.  However, then I'd probably get my ass kicked left and right because the only thing keeping my empire alive in the early goings is brilliant military victories and campaigns.  In the beginning when times are thin, it can get ugly in a hurry.  That's the best time though because after you cross that threshold of size and power, and you have the money rolling in, nobody can really mess with you. 

I haven't really had any drawn out battles.  The only time I was in danger of that happening was when an army attacked me but strangely sat outside the castle walls , I had to bait them to crash the gates.  Barely won, It was a desperate struggle to fend off a General's body guard with some peasants and archers. 


Anyone want to get some multiplay going? I'm aching to get my shit stoved in.

Thank you for sharing?

(http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1270_reg.gif)

Goddamn, that screenie looks vidcard-meltingly delicious. If the reports of MP go well, I may well have to pick this one up. It sounds like an improved version of Knights of Honor, without the irritating issue of 100 years of work going to waste because the tart your third-generation heir ends up marrying turns out barren.

It really isn't all that much of a resource hog.  I've got an AGP version ATI X850 and only a 2GHz processor (but with 2 GB of RAM, which helps) and I"ve got every single bell and whistle turned up to max.  Not even a hint of slowdown.  It seems to be a pretty forgiving game, hardware-wise.

Stray, that shot isn't that sad considering that real armies attempting to take a castled location by brute force historically have taken heavy losses.

It really doesn't take That many people to defend a closed castle; it's all about access points.

Agreed. Just running with a 6600GT here, Barton, and 1.5 ram.

This game is amazingly stabile for a new PC game. It's very odd. It launches as quickly as a web browser, runs smooth for long periods of time, doesn't choke and hiccup when quitting. Only problem I'm having right now is with Alt-Tabbing.


Yeah, but I think they died more from stupid AI and exploiting more than any intelligent strategy on my part.  8-)

Look at those guys still at my gates (heavy calvary, so it took awhile for them to fall...they can resist arrows a little better). They're still standing there, despite me wiping out the bulk of their army. They finally moved when I started shifting my units inside...But at that point, the opposing force had been reduced to 10% of what it was.

Actually, a castle isn't a very big advantage in this game.  For starters, with a decent sized army it will only take you two turns to build a crapload of rams and ladders and towers.  Yes, you do need more men than the opposing force, but if you're attacking from multiple points, you'e basically going to get over the walls or through the gates.  And if it's raining, the defenders are basically fucked as they have no hope of burning your towers or rams.  Once gunpowder is invented, even the most primitive cannonry will punch a breachable hole in the walls in a couple shots.  You usally get primitive bombards early 14th century, and then castles are practically useless.  Before that, I've found that ladders are the most useful seige implements, as they don't burn, and you just attach them to your cheapest units and zerg multiple spots along a wall.


Also, the Islamic factions are pretty much overpowered.  You canc all your own jihad.  All you need is an Imam (priest equivalent) with a high enough piety rating, and if you're pumping them out like you should be (they're cheap and you want to either preserve public order or sow dissention) then you will quickly and easily develop an Imam with a high enough piety rating.  Then you simply call a jihad on your enemy, and march there with a huge zerg army or cheap yet rabid believers who will almost NEVER rout.  You can easily daisy chain your conquests all the way to your ultimate goal, and other Islamic factions may even join you in your efforts.  Justapose this with the extremely difficult method of getting one of your priests elected from the college of cardinals, and you begin to see the problem.  A crusade is a powerful tool and the Moslems can gio around calling them willy nilly on whoever they like whenever they like (although there is a cooldown).



Nobody wants to give multiplay a shot? 

I hate you guys so much. Now I have to go buy a new distraction game. :)

Thought I'd post this if you want to play something other than the starting 5 factions right off the bat:


Unlock All Factions

Find your way to the Medieval II Total War\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign directory and youll see a file called descr_strat. Cut and Paste the unlockable section into the playable section. Now just save and close and youll have all your factions unlocked.

[edit]

Remember to remove the original unlock listing though.

Stats for my new Byzantine Spy:

Kyriakos Loukites

Retinue: Catamite

Not all men find the opposite sex to be the most distracting. +1 Agent's skill

All you have to do in order to unlock all the factions is win one single short campaign.  It's pretty easy, can't imagine feeling the need to go into the game and get all technical just to bypass such an easy task.


I'm glad you all enjoyed my homosensual turn of phrase.  I try and live up to the grief title, and it's not always easy.

But you manage, don't you?

I'm tempted to pick this up based just on the talk that happens here. Damn you all! I also have to buy R6 Vegas.

Yeah, but I got started on a long campaign already. Didn't feel like playing one of those 5 nations again.

Anyhow, it's not technical. Just a little copy and pasting.


It's a good game to get. It's shiny. Has lots of replay value. Runs well. Has all the bells, whistles, and presentation of Rome, but with the larger setting of the first Medieval game. Awesome battle play, and it can almost function as a decent turn based strategy game as well.

The only thing they could improve upon at this point is to include some of Civ's culture and technology focused elements. Civ with Total War combat. That'd be perfect imo.

It's already a fairly deep turn based strategy, almost up there with Civ.  I actually like it more than Civ because there is so much variety with the units and the settings and the flavor and the buildings that each faction has access to.  Civ 4 is so fucking homogenous I can't play it anymore.  It's definitely a must buy.  I'm about to start a long campaign, I haven't gone far enough in the short campaigns to see how the New World interplay goes.  So far I've beaten it on short campaigns with England and the Moors.  I just need to decide what faction to play with, I'm leaning towards Denmark, Russia or Byzantium.

I'm Byzantium atm, but might restart as Denmark. Less early hassles to deal with, I think.

The territory you're given is either secluded on islands, or your surrounded by a lot of mountains. Makes moving around a bit of a pain.

I also have to deal with Catholic priests in my lands a lot....And you can't cast them out as heretics. There's no recourse except to recruit a lot of Orthodox priests....Something you don't have to do as much with other civilizations.

That's on top of dealing with heretics and Muslims (who you'll being seeing a lot more of in Byzantine lands for some reason).

Turks to the East, Egypt to the South, Hungary to the North, Venice to the West. Probably best if you take out the Turks as quickly as possible.

The units are cool, but footmounted archers take a few more steps than Western armies (you're given horse archers earlier instead).

I started a long campaign on hard/hard difficulty with Milan.  What I've come to realize is that Infantry is king.  Fuck cavalry.  Fuck archers.  Archers are only good if they are on a wall, otherwise, the footspeed of armies is way too fast in this game to get enough shots off to make wasting gold and a coveted spot in the army on an archer.  Cavalry is good, however, 90% of the battles I am fighting are sieges for control or defense of a city.  This means cavalry isn't very sueful, you need open space, and their advantage with charging is almost moot in the tight confines of a city.

Another rad thing I've noticed is that the battlefields mimic the campaign map 1:1.  If you attack across a river, there will be a river between you and the opposing army.  If you're standing on a bridge and you get attacked, you'll wind up on a bridge, or behind one.  If you're in a forest, etc.  Pretty cool.


Anyway, the Italian factions suit my playstyle best.  I make all my settlements cities, rake in the trade, have a strong navy, and just make a lot of militia men.  This works great with Milan or Venice because they have the best militiamen in the game, so no need really to waste shitloads of money on castles (both as lost income and building up stables and archery ranges).  You can get decent range units from the militias as well, and cities are where you make siege units, so they have everything.  Also, Milan has the best X-bow units in the game, and they are really pretty sick because their melee is so strong.

Seems like every time you play a new faction you have all kinds of new units and buildings to play with.  A cool Milanese unit is some kind of standard bearing unit, who wheel this huge wooden contraption around that holds a Milanese standard that inspires the troops around it, and is guarded by an elite cadre of troops.  Neat.
 

I'm just really not feeling the value of castles. I might have one just to make some top end cavalry and archers, but its completely just for fun and because I can.  At least, that's the plan from now on, since I just figured it out.  It just doesn't make any sense, cities have walls too, and why invest so heavily in these huge castles when once you max them out they're obsolete from gunpowder anyway, and really aren't that much more formidable than a city wall anyway. 


Basically I'm kicking ass even on hard/hard, and I've already secured nothern Italy, Corsica, and Sardinia whilst simultaneously fending off a league of Venice and Holy Roman Empire.  Raped Bologna and Venice, almost too easy. You guys noticing the AI leave very important cities (VENICE) with paltry garrisons even when you're in extreme proximity to them? 

By the way, if you want to see some real religious struggle, play on the Iberian peninsula.  I was the Moors and had Potuguese and Spanish Cardinals in my provinces, I had to have 5 Imams and the best mosques I could make at the time just to maintain the staus quo.  It was extreme, and it hindered me in the early going because I had to foucus on training Imams and shelling out money for temples that early.

For regular troops, yeah.  Rome had cavalry way overpowered, so I think they hit it just right with infantry being so important in this game.  That said, I'm still a firm believer in artillery.  No matter how great your troops are, they aren't as good as a dozen giant flaming projectiles streaking the sky.  Furthermore, I don't like wasting my troops on ladder zerg rushes when I could just as easily destroy static fortifications with my trebuchets and catapults.

"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon Bonaparte

"I do not have to tell you who won the war. You know, the artillery did." - Gen George S. Patton

"Ultima Ratio Regum." -- Translation: the final argument of kings. -- Motto engraved on French cannons at the direction of Louis XIV

"Artillery is the god of war." - Stalin

"Contrary to popular belief, we at artillery command do not believe we're God. We merely borrowed His "Smite" button." - Anonymous

"The Mission of the Artillery is to give some class to what would otherwise be merely a vulgar brawl." - Frederick the Great

"An artillery barrage is a terrifying thing." - Erich Maria Remarque

Heh, ever play Field Ops in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory?

Nope.  I don't really like run 'n gun shooters, and I also don't like too many team based shooters (BF series, Day of Defeat, etc).  If I play a shooter, I play single player.

I was commenting that ladder zerging combined with a ram is the best option of siege equipment that is constructed on site.  Of course artillery is much better, then you don't have to wait to assault a settlement either.  I think it's a little overpowered that with one catapult you can bring down even the thickest walls though. Alsd, while artillery is awesome for sieges, I find it has limited value for open field combat, if any at all.  You get what, one wildly imprecise barrage before the enemy engages you.  I've had my cats misfire on spearmen positioned directly in front of them.  Not cool.  Cannons are somewhat better but the real culprit the way I see it lay in the fact that combat speed is way too damn fast.  Basically you just load up on powerful infantry and zerg.  I win every fight with that straegy.  Sure, I'll make sure I have spearmen as part of the infantry corps to ward off enemy cavalry, and maybe I'll have a couple divisions of my own cavalrly, but everything else is extraneous. 

One thing that does piss me off to no end is that even if the enemy attacks you it will NEVER attack you from a position of strength.  It's sort of like ok, what the fuck is the point of deploying my troops intelligently, or using defensive units like archers if I have to engage them?  Look I'm not saying In want the AI to be stupid, I'm just saying it gets a little ridiculous when their army attacks you and then just sits there and won't move until you expose yourself.  Then you can get into these queer little cat and mouse games with feints that feel more like exploiting the AI then strategy.

Use your wings.  I tend to concentrate my heavy infantry units on the left and right wings, and I try to envelop the enemy (I'll wheel them outward so I sort of have a "U" formation once the enemy engages, prior to engagement my formation looks like an inverted "U".  Yes, this is sort of the Cannae tactic).  This has the benefit of keeping the enemy boxed into a nice, tight little kill zone.  My center will gradually get wiped out, but I usually have enough time to really put a hurting on them from the catapults that are positioned just behind the weak center.  Oh, I also set my general and another cavalry unit next to my artillery for, A: protecting the artillery if the center breaks, and B: keeping my general from getting killed.

I do get some friendly fire deaths, but nothing like the amount of enemy I kill.  The trick is to always target a unit that is center mass of the enemy formation, and to never, ever put your artillery into "fire at will" mode.

No firre at will.  Good call.  I'll try that.  I have been noticing that I need to length my lines for envelopage instead of just having so much backup.

Yeah, the thing of it is, though, that some people don't like playing like this because it really is an inflexible way of fighting.  You're relying on your troops to keep the enemy bottled up; you don't really care how many people they kill, because that's the artillery's job anyway.  A buddy of mine can't fathom how I play like this, because he's a cavalry/archer fanatic, which I admit is a lot more flexible.

Also, you can't half-ass relying on artillery.  Your armies are always going to move dirt slow, and you have to go thin on the other types of troops you'd usually use because so many of your available slots are taken up by artillery.  For instance, my minimum is 6 catapult units to an army.  Sometimes I go heavier than that.  That's a lot of men you're losing just to be able to bring the big gun.  The problem is that you have to bring a lot of firepower because the whole objective behind this tactic is to kill as many people as you can fast, fast, fast.  In a prolonged battle you've lost simply because you'll probably have less hand to hand units than the other guy.  Time is not on your side using this tactic.

Some observations

 - Changes in the AI seem to mean a far higher proportion of battles occur at towns and castles - I think my first campaign has only had one major engagement on an open field.

 - I hate bloom. If you don't wish to develop headaches and eyesight problems, remember to turn bloom off in the video options.

 - Assassins and spies seem far more useful than in previous versions, playing the British in the short game (objectives are to kill Scotland and France) I had decent success by fighting Scotland openly, while softening up the French by continually destroying +Public Order buildings with my assassins, by the time I got around to fighting the French they were too weak from all the riot quelling and repair work to put up much resistance.

 - What the hell is the point of merchants? I can get them returning up to 11 florins a turn, but that's a RoI of around 100 years. They don't live that long. Anyone know what I'm supposed to do with merchants?

Merchants are worthless.  It's possible to get much more than 11 gold per turn, I've gotten 97 on a silver resource (merchant acuity helps some, remember) but the thing is, resource valuation seems to be based partially off proximity.  I'm playing Milan right now and I was all over the silver and gold to the east of my position.  However, once I expanded a bit, instead of making 97//37 with my merchants, I was only making 23/10/.  I don't know if you're supposed to fucking move on in search of more exotic shit at that point or what, but count me out.  It's a pain in the ass because rival merchants can run you out of biz and you lose the income and the merchant.  Such frailty I can't even believe what the hell they were thinking with merchants, such a half baked idea.  I'm just not going to waste my time with chump change.  Sure I recouped my investment and then some initially, but since then I've lost a couple merchants and at 550 a pop, how much can you really be making even if your average ROI is 20 (it isn't)? 


Big Gulp--

You strategy is insane.  Haven't tried that specifically.  What I meant is, I drew out my line much longer than usual, and held back my general and another cavalry in reserve to plug gaps.  I brough xbows, 2 cats, and a ballista, and peppered the enemy.  After about 4 direct hits with the cats, their troops were shaken, and they charged me.


Basically, I figured out how to get those assholes off their hilltops and into a battle without charging up the mountainside into their lances.  Still pisses me off that I always have to engage them, I think they should have made it so if they attack you they are the aggressor, I don't have a problem if I attack them and they sit back and wait.


With six cats, do you usually rout the enemy pretty quickly? I mean that's what you're banking on right?

Also, I might restart my game on very hard/very hard.  What is the shittiest faction to play?  This shit is getting too easy on hard/hard.  The fucking Venetians allied with the Holy Roman Empire, Sicily, and France.  They all attacked me and I beat them back, took Bologna from the Germans, and then took Venice.  As far as I can tell the only thing that got harder from medium-->hard difficulty is the  computer gangrape.  Didn't notice anything else.



edit:  could just be that Milan is really fucking good.    but i doubt it

Drawing out your line is always good in this game.  Depth isn't much of an issue since the guys in the back really don't do much other than stand around with their dicks in their hands.  Much better to string them out 2 deep and enable those really broad, wheeling maneuvers.  What I usually do is this...  I create three groupings of infantry.  Three spearmen units make up my center, which I designate group 1.  Then I create 2 more groups of 3 melee units, which usually consist of armored sergeants.  Those are groups 2 and 3, and they compose my wings.  Then the 6 (or more, depending on what I've got available) catapults are group 4, they go behind my center.  Right there we're already up to a minimum of 15 units.  Then my general and a unit of knights round out the mix.  I don't use archers at all.  They really don't rack up that many casualties, and even their flaming shots don't do much to destroy morale.  I also don't use ballistae since they need a clear arc of fire, whereas catapults can be launched over my troops.

I wouldn't say I rout them, but they do go to shaken pretty damned quickly.  I'd say about 60% of the time I'm able to kill their general really quickly, which also helps immeasurably.  When they do run they don't have much success since they're already in the pocket.  As soon as most of their units break I make the 'pults cease fire (or I redesignate targets, since the AI likes to leave it's archers in the rear) and any stragglers that escape the pocket get run down by my 2 cavalry units.

Seems like Scotland could be a challenge. And Byzantium.

As for the value of castles and calvary, perhaps there's too much legacy code from Rome: TW in that respect?? Medieval warfare should be a slightly different beast. Castles and calvary were far more decisive and employed than in ancient battles.

[edit]

Another thing about the Scots...

I never realized just how bad these guys had it until observing their positioning in this game. It's amazing that they're still around.  :-P

Scotland only has to stave off England.  I was thinking Poland would be the hardest, because you're surrounded ona ll sides and you have the Mongols to deal with eventually.


But do you see what I'm saying about the uselessness of castles?  You said so yourself you don't use archers, you just use a lot of infantry and artillery.  Cities can do that and then some, and they can also pump out archers and cavalry eventually.  Sure it's not top shelf but who cares when you're making triple the amount from your city anyway?  Not to mention the other benefits like being able to build agents etc.

They need a patch and an expansion to perfect the game, it's stil awesome but it could be nearly perfect.

Never said I didn't like archers. I like them, especially mounted ones. I just hate that they run out of ammo so quickly.

As for artillery, has anyone here played Egypt? Their artillery hurls giant fireballs.

Everyone's artillery does.

Anyone ever bribed an army?  Even when I have 10,000+ gold, and am targeting a shitling army without a general, they always refuse.  The manual makes bribing out to be the shit, whatever.

Wait...Really? I'm way behind then.

Install impression is negative - the version of SecuROM Safedisc they're using seems to loathe my DVD drive and won't recognize my DVDs as legit.  :x

Time to do what must be done. Stupid publishers. So full of hate.

Damn, that sucks.  :oops:

Played a bunch. Scotland is now this close --> <-- to owning the British Isles. Just a pesky matter of some peasants in Londontown left.

It probably would've been harder, but they tried to take one of my less-fortified garrisons (200 men in a wooden stockade) with the majority of their forces (100 cavalry, ~800 infantry, 100 archers). Blew up their ram early on (yay fire arrows), forcing their entire 800-man infantry column to attempt to simultaneously climb a single pair of ladders.

Needless the say, my computer nearly ate it, dropping down to a couple of seconds per frame towards the middle. Fortunately, defending against guys on ladders is really really easy, so my 120 highlanders (+1 rank, +1 weapons, +1 armor) wore 'em down sufficiently to get the remnants of the 800-man charging force to run away like little girls.

The rain of flaming fire-arrow death probably helped.

At that point, they somehow magicked up a second ram; a lone unit of peasants pushed it to the gate and broke through. The remaining English cavalry (which mostly stood around outside my walls getting shot at by towers the whole time) were pretty readily crushed by my leader's unit, which is good since I was down to single digits for my last pikeman and highlander units.

Went in with 200 men, came out with around 80 (apparently not everyone who falls is killed). They went in with around 1000 men, left with less than 200.

Tomorrow, the march on London. :)

I like it so far, although Medium is seeming quite easy, even for my first campaign. The UI is a bit clumsy in places, and I'm going to have to remap the hotkeys quite a bit. But other than that, it seems a worthy addition to any hardcore strategy fan's library.

Someone else play on hard campaign difficulty and tell me whether or not the AI gangs up on you.  I'm at war with Venice, France, Holy Roman Empire, and Sicily.  Then I got excommunicated for no reason other than defending myself from a Holy Roman attack.  By the way I'm Milan which means I'm beset on every side with enemies who are constantly sending armies at me.  What's really galling is that initially in the very beginning of the game I made an alliance with my Italian brothers Venice, who prompty betrayed me by attacking one of my cities without notice.

I don't know whether the computer is cheezing it, or if Venice is just manipulating her allies against me.  I'm going for the former, because Diplomatic relations are pretty basic.  Yes, they are much improved over Rome and Medieval, but people seem to start off hating me (at least on hard with Milan) and there isn't much you can do to change that perception. 


I have been desperately flailing for an ally in this struggle, and finally convinced England to assist me.  They haven't helped at all, and probably only accepted because I'm the number one power in the land and because they too are at war with France.  Despite being allies, they consider me to be "so-so."  Great. 


I finally have resigned myself to no outside help, it is unfortunate that my only princess to date died tragically of disease, I was just about to forge a marriage alliance.  Right now it's been a stalemate for about 20 turns, with me basically pumping out max italian spearmen every turn just to keep up, and seriously hamsrtung by the prodigious amount of unrest created by the excommunication.  That's becasue I need 10 man garrisons and low taxes just to prevent riots.  But it just goes to show how strong the Italian economies are, especially with all cities.  I'm incredibly still makign like 5,000 florins a turn, with the largest army in the game, and only seven provinces to support it *and the aforementioned low taxes I've been forced to levy). 


But FINALLY the pope just died, and I voted corecctly, and desperately for the new Hungarian Pope.  If Venice would have won, which they almost did, I would have been royally fucked.  That would have been another guaranteed 20 turns of excommunication plus the Papal States themselves probably would have allied with Venice and then attacked me.  Fortunately, as it stands, I have a "perfect" relationship with the papacy. One would think this would help me a lot long term, but they are allied with the Holy Romans, and I'm betting anything that if I can't end that war, my relationship with the papacy will deteriorate once again.

True to history, since I'm playing the Holy Roman Empire, the Pope hates me.  Unfortunately for the Pope I own Florence and Bologna, so I'm right above the Papal states.  If I'm ever excommunicated I will be traveling south to sack Rome and show the Pope just how far his pointy hat can be inserted rectally.

I don't know if it'll actually make any difference in the game, but it will be cathartic for me.  Especially since it seems like the Inquisition has set up permanent residence in my territories and has destroyed way too many of my family members, priests, and merchants (when I was still making them, not knowing they were useless).

Shit.  It's weird, I'm chilling right next to Rome and it never even crossed my mind to sack Rome after I was excommunicated.  I'm pretty sure that's some kind of socialization at work.  I really should have just taken the city.  Would have been cool to see the papacy relocate.  I wonder if a crusade would have been called against me at that point?  Probably, I've seen one called on Toulouse before, albeit, that's the only time I've seen it called on a catholic settlement.

It happened to an actual Holy Roman Emperor; Frederick II Hohenstauffen.  He grew up in Sicily and so was friendly with Muslims, which automatically put him under suspicion.  From all reports he was incredibly irreligious, which was bizarre for the 13th century.  Also the fact that HRE territory was positioned directly to the north and the south of the Papal States got the pope a wee bit worried.

Long story short, the Pope had been hectoring him forever to go on a crusade to retake Jerusalem.  Eventually he agrees to, but comes down with an illness and postpones.  The Pope has a hissy fit, excommunicates him and further tells him that now he can't go on crusade.  Frederick II ignores him, and goes on crusade.  Not the usual crusade, though, since he was so friendly with the Muslim powers he was able to cut a deal with them where he just waltzed into Jerusalem and took it over without a fight of any kind.  The Pope now really goes apeshit and actually calls for a crusade against Frederick II.

Church history is fun.   :-D

If it's anything like the old Medieval games, killing the Pope just makes another Pope pop up. Sacking and occupying the Papal States causes the Papal seat to go into exile.

I just remember the mechanics around messing directly with the Papacy being very odd.

'R'ing the 'F' 'M' tells us that a new pope is elected and petitions catholic states for a new region from which to base operations.

New-pope then loves the faction that gave him his new digs; hates you; gets all the other catholic factions to hate you; and gets all your minions to hate you.

Ah, ok, so it works different than the old M:TW game.

I don't own this one yet, so I don't have a manual to read.  :-D

How to make any enemy army run away in terror in one quick step: enfilade fire from a battery of bombards and mortars.

I'm currently running through a long game as Venice. While the Italian militia is nice, adding in some feudal knights and dismounted feudal knights for 'shock' doesn't hurt at all.

How hard would it have been to add hotseat capability to this game? That would have been great, the battles could at the very least be simulated.  No network play either.  Would be amazing to play a campaign with other people, even if the battles were all simulated.

Replayed Rome a bit...

It didn't register to me until now how shiny this new game really is.

Any suggestions how to get princesses out of your territory? I've got three English tarts sitting around York, Nottingham and London and every turn they seem to try to propose to my generals or something. Fortunately I married all the boys young.

I've run the bastards off the Isles at this point - took way more casualties running the sieges of Nottingham and London myself than I really  should have. Wall fighting sucks, as does having to cut through three regiments of royal guards with three regiments of pike militia. Made a bit of a mistake by taking a breather to rebuild their cities - they've expanded out of their little fortress across the Channel and now somehow control Paris with a HUGE garrison. Fortunate the Danes are whacking their fort, so I expect I'll just use my ex-Crusader army to siege Paris into submission.

Also, wtf is up with Inquisitors? I had a Crusading army 2 turns from Constantinople and then this asshat Inquisitor waltzes over and burns my general at the stake (with a whole four piety points! One of the highest ones I had!). Since they're so far from home, I can't get another general to them in one turn, and the entire 15000-florin army disbands. Argh!

Inquisitors are bullshit, merchants are bullshit, assassins are bullshit.

Get an assassin to stick a poisonous snake up her privates.



Princesses are easier to kill than most agents.



Assassins are in no way bullshit.

You need a spy to work with them, stick a spy in an enemy city, then train your assassins by blowing up public order buildings. It is a great way to destabalise a faction that you plan to attack next, since you rarely get caught. The spy is important because he makes sure you can choose the building with the highest % chance of success.

What is bullshit is the percentages quoted for success, assassins seem much more likely to succeed than the quoted percentage suggests.

Also, a big improvent in assassin effectiveness in this game, is that unlike previous total war games experienced assassins will *usually* survive failed missions.

There is one new downside to assassins. You cannot destroy factions with them anymore, I managed to assassinate the entire Scottish royal family in a single turn, unfortunately a new leader just pops up.


EDIT: Unless you meant the other guy's assassins, yeah, they are intensely annoying.

Tried it on two different ones; 33% chance of success for the guy right out of school, failed both, put him on a ship to the mainland for some training and ... pirates attack the ship just outside of port.

Fuckers.

I'll train some assassins and see if I can weaken the English a bit that way, then take out the girlies. Well, if their faction still exists by the time the assassin gets back, anyway.

Also, an aside, when the hell am I going to get my Total War MMO?

In my imaginary, posted-about-far-too-often, omg-bbq, imaginary-best-game-evar, you'd play a general who gets a handful of units and retinue, and you'd team with other generals to face off against npc rebels, and enemy player realms in set piece battles a la total war.

Experience levels would give you more 'points' which which you buy unit upgrades/abilities (principly specialisms which have downsides as well as upsides, much like total war units), and more unit/retinue slots, so that a high level general can choose a different set of units to lead into battle. Some effort would be made to ensure that battles are between army groups of similar points amounts.

Your retinue would craft equipment and heal fallen unit members over time, they'd gather resources in locations which your realm controlled, or act as scouts giving some degree of advance knowledge of enemy troop disposition, or incapacitate enemy units or their captains or whatever.

It could have magic and elves if it really must - though it is not at all necessary, total war artillery provides all the flaming death anyone really needs.

Yeah, that sounds like us.

*nods* 'Mercenary el Capitan Online' could be lots of fun. On the Ocean? You're pirates. Or Privateers. On land? Your a 'Free company'. Or a militia for a town. Or Robber Barons.

Sign me up.

LFM for Scot farming XP army!

Anyone know how to deal with plauge? The 'helper' said I needed to quarantine the towns affected, but I couldn't find that option for the life of me. The plagues can hit really hard, putting you in the red for 10+ turns if you're not careful.

To be honest, I think they went a bit nuts with the artillery; after a while, you get heavy ordnance coming out your rear, and the whole point of medieval warfare sort of goes out the window when you can just sit back and blow the heck out of the enemy before you send in any troops.

I haven't dealt with it yet, but I imagine that you need to increase public health bonuses somehow. You need to build more town halls/mayor's palaces for that. Certain civilizations have additional ways of going about it as well (Byzantium gets public baths and aqueducts for example...Arab nations get hospitals).

Ok, so I am not losing my mind; there is no 'quarantine this city' function, correct?

I'm currently working on the Spanish reconquista, which is a lot of fun. Between England and Spain(my side) we've already wiped out France entirely. I'm currently ignoring the Pope's calls for a crusade, since those Mongols are just a bunch of catass l33t power invaders with way too much time on their hands. Besides, Antioch is way the fook over in the boonies, who cares?

The moorish area is a bitch to conquer since their southern cities are way way down in the middle of nowhere. Getting to Timbuktu took forever, since I kept on getting intercepted by army after army of moors cockblocking my righteous desire to smack 'em. But no worries, I've converted most of northern Africa to Catholicism through sheer priest zerging.

I got hit with a plague in York last night; no, AFAIK, there's no Quarantine This City button - you just don't move units into or out of it. Any units. At all.

I also had the city start constructing buildings that boosted public health while they were plagued. Might've helped, but probably not.

Returning to my earlier theme of spies and assassins being teh awesome....

Build spies in plague cities - then send them to Paris and Edinburgh to spread the love.

I hate you all for making me want this game.  Any word on when the patch is expected to be out?

I like spies, but I just don't have any luck with my assassins. They're as reliable as merchants.

As for the tactic above: Genius.

Dude, what's really pissing me off about this game is that I'll be at war with someone, and the Pope will give me a mission that says "make any aggressive action towards this faction and you'll be excommunicated."  BUT YOU'RE AT WAR WITH THEM. AND THEY KEEP. ON. ATTACKING YOU. 

I mean that has to be a bug right?  It's the stupidest thing in the world that you are expected to just be raped repeatedly while the enemy is in your lands and do nothing about it.  If it isn't a bug then I really don't respect that design decision.  Epitome of lame.  What a contrivance.

Also, factions will often times decline to accept even the most generous of ceasefires despite losing the war, or even being on the verge of annhilation.  However, pretty much all my concerns are in the patch wish list, so with luck, we'll see them resolved soon.

I got this three times in a row when trying to rid the Isles of the English. I'm sitting here dying of army upkeep costs and the Pope's all "sit yo' ass down, clown, or you get the boot". Then the English cardinal died and it stopped happening. In fact, the Pope gave me a mission to go clobber the Danish; I'm ignoring him since they're worth like 400 florins/turn to me.

As for ceasefires, yeah, I got that too. Then I knocked them down to a single castle left and their princesses hurried on up to make peace. Like a fool, I accepted to try to build up the new digs and now I've gotta siege Paris.

Reading on the froums that the first update will be in about two weeks.



Edit:  actually, that was 2 weeks ago that it was supposed to be in 2 weeks, and there is 18 pages of people saying ok where the hell is the update.

OK, here's another issue some of you may have encountered:


You send your calvalry into charge and they don't seem to add any shock value, and are actually at times slowing down and then pulling out swords and such instead of couching their lances as they engage.  Sound familiar? Well, I scouted the forums and apparently, MOST people assume that when you double click on a traget, your regiment will charge it.  Actually what happens is, they just "rush" to that spot.  If you want them to charge you must single click.  Then your regiment will walk to their charge range, and then start charging.

Apparently, this was thought to add to the realism because it isn't feasible for units to charge from hundreds of meters away and manage to hold a cohesive formation.  However, to me and a lot of others, this is a supremely unintuitive control scheme.

An additional note that I gleaned from the forums today that I didn't know but has benefitted me greatly: 


When you select a building to be built, go into your settlement details where you can find the public order/trade/farming income modifiers.  A "grayed out" stat will have appaeared and you can see what the building will accomplish once it is built.  In this way, you can tell exactly what buildings will make the most economic sense to build at each moment in time.  Why build a 1200 florin warehouse in Bologna which yields an extra 50 florins per turn, when you can build a port for 800 florins in Ajaccio that will increase monies earned by 80 florins a turn? 

If you're like me, just sort of trying to use educated guesses, or at best, try and memorize the before and after of the totals stat in the settlement details screen, then this will be of great use.

What's the big disadvantage to being excommunicated? Tonight, playing HR Empire of all things, I got threatened with excomunication for trying to wipe out Venice, which had been harassing me for an hour. I'm like, the Pope is gonna excommunicate the HRE. Right. Go ahead, Papa, make my day.

You can be "crusaded" upon if you're excommunicated. Not an ideal situation to say the least.

Well, its only CALLED the Holy Roman empire. In reality they often clashed with the pope as well. Frederick II for example was excommunicated twice and the pope called him the Antichrist.

Apparently being excommunicated makes all the other non-excommunicated Catholic factions like you a lot less. The Milanese and Venetians have been excommunicated and reinstated a few times in my game; doesn't seem to have done much since they're fools for war with or without Popish approval.

If one of those enemies you're fighting has a particularly high standing with the pope (especially those of the same nation as the pope), then there's a good chance they'll petition for crusade.

People can attack you with impunity whether or not a crusade is called upon you (if you're excommunicated...hell, they can pretty much do that anyhow).  Also, perhaps the worst thing is that your public disorder skyrockets in your cities.  You need huge garrisons to quell the rising tide of pissed off people.  It really sucks. 


I can't wait until they release the patch, once you get deep into the game there are far too many bugs that destroy the immersiveness.  I've decided not to play anymore until I install that sucker.

 

Yeah, but they've got a cheap, instant supply of units to zerg you with.

I don't know that it is so ridiculous. The modern day UN makes threats like this all the time.

And it's not as if any faction forgives you for being at war with their allies just because you didn't start it.

In the situation you describe the pope is not saying he expects you to talk Mr. Bond, he is saying he expects you to die.

Exactly why I like this, too.  A lot of people have only known PJP II as their Pope, and think the position is all sweetness and light.  It certainly wasn't back in the day.  You had warrior popes, popes engaged in the investiture controversy with the Holy Roman Emperors, popes who sold high offices and lived with their mistresses, a period of time when the Medici family tried to get the office for their family in perpetuity, and a period when the entire church infrastructure was exiled to France and there were at least three competing people all calling themselves "Pope".

In short, I like it when the Popes are vindicative, petty assholes.  Much closer to reality.

Not intuitive, but accurate. You might be thankful for it if you can get use to it, so you're not accidentally draining the energy of your calvalry constantly.

No. Don't attack them and only defend. If you do this, *THEY* will get excommunicated. Then it's open season. And if they keep doing it (and if you get a 'friendly' pope), the pope will declare a Crusade against them. Or even better, you can petition for a crusade agaisnt them. A crusade against the French and Paris is a thing of Beauty.

I've tried this and the Pope doesn't excommunicate the other side.

I KNEW I shouldn't have opened this thread. Looks like I will be making a stop at Fry's on the way home tonight.

Bastards!

It's a good game and it's one patch away from nirvana.

Isn't that what people said about SWG for Years?

Huh. No idea why you had a different experience. This tactic has worked for me several times now. I wonder if it is because I have a military alliance with the Papal States (and now a friendly pope - the old Milanese bastard finally died. There was much mourning in the streets of Venice. Truly.)?

Venice, bringing you the Counter-Reformation Old School style.

Yeah i think maybe what you're reporting has more to do with being very friendly with the Pope.

Picked it up last night and muddled my way through the tutorial. The default camera controls are teh sux- having to use the keypad on the SAME SIDE OF THE KEYBOARD AS THE MOUSE is fucking annoying as hell. I noticed there were some other camera control setups available, but I didn't have time to muck around with them yet. Is it remappable to WASD?

Partially due to the funky camera, and mostly due to the fact that I am an RTS n00bler, battles are a challenge for me. I have decided to try to get better at managing them, however, since the strategic part of the game seems pretty cool. I also LOVE the fact that I can play historical battles...that makes my nerd peen quiver in delight.

Doubt I will ever be competent enough for multiplayer, but I would be willing to join a game with a few others as a whipping boy...might learn a few things as I hemorrhage troops!

I stayed up way too late last night (just.. one more turn...) and finished my first (short) campaign. Scotland owns the world.

Yeah, the strategic game is great, I haven't enjoyed a TBS this much since SMAC. (I started just pulling overwhelming odds in on every battle and auto-resolving.)

I plan on playing the real-time battle simulator a bunch to get a lot better at that; I'd really like to play an epic-length game and fight every battle myself to get the real "0wn the w0rld" experience. Maybe buy some mead and get a BK paper crown to wear while doing it. :)

I've chilled out on the campaign a bit and have just been playing battles. Gonna pick it up again tonight though.

I agree though, the TBS portion is fun. But like I said, it'd be even cooler with more dimensions other than military buildup and conquest (though I guess that'd go against the whole idea of "Total War").

[edit]

BTW, has anyone played CivCity Rome? Any good?

TBS + City Sim sounds like a great idea too.

Oh but there is. Get a couple 10-subterfuge assassins roaming around and you can seriously weaken entire regions. I blew away England by putting their capital under siege and then assassinating their King (who was sitting out in a field somewhere in Wales for no apparent reason) - the city immediately revolted, triggering the 'faction destroyed' message. Then I just went around assassinating the shit out of people. The Pope eventually started contracting with me to assassinate heretics; 2000 florins for killing a single heretic? Givemoneysplzkthx.

There's also the trade game of building up your cities and trade networks; something like 75% of my income was from trade and I had trade agreements with every Catholic and most Orthodox factions.

I wonder what would happen if you assassinated the entire college of cardinals on the same turn, then assassinated the Pope...

That's cool and all, but assassination is still militaristic, just in a different way. I'm talking more about Civ's multi tiered focus on military, production, culture, and research. Something like that with a Total War battle engine would be the shit. Hell, stack on city simulation, and it'd be even more the shit than that.

Not that I'm complaining about Medieval II though.

How do I raze a city again? I remember hearing about it in the tips, but I didn't pay much attention at the time.

[edit]

Man, am I imagining things? Is there even an option for this?

God damn, now I gotta put this on my list of things to spend money for.

Unfortunately, it's kind of far down on a lengthy list.

You mean like utterly destroying it, Carthage-style?  Nope, it doesn't exist.  The worst thing you can do is sack a city once you've taken it.

Cool thanks. Nearly drove myself nuts last night trying to find a way.

Speaking of Carthage, I need a Hannibal game (plus theatrical feature). Rome:TW isn't good enough.

N00bed around with the Grand Campaign last night as England (when do I get access to the other factions?). I am still the world's worst battlefield commander, and I know almost nothing about the proper campaign strategies. However, I had a total fucking blast, so all was not lost  :-D

One more turn indeed.

There's like 10 more factions you can unlock. Or you can go to page 2 of this thread and find the unlocking instructions. :)

If you don't want to cheat, you can unlock them by completing a short campaign.

Some campaign strategy tips:

Don't bother with merchants (but do bother with merchant buildings)

If inquisitors are even near one of your low piety generals' cities, move them somewhere temporarily. They will be killed if you don't.

Build more cities than castles (and try to place your cities inland, with castles and forts on the outer/border areas).

Don't stuff all your cities with shitloads of troops (especially those inland ones). Paying their salaries gets expensive.

Never venture out on a ship with just one or two fleets. Make it five or six minimum.

I tend to send out a pair of ships with a spy to do exploring, sometimes a diplomat too to open trade agreements; if I lose 'em, big deal.

As for cities, stuff 'em full of the best pike militia you can buy, up to the free-upkeep limit. Cities let you keep some amount of the spearman pike units on hand for free - 5 for the largest cities, 1 or 2 for the little towns, I think.

Oh, and the AI is currently bugged and will never attack islands with troops. Island fortresses and towns make excellent staging grounds for transaquatic invasions. (I heart Corsica and Sardinia. And the British Isles.) This also means they'll never take certain islands - Corsica, Sardinia, Finland and some little island off Turkey are what I've discovered so far.

The AI factions might not, but in my last campaign I had a pirate fleet drop off a three-starred brigand general with 7 stacks of troops onto Corsica and siege it. That wasn't fun at all (Well, it was fun, but you get the point). I dunno if its just my campaign, but the pirate fleets love covertly inserting rebel/brigand armies behind my main lines.

Gah. Playing a Brit campaign now. This is like Easy Mode or sumthin'. I've taken over the entire British Isles, plus I've knocked down France to two cities. Doing the equivalent with France seemed like twice as long.

Also, the long campaign is TOO long. Should be 50 territories, I think.

Dude the long campaign is only 45 territories, (plus sometimes a Holy Land province) so 50 would actually be longer.  Also, what diffiulty are you playing on?  Unless it's Very Hard/ Very Hard, then you really are playing on easy mode.

Ah, thought the long campaign was 75 territories.

I have no idea why. Forget what I said. 45 isn't bad at all.


Playing Medium/Hard.

Saying anything less than Very Hard is Easy is silly though.

True, but seemed like you were knocking the game for being too easy when you're playing on a fairly humble difficulty setting. 

Just seemed liked there were was much more cockblocking involved playing France or Byzantium.

Though to be fair, I've been far less wasteful with troop deployment this time around.

Well naturally playing an island nation gives you some breathing room.  Word on the street is there is a bug where the AI won't attack islands.  Don't know if that applies to England, but I've never been attacked in Corsica or Sardinia.

After playing a few days, I have a few complaints (still fun overall though)-

It is tough to find/remember to move agents spread around the map. I wish the UI would focus on each unit that hasn't had any orders each turn ala Civ.
Not enough 'happens' each turn.
Not enough info about what each building does, or what it leads to; I am sure it is somewhere in the interface, but it needs to be available in the city overview.
Having a general die from natural causes enroute to a crusade is really punishing- I lost 10-15 good units to desertion within 3 turns.
I really suck at directing battles  :-D

They're trying to be a bit more realistic. Think of what would have happened if Richard had died en route during his Crusade.

Use the "lists" scroll under your faction information.  That's how I do the rounds on all my settlements and agents.  Saves a shitload of time from playing Where's Waldo.

Reading this thread made me start playing Rome: Total War again,  and actually playing out the battles.  Bastards.

I'm so poor! What's the trick to getting more money?

Your mouth.

Build roads.  Don't build so many farming improvements unless you want population problems.  Build ports, merchant facilites, establish trade rights with all factions.  Clear rebels from your territory.

Why would you buy these games and skip the battles?  I can't fathom that.

I may be an RTS hater, but if I want to play a decent turn based game there are much better options out there (EU2, Civ4, etc) than the campaign mode of the Total War games.  That'd be like buying a Ferrari but saying, "well, I'll keep to the side streets and only drive 35 mph tops".

I did that as well with R:TW. One reason why is that I hated the UI. Another reason was that the computer played better than me.

Unless you are looking to play a fancier, more complex version of Risk (but not as complex as the Paradox games), in which case letting the computer resolve battles for you makes sense. Basically when you let the computer fight, the game turns into a "beer and pretzels"-style wargame which if you like that kind of game is quite fun.

I let the computer fight battles all the time.  Any time the odds are heavily stacked in my favor, I sim it.

Yeah, that I can understand.  But to play the whole game in campaign mode?  Seems like a huge waste to me.

It is.

I think the TBS game is pretty cool, if a bit one dimensional, but the only reason I really play is battles. Though I do skip things stacked in my favor.

I haven't even finished a campaign yet though. I keep playing single battles.

Short campaigns only take a few hours.  On VH/VH they will take maybe twice as long, especially with a shitty faction.

Also, regularly review every army and garrison for old units that will never see battle or do anything useful even if they did, and disband them (they are normally eating at least 100 every turn). Then review every settlement you control and sell any recruitment buildings you don't use. Finally, convert castles to cities unless they are one of your two or three military production centres.

keep militia to defend interior cities bc they are housed for free in cities (the bigger the city the more they hosue freely).

Some more longer term money tips.

 - Take control of the college of cardinals. Do this by picking one of your largest interior city and build every church you can, and every growth enhancement you can (the population will probably get out of control - so you'll likely need a large garrison). Then keep building priests there and nothing else, you are shooting for theologians HQ + Huge cathedral, on the way you should be able to pump out higher piety preists than every other country, eventually you end up with 6+ cardinals and a pope from your country. This unlocks the real prize, the ability to successfully request crusades everytime the cooldown timer expires. Even with early game units, a crusade is worth around 1500 a turn per army just in saved upkeep, plus the pope gives you cash for taking part, plus you get to hire cheap crusader units, plus all that crusading is going to score you more money from sacking.

 - Play as an Italian faction, or just as good, sack Italian faction cities. They are all crazy rich.

Anyone go the scoop on why the patch is taking so long? The forums aren't much help there.

Someone on the dev team started a long game, and no work is getting done as a result.

imo.

Seriously, I worry about starting this game up without ten hours to spare.

Honestly, I think the playerbase reported a lot of pretty serious flaws with the game, and they have been scrambling to collect and repair them.

Patch is out. 

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/medieval2totalwar/download.html?sid=6163250&tag=feat_dls;title;0 (http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/medieval2totalwar/download.html?sid=6163250&tag=feat_dls;title;0)

Anyone have opinions?  Still thinking about picking this one up.

The patch fixes quite a bit, including the some of the more game-stopping bugs that a few people have mentioned. Passive AI was the worst of these - i.e., your enemies sit underneath your walls and get shot to death despite the fact they've lost all their siege equipment and can't possibly take the city. Someone also mentioned that they'd noticed the AI was retarded about defending their cities, even on VH difficulty; fortunately that's been fixed, and they seem to maintain adequate garrisons now.

By the by, never play this game on VH campaign difficulty. It's basically equivalent to turning diplomacy off. By turn 50 or so, every neighbor will be at war with you all the time, regardless of your historical alliances, strength, or their own weakness.

On that same note, the campaign is still a bit easy, even on very hard. It's difficult not to win (or be close to winning) before the invention of gunpowder and the discovery of the new world. That's been my experience from playing the Scottish, HRE and Spain, though the black death certainly fucks up any major European power when it hits.

I haven't had too much problem with the Pope, though his threats of excommunication can certainly be a bitch. Counter-attacking forces besieging your cities doesn't count as an act of aggression, though attacking enemy armies (even in your territory) does. Usually I fall back and wait for the rival faction to get excommunicated itself or for the excom threat to expire.

Overall, a vast improvement from R:TW, which I felt was the weakest in the TW series yet. AI has been vastly improved, over-powered units largely disposed of, and the gameplay is just more... interesting. After I finish playing rope-a-Pope as the HRE i'll try out a Muslim or Orthodox faction. Sicily looks pretty sweet as well - check out screenshots of the dismounted norman knights with their gladiator-esque masks.

P.s. - pathing on ladders in sieges is still fucked, as after the initial rush, troops will only climb one (instead of all four) ladders. AI also seems to still have problems assaulting any castle with more than one wall; it gets confused on bringing siege engines or rams through the first broken walls. Apparently there's another patch scheduled for February to fix this.

Picked this back up again this week...man, this game can be fun. I have developed a strict extermination policy for anyone who attacks me first- first the PoWs, then the populace. I want to get a big snake flag that says "Don't Fuck With Me" made to fly.

If only I could impale the PoWs to warn the others ala Vlad. That would be quality entertainment.

That would be the Milanese, I believe.

Strangely enough, I also fall into historical mode with this game.  If I'm playing a Catholic power I'll release Catholic POW's, and just occupy cities.  Orthodox POW's get ransomed, and their cities get sacked.  I show no mercy to the Muslim infidels and just go Genghis Khan, with an army of priests bringing up the rear to convert those fuckers quick.

The historical thing is cool if you're playing to a concept and everything - but I don't think it's ever an efficient way to play. As far as I can tell, executing if your commander has dread and releasing if he has chivalry is always the best plan - for the sake of building up positive traits.

Cities I always sack, the combination of reducing population for +public order, but not wiping out the population so it is still a viable province, and ++cash always makes me feel that sacking looks the best option in just about all circumstances.

Oh, definitely not.  I've never played the Total War games like I was "efficiency man".  For some reason I latch on to specific family members and damned near create back stories about 'em.  Currently my faction leader is virtuous as all hell, and my faction heir has a dread rating that would make Darth Vader feel like a sissy.  I know it's stupid, but I'm envisioning this bizarre black sheep family dynamic that I know isn't really there, but it does enhance my enjoyment.

These historical strategy games are almost perfect for me, because I get off on that sort of make-believe.  It's the same reason I loved Europa Universalis so much.  I know it sounds strange that I invest so much into these games, but hey, there it is.

Hah - I'm always the exact opposite.

Generals go about enforcing my divine will with a righteous fire (espeicially whichever general I've picked out to do all the crusading), whereas the faction leader always switches to dread primarily because pumping out as many assassins as I use gives your faction leader -morality.

Muslim factions can be a bit different because you need so many bloody imans to convert the infidels that I find I have to dedicate my biggest cities to religious production.

Sat down for my first extended play of this title and I must say it's quite enjoyable.   Like a masochist, I pick my Spanish (go home team).  Talk about having their balls in a vice grip from the very start.  You've go the Moors running around everywhere, any second you're prepping for an incoming attack.  The shifty eyed Portuguese that I don't trust worth a darn.  But the worst are the French.  They constantly attack, declare war, then beg off for peace once you start amassing troops at their borders. 

I think I somehow managed to make matters worse.  With the French attacking, I hastily accept an alliance with the Moors. The French back off and then I come to the realization that I don't want a bunch of fucking Moops in my territory running around.  So, I start wailing on my allies.  Pope dies next turn.  Ooops, no one trusts me and I lose popedom by a landslide.  Now, the French are staring at my borders, the Portuguese want to ally but they're friends with the Moors, so I'm almost expecting them to attack.  There's got to be some sort of Moorish super army hiding somewhere.  AND WHERE ARE ALL OF MY FAMILY MEMBERS.. damnit, I don't have enough governors.

Fucking Council of Nobles wants me to take a French rebel castle at least 4 turns into French territory.   I don't want to do this.  I want to beat France, but not now.  I've got Muslims to punish.

You need to encourage the Venetians to go on an anti-Moorish rampage throughout the Med. ;)

As far as creating family members- is there any benefit for waiting to marry off male faction members? How about adoptees? Should I take any and all comers? With my princesses, I try to wait for a decent general for a good fit, but I can't see any reason not to marry the men at first opportunity so they can start cranking out governors. I mean children.

Yah, I need to definitely start ramping up other aspects of the game other than "STOMP, KILL, SACK".  The first time through a Total War campaign for me is usually an interesting combination of just ramping up your war machine, killing your way across the map, and showing a complete disdain for alliances of any sort.

Marry the men asap.

Don't accept crap adoptees.

Consider keeping princesses if you want to use them for diplomatic reasons.

Unlike previous Total Wars the adoption system seems to give you more opportunities to adopt whenever you have fewer family members. I think it's to prevent cheesy all-family-members-dead defeats as a result of the black death or an unlucky run with inquisitors.


Fuck the council of nobles - the money they give is trivial and afaik nothing bad happens if you ignore them.


I found France to be one of the shittier factions, you can pretty much ignore their ineffectual whining even if they do declare war.

NECRO!

I picked up this game in "Gold Edition" with the kingdoms expansion attached. I read through this thread and a lot of the issues yall seem to have had were patched out or fixed.

-Merchants are awesome now. Two of my merchants in Antioch have a Cotton monopoly and are pulling in 320g a turn each.
-Assassins rule. I've cranked out about 12 of them and they patrol around with my spies owning things. As a plus I'm the most dreaded guy on the face of the earth. As a downside, the Popes all hate my ass.
-You can actually execute massive populations of the cities instead of just sack them ala Rome. Not sure if that was an option before.
-The religion thing is bizarre to me. I'm having a hard time skilling up my priests because they can't find any heretics.
-I love the changes to buildings and the city/castle feature. It's much more strategic to have my front line cities as castles and my interior empire acting as cities.
-I also like the Guild House addition. It's another way to further specialize my cities.

I loaned my copy to my brother, but have been itching to play it again. I am assuming that if I buy the expansion, I can use that CD as the Play disc? Anyone know for sure?

May have to give this another shot.  Played through it once,  but didn't find the game more engaging than TW: Rome, which I still fire up every few months to play through.

I think it may be humorous/fun to put together a Turkish "tenescowri" army and see how that plays out.

Edit: I'll give this another shot, but what I really remember most is that this one didn't click with me like Rome:TW did.  Something was just off.   At least now I don't anticipate the stability problems I had with my old vid card.

I don't remember corpse-rape in that game.

Ignore heretics, they are a waste of time and energy, just dedicate one out of the way province to population growth, churches, and churning out priests.

You need the concentration of piety to attract the guild of awesome chruchyness. At that point, combined with a huge cathedral, your priests are born with piety that omfgwtfpwns all of europe, and you have control of the council of cardinals, and can declare crusade whenever you like.

Aha, thanks. I'll do that with Dublin then. I don't do diddly shit with that province anyway.

Ireland a centre of rabid Catholocism? You're starting early.

And yet, it's working. I've got 3 Cardinals already. I'm THIS close to getting a Pope within another generation.