Windows Medieval II

[nicotine]

Originally Posted by Hovis

Have to say though I find it really hard to mend fences with former enemies, and I seldom if ever get any lasting alliances. I can have a line of cannons outside an enemy's last city and they'll still flip me off rather than call a cease fire. Must be my diplomats are crap.

The diplomacy in this game is weird like that. I've had that happen. I've also had something funny happen with the French. One turn they decided to break our alliance and attack one of my towns so I attacked that army and then used my other massive armies to lay siege to Angers, Paris and that other third French town up there. Then they come back to me and ask for a cease fire. Haha silly French. If it weren't for the damn pope the French would be outside of Northern Europe

[specofdust]

Finally got this game, and I'm pretty much loving it, except for one thing. I suck at it.

I used to play rome on the default setting(I'm no military genius but I didn't consider myself atrocious), but this on easy is kicking my ass. I was doing a battle as the danes against some unorganised rebels defending a small wooden castle earlier, trying on my own I lost about 350 men for about 120 of theirs(that was about 50% of my force) - force composition wise I was in advance of them by a good bit. Then I loaded up a save, auto'd the battle and the computer gave me a result of a clear win with only 52 losses on my side, so basicly the only way I can actually do good at the game is to auto battles which misses a whole loada the fun

Anyone got any tips for battle, or links to guides that'll give me some pointers? Anything not get out of either attacking and losing most of my force or just autoing and winning easily but missing half the game would be nice.

[Hovis]

Autoing on a siege tends to not take account of the defences on the castle. This means by the normal run of things you'll see much heavier losses if you go in manually because you'll have the towers to deal with. That said if you've got gunpowder weapons you can usually smash the whole thing to bits and do the job with even fewer losses than an auto, so it's a balance.

Since I'm feeling generous I'll share my top tips for winning the game (as I've now completed it as the English and Scots in the long campaign and Venice in a short campaign).

In the campaign (half of making battles easy is the preparation):

1. Assassins, assassins, assassins. Churn these boys out of your cities and use them constantly on the easiest targets available at the time. If you start by picking off rebel captains, princesses and other soft targets pretty soon you'll be knocking off family members and army generals. If you knock off the general of an army just before you attack it not only do they lose the benefits of that general and his bodyguard unit is gone, but the army also suffers a morale hit. A few good knives in the dark can save you a lot of bodies on the battlefield. Also if a town is garrisoned by just a general and his retinue and you pick him off you can walk right in and pillage it without even having to fight.

2. Armour and weapon upgrades are your friends. In battle routing units have a habit of scaring other friendly units, so your best bet is always to go with quality over quantity and this means wrapping your gringos in as much metal as possible. If you build lots of blacksmiths and armourers you'll attract the attention of swordsmiths guilds and get access to shiny weapons of massive deathkilling.

3. When attacking a castle or city it pays to have a spy in there and some sort of wall breaking artillery in the army. If your spy gets the gate open the enemy won't get to deploy before the fight, so whether you use the gate or not you have the advantage that the enemy is scattered. You also get this advantage if you attack at night.


In battle itself:

1. Spears beat knights, knights beat swords, swords beat spears. That's the basic principle of the combat. Missile units are best dealt with by cavalry or by using better missile units and just outgunning them.

2. Spearmen will murder cavalry in a way that is not even funny, just remember that no matter who your unit is if they are about to get charged by cavalry you want to get into formation sharpish because scattered infantry are easy meat to horsemen. The Schilltrom formation is effectively cavalryproof in defence but is very vulnerable to missiles.

3. Cavalry are not nearly as strong as good infantry and will get murdered in a stand up fight, this makes them pretty crap in a siege. The best way to use cavalry is to run around behind the enemy or to charge and fall back. The cavalry charge is what it's all about, land a good one of them and you can make a unit of, for instance 150 town militias, a big pile of corpses in one hit. This works both ways, if the enemy has cavalry bog them down in a slow brawl and they'll usually die.

4. If you're going to assault a city the most important thing to have with you is artillery. Get the walls down and the towers down and then the playing field is about even. Secondary to the artillery but almost as important is the need for some proper double hard infantry. Militias will generally not cut it, you need foot knights, mercenaries or other nutters who are willing to crawl through the streets getting shot to bejesus and stabbed without complaining. Don't even think about laddering onto a defended wall with feeble troops, they'll get eaten for breakfast.

5. If you use the hold position button (the little shield thingy) your troops will get a penalty to attack but a bonus to morale and defence. They'll also stay put exactly where you placed them. This can be very handy if you want to hold a line either in defence or in attack if you're holding off a counterattack. Even lowly militia troops if you up-armour them can hold a street or gateway for quite a while in this manner.

6. The most important thing to remember about attacking in a siege is that you need to know what your edge is before you go in. If you don't have an advantage over the enemy somewhere you'll not win, because in a siege the defender is holding a lot of cards and obvious advantages like superior numbers might not cut it if you can't bring them all to bear. If I'm building a siege army my priorities are big guns and armoured infantry, dismounted knights or better if I can get them. There's no need for archers and no need for horses. If you've got the guns and the grunts you should be able to stomp over anything.

7. When defending a siege archers are over-rated. Unless you've got the walls lined with top of the tree English longbowmen you're probably not going to do a hell of a lot of damage to the enemy as they come in. A gang of foot knights waiting to receive the ladders and towers works better as, while the enemy will reach your walls with more troops, they'll get shanked en masse when they try to storm you. Packing the space behind the gate with spears or pikes is also wise, if they bust open the gate this is the best place to stop the cavalry.

8. A general point about combat is that it's worth watching for movement arrows on your troops display icon thing. If your men are bogged down in a fight sometimes they'll decide to start running, I think this usually happens if one enemy they are fighting pulls back, but they are still scrapping with another unit. If your guys do start running forwards while fighting enemy units you could easily find them getting absolutely murdered for no good reason. If this does start to happen click on the guys, get them to halt and then click on the enemy they are fighting. When infantry are in a standing fight the only icon you want to see on the unit marker is the crossed swords, anything else spells potential trouble. Cavalry it's a different matter as they can attack and defend themselves at a run. This seems to be a problem with the units AI that hasn't really been fixed since Rome.

9. When defending only castle towers with a flag on top are firing at attackers. For a tower to get a flag on top you need a unit to stand near it. Gate towers tend to be the best armed, so even if you're planning to only defend a high level castle from the second or third ring of walls (this is a good plan if you don't have many men and the enemy has serious artillery) it's worth leaving some expendable grunts on the wall to ensure the gateway is still shooting.

And the last rule, the one rule that I think all players of M2:TW need to learn and repeat daily.

DO NOT ENGAGE A MONGOL HORDE ARMY IN OPEN FIELD COMBAT. Dear God no. You'll get an arrow in your eye and a lance up your arse before you can say, "Hey cool, they can shoot backwards over their shoulders!"

Fear the long insomnia post.

[specofdust]

Good post, much apreciated

Oh and, know what you mean by insomnia I was still attempting to get some bloody sleep when you posted that ;(

[Mosey]

That's pretty impressive. Helped me too.

Good work Hovis