Medieval 2 Battle Report & Strat Thread (Super pic hvy)

[Vympel]

Good news, as far as i can tell you unlock all the factions after completing one grand campaign. The only unplayable factions are the Papal States, The Mongols, The Temurids and the Aztecs as the Papal are a special case and the other 3 don't start in the game.

Knew that

I have a really awesome assassin now- his skill is maxed out, he's got a good chance of killing anyone. The French only have Marseilles left, I've taken the rest of their territory, and I'm using that assassin to kill all their faction heirs- considering their King is 18 years old, I don't think they have any left.

Denmark is also about to be destroyed- I've just got to take the Stockholm region and, unless the Holy Roman Empire doesn't take it first, one of the German provinces (the HRE are my ally through marriage of their princess to may faction heir).

The Polish are quite strong in this game, and the Mongols seem to have been completely crushed by the Russians, who are also quite strong (they have all the territory we'd consider to be "Russia" in the game).

The Greeks have also crushed the Turks, and have all of Asia Minor.

My army that went on crusade and then had nothing to do when the crusade ended.

In tweaking news, I've heard there's a mod you can do to one of the .ini files to reduce the timescale and double your playtime- i.e. currently it's 2 years per turn (stupid!) whereas if you mod it you can get it down to it's proper 1 year per turn.

You can also mod it so that instead of showing the turn number, it shows the date.

Anyone heard about this?

[Hotfoot]

2 years per turn? Um...what now?

It seems like it's 2 turns per year. A single turn does not increase the age of my people by two years, and there is that pesky little "seasons" thing.

However, you can edit an ini file and unlock all of the powers, without that pesky "play what they want you to play" garbage.

[Vympel]

2 years per turn? Um...what now?

It's true. As an experiment, save game, exit out, load game, note the year.

Now, on the next turn, save game, exit out, load game, note the year.

Dumb, isn't it?

It's also how they have a game from 1080-1530 but for some reason the game only lasts 250 turns.

It seems like it's 2 turns per year. A single turn does not increase the age of my people by two years, and there is that pesky little "seasons" thing.

That's because it's a retarded setup. Not only do your generals age once every two years, but you miss out on a season every year. It's so damn stupid.

[Hotfoot]

Lame. I wonder if you can cut it down to 0.50 and make two turns per year without breaking the game

[Vympel]

Lame. I wonder if you can cut it down to 0.50 and make two turns per year without breaking the game

IIRC, the lowest you can get it down is one turn per year- which is still pretty acceptable, given that it doubles the number of turns to the end of the game.

There was a thread about it on tw.com, but buggered if I can find it again.

Mods have already been released doing it, though- but I'd rather just make that change, if at all.

Also it seems I was wrong about the speeches- my Byzantine general in a custom game gave a pretty good speech, referring to the Turks by name and all.

Not much talk about the glory of Constantinople, unfortunately, or any indication that's where they were from

[GuppyShark]

Man, is Spain easy mode or what?

[Hotfoot]

Actually, it seems to work at 0.50, just ran a test, 4 turns equals 2 years.

This means you could make it 0.25, with winter representing the months of harsh weather, but that would make the game 2,000 turns long.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Russian patch, where the movement slows to nothing in the late fall, etc.

[Vympel]

Actually, it seems to work at 0.50, just ran a test, 4 turns equals 2 years.

This means you could make it 0.25, with winter representing the months of harsh weather, but that would make the game 2,000 turns long.

Ahh, but did you check the age of your generals? I think that's the stickler point?

(How do you mod that, btw?)

[Hotfoot]

Generals age just fine, I'm pretty sure it's 1 year per two turns (which of course would still be a stickler for game of 0.25 turns).

C:\Games\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign

Get rid of read-only, change the 2.00 to 0.50, and unlock all the powers you want (aside from NPCs, of course, though it would be interesting to see what would happen). There you go. Oh yes, and reset the file to read only, just to be safe.

[Vympel]

Sorry, which .txt in the imperial_campaign folder? I've never dione the same with Rome.

[Hotfoot]

What I get for staying up after third shift.

"descr_strat"

[Dartzap]

The Mongols invaded some 30 turns ago, but as I was offf smacking tenkinds of shit out of France, I didnt care, but when the Pope ask my king to personally attaned a crusade upon Antioch...daaaammmnn, they had most of the Mid East under their control! And then the Scilians decided to back stab me after a 40 turn alliance... it's getting hot in hell!

[Master of Cards]

Man, is Spain easy mode or what?

France is the easiest

[Lonestar]

The God-damn Mongolians attacked my sitty wall at Antioch with over 3000 to 400-odd I had. I took out over 2500 of them but my guys were killed ot the last man.

I sent my army north out of Jerusalem to re-take Antioch, to see that the Mongolians were attacking the French Castle to the Northwest of Antioch, as I was at war with france I decided to let them take it, while my army is sitting at Acre waiting for the next turn to "liberate" Antioch.

(Oh....I'm gonna liberate the shit out of Antioch)

[Fire Fly]

Does anyone know how to increase your priests' piety? I currently have them in my regions trying to up the religious level. However, it seems to work very slow or not at all.

[D.Turtle]

Send them to foreign (non-catholic regions) and convert the evil heathens. They get a lot of piety relatively quickly that way.

Also, kill heretics with your priests (careful: priests can become heretics when they fail to kill/accuse/burn the heretic.) Cardinals can not become heretics, so its always safe with them - but they usually don't need even more piety.

[InnocentBystander]

So far, I'm rather enjoying playing as Venice. I'm about 35 turns in and I've gobbled up the local rebels, and am doing some awful things to the Byzantines, which the pope is totally cool with.
I really like Venice, the militia are quick and easy to build and generally better than what the Byzantines are building. The cavalry isn't so great, but the cheap light cavalry is nearly as good as the heavy mailed cavalry, so I figure I'm saving a lot of coin by using the cheap stuff.

I've seen two sides to the AI. With catapults the AI appears to be very dangerous at taking cities. They sit back, open up some holes, destroy towers, and them swarm in at all points; plus send guys to the wall.

However, they can also be very VERY stupid. Byzantium sent 2500 men to take back Thessaloncia, I had... maybe 1000 men. A handful of light spearmen and militia. A general, about 250-300 cavalry (a lot, yes) and about 80 archers. On top of all that, a spy had snagged one of my gates. Of course I didn't realize which one because there is no wide open door like there used to be. The enemy had 1 thing of ladders, 1 siege tower, and 2 rams (which they dropped right away). My archers managed to burn down the tower, taking out about half a unit of whatever shitty soldiers the Byzantines had, while at least a thousand men tried to climb up 4 ladders with absolutely no luck (at first they were climbing up okay, but then they stopped using all ladders, and eventually it was just a mass of 300 or so guys walking into the wall like retards). Meanwhile the enemy charge into the main gate and proceeded instantly to run up the walls. Where a single unit of italian spearmen were waiting for them, kill a lot of them (though, many where archers, which don't do so well in melee). Because the AI had decided that all its soldiers should get onto the walls, my units could not simply be ordered to 'attack' them, I had to move them in close enough where they'd start attacking. I likely killed a thousand men who were all trying to get through a single door onto the walls. Some of them started fighting back, and I think I lost about 150-200 regular infantry, plus a 4th of my cavalry. By the time I had slaughtered the enemy at my main gates the numbers by the ladders had thinned thanks to the towers. Two beat-up units of cavalry (about 50 in total) coerced them into moving, they started back up the walls, but began to break; they were chased down to the last man. Leaving the enemy with just its reinforcements; 4 or 5 units of Horse archers. I had my remaining 150 or so cavalry run them down. All told I lost almost half my amy, and destroyed a full army, and the 400 reinforcements that had joined in the fight.

I should have been overrun. It was very cool winning, but I'm sorta bummed that the AI (which is set to Hard on the battlemap) still isn't capable of pulling off a really easy win in a walled city.

[GuppyShark]

Oh my god, I just found a real pain in the ass bug, but I'm also going to tell you how to avoid it.

I was launching a Siege with catapults. What happened is each time I would empty my catapults of ammo, knock a hole in something, and the game would go "Wow, you haven't taken any of the gates/walls and you've got no rocks left! You lose!"

Grrr. All that was left was to send in my 1000 men to crush the 300 French...

[Hotfoot]

So, anyone want to set up a round robin game? We'll have to decide on a power, then a line of succession. When your ruler dies, you pass the savegame file on to the next person in the line. Many times its best to include players of all skill levels to represent the unreliability of royal succession.

Plus experienced players get the benefit of having new challenges.

So, who's in?

[Darth Wong]

Good news, as far as i can tell you unlock all the factions after completing one grand campaign. The only unplayable factions are the Papal States, The Mongols, The Temurids and the Aztecs as the Papal are a special case and the other 3 don't start in the game.

Knew that

I wonder what I did wrong. I'm playing as England and I took out Scotland and France, as required. I got the "You won!" video, so I checked back to see if I could play any other factions, and the answer is no. Does the short campaign not count?

PS. The Pope is really, really annoying. He launched an inquisition against me and killed about a half-dozen family members in heresy trials before it was over. I had half a mind to sack Rome in retaliation.

PPS. Regarding siege AI, if you have defensive cannons on your walls and you sally out of your city to attack a besieging army, the enemy will come within range of your wall cannons in order to use its own siege weapons. It will then take a horrific pouinding at the hands of your defensive cannons because the computer likes to spend its money on armies rather than construction, and hence it takes a long time to get to the point where it can build culverins rather than the relatively poor bombard cannons. I've driven off besieging armies repeatedly by simply letting my wall cannons tear up their armies. Strangely enough, this doesn't work on citadels and fortresses. I've also noticed that the boiling oil never comes out. There are definitely some bugs here.

[2000AD]

Good news, as far as i can tell you unlock all the factions after completing one grand campaign. The only unplayable factions are the Papal States, The Mongols, The Temurids and the Aztecs as the Papal are a special case and the other 3 don't start in the game.

Knew that

I wonder what I did wrong. I'm playing as England and I took out Scotland and France, as required. I got the "You won!" video, so I checked back to see if I could play any other factions, and the answer is no. Does the short campaign not count?

Ah, when i said grand campaign I meant the big ass "Take 45 regions and hold Jerusalem" version, not the short one.

[Dartzap]

Is it wrong that of the dozen odd CoC seats, I have a cardinal/priest/bishop..in 10 of them?

And Denmark has blockaded my ports for the last time! *lets off a round from the trebs/bombards* Shit, those citadal gates suck! they went down after one shot from a pair of bombards! Ah well, Oslo is mine, now lets see if they want to blockade my ports again...

[Decue]

So, who's in?

I'm in

[Cincinnatus]

So, anyone want to set up a round robin game? We'll have to decide on a power, then a line of succession. When your ruler dies, you pass the savegame file on to the next person in the line. Many times its best to include players of all skill levels to represent the unreliability of royal succession.

Plus experienced players get the benefit of having new challenges.

So, who's in?

That sounds fun. I'm playing on Medium/Medium right now, and doing alright, so I'll try not to screw up if we play on a harder difficulty setting.

I've noticed that the AI tends to freeze up at weird points. For example, I was defending Paris against a French counterattack of four armies of about equal size to my garrison. They broke my walls on two sides with catapults and two of the armies came rushing in. I pulled back to the city square to make my last stand and managed to repulse most of those that had broken through while taking heavy losses myself. After that, the troops just stood there, waiting, I guess, for reinforcements to try another push. Unfortunately for them, the two other French armies just sat outside my walls, not moving to support them or take advantage of the holes in the other side of the city.

It's a good thing I had time limits on, or I think I don't think the battle would have ended.