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

[Arrow]

Ok, I tried to give them tribute, but they refused.

The Pope refused my money! How uncharacteristic!

What am I doing wrong?

To the left of the "Make Offer" button is a circular button that looks like a present (its the "Gift" button). Are you pressing that?

[D.Turtle]

Speaking of which- are the Timurids particularly Horse Archer heavy? Because I'm wondering if Horse Archers would be effective at taking down elephants (naturally, the superb Vardariotai of the Roman Empire).

My experience is that horse archers are almost totally useless against elephants.

You can kill the rest of their army with horse archers/cavalry very well - just stay away from the elephants.

Spearmen however massacre elephants.

[Darth Wong]

Wow. I don't believe it. The French surrounded one of my cities with 4 assassins and killed its governor, so I started training assassins at Edinburgh (which has a Thieves Guild structure) and getting into a war of assassination with France. The result? I eventually managed to get two master assassins and I was killing French dignitaries left and right, until I actually wiped out the entire faction through assassination. I didn't realize that was actually possible. They still had 4 settlements left, and the whole faction was destroyed when I took out their last family member.

All 4 settlements went Rebel when the last family member died. Now I just have to move in on those 4 settlements before anybody else does. So much for the Pope's order to cease hostilities with France

[Vympel]

All 4 settlements went Rebel when the last family member died. Now I just have to move in on those 4 settlements before anybody else does. So much for the Pope's order to cease hostilities with France

LOL- I did the exact same thing when I was playing as France myself, except they only had two cities left- I did find however that taking Rebel cities could actually be more difficult than taking a city belonging to a faction, as the garrisons can actually be larger. Then again, I haven't gotten too far in my post-patch Byzantine game, so *shrug*

Also- I thought Assassin's Guilds allow cool Assassins, wheras Theives' Guilds are just for spies?

[GuppyShark]

I don't know what ninja assassins you guys lucked into. My assassins were always useless, even when I tried 'levelling them' they were still unable to do more than kill the occasional merchant.

[wautd]

I find that enemy captains are easiest to let them practice on

[Vympel]

One thing the patch definitely did was fix the AI quirk where they didn't seem to use naval forces to take enemy islands, ever.

The Venitian pricks landed an army of about 400 on Rhodes and took it (I only had a unit of peasants and a unit of town militia as a garrison- barely half that)- I exacted 50% casualties and now I'm sending troops from Smyrna to take it back.

The Venitians somehow scrounged up a huge crusading army and the same turn they declared war by attacking Rhodes it was in my territory- however it seems to have bypassed all my lightly defending cities, apparently hell-bent on getting to Jerusalem.

Well, that's fine by me.

Curious as to what their garrisons were like, I sent my army at Durazzo to look at Ragusa- it's defence was non-existent- a family member in the castle itself and three armored seargants outside. I quickly laid siege, and when i attacked the next turn (no catapults or ballista, so I relied on rams and seige towers) I sent my four units of Vardariotai to the incoming seargants and shot them full of arrows before they even got close. Hilarious stuff.

Now the Venitians have traded their single military centre for a shitty little island town (I converted it). Eyes on Iraklion next- the Venitians don't belong on Crete- Greeks do.

[ArmorPierce]

I'm going through my first grand campaign game and I just encountered the first time being on the defensive and having my city sieged, thanks in large part due to the crusades that got called against jerusalem. Pope didn't like me because I was destroying wondering Hungarian troops, funny thing is that he declared war on me (actually I haven't declared war on one person, and now the people I'm not at war are scotland, england, denmark, russia, portugal, moors and sicily. Then I killed and executed another crusading hungarian army which immediately brought my relation with the European powers down to abysmal and HRE, Spain, and Venice declared war on me the next turn. So I was up against the crusading armies of HRE, Spain, Venice, France, Hungary, and I was already at war with the Egyptians and Byzantines.I'm holding out for now but I hear about the mongols whom should be knocking on my door pretty soon (which is why I didn't expand north into Hungarian held territory above the causcus mountains, hopefully the mongols will distribute between me and him).

my empire at present state

Well Hungary decides to attack my newly conquered city of constantinople

I set up waiting for them to come knockin on my gates

I saw that they were coming with a row of two or three trebuchets and one catapult, They starting knocking on one side of my wall and not my gate like I expected. They had two siege towers as well. I had one cavalry unit with me and decided to see if I could go harass their trebuchets for a while so that my own trebuchets and archers will be able to soften up their units. suprisingly enough, I was able to take down their and drive their siege forces away, unfortunately, not before they were able to make a gaping hole in my wall

They began approaching and I reshuffled my units to defend the hole in the wall and I shot at the approaching siegetowers. I was able to set one aflame but the other one got through

burn bitch



They attacked me at the hole in the wall as well

After fighting them on the wall and at the hole for a little while I was able to drive them off.

Heroic Victory to boot

[Vympel]

Goddamit this patch makes things more exciting.

My increased play experience has allowed me to expand significantly faster than I did in my last Byzantine game.

In the West, my Empire extends as far as Zagreb.

In the East, as far as Caesarea (with an army about to lay seige to Trebizond).

In the Holy Land, I've taken Antioch, and Emperor John is laying siege to the Rebel castle (not really a castle, just a motte and bailey) of Aleppo.

The Turks have been pretty much crushed. They can't defend Trebizond against me, and I suspect Tbilisi and Mosul will be taken just as easily. They are about to complete a Jihad against Baghdad, however, that should make things more interesting.

I took Rhodes back from the Venitians- they tried landing an army originating from Crete on my Greek mainland, but my Dromon fleet sunk their entire army and one of their family members were killed.

The Holy Roman Empire declared war on me, but they're at war with Poland and they don't seem to be too powerful, so I don't expect much trouble from them.

What's really interesting is that Sicily landed an army next to Ragusa, my military backbone in the West. Luckily, I had a bunch of units refitting there from the conquest of Zagreb so their sizeable force was crushed- the battle was long, but fairly easy- their archers were cut down by my horses and then the horse archers did their work, as they always do.

Still- damn these naval landings!

Oh, and as per usual, Hungary attacked Sofia. Fools.

[ArmorPierce]

Tides of war are turning against me, I had two(!) armies crushed at Jerusalem and sultan nearly killed (actually was killed twice as I reloaded to do the battle again to try to do it right, each time I lost everything except the third time when I autobattled it and my sultan and some forces retreated) they are now rampaging toward my other cities, don't know if I can hold up against them. Mongols should be coming out soon too so I think I'm screwed.

[Darth Wong]

Ouch. Now I know how Pyrrhus felt. I just took a Timurid citadel with my best army. Full stack, 20 veteran units. The Timurids had cannon tower defenses, three units of elephants, and nearly a full stack once you combined the garrison and a reinforcing army that was coming up behind them.

What a fucking horror-show once I managed to get through the outer wall. I blew down the outer wall with my cannons and sent my men inside, only to get hammered by his elephants. While I was busy fighting off his elephants, the cannon towers on his second wall were beating the shit out of my men. I managed to blow a hole through the second wall by having my culverins fire over the first wall, and then sent my men through the second wall. The gateway on the third wall was open for routing enemies to get back to the square, so I sent my men charging in there, taking cannon fire all the way. We fought for control of the square, with his last unit of elephants waiting there for me.

By the time the bloodbath was over, his army was completely wiped out (including all his elephants), but my army was left a broken shell of its former self. Two units of heavy billmen were completely wiped out, and they both had three gold chevrons of experience. My armoured swordsmen were decimated; one of their units had only 12 men left. And there's another Timurid army rapidly approaching to lay siege to the citadel, with my mangled army inside and almost no troops available to retrain my losses. This is going to be bad.

[Vympel]

Wow- you really like the Heavy Billmen! I abandoned Billmen entirely, for my part. Armored Swordsmen did all the knife-work.

[ArmorPierce]

Well update for me is that after they took Jersualem and the Crusades were over their war effort pretty much broke apart. I made peace with france and Holy Roman Empire and the next turn a crusade was called against France! I toggle off fog of war to see what the humbug was about and saw that France had conquered a good amount of the HRE territory.

I decided that I should take out Egypt once and for all with a quick push into his territory so that I could concentrate on the European front 100%. I took baghdad and then was about to take the arabian city but it had a full army their that had a good chance of kicking mine's ass. I'm considering what to do now, I'm going to try to make peace first, not willing to fork over a city to them for peace which was what they wanted last time.

[Alferd Packer]

The trick to beating the Timurids, I've discovered, is to let them lay siege to you. A citadel with cannon towers is pretty much uncrackable to any enemy, and cannon elephants can barely break through the first wall before they run out of ammo. After that, it's academic.

Also, playing as an Islamic faction = tons of fun. The Moops are especially good, because you have an excellent base of operations to fight from, and Timbuktu is a fucking awesome moneymaker, and it's basically untouchable.

Plus, I loooove not worrying about the Pope. I just slaughter everyone and cut the Pope in on the spoils to keep him from calling a Crusade against one of my cities.

[Stravo]

Wow- you really like the Heavy Billmen! I abandoned Billmen entirely, for my part. Armored Swordsmen did all the knife-work.

Actually Billmen are no longer utterly useless like they were prepatched. They're now quite dangerous to cavalry and its a blast to zoom in and watch as heavy billmen hook an infantryman and yank him off his feet and jam the poor bastard into the ground. Nice!

On the Mongols, do they naturally create gold chevron armies? The Mongols settled into Antioch what seems like 20 turns or more ago and my English hegemony has finally reached the Bosporous and butted up against the Mongols in Nicea.

We control all of Europe and North Africa - including Alexandria, Cairo and Jerusalem. A veritable ocean of bright red and it is good. But then my leading assult army that was expecting Turkish resitance discovers a sizeable Mongol empire stretching from Antioch to Nicea and Baghdad.

We meet up with one of those full stacked gold chevroned armies and get annhilated trying to cross the Bospourous. An English army that campaigned from Northern Italy all the way to Constantinople with one of my best generals. Slaughtered to a man, we gave as good as we got generally but the Mongols were just fast on the attack and relentless. My cavalry was exhaused trying to shore up positions where my armies were getting encircled and boy I wish my archers were nearly as accurate and dangerous as Mongol ones.

The Mongols promptly laid seige to Constantinople but my gunpowdfer heavy follow on relief army arrived just in time to force them away. Now another full stack gold chevron army is on its way to Constantinople. And I believe my spies ferreted out yet another gold chevroned stack sallying forth from deeper in Mongol territory.

I took the castle south of Nicea with a surprise amphibious landing and am upgrading it to turn it into an army creator toehold in Mongol terrirtory as my Holy Land armies bulk up for a rapid strike against Antioch.

Of course I just recieved notice that the Timurids have arrived. I really don't want to be fighting Mongols and Timurids simulatenously so I have to go for a quick knock out. Unfortunately as satisfying as the size of the English Hegemony is, it sucks when trying to ferry armies over to your active fronts.

Generally whats the advice for fighting Mongols? I've never faced Timurids before what do I do there? I usually finish my game before the mongols can become active enemies (I don't like Eastern starting positions) and I've always finished before the Timurids arrived.

[Vympel]

Plus, I loooove not worrying about the Pope. I just slaughter everyone and cut the Pope in on the spoils to keep him from calling a Crusade against one of my cities.

Same reason you should play as either the Rus or the Byzantines

On the Mongols, do they naturally create gold chevron armies? The Mongols settled into Antioch what seems like 20 turns or more ago and my English hegemony has finally reached the Bosporous and butted up against the Mongols in Nicea.

How'd they get to Antioch? I've yet to face the Mongols- I'm going to soon in my new Byzantine game- where do they arrive? In my English game I wasn't bothered with them at all, I finished the game without touching them.

We meet up with one of those full stacked gold chevroned armies and get annhilated trying to cross the Bospourous. An English army that campaigned from Northern Italy all the way to Constantinople with one of my best generals. Slaughtered to a man, we gave as good as we got generally but the Mongols were just fast on the attack and relentless. My cavalry was exhaused trying to shore up positions where my armies were getting encircled and boy I wish my archers were nearly as accurate and dangerous as Mongol ones.

Well, there's something to be said for Horse Archers, I always say. Still, your longbowmen (not the standard ones- the Yeoman one and the Retinue elite) should've shot their foot archers to pieces- that'd be my expectation, anyway.

I figure in my current game the Mongols will arrive right on my doorstep.

[Stravo]

I usually don't fight Mongols at all but this time I wanted to play it out to see if I could get to the New World since I'm usually winning or won by the time of the Black Death or before I get far enough East to have to worry about the Mongols. My English hegemony has already won I'm just playing out the clock to see what events happen later on, New World, etc.

BTW have yet to really put my Arquebusers through their paces (usually win before they become available) should I treat them as fancy archers?

[Alferd Packer]

The absolute best way to face the Mongols is defending a castle from a siege. I annihilated their initial horde from my Fortress and and then Citadel at Adana (once I got Ballista, then Cannon Towers, it was all over) over a period of 50 or so turns.

The chief reason is that their cavalry is nullified in sieges. All they can do is stamp around and get shot by your towers/archers. They then have to turn to their infantry, which, for their horde units, is not great. As the English, your archers are going to make mincemeat of the cavalry, and your infantry are tough enough to smash them on the walls. For more gratuitous slaughterfest on the ground, have some your archers set their stakes just inside the first gate (normally, they manage to get a ram to your outer gate) before they take up positions on the walls.

With a 3/4 stack with no general, I was getting Heroic victory after Heroic victory. Only after the Horde was crushed did I change to engage them on the field, with their normally-recruited and much crappier units.

I've only smacked the Timurids once, but the deal was much the same. I got their elephant units to rout and smash a lot of their own troops, but it was much nastier than dealing with the Mongols. I'm near the end of the England game, so we'll see what happens in the next 30 turns.

[ArmorPierce]

So as Turkey, am I correct to assume that I'm about to get raped by the mongols once they arrive? I've heard plenty of horror stories about them.

[Darth Wong]

Re: Stravo's question about arquebusiers:

I've used them a bit now and the tactics are slightly different than with archers. For one thing (obviously), you can't put them behind your heavy infantry. You have to put them in front, which can create problems if they get rushed because they can't put down stakes like the longbowmen can. Also, you need to thin out their lines. An arquebusier unit is best deployed by stretching it out so wide that it's only three rows deep, because only the first row can fire. If you have a narrow, deep arquebusier unit, you are just wasting it.

So what are the advantages of the arquebusier unit? Well, they're not really any better at killing infantry than longbowmen are, and they're less flexible in many ways. However, they have a much greater ammo capacity than longbowmen, which means they can continue to pound the enemy for along time after longbowmen have run out of arrows. This can make a really big difference when dealing with an enemy that you'd rather not engage in melee if you can help it. The range of the arquebusiers seems to actually be shorter than that of the best longbowmen, but they can lay down a fairly dense volume of fire for a long time. Their effectiveness is somewhat inconsistent. In the open field against enemies that simply bull-rushed my armies, I found them to be less than stellar in usefulness. Against armie that preferred to stay at a distance and duel with ranged weaponry, they could be quite devastating.

After landing in the New World and losing half my heavy infantry taking the first Aztec city, I had to defend it against four consecutive full-stack Aztec armies. Those Aztecs are unrealistically effective against armoured infantry, but my gunpowder units just ass-raped them. They're also pretty good against horse archers.

[Stravo]

So as Turkey, am I correct to assume that I'm about to get raped by the mongols once they arrive? I've heard plenty of horror stories about them.

Prepatch the Mongols tended to loiter around the Far Eastern Fringes of Russia and Baghdad and were generally a nuisance. Post patch they're settling down and forging empires. I think they're far nastier now just for the simple fact that they settle down and take cities whereas before they tended to attack cities on the fringe and stay there.

If I were the Turks I would spend as much money as I could upgrading my cities and castles on the eastern edge to highest defense possible and garrisoning to the max. I would also have a small army loitering around Baghdad so that when the Mongols do arrive you can provide some relief or immediate infusion of reinforcements. Those gold chevroned armies are something to respect.

[Darth Wong]

So as Turkey, am I correct to assume that I'm about to get raped by the mongols once they arrive? I've heard plenty of horror stories about them.

Your number one priority has to be cannon towers. A city or citadel armed with cannon towers (assuming you've applied the necessary fixes) can hold off even a huge army, and deal devastating damage to any attacker. I recently took one from the Timurids despite a very strong garrison, but it did severe damage to my best army. And without my own culverins blasting through the two outer walls, I would have failed despite the high quality of my troops.

Technically, I suppose I should mention that there's also something of an exploit you can do with cannon towers, although maybe they'll fix that in the next patch. If you want to "play fair", wait for them to attack you and then try to stop them. But if you want to play dirty, just attack the besieging army with the garrison. When the battle starts, do not sally out; just sit there and let your cannon towers pound the living shit out of his army. He's too stupid to move out of range, so he just sits there and takes it. Even if his siege weapons knock holes in your walls, he's too stupid to rush in; he'll just sit there until your cannons annihilate most of his army.

As I said, it's such a ridiculously easy defensive win that one could consider it cheating.

[Alferd Packer]

Does anyone bother to try to ransom captured prisoners anymore? As the Moops, I just execute them every time, especially if I capture a family member. Of course, they are all Christian heathens, so death is obviously what they deserve.

Also, what's the deal with agent limits? I keep maxing out my Imams and Merchants trying to convert Europe and rape Africa of her resources, respectively. Is it related to the level of appropriate structures you have in your cities/castles, or just the number of structures that you have?

[Pablo Sanchez]

Also, what's the deal with agent limits? I keep maxing out my Imams and Merchants trying to convert Europe and rape Africa of her resources, respectively. Is it related to the level of appropriate structures you have in your cities/castles, or just the number of structures that you have?

The number of related structures and the number of upgrades--each first level mosque gives one imam, second level gives two, and so on.

[ArmorPierce]

Is it me or does this game have a lot of these technical stuff that they don't properly explain what is for or exactly what it does and what it's good for?