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Dartzap wrote:Argh! First it was the Mongols..now its the Timolds, or whatever they're called... Ah well, atleast they'll keep the mongols busy for a while.

The tricky thing is that these bastards have the same 8 star generals..plus monster bombards. The worlds fucked.

You have to admit that those cannon-equipped armoured elephants are fucking cool.

Darth Wong wrote: You have to admit that those cannon-equipped armoured elephants are fucking cool.

Whoa, really?

Ford Prefect wrote:

Darth Wong wrote: You have to admit that those cannon-equipped armoured elephants are fucking cool.

Whoa, really?

play them in custom it's great

GuppyShark wrote:Oh man, last night I went into the campaign data files to unlock the other factions.

There's a lot of legacy Rome data in there, including the fluff for the three main Roman families.

If anyone is interested,there are already mods out there for a Rome mod using the MTW2 engine/scripts.

That's interesting, I'd have thought the data files would be incompatible.

I have to admit, I keep finding myself thinking, "I wonder how hoplites and peltasts would do against these guys."

Darth Wong wrote:Good news to report: in my second game (I'm doing the long campaign now), I discovered that longbowmen can put down their sharpened stakes in the city square.

Recreating the Agincourt defense in the city square, with flanking protected archers and spearmen in the middle, has allowed me to repeatedly annihilate huge attacking armies when they try to assault my cities.

Holy crap. Thanks, I can definitely use that.

Is this an ability that only british longbowmen can do, or all archers?

Darth Wong wrote:What's the best route to take when going on a crusade to Jerusalem? That's a long fucking way, and when I just click on Jerusalem my army decides that it's going to go the long way around, completely bypassing the most direct route through Eastern Europe and Asia Minor so it can go round the mountains and approach Jerusalem from the east.

I didn't have a strong enough Navy to get to Antioch in time with all the pirates, so I sent my Army over land, nursing it constantly to make sure it took the shortest route even if it was temporarily blocked for a turn. It didn't make it in time and Venice beat me to it, but I took Adana (which was Rebel in my game) and when the Pope called a Jerusalem crusade, I moved the army out and was there in two turns.

But yeah, a huge fleet is the fastest way for England (or anyone) to get there I think.

GuppyShark wrote:Oh man, last night I went into the campaign data files to unlock the other factions.

There's a lot of legacy Rome data in there, including the fluff for the three main Roman families.

That's incredibly sloppy.

Now I understand why it comes on 2 DVD's. 1 for the game, 1 for the pieces of previous games.

Dominus Atheos wrote:
You can only do it when you're deploying them.

Ah, thank you!

Update on the campaign: It finally occurred to me to start bribing the Papal States, and lo and behold, my faith now inspires His Holiness! Between the efforts of Milan and myself the French have been mostly wiped-out, and once the Spanish are done I'll try and get the Danes excommunicated.

I really need to payoff the Pope. I'm about to excommunicated for the second time.

Milan tried to attack one of my armies, which was under half strength, with a force of militia (5 crossbow, 1 spear, 1 archer and peasants). The battle took place on a mountain, with me holding the high ground. Only two peasants got away.

Then the HRE tried to retake Metz, with their Emperor leading the force. I captured the Emperor and tried to ransom him off (he was worth over 15k), but they couldn't afford it.

His head makes a nice decoration for Metz's main gate. Martha Steward would be proud.

I was besieged by two French armies: one besieging army and one reinforcing army. Rather than wait for them to attack in the next turn, I tried to sally out even though I was outnumbered about 5 to 1. The besieging army was a half-stack army with no siege weapons, but the reinforcing army was a full-stack army with no less than five units of trebuchets. That would make short work of my walls, but when the battle started, the reinforcing army moved to try and join up with the besieging army, and in the process, they went right past one corner of my city. I had already built cannon towers by this point because I've been good with managing my construction and finances, so the cannon towers destroyed 9 of 10 trebuchets before they could position themselves alongside the besieging army. So much for his impressive array of siege weapons.

At this point, both of the enemy armies stupidly planted themselves where they were, which happened to be within range of my cannon towers. My longbowmen peppered the last surviving trebuchet with arrows until its crew was dead, while the cannon towers gave a godawful pounding to the rest of his army. That lone trebuchet managed to do some damage to my walls, but not enough to breach them. Both enemy generals died from cannon fire, and both armies were so badly mauled that when I executed the prisoners, there was nobody left to retreat. Ha!

3rd Impact wrote: Update on the campaign: It finally occurred to me to start bribing the Papal States, and lo and behold, my faith now inspires His Holiness! Between the efforts of Milan and myself the French have been mostly wiped-out, and once the Spanish are done I'll try and get the Danes excommunicated.

As i pointed out earlier it is ridiculously easy to bribe your way back into the Pope's good books. On average i loot about 7k from a city and it only takes 1 or 2 thousand to get your rep back, not to mention you can also donate map info, so just have a diplomat next to Rome and after you've finished you rturns pillaging give him his share of the profits.

Strange thing I have noticed, The Generals Make a Speech thing only occurs when I wait a one turn during deployment, which slightly miffs me.

That's odd. You generally only have to wait a minute or two (ie don't press the Wait button).

Quick question - is anyone running the game on a dual core - if so, which one?

Arrow wrote:I really need to payoff the Pope. I'm about to excommunicated for the second time.

Milan tried to attack one of my armies, which was under half strength, with a force of militia (5 crossbow, 1 spear, 1 archer and peasants). The battle took place on a mountain, with me holding the high ground. Only two peasants got away.

Then the HRE tried to retake Metz, with their Emperor leading the force. I captured the Emperor and tried to ransom him off (he was worth over 15k), but they couldn't afford it.

His head makes a nice decoration for Metz's main gate. Martha Steward would be proud.

I find that periodically paying a tribute of 100 gold for 6 turns (as a gift, of course) really helps. I also offer to attack factions which have poor standing with the Papacy. I've been able to keep my relations with the Pope at Perfect for a long time now. Next step: an alliance.

Thanas wrote:Quick question - is anyone running the game on a dual core - if so, which one?

You mean like a Core2Duo E6600?

Thanas wrote:Quick question - is anyone running the game on a dual core - if so, which one?

I'm using an Athlon64 X2 3800+.

I'm playing on a C2D E6600 oc'ed to 3.2 GHz (400x8 - yes I dropped the multiplier by 1) with a stock 8800GTX. Smooth as butter, everything maxed out (including 16aa/16af).

Same as Arrow over here, with the exception of O/C- don't see the need, it still runs smooth as butter maxed out

(oh and a different video card, obviously- ATI 1950XTX or whatever it's called, can't remember off the top of my head at the moment)

I gotta build me some cannon towers.

I accidently saved my englisch game over my french game so that one is lost

My Englisch game:

Territorial expensian is becoming stagnant. Portugal took one of my cities and when I took it back, the Pope excommunicated me. On the plus side, I got peace again with my fellow HRE heathens. Portugal itself seems at the moment more a nuisance, so I'm ignoring them now for a great danger coming from the south east (Milan). They muster strong fleets and a full stack army just took Marseilles (I expected an easy defence given that most of their units were militia - well, so were mine. Sadly, they superiour experience cut trough my lines rather easely). They'll have a visit of my best quality troops soon enough to take their regions. After that, I think I'll go for the Papal States as well. Always wondered what would happen then.

Oh and my king just took his second settlement in the middle of nowhere. Travelling trough the desert takes a lot of time and there only seem to be some dirth towns but he has to do something untill the next crusade I suppose.

My second game (now playing the long campaign) is almost too easy.

I've been the only faction with culverins for quite some time now, and I'm beating the shit out of my enemies with ease. They invariably die horrible deaths when they attack my cities because my cannon towers outrange everything except for a culverin, so their bombards and trebuchets get destroyed when they try to bring them in range. Worse yet (for them), many of my huge cities can already built the "Heavy Bill Militia" unit, which fucking rocks. This unit is armoured and has attack and defense values similar to a dismounted knight (well OK, not quite as good, but really quite superb for a militia unit), but it has free upkeep in cities. I can also build Demi Lancer cavalry and arquebusiers and Carrack ships in my better cities, while my enemies are still fucking around with catapults and bombards and Holks. Hell, I could almost go rampaging at this point even without any fortress units at all, although I still need those armoured swordsmen if I want a line that will hold against really powerful melee attacks.

I've eliminated Portugal, France, Milan, and the Moors. The Danes are a minor nuisance because they keep attacking me, but I'm busy elsewhere and I can afford to ignore them for now because they're so weak and they can't hurt me (they lay siege to Antwerp, I sally out and auto-resolve because I'm lazy, and I always crush them with minimal losses). I control pretty much everything west of the HRE and east of Spain. I also have all of North Africa right up to the Middle East including Jerusalem, so the bottom of the campaign map is all painted red. Enemy armies invariably take a horrific ass-raping when they attack my cities, their city walls crumble like toys before my culverins when I go on offense, and I've got the Pope in my pocket. It seems to me like it's all over but the shouting at this point, unless the newly arrived Timurids bring something really devastating to the table. My next target is Sicily, followed by Spain and then the HRE. None of them are anywhere close to my level of advancement.

Really, it's amazing how much easier this game is when you pay attention to your economy and papal standing from the start. Pay more attention to economy than conquest early on, and you can build advantages that will allow you to crush your enemies later.

PS. The Heavy Bill Militia unit has 15 attack, 5 charge bonus, and 10 defense. In comparison, an English knight has 21 attack, 6 charge bonus, and 14 defense. So heavy bill militias aren't going to take down English knights in an even-numbered matchup, but they're quite capable of holding walls against knights on ladders, where they have the defender's natural advantage. And if you compare their stats to most militia units, they're vastly superior.

So what did you do before cannons? I've been using catapults and crossbows to lame the computer out of sieges, but against enemies with artillary it doesn't always work so well. I find that the best way to push back the computer from cities is with a field army, plus large city garrisons, which is very, very expensive to maintain.