I’m not a Total War noob; I’ve played them all. But for some reason I just didn’t like MTW2 and uninstalled it shortly after release, figuring I’d wait for it to get patched up. So, motivated by boredom I loaded it up last week and realized that I suck.
A few questions:
Am I supposed to be taking losses like this? I’m seeing 20% casualties when I send swordsmen to kill peasant archers, on a city street. A unit of billmen vs. cavalry, where the cavalry is standing still and the billmen charge, I’m lucky if 40% of my pikes come back alive.
Are units always this unresponsive or is that a function of a low command rating for my general? They respond sluggishly, rarely charge when ordered, and routinely fail to attack as a solid block. For example, I’ll order a unit of axemen to take out some other guys, and instead of jumping as one and butchering them, a few guys will engage while the majority of my axes just stand there, waiting to wander over and get killed by 3 surrounding enemies.
Is it me or is taking walls with towers and ladders perfectly suicidal? I feel like a baby refusing to attack without siege weapons but my Vikings get their asses kicked by peasant archers and town militia in wall combat.
Now, I’ll grant you: some of this is the way it should be. MTW and especially RTW could be ridiculous at times, suffering virtually no losses in massive conquests. But I just want to make sure this is the way it’s supposed to be…
And any tips and tricks would be appreciated. I’m playing with the TLR mod if that makes any difference.
I want to ask: are Seiges are constant in MTW2 as they were in Rome?
I got really tired of constant city assaults in that game, assault after assault after assault, because the AI rarely came out to fight and forced me to attack their forces in the city. I don’t think I ever lost one except when I attacked with a much inferior force for kicks, so it just plain got boring after a while. And if you just auto-played it, the AI got your army slaughtered.
Yeah, I could have seiged them, but that takes years and the Senate’s riding my butt.
What kind of horsemen and what kind of pikemen? What difficulty? Pikemen should beat up the ponies, but on harder difficulties, the computer cheats.
I haven’t noticed much. It could very well be the command issue. Could even be graphics, but assuming it’s not graphics, chalk it up to command.
Ladders and towers lick. I almost always build sapping points. Those get the job done. Hell, I usually take two and make Swiss cheese out of the walls, just so I can swarm and have two entrance points. Artillery is also much fun.
Seiges aren’t as rampant. Yes, there are more cities, which equals more seiges. I notice many more battles out in the field, though.
These games are great, but they could be made so much better with a few tweaks and changes.
-Trevor, resident TW expert
It depends… city streets seem to fuck up unit cohesion something fierce. It’s not at all uncommon to see your guys streaming in, in drips and drabs, to attack an entire mob of enemies. But otherwise… probably not. What formation do you have your troops in? What’s the difficulty level you’re playing on? What’s the experience level of your troops and their troops? Tripple gold peasants with upgraded weapons and armor can still fuck up green swordsmen.
Sounds a bit like your problem in the first question. Is your computer up to modern standards?
Again… pretty weird. Your heavy infantry will almost undoubtedly get chewed up as they march to the wall (oddly, you lose almost nothing if you have the computer calculate the battle results), but once they reach the walls they should be liquid death.
TLR? I’m not familiar with that, but I can say that even with my ancient (circa 2000) computer, I ran MTW II flawlessly in anything but streetfighting. Maybe try running unmodded?
Pretty much, yeah.
Pretty much the same here. It’s veyr rare for an enemy army to sally forth if they’re overwhelmed… but many will allow themselves to be starved to death if you just wait them out. It’s also rather common that besieged forces will sally forth on the end of the last turn before they starve to death.
Well, there’s no senate in MTW 2. There is some sort of Nobles’ Council sort of thing, but it doesn’t seem to matter much. Sieges are the way to go, sometimes. They waste years off a valuable officer’s life, however.
That last point is something I’d love to change. I’d like generals to have more worth and meaning. You should be able to set a siege and have the general be able to be dispatched, but still get some of his bonus because he/she set it up.
Sieges for me in this game tend to go like this; if the enemy in question has no other towns/armies in the filed around, you’re in it for the long haul. If they have towns, quite often they’ll practically empty that town to send people in to relieve it, and armies nearby often will come to help. But if someone does come to relieve the sieged forces, the army in the city will pretty much always attack you the turn after that. So in some ways it’s actually better for you, since you get 1 hard fight in the field and an easy half-siege, instead of a single hard fight to get into the city.
I like being on the other end of sieges, though. Field maneuvres are good, but the best part of the game is holding a city you *know * is going to fall but making the bastards pay for every inch of it.
I don’t know the mod you mention, but if it’s based at all on Kingdoms, they hugely ramp up the effectiveness of flanking and horses in general. On the easier difficulties you can just repeatedly charge pretty much any non-horse non-siege unit, pull back, and repeat to beat them. On higher difficulties they’re much better at stopping you.
Of course, a little bit of reading online will tell you which number in which data file to change so that each turn is, say, 6 months instead of 2 years. I did this by my second or third campaign, and it really made it worth investing in building up good generals. I guess it is, technically, cheating, though. You may want to change the dates of the invention of firearms and the discovery of the New World as well, lest you wait 800 turns for them.
As for sieges: Catapults and (later) cannons are the way to go. Punch a few holes in the walls, and have your troops charge the center of town. If you have a lot of cavalry, they might be able to get the job done against a small defending force. Infantry is more reliable, but will take more casualties before making it past the arrow towers. Make sure to position your engines and soldiers so that, once the walls are broken, they can make it into the heart of the city with minimal exposure to the towers (you do have the camera set to unrestricted, right?). I generally don’t bother sending my archers into the city itself, but they can soften up enemy troops that suddenly find themselves exposed behind a tumbled section of fortification.
And of course, you can just hold the siege for a few turns. The enemy will generally sortie when they have one turn left, but this will be a field battle, and each enemy unit will have taken losses just from being besieged. Easy victory.
Here, the unit types matters a lot. Basically, a unit doesn’t really live up to it’s potential at the early levels. Pikemen don’t pike well, horses mostly horse around, etc. At the second or third (depending on your faction specialization) rank, they’re getting there. At the fourth, they excel at their purpose.
Further, low-level swordsmen have shite for armor and the archers, while certainly doomed at close range, can easily take down quite a few if you put them in a easy field of fire while they’re getting close. If you meant that you got to the archers with a healthy, unshot crew of swordsmen, then it’s a bit wonkier. I’d chalk it up to fighting spread out; optimally, you’ll want to charge them halfway past the archers, to get a better contact surface. 1:1 odds for swordsmen against archers is slaughter.
As for the billmen, they are known to be bugged. I assume you’re playing as the English, yes?
I have these problems with low-level generals and mercenaries, or low-morale troops. Unresponsiveness and sluggishness. However, part of the problem is that the game assumes that once someone in a unit is fighting, they all are and that the units will not be spread out. An example of this is when you’re drawing archers from the wall in a siege, through fighting at the gate, they will refuse to comply to shooting orders if even just one of their number is engaged in melée combat. (Which is really annoying, as using crossbowmen and archers inside your walls against enemies who have climbed up on ladders or in siege towers is simply brutal)
You’ll want to force a big cluster in these scenarios. If your troops are superior, just march them into the enemy formation (or through them, if they are already engaged) and they’ll engage when they’re hit. I find broad formations to be most useful for melée, anyway.
Besieging castles without ways to take down the troops on the ramparts is painful. As it’s supposed to be, kinda. However, you’ll often be better off assaulting one flank than both, and walking ladders to the far flanks is something even the computer does. If they react to it, good; they’ll dilute their forces and you’ll usually have the advantage at the flanks. If not, even better. Once your men are on the walls, clearing them is far easier.
Siege towers are a breed of their own, though; I usually find them quite useless, except for flame-arrow bait to distract the enemy from my ram. Taking the walls close to the ram is also an exercise in futility, as it’ll take far too long to affect your troops fighting under the walls. You’re better off catapulting walls to the flanks and using the tower doors to gain access to the walls.
Another necessity, of course, is to always approach the walls in a loose formation, but I guess you already know that. It’ll make archer fire far less potent.
Hope you fare better! When you get the hang of it, a well-conducted manouever is so incredibly viscerally satisfying that it makes all the pain worth it . . .
Yeah, it’s a pure gaming rig I got last year (I think). Hardware isn’t my problem.
The Long Road. It does alot of things but mostly slows the game down and make sit much more difficult strategically. This weekend though I decided it was a little too tedious, and I switched to Stainless Steel. I can’t play this donkey unmodded, mang.
Yes, and that’s exactly what’s happening. I’m charging wrong. I finally timed a charge of swords into a mass of archers last night and the effect was quite satisfactory. And I’ll take billmen off my line, they’re pathetic. I charged a full unit into 10 horses of general’s cav in the same battle and they actually lost. Good to know they are bugged.
My first (real) game was as the Danes. I was satisfied strategically when I crossed over the steppes to invade the Med and seized all the islands! But when even Hospitallers are taking 45% cas against turkish javelins I get frustrated. I guess I just need to let my men get experience and pay attention to charging them properly.