@@corterrithe thing about negative traits from inns is also new to me, but it explains why all of my generals are alkoholics XD aside from that, nothing new. i would recommend to upgrade the shipbuilder in cities, as upgrading them grants extra export routes.
Several years of playing this game and I didn’t know that having inns and brothels gave your general negative traits. I just thought standing in one citie just gave them bad traits like lazy. While I knew the rest of the tips you showed off it was still an entertaining video!
Or if you have enough money, just pay the Church a generous "donation". You'll quickly turn from the Pope's favorite punching bag to their best friend.
No big donation is needed. Always have 100 gold for 20 turns with the faction that holds the pope and watch your influence go up. You will get a like boost every turn because of the small gift.
I really love the fact TWM2 is getting attention after all these years! I really want a 3rd, but I'm a bit worried about how it will probably turn out...
Another useful tip is you can disband a few units in a safe area, then recruit them somewhere needed. It's a lot faster than move them and you will saving money (in the long run). I mean the game allows player to recruit >1 unit per turn, better make use of it. Btw nice video, have a good day...
Noooo.... all that trouble creating experienced units will be wasted! Only do this if the units don't have any experience, it can be hard to accumulate experience for infantry units
Another fair point. If you're going to charge an enemy general's unit, ALWAYS charge from the left. Doesn't matter what sort of gymnastics you need to do. The general will always be on the left. If it's an infantry man, a heavy cav charge can one shot him as soon as contact happens. And even if you don't kill him instantly, the fact is, you will put him on the first line of the fight which will kill him more quickly. This also works for Rome Total War but on the right side.
@@andyloaeza8476 I think it's on the unit's left. So it depends on where they are. But a quick look should tell you where the gen it. It's the least flamboyant soldier in the unit, usually.
If you don't have assassins and enemy agents are swarming you, you can always use your military units to encircle them so they don't have a map square to retreat and then move one more unit to their place. They die instantly. Very very useful hack.
@@corterri It can be a bit finnicky, as sometimes your units run through an agent, compelling him to move to some other sqare. Best way is to have a bunch (or just enough) units from a garrison and try to deploy them in such order not to cross the very sqare agent is on, untill the last unit that delivers the kill. Also, use terrain, as agents cannot move up to mountains or to the sea.
The No. 1 tip for inexperienced players is that you don't have to pay salaries of garrison units in towns. You can tell which ones they are by the colour of their icon, but basically, they are units that can only be built in towns - you have to use peasants to garrison castles, they are the cheapest to pay. Note that all agent units except merchants have a salary that has to be paid every turn, so don't use too many assassins, spies, or diplomats. Diplomats can be loss makers unless made to pay back their salaries by selling map information to all and sundry.
@@christopherwebber3804 WOOOOOOW i've played so many hours into so many campaigns in broken crescent , but i never noticed that >.< however in this version there is no different of color on any of the icons , but i do see now that coursering over each unit in a garrison will tell in their description box if they have free upkeep , so cool!
@@iamLI3 If I remember correctly, the free units show up in purple or something like that, there's not much difference in the colour though. Only played Broken Crescent once, will have to do it again sometime.
Tip: create a band of 15-16 groups of archers and 4-5 groups of heavy infantry. Infiltrate enemy territory and position them somewhere on a river crossing (ideally) or bridge. Then just wait for the enemy to throw their forces at you and slaughter them at the crossing. Another tip is to just run a group of cavalry far into enemy territory. AI will send all their troops to that place and meanwhile you just take their cities.
and then people say that m2tw had more ˝˝interesting˝˝ battles than newer titles , yes im sure that those 20 variants of hammer and anvil or bridge camping (this) are the pinnacle of interesting , bridge camping is for cowards same with hammer and anvil , attack your enemy head on like any real champion of the battlefield would
@@mcsmash4905 not sure they're more interesting but the main difference for me is that M2TW battles felt heavier. The new engines make soldiers feel like they're made of paper. In M2TW when there was a tight battle and you crashed your heavy cav into the flank or the back if really felt like a true cavalry charge. Empire still gave that feeling with sea battles btw.
@@mcsmash4905 mate, Like half of Julius Caesar's and Alexander the Great's battles were hammer and anvil. The ones who attacked from the front were the ones who died. Nothing cowardly about winning, you don't enjoy your life while being dead. And it's not like anyone's forcing you to hammer and anvil or 'Bridge Camp', just make your own fun, that's what the game is for. And no, It is not unhistorical to secure your crossing points. Many fortified cities and towns existed near bridges and natural crossing points, Like through the alps and such.
This is less of an issue in Medieval 2 since they fixed Squalor by capping it to -100 (rather than in Rome where the squalor penalty was UNCAPPED, something they didn't fix until Medieval 2). But you want to set the taxes as high as possible to avoid growth to avoid the annoying Squalor PO penalty.
In Rome TW I often found myself having to provoke cities that had grown too large to manage into revelling, only to recapture them and decimating the population. Kinda brutal.
Bonus tip: when Jihading or crusading, get as many armies involved when u are about to be succesfull, u'll get a nice xp bonus 2nd bonus tip, reinforce from similar unit with most xp and sent the understrength unit back for retraining, u'll keep the xp and spread xp over greener units secret tip; When playing as Russia, get all units and characters at Petrograd and hire a mercboat.....going for Scotland (wut!?) U'll never survive the mongols at 1st and you can start of from a safe corner of the map. With woodsmen and spearmen u can take all of brittania easily and the pope can shove it since u are orthodox With Turks u can do the same, declare a Jihad on Spain or Portugal and relocate to Iberia ( movement bonus), then take over Moors and North Africa and get monopoly on all trades there
3 -4 ish, Unload at Kopenhagen (optional) take town with allmost full army, sell all buildings for cash and move on, 7-8 u are at Inverness ( get heavy mail upgrade for spearman and they are better and cheaper compared to local enemies, )@@Shammer1
Hi, love the video. All of your tips were great even as a TW2 veteran, just one i have to disagre with is low taxes. You should always put evrything on very high taxes, exactly because of the lower growth. Since that means its easier to deal with squalor, also the income difference is huge. If you have around 5 settlements and put alll of them on very high vs low you can see a around ~3000 or more difference(thats a extra army). And the last one you were wrong about was that you get better traits, you do actually get worse traits. I know this since i am a modder for the games and have seen the files, in fact there are around 3 really powerful traits (more taxes, less contruction cost and less squalor) that can only trigger if you have very high taxes and the settlements i at disullusioned happinies(blue). A cool extra tip i could give that no one uses is, convert Castles to Cities it does cost you a little bit. But Cities are so much more profitable than castle and you dont need half of your settlements to be castles to have a lot of good armies.
What you need to do is put the cities on low taxes except when on the turn when something is built there. Then you put it on very high taxes. If you put a city on low taxes the general may get "bad taxman" or similar if the taxes are low when a building is constructed - or he may get some good chivalry traits if its a church or similar. I agree it's necessary to keep a lid on squalor, so I only put low taxes on towns - once they have grown to a city, and can't grow much more, that's when squalor becomes a problem. It's very bad to keep cities on very high taxes as this causes rebel armies to spawn nearby even if no rebellion happens. That can be good if your general needs the practice (a good fight improves his loyalty and experience) and you have enough troops to deal with the rebels, but if not, keep your taxes low!
@@corterri You have to build lookout towers, the rebel troops frequently spawn in places that are out of sight and the only way you know they are there is by looking at the city status screen and seeing some plundering going on somewhere in the province
something I learned today is if you take military troops and stand them over the campaign maps model of an enemy port is counts as a blockade, the same as if you used a ship
Trade rights with everyone isn't actually a good idea. There's a wonky mechanic where if you have trade rights with someone, but you are unable to trade (because you don't border them over land and don't have a port, or enough trade fleets even if you have a port), you are considered to be a treaty breaker. This affects the relationship with the nation you are trading with, and POSSIBLY (not too sure) affects your global reputation as well. One tactic that I use personally is that I convert a lot of the base settlements into towns. A lot of the base settlements are castles but in reality, you only need 1 castle for every 3 or so towns, and the castles need to be placed at strategic points of your territory (i.e. 1 castle in the middle of your empire, and the rest on borders or choke points). Good example being Byzantines, because Smyrna, Rhodes, Nicosia (Cyprus) and Corinth are all right next to each other and are castles. Smyrna and Rhodes should be turned into towns, Corinth is a good primary military base for your entire empire, and Nicosia is a good strategic castle for the Levant region. Northern Germany also has like 5 castles that border each other.
I tried your trade rights idea in my current campaign. I only offered trade rights when i could trade. It didn't seem to make any difference. I was trying to play a peaceful campaign but everyone still dispises me. And I seem to be broke more often. Sorry, hate to be a naysayer. Maybe I still did something wrong. Medieval 2 diplomacy is notoriously tricky.
Was about to say this myself. I'm glad I checked to see if someone had beat me to it. Making trade deals that you can't follow through on will wreck your relations and reputation like almost nothing else will. The way to improve your reputation is to *never* be the first one to break a deal of any kind, avoid sacking cities as much as possible and (most important, and most painful) always release prisoners. If you get into lots of fights and then just let the prisoners go, your reputation will rise and people will stop stabbing you in the back for no reason. (It's also a viable strategy to just not bother with making friends and count on expanding so rapidly that diplomacy is irrelevant).
wooooow that's so cool to learn , i always wondered what was the deal with factions on the other side of the planet sending a diplomat to make trade with me , there's no way we're actually exchanging goods right? does it actually do anything? and now i know , it's a trap lol.....
Not bad advice, just one or two things about the assasins: 1) killing merchants isn't such a good idea - you should use your own merchants to take them out. This increases their skill (and gives you money), and a merchant parked at a good resource can make you even 1000 gc a turn ( with skill 10+). The further the resource from your capital the better it pays and allied teritory pays better then enemy teritory. The best are gold, ivory and spices. 2) Even when your assasin succedes, the target can get info that it was you. 3) Trying to marry princesses is a good way to make aliances and get a clame on a foraign throne (if their royal line dies and you have good relations, you will get at least part of their teritory) so you might not want to kill them. 4) Heretics and witches can be killed by your priests. This is again better, because the priests get skill. Still, if you don't have a priest arround the area, but you do have an assasin it's probably better not to wait.
I play this game on my phone , I cannot get any of the princes to marry any princesses , is it because I play with a Muslim faction ? Is it only doable with Christian factions?
my fav tip, if you put a row of spikes behind a gate, it will kill half of the cavalry that runs over them, put in a second line of spikes right behind the first, and it will get 99% of the cavalry that runs over them
Tip for giving governors good traits: keep the taxes low, until the turn before a building completes. Then set the tax rate as high as possible while still keeping blue or better public order. After the building is built, go back to low taxes. This avoids getting the "bad with taxes" traits, and I think gives other good ones as well.
Trade Rights... In the Stainless Steel mod (not sure about vanillia) If you can't actively trade with the other faction from shared borders or sea route this will be considered " unfulfilled trade agreements" and your relationship will worsen. Also, if you declare war on a country that you had trade rights with this will lower the relations other nations (this is considered back stabby) So you should only seek Trade Rights with countries that you can actively trade with and have no intention on declaring war.
Another nice tip for defending cities against mongols or other cav heavy civs is placing archer spikes in front of the gate they are attacking, they will hurl themselves onto those spikes lol
9 - I did not know that, and that is an excellent point out! 8 - I haven't used assasins much, but I'll look into them. 7 - Good advice. 6 - I have used lower taxes to good effect. 5 - Always trade rights. A stapple of early game with the diplomat. 4 - Agreed on early building. I do that same, with one focused on military building. 3 - I always set keyboard Group 8 & 9 as missile troops, Group 5 as cav, for ease of finding and directing. 2 - Agreed. Make sure you don't forget the horses in melee. 1 - I've not played with the pope, so it's good to know. Wouldn't want to be Crusaded against. Bonus - Good advice and I'll try it out.
A seasoned veteran I should admit, my dear sir, you got me with the very first point. I shall be ashamed of all the dirty brothels I brought my commanders to
I started playing Total War Rome when I was 8ish and have got stuck into most of the series for hundreds and hundreds of hours since. It's my first time playing Medieval 2 (I'm 28 now haha), this will help me lots, thanks dude :)
For the taxes bit, you need to put your taxes to high or very high whenever a building gets constructed the next turn for your governor to get the good taxman trait. If you don't, you will get the bad taxman trait. Dont forget to put it back to low as you will get bad traits leaving the taxes on high for 3 turns. The inn/brothel negative effects only trigger if your general or governor has full movement points when the turn ends. You can mitigate this by moving your generals though it is tedious. Building civic buildings is good, but save for roads, it is difficult to get an return of investment for buildings that cost more than 3200/3600 as your campaign would be over by then. So I advise to stop building stuff that cost 4000 save for a few settlements that you want a guild in. And also, you can freely attack a catholic faction on your lands without repercussion.. The pope is not entirely unreasonable.
One thing about trade agreements. I'm not sure about Medieval 2 specifically, but in other Total War titles making multiple trade agreements doesn't increase your gold per turn, it only splits your revenue stream between more factions. If it does increase, then it is only by a fairly small amount and not 100%. For example, making one trade agreement gives you 1000 gold per turn, but signing two will not give you 2000 gold per turn, rather it will just make it so that each faction you've signed with gives you 500 per turn. This is better since if one port is blockaded you still have trade income. At least, that's how it works (roughly) in Empire and Shogun 2.
In medieval 2 all the provinces trade with every province they border with no limits, so you ideally want to trade with every faction you have a border with and it would indeed increase the gold per turn. In terms of ports there is a limit to the trade routes each port has, so here a new trade agreement isnt that important. Unless an ally port is blocked, to make sure you can still trade with another port (though the AI automatically chooses the best routes so it is still better to have an agreement with everyone to max proffits).
- build the ballista. - wheel it out of your castle walls far towards the right or left of enemy army. - turn enemy into satay sticks. - when your ballista is out of ammo, wheel another one.
I like the video really, the brothels think is a bit complicated, but in short, you get the worst traits for the pleasure palace, or if theres a governor the turn the brothels is builded, up to a tavern is ok to have, gonna get some drunk and gamblers generals but its ok
Well done! Good advice. A few additions/points... 1. I prioritize farms in settlements and feel that sometimes you don't want a city to grow too fast. I therefore tax them pretty high early (good farms generate money as well as babies). Seems to work for me. 2. Regarding popes, also look at the age of the pope. If he's on death's door, maybe a turn or two of excomming...might be worth it. If he's 40 years old, however... 2a. If he's 40 years old, or just new, and you have a VERY good assassin near...and some serious cojones...just sayin'... 2b. If you are swimming in the florins, keep a diplomat near Rome. Thirty-something 100 florin gifts delivered in one turn, although tedious, always make him love ya, and nickel and diming him 30+ times is more effective than dumping 3-4000 florins at once. Really. Psychology, man, not an exploit... 3. On higher levels of difficulty unit traits like good or great stamina and morale are much more important. Also a unit or two of fast traited horseys are great for running down fleeing generals on their heavy cav. 4. Yup, try not to be at war with too many at a time but again on higher diff levels, that's easier said than done. Try to build your empire at a steady pace until you can take on multiple opponents and win - remember Napoleon's quip - "I'd rather fight allies than be one." Didn't end well for him, but it can for you if you play your cards right. It IS Total WAR, after all, not Total Chill and Build...or Total Diplomacy....
When the pope threatens with excommunication, ignore him and continue to siege your enemy or let your army stay in enemy territory. As long ss you don't attack active, you are fine and the enemy will be excommunicated. A siege will force the enemy to sally out after some time. And Bam! You had to defend against them.
Is the AI better in this game than Rome: Total War since it's pretty common for me in that game to end up in wars with all of my neighbors fairly quickly? In my current Brutii run on VH/H I'm currently at war with nine other factions if you don't include the rebels and I'm around 40 or so turns into the game. Though, I suppose one of those factions isn't that threatening considering I had become so popular with the people that I decided to trigger the civil war while at war with Carthage (1 Settlement), Numidia (4 Settlements), Thrace (2 Settlements), Pontus (4 Settlements), and the Egyptians (10 Settlements).
Here's a tip from me, Always have some thrash infantry arrayed in loose formation in the front of your army to absorb cavalry charges and missile fire. If cavalry charges, your thrash infantry WILL be destroyed, But you will save more valuable infantry + you'll be able to deliver a powerful countercharge to whatever is attacking. It saved me in many battles in Tsardoms TW(Mod), Where the ottomans charged me with Sipahis, which usually CAN and most likely WILL cleave right through your infantry, usually killing 90 percent of a mid-tier infantry, kill like 70 percent of the thrash infantry and something like 20 percent of your good infantry. Tip #2 - Never fight without at least 1 unit of light cavalry and 1 or 2 units of heavy cav, aka Some cav that at least has a basic ranged attack and is fast. When you will run into occasional annoying enemy light cavalry, you can steadily skirmish with the enemy, Slow inching your heavy cav. Nearer to the skirmish site and once you are sure it'll be able to reach the light cavalry quickly, Have the light cavalry charge and simultaneously order the heavy cav to charge. A guaranteed light cav bane, I fought like 4 Ottoman light cavalry units with that trick+ some infantry and archer support and the light cav was no more. BTW first tip was a revelation ! IDK if I consider myself a veteran, But I have played for 4 years and never knew this.
I build brothels for the growth bonus more so than order since the benefits outweigh any cost. Similarly, low taxes in the early game are crucial for growing population, and it's not just about income: the faster you upgrade a settlement, the sooner you can access higher tiers of buildings and therefore elite units. You can raise them once they've gotten large enough that unrest becomes an issue.
i've played medieval 2 for most of my childhood, then in my early adulthood, now i have stopped playing any games for 2 years and I JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT MANY THINGS I MISSED IN MEDIEVAL 2 WTF???? 2 years is enough, i'm installing a bunch of old games and i'm gonna play through all of it just to feel like a child again 😂
My go-to tactic when it comes to dealing with Mongols (and to a lesser extent, Timurids): Don't meet them in the field. You'll use and lose too much manpower for nothing, and since their armies tend to stay grouped you'll often find yourself against 2 000+ strong armies. Instead, do 2 things: Stay in cities/castles, and get longbowmen. If you don't play England, send generals to England and recruit as many mercenary longbowmen/sherwood archers as you can, before funneling them to the frontline. If you have access longbowmen, you only need at max 1 archer and 3 infantry to hold a city/castle. Since Mongols are an almost-exclusively cavalry faction, they'll more often than not have no more than 3 infantry units. One will use the battering ram, another a siege tower and the last one ladders. The trick is to have one infantry (or armored archer) unit for receiving each siege engine on the walls, one in front of the gates, and finally your longbow unit in front of the gates as well. This seems counter-intuitive, but the idea is to deploy the stakes behind the gates. Then, once they're destroyed, the Mongol cavalry will pour in and get itself destroyed in a matter of seconds. The infantry unit at the gates ensures dealing with the rare infantry and few horses who managed to slip past the stakes. I once destroyed the entire mongol army using this tactic because they circled Jerusalem with all of the family members. Once the gates were down, the khan, the heir and the few last family members all killed themselves on my stake, effectively destroying the nation.
I remember holding Antioch, playing as England, when Mongols came to Bagdad. I had a few Longbowmen in the full-stack garrison. All the Mongols came to Antioch and began the siege. I don't exactly it happened, but all they could do is to put ladders on the walls and ram the gates. All 4 Longbowmen units put Stakes against all 4 gates. A few units of Mongol Archers and Mongol Infantry were slaughtered on the walls by Feudal Knights. And all Mongol cavalry died on Stakes, while attacking through the broken gates. 10+ units each time. That was glorious. As I remember, almost the entire Mongol Invasion army died while storming Antioch.
Thanks, I am gonna try that. However there is some settlements that keep acting up regardless of who is in charge and how big of an army I have in the city. Constantinople being the worst example
Is there any advantage to having the pope come from your own faction? I have a few tricks to flood the game with cardinals and ensure one of your guys become the pope, but I really haven't seen the value.
The best way for me to deal with Mongols is to build a ton of forts and garrison them all with pikes, bows and axe units. And assassinate all their generals. Also set the battle time limit so they don't fight with full force they lose.
Let’s face it the most fun part of any campaign is training your assassin. The fantasy of one sneaky dude dismantling the enemy faction of fucking with the Pope is just too good to pass up.
Trash infantry are you best friend for the entire game. Keep producing those spearmen at all times.. Half a stack of trash can defend a city from a doomstack if used wisely and in conjunction with siege to block streets and rain death down on gate/wall beaches.
1. You don't always have cavalry. You can make a hammer out of literally anyone. Cavalry, infantry, archers, heck, I'll do it with ballista. If you have less units than the enemy, you can just spread the anvil thin to spare at least one unit for the hammer. It's better than fighting from the front with bulkier units. Additionally, it's always good to have spearmen on your sides. AI sometimes tries to rout them with cavalry. Most often however it just charges frontally or through a gap in your lines to get faster to archers. Which is stupid. You can use that to eliminate enemy cav first. Leave such gap on purpose and place one spearmen unit behindyour archers facing the gap. Then trap enemy cav. 2. defending the gates is not always the brightest idea. Sometimes (especially in wooden palisade settelments), there is higher ground or better angle for your archers somewhere within the settelment. AI also gets confused in some alleys within settelments and acts weird there. You can exploit this. Example: while defending the gate, ALL malee enemy units will try to break there at once. While defending alleys AI would usually throw only several units at you at once. Some of AI other units may take other alleys, but it is still better for each of your unit to defend against smaller number of enemies. Near the gate your units may just got pushed in all sides by the enemy and will eventually break their formation.
low taxes is generaly a bad idea in the long run , the only exception being tiny settlements that need to growth , if you put it in really large cities you are just asking for squalor , and do not trade with everyone it will cause diplomatic issues , for example as sicily i blockaded moorish ports , guess who traded with the moors? milan ,and i got messages about my relations with them getting worse , why? because its their money thats being sent to the bottom of the sea , trade with factions that you have no plans attack , while also keeping in mind with whom they are trading , you are an ally of the HRE but they are at war with denmark and on top of that you trade with denmark? cease trade with denmark ((stuff like this should be obvious))
I definitely learned a tip or two and appreciate it! One thing I'm struggling to figure out is what building enables recruiting of pikemen, I am playing as the scots and that's supposed to be my strength but I can't figure out how to be able to recruit pikemen.
In any playthrough, bullrush for Timbuktu. It is the wealthiest province on the map as it features a couple of goldmines, ivory and slaves. All resources you can park a merchant on and rake in the cash.
tip 9) unless you're having public order issues and need a general inside or have the setting turned on where you need a general to manually control a city, build the Inn/Brothel. generals are too valuable to keep inside cities. Tip 8) agents have a hidden 200 florins per turn upkeep cost. build what you need and no more. How I play the game agents aren't worth the time or trouble anyway. 7) good tip. 6) keep it on high unless there are no more upgrades for that settlement and needs more population to upgrade. I usually keep taxes high and prioritize growth over all other buildings unless other buildings are needed i.e.. religious buildings, public order issues. 5) Good tip, don't pay fee for it tho, not in early game at least. the money you make will not be worth it in the early game and that money can be better spent elsewhere. try and squeez whatever money you can get from anyone and trade whatever they want. The early cash snowballs fast so get what you can as early as you can and use it. 4) Yes, prioritize the buildings that the settlement/Castles need. 3) yes, heavy knights/cav are king in medieval 2 but expensive, get cheap spears for the line, hammer with cav. 2) good tip, see 3. 1) befriend the pope early and give gifts to increase favor. you can ignore the first warning of excommunication the pope threatens you with if you have very good or higher favor. Ally if you can, other catholic nations can and will still declare war on you but it's much more severe for them. Other nations will not like them, they'll get excommunicated, favor with pope will not be harmed if you are fighting a catholic faction if they are excommunicated. My Tip is try to never have spare cash, the moment you hit end turn you can never make that time up. only in very specific scenarios should you be on a big wad of cash. build buildings, train units, get that agent you've been waiting on for when you had the spare cash. there are more than one way to make money and going to 0 dollars doesn't matter. Not sure on what to build so just sitting on cash and hitting next turn is one of the worst things you can do.
Lazy happen when a general sits in a settlement day by day, click him and give him a walk before going back, keep building brothel, my generals are still fine.
I'd love to see a video about war provocation methods. Having the AI actively attacking has always been one of my concern. Back in RTW, the Seleucids and Greek Cities always got ganged up less than 5 turns into the game. As for Rome 2, the AI keeps befriending with each other, far and near. Especially Rome, after taking out probably the Etruscans, they never set foot out of the Italian Peninsula. It begs the question: Should I be the one to wage all and influence of all wars or should I weaken my military, leaving vulnerable ports and cities to coax the AI to attacking ?
For number 5: you can even sell your trade rights to the others demand a tribute (they wont accept) but offer a payment much higher than you could get if you would directly ask for 1200 denari for diety traderights ^^ take from your enemys as much as you can
i was playing as a turk and i always use auto resovle cause i thought that if i commanded more men will die in 80 90 ish turn venice declared war on me and attacked my best general and king who had only 6 units of cavalry while the enemy had 19 highly trained Pikemen i was scared of loosing to many soldiers so i ordered my men to withdraw and immediately the pikemens were chasing me the but i hid a unit of cavalry which surprise attacked there two generals and the king their death caused a massive route and i the battle from that day i stopped doubting my capability
Missile Cav is technically not Light Cav, they occupy a Medium Cavalry middle ground. What that means is that your Light Cav can catch up to them and lock them down long enough for your heavy cavalry to close and hack them to pieces.
@@corterri As do I. They’re goddamned broken in the hands of a good player. The strategy I mentioned is an anti-AI move. I don’t know if Mongolian missile cav is tougher or good in a melee compared to Turkish or Moorish missile cavalry units, though, so maybe this strat doesn’t work against them. In my experience(as England), my Hobbilar light cav would catch Missile Cavs and outright win the fights at times, but again this was against Muslim missile cavalry and not Mongolian.
Never Knew that inns make your general have bad traits, thats actually clever design to not just spam them and low taxes can actually help, who would have knew
Ballista/ Catapult buildings prevent your general from getting the ignorant trait and he could get combat bonuses. Build them if a general is going to sit.
Tip #8 about using Assassins is how you actually resolve Tip #1 about the Pope. When the Pope dies, your ruler is no longer excommunicated if the next elected Pope is more friendly to you.
During my current campaign I was Venice and got attacked by Milan, Sicily, Hungaria and the byzantine at the same time. I lost Venice and all my territory apart from 2 small towns. I played smart slowly started plotting my revenge against those that wronged me.... Constantinople will burn just like Milan.
In my Venice cam, i attack HRE in first turn, take Rome in turn 5, beat Sicily in turn 12, Constantinople in turn 30, have the victory condition in turn 48, and now i am head to head with the Mongols in turn 68 :)).
Lower your taxes is a pretty garbage advice; it reduces the amount of money you earn per turn hence, you are vulnerable, because money means power. It is better to adjust the taxes to your own specific needs. How would you improve a settlement if you don't have money to purchase the next level building?
True but general rule for a newbie, which this video is for, lower taxes and better population growth= more advanced units and more sacked enemy's for income
@@brandonyoho2236Well, that's even worse. Low taxes are not an advance tip, every newbie will realize that without money is game over. Lower the taxes gives you a bad early game, and therefore a headache in the middle-late game.
Tip 12: The walls are not glitched, if you know how to operate on them. Tip 13: Cavalry charges work fine, if you know how to charge, and know what effects on you charge success. Tip 15: Turn of skirmish, and micromanage the skirmish units manually.
Not sure if this footage was just to make a point or from a real game you played, but my tip to you: 2:45 always ask for money when the balance is generous. Nobody should waste free money.
The growth rate in Medieval 2 is so slow that you lose out on a lot of tax money when you put it up low taxes. In-room one you could raid enemy towns and then enslave the populace and send it to your other settlements strategically. Medieval 2 you cannot. So I guess you might as well low-tax all your settlements and then just pick big enemy settlements to completely raid for extra cash.
Decent advice, but I wouldn’t take the Pope too seriously. Yes, the public order hit can be really bad, but you are going to end up expanding into other Catholic factions at some point. Instead, use cheap militia and public order buildings to offset the public order hit, or better yet, have your own Pope installed by training up priests in non Catholic areas and recruiting them from cities with bigger churches/theologians guilds. Bribing/allying the Pope helps a lot too. But, whatever you do, don’t sit on your hands for dozens of turns because you’re scared of excommunication, that’s makes stagnation/defeat a certainty.
I didn’t know the don’t build inn tip or don’t raise taxes tip. Never thought about it thanks I’ve been playing for over a decade 🤣 but I’m going to ignore the pope, I don’t care let them come.
When defending town or castle use its center for infinite morale so your units will not brake becouse enemy numerical superiority; abuse bridges and be like Gandalf "You shall not pass!!!" with a lot of ranged units; try to shoot enemy from sides and behind so they will melt like my paycheck in first week xD. Oh and abuse jihad/crusade mechanic, every general in army that took its target city will have massive chivarly boost so you can have in one jihad 20 generals with 6+ chivarly. When you attack enemy nation before you have any ally will meke ai have 0 trust to you.
In the big Stainless Steel mod it nearly always just gives positive traits. Most of the negatives come from the govenor being too passive inside the city.
Yeah you know I would charge the enemy but 90% of the unit decides to stop and have a smoke ten feet away and I would flee from the enemy's charging cavalry, but I have to give my light horse an hour or two to decide to turn around.
Lowering the taxes at the beginning is terrible advice. You need that money and if you want to grow your settlements it is best to spare captives to get your generals to be chivalrous and you'll build farms and other buildings that raise your popgrowth anyway.
You are handicapping yourself so much mate. Low taxes increases your population growth twofold, because you also get chivalrous traits for the govenor that boost happiness and population growth again. So chivalry is mainly good on gouvenors, not leading generals. So my advice to you would be to turn those things around: low taxes and kill captives. The generals will gain dread wich makes the enemy have lower morale and your govenours will gain alot of chivalry for the prosperity of your citys.
@@longbow857 I was talking only about the first maybe 20 turns. In that time you are very limited by money and grabing a few good cities/castles quickly is essential. Sparing captives is also a must in the early game in my opinion because you get chivalry much faster that way and having one or two generals that bost the growth of a castle is great for getting your best units quicker.
@@tarmairon431 In my campaigns I never had problems taking all rebel settlements around me with low taxes, so I feel it's not a must, but I get what you are saying.
i tried playing this but sieges were insanely hard. towers shooting from all directions whenever an enemy unit is anywhere near them...even when im at them already, and u cannot ever capture them! it made sieges almost impossible without overwhelming forces, even basic walls. compared to rome 1 its ultra hard this way...couldnt handle that and no idea how u do. also im not sure how to build my economy. very few economic buildings and some dont seem that useful when u actually build them. also, which cities i should have as castles and which keep as cities?
Ever use catapults or trebuchets to punch two holes on opposite sides of the gatehouse? I usually do that and hit the gate with a ram and that sort of confuses the AI since it doesn't know what hole to cover. I almost never use ladders, I feel like I always get routed using ladders unless you have an overwhelming force. A lot of times I also like to wait out defenders if possible since it's easier for them to come out to you. It takes a fuck ton of turns sometimes, though.
@@corterri Early game i got no access to siege weapons. Maybe ballistas if i make an effort to rush them. The towers will still shoot non stop. They give an overwhelming advantage to the enemy, and i cannot stop them.
@@cobrazaxTowers are strong, it's best to get a couple of ballistas to take them out at your planned entry. Even 2 or 3 is enough for early settlements to punch a hole in the wall and take out 2 towers. Also the AI will send units to guard the hole you just punched in the wall. After you destroy the towers, you can get your ballistas and other missile troops on the right angle to shoot through the hole and into the guarding troops. I have had battles where I have killed 50-60% of their forces before the battle even starts. Make two holes in the wall in different places. Get their infantry engaged with yours at the first entry point and then run the heavy cavalry in behind them through the second hole. They will rout quickly, especially with a dread general.
@@Kevin-oy2lr well im talking mostly about early game where i dont even have any artillery available. only some cav, spearmen and archers. in that situation, i cannot do anything vs towers and the annihilate me, even when im facing smaller forces. in rome 1, basic towers were easy to avoid, and even later towers could be mostly avoided if u were smart about it. now, its literally impossible to do anything against them without artillery...no idea what to do.
@@cobrazax Every faction has a city or castle that can build a ballista range from turn 1. Even the single city starting factions like Scotland and Denmark can build them in Edinburgh and Arhus, respectively. Every faction can have at least 1 ballista by turn 4. 3 turns to build the range and 1 turn to produce the first one, by turn 6 you can have at least 2.
Can’t be excommunicated if you destroy your enemies before the Pope gets involved. That’s how I get rid of Scotland before Turn 5: Build spies, send them into Edinburgh, and then strike with the gates open and take their capital. The rest of Scotland falls in short order.
by the way at the start when you getting the trade agreements check the priorities of the ai. if it wants it then they will be willing to pay for it. sometimes you can pull ove 1k gold from them. also exchange map information. If the ai wants to kill you they will try anyway, but it will help you greatly to learn where their cities are as well as what neutral cities they might know about that they have not taken. If you do this and focus on taking reb setlements and mostly just build eco buildings at start then you can easily end up in a situation where you can continously build in all of your setlements simultaniously.
1k? Especially when they want peace they give between 10-20k gold for it, to then start the war soon again themselves and you can sent the next diplomat to claim more cash.
From my experience, horse units are just so much better than any other unit to the point it's hilarious. I once had a battle where I was outnumbered 7 to 1 and the enemy had at least 300 spearmen and nearly 200 horses units of their own, while I had nothing but 100 horse units myself. After a grueling 15 minute battle of attrition where I baited small individual groups of the foe's army and did quick charges to scare them and eventually force entire groups to retreat, I eventually won with 42 horses remaining, and over 400 of my foe's units dead/retreated + their commanders dead. I guess in siege battles horses might be a bit weaker, but on offense, with a bit of assistance from siege units or infantry with battering rams, they can assault the settlement from multiple angles so fast that the AI can't deal with it properly. Or on defense, they can quickly charge out of the defensive walls to interrupt/scare away the foe's infantry from using their battering rams/ladders/seige towers and then retreat before taking too much damage themselves(either back into the main gate or far to the sides if opening the main gate is too risky). So basically, spearmen only really counter horse units that run right into them, but fail to curb any of their other strengths.
Most struggling thing for me in this game is diplomacy. AI always acts like a capricious bitch in mid and late game, no matter how much you pay them, give them map and trade rights, and fight their enemies, they will always get offended for no reason and march army at you even from neutral relationships😅. Even Allies suddenly might go bipolar and betray you out of nowhere. This is especially annoying when playing Central European kingdoms
Yeah I also find this, eventually everyone becomes an enemy and diplomacy disappears. I think maintaining a positive overall "reputation" has a major impact on this, though.
Me: “as a seasoned veteran why am I even watching this.”
Also me 30 seconds in: “wtf how did I not know this”
Lmao
@@corterrithe thing about negative traits from inns is also new to me, but it explains why all of my generals are alkoholics XD
aside from that, nothing new.
i would recommend to upgrade the shipbuilder in cities, as upgrading them grants extra export routes.
My generals are rarely in settlement so I never notice tbh
Several years of playing this game and I didn’t know that having inns and brothels gave your general negative traits. I just thought standing in one citie just gave them bad traits like lazy.
While I knew the rest of the tips you showed off it was still an entertaining video!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed the video!
@@corterri you can avoid it to some extent by taking the general out of the city every time you build something
Wait until you discover the depth of the royal family tree system. You can actually breed generals with good traits.
get a copy of the Medievalopedia, it explains all the traits plus a huge amount of other useufl information
@@dmtaboo_truth7052 What is this, CK2?
Or if you have enough money, just pay the Church a generous "donation".
You'll quickly turn from the Pope's favorite punching bag to their best friend.
No big donation is needed. Always have 100 gold for 20 turns with the faction that holds the pope and watch your influence go up. You will get a like boost every turn because of the small gift.
I really love the fact TWM2 is getting attention after all these years! I really want a 3rd, but I'm a bit worried about how it will probably turn out...
Unlike rome 1 wich needed more work to be good, a medieval 2 remaster would already be amazing.
@@longbow857 it might be really bad due to the year were in. all games are bad recently for whatever reason
We need the biggest medieval 2 remaster ever :)) plus some mods, remember stainless steel? We must combine them, m.
@@longbow857rome 1 was a masterpiece you kidding
@@RsDv5 The original back in the day, yes. The remaster is a disgrace.
Another useful tip is you can disband a few units in a safe area, then recruit them somewhere needed. It's a lot faster than move them and you will saving money (in the long run). I mean the game allows player to recruit >1 unit per turn, better make use of it. Btw nice video, have a good day...
What? Nah in medieval two you can recruit up to three units in one turn especially with the castle and citadels units.
@@54032Zepol that's what I said, more than 1 unit. You don't get what ">" symbol means...
@@addochandra4745 no :
Noooo.... all that trouble creating experienced units will be wasted! Only do this if the units don't have any experience, it can be hard to accumulate experience for infantry units
@@corterri if your units are beat up, then they probably have some experience, so they should be rebuilt, not destroyed
Another fair point. If you're going to charge an enemy general's unit, ALWAYS charge from the left. Doesn't matter what sort of gymnastics you need to do. The general will always be on the left. If it's an infantry man, a heavy cav charge can one shot him as soon as contact happens. And even if you don't kill him instantly, the fact is, you will put him on the first line of the fight which will kill him more quickly.
This also works for Rome Total War but on the right side.
Would this be my left or his left ?
@@andyloaeza8476 I think it's on the unit's left. So it depends on where they are. But a quick look should tell you where the gen it. It's the least flamboyant soldier in the unit, usually.
If you don't have assassins and enemy agents are swarming you, you can always use your military units to encircle them so they don't have a map square to retreat and then move one more unit to their place. They die instantly. Very very useful hack.
Really? I'll have to try that now..
@@corterri It can be a bit finnicky, as sometimes your units run through an agent, compelling him to move to some other sqare. Best way is to have a bunch (or just enough) units from a garrison and try to deploy them in such order not to cross the very sqare agent is on, untill the last unit that delivers the kill. Also, use terrain, as agents cannot move up to mountains or to the sea.
Tried it in rome 1, still need to try it for medieval 2
The No. 1 tip for inexperienced players is that you don't have to pay salaries of garrison units in towns. You can tell which ones they are by the colour of their icon, but basically, they are units that can only be built in towns - you have to use peasants to garrison castles, they are the cheapest to pay. Note that all agent units except merchants have a salary that has to be paid every turn, so don't use too many assassins, spies, or diplomats. Diplomats can be loss makers unless made to pay back their salaries by selling map information to all and sundry.
wait by salaries do you mean upkeep??
@@iamLI3 Yes
@@christopherwebber3804 WOOOOOOW
i've played so many hours into so many campaigns in broken crescent , but i never noticed that >.<
however in this version there is no different of color on any of the icons , but i do see now that coursering over each unit in a garrison will tell in their description box if they have free upkeep , so cool!
@@iamLI3 If I remember correctly, the free units show up in purple or something like that, there's not much difference in the colour though. Only played Broken Crescent once, will have to do it again sometime.
Tip: create a band of 15-16 groups of archers and 4-5 groups of heavy infantry. Infiltrate enemy territory and position them somewhere on a river crossing (ideally) or bridge. Then just wait for the enemy to throw their forces at you and slaughter them at the crossing.
Another tip is to just run a group of cavalry far into enemy territory. AI will send all their troops to that place and meanwhile you just take their cities.
Both tips are actually historical
That's just nasty ;p
and then people say that m2tw had more ˝˝interesting˝˝ battles than newer titles , yes im sure that those 20 variants of hammer and anvil or bridge camping (this) are the pinnacle of interesting , bridge camping is for cowards same with hammer and anvil , attack your enemy head on like any real champion of the battlefield would
@@mcsmash4905 not sure they're more interesting but the main difference for me is that M2TW battles felt heavier. The new engines make soldiers feel like they're made of paper. In M2TW when there was a tight battle and you crashed your heavy cav into the flank or the back if really felt like a true cavalry charge.
Empire still gave that feeling with sea battles btw.
@@mcsmash4905 mate, Like half of Julius Caesar's and Alexander the Great's battles were hammer and anvil. The ones who attacked from the front were the ones who died. Nothing cowardly about winning, you don't enjoy your life while being dead.
And it's not like anyone's forcing you to hammer and anvil or 'Bridge Camp', just make your own fun, that's what the game is for. And no, It is not unhistorical to secure your crossing points. Many fortified cities and towns existed near bridges and natural crossing points, Like through the alps and such.
This is less of an issue in Medieval 2 since they fixed Squalor by capping it to -100 (rather than in Rome where the squalor penalty was UNCAPPED, something they didn't fix until Medieval 2). But you want to set the taxes as high as possible to avoid growth to avoid the annoying Squalor PO penalty.
The growth can be pretty excessive with low taxes, I find myself upgrading cities every other turn. Them walls expensive.
In Rome TW I often found myself having to provoke cities that had grown too large to manage into revelling, only to recapture them and decimating the population. Kinda brutal.
@@corterrihigher taxes r only to be used in growth controlling situations
Bonus tip: when Jihading or crusading, get as many armies involved when u are about to be succesfull, u'll get a nice xp bonus
2nd bonus tip, reinforce from similar unit with most xp and sent the understrength unit back for retraining, u'll keep the xp and spread xp over greener units
secret tip; When playing as Russia, get all units and characters at Petrograd and hire a mercboat.....going for Scotland (wut!?)
U'll never survive the mongols at 1st and you can start of from a safe corner of the map. With woodsmen and spearmen u can take all of brittania easily and the pope can shove it since u are orthodox
With Turks u can do the same, declare a Jihad on Spain or Portugal and relocate to Iberia ( movement bonus), then take over Moors and North Africa and get monopoly on all trades there
Wow never thought of the move and come back stronger technique but how many turns does it talk to get too Scotland and Iberia
3 -4 ish, Unload at Kopenhagen (optional) take town with allmost full army, sell all buildings for cash and move on, 7-8 u are at Inverness ( get heavy mail upgrade for spearman and they are better and cheaper compared to local enemies, )@@Shammer1
Hi, love the video. All of your tips were great even as a TW2 veteran, just one i have to disagre with is low taxes. You should always put evrything on very high taxes, exactly because of the lower growth. Since that means its easier to deal with squalor, also the income difference is huge. If you have around 5 settlements and put alll of them on very high vs low you can see a around ~3000 or more difference(thats a extra army).
And the last one you were wrong about was that you get better traits, you do actually get worse traits. I know this since i am a modder for the games and have seen the files, in fact there are around 3 really powerful traits (more taxes, less contruction cost and less squalor) that can only trigger if you have very high taxes and the settlements i at disullusioned happinies(blue).
A cool extra tip i could give that no one uses is, convert Castles to Cities it does cost you a little bit. But Cities are so much more profitable than castle and you dont need half of your settlements to be castles to have a lot of good armies.
What you need to do is put the cities on low taxes except when on the turn when something is built there. Then you put it on very high taxes. If you put a city on low taxes the general may get "bad taxman" or similar if the taxes are low when a building is constructed - or he may get some good chivalry traits if its a church or similar. I agree it's necessary to keep a lid on squalor, so I only put low taxes on towns - once they have grown to a city, and can't grow much more, that's when squalor becomes a problem. It's very bad to keep cities on very high taxes as this causes rebel armies to spawn nearby even if no rebellion happens. That can be good if your general needs the practice (a good fight improves his loyalty and experience) and you have enough troops to deal with the rebels, but if not, keep your taxes low!
@Christopher Webber
I wasn't aware of the rebel troops spawning due to high taxes!
@@corterri You have to build lookout towers, the rebel troops frequently spawn in places that are out of sight and the only way you know they are there is by looking at the city status screen and seeing some plundering going on somewhere in the province
Ugh ur wrong and trash never play a total war game again noob
something I learned today is if you take military troops and stand them over the campaign maps model of an enemy port is counts as a blockade, the same as if you used a ship
Trade rights with everyone isn't actually a good idea. There's a wonky mechanic where if you have trade rights with someone, but you are unable to trade (because you don't border them over land and don't have a port, or enough trade fleets even if you have a port), you are considered to be a treaty breaker. This affects the relationship with the nation you are trading with, and POSSIBLY (not too sure) affects your global reputation as well.
One tactic that I use personally is that I convert a lot of the base settlements into towns. A lot of the base settlements are castles but in reality, you only need 1 castle for every 3 or so towns, and the castles need to be placed at strategic points of your territory (i.e. 1 castle in the middle of your empire, and the rest on borders or choke points). Good example being Byzantines, because Smyrna, Rhodes, Nicosia (Cyprus) and Corinth are all right next to each other and are castles. Smyrna and Rhodes should be turned into towns, Corinth is a good primary military base for your entire empire, and Nicosia is a good strategic castle for the Levant region. Northern Germany also has like 5 castles that border each other.
Doesn’t matter if I have trade rights with a nation that borders between I and another?
I tried your trade rights idea in my current campaign. I only offered trade rights when i could trade. It didn't seem to make any difference. I was trying to play a peaceful campaign but everyone still dispises me. And I seem to be broke more often.
Sorry, hate to be a naysayer. Maybe I still did something wrong. Medieval 2 diplomacy is notoriously tricky.
Was about to say this myself. I'm glad I checked to see if someone had beat me to it. Making trade deals that you can't follow through on will wreck your relations and reputation like almost nothing else will. The way to improve your reputation is to *never* be the first one to break a deal of any kind, avoid sacking cities as much as possible and (most important, and most painful) always release prisoners. If you get into lots of fights and then just let the prisoners go, your reputation will rise and people will stop stabbing you in the back for no reason. (It's also a viable strategy to just not bother with making friends and count on expanding so rapidly that diplomacy is irrelevant).
wooooow that's so cool to learn , i always wondered what was the deal with factions on the other side of the planet sending a diplomat to make trade with me , there's no way we're actually exchanging goods right? does it actually do anything?
and now i know , it's a trap lol.....
if you desire the enemy generals head,
just remember - snake in the bed.
Shang Tsung Art of War.
Lmao best comment
Sun Tzu, the greatest of military cheeze
Not bad advice, just one or two things about the assasins: 1) killing merchants isn't such a good idea - you should use your own merchants to take them out. This increases their skill (and gives you money), and a merchant parked at a good resource can make you even 1000 gc a turn ( with skill 10+). The further the resource from your capital the better it pays and allied teritory pays better then enemy teritory. The best are gold, ivory and spices. 2) Even when your assasin succedes, the target can get info that it was you. 3) Trying to marry princesses is a good way to make aliances and get a clame on a foraign throne (if their royal line dies and you have good relations, you will get at least part of their teritory) so you might not want to kill them. 4) Heretics and witches can be killed by your priests. This is again better, because the priests get skill. Still, if you don't have a priest arround the area, but you do have an assasin it's probably better not to wait.
I play this game on my phone , I cannot get any of the princes to marry any princesses , is it because I play with a Muslim faction ? Is it only doable with Christian factions?
@@junudallah6406marriage has to have same religious beliefs
my fav tip, if you put a row of spikes behind a gate, it will kill half of the cavalry that runs over them,
put in a second line of spikes right behind the first, and it will get 99% of the cavalry that runs over them
exceptionally well done video, hit me in the nostalgia feels
Tip for giving governors good traits: keep the taxes low, until the turn before a building completes. Then set the tax rate as high as possible while still keeping blue or better public order. After the building is built, go back to low taxes. This avoids getting the "bad with taxes" traits, and I think gives other good ones as well.
Trade Rights... In the Stainless Steel mod (not sure about vanillia) If you can't actively trade with the other faction from shared borders or sea route this will be considered " unfulfilled trade agreements" and your relationship will worsen. Also, if you declare war on a country that you had trade rights with this will lower the relations other nations (this is considered back stabby)
So you should only seek Trade Rights with countries that you can actively trade with and have no intention on declaring war.
Another nice tip for defending cities against mongols or other cav heavy civs is placing archer spikes in front of the gate they are attacking, they will hurl themselves onto those spikes lol
9 - I did not know that, and that is an excellent point out!
8 - I haven't used assasins much, but I'll look into them.
7 - Good advice.
6 - I have used lower taxes to good effect.
5 - Always trade rights. A stapple of early game with the diplomat.
4 - Agreed on early building. I do that same, with one focused on military building.
3 - I always set keyboard Group 8 & 9 as missile troops, Group 5 as cav, for ease of finding and directing.
2 - Agreed. Make sure you don't forget the horses in melee.
1 - I've not played with the pope, so it's good to know. Wouldn't want to be Crusaded against.
Bonus - Good advice and I'll try it out.
A seasoned veteran I should admit, my dear sir, you got me with the very first point. I shall be ashamed of all the dirty brothels I brought my commanders to
I started playing Total War Rome when I was 8ish and have got stuck into most of the series for hundreds and hundreds of hours since. It's my first time playing Medieval 2 (I'm 28 now haha), this will help me lots, thanks dude :)
For the taxes bit, you need to put your taxes to high or very high whenever a building gets constructed the next turn for your governor to get the good taxman trait. If you don't, you will get the bad taxman trait. Dont forget to put it back to low as you will get bad traits leaving the taxes on high for 3 turns.
The inn/brothel negative effects only trigger if your general or governor has full movement points when the turn ends. You can mitigate this by moving your generals though it is tedious.
Building civic buildings is good, but save for roads, it is difficult to get an return of investment for buildings that cost more than 3200/3600 as your campaign would be over by then. So I advise to stop building stuff that cost 4000 save for a few settlements that you want a guild in.
And also, you can freely attack a catholic faction on your lands without repercussion.. The pope is not entirely unreasonable.
Me: has over 500 hours in this game
Also Me: didn't know about #9, and has been building brothels everywhere...
I simply don’t build them because they are haram 😎
One thing about trade agreements. I'm not sure about Medieval 2 specifically, but in other Total War titles making multiple trade agreements doesn't increase your gold per turn, it only splits your revenue stream between more factions. If it does increase, then it is only by a fairly small amount and not 100%. For example, making one trade agreement gives you 1000 gold per turn, but signing two will not give you 2000 gold per turn, rather it will just make it so that each faction you've signed with gives you 500 per turn. This is better since if one port is blockaded you still have trade income. At least, that's how it works (roughly) in Empire and Shogun 2.
Wow, I didn't know that at all. I hope that's not the case for Medieval II!
@@corterri Boot up Medieval 2 and give it a try! Get back to me with the results.
In medieval 2 all the provinces trade with every province they border with no limits, so you ideally want to trade with every faction you have a border with and it would indeed increase the gold per turn.
In terms of ports there is a limit to the trade routes each port has, so here a new trade agreement isnt that important. Unless an ally port is blocked, to make sure you can still trade with another port (though the AI automatically chooses the best routes so it is still better to have an agreement with everyone to max proffits).
@@PoorManatee6197 well dang , this guy has L as his picture , so he must be the correct one here o:
- build the ballista.
- wheel it out of your castle walls far towards the right or left of enemy army.
- turn enemy into satay sticks.
- when your ballista is out of ammo, wheel another one.
I like the video really, the brothels think is a bit complicated, but in short, you get the worst traits for the pleasure palace, or if theres a governor the turn the brothels is builded, up to a tavern is ok to have, gonna get some drunk and gamblers generals but its ok
high quality stuff, still enjoyed this even as a Med II vet!
Well done! Good advice.
A few additions/points...
1. I prioritize farms in settlements and feel that sometimes you don't want a city to grow too fast. I therefore tax them pretty high early (good farms generate money as well as babies). Seems to work for me.
2. Regarding popes, also look at the age of the pope. If he's on death's door, maybe a turn or two of excomming...might be worth it. If he's 40 years old, however...
2a. If he's 40 years old, or just new, and you have a VERY good assassin near...and some serious cojones...just sayin'...
2b. If you are swimming in the florins, keep a diplomat near Rome. Thirty-something 100 florin gifts delivered in one turn, although tedious, always make him love ya, and nickel and diming him 30+ times is more effective than dumping 3-4000 florins at once. Really. Psychology, man, not an exploit...
3. On higher levels of difficulty unit traits like good or great stamina and morale are much more important. Also a unit or two of fast traited horseys are great for running down fleeing generals on their heavy cav.
4. Yup, try not to be at war with too many at a time but again on higher diff levels, that's easier said than done. Try to build your empire at a steady pace until you can take on multiple opponents and win - remember Napoleon's quip - "I'd rather fight allies than be one." Didn't end well for him, but it can for you if you play your cards right. It IS Total WAR, after all, not Total Chill and Build...or Total Diplomacy....
“Tip for beginners: snake in the bed.” 😂
Keep an agent with your characters so they gain positive traits and perks.
That's good advice, I completely forgot about that one!
When the pope threatens with excommunication, ignore him and continue to siege your enemy or let your army stay in enemy territory. As long ss you don't attack active, you are fine and the enemy will be excommunicated. A siege will force the enemy to sally out after some time. And Bam! You had to defend against them.
If only I knew this early on, I won't had to burn Rome for dozens of times
Is the AI better in this game than Rome: Total War since it's pretty common for me in that game to end up in wars with all of my neighbors fairly quickly? In my current Brutii run on VH/H I'm currently at war with nine other factions if you don't include the rebels and I'm around 40 or so turns into the game. Though, I suppose one of those factions isn't that threatening considering I had become so popular with the people that I decided to trigger the civil war while at war with Carthage (1 Settlement), Numidia (4 Settlements), Thrace (2 Settlements), Pontus (4 Settlements), and the Egyptians (10 Settlements).
Here's a tip from me, Always have some thrash infantry arrayed in loose formation in the front of your army to absorb cavalry charges and missile fire. If cavalry charges, your thrash infantry WILL be destroyed, But you will save more valuable infantry + you'll be able to deliver a powerful countercharge to whatever is attacking.
It saved me in many battles in Tsardoms TW(Mod), Where the ottomans charged me with Sipahis, which usually CAN and most likely WILL cleave right through your infantry, usually killing 90 percent of a mid-tier infantry, kill like 70 percent of the thrash infantry and something like 20 percent of your good infantry.
Tip #2 - Never fight without at least 1 unit of light cavalry and 1 or 2 units of heavy cav, aka Some cav that at least has a basic ranged attack and is fast. When you will run into occasional annoying enemy light cavalry, you can steadily skirmish with the enemy, Slow inching your heavy cav. Nearer to the skirmish site and once you are sure it'll be able to reach the light cavalry quickly, Have the light cavalry charge and simultaneously order the heavy cav to charge. A guaranteed light cav bane, I fought like 4 Ottoman light cavalry units with that trick+ some infantry and archer support and the light cav was no more.
BTW first tip was a revelation ! IDK if I consider myself a veteran, But I have played for 4 years and never knew this.
I build brothels for the growth bonus more so than order since the benefits outweigh any cost. Similarly, low taxes in the early game are crucial for growing population, and it's not just about income: the faster you upgrade a settlement, the sooner you can access higher tiers of buildings and therefore elite units. You can raise them once they've gotten large enough that unrest becomes an issue.
i've played medieval 2 for most of my childhood, then in my early adulthood, now i have stopped playing any games for 2 years and I JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT MANY THINGS I MISSED IN MEDIEVAL 2 WTF????
2 years is enough, i'm installing a bunch of old games and i'm gonna play through all of it just to feel like a child again 😂
My go-to tactic when it comes to dealing with Mongols (and to a lesser extent, Timurids):
Don't meet them in the field. You'll use and lose too much manpower for nothing, and since their armies tend to stay grouped you'll often find yourself against 2 000+ strong armies.
Instead, do 2 things: Stay in cities/castles, and get longbowmen. If you don't play England, send generals to England and recruit as many mercenary longbowmen/sherwood archers as you can, before funneling them to the frontline. If you have access longbowmen, you only need at max 1 archer and 3 infantry to hold a city/castle.
Since Mongols are an almost-exclusively cavalry faction, they'll more often than not have no more than 3 infantry units. One will use the battering ram, another a siege tower and the last one ladders. The trick is to have one infantry (or armored archer) unit for receiving each siege engine on the walls, one in front of the gates, and finally your longbow unit in front of the gates as well. This seems counter-intuitive, but the idea is to deploy the stakes behind the gates. Then, once they're destroyed, the Mongol cavalry will pour in and get itself destroyed in a matter of seconds. The infantry unit at the gates ensures dealing with the rare infantry and few horses who managed to slip past the stakes.
I once destroyed the entire mongol army using this tactic because they circled Jerusalem with all of the family members. Once the gates were down, the khan, the heir and the few last family members all killed themselves on my stake, effectively destroying the nation.
Destroy the entire Mongol army, eh?
*Opens Medieval II for the 100th time*
I remember holding Antioch, playing as England, when Mongols came to Bagdad. I had a few Longbowmen in the full-stack garrison. All the Mongols came to Antioch and began the siege. I don't exactly it happened, but all they could do is to put ladders on the walls and ram the gates. All 4 Longbowmen units put Stakes against all 4 gates. A few units of Mongol Archers and Mongol Infantry were slaughtered on the walls by Feudal Knights. And all Mongol cavalry died on Stakes, while attacking through the broken gates. 10+ units each time. That was glorious. As I remember, almost the entire Mongol Invasion army died while storming Antioch.
That sounds like a glorious tale: The feared Mongolians breaking upon the walls of Antioch.
The thing about low taxes tho is you cant decrease the taxes when people are rioting for a quick fix
If a settlement is likely to riot (most often due to religios differences), you should put a governor and spy in it after conquest.
Thanks, I am gonna try that. However there is some settlements that keep acting up regardless of who is in charge and how big of an army I have in the city. Constantinople being the worst example
Is there any advantage to having the pope come from your own faction? I have a few tricks to flood the game with cardinals and ensure one of your guys become the pope, but I really haven't seen the value.
Aside from having more favor with the Pope, nothing really comes of it as far as I know.
The best way for me to deal with Mongols is to build a ton of forts and garrison them all with pikes, bows and axe units. And assassinate all their generals. Also set the battle time limit so they don't fight with full force they lose.
Let’s face it the most fun part of any campaign is training your assassin. The fantasy of one sneaky dude dismantling the enemy faction of fucking with the Pope is just too good to pass up.
Trash infantry are you best friend for the entire game. Keep producing those spearmen at all times.. Half a stack of trash can defend a city from a doomstack if used wisely and in conjunction with siege to block streets and rain death down on gate/wall beaches.
I didn't know the "Bad traits from Inns, but I'm also always using my generals to fight, so they're never in a city very often.
I only notice the bad traits from inns because I park a general in each settlement. Dunno why I do that shit.
@@corterridoes this mechanic apply to Shisha Bar or/and other Muslim buildings?
@@Maciek80511 yes I think, but I haven't played with any Muslim faction, I just assume they are the same
1. You don't always have cavalry. You can make a hammer out of literally anyone. Cavalry, infantry, archers, heck, I'll do it with ballista. If you have less units than the enemy, you can just spread the anvil thin to spare at least one unit for the hammer. It's better than fighting from the front with bulkier units. Additionally, it's always good to have spearmen on your sides. AI sometimes tries to rout them with cavalry. Most often however it just charges frontally or through a gap in your lines to get faster to archers. Which is stupid. You can use that to eliminate enemy cav first. Leave such gap on purpose and place one spearmen unit behindyour archers facing the gap. Then trap enemy cav.
2. defending the gates is not always the brightest idea. Sometimes (especially in wooden palisade settelments), there is higher ground or better angle for your archers somewhere within the settelment. AI also gets confused in some alleys within settelments and acts weird there. You can exploit this. Example: while defending the gate, ALL malee enemy units will try to break there at once. While defending alleys AI would usually throw only several units at you at once. Some of AI other units may take other alleys, but it is still better for each of your unit to defend against smaller number of enemies. Near the gate your units may just got pushed in all sides by the enemy and will eventually break their formation.
Awesome video. I have a question, when i launch twm2, there are like multiple different campains, are they different from base?
The other campaigns (Teutonic, Spanish/natives, etc.) are different maps and goals, slight different mechanics. Same overall gameplay, though.
@@corterri thx
low taxes is generaly a bad idea in the long run , the only exception being tiny settlements that need to growth , if you put it in really large cities you are just asking for squalor , and do not trade with everyone it will cause diplomatic issues , for example as sicily i blockaded moorish ports , guess who traded with the moors? milan ,and i got messages about my relations with them getting worse , why? because its their money thats being sent to the bottom of the sea , trade with factions that you have no plans attack , while also keeping in mind with whom they are trading , you are an ally of the HRE but they are at war with denmark and on top of that you trade with denmark? cease trade with denmark ((stuff like this should be obvious))
merging depleted units of the same kind is something i wish i knew earlier.
I definitely learned a tip or two and appreciate it! One thing I'm struggling to figure out is what building enables recruiting of pikemen, I am playing as the scots and that's supposed to be my strength but I can't figure out how to be able to recruit pikemen.
"Snake in the bed" words to live by.
Hey mate do you know anything about PC what gaming rig is good for Rome two Attila or wh3
In any playthrough, bullrush for Timbuktu. It is the wealthiest province on the map as it features a couple of goldmines, ivory and slaves. All resources you can park a merchant on and rake in the cash.
Have a loyal general in the army too. I once sent an army to Timbuktu with no general and halfway they turned into rebels.
@@corterri as England you can take timbuktu with rufus and 1 unit of mailed knights, being cavalry they can move alot further per turn
tip 9) unless you're having public order issues and need a general inside or have the setting turned on where you need a general to manually control a city, build the Inn/Brothel. generals are too valuable to keep inside cities. Tip 8) agents have a hidden 200 florins per turn upkeep cost. build what you need and no more. How I play the game agents aren't worth the time or trouble anyway. 7) good tip. 6) keep it on high unless there are no more upgrades for that settlement and needs more population to upgrade. I usually keep taxes high and prioritize growth over all other buildings unless other buildings are needed i.e.. religious buildings, public order issues. 5) Good tip, don't pay fee for it tho, not in early game at least. the money you make will not be worth it in the early game and that money can be better spent elsewhere. try and squeez whatever money you can get from anyone and trade whatever they want. The early cash snowballs fast so get what you can as early as you can and use it. 4) Yes, prioritize the buildings that the settlement/Castles need. 3) yes, heavy knights/cav are king in medieval 2 but expensive, get cheap spears for the line, hammer with cav. 2) good tip, see 3. 1) befriend the pope early and give gifts to increase favor. you can ignore the first warning of excommunication the pope threatens you with if you have very good or higher favor. Ally if you can, other catholic nations can and will still declare war on you but it's much more severe for them. Other nations will not like them, they'll get excommunicated, favor with pope will not be harmed if you are fighting a catholic faction if they are excommunicated. My Tip is try to never have spare cash, the moment you hit end turn you can never make that time up. only in very specific scenarios should you be on a big wad of cash. build buildings, train units, get that agent you've been waiting on for when you had the spare cash. there are more than one way to make money and going to 0 dollars doesn't matter. Not sure on what to build so just sitting on cash and hitting next turn is one of the worst things you can do.
one of the more proper video with good Tips....
Btw, when your relationship with the papal state is so bad, use your diplomat give them 10 time 1k florins instead of 10k florins 1 time, lol.
Lazy happen when a general sits in a settlement day by day, click him and give him a walk before going back, keep building brothel, my generals are still fine.
Snake in the bed is always a good Option. Especially for merchants
I'd love to see a video about war provocation methods. Having the AI actively attacking has always been one of my concern. Back in RTW, the Seleucids and Greek Cities always got ganged up less than 5 turns into the game. As for Rome 2, the AI keeps befriending with each other, far and near. Especially Rome, after taking out probably the Etruscans, they never set foot out of the Italian Peninsula. It begs the question: Should I be the one to wage all and influence of all wars or should I weaken my military, leaving vulnerable ports and cities to coax the AI to attacking ?
For number 5: you can even sell your trade rights to the others demand a tribute (they wont accept) but offer a payment much higher than you could get if you would directly ask for 1200 denari for diety traderights ^^ take from your enemys as much as you can
i was playing as a turk and i always use auto resovle cause i thought that if i commanded more men will die in 80 90 ish turn venice declared war on me and attacked my best general and king who had only 6 units of cavalry while the enemy had 19 highly trained Pikemen i was scared of loosing to many soldiers so i ordered my men to withdraw and immediately the pikemens were chasing me the but i hid a unit of cavalry which surprise attacked there two generals and the king their death caused a massive route and i the battle from that day i stopped doubting my capability
Brothel towns... nope... i'm dying, dying from laughter.
Yup. I always say; you might win, but i'm taking 3/4 of your army with me.
Missile Cav is technically not Light Cav, they occupy a Medium Cavalry middle ground.
What that means is that your Light Cav can catch up to them and lock them down long enough for your heavy cavalry to close and hack them to pieces.
I was not aware of this. This is really valuable info to know, I fucking hate missile cavalry.
@@corterri
As do I. They’re goddamned broken in the hands of a good player. The strategy I mentioned is an anti-AI move.
I don’t know if Mongolian missile cav is tougher or good in a melee compared to Turkish or Moorish missile cavalry units, though, so maybe this strat doesn’t work against them. In my experience(as England), my Hobbilar light cav would catch Missile Cavs and outright win the fights at times, but again this was against Muslim missile cavalry and not Mongolian.
I didnt know about the inns and brothels :O Been playing the game for a looong time, recently started a campaign again :D
This game is the best total war ever
moving and shifting your capital is often the best decision for trade finance and public order
Never Knew that inns make your general have bad traits, thats actually clever design to not just spam them
and low taxes can actually help, who would have knew
Ballista/ Catapult buildings prevent your general from getting the ignorant trait and he could get combat bonuses. Build them if a general is going to sit.
Tip #8 about using Assassins is how you actually resolve Tip #1 about the Pope. When the Pope dies, your ruler is no longer excommunicated if the next elected Pope is more friendly to you.
During my current campaign I was Venice and got attacked by Milan, Sicily, Hungaria and the byzantine at the same time. I lost Venice and all my territory apart from 2 small towns.
I played smart slowly started plotting my revenge against those that wronged me.... Constantinople will burn just like Milan.
In my Venice cam, i attack HRE in first turn, take Rome in turn 5, beat Sicily in turn 12, Constantinople in turn 30, have the victory condition in turn 48, and now i am head to head with the Mongols in turn 68 :)).
@@tankiemphituyet5969 captured Constantinople and Jerusalem but Milan still owns my homeland 😭
Lower your taxes is a pretty garbage advice; it reduces the amount of money you earn per turn hence, you are vulnerable, because money means power. It is better to adjust the taxes to your own specific needs. How would you improve a settlement if you don't have money to purchase the next level building?
True but general rule for a newbie, which this video is for, lower taxes and better population growth= more advanced units and more sacked enemy's for income
@@brandonyoho2236Well, that's even worse. Low taxes are not an advance tip, every newbie will realize that without money is game over. Lower the taxes gives you a bad early game, and therefore a headache in the middle-late game.
Tip 12:
The walls are not glitched, if you know how to operate on them.
Tip 13:
Cavalry charges work fine, if you know how to charge, and know what effects on you charge success.
Tip 15:
Turn of skirmish, and micromanage the skirmish units manually.
use Naffatun against Timurid's elephants
Not sure if this footage was just to make a point or from a real game you played, but my tip to you: 2:45 always ask for money when the balance is generous. Nobody should waste free money.
Ah shit, I never knew that! Thanks!
Me, an 8-veteran watching this video:
hmm. Interesting.
The growth rate in Medieval 2 is so slow that you lose out on a lot of tax money when you put it up low taxes. In-room one you could raid enemy towns and then enslave the populace and send it to your other settlements strategically. Medieval 2 you cannot. So I guess you might as well low-tax all your settlements and then just pick big enemy settlements to completely raid for extra cash.
Decent advice, but I wouldn’t take the Pope too seriously. Yes, the public order hit can be really bad, but you are going to end up expanding into other Catholic factions at some point. Instead, use cheap militia and public order buildings to offset the public order hit, or better yet, have your own Pope installed by training up priests in non Catholic areas and recruiting them from cities with bigger churches/theologians guilds. Bribing/allying the Pope helps a lot too. But, whatever you do, don’t sit on your hands for dozens of turns because you’re scared of excommunication, that’s makes stagnation/defeat a certainty.
Tnx you a loot you say soo much in short time and just want to ask are fire arrows useless or not?
Fire arrows are less accurate but supposedly they have a better chance of panicking the enemy. I usually stick with regular though.
I didn’t know the don’t build inn tip or don’t raise taxes tip. Never thought about it thanks I’ve been playing for over a decade 🤣 but I’m going to ignore the pope, I don’t care let them come.
Supposedly the taxes tip is a bad tip since it makes your cities overcrowded too quickly!
i get the bonus tip i used that tactics too in a few battles experiments hehe
i call hammering and anvil strat as sandwiching
When defending town or castle use its center for infinite morale so your units will not brake becouse enemy numerical superiority; abuse bridges and be like Gandalf "You shall not pass!!!" with a lot of ranged units; try to shoot enemy from sides and behind so they will melt like my paycheck in first week xD. Oh and abuse jihad/crusade mechanic, every general in army that took its target city will have massive chivarly boost so you can have in one jihad 20 generals with 6+ chivarly. When you attack enemy nation before you have any ally will meke ai have 0 trust to you.
brothels give bad traits but not all those, harsh ruler has nothing to do with brothels but with have high or very high tax
Dont low taxes give your governor bad traits (less tax income)? This might be mod only
In the big Stainless Steel mod it nearly always just gives positive traits. Most of the negatives come from the govenor being too passive inside the city.
tip: bribe the pope
Yeah you know I would charge the enemy but 90% of the unit decides to stop and have a smoke ten feet away and I would flee from the enemy's charging cavalry, but I have to give my light horse an hour or two to decide to turn around.
i downloaded the game but i didnt find the other empires moors egypt turks ........... there's only england france spain venice
why??
You need ro beat those factions in order to unlock them.
For instance, beat Scottland with England, then play England.
is it impossible to beat two countries armies or more in a battle?? even in custom battle or grand campaign
No
Lowering the taxes at the beginning is terrible advice. You need that money and if you want to grow your settlements it is best to spare captives to get your generals to be chivalrous and you'll build farms and other buildings that raise your popgrowth anyway.
You are handicapping yourself so much mate. Low taxes increases your population growth twofold, because you also get chivalrous traits for the govenor that boost happiness and population growth again. So chivalry is mainly good on gouvenors, not leading generals. So my advice to you would be to turn those things around: low taxes and kill captives. The generals will gain dread wich makes the enemy have lower morale and your govenours will gain alot of chivalry for the prosperity of your citys.
@@longbow857 I was talking only about the first maybe 20 turns. In that time you are very limited by money and grabing a few good cities/castles quickly is essential.
Sparing captives is also a must in the early game in my opinion because you get chivalry much faster that way and having one or two generals that bost the growth of a castle is great for getting your best units quicker.
@@tarmairon431 In my campaigns I never had problems taking all rebel settlements around me with low taxes, so I feel it's not a must, but I get what you are saying.
Just do a rohirrin army and steamroll the entire game
thanks dude great content
i tried playing this but sieges were insanely hard.
towers shooting from all directions whenever an enemy unit is anywhere near them...even when im at them already, and u cannot ever capture them!
it made sieges almost impossible without overwhelming forces, even basic walls. compared to rome 1 its ultra hard this way...couldnt handle that and no idea how u do.
also im not sure how to build my economy. very few economic buildings and some dont seem that useful when u actually build them.
also, which cities i should have as castles and which keep as cities?
Ever use catapults or trebuchets to punch two holes on opposite sides of the gatehouse? I usually do that and hit the gate with a ram and that sort of confuses the AI since it doesn't know what hole to cover. I almost never use ladders, I feel like I always get routed using ladders unless you have an overwhelming force. A lot of times I also like to wait out defenders if possible since it's easier for them to come out to you. It takes a fuck ton of turns sometimes, though.
@@corterri
Early game i got no access to siege weapons. Maybe ballistas if i make an effort to rush them.
The towers will still shoot non stop. They give an overwhelming advantage to the enemy, and i cannot stop them.
@@cobrazaxTowers are strong, it's best to get a couple of ballistas to take them out at your planned entry. Even 2 or 3 is enough for early settlements to punch a hole in the wall and take out 2 towers.
Also the AI will send units to guard the hole you just punched in the wall. After you destroy the towers, you can get your ballistas and other missile troops on the right angle to shoot through the hole and into the guarding troops. I have had battles where I have killed 50-60% of their forces before the battle even starts.
Make two holes in the wall in different places. Get their infantry engaged with yours at the first entry point and then run the heavy cavalry in behind them through the second hole. They will rout quickly, especially with a dread general.
@@Kevin-oy2lr
well im talking mostly about early game where i dont even have any artillery available. only some cav, spearmen and archers.
in that situation, i cannot do anything vs towers and the annihilate me, even when im facing smaller forces.
in rome 1, basic towers were easy to avoid, and even later towers could be mostly avoided if u were smart about it.
now, its literally impossible to do anything against them without artillery...no idea what to do.
@@cobrazax Every faction has a city or castle that can build a ballista range from turn 1. Even the single city starting factions like Scotland and Denmark can build them in Edinburgh and Arhus, respectively.
Every faction can have at least 1 ballista by turn 4. 3 turns to build the range and 1 turn to produce the first one, by turn 6 you can have at least 2.
Excommunication is inevitable
Can’t be excommunicated if you destroy your enemies before the Pope gets involved.
That’s how I get rid of Scotland before Turn 5:
Build spies, send them into Edinburgh, and then strike with the gates open and take their capital. The rest of Scotland falls in short order.
by the way at the start when you getting the trade agreements check the priorities of the ai. if it wants it then they will be willing to pay for it. sometimes you can pull ove 1k gold from them. also exchange map information. If the ai wants to kill you they will try anyway, but it will help you greatly to learn where their cities are as well as what neutral cities they might know about that they have not taken. If you do this and focus on taking reb setlements and mostly just build eco buildings at start then you can easily end up in a situation where you can continously build in all of your setlements simultaniously.
1k? Especially when they want peace they give between 10-20k gold for it, to then start the war soon again themselves and you can sent the next diplomat to claim more cash.
@@longbow857 the 1k is for trade rights at start. Yes you are correct that you can get a lot of money if they are begging for peace
@@priamossz1419 Ah you ment for that specifically :) Yeah each offer above balanced you should ask money for :)
From my experience, horse units are just so much better than any other unit to the point it's hilarious.
I once had a battle where I was outnumbered 7 to 1 and the enemy had at least 300 spearmen and nearly 200 horses units of their own, while I had nothing but 100 horse units myself.
After a grueling 15 minute battle of attrition where I baited small individual groups of the foe's army and did quick charges to scare them and eventually force entire groups to retreat, I eventually won with 42 horses remaining, and over 400 of my foe's units dead/retreated + their commanders dead.
I guess in siege battles horses might be a bit weaker, but on offense, with a bit of assistance from siege units or infantry with battering rams, they can assault the settlement from multiple angles so fast that the AI can't deal with it properly. Or on defense, they can quickly charge out of the defensive walls to interrupt/scare away the foe's infantry from using their battering rams/ladders/seige towers and then retreat before taking too much damage themselves(either back into the main gate or far to the sides if opening the main gate is too risky).
So basically, spearmen only really counter horse units that run right into them, but fail to curb any of their other strengths.
Didn’t take number 7 too seriously
Disclaimer, these tips are for easy or normal difficulty.
Absolutely. I have no clue whatsoever on how to beat this game on hard.
Most struggling thing for me in this game is diplomacy. AI always acts like a capricious bitch in mid and late game, no matter how much you pay them, give them map and trade rights, and fight their enemies, they will always get offended for no reason and march army at you even from neutral relationships😅. Even Allies suddenly might go bipolar and betray you out of nowhere. This is especially annoying when playing Central European kingdoms
Yeah I also find this, eventually everyone becomes an enemy and diplomacy disappears. I think maintaining a positive overall "reputation" has a major impact on this, though.
In my Byzantine playthrough, the Turks and Egyptians always backstabbed me every time I focus on something else.