Tactics for Medieval:Total War

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by War of Art
Thanks again Doc

Is it useful to have so many missile units?

I like at least 4 on defence.....4 on attack.....just play and find what suits you.

They do a lot of damage, especially if directed at expensive units with low armour, such as many shocks troops. The key is managing to defend them against enemy cavalry during the fight. It's easy in SP, but in MP can be tricky.

[Jamski]

But a whole quarter of my army as shooters? So these guys are only good if I have a lot of them. Hmm. I'll try the "rain of arrows approach" tonight.
Does the "mass charge" with 16 units of the best cavalry, and nothing else, work? That would be fun...

-Jam

[DrSpike]

Depends on how many spears/pikes they have, and the comparative valour of the 2 armies. Out of the box spears munched cav too easily......now in the latest patch cav are better.......you might get away with it against some armies.

[Jamski]

Pessimist !
I'm going to try it. Just against peasants first, then milita and so on till I find the balance. It's great that you can set up this game for a one-off battle with ANY forces you like. This is really keeping me away from Civ, SMAC and the rest. And I don't suck at RTS normally. I only have the one tactic, which always wins. But I can't just build a heap of the best units and steamroller the oppositon in this game. Maybe in a few weeks I'll crack it

Hmm, and a few guys with spears shouldn't stop MY cavalry

-Jam

[DrSpike]

This isn't really RTS.......more real time tactical. There aren't many games I would call the same genre as the battles in MTW.

[Grumbold]

Maybe my "spears rule!" tactic is now out of date if Cavalry have been toughened but I still think their best use is for flanking enemies. You don't need to take heavy casualties killing the opposition if they're almost ready to break before you charge them. Cavalry are perfect for whisking round their flank and rear.

[DrSpike]

Absolutely, they are great for flanking now. Out of the box the spears wheeled perfectly to meet the charge head on every time, and always got the formation bonus when attacked in such a manner. Now they do not unless they can complete the face change maneouvre in time.

[Grumbold]

Aha. Nice change.

I must admit to largely being disappointed with heavy cavalry, especially the really expensive chivalric ones. They exhaust themselves after a single charge and are only really good at beating up other heavy cavalry. For flanking medium cavalry do the job nicely and save money so I can have more spearmen

[DrSpike]

Yeah for a while there MP was spears spears spears........zzzzzzz........now there are still balance problems but it is slightly better.

[Jamski]

Well I tryed the "Spears of Death"(tm) approach with the Italians last night, and I won all my battles ! I simply formed a wall of Spearmen, Italien Infantry, Feudal Hauptmänner(Seargents?) and advanced directly accross the field, with Royal Knights on the flanks (2 units of 20 that I got free with my sons) It works a dream, thanks guys (Grumbold & DrSpike) for the tips. My idea of a mass cavalry charge failed, and how, as I lost the entire royal family in one battle (Where else do you get those knights without combing the land for all the heirs - pun intended) That was a mistake, eh?

-Jam

Oh, Doc, you're right, its not RTS like C&C is, but I don't know what else to call it. I cam oly compare with Shogun, and MoO3 when it comes.

[Grumbold]

The royal cavalry are definitely to be kept alive at all costs. You don't get better until you work quite a way up the construction tiers. One of the most effective ways of winning a battle where you are outnumbered is to lure the enemy general into a trap and force him to rout. Killing all the heirs can be a nice way to finish a country too.

[Jamski]

Well, I just managed to lose my king and his eldest son in one battle last night, so I guess I'm still not protecting the royal knights enough. But the second eldest son had 6 feathers ! So there was a silver lining to my cloud. (I am right in thinking that the King affects the finances of the whole nation ?)

Is it possible to build units with less armour, when the armour smith is already built ? I want to launch a crusade, but I'm not looking forward to fighting in the desert.

-Jam

[yin26]

Regarding money:

Sea trade! From the very earliest moments in the game, start to have ships in consecutive sea squares. If you make ship-building a standard part of your build-up, you'll soon have more many than you can spend (literally).

The trick here, of course, is that you have to avoid sea warfare, and the only way to avoid that is to keep at peace for as long as possible (or until you've got MORE ships in place to defeat any enemy ships in a zone that disconnect your trade.

Many people make the mistake of having all this income, of course, just to drop to massive negatives once war breaks and they lose their ships or once they can't recapture a crucial sea square.

To help alleviate the inevitable sea stuggles, though, you've got to make farm and other econ. upgrades a standard part of your build process. This will ensure that no matter what difficulties at sea, you'll be solid at home.

This economic focus, in fact, makes the game rather too easy. I played my last game as Byzantines on hard. With a careful plan of not starting needless wars, marrying into my strongest neighbors, and keeping enough troops on my borders to keep myself from looking like an easy target, I was able to get sea trade in place, build up local econ, and start expanding against rebel territories in full force.

Then, of course, I began breaking treaties left and right as I was able to field the single largest armies on the globe. And even when I broke treaties, other nations were too scared to gang up on me.

Now, was this fun? Not really. In essence, I beat the game by playing the numbers. Victory of scale, let's call it, not finesse.

Needless to say, I used auto-calc on all battles after a few years. World conquest any other way would have taken months to complete.