Medieval Total War II

[Gamecube64]

No reinforcements can be brought.

[Proteus_MST]

At least not, if the generals commanding the reinforcements don´t have the nightfighting ability (or if they are just commanded by captains).
Troops with generals that have the nightfigbhting ability can still act as reinforcements.

This applies to both, to the enemy as well as to yourself.

Commanding generals with the nightfighting ability also get +1 on their command rating during night battles.

[Quillan]

Well, you get a +1 Command. That only happens if you have the "Night Fighter" trait, but since you can't attack at night without it, the attacker will get that bonus. The defender may also get that bonus if the general has the trait as well. The main benefit is to cut out reinforcement armies; the only armies that can reinforce in a night battle are those led by a general with the Night Fighter trait. It's a way to attack a horde, you can sometimes pick out a single stack in a group of 5-9 stacks and fight it by itself.

[Ned]

I've been playing this game for a few weeks now. I have revised my opinion. It has bugs in the AI, but otherwise, its battles, particularly, its sieges, are a lot better than RTW for a number of reasons. Combat takes a lot longer, for one, which allows one to use artillery such as catapults and ballista's to effect. I have begun using them quite a bit where I hardly ever used them, except to break walls, in RTW.

In recent battles, I have inflicted mass casualties on "immobile" defenders using ballistas. The AI tends to bunch its forces just inside the walls if you punch holes in them with artillery. Ballistas, firing normal bolts, not fire, can be used for effect firing through those holes and into the massed enemy.

But at night, the visual effect of catapults and ballistas is just amazing to behold. Wow. That is all I can say.

BTW, I have noticed that the AI catapults are a lot more accurate than yours. If you get anyone near an AI catapult with your general, he is toast. (I play on the default "medium" difficulty.) Anyone else notice this?

[Chemical Ollie]

I've found myself auto-solve most battles, except for the most critical or funny. Defending a castle against a huge force is always funny, and I normally try to play manually when I have the chance to kill an enemy family member, as they often slip away when solved by AI. Using lots of artillery units is also funny, if you have the infantry to defend them against conterattacks. Some AI enemy units just stand there to get killed When you bombard them.

This way, I save a lot of time in the grand campaign.

[El_Cid]

It's weird, but i really loved the first Medieval, yet my copy of MTW II is still sitting in its plastic wrap!! I suppose i've got into other games, and had decided to wait for a few patches etc? It's become the norm these days with PC games for me.

I dont buy many new/recent games per year(like i used to), and then wait a few months for the patches before playing - i guess i just dont want to be dissapointed by the few games i still think deserve my money?

What patch are we upto on this one? I think we've had one(i should go check i guess)?

I stopped playing OB after it was clear it was only getting one patch(while Bethesda went for more money with expansions etc).

[Quillan]

Only one patch so far. The last thing I heard was the second patch would probably be sometime in February, and that's the one that's expected to fix the 2h axe bug and hopefully the shield issue.

[El_Cid]

ok thanks for the info - i'll hold out a little longer until that patch comes out i think.

[Chemical Ollie]

I'm currently playing a campaign as Russia. It's quite nice to have room to expand and only fight barbarians in the early game, and it would be an understatement to say I don't miss the Pope at all. But it will probably be a challenge to stand up against the Mongols and Timurids.

[Ned]

I just got done playing the Byzantines. They have some wonderful and relatively inexepensive mounted archers, which have been my favorite type of unit since RTW.

I notice that England has no mounted archers or crossbowmen of any type. This must make the English quite vulnerable to both the Mongols and Timurids.

[Proteus_MST]

England has several types of Longbowmen which have a higher range than normal archers, are armor piercing and can plant stakes into the ground (which are the bane of assalting horemen).
Don´t think that they are especially vulnerable against the mongols (don´t know about the timurids as I onbly fought them once or twice in a custom made battle).

[Ned]

Proteus, I'll never forget the first time I met the Timurids on the battlefield. It was a horrible experience.

I was playing the Danes. We met the Timurids at a bridge. They had three stacks, I one. I had four cannons and five groups of pikemen. My plan was to use the pikemen to hold the bridge while raking the Timurids with cannon-fire.

But they showed up with around 50-100 cannon elephants who arrayed themselves on the opposite bank. They fired ceasely. It was amazing to see and hear. I fired back and killed a few of their massive cannon-mounts until most of my own cannons were destroyed.

Then they came across the river. Only at the last moment did I see that my pikemen had all but been destroyed by the Timurids cannon-fire. They were overwhelmed. And soon, everyone else was as well.

If I had to do it again, I would know to keep everything out of range of the elephant-cannons until they began to move across the bridge. But that is hindsight.

In later engagements I did rather well with mounted crossbows because they could avoid direct assaults by the Timurid elephants and heavy cavalry, while blasting them with armor-piercing arrows. Any units that have to stand to fight, or which move slowly like ground archers, have no chance at all against the Timurids. They will blast your positions with accurate cannon-fire, then overrun you with heavy cavalry and pikemen.

[Proteus_MST]

The timurid Elephant-cannons sound really Uber.

In my custom battles I fought only against the timurid Musket elephants which are already really strong (and these battles were only a test to see how good a certain tactic with pikemen could stand against elephants [the tactics was rather successful after the elephants were slowed down]).

Never tested any unit against the elephant cannons however.

What I would have done in your battle (if I played the english) would be, to plant the stakes directly in front of the bridge on my side of the river (so that every unit crossing the bridge would meet a field of doom of sharpened stakes and then retreat to a location where the archers and cannons could fire at the bridge and hopefully aren´t too much within effective range of the cannons as the elephants cross the bridge (with all units being in loose formation of course).
The elephants wouldn´t be able to fire at the stakes therefore it is an obstacle immune to the cannons which remains even after all of my units are out of range.
The main unknown in this battle however is, how effective the stakes are against elephants. If the stakes are as effective against elephants as they are against cavalry, I could imagine that the strategy might succeed.

[Quillan]

That doesn't work. Stakes can't be planted on the roadway itself, at least assuming it's a stone road. I'm not sure whether the game allows stakes to be planted on a dirt road.