@@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
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.
Always rush rebel settlements and make alliances at the start even if you plan on expanding later. It will give you time to build an income and a good Army.
making alliances with everyone , including those you plan to betray in the future is what often leads to ai agression (most visible on normal cause the ai on normal isnt turned borderline insane unlike hard or very hard)
@@masterofthedeathwing2839 Definitely a solid idea if you’ve got the forces to manage it. For England in the early game, the first thing that needs to go is Scotland. Secure the Isles, turn all but 1-2 of the settlements into cities for big gold production, and you’ve got yourself a very solid base to strikeout from. I tend to forge an alliance with France at the start, though. The French are powerful in the beginning and would be a big problem if you try and tackle them as the English.
@@masterofthedeathwing2839 Yeah I'd advise doing that too. Those rebel settlements won't move their troops so let the AI widdle them down for you while you take out a richer territory and an enemy at the same time. Aggression is key in MedII.
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.
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.....
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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).
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.
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.
- 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.
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
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 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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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
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 😂
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 :)).
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
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....
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
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.
On #5 the trade rights, if you want to keep an alliance do not do this across the board, if you get trade rights with a faction that you have no port close enough or roads to trade with that faction it will ruin your rep with them!
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.
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.
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.
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.
N° 7 is a good tip but what can I do when every single AI factions simply attacks me of a sudden? One army of mounted crossbow is unstoppable against AI, they can swipe out heavy infantry and cavalry from distance or charge exposed missile. troops...
0:32 Even myself who have played this game for 15 years.. I didnt even know this. 1:34 This thing has more come to me naturally.. its nothing Ive learned by "aha, so thats how I should do it".. Ive only felt it was the most logical decision based on the current circumstances.
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.
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.
Dont bother with merchants unless its in an isolated territory with gold like Timbuktu. They dont make that much money and its frustrating when abother merchant gos out of their way to find them and kill them. And they always do. They are hard to level up and even if they are really good they will fail to aquire an enemy merchant half the time. But A.I. merchants rarely fail. Units like this are a trap. A way to make you spend money on nothing.
I can honestly say I feel exactly this way. I don't fuck with merchants unless I'm putting their ass far away from everyone else's merchant. Bastard will trade in ivory his entire life, not improve his trade at all, then get bought out by some idiot that doesn't even stay on the resource they bought me out for.
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.
Always expect to be attacked at any time depending on faction and alliances don’t always mean friends I was England marriage to fiancé and still got attacked by them
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.
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.
I remember when 5 general mongol siege my little castil, i forget what fraction i use maybe ottoman, i only have some platon, but some unit can put chevaux de frise anti cavalery, so i put that shiet behind the gate, every gate on my castil, n some on the street, every where, so when the gate open mongol cavely will charge that shiet n die, n you know i keep loosing but mongol loose 4 general n toons of cavelery, im loose but im so happy, i never forget that, i forget how to fight mongol face to face cause their never alone always move together, their like gangbang mode,.😂
1:05 hold up i do play the game and i know this scene, the snake will gonna crawl up on the bed under the blanket between his legs and he is gonna bite his nuts-
Build forts on trade resources using your generals. Later send there merchants and at least one garrison unit... Foreign merchants can't bribe them then.
![[UA] Team Vitality проти NAVI | IEM Cologne 2024](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wttO1zVRTC0/mqdefault.jpg)
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
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.
Always rush rebel settlements and make alliances at the start even if you plan on expanding later. It will give you time to build an income and a good Army.
making alliances with everyone , including those you plan to betray in the future is what often leads to ai agression (most visible on normal cause the ai on normal isnt turned borderline insane unlike hard or very hard)
i prefer the opposite, i take out the nearest neigbouring factions first, then back fill all the rebel settlements surrounding my starting location
@@masterofthedeathwing2839
Definitely a solid idea if you’ve got the forces to manage it.
For England in the early game, the first thing that needs to go is Scotland. Secure the Isles, turn all but 1-2 of the settlements into cities for big gold production, and you’ve got yourself a very solid base to strikeout from.
I tend to forge an alliance with France at the start, though. The French are powerful in the beginning and would be a big problem if you try and tackle them as the English.
Allies will betray you most of the time too, which makes them look bad to the rest of the world and gives you free reign to rip them in half.
@@masterofthedeathwing2839 Yeah I'd advise doing that too. Those rebel settlements won't move their troops so let the AI widdle them down for you while you take out a richer territory and an enemy at the same time. Aggression is key in MedII.
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.
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 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
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.
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
if you desire the enemy generals head,
just remember - snake in the bed.
Shang Tsung Art of War.
Lmao best comment
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
exceptionally well done video, hit me in the nostalgia feels
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
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.
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
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
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:
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 😎
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
- 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.
“Tip for beginners: snake in the bed.” 😂
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
high quality stuff, still enjoyed this even as a Med II vet!
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*
Keep an agent with your characters so they gain positive traits and perks.
That's good advice, I completely forgot about that one!
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?
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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
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 😂
merging depleted units of the same kind is something i wish i knew earlier.
i call hammering and anvil strat as sandwiching
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 😭
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.
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
Disclaimer, these tips are for easy or normal difficulty.
Absolutely. I have no clue whatsoever on how to beat this game on hard.
use Naffatun against Timurid's elephants
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....
Don't give your traderights away. Barter for them, you really need money at the start of the game.
moving and shifting your capital is often the best decision for trade finance and public order
one of the more proper video with good Tips....
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.
Truly the best total war game imo, if anyone wanna play some online battles or smth on steam, drop ur ID, I'll add as a friend 👍
I agree, best Total War.
Online matches keep disconnecting
rome 2 and attila are so much greater
This game is the best total war ever
Snake in the bed is always a good Option. Especially for merchants
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.
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
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
Yup. I always say; you might win, but i'm taking 3/4 of your army with me.
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.
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.
Brothel towns... nope... i'm dying, dying from laughter.
brothels give bad traits but not all those, harsh ruler has nothing to do with brothels but with have high or very high tax
Just do a rohirrin army and steamroll the entire game
On #5 the trade rights, if you want to keep an alliance do not do this across the board, if you get trade rights with a faction that you have no port close enough or roads to trade with that faction it will ruin your rep with them!
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.
tip: bribe the pope
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!
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.
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!
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 didnt know about the inns and brothels :O Been playing the game for a looong time, recently started a campaign again :D
N° 7 is a good tip but what can I do when every single AI factions simply attacks me of a sudden?
One army of mounted crossbow is unstoppable against AI, they can swipe out heavy infantry and cavalry from distance or charge exposed missile. troops...
Didn’t take number 7 too seriously
0:32 Even myself who have played this game for 15 years.. I didnt even know this.
1:34 This thing has more come to me naturally.. its nothing Ive learned by "aha, so thats how I should do it".. Ive only felt it was the most logical decision based on the current circumstances.
Hahaha, sassy modern knights can't stand against wine. In Vikings invasion, you HAD to build inns to produce Karl infantry.
Me, an 8-veteran watching this video:
hmm. Interesting.
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.
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.
I still play this game since I was twelfe but it's way too good
I started at like 14. I was amazed at the amounts of soldiers the game was rendering.
Dont bother with merchants unless its in an isolated territory with gold like Timbuktu. They dont make that much money and its frustrating when abother merchant gos out of their way to find them and kill them. And they always do. They are hard to level up and even if they are really good they will fail to aquire an enemy merchant half the time. But A.I. merchants rarely fail. Units like this are a trap. A way to make you spend money on nothing.
I can honestly say I feel exactly this way. I don't fuck with merchants unless I'm putting their ass far away from everyone else's merchant. Bastard will trade in ivory his entire life, not improve his trade at all, then get bought out by some idiot that doesn't even stay on the resource they bought me out for.
yeah, computer merchant is cheating, even when your merchant level is higher high chance you'll lose to theirs.
Thanks!!
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 get the bonus tip i used that tactics too in a few battles experiments hehe
thanks dude great content
I need a more "beginner" vid than this. 😂
It's all good, man. I still feel like a beginner lol
Always expect to be attacked at any time depending on faction and alliances don’t always mean friends I was England marriage to fiancé and still got attacked by them
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.
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.
All I want to know is how to survive the mongols
I remember when 5 general mongol siege my little castil, i forget what fraction i use maybe ottoman, i only have some platon, but some unit can put chevaux de frise anti cavalery, so i put that shiet behind the gate, every gate on my castil, n some on the street, every where, so when the gate open mongol cavely will charge that shiet n die, n you know i keep loosing but mongol loose 4 general n toons of cavelery, im loose but im so happy, i never forget that, i forget how to fight mongol face to face cause their never alone always move together, their like gangbang mode,.😂
Nobody survives the Mongols, man.
The bastards will pour molten gold down your throat for resisting.
1:05 hold up i do play the game and i know this scene, the snake will gonna crawl up on the bed under the blanket between his legs and he is gonna bite his nuts-
Build forts on trade resources using your generals. Later send there merchants and at least one garrison unit... Foreign merchants can't bribe them then.