Exterminate, Sack or Occupy - Why you should never Exterminate cities in Medieval II TW [Vanilla]
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- Опубліковано 9 вер 2024
- Exterminating your cities has huge, mostly unnoticed consequences, and not just on Diplomacy. I'll explain exactly what it entails and consider when to Occupy or Sack your conquests.
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It’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message
Indeed my good sir!
Exterminating or sacking a city sends the message that you’re a greedy psychopath.
You wanna know how I got these scars
The Franks are all gangster until their cities start getting exterminated.
@@user-xr1kc8sp2f no, not really.
One of the most fun times I ever had in this game was when I was forced to betray my ally of 200 years, Sicily, by the pope because they were excommunicated. From a role playing aspect this must have been heart wrenching for my generals, as I actually had 2 marriage alliances with them. Because of this was I was viewed as untrustworthy and so the Imperials also betrayed me. I was legitimately angry and swore that I wouldn’t stop until I burned Germany to the ground and slaughtered it’s people. I called it “The Ravaging of the Rhine”. I exterminated and destroyed every town I came across, leaving them to rebel, sorta like a horde faction. Fun times
The Ravaging of the Rhine... Priceless 🤣
Exterminating is certainly fitting when role-playing, or indeed when you are going full on blitzkrieg and want no problems going forward.
Meh you're better off excommunicated because popes die but relationships are hard to build.
@@ChrisZukowski88 yeah but being excommunicated destroys your relationships
@@lordblenkinsopp1537 I'm playing s.s. 6.4 on gracul setting i have no friendships
I'd have tried to assasinate that pope. Personally I rarely occupy or exterminate. Occupying makes more sense early in the game or in special situations, like you take Rome on a crusade. Or maybe if you are liberating a city that was previously exterminated. Sacking optimizes your profit and kills the right people. I've always seen it as you killing off the people most likely to oppose your occupation. Its very hard to be a world conquerer and keep a good rep.
But I Love the GENOCIDE!!!!
😂😂😂 Ironic that the example is my Timurids campaign where it was pure genocide!
Do as I say, not as I do! 😛
I was fully expecting this comment. Coming from Melkor feels very fitting!
of course you do
rome total war exterminate does not destroy buildings ;)
Fitting.
Hm...
Wish I knew this years ago.
Allways been treating settlements acording to their faces.
Green for "You people are nice, I like it!"
Yellow for "I take your shit, as payoff."
Red for "You dont like me? Thats fine, this way to the gallows."
Not a bad rule of thumb to be fair! But yes, extermination comes at a mid-long term cost for sure!
Extermination option really only applies to mid to late game. By the time 1400 AD rolls around you should already “well off” financially and purely focusing on conquering.
Extermination works wonders if you're going to give the settlement to an enemy faction on the same turn. Sometimes I purposely demolish all the other buildings, leaving just enough for the city to not convert to rebels. That way the enemy is stuck spending extra resources rebuilding a lost asset, as my army continues to ravage their land. Plus I like to think they are being gifted a glimmer of hope before it is slowly drained away as their entire civilization is slowly and repeatedly goaded back towards the dark ages, mocking their pitiful struggles.
I believe the AI gets cheats and things don't affect them that affect you for example blocking ports does nothing to the AI's trade icome, Extermination is useful for blitzkrieg strikes when you just want to take over territory and get the public order low so you can move your stack on to the next settlement or simply if it's got bad public order and you need to bring it down to stop a revolt
@@oliver4693 They definitely have to re-build all the buildings before they can create units of that type out of them. Don't know about economy though - but it's still something they need to re-build before they build the siege workshop and trebutchets
You read the Medieval Total War 1 manual too huh?
I'll never forget they suggested the building-demolishment part as a way to off-set the enemy and raise cash, and cited the conduct of British armies in France as a historical example.
I had no idea the devs actually encouraged that, let alone in MTW1. I thought of it independently, it's not exactly an innovative strategy, to pillage and destroy - but it is very useful.
I occupy every single settlement I conquer, unless the public order isn't good, in which case I sack. This allows me to be a conqueror and a reputable nation at the same time, and it prevents me from being untrustworthy early in the game. I only start becoming untrustworthy 80 turns in or so, at which point I would've already gained 50+ settlements. lol
Indubitably! Occupy is always the ideal, especially if you want diplomacy to vaguely work in Med II. And of course, once you are the most powerful, everyone is very much inclined to attack you anyway. You might as well embrace the bad guy image. 😅
@@ToNerdistoHumanTNH
Ocupying is supposed to give you a debuf because nobody likes it when a power starts grabbing up land.
Ever been on your way to take a citty and then a power that you reaaaaaaly dont wanna go to war with decided to take it right from under your nose?
Yeaaah. Same deal.
I don't think what you do to a city has an impact on your reputation. However, finishing wars quickly while maintaining many alliances is the best way to maintain your reputation (being at war lowers your reputation each turn). The higher your difficulty, the lower your reputation will normalise, which is probably why your reputation drops over time.
Occupy is for when the religion is the same and the order ir good; to build chivalry.
Sack is for when you're broke af and need that moneyy asap
Exterminate when conquering different religions and/or very rebellious settlements
I wish the sack feature didnt include adding it as a territory. So the enemy can walk back in but its a complete shell.
@@olivere5497 You can raze buildings and then go away so it becomes rebel settlement :D Lotta gold is in that :D
@@krystofcisar469 but the game implies you have lost a city abd make you look like a cuck.
Exterminate also good to build a good dread general 👀
Everytime I siege a settlement, I bring about 5 priest with piety 5+.
In just 5 turn, half of the population converted.
So it's save to occupy
Aggressive conversion prior to invasion is definitely preferable!
That is a great idea.
When I started playing TW:M2, I treated cities based on distance to capital, and if the capturing general had chivalry or dread. There were games where I'd raze every City in the middle east. Treatment of captured prisoners I based on generals chivalry/dread, except when fighting Mongols & Timurids - for them I'd always go with execution to cut down their numbers. Then I had 1 game where I had gotten up to Very Trustworthy, and after a scorched earth war with the Mongols I had dropped to Despicable. Shortly I was at war with everyone but (my only remaining ally) the Pope. While that worked out for me (I'd attack their forces near Papal units to get them excommunicated), it caused me to look at what effect prisoner treatment and city razing have on your reputation, and since then I've only razed 0-1 cities per game, and prisoner execution is rare.
Indeed! The general involved is one of key considerations and something I didn't touch on in this video - I was a bit too focused on the settlement damage with extermination. I'm going to do more videos on these sorts of choices soon though!
Minmaxing chiv or dread in each general is a massive game-changer.
I guess Ghengiz Khan hadn't watched this
Occupying had an unpatched bug that causes your trustworthiness to decrease... though it probably isn't a big deal because diplomacy is almost worthless on older total war games anyway.
Indeed. I have a guide on fixing that exact bug! 😜
@@ToNerdistoHumanTNH was it actually a bug tho? I mean, yeah occupy is the more chivalrous option, but you've still stolen that settlement and killed it's defenders. Kinda makes sense they'd be a bit annoyed, no?
@@DraconimLt Yeah, but generating untrustworthyness? Idk about that. As far as the complexity of TWM2 is concerned, you've commited the action with a just cause.
@@heroinboblivesagain5478 hmm maybe. Guess the *reason* for the attack/war being justified or not can't be distinguished with those mechanics, just the way you resolve it...
@@DraconimLt I wonder how different the early TW games wouldve been if they had a system kinda like the EU games.
I am a simple man, first I conquer a settlement and then I always exterminate it. Good video, now I understand how that choice affects the game; but in the end, I prefer to ensure the public order of the city and continue my blitzkrieg. XD
I usually send my best priests/imams to convert a good portion of an enemy region (providing you're at war with a faction of a different faith) before I besiege the settlement. As religion is a huge factor that dictates public order, by the time I've conquered the city, occupying is usually inconsequential as a good chunk of the population have already converted and revolts are rarely ever a concern.
Sure, occupying doesn't get you much money but that's hardly ever been an issue for me.
I see you've mastered the art of war.
You are talking as if Exterminate was a tool. It's not. It's the end.
Anger and violence... a simple solution. The total war way1
Great video, i love playing campaign but i never understood how reputation system worked. Turns out it was kind of a stupid system but still, Medieval II is a better game than Warhammer.
I had no idea until I made this video. At least now I can manipulate it 😅
I am surprised you werent talking about the effects on chivalry or dread
I always intended on doing a separate video specifically on that. I really should get to that! 😅
Best explanation I've found ever, thank you much.
If a city surrenders it is occupied, if it fights it is exterminated unless I need the city for local recruitment as a bridgehead of sorts. If a family member dies taking the city it gets exterminated regardless (cant remember when this happened the last time, but if it does strategic considerations are irrelevant).
The economy in medieval is super easy, so the fact that settlements regress when you exterminate them is really not that bad unless you need to recruit high level troops there. You can be rich af no matter what you do to your enemies.
The only real time i exterminate is if im not confident that i can hold the city. Its especially the case if im playing the British against the French. Holding the mainland is a real slog back and forth so I try my best to kneecap my enemy by taking a scorched earth tactic and intentionally destroy and demolish the buildings that would be useful to my enemy. Reap the benefits of cash from destruction while leaving my enemy to sink that money back into rebuilding those upgrades.
I do the same. :)
In my moors campaign, I conquered Rome, and occupied it at first, ( with low tax rate and a full stack army garrison) but it revolted 3 times in 6 turns and I had enough, so I exterminated it.
1. Bring Imams, convert the Roman province to about 50 percent Islam before you even take the city.
2. Take the city, and sack the city to reduce the population a bit and gain a load of coin while preserving the infrastructure, low taxes. Bring a general with high chivalry to govern the city afterward, preferably one that did not sack the city as it can give that general unwanted dread points, or bring a general with high dread, if that one sacked the city it's fine because it improves his dread. Just know governing with a high dread general at low taxes can lower the general's dread if it sits there for more than 3 turns.
Note also certain titles, offices, retinue, and ancillaries will grant the governor bonuses to Law or reduce squalor, or improve popularity, all of which directly affect public order and improve it in your favor. For particularly hostile populations distant from your capitol and not in your religion, those bonuses are sort of necessary to avoid rebellions. When you get such retinue, stack them all under the same general and have that general be assigned to govern conquered territories until you've religiously converted the populace. Dread works the best because you can sack and put taxes at normal or higher and not lower the general's dread, but in the early game when you're trying to boost the population of cities and castles to get higher tier recruitment facilities and more trade and taxation, chivalry would be preferable wherever you can possibly get away with it. Dread is more for late game, controlling populations that already exist and keeping infrastructure intact so you can sack the city and then govern it, whereas chivalry is for occupying settlements in the early game and boosting their population and loyalty faster.
3. Build religious buildings and continue converting the population, the closer it gets to 100 percent, the less religious unrest there will be.
4. Build up the barracks as it has a bonus to law at every improvement stage.
5. Build up the town hall / governor's palace building as it has a bonus to law at every improvement stage.
6. Build up buildings that give bonuses to public health, as that helps combat potential plague, reduces the chance of getting it unless it is scripted to happen, and it directly improves public order.
7. Build entertainment buildings such as brothels for public order.
8. Some buildings give bonuses to happiness and public order when built, but it only improves it by an invisible half-step, so you require two different buildings that fall under that category to see a difference. Example being schools and libraries, I believe. It works a little differently in the mod stainless steel which I play exclusively, I never play the base vanilla game anymore, so I can't remember the specific buildings that do it in vanilla. But you can tell by queueing up the buildings in the building queue and then checking what the projected effects are on public order in the settlement details page at the same time. Watch when a building does nothing for public order alone, but mysteriously public order improves when you add a second building that also seems to do nothing for public order alone, combined, they improved public order. The public likes having lots of infrastructure that benefit them, along the education line of buildings in particular.
However, almost all your public order problems go away if you convert half the population to your religion before you ever occupy the settlement, and you bring a general with either very high chivalry or dread, and you have a large garrison.
Remember the garrison need not be quality troops, the game only cares about individual soldiers in the unit, so units with a large number of garbage troops are great for public order, example, peasants and any other large number infantry unit, no matter the quality. Missile units never have as many troops as the largest infantry units, but still work fairly well in second place, and some are extremely cheap like levy archers, and the worst units for public order are cavalry and anything with small numbers like artillery, or weakened units with fewer soldiers in it than maximum.
I specifically create stacks of low cost spears or peasants and levy archers when I go conquering so I have a garrison in the settlement I conquer that is hardest to maintain public order while I convert the population, so I can send my real troops to continue conquering. Peasants do indeed have a purpose, any large sized unit with low cost or free upkeep certainly does.
Also consider how developed it is, Antioch in the vanilla as a rebel city you should always exterminate as a crusader or have to govern abunch of angry locals
Exterminating is good if you know you will not be able to hold and come back for a long time but it will cripple the enemy. Or you have a similarly strong castle close, so you don't need to hold another castle if you don't need need it.
Unless it's a village, it's 100% sack if I have a general, I don't want useless chivalry, I want him to gain or retain as much dread as possible so I can route enemies super easy wth just one charge, battles are all about morale and dread is the best stat for winning.
I use a little of each, what I mean by that is I normally have two generals which are my most loyal ones,they are my Lone Wolf and Lord of War General. The faction leader and mostly the faction heir will be my Chivalrous Generals, the rest I use more as regional governors.
My Chivalrous Generals are just that and are seen as the shining examples of what rulers should be, the middle generals are the rank and file, they do all the hard work. They Occupy and Sack only while the faction leader and heir only occupy and release any and all captured enemy troops. The Lone Wolf general pushes deep into enemy territory and causes as much infrastructural damage as possible, that means extermination. Now the cities that the Lone Wolf does attack are the cities that I know I can not hold. The Lord of War General does a little of both seige and field battles but mostly field battles with the added "kills all prisoners" which boosts the Dread factor real fast. I have played games where once my desired borders were made, I only send out the Lone Wolf and Lord of War to cause mayhem to the enemies of my allies and generate money thru extermination and sometimes ransoms. I have had generals with such a high dread level, enemy army ran away at the the sight of him marching towards them.
But I like the screams and pain of civilians :(
3:50 population growth there probably represents 3/4 of the housing now being free real estate for the surviving 1/4, at least whichever houses aren't damaged beyond repair or claimed by the conquering soldiers...
sack, sack, sack bc i like watching my coffers overflow
Exactly this!
Also it affects your global standing. Occupy +0,05 and exterminate -0,05. Considering that you loose 0,05 just for taking it, you would like to only occupy till mid game.
I wonder if sacking cities would make your armies less likely to rebell.
Rebelling forces is down to the character's loyalty and the faction leader's authority so whilst I don't think sacking would directly influence that. But the trait gains from that choice of action may well impact loyalty or authority so in effect have the same impact. Would be interesting if it did though!
always thoguht sacking should get the happieness hit, not occupying. i never occupy because of terrible happieness, but sacking pacifies... i mean..what would irl make ppl more happy: getting robbed, violated, killed or...not that.
How to play with timurids and mongols??
Mongols: ua-cam.com/video/bFKDDHCf8SM/v-deo.html
Timurids: ua-cam.com/video/CRJf2EkiF7g/v-deo.html
trust me on this one. if you do the Play as England, and do the take timbuktu with 2 units asap thing, (rufus and mailed knights) your'e going to need to exterminate timbuktu and arguin, because on turn 20 with 2 catholic units, in a muslim culture place, you need to exterminate them if you want to keep them
both provinces have no building chains at all there, and arguin can be rebuilt by turning from a villiage, to a wooden castle/motte and bailey/ stone castle, then convert to large town. its expensive, but worth it.
In that case you are certainly getting more from exterminating than not. And those settlements are soooo valuable too
I miss slavery
In Rome total war ofc
The bestbis sacking
A solid option on most occasions.
Very interesting! Does extermination destroy the buildings in Rome total war as well?
Indeed it does! The ports is usually the most visible impact that makes you notice this.
@@ToNerdistoHumanTNH hmmmmm? Are you sure?
@@Chelovek_PotYou are correct actually! In my memory it did this in Rome too but having just experimented a little it appears to not destroy things in Rome! My mistake!
In the beginning I'll occupy key locations to not hinder growth. After that it's dread xp farming time lol
I mean, I always end up destroying every faction so...
I never understood why game manual doesn't mention all these :/
I usually leave my cities at 70% public order because for some reason when the public order is being red at 70% the riots dont happen, riots will only happen if the public order is below 70% like at 65% or below
Riots can happen at 70 percent public order assuming that conditions are not improving, meaning you could be losing public order due to a heretic in the region, or if the city itself is under seige, or if there is a spy that entered the city to cause unrest, and these things are offset by the slow improvement to public order that happens the longer the settlement is yours.
It will visibly still be red and still says 70 percent order, but because conditions aren't improving, there's a chance of riots. It's only a chance of riots, however. A lot of initial unrest happens due to religious differences and the shock of being occupied by a foreign power with a different culture, and that stuff naturally decreases over time as you convert, and the temporary initial unrest also goes away after many turns.
Because a lot of that unrest is temporary, conditions usually improve, but if the city is on the edge of disaster like 70 percent, a single spy or religious conversion agent not of your religion can ruin your whole day. But I have seen cities riot at 70 percent, is my point. They typically will not rebel entirely, that kind of thing has never happened to me personally, it's more likely to happen the closer you are to zero public order.
If you, for whatever reason, don't want to occupy the region you just took over, I think that exterminate is a viable option. It's destroying your enemy logistics and income.
There are definitely situations for extermination. That's. Certainly one!
playing a GAME and then minmaxing every single move is such a silly idea. i sack, occupy or exterminate just how i please.
Strange sacking the settlement works for pilps
Occupying settlement does major DECREASE diplomatic relationships with ALL fations(even if even u havent met them) same as Exterminating due to diplomacy bug.
Never occupy them!
PS
Should be a disclaimer about this bug at begining of the video for new players.
Cool
What about modding exterminations to not destroy the infrastructure?
In the 6.4 stainless steel mod I played as the Golden Horde and struggled with rebellion so in other settlements I conquer I simply wipe out the populace the Mongolian way especially when I’m invading the Seljuks and Cuman Khipchaks And Kiev - I also destroyed Jerusalem and the only city I never destroyed was Constantinople and Damascus and Cairo as the mongols
Is the Diplomacy fix add ; save game compatible ?
Would it just cause crashes or would it not take effect until a new campaign or would it have any odd side effects in game.
Also is there any thing like it for Empire TW ?
It will take effect over all saved and new campaigns. Although in an old save game the effects may appear to be more minimal as damage to reputation is often done and most settlements we occupy are rebels in the early game.
@@ToNerdistoHumanTNH Great to know, thanks 👍.
No idea why CA never implemented that in, seems such a simple fix and a logical one.
I'll re watch your video and implement it immediately .
I would exterminate if I was attacking a settlement deep in territory that I had no hope of keeping. I would exterminate and abandon the settlement letting the AI take it back.
I only ever sack or exterminate, i will exterminate cities that slightly piss me off idc, dread is so useful its insane i got a general to 10 dread and the rout before he touches them, battles are increidbly easy when u have high dread xD.
If the sack money is less than 5k thats an exterminate, and my generals get so good and public order isnt a problem
Disco inferno!
Love this game, how do you keep the population happy in Rome 2 it's so much harder in that game 😊
By building right buildings and using right generals, dignitaries but at least rebels spawn next to city and not in the middle of desert like in m2tw
its why i never exterminate. you destroy buildings. i always SACK settlements.
Absolutely!
but muh dread gain
Sacking improves dread over repeated instances thereof, or at the very least, doesn't gain chivalry.
Gain dread by executing prisoners and putting the tax rate up while not building anything, having public order under 100 percent but above 70 percent, while governing the city for many turns. If you build nothing while taxing them above "low", after sacking the city, and maintain public order via religious agents and the governor's traits and garrison alone, that's how you govern dreadfully. The population hates to simply be used as a tax base while gaining no benefit from the taxation, but if you're dreadful enough and have enough troops and they're in your religion, they will be too frightened to revolt.
If you are fine with basically making a settlement worthless as a recruitment building or tax base for the rest of your campaign and don't care about keeping peace along any of your borders, then exterminate doesn't affect you negatively. It just doesn't make a lot of sense to cause 100 turns worth of growth damage and 100,000 florins worth of infrastructure damage to a settlement you want to actually turn into something great, when it already has a large population and loads of valuable infrastructure that takes 100 turns to replace.
How are you playing as timurids?
I'm sure there's a video of his on how to play as them on his channel somewhere.