MTW VI - a few questions

[Germanicus75]

Hi guys,

I think I've lost the manual for MTWI, a game a bought several years ago. Hope I can ask some questions here then :-)

1) Does anyone know if there is a downloadable version of the manual?
2) Is there a way in battle to select only infantry units? Pressing Crtl + M for melee units selects cav as well
3) Saxon Fyrdmen - best in formation or engage at will?
4) If you're only *upgrading* units - new armour, valor etc. - and not retraining them because of losses, is it possible to upgrade several units at a time?
5) Valor - when building valor buildings, are the valor effects of these buildings cumulative? So if you building a stew, your men get 2 points, but then if you build a Rookery, your men get 3 points + the original 2 points = valor 5? Or you only get the bonus of the extra point between 2 and 3?
6) How to get the valor - I'm not sure about this. Do you have to retrain your units after building a valor building to get the value boosts? Also, does the valor boost apply *automatically* to units you build after the valor building has been built, or do you have to retrain them as well?
7) Can someone tell me how to change the depth of a unit formation?
8) Is there a way to get your units to be more responsive? It is seems once your units are engaged in melee, it's very difficult to get them out.
9) Ports - I've built these and a trader and have a line of ships in each province up to the next faction's port. But my ports are still not making an income. I don't know why.
10) I once saw the AI in VI jump over several provinces of mine and attack me, i.e. he moved his army from north-east England right down to East Anglia - anyone know how?
11) Does the XL mod feature any changes/improvements specifically to VI?
12) What decides whether you capture the AI general in battle or kill him?


A few observations:

- It's much harder to see where your units are both on the bm radar map and the bm itself than in Rome - units are not highlighted very well when selected, only on the unit cards
- Cav seems to be barely faster than infantry (is there a way to tweak this?)
- I've not noticed a great deal of benefit from charging into the backs of units so far
- Units are much hardier than in RTW. You can charge a full armoured unit around for ages and it hardly breaks a sweat
- Skirmisher units are poor at keeping a safe distance when on skirmish mode
- It sucks a bit keep having to check around longwindedly for any disloyal generals - this should have been made easier
- On the bm, Northumbrian and Saxon units are almost indistinguishable
- Bm speed slider is excellent!
- Merc units have names of captains who are not right for their faction sometimes, e.g. Saxon units with Welsh names, Russian mercs with Spanish names...

update: I've now managed to make some income with sea trade. But I still don't understand the mechanism. The trader buildings make much more money than the ports do.
Second, I had one port where even though I had a line of ships to my allies ports and they had ports and traders as well, that port made zero income, although the trader in the same province made some monry (the province had 3 tradeable goods). Anyone know why?

I'm still having trouble with valor. I can build valor buildings and even retrain the men, but they don't seem to get a valor upgrade. The AI troops seem to have rather higher valor than mine. I have to rely on greater numbers. What am I doing wrong?

Compared to Rome, I also find it frustrating that you can only upgrade/retrain one unit per turn. So if you build an armory and have a 10-unit army, it takes you 10 turns just to reequip that army before you can use it!

Thanks for any feedback :-))

Cheers, Germanicus91

[Germanicus75]

No one who can comment on my questions? :-(

[Germanicus75]

Bump: anyone found the AI can handle the Vikings competently? I mean an AI Viking faction actually appears and raids various well-selected targets in the British Isles? So far I've not seen the AI do this.
Play as the Northumbrians for example and you have much more to fear from the Mercians and Picts.

[Kaidonni]

Traders don't make more than Ports. You need a ship in EVERY sea region from your Port to the recipient Port. You MUST have a trader or higher, as provinces without tradeable goods won't exactly do well trading. You can't trade with your own Ports. If you handle it right, you can make a hefty income from naval trade.

Also, works like this for invasions. If you have a Port, then you just need ships in each sea region from that Port to the coastline of the province you want to invade. They don't need a Port. But be careful, for this means if they don't have a Port, you're stuck there until one is built by you. Or you lose your army if you lose the province.

Valour is also increased by every second command star. Might explain why the AI has higher valour soldiers. Check your generals and their command ability.

[Henry of Grosmont]

Bump: anyone found the AI can handle the Vikings competently? I mean an AI Viking faction actually appears and raids various well-selected targets in the British Isles? So far I've not seen the AI do this.
Play as the Northumbrians for example and you have much more to fear from the Mercians and Picts.

In my campaigns, AI Vikings were aggressive. They did attack everyone, especially, Irish and Mercia, and were allied alot of times with Picts. If not, they attacked them in first 10-20 turns.

[DarkKnight]

2) Is there a way in battle to select only infantry units? Pressing Crtl + M for melee units selects cav as well

Just group them together or hotkey them. To hot key units select the units you want hotkeyed, then hold "ctrl" and "shift" and press a number key (#0-9). Then to recall a hotkey hold "ctrl" and press the number key you assigned to the units.

4) If you're only *upgrading* units - new armour, valor etc. - and not retraining them because of losses, is it possible to upgrade several units at a time?

No

5) Valor - when building valor buildings, are the valor effects of these buildings cumulative? So if you building a stew, your men get 2 points, but then if you build a Rookery, your men get 3 points + the original 2 points = valor 5? Or you only get the bonus of the extra point between 2 and 3?

When the building you build is an upgrade the effects are not cumulative. They are only cumulative for separate buildings.

6) How to get the valor - I'm not sure about this. Do you have to retrain your units after building a valor building to get the value boosts? Also, does the valor boost apply *automatically* to units you build after the valor building has been built, or do you have to retrain them as well?

You have to retrain.

7) Can someone tell me how to change the depth of a unit formation?

Hold the left mouse button down and move the mouse. Thats in the tutorial by the way.

8) Is there a way to get your units to be more responsive? It is seems once your units are engaged in melee, it's very difficult to get them out.

Plan ahead more so you don't need too. But if you must get them out immediately rout them. If you can't afford to rout them sometimes hitting withdraw ("ctrl" and "w") gets them out.

9) Ports - I've built these and a trader and have a line of ships in each province up to the next faction's port. But my ports are still not making an income. I don't know why.

Is the trader in the same province as the post?
Does the province have any resources?
Are there any breaks in your line of ships?
Is there an enemy ship interupting your line?
Does the faction you are trying to trade with have a port(s)?
If so does your line of ships go to it(them)?
If so do any port provinces you connected to have any resources?
Are you at war with the faction you are trying to trade with?

Also in order to make real money you need merchants not traders. And also the ports do not generate the income, the merchants do.

10) I once saw the AI in VI jump over several provinces of mine and attack me, i.e. he moved his army from north-east England right down to East Anglia - anyone know how?

He had a line of ships from a port province in his lands to your lands.

Because you asked that I take it you don't even know how to transport troops across sea. Moving troops follows the same rules as trading except that the province you land in does not need a port. You just have to have your troops in a port province and a line of ships from the port to the province you want to go to. Movement happens instantly no matter how far they are transported.

12) What decides whether you capture the AI general in battle or kill him?

If the general is routing when he is "killed" he is captured instead of killed. The same is true for any units. The combat engines calculates when a unit is "killed". If the unit is fighting when it gets "killed" it gets killed, but if it is routing instead of being killed it is captured.

- It's much harder to see where your units are both on the bm radar map and the bm itself than in Rome - units are not highlighted very well when selected, only on the unit cards

You can enlarge the mini map by clicking and dragging the bottom right corner of it to make things easier to see on it. On the battle map the flag on a unit changes size when it is selected. FYI, you can tell how much valor a unit has by counting the number of small flags a unit has.

- Cav seems to be barely faster than infantry (is there a way to tweak this?)

Cav is much faster than infantry. The only infantry which can even come close to cavalry are Janissary Heavy Infantry. You are probably using cavalry like gothic knights or kataphrokai which might as well be tanks because they have so much armor on, and therefore are slow as hell. That is the beauty of MTW. You can use uber cavalry which are slow as hell or use cavalry like Alan Mercenaries which are much weaker but in my opinion are the strongest cavalry in the game because of their speed and cost.

Another observation I made from your post is that you are used to playing RTW. RTW threw away most of the tactical depth of battles where the smartest player wins and made it so just the fastest clicker wins. MTW is much slower paced, which is why you probably think your cavalry are moving so slow.

- I've not noticed a great deal of benefit from charging into the backs of units so far

Of course, that is the most powerful position to charge from. Try to use your infantry to pin down enemy units and have your cavalry run around and charge their rear.

- Skirmisher units are poor at keeping a safe distance when on skirmish mode

Don't use the skirmish function. This is what your formation should look like:

AAAAAAA
LCLCLCLC
IIIIIIIIIIIII
HCHCHCHC

A= Archers
LC= Light Cavalry
I= Infantry
HC= Heavy Cavalry

Use your light cavalry to protect your archers from enemy cavalry raids. When the enemy decides to attack with his infantry bring your infantry forward, and your archers and light cavlary back.

[quote]- Units are much hardier than in RTW. You can charge a full armoured unit around for ages and it hardly breaks a sweat[quote]
If MTW was a board game RTW would be an arcade game. Battles last normally at least 5 times longer in MTW than RTW.

- It sucks a bit keep having to check around longwindedly for any disloyal generals - this should have been made easier

If you are constantly having disloyal generals it is most likely because your king has low influence. All of your generals loyalties are directly proportional to your kings influence. Your kings influence is increased or decreased by the amount of territory gained or lossed during his reign. Often your generals become disloyal right after a highly influential king dies. As far as I know, the influence a king recieves when he ascends the thrown is fairly random. That is a key reason why it is important to slowly expand rather than take over an entire factions land then spend a couple decades stabilizing.

update: I've now managed to make some income with sea trade. But I still don't understand the mechanism. The trader buildings make much more money than the ports do.
Second, I had one port where even though I had a line of ships to my allies ports and they had ports and traders as well, that port made zero income, although the trader in the same province made some monry (the province had 3 tradeable goods). Anyone know why?

Disregard ports making money. Any money a port makes is insignificant to what merchants make. Get Master Merchants in your provinces with the most valuable resources and get ships in every single sea province. You will make more money than ever imagineable, but the downside is every faction will team up on you (especially anyone competing with you for naval dominance).

I'm still having trouble with valor. I can build valor buildings and even retrain the men, but they don't seem to get a valor upgrade. The AI troops seem to have rather higher valor than mine. I have to rely on greater numbers. What am I doing wrong?

Your men gain valor for fighting. You will get units with the highest valor through experience not training. The valor that it says your unit has is the average of the valor of every man in the unit. So when you retrain a unit and the valor level goes down, your men aren't losing valor, its just that the trained units have less valor than the average man already in the unit, so they bring down the average.

Compared to Rome, I also find it frustrating that you can only upgrade/retrain one unit per turn. So if you build an armory and have a 10-unit army, it takes you 10 turns just to reequip that army before you can use it!

You don't have to retrain your army before you can use them. If you have men that just need re-equipt, use those men to fight a war. Instead of keeping your unit queue busy retraining your army, have it busy training new units. The new units will have the new armor, plus you won't be wasting your money by paying upkeep for an idle army.

[Ferpo]

I have only discovered VI reciently. (I have 2.01) but it lookes like the ling on the TW site is dead.
Anyone know where I can get VI?

[DarkKnight]

I have only discovered VI reciently. (I have 2.01) but it lookes like the ling on the TW site is dead.
Anyone know where I can get VI?

What do you mean? If you have 2.01 that means you have VI.

From what I understand from reading your post, you have VI version 2.01 but are looking for VI

[Ferpo]

Thank you for your reply.

In my MTW I can see a 2.01 in the corner. So I know I am patched to that. But I see people talking about version VI and found a dead link at:
http://www.totalwar.com/index.html?p...l&nav=/us/8/2/
which is called "MEDIEVAL: TOTAL WARTM VIKING INVASION PATCH"
Download Medieval: Total War VI US/Euro Patch (5.67MB)
I assumed it was another version.
If you are saying 2.01 and VI are the same thing. Then fine, I don't need to download or install anything.
But how can I verify this?

Regards
Ferpo

[DarkKnight]

Vanilla VI was 2.00. The patch upgrades version 2.00 to 2.01. If you bought VI after the patch was released, which you must have done, then your VI is pre-patched. You already have the patch.

[Ferpo]

I guess so. Thanks for your help.

[Germanicus75]

MANY THANKS guys for your responses - especially DarkKnight for your full and detailed response - you've answered many of my questions! It should help me quite a lot in the game.

One thing that bugs me about MTW is that you can only retrain one unit per turn, but still it's a great game and good immersion for M2TW :-)