Two Handed Glitch

**cjm81499** · October 20, 2015, 03:08 PM

There is, of course the "Two Handed Glitch" in vanilla Medieval 2, which makes two handed units defend in combat a lot more than they attack, which of course makes them lose much of the time. But I have heard it does not affect all two handed units, and some of them are not glitched.

Is there any way to know what units it does not affect at all?

**Lucem Mundum** · October 20, 2015, 06:06 PM

It only affects axes, and polearms, the affected units include Varangian guards, Tabardariyya, Woodsmen, Berdich Axemen, all types of Billmen, Dismounted Noble, Portuguese, and English Knights, Norse Axemen.

I might have missed a few, but you get the idea.

**Lucem Mundum** · October 20, 2015, 06:18 PM

It is not a bug after all, it's just that their attack animations are a bit slow compared to 1h units, leading many players to believe it's a bug. You can also notice the 2h swords are quit fast compared to the 2h axes and polearms. 2h units can do exceptionally well if used correctly, they are very good at fighting at the walls, fighting cavalry in melee, charging, and can pretty much hold their own against anything that melee.

**lolIsuck** · October 20, 2015, 06:49 PM

Defending's not really the purpose of a two-handed unit. They are still good enough as offensive shock troops but yes, a prolonged melee is not ideal for these units. It's somewhat logical, these units use heavy and often slow weapons, they need some space and time to strike and therefore are on the receiving end more than the giving end, but when they strike it's devastating. The only problem here is the stagger loop where a soldier can't stop staggering because the enemy beats him to attacking every time. There should've been a stagger-breaking move where the man parries or deflects his opponent's hit and counters it.

**Silverheart** · October 23, 2015, 05:23 AM

Does the "glitch" really not affect all 2-handed troops?
I mean, I get that pikemen aren´t affected, since they use their weapons entirely differently, but polearms, halberds and 2-handed swords are all weapons were the wielders use the same attack animations (and 2-handed axes and billhooks also use the same animations as each other). So if the glitch affects one of these, it should logically affect all of them.
I´m also speaking from experience, as it seems to me that all of these 2-handed units suffer from the slower attacks, as well as the "stagger loop" that Lolsuck identified.

**Fwance** · November 10, 2015, 02:12 PM

The "glitch" doesn't affect any two-handed troops because there isn't a glitch.

From the reading I have done, and past research others have posted on this forum and otherwise, the two-handed glitch does not exist, and is a myth. The two-handed glitch myth is, as I understand it, that the slow animations of two-handed troops cause them to suffer or otherwise not be as effective as they should be. However, in reality, it has been determined that the animations of the strikes, parries, blocks, kills, etc. are determined by the game's engine which has calculated the kill, block or otherwise before it has been animated.

Still, there are youtube videos, even recent ones, where people will illustrate the two-handed "glitch" in action, but I believe this to be a function of the game mechanics. Of the ones I have seen, it typically involves letting two units fight to the last man (usually a dismounted two-handed heavy unit vs dismounted feudal knights), which IMO is not an appropriate demonstration. Two-handed units are typically supposed to be "shock troops" and not intended for a prolonged, stationary fight, where a high-defense unit like a feudal knight will typically have an advantage.

This game has been around for a long time, patched and re-released in several editions, and the developers have not seen fit to make any adjustments.

At first I heard about this supposed glitch and it negatively affected my gameplay, causing me to imagine there was some problem when there wasn't one. But after doing more research, I am confident there is no glitch, and use two-handed units without reservation.

**Fwance** · November 10, 2015, 02:22 PM

I'll also add (can't seem to find an edit button)...

That it's very easy to dream up that there is a glitch when you see something happen over and over.

More often than not, I have found certain things happen as a result of how someone plays the game, and not due to some fault of the game itself.

Players assume a later, more expensive unit should simply defeat every other unit, when in fact the game has much more depth and complexity. The game relies on a multitude of statistics (some shown in the unit's stats, some not), battlefield variables and a bit of chance, even though the relatively simplistic battlefield animations belie that fact.

**cjm81499** · November 10, 2015, 02:56 PM

Well, Fwance. I mean, even if it is not a glitch, it still makes two-handed troops not very good. They are often expensive, and it can be hard sometimes to be able to get a good charge in (unless you rush, of course).

Just seems like they could have been better, and maybe attacked more in prolonged melee.

**Fwance** · November 10, 2015, 03:48 PM

A more accurate opinion (although I disagree) would be that two-handed troops are simply not very good. Nothing causes this in particular except for the game itself (i.e. they are designed and intended to function this way).

Many two-handed units IMO are very good. If you put them up against a unit with weaker stats, they typically will perform very well. Only when matched up against units with high defense do they not shine, in my experience.

Just because it doesn't totally crush a unit like a dismounted feudal knight doesn't make it a bad unit.

**CavalryCmdr** · November 10, 2015, 05:15 PM

I find two-handed units are very good for sweeping a line or clearing spearmen out of the way for cavalry. However, as a line unit, they are indeed inferior, and I am quite certain that is intentional and thus there is no "glitch" as Fwance says. There was a two-handed bug back in the earlier days, I believe was fixed with the 2.1 patch around 6 months after the game was released, that made all two-handers except Janissary Heavy Inf pretty well useless, I suspect that is where the alleged "glitch" got it's start.

**UndrState** · November 11, 2015, 03:37 PM

Fwance - I thought that the Kingdoms expansion did do somesort of fix or rebalancing of the 2-handed units, and that even playing Vanilla troops you can see the difference with Retrofit. I don't claim to know this for a fact, so if someone wants to chime in and let me know either way, but that is what I recall reading.

**Lucem Mundum** · November 11, 2015, 05:22 PM

The Kingdom expansion did not change the animation or remove the "glitch", all it did was buffing the 2-handed units' stats due to players complaining about the units being "too weak".

**UndrState** · November 12, 2015, 08:29 AM

Originally Posted by Lucem Mundum

The Kingdom expansion did not change the animation or remove the "glitch", all it did was buffing the 2-handed units' stats due to players complaining about the units being "too weak".

Fair enough.

I'm under the impression you are skeptical that was the correct choice on the part of CA - am I right?

**Lucem Mundum** · November 12, 2015, 06:02 PM

Yeah I think the 2-handed units are good enough the way they are now. Any faster animation will make them OP as hell.

**lolIsuck** · November 12, 2015, 07:05 PM

Best option would of course be some way for them to break out of the stagger, but that rarely happens. An animation where they block, followed by a counterattack would be awesome but I suppose very hard to make.

**D@gget** · November 24, 2015, 11:20 AM

As previosly stated, Kingdoms buffed 2H units to give them more survivability in prolonged combat.

Another interesting issue with 2H axes is that they seem to have a minimum range. This becomes more apparent when fighting on walls, where they have less spacing and end up only using the "shove" animation, resulting in no kills at all. I tried to cope with it by assuming they didn't have enough room to swing their weapons, but I don't think this affects 2H swords and halberds.

That said, 2H units preform marvelously when fighting cavalry, and the stab animation they most commonly use against them is faster than most 1-handed animations.

**Geoffrey of Villehardouin** · November 29, 2015, 06:20 AM

Have you ever seen a two-handed unit charge kill anyone? Their charge animation is such that they hold their weapons high, so no one gets killed. Their charge bonus is utterly pointless. They are only good against pikemen, who also fight defensively, even more defensively. If a unit with high attack stats fights defensively, something has gone amiss. They are glitched, or whatever word you want to use for that. Especially the HRE two-handers are certainly not worth their money.

It is also not strictly correct that the two handed units have been buffed up in Kingdoms. Rather most other melee infantry has been toned down (dismounted feudal knights have a defense of 17). They also have lower morale. So the two handed units do better in Kingdoms.

**UndrState** · November 29, 2015, 10:50 AM

Originally Posted by Geoffrey of Villehardouin

Have you ever seen a two-handed unit charge kill anyone? Their charge animation is such that they hold their weapons high, so no one gets killed. Their charge bonus is utterly pointless. They are only good against pikemen, who also fight defensively, even more defensively. If a unit with high attack stats fights defensively, something has gone amiss. They are glitched, or whatever word you want to use for that. Especially the HRE two-handers are certainly not worth their money.

It is also not strictly correct that the two handed units have been buffed up in Kingdoms. Rather most other melee infantry has been toned down (dismounted feudal knights have a defense of 17). They also have lower morale. So the two handed units do better in Kingdoms.

You run a mod - did you do anything in particular with 2-handers to put them into balance ?

**Geoffrey of Villehardouin** · November 29, 2015, 02:37 PM

Originally Posted by UndrState

You run a mod - did you do anything in particular with 2-handers to put them into balance ?

Yes, in the 1648 mod they have higher defense and melee attack stats than other units. Typical pikemen have an attack of 3 (with a long pike with spear bonus of 12) and a defense of 9 and cost 500 coins. Typical musketeers have swords as secondary weapons with an attack of 6 and defense around 9. They cost about the same. The basic two-handers have an attack of 14 and a defense of 17 and cost 650. Better two-handers have attacks of 20-24. Two-handers are more expensive, to discourage players from using these units too much, because they were rare in the period of that mod. Maybe Creative Assembly felt the same?

**rattenfleisch** · December 04, 2015, 09:20 PM

Originally Posted by Fwance

The two-handed glitch myth is, as I understand it, that the slow animations of two-handed troops cause them to suffer or otherwise not be as effective as they should be. However, in reality, it has been determined that the animations of the strikes, parries, blocks, kills, etc. are determined by the game's engine which has calculated the kill, block or otherwise before it has been animated.

Not true. You can easily test this yourself through modding. You can create two units with the exact same stats and give one unit the regular one-handed animation, while the other unit gets the animation for two-handed axes. The unit with the one-handed animation will absolutely wreck the other unit every single time, no exceptions.
The battle outcome is heavily influenced by the animation speed, no doubt about that.

So is this a glitch? Depending on how you look at it, it actually is. It isn't a glitch in itself - the animation speed is most likely intentional. But you have to consider that there was a shield glitch in the early days of Medieval 2, which caused the shield value to be subtracted from the defense value in melee combat.
Back then, units with two-handed weapons weren't too bad against dismounted knights for example, while they get completely slaughtered nowadays.
The game was balanced with the shield bug in place and the fix broke the balance in this regard.

While the slow animation was (at least at some point) intentional and therefore not necessarily a bug, it could be argued that this issue would have been noticed during development if the shield bug never existed.

Two-handed units are typically supposed to be "shock troops" and not intended for a prolonged, stationary fight, where a high-defense unit like a feudal knight will typically have an advantage.

I really don't know where people get the idea that two-handed units aren't supposed to do a frontal assault or fight in a prolonged melee.
In other Total War games (Rome 1 & Barbarian Invasion or Attila for example), units with two handed axes work just fine in a prolonged 1-on-1 melee. They already have a severe weakness in their lack of shields, no need to make them melee pussies on top of that.
Okay, it might be the case that the developers for Medieval 2 had something different in mind (dedicated flanking units or something like that), but considering their movement speed and the shield bug, I highly doubt that.

This game has been around for a long time, patched and re-released in several editions, and the developers have not seen fit to make any adjustments.

They actually adjusted the stats in the Kingdoms expansion. Two-handed units work a lot better in the expansion campaigns (but for some reason not for the Grand Campaign).
Whether a stat adjustment is a good solution to this or not is debatable however, because it messes with the auto-resolved battles - buffing units to make up for their slow animations might make them just about viable in battle, but total beasts in auto-resolving (where their slow animations can't hamper the effectiveness of their stats).

Of course you can make these units work or at least make it look as if they work properly. Yes, you can flank with them, but you can pretty much flank with any unit. Considering how slow most two-handed units move, they are actually pretty bad for that job. Use cavalry for flanking. Or fast, one-handed axe units. Just about anything will do the job here just as good, if not better.