Share your Tricks, Strategies and Ideas

[(insert clever name here)]

Hey, I've been playing for about three weeks and find going on crusades a big pain in the tookus. The pope calls for a crusade to Jerusalem or whatever so I send a big army off. If they go by sea I have to use my whole fleet or it'll be sunk and if I go by land I'm usually in Turkey or someplace before the crusade's over. I've found it better to just take the reputation hit from the pope and concentrate on world domination. But it's such a big part of the game, I'm wondering, what am I missing? Is there some advantage in a successful crusade? And if so how do you do it right.

Ok, the way to make crusades fun is to first, dedicate one place to producing priests. Make one every turn if you have too. The goal is to dominate the college of Cardinals and always get your guy elected. This gets easy once you get Master Theologians Guilds. Next, build churches, and abbeys. Next, don't actively attack other Catholic factions, at least one AI nation will be aggressive and get excommunicated in every game. If it's someone near you, which it probably will be, then make sure YOU pick every crusade target, check every turn for the soonest opportunity. Controlling the attention and fervor of the Catholic world is the same as controlling the world itself. Then while on the crusade, make all your units crusade units because they don't take upkeep when on crusade. This makes you piles and piles of money. You'll have to take it kind of quickly or stuff will start to desert but it's well worth it. Also you can make another army to take something else along the way. Plus when you take the city that is the crusade target, sack it and get even more money. You get experience for all those units whether they did anything or not, and you can keep the city if it is in a good position, or destroy all the buildings, and give it to an ally. Or a muslim faction so you can repeatedly send crusades to it, or just have your enemies be distracted by calling countless crusades on a worthless target that you have already ransacked.

[King Swietopelk]

On the Campaign map, in the unit browser of a settlement, press M to auto merge your armies. Also, if you have multiple units selected press Ctrl+D to disband all of them. I only found these put recently and it has saved me alot of time

[Germanicus75]

It's a good shortcut but the auto-merge is bugged and sometimes doesn't work.

[♔ST0MPA♔]

i guess ctrl d would work also on destroying all buildings too

[z00b]

Hey, I've been playing for about three weeks and find going on crusades a big pain in the tookus.

I've been successful on a few long-distance crusades so far (more if you count the ones I called on European enemies when the pope was in my pocket, but I'm usually already on the doorstep in that case).

I always go at least halfway by sea, and then make a beeline for the target after disembarking (at least once I've had to do an emergency disembark due to hostile waters and a small navy).

If you're going to go for it, try to accept on turn one or ASAP. If you have any generals out in the field anywhere near the target, hire as many mercenaries as you need if below 8 units, and then once you join the crusade get crusader units to fill out the army.

As to benefits, what's already been mentioned above ... And keep in mind that the target city is probably quite rich and will result in a large number of florins.

And a braindead one that I didn't notice for a long time - ctrl-t and/or ctrl-n to toggle the names of individuals and settlements. Makes it much easier to track movements of both your own and your enemies' units.

[Slexlaw]

One I found useful for diplomacy - When the Pope dies and you are electing a new one, you can use the event to make alliances, call ceasefires, butter up potential attackers etc with countries that might be a long way away from your diplomats.

[Gordon Freynman]

I got a nice little trick to share, known about it for atleast a month and havent seen anybody else anywhere post it.

Basically, it will let you build barracks, missle ranges, and stables in cities which you can normally only build in castles. It works best when you take a rebel castle with no buildings in it, since you have to start with the lowest level (i.e. mustering hall, bowyer, stables). Queue all three of those, then click convert to town, or city. Drag the "convert to city" option infront of the other buildings. When your castle converts into a city, the mustering hall and others will still be in the construction queue, and when you finish them, you can upgrade them like they were in a castle(oddly enough)!

Possible problem could be when the city is sieged and you fight the battle on map, the game might crash since the city isnt supposed to have those buildings.

[danes]

ive seen happen but dont know about the possible crash. i rarely get sieged in my cities since i would rather go on offence than wait for enemies to siege me. but it is an interesting "exploit" since you can field knights from your cities.

[TemplarHistorian]

There is away to get both Templars and Hopitallers.

I found this out while playing a campaign as the English.

After taking Pamplona I accepted the Hospitaller guild house.

Later in the campaign, I knocked out Scotland by taking Inverness where they had a Templar guild house.

I was quite pleased to find this out, I had been using the unit create cheat to get both of these knights.

[Vindahl]

If you have a military access to another nation, which you want to attack, without really going to war against them, take some spare units, (could be when you get better units availeble and you dont just want to dismiss the old ones, or just some peasants) take them, and march them into the other nations provinces, set them up some places near the settlements, and let them stay there. If they stay long enough they will rebel and the AI have then to deal with them and fight them off.

[valero]

If you attack a fortification with siegetowers, ladders and ram there is an easy way to get in your cavalry even if the ram gets burned.
Just besiege the walls and get to the gate from the inside, use one unit to move outside the walls, while they go back out they wont go through the siegetowers/ladders. They will instead open the gate from the inside and move out, while halfways through halt em and move in the cavalry.

Most of you probably know about it, but i found it pretty useful.

/V

[Angmar_nite]

What I liek to do is, when hte enemy comes out to break the seige you rushe them. This should creat an unorganized mob with two obvious sides. Then you wheel your cavalry around and break them real quickly. Sense they are so close they will all rout.

[sgt.kzi33]

Well with alot of people asking the same questions over and over again i've decided to start a thread that shows all of the basic tips and do-dads for new people to medieval 2: total war. I'll also be includeing links in here for future reference and i take no credit for whats inside the links. Well here goes.

Q. How do i get to the new world??
You have to wait for the "world is round" event and it occurs around 1400 after that you will get an extra level of docks and will be able to build carracks or boradsh which will help you get to the new world. And before you get the aztec event you will have to sail your ships to the southern or northen area of the new world then you can slaughter as many knuckledraggers as your heart desires.

Q. How do i get this guild??
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=77577
VERY helpful reference for guils and reqs and modding

Q. Help!! I keep going into the - in my treasury!!! Any good economic tricks?
1. my personal favorate BTW: Blockade enemy ports to control all trade and add the ports benefits to yours.

2. Position your armies on enemy roads or allys roads that you have miltiary access to take their trade and road trade benefits so once again it's like that entire road is yours.

3. Devestation!! To effectively deminish the enemies economy (or allies) Position multiple armies all over their lands that you don't plan to siege anytime soon. Soon the provinces will riot and the enemies economy, population, and armies will get crippled. And coupled with priests, assasssins, and spies the enemy might have a horrible time in their campign

4. Pirate trade routes so you can position your ships on enemies central sea trade or land trade and steal and ravage their ecnomy even more and add the stolen goods to your treasury.

5. Vassals - hard to achive but huge money maker to get a good chance of getting a vassal is to take a 4+ influence diplomat. And make sure desired vassal doesn't have ANY allies and has tons of enemies and is reduced to 1-2 settlements. And position many huge armies around their settlement for a good amount of turns and then keep asking. You will get it eventually and you will make 10-15k each turn from the vassal

6. Bully - Simple make sure you have surpreme power and have huge armies around their territory and then ask for desired money NOTE: you can only get upto 2000 florins this way before you get backfired.

Q. I hear about these "great mods" where are they??
Heres 3 of the most well known and in my own humble opinion the best mods for m2tw
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=315 The long road it offers a truely epic campign (900 turns) and realistic effects and new textures. Also huge ai improvements and diplomacy

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=302 Lands to conquer
Most greatest ai improvement and is created by the most revered lusted so it has guarranteed quality. nuff said

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=293 Darthmod
Created by the revered darth vader it includes massive improvements in the ai includeing on the battle map createing a more intense battle mechanic

Q. Late body guards??
Well in vanilla theo only way you can get them is if your general spawns in a castle that has the following buildings:
Armour factory
Highest level of stables
Highest level of torney
But i doubt anyone will get late generals due to this crita so give yourself an easier time and download a mod that includes recruitable generals (see above)

Q. WHEN IS THE NEXT PATCH COMING OUT!!!!!! ATLEAST TELL US WHATS COMING!!
Almost out look at the front page

Q. Unit stats and info????
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=75092 Dead helpful unit table...go crazy..

Well there you have it i'll include updates if i have to but i'm sure this topic will help newbies and will create a more knowledgeable community

[Martius Tiberius]

In respond to #112.

Yes i use that strategy to diss form swords-men and archers... but of course, NOT SPEAR-MEN!

[kirlo]

I've also noticed that when attacking a citadel, the AI seems oblivious to the link between the tops of the second and third walls. In fact, I've never seen it position troops to cover an attack that way (until my attacking troops reach the top of the inner wall and it belatedly rushes men to defend).

To elaborate on this, I use this link whenever I have missle units assaulting calvary troops in a big castle. I killed the king of Hungary and 120 Chivalric Knights with a few units of cheap archers by climbing a ladder, walking all the way around the left wall (the right one was blocked so I had a long walk backtracking), up the towers and onto the central walls. Then it's just a massacre firing into the courtyard. Sure it's cheap, but not letting calvary dismount like they could in MTW1 was cheap too.

Also, using biological germ warfare by infesting a spy with the plague was my favorite trick in RTW , but I haven't seen any characters actually catch it in M2TW. Has anyone else?

[Imperator_Maximus]

Heres a good trick.

Who doesn't like it when say you loose a battle or your ship gets sunk or spineless captain deserts you?

Never fear autosave is here. As the event occurs or just after go to load and load autosave. If it was during your turn it will put at the very beginning of that turn. If it was during the computers turn, it will put you right at the time you hit end turn.

I use it all the time.

[Gurbebio]

Another good trick I use (probably well known) is when fighting multiple army's (eneny reinforcements). I play France right now, and a lot of my generals have nightfigting-capabilities. When you engage an enemy army and you don't want to face the reinforcements, click on attempt night attack. The enemy reinforcements cannot join the battle. Especially usefull when facing multiple full stacks (mongols and such)

[sgthunter]

This is what I always do when im fighting on a thin street. Usualy only the 1st rows of the units are fighting so what I do is select my unit and order them to run trough the enemy. Once they are half way trough i click attack and 80% of the soliders are now in the fight.

Its more realistic if you ask me, In real life they didnt just let the 1st row fight, they clashed together and it was a total mess

[CAWX]

Heres a good trick.

Who doesn't like it when say you loose a battle or your ship gets sunk or spineless captain deserts you?

Never fear autosave is here. As the event occurs or just after go to load and load autosave. If it was during your turn it will put at the very beginning of that turn. If it was during the computers turn, it will put you right at the time you hit end turn.

I use it all the time.

Man thats lame!

[Condottiere SOG]

I have noticed that when a missile unit is set to f'ire at will', they tend to shoot at different enemy units depending on how close they are(from the same unit). Seen unit of arquebusiers, surrounded, fire off in all directions.