Chivalry

[Lubeck]

Aren't horse archers and light cav more useful in the Holy Land than heavy cav?

You can't recruit HA as pretty much any Catholic faction (although the mounted longbowmen the Brits get are pretty nice) and the ones you can come late in the tech tree, so you are stuck with the Turkomen mercs which aren't so bad. And I find going head-to-head with the Turkish and Egyptian HAs the Turkomen come out on the losing side. Rather use foot archers who have longer range and more power.

Light cavalry is easy to get, they are the initial cav in a castle. The Alans are not bad as LC too.

Heavy cav, especially a Knightly order, can totally dominate the infantry of a Muslim faction. Their only weakness is the Mamluks who use maces as their melee weapons. Good idea to throw in some spearmen to help out your heavy cav then.

[Silent Assassin]

The Mounted French Archers are a good unit too for France

I think that the best way to build an army is to use every kind of units that you have available. I like ussing different units in my games and not only the professional and elite units. Makes battles more real, more fun and also more challenging

[n0bl3]

I don't understand why chivalry is the better rout. I'm a newb, but I always go the dread rout. Generals with maxed out dread will rout whole armies extremely easily, especially if you're using things like flaming shot. Additionally, you never have to deal with rebellion, since every city you take is exterminated, and you never have to deal with the same troops twice. Scorched earth baby.

[Snipafist]

I don't understand why chivalry is the better rout. I'm a newb, but I always go the dread rout. Generals with maxed out dread will rout whole armies extremely easily, especially if you're using things like flaming shot. Additionally, you never have to deal with rebellion, since every city you take is exterminated, and you never have to deal with the same troops twice. Scorched earth baby.

Dread is better in the short term. Maxed-out taxes on settlements, easily-controlled exterminated populations, better agressive warfare, and more easily-gained authority traits certainly help. However, you'll quickly find that your reputation is terrible, enemies are keen to betray you, your long-term finances are poor as your cities don't grow very fast and start revolting because your dread governors have picked up several traits/ancillaries that increase unrest, and defending key choke points with infantry and archers isn't as good with dreaded generals as it is with chivalric ones.

You'll also find that dreaded faction leaders cause chivalric generals to become disloyal and that you're not going to get any crusading bonuses because crusading gives you too much chivalry and that ruins your dreaded characters. Further, some guilds will not become available nearly so quickly, as they prefer chivalric governors over dreaded ones.

Chivalric governors are great city governors. People complain about population growth, but its easily kept under control with chivalry. It provides population boom bonuses to order as well as the base chivalry bonus. It's invaluable for agriculturally poor areas, and great for boosting castle growth rates. Taxes will start pouring in from your huge cities, and you don't even have to tax them heavily (normal works just fine for me, and I'm filthy rich in most of my campaigns).

[infierno]

i prefer dread, i like when enemy fears me

[n0bl3]

I guess I can see that, but I usually don't use governors at all, my generals are always attacking. That's probably a mistake, but oh well. As for the reputation thing, I have to say, who cares? I'm playing to take over every corner of the world that I can, not to make friends with my neighbors. I've found that dread rocks for choke points. Make a "cup" for the enemy to run into, that way you surround them and the presence of your leader will cause the army to rout.

[Uniema]

I admit... really chivalry is dead and you know who killed it?

Feminisim

No serously though... Dread is easier to obtain and keep, and I see far more benefits from dread then I do from chivalry. Sure chivalry looks good on paper, but what does it really give you? I dont want my army to have more moral... that means more loses... I want my enemy to fear me and break... that means less losses.

[Snipafist]

I guess I can see that, but I usually don't use governors at all, my generals are always attacking. That's probably a mistake, but oh well. As for the reputation thing, I have to say, who cares? I'm playing to take over every corner of the world that I can, not to make friends with my neighbors. I've found that dread rocks for choke points. Make a "cup" for the enemy to run into, that way you surround them and the presence of your leader will cause the army to rout.

If you play on harder difficulties (or with better strategic AIs, or both) you can't conquer the whole world at once. You need friends, or at least people you can comfortably border. You also need to build up your forces and buildings. You can't do that very well when you're the exemplar of wanton violence and two-facedness.

[Giorgos]

I just don't like the idea of having to defeat the same troops time and time again.

i actually like that idea, because units that have lost a couple of battles in a row, perform much worse in all their future battles. or at least i think they do.

[Mighty]

How about being dreadful to enemies and chivalrous to allies or something similar? Like, honor, respect, chivalry and nobility to those who deserve and are worth it, and merciless to the opposite.

[Snipafist]

How about being dreadful to enemies and chivalrous to allies or something similar? Like, honor, respect, chivalry and nobility to those who deserve and are worth it, and merciless to the opposite.

Diabolical actions still tank your overall reputation and your characters are just about going to break even on the chivalric/dreadful traits, making them worse off than one or the other. You really need to decide on one or the other and just go for that. This isn't to say you can't maintain peace through force. Better AIs don't attack if you can easily defeat them (although you need to ensure you control the seas as well with a navy or you'll get dragged into wars through blockades, but I digress), but this gets very expensive. It doesn't help that long-term economic wellbeing is stunted under dreadful governorship either...

Responding to an earlier point regarding never using generals as governors: that's just insane. Some characters make far better governors than generals, especially those with nonexistant/mediocre command skills and those with poor combat traits (hypochondriac, coward, bad attacker, insane, etc.). A good governor can significantly add to the income (several thousand/turn in the right circumstances), population growth, and order of a given settlement. I fail to see why you wouldn't use them in such a way.

i actually like that idea, because units that have lost a couple of battles in a row, perform much worse in all their future battles. or at least i think they do.

Agreed. It's also an excellent way to quickly build up command stars (winning several battles in a row), chivalry (defending against enemy attacks and releasing captives) and other combat-gained traits (like good speaker, scarred, good defender, etc.). I really don't see why people seem to hate it so.

[Legione]

So basically it sounds like it evens itself out. On the one hand if you're generous and chivalrous your troops will fight harder and the enemy will route, on the other hand if you have high dread then your enemy will fear you and rout more easily. So in terms of the battle aspect, aren't the two essentially the same?

[Snipafist]

So basically it sounds like it evens itself out. On the one hand if you're generous and chivalrous your troops will fight harder and the enemy will route, on the other hand if you have high dread then your enemy will fear you and rout more easily. So in terms of the battle aspect, aren't the two essentially the same?

No. It's obvious that it's better to have a high dread/chivalry than not having anything regardless of what type of battle you're in or what type of army you lead, but they work better with different army constructions. Fighting it out longer doesn't really do much with heavy cav, most of whom have high morale anyways and are relied upon for the charge and not for slugging it out afterwards (mace-armed knights excepted). If you're relying mostly on a blitzkrieg style of play, then dread is best. You hit hard, hit fast, and break the enemy ASAP, denying them the chance to really fight back much. Chivalry works better with infantry-dominated forces that tend to take charges and have moderate morale. By boosting the morale of your infantry considerably, they make a fine solid core for an army and can hold the enemy until your shock units can get into the fight to turn the tide. While you can obviously defend yourself with a blitzkrieg on the enemy or attack the enemy with an infantry-based army, dread is overall better for more agressive play and chivalry better for defensive play.

As I said earlier, both chivalry and dread help pacify populations while governing. Chivalry also increases growth rate and tends to pick up law-enhancing and squalor-reducing traits and ancillaries. Dread does not increase growth rate but you can feel free to tax the bejeezus out of your citizens with no guilt. Unfortunately, dreaded governors tend to pick up unrest and squalor-increasing traits and ancillaries because they simply don't care about the citizenry. Keep this in mind as well. Overall dread is easier to come by. Simply play like a cut-throat megalomaniac. Exterminate cities, execute enemies, run your general into a combat like a berserker, tax the peasants until they cry and then take their daughters as payment, etc. Chivalry requires going out of your way to behave yourself and achieve great deeds. Go on crusades, occupy cities if you can (at least never exterminate and only sack sometimes), release enemies (at worst ransom them), keep your general out of combat unless necessary, keep your taxes low enough to make sure your people are always happy (105% order or above and preferably normal or low taxes), etc. In my mind, chivalry is the better of the two. Dread has its advantages, but chivalry pays off for the difficulty of acquiring it in better traits, better loyalty, and happier populations.

[Jackster]

I would go for Chilvalry, just for the Knights Templars to set up their chapter house in my city.
Completing a Crusade gets you a bunch of Chivalry points.

[Ippius]

I would go for Chilvalry, just for the Knights Templars to set up their chapter house in my city.
Completing a Crusade gets you a bunch of Chivalry points.

Yeh but the whole problem with that is that once u capture a Muslim territory, u HAVE to exterminate which decreases the amount of chivalry u get

[parvus]

personally i like chivalry, but dread's morale penalty on enemies rly work wonders

[DukeKent]

I try to decide early on if a general is going to be Dreaded, or Chivalric. Early in the game it seams like Dread is the only way to go for my Faction Leader and Heir to build up the empire. I try to use my Faction Leader or Heir to lead my major military initiatives to build up their traits. Diplomacy, and reputation are borked in M2TW anyway. You have to bend over and grab your ankles and let the other factions have their way with you to maintain a good reputation in M2TW. Those bribes that you will have to pay to keep your allies and reputation up are going to your future enemies. Besides My faction is the big dog, they should be paying me You could call those bribes two faced, or aiding and abetting the enemy Eventually you will have to fight most, if not all of your neighbors anyway. Remember this game is "Total War", not total chivalry To obtain your objectives you have to conquer. To conquer with any kind of a pace against an infidel faction (different religion than yours) requires extermination. If you don't exterminate then you will have to keep an army of troops and priests around each newly conquered city for many turns singing kumbaya. This game requires way to much micro management anyway. Use your Chivalric generals for Crusades, governership of the cash cow cities, and cleanup of pesky enemy faction armies. Use the Dreaded bad boys for the dirty work of conquering. Once you have a sizable empire carved out, you can focus on getting a high Chivalry Faction Heir and convert to the Chivalric path. Even then you will want to have Dreaded Generals for the heavy lifting.

Observation: It appears that non stacks without a general in them tend to go rebel more often when you have a Faction Leader with Dread. Doesn't appear to matter if the Dread is high or low? Sometime I feel like calling this game, "Rebel Total War". You have to spend way to much time dealing with pesky rebel armies, and micromanagement of each stack to keep if from going rebel. Things like building forts, and putting assassins in stacks to keep them loyal. This seams to happen less with a Chivalric leader, but still happens and can be quite annoying.