Cheap ways to beat the AI in fights

[homefry]

Just for kicks, I want to see some of the tips/cheap ways you guys use to beat the AI.

As this is a strategy game, I always try to out think the computer instead of sending my whole army to attack. Sometimes this results in finding a hole in the AI. And it becomes so hard not to use the hole when you're outnumbered.

1. When you're being sieged by an enemy and you sally out to fight them, you can sneak out the side door and position your whole army behind them and if they don't have any archers, kill them without any losses with your archers. They'll just shout out, "we're being attacked" (no **** lol)

If they do have horse archers (like the mongols), only 1 of the archers units will come out to attack you if you inch towards their 4 or 8 'o clock position. So you basically destroy each archer unit one by one when they come face your 5-6 (or however many) archer units.

2. When you're sieging an enemy force and opened the gate and the enemy is on top of walls and on the street in the front wall, send in heavy cavalry through the gate first. They'll absorb any arrows fairly well and the enemy won't engage them at the gate. Have the cavalry go around and inch towards the middle square. All of the units at the front wall will move back towards the square to reinforce allowing you to send in your whole army through the front gate untouched. This way only 1 calvalry unit gets peppered by the settlement towers/defenses.

3. The enemy seems to be oblivious to cavalry at their flanks if you position the calvalry at the right distance. This allows to hit them at the rear/flank anytime you want.

4. If you're defending a fort, keep a trebuchet in the fort because if you sally out, you can kill many soldiers firing the trebuchet in the comfort of your fort. You can't bring the trebuchet out though because it's taller than the entrance.

Disclaimer: This is a single player game, so who cares who uses these cheap tactics in fights. Or for that matter, cheats. You don't have to tell us that you don't use cheap tactics. (somebody always does in these types of threads)

[Sitarus Originalus PM-30+]

i have some simple rules how to fight against enemies:
- don't fight a lost battle
- attack and fight enemy army only if you know you can win (or if necessary stop the AI attacks) and still be able to continue your attack on the cities, forts or armies
- know which units can defeat certain types of units! (eg. horsemen can defeat arches, pikes can defeat horsemen, archers can defeat pikes)
- if you want to win battle with low casulties then you have to win battle quick... search for ways to make enemy army rout and surrender, so you don't have to fight them at all.
- when you are moving your armies trough enemy and dangerous lands... make sure you stop on bridges, hills or near mountains ...that way you will have advantage if you defend against AI attacks!
- use spies to open gates and assassins to make damage to enemy cities and kill generals and other agents. If you open gates (with a spy) to a city with little defence, then you wont waste turn beseaging it and you will not have to destroy walls or make unnecessary damage to the city. That way you will make more money because city will bring you income and your armies wont be wasting one turn outside the city (so you don't pay upkeep for armies that just stand outside the city)
- when you are fighting against a faction capture forts and castles first, because that way you wont have to fight against good professional soldiers ... if you take castles first you will also recrute more professional and better soldiers on the (ex)enemy lands and you will have near supply of fresh armies and you will be able to bring more and better armies then the enemy,because they just lost a castle.

maybe when i remember anything more i will post... but i think i once already posted a post about strategy ... especially how to win war quickly and cheaply.

take care guys/girls !!

[Drag529]

i have some simple rules how to fight against enemies:
- don't fight a lost battle
- attack and fight enemy army only if you know you can win (or if necessary stop the AI attacks) and still be able to continue your attack on the cities, forts or armies
- know which units can defeat certain types of units! (eg. horsemen can defeat arches, pikes can defeat horsemen, archers can defeat pikes)
- if you want to win battle with low casulties then you have to win battle quick... search for ways to make enemy army rout and surrender, so you don't have to fight them at all.
- when you are moving your armies trough enemy and dangerous lands... make sure you stop on bridges, hills or near mountains ...that way you will have advantage if you defend against AI attacks!
- use spies to open gates and assassins to make damage to enemy cities and kill generals and other agents. If you open gates (with a spy) to a city with little defence, then you wont waste turn beseaging it and you will not have to destroy walls or make unnecessary damage to the city. That way you will make more money because city will bring you income and your armies wont be wasting one turn outside the city (so you don't pay upkeep for armies that just stand outside the city)
- when you are fighting against a faction capture forts and castles first, because that way you wont have to fight against good professional soldiers ... if you take castles first you will also recrute more professional and better soldiers on the (ex)enemy lands and you will have near supply of fresh armies and you will be able to bring more and better armies then the enemy,because they just lost a castle.

maybe when i remember anything more i will post... but i think i once already posted a post about strategy ... especially how to win war quickly and cheaply.

take care guys/girls !!

lol i agree with you on all this except for this one - don't fight a lost battle
their are no lost battles in my eyes, as even if i loss i kill as much as their troops as possible (perferly their more expensive troops as they cost more to retrain), than i attack them with another force not to far.......lol but than again i look before i leap

[mbchudno]

i tend to agree with lost battle definition. very often, loss battle can be fought if only to harass enemy to turn next battle into win and dispose of older, less efficient troops instead of disbanding them. Also, horse archer armies with crappy generals can be used to harass enemy and then retreat. Aside of that, post was great

[Captain Spanky]

One thing I like to do is to entice the enemy into a battle by using less men, but counter-acting that by defending from a mountain. I find the AI doesnt take terrain into account on the battle ratio, so the enemy will be happy to hit your smaller force, even if it halfway up a mountain.

We all know how easy these types of battles are for defenders, so sometimes it makes things easier if you scale down your force before fighting the enemy.

[mbchudno]

wiping our enemy force by boxing yourself inside of the city center and using a lot of flaming arrows from behind spear/pikes while abusing city center moral boost. too easy. who cares about walls when there are buildings and roads as reliable choke points. Specially against large cavalry/spearman forces.

using horde of horse archers to wipe out enemy armies on the map with nearly 0 chance of retaliation (does not work in cities).

use general as a bait to control enemy army movement while flanking and wiping them one by one from the back with charges with your cavalry.

buy off faction's cities, demolish expensive buildings in their castles with assassins, see how their economy crashes as soon as your tribute you are paying for cities runs out (economic war).

sacking, selling building in the enemy cities you will have hard time to control/keep and then give them to one of your allies for boost in relations and good possibility of opening war between them and your enemy as they might want to retake it.

[Irishmafia2020]

My cheapest tactics date back to RTW... I used to sally out with a cavalry unit and goad the enemies army into following me in circles around and around the fort (or city). The whole time they would be taking arrow fire from the walls. If they got to a place where they were exposed, I would slip back inside and their whole army would stand there while entire units died from arrow fire. When all of their units within range had been killed, I snuck out on the oppisite side and the chase would be on again. I destroyed full stack Roman armies that way, but it was time consuming and actually took up to two hours for me to complete those battles. Fortunately that tactic does not work in M2tw, because it was CHEAP! In my defense, I was usually playing with Armenia....

[homefry]

My cheapest tactics date back to RTW... I used to sally out with a cavalry unit and goad the enemies army into following me in circles around and around the fort (or city). The whole time they would be taking arrow fire from the walls. If they got to a place where they were exposed, I would slip back inside and their whole army would stand there while entire units died from arrow fire. When all of their units within range had been killed, I snuck out on the oppisite side and the chase would be on again. I destroyed full stack Roman armies that way, but it was time consuming and actually took up to two hours for me to complete those battles. Fortunately that tactic does not work in M2tw, because it was CHEAP! In my defense, I was usually playing with Armenia....

LOL. You win the cheapness prize.

[Zeno of Citum]

Well I don't know how it is now in medieval2 but in RTW when playing germany I think I defended meodalium for like 10-20 turns (and I still haven't lost the city just to booring playing it) from the Julii, using spearmen/pike men and a few other units. I were playing on very hard/very hard. You basically just put you units close to the walls protecting each others backs and all the enemies will attack you. The same with bridges, just put a couple of pikemen in a V or U. I beat the crap out of their cohorts. You can probably do this in mediaval2 also, but I don't think its such a great tactic unless your outnumbered.

[Kahn]

I'm playing a vanilla English campaign and I've noticed that pretty much everytime I fight an open battle against Spain, I place some stakes with my longbowmen, and sit back to watch the opposing general charge my army and run his horses right up into the stakes, killing himself.

Again, no mods or anything and last night I watched the 4th Spanish general to commit suicide 20 seconds into the battle.

Awesome, but strange.

[Swordboy]

Ok I think I may be the cheapest bastard of all times. As a lark, I reloaded one of my old games wherein I attacked the rear end of the Mongol Hoard, only this time I loaded my army with 9 "rogan" elephants, just to see how well they'd do against one of the Khan's nine star generals with a full silver army. I had a 5 star Russian general with about 6 units of Dvor cavalry and the rest elephants.

I ran out of movement points before I hit the rear guard of the Mongols. I had to stop in that small patch of forest just southeast of Bulgar. As luck would have it, the Mongols turned to move in my direction, and were AMBUSHED!! I'd never experienced an ambush before, and this one offered me a hook shaped hill plateau, high above the Mongols in line down in the valley. Several elephants and Dvor were placed at the U of the hook, firing straight down the shaft of the Mongol line, and the rest of them hit the line broadside. Sooooooo cheap, but soooooooo fun!

Then, right after wiping the first army, almost to the man, and without a break, THEY ambushed me at night down in the same freakin' valley! We prevailed, but were hammered pretty badly. Those GD elephants are something else though, and now the Mongols were down 2 full armies!

I know, cheap...

[boerekovic]

Being a Victory-loving Geek,
i send out Cannons when im Sieged to Kill their Rams and Towers.
Their Catapults are killed by my Cheated Towers
Then,I line up Musketeers infront of the Enemy Army (they just dont move after losing their Siege stuff)
and shoot them to pieces.
When Sieging myself,
I Destroy EVERY Tower and EVERY Wall section near to me,
within that time the enemy has bulked in the Streets in a massive pile of men,
i let my Cannons get near to the city walls like this: ------- ---- -------
II II <-Guns
And they fire their Projectiles right into the Crowd of dumb enemies.

im on Vanilla 1.0 unpatched.

[TheOnion]

Being a Victory-loving Geek,
i send out Cannons when im Sieged to Kill their Rams and Towers.
Their Catapults are killed by my Cheated Towers
Then,I line up Musketeers infront of the Enemy Army (they just dont move after losing their Siege stuff)
and shoot them to pieces.
When Sieging myself,
I Destroy EVERY Tower and EVERY Wall section near to me,
within that time the enemy has bulked in the Streets in a massive pile of men,
i let my Cannons get near to the city walls like this: ------- ---- -------
II II <-Guns
And they fire their Projectiles right into the Crowd of dumb enemies.

im on Vanilla 1.0 unpatched.

Good Idea but, aren't your cannons almost out of ammo by the time you have destroyed all of their walls? If not then you are probably rocking a lot of siege weapons.

[General_Genocide]

If you have archers that get stakes of doom you can put them in behind a a gate during a siege. Calvary will get eaten when they charge it provided that a unit is standing behind/mixed in with the stakes. Works well against the Mongols.

If the AI has artillery during a siege 10/10 times they'll send them in unprotected - quick calvary charge can kill them. Leave them with only 2 soldiers left and they cannot operate most equipment.

If you are a the Egypts/Turks and a crusade is called in your homelands you can block the crusade armies by having 2 fleets block the land bridges by Constantinople. They will stay there until the crusade gets called off[this takes a long time so make sure the fleets are strong]. Factions like France will use sea invasions so be on the lookout for that.

If the Pope tells you to stop attacking a faction or you'll get excommunicated he may not do it if your rep is high enough. If it's not try to call a crusade on someone and then attack the faction.

[pwijnands]

If you are a the Egypts/Turks and a crusade is called in your homelands you can block the crusade armies by having 2 fleets block the land bridges by Constantinople. They will stay there until the crusade gets called off[this takes a long time so make sure the fleets are strong]. Factions like France will use sea invasions so be on the lookout for that.

I do that all the time, with every faction. I usually have a fleet blocking all land-bridges. Works perfectly, your armies can move across, other armies can't.

[TheJoker]

in 1.0 I used the 2h bug to my advantage. I'm scum :[

[antaeus]

box up an enemy inside your gate... - if the enemy has knocked down your gate, dont hold them there - they will mass charge you and probably push through your spearmen. instead put the spearment a bit to each side of the gate allowing the enemy army to come through the gate - their momentum will be lost when they turn inside the gate, and they will die on mass with no charge bonus as they turn into your spearmen. works well against mongols as they like sending their cavalry in mass. if you kill their general early you will get a mass rout.

use spikes they are one of the most important items on a battlefield. if your units can use them, do so. in a siege, put them inside your gate, on your streets near the entrance to your town square. they will kill virtually all attacking cavalry, just be careful to not accidentally ride your general anywhere them... they are general magnets and seem to have the ability to hypnotically draw your general in to their sharpened timbery death!

someone mentioned the creep kill when sallying out from a citys flanking gate... i love this one. its not that accurate but works well. especially if you have muskets that outrange even horse archers. if you sneak far enough behind an enemy, you can sometimes bring archers to bare on the enemy general.

[Qwestor]

stay ballista in front of yours gate and enemy can't use ram

[Sarlvarian]

when i defended jerusalem against the mongols i had a very small army like 2 units of spearmen and 2 units of pikemen (scottland) i just abandoned the walls and set every unit right at the gate just piling them ont top of one another when their ram destroyed the gate they werent able to get in because of my army it worked for like 7 different seiges against jerusalem with just those units. i dont know why it worked so well but they would break through the gate and after a few mins of battle would turn and run.

[antaeus]

stay ballista in front of yours gate and enemy can't use ram

thats a good one!

i had it happen with some canons once... i went to march them out the gate to fire on approaching towers .. when i went to withdraw them they got stuck, it put me into a panic not being able to close my gates.. then i noticed the enemy were only coming in single file... and struggling to do that... haha