Tons of questions bout this game.

[henyo10]

1.) I find it really annoying that half the time i forget i had a navy because i did not select it. I am used to civ 4 where it always selects idle units. Is there an option to always select idle units?

2.) I'm clueless what are the mods out there for the AI. I want an intelligent AI.

3.) When do musketeers appear? I have cannons and its the 15th century and I still don't have guns.

4.) How to avoid desertion?

5.) Do armies suddenly just disappear???

6.) Is flaming/exploding shots better than normal shots for archers and cannons respectively?

7.) Is it better to ransom, execute or release prisoners? And do Generals last for a long time as in life span??

8.) How big of a threat are the Mongols or the Timurids?

9.) What are the new features of Kingdoms?

TY for answering if you do. I'm clueless about this game.

[Napoleon1853]

1.) I find it really annoying that half the time i forget i had a navy because i did not select it. I am used to civ 4 where it always selects idle units. Is there an option to always select idle units?

2.) I'm clueless what are the mods out there for the AI. I want an intelligent AI.

3.) When do musketeers appear? I have cannons and its the 15th century and I still don't have guns.

4.) How to avoid desertion?

5.) Do armies suddenly just disappear???

6.) Is flaming/exploding shots better than normal shots for archers and cannons respectively?

7.) Is it better to ransom, execute or release prisoners? And do Generals last for a long time as in life span??

8.) How big of a threat are the Mongols or the Timurids?

9.) What are the new features of Kingdoms?

TY for answering if you do. I'm clueless about this game.

I know what you mean..Im used to Civ as well..im a Civ gamer and just now getting into this game I guess...
So for #1..im wondering that also
Generals and Family Members life span are comparable..they are basicly the same..the thing is though each person dies at a different time..
Kingdoms has some new features iv herd(i dont own it) but im gonna get it if only for all the great mods for it, like Stainless Steel..
For Medieval 2 there is mods that are just for AI..like DarthMod.
Or there is Mods that improve AI(though not as good as DarthMod) and add a lot of other things to the game...
DONT YOU WISH WE COULD HAVE BOTH! lol

but I can answer some I guess
#1 like I said im wondering that also
#2 like I said
#3 Youll get to them soon I dont know exact date though.....
#4 I suppose your talking about on crusades Dessertion right? To avoid that you must constantly be moving towards your target with your crusading army..so if your crusading for Antioch, then You must constantly Move your crusading army towards that city
#5 By dissapear are you talking about yours or enemy? Yours wont just disapear for no reason, but an enemies can if they are for example in a forest..they can be in the hiding mode(all you do is sit in a forest to do this) and then they can ambush people who pass by
Like if your asking wil your army die of old age..no(would make the game way too complicated IMO, especilly if you wanna crusade...)
#6 If your enemy is tightly packed together, use flaming arrows and exploding shot(for archers Flaming Arrows not only have an area of affect, but also scare enemies) (For Cannons A exploding shot has more area of affect then a regular cannon ball, and scared enemies)
There are times you don't want to use these though..Use these only if your enemy that you are targeting is packed together enough..otherwise youll want to use Regular shot as they are more accurate, but less area of affect, and dont scare enemies
#7 Its up to you..Execute can increase your generals Dread who lead the battle, Releasing can increase his piety, and ransom I forget what It can increase..but if you need money of course randsome..but if you are in a bat military situation, you want your enemy to have as lees troops as possible, so execute if in that situation
#8 To put it simply, You don't wanna mess with em If you don't have to they will demolish the AI in east europe and middle east..teh Timurids same thing..dont wanna mess with em unless you gotta
#9 like I said im not shure on all the features it includes, but it has kick ass Mods for it, so I myself will be getting it shortly

[Psychonaut]

6.) Is flaming/exploding shots better than normal shots for archers and cannons respectively?

flaming/exploding shots are more deadly if they hits units, but arent as accurate as normal shots/arrows

[knight of virtue and valor]

1: you cant tell the game to automatically select units but you can tell units to do somthing and if they cant do it in one turn, they will automatically keep going at the end of every turn so long as you haven moved them that turn 2: there are some mods that just add a better AI, but theres quote a few that do that AND make drastic over halls to the entire game, and new units and skins for ALL factions, and even adding new factions that weren't there at all.3: it depends on what faction you are, as soon as the gun powder is discovered event happens, you can recruit musketeers and cannons, but some factions dont have ANY gun armed infantry, and only three or four have the really good ones. all musketeers are recruited from city barracks, never castles!
4: in the unmodded (vanilla) M2TW your troops only desert if your on a crusade, they are deserting because they are bored, and really will join whoever gets to the place the crusade is called upon as quickly as possible, I have found taking a few rebel, or even better, Islamic cities on the way, is a good way to keep your troops from getting to bored and deserting. 5 not unless you have a mod that includes the supply traits, in that case, if your army runs out of supplies, it will dissepear. 6: archers are more effective without fire, and there are no practical uses for flaming arrows except for the joy of seeing the enemy burn, the cannons are more effective (and more impressive) against troops when using exploding shot, but are more damaging against buildings with ordinary cannon balls. 7: depends on what you want your general to be like. executing makes your genaral more "dreadful" (makes the enemy less brave) but releasing the prisoners and sparing the peasants of your captured settlements gives your general more "chivalrous" (makes your men more brave). 8: HUGE threat for a new player if you are russai or somone else close to where they come into the map, they each at their own respective eras, spawn with 3 waves of three FULL ALMOST ENTIRILLY ELITE STACKS EACH. 9: its worht getting, it adds four new campaigns and allot of new units (including my personal favorite, the byzantine flame throwers....they actuely have tubes that spit out wall of flame!), and their are allot of great mods that only work with kingdoms installed, because of the buildible stone forts and such. hope this helps PM me if you have any more questions!

[Napoleon1853]

1: you cant tell the game to automatically select units but you can tell units to do somthing and if they cant do it in one turn, they will automatically keep going at the end of every turn so long as you haven moved them that turn 2: there are some mods that just add a better AI, but theres quote a few that do that AND make drastic over halls to the entire game, and new units and skins for ALL factions, and even adding new factions that weren't there at all.3: it depends on what faction you are, as soon as the gun powder is discovered event happens, you can recruit musketeers and cannons, but some factions dont have ANY gun armed infantry, and only three or four have the really good ones. all musketeers are recruited from city barracks, never castles!
4: in the unmodded (vanilla) M2TW your troops only desert if your on a crusade, they are deserting because they are bored, and really will join whoever gets to the place the crusade is called upon as quickly as possible, I have found taking a few rebel, or even better, Islamic cities on the way, is a good way to keep your troops from getting to bored and deserting. 5 not unless you have a mod that includes the supply traits, in that case, if your army runs out of supplies, it will dissepear. 6: archers are more effective without fire, and there are no practical uses for flaming arrows except for the joy of seeing the enemy burn, the cannons are more effective (and more impressive) against troops when using exploding shot, but are more damaging against buildings with ordinary cannon balls. 7: depends on what you want your general to be like. executing makes your genaral more "dreadful" (makes the enemy less brave) but releasing the prisoners and sparing the peasants of your captured settlements gives your general more "chivalrous" (makes your men more brave). 8: HUGE threat for a new player if you are russai or somone else close to where they come into the map, they each at their own respective eras, spawn with 3 waves of three FULL ALMOST ENTIRILLY ELITE STACKS EACH. 9: its worht getting, it adds four new campaigns and allot of new units (including my personal favorite, the byzantine flame throwers....they actuely have tubes that spit out wall of flame!), and their are allot of great mods that only work with kingdoms installed, because of the buildible stone forts and such. hope this helps PM me if you have any more questions!

no point in flaming arrows for archers? LOL..
If your enemies are grouped close together..use it
It not only has an area of affect, but also scares the enemy

[Random Emperor]

3. only venice, milan, spain, portugal, moors, (camels), jass musketeer for turks, cossack musketeers for russia

[knight of virtue and valor]

guesss, I was wrong about that, but I seem to kill more men before they get to me wit hordinairy arrows, then fire arrows. but the rest is accurate.

[Mythre]

to #3
Musketeers/ Arquebusiers are available in cities with the highest militia building think its the Royal Barracks you need. After the gunpowder event, if you have the Royal barracks you can get Musketeers/Arquebusiers. Although Russia gets Cossack Musketeers from their city walls.

[henyo10]

ohh i didn't know musketeers are only for cities ty.

And btw is Kingdoms an entirely different game or it also adds units to the existing factions?

And uhh whats the point in executing or releasing prisoners if you're general doesnt live forever?

[Sascha]

1) Unfortunately, I am not aware of a solution.
3) In addition to what's already said, not all factions get musketeers, some only get hand gunners and arquebusiers, some not even that. But you can check what buildings you need to build which unit with the faction you are playing in the building roster.
4) You keep your crusade heading towards the crusade target, don't hang around with the army. Be wary of sloppy pathfinding of the computer if you just click the crusading target though, mit might want to walk around some mountain or some such, bringing it further away from the target, which can result in desertion.
5) Usually not, but they may be hiding.
6) You basically trade firepower for accuracy. I never bothered to find out which selection is better, but flaming arrows and shots look way cooler at night.
7) Executing prisoners will give your general dread (got to break enemy armies) and lower your faction's reputation (bad for diplomacy). Releasing will give the general chivalry (good for keeping your army from breaking and ruling settlements) and increase your reputation (just the reverse). Ransom will do neither of the mentioned, just get you some money or get you rid of some enemies you otherwise might have to fight again.
8) Depends on your starting location and playing skill. I never experienced them as a existential threat, though they were able to take away my outremer possessions from me in my early campaings. Nowadays, I am usually that powerful that once they arrive, I can just overpower them with sheer numbers.

[Double A]

@Henyo10's last post: If you look at it like that, you can face the full-dread mongolian general with a captain and watch your troops run for the hills when he flicks his teeth.

But if you are smart, you will train (or cheat if your lazy like me) a full chivalry general to counter the threat from the east.

Plus, your generals aren't around forever, but most of them are for 44 years until "retirement" (I don't include the 16 years of living it up with the wives and "not pure" girls in the 44 years, and I mean of natural causes, not from suicide missions, though it would be cool to see a general + bodyguard to slaughter a stack. BTW this is the longest () I've ever seen. And actually its 36 and 88, because a turn = 2 years, and generals age like its .5 years. If you actualy read all this and say so I'll rep you if I haven't repped out this week) so you may want to put them to some use (like Crusading!).

And guess what rebels more: A Craptain (I mean captain) or a 10-loyalty general with a Faction leader with 10 authoritah (yeas I do mean that)?

So, to sum up what I just said (and ()ed), IF YOU DON'T WANNA GET @** RAPED BY THE MONGOLS, USE GENERALS!

[Double A]

Dang, I double posted.

well, anyway, here's #9

Kingdoms has 4 campaigns like others said, which are the Crusades (Centered around Jerusalem, map from Constanople to Bagdad, Armerina to Egypt), Teutonic (Teutonic Order vs. Lithuania. Danish can get Kalmar Union, and Poland, HRE, Novgorod (Russia with YELLOW), and Mongols (!) are also around. Not to mention the number of rebel settlements sandwiched between everything), Britannia (speaks for itself), and my personal favorite, Americas! (New Spain against all those Aztec tribes, Mayans, and a special appearance by the Apaches who think Texas is their home! Oh and The French and English come later to try to kill everyone)

So, all the old factions are mainly the same, but there are a few new units (HURRAY FOR GREEK FIRETHROWERS! CA did something right!) and the new factions have PLENTY of new units (Ritterbruder anyone?)

GETZ IT. GETZ IT. GETZ IT.

[henyo10]

question does the Kingdom expansion include the 1.3 patch??? And does it make the AI better?

This also confuses me though if a general has chivalry as his trait and one uses execution does the general switch his chivalry trait for dread? And if prisoners are executed due to failed ransom, does it count towards dread?

misc question: What do you call the impaling siege weapon? Ribituals?

[knight of virtue and valor]

1: yes, but the latest patch is 1.5 2: it depend on the chivalry of the genaral in question, but regardless it will bring his chivalry down if you don't play nice with enemy cities and prisoners. riterbruders......siege weapons...... not unless they can slash there way through the wall with their swords, they are cool looking uberized kick but Teutonic knights!