Newbie could really use some help with standard gameplay elements.

[The Dude]

EDIT: Duh, I'm a nub. Ok so I just found the big FAQ thread. I'm gonna read through that now to see if it answers any of these questions but in the meanwhile I'm gonna leave these ones up to see if anyone else feels like answering them.

Alright so, I was recently introduced to the awesomeness of Med II, and while I love the entire concept of the game, I'm not sure I'm fully realising the game's potential. So if people can answer some questions for me, I'd be most appreciative.

1. A mate of mine is running around with units of 150 spearmen. Mine are 75 max. He says his units are so large just because they are. What's up here? I've never seen such big units in any of the armies I played. Is there a way to increase unit size?

2.When I play the grand campaign, I feel like I'm never making enough money. Currently I'm playing as spain and I'm in turn 121. I've conquered all of africa except egypt, the entire iberian peninsula, the entirety of france and Caen, and all of northern italy. I make 27.000 florins a turn. This seems like barely enough to upgrade my cities fast enough to maintain up to date armies.

3. Which brings me to the "amount of turns left." Does the campaign really end after that many turns? Because eventually every building takes 6 or so turns to build and moving armies around is also a timeconsuming ordeal. I always feel like I don't have enough time to do what I want to do.

4. How do I increase the efficiency of my agents? My assassins and spies always have abysmally low chances to succeed at their missions, my priests are almost clumsy enough to crucify themselves and my diplomats are met with laughter and rotten apples. How do I fix this XD

5. And how do I increase the efficiency of my royal family members? I'm not really sure what I can do to increase their traits. Especially considering I've found that the average guy only lives for thirty turns or so.

6. The plague. Any way to counter it or is it just that guaranteed period in history where you have to suffer through the extinction of half your population?

I think this pretty much covers the main questions I had. Answers would be most appreciated. Thanks.

[Lysimachus]

1. Go in to Game Settings in the main menu, then you get to change the unit size/scale from there.

2. Try shooting taxes up to very high.

3. I think that after that time is up, that's it. Not too sure though.

4. Send your agents on easy missions like spying/assassinating captains, rebel bribery or just things like maps and trade rights.

5. There is an enormous amount of ways to influence the traits and retinue of your family members.

6. I'm not too sure if this is represented or not.

[Dead Sun]

1-4: Alex got it right

5: Building buildings, sending them on crusades and battles, getting them involved in "famous battles", building a lot of certain unit types, winning a battle with purely horses gives the a +1 command with horses, lots of things.

6: no way to counter it, but if you get all your affected persns and put them in one settlement, it sorts the problem pretty good.

[Alxaro]

3. You can keep playing forever if you want to, but you wont have any events, new buildings, soldiers etc. I once played until 1864.

[Pfundner]

ah these kind of questions take me back to my early total war days.... *sentimental sniff*

3. You can keep playing forever if you want to, but you wont have any events, new buildings, soldiers etc. I once played until 1864.

lol

[MedievalDragoon]

is there a way to "delete" the plague in the game folder thing?

[The Dude]

Thanks guys This was a huge help. Gonna dive into the game and start a new campaign right up o_o

[MedievalDragoon]

Thanks guys This was a huge help. Gonna dive into the game and start a new campaign right up o_o

good luck!

[Toshi-sama]

Well one thing I'm good at is making pious priests. Just be sure to get an abbey first at your capital and start making priests FROM YOUR CAPITAL ONLY. Keep 'em there for the first generation or so you produce and you should get a theologian's guild. Now with the priests you produce getting monks and nuns +2 piety for both, have an average to 2 to start with and the influence of the guild +1 and lastly the traits from your saintly priests there, you should be doing pretty well with probably 6-7 halo priests. For getting them to be basically saints you should build a huge cathedral and get a master's theologian's guild.


For your economy, build roads, markets, farms, ports and merchant banks if you can. Also be sure to have at least 3 towns to 1 castle. Governors also give an income boast, like 10% with a gov with no traits, so stick them in high income settlements.


To make the royal family better well at least economically, be sure to have a general or two hand picked from age 16. Try to get one with good traits such as smart, good with taxes, abhors drink (so he doesn't have a drinking problem later in life and get a -10% tax decrease) stuff like that. Have him be present during from the last turn the building is being built and he might get some traits since he gets the credit for building it. Also crusades are awesome at giving great traits. Don't forget to train up your princesses so they are good in charm to marry them to your heir. By the way your heir should be a super governor while the 'rejects' a.k.a. the 'adopted ones' are sent off to war to be either chivalrous generals or dreaded-bloodthirsty warlords. (by the way, keep dread generals out of town since they lower population growth).

That about is a crash course in the economy. You can pm me if you want to learn alot more about managing cities and stuff

[MedievalDragoon]

Well one thing I'm good at is making pious priests. Just be sure to get an abbey first at your capital and start making priests FROM YOUR CAPITAL ONLY. Keep 'em there for the first generation or so you produce and you should get a theologian's guild. Now with the priests you produce getting monks and nuns +2 piety for both, have an average to 2 to start with and the influence of the guild +1 and lastly the traits from your saintly priests there, you should be doing pretty well with probably 6-7 halo priests. For getting them to be basically saints you should build a huge cathedral and get a master's theologian's guild.


For your economy, build roads, markets, farms, ports and merchant banks if you can. Also be sure to have at least 3 towns to 1 castle. Governors also give an income boast, like 10% with a gov with no traits, so stick them in high income settlements.


To make the royal family better well at least economically, be sure to have a general or two hand picked from age 16. Try to get one with good traits such as smart, good with taxes, abhors drink (so he doesn't have a drinking problem later in life and get a -10% tax decrease) stuff like that. Have him be present during from the last turn the building is being built and he might get some traits since he gets the credit for building it. Also crusades are awesome at giving great traits. Don't forget to train up your princesses so they are good in charm to marry them to your heir. By the way your heir should be a super governor while the 'rejects' a.k.a. the 'adopted ones' are sent off to war to be either chivalrous generals or dreaded-bloodthirsty warlords. (by the way, keep dread generals out of town since they lower population growth).

That about is a crash course in the economy. You can pm me if you want to learn alot more about managing cities and stuff

cool i might try that!

[NobleNick]

Well one thing I'm good at is making pious priests. Just be sure to get an abbey first at your capital and start making priests FROM YOUR CAPITAL ONLY. Keep 'em there for the first generation or so you produce and you should get a theologian's guild. Now with the priests you produce getting monks and nuns +2 piety for both, have an average to 2 to start with and the influence of the guild +1 and lastly the traits from your saintly priests there, you should be doing pretty well with probably 6-7 halo priests. For getting them to be basically saints you should build a huge cathedral and get a master's theologian's guild...

Good stuff.

I'll add: Get your priests into areas with very low Catholic level, so that they can convert a lot; **BUT** they do not seem to get more halos unless they are successful, and if there are competing priests/temples, then no success = no added piety. SO I send them in groups, so that the catholic (or whatever religion) effect overwhelms any competing effect, then all my priests get good advancement.

[Toshi-sama]

*takes deep breath*

forgot to add that if you have a bunch of family members lazing around town you can group them all and make a giant crusading force (be sure to make them all in one army) and when you take the target (you should be able to move across a GIANT part of the map with just generals and crusader knights). Take the settlement and all of the generals become great crusaders. Next sell off the target if its too far away from home to establish a good dominance. Also try and evac the middle east until the mongols come.

A good idea is to split a general from your horde near the target site if you don't think you can hold it and then hire all the mercenaries you can get and while you are sieging the target you can pillage all you want with your crusader army. Be sure to raze all of the buildings if you are going to let rebels take over or you can just give it to your papal allies. They are like a buffer for the mongols and timerads. Also they might call a crusade on them if they take some land from them so be sure to have another batch of generals to lock and load if it happens!

*breathes out*

[Grimmy]

Another thing that is probably helping to hurt your economy is army upkeep. There are specific units, usually militia, that get free upkeep. But, only so many free upkeepers get the free upkeep in a settlement, depending on settlement size. You can tell which are getting free upkeepage, if any of your units are getting it, by looking at the army screen in the settlement window. The free upkept ones will have a darker color to their unit card.

Don't keep more units in a settlement than you need to keep the peace, and use free upkeepers as often as you can for that purpose.

Learn to balance your overall army size and composition against actual pending threat. Having the coolest looking/sounding units just to have the coolest looking/sounding units is often a quick path to financial problems. Having more army than you actually need just standing around and doing squat all, is muchly the same as just throwing away coin by the handfuls every turn.

Plague comes, you gonna die lots and bunches. Plop a spy or a diplo into a plagued city and once he catches the ick, send him off to visit your neighbors. Dont be greedy, share the misery.

[MedievalDragoon]

Another thing that is probably helping to hurt your economy is army upkeep. There are specific units, usually militia, that get free upkeep. But, only so many free upkeepers get the free upkeep in a settlement, depending on settlement size. You can tell which are getting free upkeepage, if any of your units are getting it, by looking at the army screen in the settlement window. The free upkept ones will have a darker color to their unit card.

Don't keep more units in a settlement than you need to keep the peace, and use free upkeepers as often as you can for that purpose.

Learn to balance your overall army size and composition against actual pending threat. Having the coolest looking/sounding units just to have the coolest looking/sounding units is often a quick path to financial problems. Having more army than you actually need just standing around and doing squat all, is muchly the same as just throwing away coin by the handfuls every turn.

Plague comes, you gonna die lots and bunches. Plop a spy or a diplo into a plagued city and once he catches the ick, send him off to visit your neighbors. Dont be greedy, share the misery.

the last part the share part was funny but wierd