England vs France

[Juli]

First of all, I got Medieval 2 a few days ago, and I love it!!! Good gameplay, graphics pwn, and a lot of cool stuff makes it a worthy game, so I dont complain. However, a question popped up in my mind, so I decided to post it here:

Does England have any advantage against the French???

France gets everything England gets, and more.

For example, though England gets billmen (who have quite infective animations and stats) and Dismounted Knights with halberds, France gets similar guys too! England gets the armoured swordsmen, which are actually the same as Chivalric Foot Knights!! France gets some pikes too, so France is superior in Infantry (which is historically inacurate BTW, English infantry was cooler than French´s)

Then, England gets longbowmen, yet so do the french! French Dismounted Archers and Scot Guards are even superior to Retinue Longbowmen!! And France also gets crossbows, so France have Missile superiority too (again historically inacurate)

Well, the Cavalry field is even funny. England gets no Mounted Sergeants, which ARE important, English Knights dont outbest Chivalric ones, and France has more variety in this field.

So, which advantage does England have? Is there any mod which changes this???

[Silent Assassin]

Longbows, Sherwood Archers, their starting position is much better

[Juli]

Longbows, Sherwood Archers, their starting position is much better

Errrm, thats what I said, France HAS longbows

[Silent Assassin]

Errrm, thats what I said, France HAS longbows

No I was stating the English good sides

[Juli]

No I was stating the English good sides

Ups, sorry:brush:, misunderstood you

However, both England and France have longbows, so that´s not an advantage, because French longbows have (misteriously) more powerful arrows, which are armour piercing like english ones. Perhaps they are evenly matched, because English Retinue Longbows have shields, which (If Im right) count as twice their value vs missiles.

Are we discussing hman to human in multiplayer or are we discussing one player in a solo campaign game? If the later, advantage human no matter which faction.

My original intention was to discuss the Unit Rosters, rather than starting position, be it singleplayer or multiplayer.

-- I like to see boiling oil and flaming arrows even if this is the result of friendly fire. Before anybody asks, no -- I do not pull the legs off of insects.

LOL

[Lucifer Sam]

Errrm, thats what I said, France HAS longbows

actually the english longbows can be bought earlier and at a cheaper price, it also has a much better starting posistion, and when patched billmen arnt so buggy

longbows fire faster than Xbows also (and can has fire)

[Juli]

actually the english longbows can be bought earlier and at a cheaper price, it also has a much better starting posistion, and when patched billmen arnt so buggy

longbows fire faster than Xbows also (and can has fire)

I know, but Dismounted Noble Knights are better in stats than billmen, and are AP too, soo...

Its true that England gets longbows earlier and a slightly better price, but the discussion is about the complete unit roster, or at least that was my intention. Anyway Scots Guards outbest Retinue Longbowmen. And Xbows have a lot more attack than longbows, in such a way its disgusting

I dont remember if France gets Pavise Corssbowmen, but the Pavise Crossbowmen are exageratedly powerful. Large shield deffense and some armour, and the obcene atack of Xbows too, makes them extremely powerful missile units, who can defeat most missiles in an arrow duel (because of large shields)

[robbo]

I know, but Dismounted Noble Knights are better in stats than billmen, and are AP too, soo...

True but they should be as they cost more.

Its true that England gets longbows earlier and a slightly better price, but the discussion is about the complete unit roster, or at least that was my intention. Anyway Scots Guards outbest Retinue Longbowmen. And Xbows have a lot more attack than longbows, in such a way its disgusting

No, the discussion is about England vs France. Therefore the fact that England get longbowmen early is a valid point. Up until the point France get their high tier archers/crossbowmen, England has the advantage. You could also argue that even when France do get access to the likes of Scot's Guard, England are more likely to have better upgraded, archers with more experience along with woodsmen guilds. Since a player is more likely to pursue the archery line of buildings with England than with France, that can also give an advantage to England.

[Old_Scratch]

I dont remember if France gets Pavise Corssbowmen, but the Pavise Crossbowmen are exageratedly powerful. Large shield deffense and some armour, and the obcene atack of Xbows too, makes them extremely powerful missile units, who can defeat most missiles in an arrow duel (because of large shields)

France does not get pavise crossbowmen. They get Aventiur for the late game which are better than pavise crossbows. They do get regular crossbowmen and peasant crossbowmen for the early game though. They are shorter range than longbows, but they have an AP 9 attack, higher than retinue longbows, and at 220 florins, I don't care if they get all shot up.

As for pavise crossbows, yeah, they are a little overpowered for their price. They get an AP 12 attack for a lower price than regular longbows which have a AP 6 attack.

Crossbows should take longer to fire the more damage they do. Many crossbows just had a lever to pull to draw the string, not a crank like they all do in M2TW. The more powerful ones had a crank, but they should load quite a bit slower, but weaker ones should be faster. That, and longbowmen should fire a whole lot faster.

[Old_Scratch]

Eh, no, not really. France has one of the most diverse unit rosters. The only thing that they are weak in is they don't have muskets. Considering everything else they get it's not that much of a disadvantage though.

England gets demi lancers in the late period which are good and quick chargers, and the get hobilars which are not powerful, but are very cheap. These two units, while unique to England, don't really convey any real advantage against the French though.

English knights have an armor piercing axe as their secondary weapon, but are more expensive than similar cavalry, like imperial knights, and don't really have enough armor to use them in a sustained fight. While England doesn't have spectacular artillery, they do get mortars which are good for sieges.

Over all, I think England is arguably the most underpowered faction in the game. The combination of a limited unit roster, high prices, and some rather weak units makes the English faction considerably weaker than the French.

[snuggans]

surprised nobody has mentioned lancers.
the french roster in vanilla is quite ridiculous, relatively speaking.

[France]

Ya, French pretty much owns the English. French has best cavalry next to the Mongols, good archers, and good infantry. They lack good gunpowder though, so ya.

[Sir_Killalot]

Ya, French pretty much owns the English. French has best cavalry next to the Mongols, good archers, and good infantry. They lack good gunpowder though, so ya.

Sorry to bust your balls, but I did way to many tests with Russia, and Russia beats the hell out of france.

But back on subject...
England does seem to have a disatvantage compared to France. Billmen are really a joke, they are practicly space fillers in your army, while voulgeirs are very helpful with their spear wall. If england could field armour sergents, then they would have a little more kick, which would be nice.

[Old_Scratch]

French has best cavalry next to the Mongols.

I think France's cavalry should be better than it is. It really isn't anything special as compared to other factions. It's debatable if lancers are any better or worse than chivalric knights, the whole shield vs armor thing. Their horse archers, while not bad, are ludicrously expensive and not at all cost effective.

I mean, there are lots of factions that have better cavalry than France. HRE, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Poland, Denmark, Mongols. The rest of the other factions cavalry, while not better than France, are pretty much on par with France. If fact, the only 2 factions that I'd say have worse cavalry than France are England and the Byzantines.

[Muagan_ra]

France starts out very under-developed, and in my experience can muster little more than peasants, militia and missile units. France is only dangerous if they're given time to develop their Castles.

[Richard I of England Lionheart]

:hmmm:Hmmm you all are WRONG that France has a better standing piont in the game! England AND France BOTH start-off with "weak" like units in the beginning of the game. As for France's "coustom unit(s)" England has some units like those as well,(armoured Sword men,English Knights,ect.)
As for France's first lands,are landlocked next to England,The Holy Roman Empire,Denmark; and would be a a VERY DIFFICULT thing to say France does not have it's fare share of enemys.To say even more would be to say that most euo-like fractions BASICLY have the same units! I mean think about it Fud. knights,dismounted knights,fractions name/spear men,ect. they ALL mostly have the same standing with the pope and so on...In my opinion BOTH England and France have the same chance any other fraction in the game wold have.

[Manoflooks]

The roster on france is better, but the ai england always(almost)beats the french AI.

[Viking Prince]

Are we discussing hman to human in multiplayer or are we discussing one player in a solo campaign game? If the later, advantage human no matter which faction. If it is multiplayer, no set of humans would tolerate my extended time having fun on my turn and I dislike auto resolve -- I like to see boiling oil and flaming arrows even if this is the result of friendly fire. Before anybody asks, no -- I do not pull the legs off of insects.

[merocaine]

I'd say that the French starting position is quite poor, if your AI that is, in my games France is in the merde pretty much from the get go. Its has too many frontiers to protect and has a crap economy, as all the decent units come from castles which take a long time to build up, France is very weak early game.

[Kawee]

Thing is...France will only get their elite units in the late game. Longbowmen become available to England since early in the game and England can use that to dominate over France in the early periods.