Tsardoms Total War - Campaign Feedback, Bugs and Reports

[jurcek1987]

This is hardcoded so it would be same as in any other mod. AFAIK on higher battle difficulties, the AI only gets morale bonuses, not like in RTW where they also get stat buffs. Personally I play H/H or H/VH

[Elendil 03]

Has anyone seen Wallachian lately? I sent him a message about some research I did for the 1448 campaign three weeks ago and haven't gotten a reply.

[Anubis88]

He's been very busy lately and not active on the forums.

[BanYanko]

Hi everyone!


Firstly, I have really enjoyed 2.2 so far and I am glad to see the team keeps adding new things to the mod which just adds so much flavour and makes even the original M2TW seem completely unrecognisable . With that said, here is some of my feedback on what I have experienced so far:


1 Like I said, the little additions like monasteries, name changes of settlements when taken over and more historical events/information really add to the immersion of the mod and I completely love the dedication put in!
2 It could be just me, but I have noticed the AI seems a bit smarter now - they sometimes pull of clever strategic decisions during battle and are pretty persistent when attacking on the map, and also where (meaning they do not suicide as often on fully garrisoned settlements and actually wait out for you to surrender, for example).
3 Faction leader model is finally fixed when the heir becomes the leader! Ancillaries also work better now compared to 2.0 for example, although not always.
4 No more crashes during battle (At least for me). Yay! Although the stability on the map for me is a different topic...I will get to that below.
5 Economy seems a bit more fair now as well, this was addressed by another user as well so I will not get into detail
As for everything else, I still think this is one of the best mods for M2 to date, I love the period and the work put in to make this section of history playable. However, I will now get into the issues I have experienced:
1 My main issue on 2.2 has been the near constant crashes on the map, mostly during the end-turn. Compared to other versions, 2.2 has been (for me) the most unstable version to date, though battle are completely fine. I assume this is because the mod is very script-heavy and more so with the new features every patch, but my experience has been near awful because of this!
2 Relating to the last topic, there are also bugs that completely killed my save - specifically, while playing the Ottoman campaign, my princess married a Wallachian family member from inside a settlement, but the general still appears inside the settlement! Worst of all, no matter what I do, if that general dies, or "fights with himself" while besieging the settlement, the game crashes and there is NOTHING I can do to prevent this from happening, only delay it by not letting me or any other faction touch the settlement. However, later on, I assume the script just completely went bonkers from this dude and now my save crashes every time I want to load it - what a waste...
3 I remember a bug from 1.5 that made Judaism spread like crazy after a certain amount of turns, now no religions really increases if you have basic religious buildings or is flodded with priests.
4 Speaking of religion, I had an idea to spice things up in the game by making certain units only be available or common enough only if the settlement has a required amount of religious %. This is something that exists in the Brittania campaign with its "Culture" feature. I think it makes sense in a certain historical context like the Ottoman voynuks who were Christian auxillaries, but how do you have these voynuks or even the famous Jannisaries if the area is 99% Muslim? I think it can add to the difficulty of the game quite a lot - sacrifice some public order to recruit more specific units. Although I understand if it is not possible seeing as the game has a ton of scripts as it is, or is simply too much work at this point.

[Stivanderen]

Hi my version of Tsardoms 2.2 is interferring with my other mods. So when i try to play them it just opens up the normal med 2. Does any one have the same problem or heard of it before?

edit: figured it out my self

[Brezkimra]

The Hussite Pavise Crossbowmen units use flying maces in melee.

[Brezkimra]

Some units can't make loose formation:
Hungarian Crossbow Militia
Hungarian Crossbowmen
Hungarian Hand Gunners
Hungarian Pavise Crossbowmen
Hungarian Hook Gunners
Gyalogpuskasok Arquebusiers

These units are silent in the battlefield:
Szekely Archers
Szekely Horse Archers

[PavleSubich]

and no single crosbow unit can shoot wwhen on the wals of a city

[Jurand of Cracow]

and no single crosbow unit can shoot wwhen on the wals of a city

You mean: in the Tsardoms, or in general: in the Med2 engine?

[Brezkimra]

The Bosnian Bowmen units use flying axes in melee.

[Anubis88]

The Bosnian Bowmen units use flying axes in melee.

That's working as indended. There's a lot of old paintings in old bosnian churches about these types of warriors. We don't know how they managed to use the axes in such a way, but the evidence is clear

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

I played the Aydinids earlier this year to victory. I greatly admired this faction and there is much to say about their campaign. I think it's best delivered point by point:

DISCLAIMER: I modified all the unit sizes: 100 for all cavalry except those that were already at 100, those went to 125. 225 for all levy infantry, 200 for all non-levy infantry. However I believe my experience with each unit would have been the same with default sizes. If anything this made the later game harder because heavy Christian knights were at 100 unit size rather than 50, a much larger increase relative to their original size than the Aydinid infantry and cavalry.

1. This faction's victory conditions are much too easy to complete. If you want to speedrun Tsardoms then the Aydinids are the faction to go for, I believe you can get a victory screen before turn 10. If you prioritize taking out the Hospitallers and taking Crete, it's very plausible that a first time player could accidentally meet victory conditions by turn 20. You can actually achieve victory conditions without ever going to war with the Romans or the Ottomans until the final turn. I don't know enough about the Aydinids historically to recommend the most flavorful changes to victory conditions. However, it seems like all Islamic factions should be required to take Constantinople at the least. Given the Aydinids sea focus, having them take territory in Greece and/or eliminate Venice also seems like a fit for them. Maybe Athens or Saloniki or Venexia?

2. This is possibly the strongest faction in Tsardoms for the first ~60 turns. Only the Mongols seem to have better starting forces and recruitment, but their poor corner start position hamstrings their expansion while the Aydinids start in a beautiful coastal spot with expansion opportunities in all directions, including across the sea, and a monster of a faction leader with a thousand command stars to lead your early battles.

3. However their first 10 turns can be very brutal. Your enemy is the Knights Hospitaller and their units are much higher quality at first. Armored knights and crossbowmen up against light spearmen and archers make for some costly early battles. I found that if I ignore Smyrna and immediately go for Rhodos, the garrison script army there is so strong that it will almost always sally out to attack my levy army on the end turn. I enjoyed fighting the Hospitallers, overcoming their heavy knights with light faris and yaya spearmen felt like an accomplishment. The

4. Aydinid unit roster is small but very mean. For infantry: their Aydinid Guard Archers are among the best and available immediately; they will always carry you to victory. You start with 2 and a 3rd is available immediately to train from Guzelhisar. Until you can get more cities capable of training Guard archers, Noker archers are a strong supplement and not that expensive. Their start position puts them in range to sail out to Crete and grab up the Cretan Archer mercenaries when they appear, adding more 7 missile damage archers to your army. Naffatun are a true blessing. Much of the challenge in a battle in Tsardoms is killing family members, as bodyguard units in this mod are immortal terminators that do not die. Units like Siphonatores for the Romans and Naffatun for the Muslims are extremely valuable for their ability to one-shot family members, and unlike Siphonatores the Naffatun can fire over friendly units. Get the enemy bodyguard to charge into some expendable infantry like Yaya Spearmen, then dump the Naffatun on them. Friendly fire - literally - well who cares, as long as the Hospitaller Grandmaster gets one.

Their melee infantry severely lacks in variety. They have many cheap and effective levies, but their only truly reliable infantry are Foot Askari. Port Guard Spearmen will usually perform well but can give a seriously disappointing performance for a unit with so much armor. The big tragedy of Aydinid infantry are the Tirpanlu Guardsmen. They could be a strong, offensive foil of the Foot Askari, but their terminal lack of shields damages their performance in every battle where the enemy has even a modest core of ranged units, which given your starting location in Crossbow & Horse Archer Land is going to be every battle. I badly, terribly wanted this unit to impress and though I tried everything to make them work - mix them with Askari, deploy them in the middle of the formation, deploy the Askari further up to draw fire, etc, the AI knows they lack shields and focuses on shooting and charging them every time. Every time they got into melee they did well, but the amount of casualties they bleed in each battle made them unusuable outside any territory where they were not immediately retrainable.

Finally, shoutout to those Martolos Axemen mercenaries. They are widely available around the Aydinid homeland and many thousands of them died protecting that homeland. Because they are widely available they can be retrained all over that region of Anatolia and are a good basic infantry for expansion.

5. As for cavalry, the Aydinids impress. Beglik Nokeri Lancers are very strong and a match even for christian knights. Though they can only be trained from Guzelhisar, Bursa and Konya, I got 4 of them as mission rewards 3 seperate times so I was able to field many of them. I had a system going where I used Guzelhisar and Konya to train new units of them, and Bursa only to retrain them. They are durable and deadly enough that I was able to sustain 18 units of them on just the 1 every 10 turns retraining in Bursa. Even so I was a bit disappointed that were was no way to islamicize Constantinople to make Beglik Nokeri Lancers available there.

I found the 2 elite Aydinid horse archers to have an odd dynamic that I wanted to mention seperately, as it affects the Karamanids too since they get these units. Both have almost the same stats with small differences in armor and attack, except:

* Noker Retainers: Good stamina, 242 upkeep.

* Askari Horse Archers: no stamina bonus, 375 upkeep.

I found this to be very backwards, as if the upkeep costs should be switched. The two units have nearly the same stats but the stamina bonus on the cheaper Nokers dramatically increases their performance over the much more expensive Askari; for two units standing still shooting, the difference between no stamina vs. good stamina is the no stamina unit being Exhausted vs. the good stamina unit being Winded. It's a massive difference especially for a horse archer unit that is 100% dependant on its movement speed to serve its function. Once a unit reaches Very Tired and Exhausted it becomes much slower and can no longer outrun even heavy christian knights, and they become a liability. While the Askari are Exhausted and no longer able to kite, the Winded Nokers still have multiple minutes more they can run around on the field - and the Nokers are 133 upkeep cheaper! The only reason to make Askari is because you need horse archers and Nokers are not refreshed to train yet.

It seems that the reason Nokers are so cheap is that they are supposed to be a temporary unit that is only available for a short time before they are replaced by the Janissary reform, at which point the Ottomans can no longer train Nokers. But the Aydinids and Karamanids don't get the Janissary reform and can keep training Nokers indefinitely. It seems that there are four options for this situation: 1. Askari get Good Stamina 2. Askari become cheaper 3. Noker Retainers become more expensive 4. Both the Aydinids and Karamanids get some horse archer unit that replaces Nokers later, as the Ottomans do. Personally I dislike the idea of a unit becoming untrainable in Medieval 2 as all the veterancy you have accumulated until that point is wasted since they cannot be upgraded into their replacement as would be possible in, say, Total War: Attila.

Another shoutout, this time to Faris Lancers. Available as both mercenaries and AOR units, regardless of which you use they perform admirably for such a common unit. Many hundreds of them died counter-charging bodyguards and elite infantry so the Naffatun could do their work, and many more died to friendly fire when charging enemy archers while I forget to stop my own archers from shooting theirs.

6. So you've got an army of Foot Askari, Port Guards, Guard Archers, Cretan Archers, Naffatun, Beglik Nokeri Lancers, Askari Horse Archers, and Noker Retainers. The world is now yours. You only need 1 army because that 1 army is invincible for the next 50-60 turns and you'll be able to power through 2-3x your number with barely any losses because your units are so much stronger than everyone else. The Aydinid early units felt so much stronger than any other faction, this is my only experience with the mod so far where I felt truly untouchable. I was able to get some wild victories with minimal losses that I either wouldn't have won with other factions, or would have taken hundreds of casualties. Victories like these are not only not uncommon, they will be par for the course for some time. And your post battle screen will usually look like this, with your archers scoring thousands of kills and the rest of your army just playing keepaway and cleanup for them.

Your victories will so complete with each battle, your archers having killed rather than captured all the enemy's high value units, that you can release prisoners after every engagement since all that will be left are levies. This will give you such a great reputation that everyone will love you and you can pick your wars as you wish. Even though Medieval 2 is a million years old now and I've played a billion campaigns on it over the years, the Aydinids are the first and only time I've ever reached an immaculate reputation because of how easily they can destroy armies, release prisoners, and destroy them again. The released prisoners are just additional experience for your archers next battle and can be used as bait to force city garrisons out onto the field, allowing you to more quickly conquer and move on.

I really can't get over how powerful, even over-powerful the Aydinids felt in this campaign. Until heavy macemen and christian knights starting hitting the field en mass around turn 70, there was absolutely no stopping that army. It tore through the Romans, Bulgaria, and the Ottomans with hardly any effort and only needed to retrain twice even after more than a dozen battles facing 2-3x their number. I was never able to do that with any other faction, going from the Aydinids back to playing the Romans felt like I was now playing the old people faction that could barely maneuver and shoot. I love the Romans in Tsardoms, but the Aydinids - they are something else. And by the time the AI is able to produce armored units that can put up a fight against you, you have already won the campaign due to the easy Aydinid victory conditions.

7. Some notes on the start location. I like it. The coastal trade economy and inland road trade economy come together to make you a major financial powerhouse early in the campaign. The long coastline and the Aydinid fleets give many opportunities for free money via raiding ports. You can plausibly expand in all four cardinal directions - there is a faction to fight in each directon and your high reputation lets you pick your allies and enemies along the way.

However, for starting allies, I think it's worth noting the Kantakouzenos AI needs some help. His starting position is totally unforgiving and his AI always collapses basically without a fight. His extremely long border with 2 hostile military juggernauts, Serbia and Bulgaria, are the reason for this. However a large part of that reason is that two Kantakouzenos cities, Berroia and Serrai, start with serbian armies just outside them that immediately capture both cities 100% of the time on turn 2. Kantakouzenos immediately loses 1/3 of his territory by turn 2 without being in a position to even fight for either city. If it's possible through whatever means available, scripting or otherwise, those two Serbian armies should be moved elsewhere or simply disbanded when Kantakouzenos is under AI control. Otherwise he always becomes the Mystras-Philadelphia Roman Rump State.

8. Time for a conclusion. The Aydinid start position is very strong, though one that must be bloodily fought for early on. Their units are extremely effective for their cost and numerous enough to easily take over Anatolia. However, they do lack variety. If you like archer lines and cavalry charges that destroy whole armies while your spearmen watch, this is the faction to play. I would like to see some units such as Tirpanlu Guardsmen and Port Guard Spearmen be more effective - these are the Aydinids only unique melee units but they are both inferior to Foot Askari, a generic spearmen available to all 3 Islamic factions. Aydinids could very much use some unique infantry for later in the campaign. However the Aydinid victory conditions will need to be expanded first, otherwise you'll never reach those later units before you win. I very much believe this faction deserves some love - it has much the offer at the moment and much potential for expansion.

Finally, the Aydinids boast the best color scheme. Blood red and pirate black, the classic protagonist's colors.

[Wallachian]

Awesome feedback as always! Much appreciated!

I agree the victory conditions are way too easy. They need to be revised. For example, adding some more island provinces such as Crete and even Crimea and Sicily. Sort of remaking the sea adventures of the old arab empire. Basically forcing the player to send ships in many places and expand in uncomfortable ways. And Constantinople should indeed be key. And yes, the Aydinids are meant to be an islamic version of the Italian trading republics, so perhaps Venice and Ragusa should be targetsdue to them being rivals.

Perhaps some of those powerful Aydinid units need to be nerfed a bit (like Aydinid Guard Archers). But I believe the Beglik Nokeri Lancers can be recruited in any regional capital, so it should be recruitable in Constantinople as well.

For Tirpanlu perhaps we can give them some shields on the back, like other similar units get such as the Venetian Arsenalotti. The Nokers should not become untrainable, according to wiki 'The nöker system in the Ottoman Empire ended by the 16th century'.

For Kantakouzenos, well those 2 settlements are actually meant to be taken by Serbia. But perhaps we can beef up the Kantakouzenos AI with some more money and units to allow them to fight back.

Since the Karamanids are also in 1448 we will focus on fixing and improving them first. But we will definetly have the Aydinids in mind too.

[Wallachian]

2 Relating to the last topic, there are also bugs that completely killed my save - specifically, while playing the Ottoman campaign, my princess married a Wallachian family member from inside a settlement, but the general still appears inside the settlement! Worst of all, no matter what I do, if that general dies, or "fights with himself" while besieging the settlement, the game crashes and there is NOTHING I can do to prevent this from happening, only delay it by not letting me or any other faction touch the settlement. However, later on, I assume the script just completely went bonkers from this dude and now my save crashes every time I want to load it - what a waste...
3 I remember a bug from 1.5 that made Judaism spread like crazy after a certain amount of turns, now no religions really increases if you have basic religious buildings or is flodded with priests.
4 Speaking of religion, I had an idea to spice things up in the game by making certain units only be available or common enough only if the settlement has a required amount of religious %. This is something that exists in the Brittania campaign with its "Culture" feature. I think it makes sense in a certain historical context like the Ottoman voynuks who were Christian auxillaries, but how do you have these voynuks or even the famous Jannisaries if the area is 99% Muslim? I think it can add to the difficulty of the game quite a lot - sacrifice some public order to recruit more specific units. Although I understand if it is not possible seeing as the game has a ton of scripts as it is, or is simply too much work at this point.

Thanks for the feedback mate. We appreciate it.

2. There must be some script going wrong here. It could be related to the Ottoman scripts although they dont trigger if you are Ottoman. I wonder if you can kill off the Wallachian faction via the console to try and get over this bug. So can you be a bit more clear? You marry the wallachian general and steal him to your faction. But the general still exists in the settlement? so there are 2 versions of the same general, one for wallachia and another for ottomans?

3. Yes, we changed the religious conversion rates so that it happens a lot slower. This is more realistic as it took decades or centuries to change religious make-up of regions.

4. We actually do have these religious requirements in Tsardoms for a few units. For example, for the mercenary Hospitaller and Teutonic units. It's not complicated at all to add this requirement to other units. But this could clash with the above issue of slow religious conversion.

[Artannis Wolfrunner]

Awesome feedback as always! Much appreciated!

I agree the victory conditions are way too easy. They need to be revised. For example, adding some more island provinces such as Crete and even Crimea and Sicily. Sort of remaking the sea adventures of the old arab empire. Basically forcing the player to send ships in many places and expand in uncomfortable ways. And Constantinople should indeed be key. And yes, the Aydinids are meant to be an islamic version of the Italian trading republics, so perhaps Venice and Ragusa should be targetsdue to them being rivals.

Perhaps some of those powerful Aydinid units need to be nerfed a bit (like Aydinid Guard Archers). But I believe the Beglik Nokeri Lancers can be recruited in any regional capital, so it should be recruitable in Constantinople as well.

For Tirpanlu perhaps we can give them some shields on the back, like other similar units get such as the Venetian Arsenalotti. The Nokers should not become untrainable, according to wiki 'The nöker system in the Ottoman Empire ended by the 16th century'.

For Kantakouzenos, well those 2 settlements are actually meant to be taken by Serbia. But perhaps we can beef up the Kantakouzenos AI with some more money and units to allow them to fight back.

Since the Karamanids are also in 1448 we will focus on fixing and improving them first. But we will definetly have the Aydinids in mind too.

I like the idea of making the Aydinids into a sea rival for Venice and Ragusa, I think this will make for some unique victory conditions and help to distinguish them from the other 2 islamic factions by pushing them to become a maritime power.

As for nerfing units, I was thinking less of reducing stats and more of increasing cost, especially upkeep. Honestly I think all of the elite foot archers in the mod should be scrutinized for cost and unit size. It's not even the 6 or 7 missile damage to makes elite archers excel, its their 200 range and generous firing arc compared to, say, crossbows. Handgunners are a good example of how very high missile damage counts for nothing when every enemy unit outranges you and can focus you down before you get into range. Part of what makes Aydinid Guard Archers so strong is they have the standard 60 unit size, compared to 40 and 48 for similar units like Mongol Heavy Archers and Bulgarian Streltsi Archers. HOWEVER it's worth noting that both of those factions have much wider and more varied unit rosters than the Aydinids and thus are less dependent on their elite archers. The Aydinids need their super archers as they have no alternatives. If they had a wider unit selection and especially better melee infantry then I could see Aydinid Guards going to 48 unit size.

About Beglik Nokeri Lancers, their description says they can only be trained in Guzelhisar, Bursa and Karaman and I've only ever been able to train them there. I guess because those were the major begs. It seems like Constantinople would be the beggest of begs and it would make sense for them to be available there, but I do not know their history.

Anything to help Tirpanlu with missiles, they would thank you. I am not familiar with shields-on-back functionality with Medieval 2, would this protect missiles from the front? The Karamanids have a very similar unit to the Tirpanlu, their Thaqlah Axemen. The Thaqlahs have shields on their backs on their models, but no shield value in game. Even after I gave them 2 shield value I noticed no difference in survivability while playing around with them. Thaqlah have the same problem as Tirpanlu in that they are armored close-quarters armored piercing infantry that die to missiles much too easily which severely limits their functionality on the field. It made me simply drop these units from my armies, get more spearmen and archers, and shoot everything to death since that is cheaper and easier. Missiles are very easy to use and cost effective, so I think that melee infantry that is much harder to use effectively could do with some defense against them.

I did want to reiterate the issue with Noker units being as strong and cheap as they are. I gave the example above of Noker Retainers vs. Askari Horse Archers to show how Noker Retainers are both better and cheaper than Askari. The same is true of Noker foot archers. They are heavily armored and cost only 182 upkeep which is barely more than levy archers. This is one of the most cost-effective infantry units in the mod. The upside of this is that the AI tends to recruit many Noker Archers which can make them tougher to fight against.

Anything you can do for the Kantakouzenos AI, I know it would thank you. Those two cities are meant to be taken by Serbia but their loss throws the AI completely off course. The AI in Med 2 is terrible and managing empires with non-contiguous settlements - a problem shared by Venice and Genoa in the mod - and the loss of those two cities immediately splits his empire into 3 parts: Greece, Thrace, Philadelphia none of which are able to support each other. He then falls off the map and becomes irrelevant in the first 5 turns. I'm not sure money would help because of how confused the AI becomes when its cities don't border each other. This faction's starting border seems to be simply unmanageable for the AI, sometimes I think it would be better to start the Romans off as 1 united faction with the Palaiologos in control of everything if the player is an Islamic faction, though this would be ahistorical it would make things harder. The AI functions best when it can focus all of its forces in 1 place, and Philadelphia and Mystras seriously interfere with the Kontakouzenos Ai's ability to do this by spreading the faction's forces thin which makes them easily overwhelmed on all fronts.

[eyelurker]

Nice to see Aydinid appreciation. They are some of my favorite faction to play but also a nightmare to fight especially at their last holdout because Aydinid Guard archer are just that scary.

Currently playing Ottoman and the desperate Regent Roman Empire who only have Constantinople and Raidestos decide to attack my castle across the strait(forgot the name but it's near Iznikimid)

Their army are fewer than mine but are crack troop elite and i'm not prepared facing them so my army are exclusively local mercenary unit. It turns out quality of army means little when facing with 1500 vs 800 and despite cavalry and number superiority the game still give me heroic victory.

[eyelurker]

I kinda miss when there is a script that end Roman civil war when under ai because as Ottoman i have conquer Constantinople and Kantekouzi remained my allied and unfortunately block my expansion into didymotheico unless i betray them.

At least i could use them to launch amphibian assault to Greece and use Kantekouzi as a buffer against Serbia while i clean up Athens, Naples and Venice.

[Wallachian]

I didn't realise that script got removed.

[Anubis88]

I kinda miss when there is a script that end Roman civil war when under ai because as Ottoman i have conquer Constantinople and Kantekouzi remained my allied and unfortunately block my expansion into didymotheico unless i betray them.

At least i could use them to launch amphibian assault to Greece and use Kantekouzi as a buffer against Serbia while i clean up Athens, Naples and Venice.

I can second that issue, it really stalls Ottoman expansion and you are forced to betray the Kantakouzenos.

[Brezkimra]

Mesnaderos Horsemens skin not visible.