So why am I terrible? :)

[TheVrolok]

I keep running into the same issues when playing through the campaign, and I'm playing on M/M. I've played a bit as HRE/France/Egypt/Poland and it just feels like I get over extended. I'll end up with 5 regions and 4 governors then for any number of reasons I'll lose 2 more governors (plague/inquisitor/age/etc.) and bam, I've got way more regions than governors and have problems expanding. In addition, I'll always end up having 3-4 other factions attacking me at a time and I over extend my armies .. if I build more troops, I don't have enough income (army upkeep is too high) to expand cities/castles. Most issues stem from this sort of area.

I'm a relative newbie to the Total War games, I played Shogun and Rome a little bit and just got into MII which I'm enjoying up until a point. Any pointers? I do seem to get better each time I start over, at least.

 

[General Savage]

Hey,

Do you have auto manage settlements on? if so, turn it off - that will allow you to keep building/training when there is no governor.

I would say that doing that will help a lot, but if not:
1) dont bother governng castles - they dont need it and your governors will get crap traits.
2) build money makers right from the start. these are roads, ports, markets etc. without these, you will go broke.
3) take some rebel settlements early. You will have several rebel cities/castles around you at the start. take most of your troops and take them. they will form your powerbase.
4) send your diplomat/princess out to get trade rights with EVERYONE. I usually offer trade rights for free, then sell them map info for 1000 florins.
5) dont worry too much about upgrading your military at the start. I usually pick one castle to be a troop producer and then build a military building every other time.
6) Do the missions. At the start the rewards are quite good (an extra 4 units of cav for example). earning these will give you a real boost early on.
7) Train a bunch of merchants and send them to timbuktu. You'll thank me when you finally get there...

THere is so much more out there to read, so these tips are the tip of the iceberg

 

[King_Agamemnon]

Or you can use some cheats that really helps in the beginning Money,fastbuild,

 

[Kratos]

Don't worry about having too few governors, they aren't of much use anyway. In my experience they always get bad traits and few good ancilliaries.

 

[Sir Nicholas Altman]

Hey,

Do you have auto manage settlements on? if so, turn it off - that will allow you to keep building/training when there is no governor.

I would say that doing that will help a lot, but if not:
1) dont bother governng castles - they dont need it and your governors will get crap traits.
2) build money makers right from the start. these are roads, ports, markets etc. without these, you will go broke.
3) take some rebel settlements early. You will have several rebel cities/castles around you at the start. take most of your troops and take them. they will form your powerbase.
4) send your diplomat/princess out to get trade rights with EVERYONE. I usually offer trade rights for free, then sell them map info for 1000 florins.
5) dont worry too much about upgrading your military at the start. I usually pick one castle to be a troop producer and then build a military building every other time.
6) Do the missions. At the start the rewards are quite good (an extra 4 units of cav for example). earning these will give you a real boost early on.
7) Train a bunch of merchants and send them to timbuktu. You'll thank me when you finally get there...

THere is so much more out there to read, so these tips are the tip of the iceberg

Tell me whats that fuss with Timbuktu?

 

[TheVrolok]

My latest shot at a campaign with Poland is going better. After I raised a crusading army and took Jerusalem I made quite a bit of money to expand. I still think my weakness lie in diplomacy and merchanting. I just don't make enough money.

 

[mic111]

That is a city close to the south border of map - roughtly south of Algiers - your merchant will find there ivory and slaves and the cash he will get will be something about 400-500 hundred (unexperienced as I remember)

 

[Cadmium77]

I don't care what anybody says...M2TW can be a ballbuster of a game. I've blasted through STW many times, MTW, and RTW and M2TW is just hard. I've always played VH/VH but I've never been piled on like this.

And I'm playing a great game, I'm totally resourceful and daring...I win 98% of my battles even against overwhelming odds. But then the dreaded moment comes and even if I've won 19 battles in a row, with resounding victories, just crushing my opponents every time...it's that 20th battle that I lose that undoes me. There's no margin for error. Once you start to lose, especially cities or castles it starts to turn into an avalanche with debt, weakness, falling behind in technology and then everyone piling on. I have won twice (well three times but playing the Turks in Renaissance TW isn't quite a fair fight is it? )

I did well with Spain and I've done well with England. But Venice? Oh man, I get the beat down bad. I just got the beat down as France. And I was doing well too, until all my allies turned on me and the HRE and Milan just finally ganged up on me to crush me while the Limeys stabbed me in the back.

I'll take some time away from the game and come back later with a fresh approach. I've had too many insane crushing battles at the gate for now. You wouldn't believe how many times I've had to defend Metz in the last 4 days.

 

[Germanicus75]

I always keep a general in castles because you'll need them for castle defence

 

[mightyfenrir]

I always keep a general in castles because you'll need them for castle defence

I keep them in the city instead for that reason because normal troops can always fall back once you get it up to fortres but the city troops really have no secondary defenses to fall back on. It would be kinda cool if the cities had the old walls within their limits even if they weren't totally enclosing any section of the city.

 

[TheVrolok]

I win 98% of my battles even against overwhelming odds. But then the dreaded moment comes and even if I've won 19 battles in a row, with resounding victories, just crushing my opponents every time...it's that 20th battle that I lose that undoes me. There's no margin for error. Once you start to lose, especially cities or castles it starts to turn into an avalanche with debt, weakness, falling behind in technology and then everyone piling on.

This is how it goes for me, I do very well, never lose a battle, take a number of regions, then I lose one battle, and everything gets unraveled.


Oh, and when General Savage mentions to not worry about keeping Generals in castles, does he mean Castles specifically, and that Generals should still remain in towns?

 

[Underoath]

This is how it goes for me, I do very well, never lose a battle, take a number of regions, then I lose one battle, and everything gets unraveled.


Oh, and when General Savage mentions to not worry about keeping Generals in castles, does he mean Castles specifically, and that Generals should still remain in towns?

Happened to me too. I was playing as France and the HRE attacked me after I gained a ton of land, then I lost one battle, and to make the story short, I lost like 4 or 5 regions to them, because of that one battle. I got them back though.

 

[Hallequin]

My strategy to have lots of land with lots of gold and enough armies is to take provinces in convenient ways. For example, when playing for the English, as soon as I take France, I overflow with gold for one big reason: the western french provinces and all of england don't need much garrison because there's no one to attack them. So, you don't have as much to pay, and you can have most of your troops at the borders, where they should be.

This is just one example, so wherever you expand, think ahead, and remember that with the vanilla AI, alliances aren't worth trusting.

 

[General Savage]

As mentioned, Timbuktu has an abundance of Gold & Ivory. Take 8 merchants when you do go... its worth it!

And in regard to generals, i dont bother using them to govern castles (other than short stopovers) as they dont need it (public order is always really high in castles). Rather, use them for governing cities, or for conquering.

When i play i usually have one main goal at a time. in the start, it is to secure the immediate area (e.g Iberian penisula if you are spain/portugal, the british isles for England/Scots etc). After that, i am an opportunist. I find that the AI might have huge armies running about the place, but will often leave cities lightly defended. When you spot this happening, get your army there NOW. The amount of times i have sieged a city defended only by the faction leader is crazy.

Hope it helps!

 

[joewagner501]

Something happened to me recently I hadn't thought of. Your mention of a city defended by only the faction leader reminded me of it. I had an army near a Spanish city (I was playing England and had already taken out France) that was defended by a family member. I was in the process of training an assassin so I sent him in for more "training" and discovered after the family member was killed the city was completely undefended. I simply walked my army into the city and occupied it. The easiest conquest yet.

 

[TheVrolok]

Re: So why am I terrible? (updates)

Started a new Polish campaign today, played for a few hours. Took over 10-15 provinces and was doing pretty well until a few things occurred. The HRE and Denmark teamed up on me; I wanted to next move north through Denmark into Scandinavia, then east into Russia and back down to isolate myself in the east. Pretty much what the adviser mentions when the Polish I believe?

So I started sieging Hamburg and the Pope warned me off, then the HRE attacked me at Prague from the south. I'd move back, defend, Pope's mission would run out, would go back up to Hamburg, Pope would warn me off, HRE would attack in the south, etc. Eventually the HRE sent enough to take Prague and keep moving into my western regions. At this point I was making no money and was pretty much out of it. Still a good learning experience.

The other problem I noticed was that as I continued to take territories I wouldn't make enough money per turn to build anything in more than 2-4 regions (depending on the upgrade - obviously fortresses are more expensive than level 1 roads, etc.). I don't think I ever made more than 3-4k in a turn. Is that about right for this point in the game, or am I just way under in the money making department? I did get a merchant to Timbuktu, but it's rather far from Poland. And I also don't quite know how to get tons of merchants, it seems that no matter how much I try to build markets and the like I only get 1 merchant per province and even then I don't have enough time/money to build up tons of markets.

I think I'm getting better, I really don't play Total War games all that often - but am I on the right track with progression?

 

[Funnage]

Are you constantly building troops? With Poland all you really need is one good horse army and you're good to go. I've been tinkering with what could be done but I think 1 sterzalcky, 2 nobles, and one general can pretty much take on 3x it's size. Actually that one army would be more than enough to take all surrounding rebel providences out, just let the regions sally forth or starve.

Also with Poland your best bet is to grab the western rebel providences and then move east. Alliances with Catholics are crucial because as Poland you have alot of area to cover and defend with less cities & castles to generate troops & income.

Try to minimalize garrison units and armies. Right now I'm on a Byzantine game and have taken two main armies, east & west. Although Venice has forced a smaller Northern army to repel attacks. These armies aren't always for attack after the rebel providences have been gobbled up into my empire, but more deterent.

Make sure you do have good intel with spies on faction leader & heir's locations. I managed to take out Turkey & Sicily in one battle because they were garrisoned in the same place or same stack.

Finally:
Don't keep your leader & heir in the same location.

 

[Oxberger]

Tell me whats that fuss with Timbuktu?

Gold, Iron, and Slave trade

But I have found that the region of Constantinople gets you more money due to the silk income. In my Venice campaign my merchants make around 500 florin per turn on each silk resource out there(there are 4 different resources).

 

[BuchVecny]

Well i dont know if this quote is in MTW 2 but that doesnt matter. The quote says: who defends everything, defends nothing. I used this quote in real game for first time when i was playing the templar faction in stainless steel, its said that this faction is the hardest faction ever. So about 50 turn when all was going good and i was getting 1st places in everything, suddenly egypt (which i thought is weak after i crushed it) and byzantins (which i thought they are my allies) attacked. 55 turn =>mongols invade. So i just offered few settlements to byzance for peace and leave out 2 or 3 on egypt side for rebels. Well and then? I just reformed my army and took it all back.

1) i dont ever use mechants
2) i dont ever start a war, however if someone starts it against me it means that the reply will be disasterous.
​

 

[Burns]

In my current France campaign (h/h) things are going mightly badly. So badly that I had to literally abandon my Holy Land posessions (gave them to the Papacy - which frankly didnt help much because Im still excommed). I was at war with basically all my neighbours until HRE asked for me to become a vassal. That instantly ended war with Milan and Portugal. So now I have England and Sicily to contend with but I bet the Milan peace won't last and I need it to end because they took Marsaille.

 

[TW_ruler]

I keep running into the same issues when playing through the campaign, and I'm playing on M/M. I've played a bit as HRE/France/Egypt/Poland and it just feels like I get over extended. I'll end up with 5 regions and 4 governors then for any number of reasons I'll lose 2 more governors (plague/inquisitor/age/etc.) and bam, I've got way more regions than governors and have problems expanding.

Just wanted to add that with me it depends on the faction I am playing as to what strategy I have. My biggest game is England year is 1453 now, just playing running out the clock (Took the win at 1320 or so). I would suggest maybe a game with England just because once you have the Islands you will not be pestered by having those lands attacked. Reasonable money not great but should finance a nice army to go off and conquer across the channel. Don’t rely so much on England’s cavalry but put your money in good infantry and longbows. Just use a few cavalry per army for routing troops. This will save you money on those expensive cavalry troops. England has some good and bad things when playing them. The cavalry is one of the bad or weak things England has to offer, but there infantry and longbows are tough troops. Don’t be concerned about not having generals some cripple your city or castle from producing more wealth. What I do is look at what the city is doing financially with a governor in place then pull the general/governor out of the place and look did the money go up or down, did the happiness increase or decrease when you moved him out. If he works better in the city then use him there but if he effects the production then use him as a field general and go forth with him and conquer. Importantly too is you don’t need a general in the army to be successful. If you have the land vs general ratio (don’t know what it is) you can have these captain guys promoted to generals after their battles. The last thing to mention is no matter what faction you decide on playing keep playing them even if you lose again and again eventually you’ll find the secrets for playing that faction and you’ll totally dominate with them. You will get better every time you play, good luck brother.