Total War: 2

[Xanupox]

Ok, I know there are a few threads, but this is for a specific question.

I am playing England. I have totally fucked the world over and killed everyone except those countries who married my princess to thier prince and have double royal blood. (Sicily and Milan). Everywhere else on the map that was once Catholic is now, English Red.

My only enemy is the Muslims. The weaker Mongols, and the fucking overpowered Timurads.

My question: How do the english "effectively" stop that fucking Timur Elephant Artillary.

I have tried using mass cannons, but that is basically arty versus arty and it sucks. I have tried mass Knights charges, but my horses get fucked up by the elephants fast....too fast to be worth the effort of the long campaign into asia. Lastly, I have no long pole units, the spearmen I have suck ass, only militia.

Has anyone else been successful as England in defeating Timur Arty Elephants?

[Pherr the Dorf]

Flaming arrows galore drive elephants into a panic

[Bubba Grizz]

I only started playing this as I had the game in the package 2 weeks before I installed it and then another week before I actually tried it. I too am playing England. I am getting raped on 3 fronts now. Scotland has only one city left, France has been pushed down to the Med, and Denmark I just kill their king. It is all I can do to maintain much less pick a target to obliterate. I'm thinking about restarting.

How do you use your Merchants and Priests effectively?

[Truant]

Flaming arrows galore drive elephants into a panic

Bingo. In rome:tw you could use greek phalanxes to some degree of success, or combine them with flaming arrows for absolute elephant slaughter. But I haven't yet found a pike unit, and spears don't seem to be too effective on anything bigger than horse.

I only started playing this as I had the game in the package 2 weeks before I installed it and then another week before I actually tried it. I too am playing England. I am getting raped on 3 fronts now. Scotland has only one city left, France has been pushed down to the Med, and Denmark I just kill their king. It is all I can do to maintain much less pick a target to obliterate. I'm thinking about restarting.

How do you use your Merchants and Priests effectively?

I ran into this on my first campaign as well. I simply expanded too fast and then had to face the consequences. I prefer to kind of slow play it, and focus on only one enemy at a time (at least early in the game...late in the game, it's a fucking freeforall).

The most effective way to use priests is in pairs (at least) in regions with low levels of your religion. As your priests convert more people, their piety increases which can make them cardinals, and so on. Once you have your region up pretty high, you may want to send your priests by boat to an area like south spain/north africa, as converting the islamic fath there to catholic will gain you a lot of skill, and a lot of favor with the pope. Also, trying heretics with your cardinals will raise their skill, calm the region of unrest (religious and otherwise), and gain papal favor.


Merchants I don't do a whole lot with. I build them, and I put them on resources, and I leave them to generate income. Marble, Tin, Iron, Silver seem to be pretty consistent for decent cash. I don't normally bother with foreign acquisition unless someone else took the resource from me, then I'll just try to get it back. Many regions have two of the same resource, and if you can get both, you will have a monopoly which generates more money, and increases skill.
There may have been something about the farther the resource is from the capital the more income it generates, but I can't remember, and Xou has my manual atm.

[Xanupox]

Yeah, it seems flaming arrows work ok. The problem is that in the stage of the game I am in, about 1/3 of the enemy army are these huge groups of elephants with cannons on them. They fire from halfway accross the map at you, so you have to move along ways with archers to get to them... by the time you get there, most of your army has been shot to hell.

I didnt mess around with priests very much at the beginning, but I learned my lesson. Make as many priests as you can, and send them EAST into Russia/Byzantia or south across the med into Africa. Make so many priests that you go crazy!

Eventually you will control all the cardinal seats, you will have the pope from your country and you can pretty much pick any target you want for a crusade.

Merchants are good! The farther away you have a merchant from your own lands the more he will make for you. If you have trade rights with the country he is in, even more money. If you cover EVERY single resource in a province, you get a monopoly on that good and get even more money.

If you are England, as soon as you can make that large boat, I think its a Caravel or something... you can travel all the way to the Americas. Send no less than 10 priests, 15 merchants and a couple diplomats. The north and south islands are rebel controlled, but the center is aztec with 3-4 cities. The items you can place your merchants on there range from 200-1200 gold per turn. There are like 15-20 resources you can grab, and usually no competition. Gold, Tobacco, Silver, Chocolate are the best ones.

[Bubba Grizz]

Holy Shit. I didn't know you could even go that direction. I'll have to explore the Americas then. Should be cool.

[Truant]

haha, I didn't know that about the Americas, that's hilarious.

[Pherr the Dorf]

americas only available after 1492... of course

Heavy cannons with exploding shot freak the fuck out of elephants as well.

As far as early play, my final restart has been france, by far the easiest faction to get going with and far enough away from the mid east to avoid the hordes. The first 42 turns I only fought rebels, and pretty much only worked on my economy, it made the growth period so much faster.

[Truant]

Has anyone found a way to deal with squalor sucessfully? I know that town hall/council chamber buildings and cathedrals improve health, but it doesn't seem to keep up honestly.

[MooZilla]

Off topic, but how much do you like the game? Is it worth buying?

[Neziroth]

This game is definitely worth the money if you like Turn-Based strategy games.

I'm still working on the first game I started as england.

I took out france and scottland, and I just killed spain's last king in a huge battle so they've all gone rebel and I have to deal with them now.

I've been at war with the Romans 3 separate times now, each time they bribe me for a ceasefire with one of their cities, but they'll be my next target anyhow

I love this game even though I can only play 40 or so turns a week on my current schedule.

[Truant]

Off topic, but how much do you like the game? Is it worth buying?

A lot. Yes.

[Pherr the Dorf]

Off topic, but how much do you like the game? Is it worth buying?

A lot. Yes.

I kinda thought we were jabbering away weeks later because it sucks

Squalor is a bitch and causes you to actually develop your cities a little slower, it does help.

[Hesten]

I only started playing this as I had the game in the package 2 weeks before I installed it and then another week before I actually tried it. I too am playing England. I am getting raped on 3 fronts now. Scotland has only one city left, France has been pushed down to the Med, and Denmark I just kill their king. It is all I can do to maintain much less pick a target to obliterate. I'm thinking about restarting.

How do you use your Merchants and Priests effectively?

BAD Bubba, leave Denmark alone

[VariaVespasa]

For one reason or another I've never actually had to face the Timurids in battle yet so I have no experience with their elephants. However, if they dont like fire or explosions then those rocket launchers you can hire in eastern russia etc might be worth a try.

For the Americas- you will need carracks to get there, and even then its a long slooow trip (around 7-10 turns all told), so plan accordingly. Anything you send out there is going to have to be self-sustaining for a fair while, so include extra units you can scavenge for rebuilding damaged units, and make sure the leaders and spies you send are young.
It consists of 4 areas- the southeast area of the US, with 1 normal rebel town at the top of the Florida panhandle on the west side and 1 tobacco resource. Cuba, which is due west of the south edge of Ireland, with 1 normal rebel town, no resources. The northeast corner of South America, with 1 normal rebel town in the center of the north coast, and 2 gold resources (+1-2 other resources). And last, Central America, containing the Aztec empire (which has 3 cities, each with a full heavy-infantry army, and 7 gold, 5 chocolate, 2 silver and a tobacco resource. Central America can only be landed on along the north coast so you probably wont be able to blitz all 3 cities at once. I'm in mid-campaign there now so I dont know about the 2cnd and 3rd cities, but the northern one is good terrain for cavalry. Their archers dont have long range.

Have fun.

[Xanupox]

Those aztecs get tougher the closer you get to thier main city, techchonigcha or whatever it is. They get some mad special units, but if you overpower them with 2-3 full armies of good calvary you should be ok.

The problem with fighting deep in thier terrirtory is that its very hilly, and so much foliage you can hardly see your units. Tree canopy is nuts.

Yeah, you can go about it 2 ways with the aztecs.

You can just leave them alone militarily and only send the boats full of merchants and a couple diplomats (make 3-4 rounds worth of brand new young merchants though, you want to send them all young, the trips will take its toll on a few years.)

I would suggest at least 20 merchants, there are enough resources.

there is also a remote southern part of western africa, its rebel. I never landed any forces there just sailed past it. I think there is lots of SLAVE trade down there though lol, saw shackels all over the place.

[masteen]

You mean there were slaves in Africa before there was even an America?

I thought white men are the root of all evil, and Africa was one big block party before we showed up.

[VariaVespasa]

I grabbed the southwest african town recently too, but I havent seen any shackles down here. Are you sure you arent looking at the Ivory resource? There are 2 of them in that territory and 2 more in the Timbuktu territory in central africa. Theyre fairly valuable. Anyone else unable to build watch towers in Timbuktu btw?

Dont worry too too much about the merchants for the aztec territory. You can build more in cuba or the US once you have them up and running, so your initial load dont have to last TOO long. Oh, about cuba- if you want to be able to rebuild your armies locally then make sure you build cuba up to be able to build the right type of troops, in terms of whether you grow it as a city or a fortress. My invasion was experimental and inadequately planned, so my army is castle cavalry but cuba and the US were both built up as cities so I cant repair my troops. Doh. The followup armies are demilancers, but its a tedious delay. Ugh.

[Bubba Grizz]

See now that confused me. I see this convert to a city or convert to a castle and it throws me off. Which is better?

[Truant]

See now that confused me. I see this convert to a city or convert to a castle and it throws me off. Which is better?

Neither is better, they are two sides of the same coin.

City is for economic development. It will generate much more income, and be able to train all non military units (priests, diplomats, spies, assassins, merchants, etc. etc.). You can develop siege weapons at your cities, but that's pretty much the limit of military in the cities.

Castles are for military development. They are much harder to siege than a city, and have much higher public order. They have very little in the way of economic development and the tax rate is not controllable, so they generate little income. But they are able to produce the full range of military units (both land and sea)


I generally keep many more cities than I do castles. But I will use castles to help secure a border with another faction, and also to prevent any rioting in a newly captured city until the unrest/religious unrest settles down.

[VariaVespasa]

You can mostly only train heavy cavalry at castles, so bear it in mind. Late in the game with the construction of academies you can build demilancers (new-style heavy cavalry) in your cities, and then you can phase out the castles. Till then I like to keep castles on all my borders to keep my combat armies up to strength, and about 1 other castle per (modern) country behind the lines (eg- 1 in the british isles, 1 in france, 1 in germany) etc.

Note that militia are free upkeep when stationed in cities.

[Noysyrump]

This game is like all i Play now...

Timurid elephants... The trick is let them attack your... CITIES!

Do NOT attack mongols or timurids in the open, let them attack jeruselem (u should keep a castle close by too, like gaza) and javelin units wipe elephants out FAST. Like spanish amulgavers, etc. Otherwise flame them out til they kill their own troops.

as england try longbows 'stake' feature and tease them into running into them. otherwise, sit in your city and let them wear themselves out.

1200 is mongol invasion, about 1220 is gunpowder, and 1400 is "the world is round".

[Bubba Grizz]

Well that settles it. I am starting over. This was the practice round. yeah that's it.

[Truant]

Well that settles it. I am starting over. This was the practice round. yeah that's it.

I've started over various times, or reloaded from a certain point.

In my most recent game as England, I'm just chillin' and minding my own business, and in the same turn...France, Spain, and Portugal all decide to ally and invade me. All this in the first 30 turns of the game, and while being allied to France and on friendly terms with the other 2.

Needless to say, I probably won't be pursuing that game much farther.

[Pherr the Dorf]

England, France, Germany, Spain and all of africa is french!

[Xanupox]

A cool tactic I found out was using the archers/longbowmen stake feature.

You have to place the stakes down prior to starting the battle, so it limits you a bit but for this tactic it works fine.

WHen you place a longbow unit down prior to battle you will see the green stakes icon lit up. If you click it, a row of stakes about as long as the formation appears in front of the archers.

I used this to obliterate the mongols.

The stakes are basically unseen by the enemy force until thier calvary charge into them. If a horse touches the stake they die instantly no matter how tough they are.

Since the mongols are 90% calvary, it works well.

The best instance of this WTFpwning a huge mongol force was in a city defense I recently pulled off.

I placed my longbowmen inside the city, (only placeable inside anyway) but I placed them in rows around the gatewalls inside, basically I had 5 rows of stakes just inside the gate. I also expected the walls to get knocked down, so I placed 4 sets of stakes behind the wall sections that usually get blown up, the 2 on each side of the gate.

It worked.

They blew down 2 sections of wall, but there was stakes perfectly filling the gaps.

They knocked down the gate as well.

What happened next was hillarious.

About 2000 mongols horde riders come storming thru the main gate, at least 90% of them impale on the first row of stakes, what did manage to slip thru the first row got destroyed on the 2nd or 3rd row of stakes. They took such heavy losses so fast they routed themselves. My own guys only had a couple kills as I had retreated back to the city square since the walls were too dangerous.

The mongols basically killed themselves for me.

Try it and see if you like.

[Xanupox]

In my most recent game as England, I'm just chillin' and minding my own business, and in the same turn...France, Spain, and Portugal all decide to ally and invade me.

When you say "invade" do you mean they attack your lands in western Europe, or did they actually land forces on mainland england?

I am playing a game right now, where I gave up Caen to rebels and abandoned the mainland completely. I am isolated on the islands and am just making mass $$ and advancing as fast as possible.

I only saw one Portugal princess that actually came up to visit, other than that no units that I have saw have came to my island.

[Truant]

In my most recent game as England, I'm just chillin' and minding my own business, and in the same turn...France, Spain, and Portugal all decide to ally and invade me.

When you say "invade" do you mean they attack your lands in western Europe, or did they actually land forces on mainland england?

I am playing a game right now, where I gave up Caen to rebels and abandoned the mainland completely. I am isolated on the islands and am just making mass $$ and advancing as fast as possible.

I only saw one Portugal princess that actually came up to visit, other than that no units that I have saw have came to my island.

Western Europe, I don't think I have ever had anyone try to cross the channel.

[Pherr the Dorf]

In my most recent game as England, I'm just chillin' and minding my own business, and in the same turn...France, Spain, and Portugal all decide to ally and invade me.

When you say "invade" do you mean they attack your lands in western Europe, or did they actually land forces on mainland england?

I am playing a game right now, where I gave up Caen to rebels and abandoned the mainland completely. I am isolated on the islands and am just making mass $$ and advancing as fast as possible.

I only saw one Portugal princess that actually came up to visit, other than that no units that I have saw have came to my island.

Western Europe, I don't think I have ever had anyone try to cross the channel.

I love all the different ways we are playing, the game really just kinda is the shit

[Sylvus]

Is there a good way to build up your assassins once you've gotten into the game a bit? Whenever I make new ones, pretty much every target I try is 5-10% chance. I had one guy that I maxed out, but he recently died of old age, and now I can't assassinate anyone.

[Bubba Grizz]

Piss me off. I was really starting to get something accomplished and almost had the French wiped out when the fucking game gets a graphics error and killed all my progress for that 3+ hours. I don't auto save but now I am thinking I will. Game is on the shelf for a while now.

[Truant]

Piss me off. I was really starting to get something accomplished and almost had the French wiped out when the fucking game gets a graphics error and killed all my progress for that 3+ hours. I don't auto save but now I am thinking I will. Game is on the shelf for a while now.

The game autosaves everytime you press the next turn button.

If you load the autosave it should take you to the last turn you did before the game crashed, or it may even take you to the next turn (that you didn't see) if the game crashed during the AI turns.

[Pherr the Dorf]

what he said

[Xanupox]

Piss me off. I was really starting to get something accomplished and almost had the French wiped out when the fucking game gets a graphics error and killed all my progress for that 3+ hours. I don't auto save but now I am thinking I will. Game is on the shelf for a while now.

yeah, Bubba, unless you changed the default settings, you only need to go back to the main load screen and "continue campaign". Or you can load game and choose the auto save.

I often hit Control-S, to quick save before a large battle or an auto battle. If I took a shitty loss from autobattle, I control-L and reload and manually fight it, since I can usually win manually while the computer will give me stupid losses otherwise.


Speaking of autosave....

The autosave pisses me off quite often. It saves AFTER the completion of each turn, as in you hit the "end turn" button... it then cycles thru all the AI moves for the rest of the round, then saves... fucking pisses me off.

Here is why.

If the game SAVED, then processed the end of the turn, you could reload if a mistake occured, during some AI events requiring a decision on your part. Sieges, Diplomacy, Marriages, etc.

My most recent autosave fucking over occured when I had 480,000 gold, my entire island was secure on England and Poland was raping the fuck out of Europe. A Polish diplomat met with one of my diplomats somewhere in the world and demanded I become Polands Vassal. I tried to decline that demand and counter demand instead they became my vassal, acccidently hit the wrong button and took thier offer... mid fucking round.

Of course what happened next, was that Poland took 470,000 gold from me, and the round ended then SAVED. I couldnt reload or do shit. I had to go back to my nearest Control-S quicksave, which lost me an hour. It saved my game though.

That is the only thing I would change about the game is the 'timing' of the autosave in relation to the round.

[Tegellan]

How is the game progressing for everyone?

I have one question I cannot seem to find an answer for, is there a way to produce princesess? Or do they just show up now and then?

[Xanupox]

If you have a KING that has daughters, when they come of age (14), they will become princesses. If the girls are already of age, then he becomes King, they are just royal women.

They have a different icon than just regular women, more defined faces and hair.

Princesses are ok, if you marry one off that has high charm you maybe able to pull whoever she married into your faction.

If you marry her off to another countries faction hier, you can kiss her goodbye, you will not benefit any from thier children and thier family tree ends for you.

If you want to keep Royal blood, marry her to one of her cousins that has really good traits... just not her brothers.

[masteen]

Wrong Xan. All female family members become princesses.

If they succeed in stealing a male from another faction, she will turn into a regular looking woman, and her unit disappears from the map, replaced by a general, who usually appears in the capital or whatever city her father is governing.

[Bubba Grizz]

Ok, I am thinking about running this in a lan setting. Has anyone done this multiplayer yet? I was reading on the box that you can have up to 8 armies? I am curious to know how this works. I wish this game would support multiplayer campaign mode.

[Bubba Grizz]

This game was really sweet in multiplayer mode. We had no problems with our lan connection and it was readily available. You can have up to 8 players in this. There are scenarios as well. We only had 3 people so there was no lag. I recommend playing with an even number of teams. One of the best things was watching the Elephant troops run amok.

[Pherr the Dorf]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=109070'

It is like a drug, I still play medieval 2 at least once a week

[masteen]

So that link you posted is a mod for Rome? Awesome!