Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 01 Turn 1-5

Here we go for the New Year a new Chronicles! This time I choose the faction base on the big number of people asking for a Turkish Chronicles. Since many fans seem to have had a hard time with them, I hope you will be able to learn some trick from this new Chronicles showing the Turkish way of making war.
So enjoy the ride.



First let’s have a small view of the Turk situation. Turk are surrounded by rebel. That mean they are not at risk of getting siege in the early turn. So they must take the opportunity to expend on those rebels as fast as they can. In this first episode, I rush to conquer rebel territory before the real war against Byzantine and Egypt start. To expend you must first have money and mobility. You can achieve that by building road. They increase commerce and your army mobility. That's what I did.

The Turk also start with a very spread around territory and weak army. So you need to concentrate your strength toward achievable objective and use the early Turk strength instead of waiting for it to grow. The faster you expend, the stronger you will become. If you wait, you will give the advantage to your enemies.

The Turk might seem weak at first but that's because you need use archer cavalry and using hit and run tactic you can win very fast and with very little lose.

Historically the Turk didn't fight for valor and honor the same way as knight did, they fought to win battles first. In clear it means that there is no shame in running away in front of your enemies. That's what made Saladin's army so effective against Crusader. His archer cavalry had light armor and bow; they could attack and withdraw very fast. While heavy crusader cavalry were tired really fast.

Also the fact that Turk were using Female Horse allowed them to have a very good control over them since female horse was more docile. Crusader had male horse; I think you can figure out how controllable male horses were against an army of female horse... The biggest Turk weakness what the early division between them self. I guess Medieval 2 Total War represent that division by the many rebel town and fort around.

So expending is really the priority and by doing so you must compete with your future enemies, the Byzantine and Egypt, even if it means starting a war against them.

This quick expansion leading us to this first battle against Rebel.



One of the really effective ways to take a city early in the game is to wait until the enemies come out to break the siege. This situation allows you to have a serious advantage against the enemies since they can only come out of the city in a very dense column. So you need to surround them with cavalry and use your infantry to block the attacking column into a static formation.

With the Turk the main problem is that they don't have any reliable troop in melee so you need to use your missile troop to weaken the enemies until you become confident that if you charge the enemies they will run away. That's what I did in this battle but took me sometime since the enemy were more and had better troops

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 19 Turn 71 to 72

Here are the last 3 episode of the Polish Chronicles.



At that point in the campaign all my fronts advance more then before. On the West my campaign against Danish is going well. In Italy My force advance toward Venice and will take it.



This battle was basically a charge against the enemies. I had more archers, but the enemies had artillery making them stronger then me. So I charged as fast as possible under the artillery fire and flanked them at the same time, leading to a victory.



This battle is interesting on the tactical level. I first defend, knowing that I will be attacked on the rear. So once the first army is destroy, I rush on the other side and use once again the bridge to my advantage and allowing me to capture Venice at the same time =)

Ok, that's all for the Polish Chronicles people. Now before every one start asking, what next! Well it will be a Turkish Chronicles. But I plan to take a small break first since those chronicles take a lot of time to do. So stay calm no panic!

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 18 Turn 69 to 71

In this episode my eastern frontier is now secure from Russian treat. On the East I advanced against Danish and Holy Roman Empire. On the South my army advance fast on the Byzantine Empire with the fall of Constantinople. On the Italian front I slowly advance against Sicilian.



(hmm still blurred, that will be fix in future episode)
In this first battle The holy Roman Empire engage me with a lot of troop, against a very weak army defending a city. My only advantage is to have 3 unit of catapult. So that Siege is the perfect example how to use catapult as defensive weapon. You deploy a small force at a couple of meter in front of the catapult to keep the enemies from reaching you catapult and then you fire at a close range. Since in this case my troops were weak, and bad quality, well wasn't really important if I lose some by friendly fire. The critical moment of the battle was when the feudal knight engaged my general, but they were taken care of fast.



This third battle is interesting since I discovery that polish archer could put anti cavalry pike in front of them. Those static pike kill all cavalry that charge them and slow down any charge. But I also learned that it kills friendly cavalry...

Anyway... In that battle I use my archer superiority and my cavalry mobility to win the battle. My infantry keeping more or less effectively the enemies busy.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 17 Turn 69

Here we go again people.
(Hmm for some reason the top of the video is blurred...)

So this in this first video I siege a Danish Fortress, (3 wall).
It's not a really well executed siege, but my troops were expendable since most of them were mercenary. At the beginning the enemy king comes out to slow my troop down. It worked a little and allowed his troop to inflict me more casualties on the walls. But cost him his live.

Once the gates were open I rushed my cavalry inside the walls so that my cavalry could take care of dismounted feudal knight, which would have decimated my infantry. Since Cavalry is more effective against sword units, well I proved to be a good. Once those feudal knight dead, the enemies on the wall panicked leading to a quick victory.



This Second Battle is a siege that Sicily did against a very badly defended town. I did kill as many enemies as I could consider my infantry were spearman. The most important thing is that I killed the enemy general. But also lost one good general.

I think the important thing to remember from that battle is the way I use cavalry by charging, withdraw to charge again. That's what killed the most of the enemies.

From a strategic point of view, that defeat is minor, and the only sad thing is to have lost a general, the city will be taken back in a couple of turn.



This Third battle is against Russian when they decide to lift a siege. I must admit I didn't expected to win, but my skirmishing cavalry did the job very well. I decimated the first army with my javelin and finished them by a global cavalry charge.

The second army came too late, and the AI came too spread around allowing my to charge the isolated archer with the cavalry and most of the battle I took advantage by isolating every enemies from each other and charging from many direction at the same time. But the victory was achieved at the time when the enemy general was finally killed.

Medieval II Total War Attila's Battle Guide

Here is my Christmas gift for the Total War Fans. It's a guide that explains and shows how to effectively win a battle in Medieval 2 Total War. It shows the strategy and principle to use to win, all commented by the adviser and showing contextual information.

For those who would have missed it, here is also the Small Siege Guide I create sometime ago, explaining siege tactic.




Also for new visitor, here are some useful link you might enjoy.

Here is the filter for the Polish Chronicles

Here is the filter for Sicilian Chronicles

Here is the Filter for the German Chronicle in Rome Total War, It's full of good advise.

I also must say, that I will now take a pause in the chronicles publishing process so that I can fully enjoy my vacation. That will allow you to check archive, learn tips and trick from old battle, ask question in comment that I plan to keep reading and answering.

So Merry Christmas! And feel free to tell me your first contact that many of you will live on the 25 December with Medieval 2 Total War.

I will be back in a couple of days. =)

Pixel Shader 1.1 problem and How to fix it.

I get lot of emails about Pixel Shader support problem. To short answer... Get a true Graphics Card if your computer has an onboard graphics card. If you have an AGP or PCI Express interface available it's the way to go! My card is an ATI X1600 512MB AGP. Amazon.com offers the newest version, the X1650 at $186.99 with Free shipping in the US. More information at ATI about the X1650. Here links to Amazon pages.

		ATI Radeon X1650 Pro 512MB AGP Graphics Card
		ATI Radeon X1650 Pro 512MB PCI-E Graphics Card

AGP vs PCI Express, confused?

More information on Wikipedia.

• Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP)
• PCI Express (also known as PCIe or PCI-E)

Recommendation:

If your board support PCI Express... Go with it. Otherwise... not much choice.

Also Keep in mind that this Graphic card is the Minimum I recommend to play medieval II Total War in an acceptable condition. But feel free to buy newer card to be sure to be able to play future game correctly.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 16 Turn 67 to 68

After the victory against the Holy Roman Empire, I turn my attention on the byzantine.
I attack the General outside the city so that the city garrison come and help him. By doing so they will get destroyed and leave me the free path in Constantinople.

On the battle field level. I charge the general first, and then reorganize to face the enemies. As you will notice my cavalry is in front of the army that time. instead of the infantry as usual. Well the main reason is that byzantine have very good infantry with sword. Swordsman being weak against cavalry charge, the cavalry did a good part of the work. Then the infantry can take care of the swordsman weaken.

When the army finally Panicked I took care to kill as many as I could so none would be able to get back in the city. So I took Constantinople without a fight for the walls



The important aspect of the second battle is really the tactic to engage the enemies in the street. Since the enemies had dismounted feudal knight, they could have basically kill all my troops. Spearmen are really not effective when it comes to fight sword units. So the small tactic I use is the make my infantry ignore the enemies. That allow the enemies to kill some of my soldier, but once I order to engage the enemies, my troop are more then the enemies and use number too kill the enemies. This is a risky but effective tactique.



In this battle, I only have 4 units of knights against far more Danish Troop. At no point did I expect to win. So my goal was to kill as many as I could, using my troop’s mobility. And I did stop the Venetians from annoying me for many turn later.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 15 Turn 66 to 67

In this episode you see the introduction of the Mongols invasion. Don't they are not are Not so dangerous as long as they don't decide to come in the north. But it happens some time. So back to our regular foes.

So, after capturing back my fort, it was time to engage the Holy Roman Empire.

The battle is really a big chaos so it is hard to describe the strategy, if there was any...

But I think the most important aspect in this battle is the "group" management.

As you can see I group my units with "G". This group functionality change the way the units act. So, when your units are not grouped, they will all engage the unit you tell them to engage. But when they are grouped, they engage the enemies at proximity. So by grouping your units or ungrouping them you can use the most useful behaviour that you want in different situation.

When you see nothing in the forest, grouping allows you to order your troop to attack even if you don't clearly see all enemies. Groups are also useful when you need to hunt the fleeing enemies, you group all you army and order them to attack any enemy and they will start attacking nearly all enemies.

So when you watch my videos carefully (all of them), you might noticed that I change many time my groups setup during the battle to give some flexibility or to better coordinate the army.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 14 Turn 64 to 66

Here is an other episode containing a small battle in the middle of the campaign.

In this episode my troop are getting ready to invade the Holy Roman Empire.

As for the battle, as you can see the artilleries does the all the job.

After the battle I advance against the fort I lost the previous episode. And in the South I prepare to engage the Byzantine Empire. Finally the Danish try to lift my potential siege over the fort I previously lost.



So what is interesting in that battle is that on the campaign level the AI always uses a small army to attack your siege army so that the defending army can come out and fight in the open. This is supposed to make the game harder but as you can see in that battle it turn out to be far more useful to the siege army then the defender that come outside and get exterminated leaving no one inside the fort to keep it. So that allows you to take cities and fort without a siege. Very useful strategy that come to the principle I like to call, the best offence is defence.

So in that battle the first army is taken care of in less then 2 min, I make sure to kill most of them so that they don't come back. Then I form a new line of defence, crossbowman in front. I did a small error there; I should have shot the main force instead of archers. I would have weakened the enemies far more before the main fight with little lost.

As for the main fight, the mercenary spearman did most of the holding work as expected, but it is the cavalry flanking that proved to be the key moment in the battle leading all of the to flee. I still had to hunt as many of them as possible so that none could escape and then defend the fort after.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 13 Turn 63 to 64

This episode also contains some campaign play since it wasn't too long.

So on the West the Danish start to invade my territory. On the East I start to establish my religion.

And then come the siege from the Danish. That I lose. But my plan was perfect. What went wrong is the fact that the Siege Tower was destroyed, forcing the enemies to use the Ram. If the tower had survived, the enemy would have used it as the only way into the fort. I would have killed the Danish one by one instead of having to fight them into the street where my spear could not match the sword and axe.

So since my initial plan didn't worked out. I gained as much time as I could by harassing the battering ram and gaining as much time as I could for the tower and archer to kill as many enemies as they could. It might have been a better idea to hold the center of the town so my troops would have fought to the death, but since ultimately I would have probably lost anyway. I told myself well lets kill as many of them as I can and finish this fast since, anyway, I will counter attack in a couple turn. But still I had fun. =)

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 12 Turn 62 to 63

This episode is in fact some campaign play and 2 battle, one of the could not be recorded because of horrible lag.

So, as you can see I'm expending on the East on the campaign level of the game. On the South West, The Sicilian begins hostilities and sieges a weak city.

I lift the siege and charge the enemies, the cavalry being my only good unit I concentrate it on crossbowman and Normans knight this way I decimate the main Sicilian force of the battle and the battle is easily win.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 11 Turn 59 to 62

After repealing the Holy Roman Empire enemies on the West front, I kept advancing on the Eastern front against Russia. But the Holy Roman Empire is not out of armies to invade my territory. Soon to be follow by Danish. So seeing that I was menaced, I decide to take the initiative of the hostility in a risky move on the Danish Territory. Provoking that battle.



This battle is a really nice one that I think you can judge by yourself.

There is a small cut in it; I think I had a diner pause or something like that if I remember...

Medieval II Total War First Patch

Here we go people the famous first patch for Medieval 2 Total War.

Download the first Patch for Medieval 2 Total War

May it bring many fix =)

Medieval II: Total War README

Last Updated: 2006-12-05
v1.1

Medieval2 v1.1 contains the following changes:

- Battle AI, Siege AI and Campaign AI are no-longer passive
- Close-range AI attacks are more consistent
- Cavalry Charge and Cavalry power are more consistent
- Merchant trade values no-longer drop after load / save
- Elephant Artillery does not cause problems in Campaign Battle
- Reduced Inquisitor power
- Morale effects tweaked
- Autoresolve
- Increased effectiveness of naval invasions
- MP lobby crashes removed
- MP in-game soft-locks removed
- Added support for international MP
- Minor issues with deployment lines / zones have been solved
- Tweaks made to Diplomacy mechanic
- Sieged Settlements no-longer showing as sieged even if besieging army has been defeated
- Gunpowder units do not get stuck re-forming
- Siege equipment does not disappear while zooming
- Removed Assassin exploit
- Tweaks made to unit pathfinding in settlements
- *Command line switch added to remove 'reinforcements delayed' message
- No-longer possible to open gates with siege towers or embed them in walls
- Minor UI changes
- Added missing Audio triggers
- Controls and Camera tweaks
- Added ModTool - Unpacker

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 10 Turn 54 to 59

In this episode I was against a Hungarian advance and they only have 2 cities left. I also advanced on the Russian front, but my weak border on the West is starting to attract the western powers like the Danish, Milanese, and the Holy Roman Empire. I also start producing better troops on the western front.

At 10:50 I finally destroy the Hungarians and still increasing the size of my armies on all fronts.



This battle is not complete... the best part where I uses my cavalry with an uncommon skill is missing... arrggg...
So basically the part that remains is the pursuit of the sieging army by my noble cavalry... So not much strategy to learn there... enjoy the Hunt =)

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 09 Turn 53 to 54

Not much to say here on the campaign level of the game, the Hungarian front is still the priority for the moment and I take the command of the battle personally because the auto battle would probably have lose this battle.

This battle was done at a good moment because the enemies were divided so I could fight them isolated. Also the enemies were outnumber, but had far better troops then what I had, so it was imperative that I used my missile unit superiority over the enemies so that once my weak troop engage the enemies they don't get routed by the good infantry or cavalry the enemy had.

So I destroyed the first army by weakening them with my mercenary crossbow so that when they finally reached my line they broke easily. I charge the second enemies 2 times with my cavalry that took care of them. And I moved cavalry in the back of the enemies so that he didn't really knew what to do... and decimated many with my crossbow again. When they started retreating I engaged all my force to finish them.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 8 Turn 50 to 53

In these turns the Hungarian front is now my priority over all other fronts as my reinforcements finally arrive. At the same time my army on the Russian front keeps advancing to take the cities.

All those moves lead to these battles for turn 54



In this first battle I start by using my missile superiority to weaken the enemies and approach them step by step. Then, I engage them with my infantry to immobilize the enemies. Next, I send my cavalry against the dismounted feudal knight and the enemies general. After a close fight the enemies flee, allowing me to secure my advance on the Hungarian front.

Here is an attack from a Russian army that was expected and resulted in me kicking them out of my territory.



In this battle I really use the Polish Cavalry at its best. I use my missile to weaken the enemies as much as I can and divide and isolate them before finishing them. Not much else to say, so enjoy =)

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 7 Turn 47 to 50

This is a weird episode because it was recorded on 2 different days, and had many breaks between the videos that compose it. It also contains a bugged battle.

So as you can see the Hungarian front is still active and they are sieging my cities. The Russian front is also beginning to show activity with my invasion of Russia. In a way by expanding into Russia I make the Pope like me since I convert infidels. I also took the last Venetian city on the continent since the Milanese and Sicilians seem to have taken care of them in Italy.

So At 6:00 the Hungarians started the siege of my city. As I nearly always do now, I rush my cavalry right on the battering ram then retreat immediately after. By disabling the ram or any other siege equipment you can direct the enemies where you want them. But DO NOT attacks all siege equipment, or the enemies will stay back.

So see the enemies as water, if water is completely stopped will destroy what is on the way, but if you canalize it, you can control it and make it go where you want it to go. So in that battle that's what I did. However, It seems the AI bugged and they never used the ladder... So in the end I won by the timer. I always use the timer because of AI bug like that. Or it would lead to an endless battle... and I don't have days to make a battle...

So at 9:32 back to the campaign.
As you can see at that point I rally my armies from the south and west to concentrate on the Hungarian front.

On the Russian front I continue my way to Moscow ignoring enemies on the way. The main reason for that is that the goal to destroy an enemy is not to destroy his armies. The goal is to destroy his empire. So concentrate yourself on the cities and forts. It's like in fencing. The goal is not to fight the blade; it's to hit the enemy. So stay focused on the target.

As you can see the Hungarian siege the city again and that a bug in the AI saved, but this time, I had reinforcements and I engaged the enemies outside the city walls. This is a strategy that the AI uses a lot, so, why not use it myself. =)

Here is the battle that resulted.



In this battle I make a move on the Left flank with all of my cavalry, the main reason for that is that making a direct charge from the hill would not be a good move, so by flanking, I gain a better position to charge the enemies. As for the infantry they charge from the hill since they are more expendable than my knights. Infantry also keep the enemies busy so that they can't make an effective formation to resist my knights. As soon as I charged the enemy, their infantry was jammed into the fight and could not prevent a charge on the enemy feudal knights and general leading to a quick victory.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 06 Turn 44 to 47

(Ignore the fact that it is written episode 5 instead of 6...)

The Hungarian front is stabilizing because my force finally retached the front. I still invest in my economy. Milan made me an offer to become my vassal, I accept since that will prevent them from attacking me for sometime.

My priests in the far east also started to become cardinals, that will help me in the long term by giving me more voice when it is time to elect a new pope, that will be more interested in my cause and won't complain too much about my invasion of Christian factions in the future.

An interesting thing in that episode is that the Venetians sent an army to siege my city at 8:12 but before the turn ended that army rebelled leaving my city unsiege. That really was good luck and I avenged myself for that attempt very soon after =)



This battle is not very complex to describe, the enemies had mostly crossbow units, so, with my cavalry I made the enemies panic quickly and the infantry gave the final morale effect on the enemies and made them panic as my cavalry came back to engage in the pursuit.

Medieval II Total War Victory in 58 Turn at Very Hard/Very Hard with French

Ok, people, today I don't plan to release an episode. But I will share an interesting thing I did a couple days ago. As you might know, publishing the videos of the campaign chronicles is the longest part of the process in the making of episodes. It also takes hell of a lot of space on the hardrive. So all of that forces me to do something else while I publish the episode and clean space. So I played some campaigns...

One of my friends told me someone said he conquered 36 regions in 46 turns while playing at very hard with the english. At first I told myself "Hmmm, that's hard to believe." So since I'm good I told myself... "well if someone can do it, I can!"

So in 45 turns with the french I had 40 regions.


So Once I reached this first objective, I told Myself lets continue to victory. I reached the first victory condition and by turn 48 I had 45 regions.



The longest part was to send a Crusade to Jerusalem, That was achieved at the turn 58 mostly because I didn't have a good fleet and it seems every one had huge fleet around ready to destroy me.

So here is the save game of the campaign as proof and the really interesting thing is that when you win the battle from the save, all factions are unlock! =)

Download the save of the Victory in 58 Turn here

So enjoy!

I also continued a little more and here is what it looked like around turn 92



So the conclusion is, either french are too powerful or I'm just too good...

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 05 Turn 43 to 44

In this episode the Hungarian front and potential front gain in importance.



In this battle I greatly outnumber the enemies. I mostly used my missile units to weaken the enemies so that when the time of the melee fight came the enemies were easily defeated. Simple but effective strategy.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 04 Turn 41 to 43

In this episode I try to reinforce my southern front so that my advance doesn't stop and so that I can destroy Hungaria soon. As you can see I'm divided on what to do against Russian.



In that battle I had archer superiority, but I decided to charge the enemies because of the effectiveness of the enemies artillery against my cavalry. The enemies didn't last long against my charge. My mercenaries were very effective since they were more heavily armored than normal polish infantry. Combined with polish cavalry I won the battle easily.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 3 Turn 36 to 41

The war goes on on the Southern Front against Hungarians but they halt my advance with a huge army that came out of no where. So I advanced on the Venetians territory and prepared to invade a rebel region.

The Hungarian soon take back a city (at 6:23) with the huge army, but it wasn't a big loss for me.

At 8:00 the pope died, as you can see I vote for the Portuguese Cardinal. By voting for the most distant faction I make sure that If I attack a faction near me, the Pope won't be as displease.

At 9:00 I start a mini war against Russia so that I can gain control of the rebel fort

At 9:39 I take the first Venetian city very easily and prepare to take another to the South. By attacking the Venetians I make sure they don't expand to the east into Byzantine territory.

At 11:00 I make the first move to start a war against the Holy Roman Empire, but it turns out that the first city is basically full of troops. So while I retreat it is clear, at that point, that a war will happen on that front soon. But my priorities are first to push back the Milanese army, and that lead us to the first battle.



This battle is hard to describe since it is in a forest. The main strategy was to first weaken the enemies with arrows. Then charge them in the middle with infantry. During that time my cavalry flanked them and charged into the rear. Once the infantry was fully engaged in the battle, cavalry charged from all direction. It becomes a huge massacre with very little lost on my side. Of course the enemies were not very efficient since most of them were crossbowman, but still those troops can be powerful. Hopefully, Milan won't attack for many turns.

Hmm

Hmm seem I won't put an episode today, I was too busy on other stuff... and I need to relax a little. I will try to update tomorrow.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles Turn 33 to 36

In these turns I concentrated my strength toward the south. I captured the Hungarian territory and prepared to attack the Venetians. Unfortunately one very big battle against the Hungarians wasn't recorded because of a bug in Medieval 2 Total War...



Here is the resulting battle. It was challenging since the Hungarians have feudal knights and I only had militia and some cavalry. The enemies were not many, but were good troops. That strength explains why the game said it was a Heroic victory.

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 01 Battle 1

Here is the resulting battle



I don't have much to say about this battle except that the enemies had better troops than mine. So I had to advance, secure my position, and then continue my advance. As you can see, I exicuted the siege the same way as in the guide. That's really the best tactic I found to take a city. =)

Medieval II Total War Polish Chronicles 01: Turn 1 to 33.

Ok before you start watching this video I must warn you, it is 45 minutes of turn based campaign game play. It's all the campaign, from the moment I choose the faction, to the turn 33 where I finally take command of a battle. No battles are included in the episode.

Many people ask me advise about how to play the campaign. By showing this aspect of the game you might learn how to play better on that aspect of the game. This first episode will help people see what my priorities are, how I start up my campaign, and different phases of game play. So I will split the Chronicles as 2 part episodes, the first part being the Campaign Level and the second being the battles of the turn. This way you will be able to realize the importance of every battle and the context of it.



Since that episode is really long I will give time reference and explain them in phases in the developments of the game and of my strategy.

0:00 to 2:00. Here is the choice of the faction and introduction video of the faction.

2:00 to 3:12. This was the first turn, as you might notice I developed my economies and start invading rebel regions with my armies.

3:12 to 4:48 Turn 2. In this turn I take 1 city and 1 rebel fort. And I continue to develop my economy by building farms.

4:48 to 9:00 I take one fort and get ready to take 1 city and another fort, I still invest into farms.

9:00 to 11:34 I still gain territory on the west, but I start consolidating my armies on the south and east since the western frontier is against the Holy Roman Empire and Danish borders. From that point I will improve my defence to the West and expand to the East.

11:34 to 14:20 At this point diplomacy starts to play a role, factions offer me trade rights, so I offer them an alliance, they accept, and I offer them to share map information, they will also accept. This way I know where the cities are, and who controls them.

14:20 to 18:28 At this point I disband my mercenaries on the Western front so that I can finance my armies on the Eastern front. I keep developing my economy, and I'm still puzzled by the well defended fort on the East since my army is really weak.

18:28 to 22:44 After reinforcing my army to the East, I capture the fort. I also redeploy some of my generals so they can govern cities. I still invest in economy.

22:44 to 35:36 I capture another city and a fort in the far north after using boats as a fast way to reach them. As you might see I keep investing to develop the economies, but I'm starting to develop my military to invade the South Rebel Regions.

35:36 to 38:00 my plan for the south is compromised by the presence of a huge Russian Army and the presence of Venetians in my territory. So in reaction I decide to prepare to invade Hungary, and send an army to take the rebels in the south

38:00 to 42:00 I merge my army in the East with my reinforcements outside my fort so that I can have the strength to repel the Huge Russian Army. It turns out that the Russian army isn't hostile and continues on their way to go capture a rebel settlement. At the same time the army I sent to the South rebels against me. That was a little annoying, but I will survive.

42:00 to 45:35 I engage my Hungarian ally and the Venetians.

Hmm what next.

As you might all notice, today I didn't added any videos. Well that's because I'm out of videos to publish. But don't panic I'm currently working on the next chronicles that might be more interesting to watch the earlier one. It will be a campaign with the Polish Faction, at Very Hard/Very Hard.

Medieval 2 Total War The Siege of Vienna

Here is a very well executed siege of the city of Vienna. I hope you enjoy. =)

Medieval 2 Total War Danish against Holy Roman Empire

Here is a very fast and effective battle in my Danish campaign at Very hard/ Very Hard. In this battle my army is a very well composed mix of sword infantry, mercenary crossbow and cavalry.

My first move is to deploy my crossbow in front, not so much because they are strong or will inflict damage to the enemies, but more to see the effectiveness of the enemies fire and take the hits instead of my infantry. At the same time I deploy all my cavalry on the flank of the enemy so that at the good moment I could charge the enemies. Once at proximity I move my infantry group in front of the enemies to push back any skirmisher. Then I send all my cavalry from the flank and charge the enemies general to kill him. Once done the ennemies will panic easily.

As soon as the enemies died, I sent all my infantry into the enemy army and killed many of them. In at the same time as the first army panic, the second army show up on my left flank. But since the first army panicked the sec is easily routed in the pursuing process. The battle ends with a big panic and my army suffer very little lost.

FAQ: Question and Answers by Attila

Since many people ask me advise for their campaign where they meet many difficulty. I decieded well lets Share it with the rest of you guys. This way you might learn many small trick and my way of dealing with the Situation in the game.

Question on City

I'm having a problem with public order in Medieval 2, and I saw your Sicilian Chronicles and the public order is really good. I'm always having constant riots that prevent me from advancing my troops. You have any advice dude?

Yeah, public order is sometime a challenge. One of the first thing to build in a city is a church. The bigger the church the faster you will convert people to your religion, and the more the people will be happy in general. Also, note that cities dislike having military unit and preferring militia, they also seem to dislike mercenary.

So, when I conquer a city I either pillage it or exterminate it. That allow you to breed new population that is loyal to you and reduce the population who would like to rebel. With fortress you just have to pillage since the population is not as big.

There is also a strategy I first formulated for Medieval 1 Total War.

"You can prevent rebellion by making sure it happens."

What I mean by that is that is that if you leave your city without any troop, the rebellion will be smaller, then you take back the city you wanted to rebels and exterminate the population, this way you will have peace of mind for a long time and lots of money.

What sometime my cities make negative money?
I'm not sure but I do think that it's because it must keep order, sustain building, support troops, etc. But over all it's not a big problem since all the money you get is centralized.

Question on Guild
How do you get knight templar or knight hospitalier:

To have those special unit you must build a Guild HQ. Those guild appear as your city developpe, one city can only accept one guild, that also include merchant, spy, and assasin guild. So don't jump on the guild that offer you to join your city too fast and think if it would not be better to choose a knight kind of guild.

Also you need to know that all faction cannot have all guild, some faction are limited to one type of guild. But England actually can have both knight guild. Normaly you get with the game a large paper that show you what you faction can have or not.

Papacy Related Question
How do I kill, Destroy, the Pope, papacy faction?

Well that's the annoying thing, you can't as far as I know... You Can conquer Rome you the Pope will alway reappear somewhere. So As a Christian faction what you need to do is simply to assassinate the pope when he hate you, and leave him alone when you relation with him goes well, and use him to call crusade arround the world.

Late Gameplay Tips and Trick
How do I destroy Mongols?
Well watch The Mongols invasion video I did in the Turkish Chronicles. That will show you the path, and read the comment there are tons of trick, and also some alternate way to fight them.

What are the Victory Condition to win a campaign of Medieval II Total War.
Well you can make a short campaign, you will need 15 province and destroy one faction or two.
If you make a long campaign you will need 45 region, and to capture one of 2 city that you can see in the report tab

What is you computer hardware?
Check in the system requirement page, I give my hardware.

How Many people can you put on the Battle Field?
10 000 but in general you won't play with more then 5000

Medieval 2 Total War FireStorm

Here is a really nice looking siege where the holy roman empire try to take the city from my Danish troop. A lot of fire arrows flying around, really look good in my opinion.

Medieval 2 Total War Siege Warfare Mini Guide

Here is a request from Chris, a Mini Guide explaining a little the strategy to addopt when you want to storm a city. The text might be a little fast so sometime might be a good idea to stop and read. Making Guide is not my specialty. ;)

Feel free to ask questions =)

Here is a very good description of the principle showed in the video that SFDean said in the totalwar.com Forum.

Some nice lessons illustrated in the video sequence.

1. Take (and defend) walls with sword units. No rank bonus for spear units, no cavalry, so sword units are the way to go. (Presumably, also consider use of heavy axe infantry vs. armored swordsmen.)

2. Combine ladders with siege towers. Your men with ladders climb the wall first, further away from the gate, and the defenders bunch there to fight them. Then the siege towers discharge their men as reinforcements CLOSER to the gate. You put a lot of men atop the wall fast and take the gate fast.

3. Use missile troops (preferably archers, not flat trajectory crossbows) to harass/distract/weaken the wall units, but shift fire immediately to another target once your units get into melee combat atop the wall.

4. After you've seized the wall top of the gate area, you can bring your battering ram and breakthrough troops forward to the gate, free of deadly fire from the wall towers in the gate area.

Very explained in my opinion

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicle 17 Taking Jerusalem and Victory

Here is the final victory. I take Jerusalem that I had forgotten about in the victory objectives. So I have control of 58 Region, 38 cities and 20 Castle, by the time my armies reach Jerusalem by a very strong fleet since there was Venetian, Spanish, Mongol fleet on the path to stop me. When I finally reached Jerusalem It was defended by one 9 Star General so It ended up on an Auto Battle. Over all I won 187 Battle and lost 23 Battle. I won on the year 1400. I had 32 generals.

I hope you liked the campaign. I don't think I will make a "Campaign Chronicles" for sometime. It's very time consuming and require hell of a lot of hardware space on my disk. But I plan to release some of the nice moment of my campaigns.

As you might have noted my commenting were far smaller for Medieval 2 then for Rome Total War. This is mainly because, I knew how Rome Total War worked and had a deep understanding of it. So I could put into word my experience since, I had think about it. But for Medieval 2, I'm still in the learning curve. So as you might know, when you are in the action you don't take time to think about it and make the choice instinctively. So, I still need to learn about the game and develop my reflexion, on the subject, before being able to give effective advice and deep thinking about it.

Now, what I would like to know is what you guys want to know about Medieval 2 Total War. What would you like to see? What kind of information would you like me to put on the blog.

(For those who don't understand how to comment on the blog, simply choose "other" enter your name and post what you have to say)

I hope to see some comment!

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 16 Resisting the Mongols

In this episode I repelled the very, very annoying Mongols. Mongols are far too powerful in Medieval 2 Total War. They come with a 9 star general and an army that has 1 gold level of experience. Basically you can only win against them by defending your cities and inflicting the most casualties you can and after a couple of sieges you might win. Some players say that sending armies of Heavy cavalry only also does the job. But it's a little ugly to come to that point...

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 15 Storming a Citadel

Here was my first siege of a 3 walled Citadel. Very challenging, but fun stuff!

Medieval 2 Total War Principles of Strategy: Part 1

Here is a video that Vauban666 created that explain many principle of strategy very good information and can be apply in many games and Total War series are a good exemple of where you can apply those principles. So take a look it's very instructive.

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 14 Defending Against Spain

Here is episode 14 where, on the strategy level, I take a defensive stand against Spain, so that I could rally some troops to invade the Spanish territory more effectively. At the same time I expanded a lot to the East and sent a fleet to take Jerusalem to complete my mission to win the Campaign.

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicle 13 Destroying Sicilian Traitors

This battle is against troops I actually produced myself... What happened is, since I was excommunicated for a long time, my catholic troops lost a lot of loyalty to me and unless I had a family member as a general most of my captains would betray me. That was indeed annoying, but didn't stop me from expanding. In fact that was the most lucrative period I had, with many conquest.

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicle 12 Conquering England

Here is my charge against England. They had chivalric knights but they could not stand my Normand knight charge and got routed very fast.

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicle 11 Charging under a Firestorm

Here is a battle that impressed many people with the flaming arrows. The main effects of those arrows are a decrease in morale. Combined with a charge it ends up a very powerful weapon against the enemies. By winning this battle I won control of a fortress from where I could retrain my troops and push into the Danish homeland

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 10 Holding an other bridge.

here is another bridge battle and another strategy to hold it. Seem to have worked even better then the other one but was also more chaotic =)

sorry for the weird bug with the credits at the end, but I'm too lazy to fix it...

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicle 09 Defending a Bridge from Danish armies

Here is the most effective strategy i found to defend the bridge. Make a line of Halbardiers, and Spearmen, with some Swordsmen, and many archers and you will be able to hold a bridge.

Medieval 2 Total War Siclilian Chronicle 08 Charging the French Armies

In this battle I make what I call a huge charge! The French army simply gets engaged and then runs away. They simply could not resist the impetuous charge from dismounted Norman knights and a charge of the cavalry from my right. So once the first army was destroyed the second was destroyed on the same path as the paniced first one. That was a happy massacre. After that battle the French had little to resist my armies on the strategic level of the game. So in probably 5 turns the French were eliminated from the game.

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian chronicles 07 Attacking Danish

Here is a battle I really won because of 2 simple reasons, my general was a really powerful general and my troops were very good. Because my strategy wasn't good at all. And the enemies had advantage of the hill. So they could have won easily. I also did use my general cavalry unit very well and charged many time into the back of the enemies. Since the enemies had mostly sword and axe unit, the cavalry proved to be very effective. But still I could have play better. =)

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 06 Undersiege by German Crusader

I don't have much to say about this battle, What i find interesting in it, is the effectiveness of halberd against every type of enemies cavalry or infantry.

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 05 Decimation by a rain of arrows

In this battle I continue advancing against Danish troops in Germany. As you might have notice the enemies just wait there doing nothing. Well the reason they did that is that the developers put in an AI behaviour that send skirmishers in front at first and let them fight until they are dead or routed, then the AI engages in full force. As you might have noticed a little in the battle, the Danish had some small units of archers. So that's what was holding them under my heavy fire. That's the kind of scripted AI behaviour that doesn’t make the AI very smart...

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 04 Charging Viking's Armies

In this battle my strategic objective was to prevent a siege by the enemies by attacking them before they set the siege. So in this battle the enemies have 2 armies: The first in front of me and the second on my right flank. So I had to charge the first one and route them as fast as possible and then redeploy and take care of the second army.

On the tactical level I think this battle is a good illustration of the principle of the game. Using the right units against the right enemies. As you might notice in the battle I charged the enemy with my cavalry without infantry support. I was very confident about my success here because the enemies had dismounted feudal knight armed with swords. Cavalry is more than effective against those kinds of troops. You may have noticed when you saw the first unit get charged, that it was decimated very, very fast. It is also important to note that in medieval 2 you must not leave your cavalry engaging infantry, unless you are certain that the enemy will panic. Because when the cavalry is not moving they are vulnerable to attack.

As for the second army, my archers and crossbowmen did most of the job and as soon as I saw the enemies retreating I sent all of my army forward and decimated them making sure most of them would not come back to fight me.

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 03 Under Siege by Hungarians

In this battle I'm under siege by Hungarians on my eastern front. As you may notice here, the enemies had one ram, 1 ladder, and 1 tower. I only had 2 infantry units and some weakened cavalry. So my only chance to win was to prevent the enemy from attacking on multiple fronts. So I rushed my cavalry outside and charged the enemies ladder with the hope to prevent that front. That worked out very well. Once the enemy’s dismounted feudal knights were taken care of I charged the enemy's ram. That also worked out well and secured the gate but sacrificed my knights in the process. That was noble of them. ;)

The rest was mainly faught on the walls where my Dismounted Norman Knights held them with the help of spearman militia. Units with blades are very powerful when it comes to fighting infantry.

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 02 Under Siege by Spain

Here is a siege Spain made against me on my western front. As you can see in this new Total War it is actually fun to defend the wall and you have a chance to win there since troops are very well balanced so far. In this siege I was really lucky that the ram was destroyed by my archers because once it is at the wall there is no way to stop the ram from destroying the gates. So the fact that I destroyed it forced the enemies to use ladders. Now by my short experience with the game, I must say those ladders are a very risky way to storm the walls. So when you siege the walls with ladders make sure to back up your units with a minimum of 2 other units or you simply won't be able to gain control of the walls unless your first units are very experienced and well armoured.

Now at the end you will notice that I charged the fleeing enemies. When you hunt the enemies like that it brings you multiple advantages. When you hunt fleeing enemies you capture them as prisoners. That means that you have different choices after the battle. Set them free, ask a ransom, or simply execute them. I think there are only 2 positions you need to think about. My first choice is always execute. This way I’m sure those soldiers won't come back. The second is to hold them for ransom. The only ransom I asked was for the pope, which gave me 14000 florins. That is a lot. But other then that the most I ever saw was a ransom for 11000 florins once. Most of the time it more like 5000 and below. So might not be worth it most of the time. You must think of how many soldiers you have wasted to gain those few florins. So it's better if those enemie soldiers don't come back in my opinion.

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 01 Under attack by the Holy Roman Empire

This is the first "official" episode of the Sicilian Chronicles. It started on turn 98. At this point My Sicilian Empire broke out of Italy and started invading the North, The East and The West. The reason the war is on multiple fronts is because the Pope excommunicated me. He did that because I was at war against Venice and took Constantinople back from them, resulting in excommunication and the start of 5 crusades against Constantinople. That made me lose a very good general and very good army. Mainly because the battle kept crashing... So the auto battle didn't win the battle...

Since that time my eastern front is very static due to the lack of generals around. The Northern front against the Holy Roman Empire and the Danish is very active and if it wasn't for the lack of loyalty of my captain, I would invade them far faster. The Western front is also static. The war against Spain, at this point, is defensive until new generals can come and take the command of the elite troops in my fortress, or that I gain control of the pope siege with one of my Cardinals.

Now on the tactical level. In this battle I'm under attack by 2 Holy Roman Empire Armies. The one attacking me is composed of 2 units of crossbowmen. My cavalry took care of them very easily. Now the other army came and sent crossbow in front. After some exchange of arrows I noticed the enemies also had a catapult. Those siege weapons are very powerful so I ordered my troops forward. Now the important thing you MUST notice, is the fact that all of my troops converged on the crossbow. Even if that wasn't my order. This lead my army to be surrounded by enemies and made the battle a very bloody fight. So why is that? Well it comes to a feature they added in medieval 2. I love it, but you need to be cautious when you use it.

So as you all probably know, you can group some units so that they keep formation and move as a group. (using the "g" button) Well in Rome they kept formation but not much else... Now in medieval 2. When you order them to attack a group, all of the units choose a different target! So now they all charge in line toward the closest and most logical unit. Very very good feature. But in this battle it didn't help me at all and in fact it nearly made me lose. The reason is that all of my troops chose the crossbow unit as a target. As you will notice, that won't happen to me anymore. The strategy I now use it to order the troops in front of the target I want. And once the archer and crossbowman are out of the way, I order the charge.

Ok now for something completely different. I would like your opinion on the videos quality for the blog, as you might have noticed I used mostly youtube, but lately I used a little Dailymotion and personally I think the quality is better visually, but it might be sometimes slower to load the videos... So what do you guys think, Youtube or Dailymotion? (I will keep uploading on both, but just want your oppinion for the blog) ;-)

Rome Total War German Chronicle 77 Post Victory Tour

German Chronicle 76
envoyé par Attila16

Here is the final video of the German Chronicles. This time there is no statistic in them but I offer people to see by them self the campaign by downloading the saved game of the victory. This way you can explore my campaign as much as you want. And try to expend the empire even more =)
Enjoy!
Download Post German Chronicles saved Campaign for Rome Total War

Rome Total War German Chronicle 76 Under the Sun of Dacia, The Victory

This battle is the end of the German Chronicles. I capture the last Dacian city.

What is special in the battle is the number of archer I have. They decimate the enemies very fast. As you might notice I use flaming arrows. There was many debate about what is the best, flaming arrows or normal arrows. From my experience it depend the context. Flaming arrow is shooting slower, but makes more damage and has a moral effect. Normal arrows are fired faster and hurt a little less.

So my advice is in a Quick Battle use normal arrows, in a medium size battle use a mix of the 2 type of arrows, half archer fire normal and half fire. And in a long battle use Fire arrows since you won't end up out of arrows as fast and then you can fire longer and have a moral effect on the enemies.

Rome Total War German Chronicle 75 Taking controle of Italie

The battle is the final battle against the Scipii. After conquering Sicily I turned myself against the main Scipii battle force and last city. So I started the siege and was certain that the Scipii would send an army to engage my army outside the wall. That's what they did as planned. The first army was engaged mostly by my strong cavalry and my archer and spearman. I would like to point out the fact that I did not engage my Berserker. The reason is simple, once in battle you lost control of them. So I kept them in reserve against the second army.

The second are was really important to destroy since it was the garrison from the city. Meaning that if I left none alive the city was easily conquer without any fight and this is what happened. My berserker and cavalry decimated the enemies and the city was mine destroying the Scipii for good.

Rome Total War German Chronicle 74 Sieged on the far East

This battle show the effectiveness of the V formation when you know where the enemies will come from. So the interesting thing in that battle is not soo much the battle itself but why the gate was open.

The Reason is very simple. The enemy had a spy in my city that opened it. The impact of this is that my city probably has some unrest. But more then that is that the gate was open. This is supposed to have a very bad effect from the game designer point of view. But in fact it turns out very positive for the defender.

When the gate open, you know where the enemies come in. you can put archer on the wall and decimate enemies without risk. You can deploy all you troop to cut the enemies in piece at the gate. So basically. While enemies spy are annoying. They are actually of great help for you!

Rome Total War German Chronicle 73 Carthaginian Rebellion

This battle was an important one. Since my city revolted with Carthaginian troop in it. I was pushed out of the city and was force to make this battle. But by wining this battle I the was able to take back the city I had lost and kill all the population. That allowed me to bring back the order for good in Spain and eliminate all risk to lose ground in Spain.

In the tactical level I have choose a kind of "n"defensive position mainly because the enemies were more then me. That could have been a risky tactic and my troop could have panic. But in the end it worked out well, but I think it was lucky. The "n" formation is very reliable when you have an army of hoplite or armoured hoplite.

Rome Total War German Chronicle 72 All Quiet on the Eastern Front

This battle is not what I would call an important battle. But it had some interesting stuff in it.

I think the most important aspect of the battle is my movement that created a --^-- in my line, that caused the enemies to panic. The enemy also did some damage to my army, but it was fixed in the following turn.

The lack of update

Sorry for the lack of update in the last 2 days. I was busy doing this =)

Venice vs Sicily
envoyé par Attila16

Rome Total War German Chronicle 71 Exterminating Scipii Army

This Battle is the result of a tactical retreat I did. Since Brutii did bride Rome I redeployed my army to a river. By doing so, It allowed me to have a serious strategic advantage over scipii army. And they Falled into the trap as planned and I decimated the Scipii army. After that I could take back Rome with no fighting at all.

Alemanni Chronicles 1

Here is a Chronicle Started by jva1962 inspired by my work, go take a look, it worth it =)

Germanos contra avanzadilla Dacia

Here is a campaign chronicle started by Narboren and inspired by my chronicles, he play as Germans so it sure will be interesting to see how he manage it.
Take a look. =)

Rome Total War German Chronicle 70 Invading Sicily

This is the episode where I capture a first city in Sicily. As you might quickly notice, Scipii armies are still on mainland Italy. So Sicily is badly defended and I take that opportunity to invade it easy.

On the tactical level, you can mostly notice the effectiveness of combining a heavy arrow fire and a cavalry charge. This is devastating for the enemies moral. So Arrow might kill some friendly troop. But overall those are very superficial lost and if it bring you victory many of those fallen from friendly fire will get healed. So never be afraid of friendly fire.

Rome Total War German Chronicle 69 Hunting Brutii in Thracia

This battle wasn't an important one, neither from a strategic point of view or a tactical point of view. The goal was mostly to keep Brutii busy so that I could consolidate some army in the region to start a more effective advance on the Thracian region of the Brutii faction.

On the tactical level, you might notice that the enemy army seem to walk away from my army at the start. This is the result of a quick flanking I did at the very beginning of the battle. I rushed my army on the Left flank to take control of the Hills. This way my archer could become more effective and my defence could also gain some advantage of it.

The decisive moment in that battle is probably when my army routed the enemy general. Once that was done the rest of the battle was mostly hunting down the enemies

Rome Total War German Chronicle 68 Invading South Italy

In this episode I annexe the south Italy. As you might quickly noticed I did not destroy Scipii at this point. South Italy was also a great target of opportunity for many reasons. Most Brutii Armies were busy fighting my troop in Greece and Tracia. So I had a nearly free path to the south Italy. South Italy is also a very developed part of Romans faction, so it's like a money making cow. Scipii were very well defended around the capital, so I could have won against them but with lot of dead soldier. So South Italy was an easy prey.

South Italy also give be a good starting ground to invade Sicily. Targeting Sicily is my goal before capturing the Scipii Capital for the main reason that it's not well defended either. So while most Scipii armies defend the capital on mainland Italy, my troop will be able to take 2 Brutii cities, and all 3 Scipii cities in Sicily. So this episode is in a way the start of that "long term" strategy on the strategic level.

On the Tactical level this battle wasn't really hard I lost most of my troop against the Romans cavalry, but at no point my victory was in danger, so I don't have so much to explain about it this time. Exept that my cavalry did most of the job. =)

System Requierment For Medieval 2 Total War and current Attila hardware

Here is
The Computer I recommend as a Minimum to play Medieval II Total War

Since many people ask me that question here is the official answer.

As stated by CA on the Medieval II section of this site:

Minimum System Requirements:

Creative Assembly recommend the Windows® 2000/XP.
With a processor Celeron 1.8GHz Pentium 4(1500MHz) or equivalent AMD® processor.
512MB RAM. (i personnaly would recommend at least a gig)
8x Speed DVD-ROM drive (note the fact that they ask for a DVD)
11.0 Gigs of uncompressed free hard disk space. (that's a lot!)
100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card and latest drivers. ( that mean probably ATI 9800 and above...)
100% Windows® 2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest drivers.
DirectX® 9.0c.
128MB Hardware Accelerated video card with Shader 1 support and the latest drivers.
Must be 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible.
Monitor must be able to display 1024x768 resolution or above.

Multiplayer:

Internet (TCP / IP) play supported, internet play requires broadband connection and latest drivers, LaN play requires Network card.

Important Note: Some cards may not be compatible with the 3D acceleration features utilised by Medieval II: Total War. Please refer to your hardware manufacturer for 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatibility.

Now from my point of View, I Recommend an ATI Radeon x1600pro 512meg of Ram Minimum This is probably the most balanced card for the moment. It doesn't worth it to buy the best card on the market for the moment because of vista, Vista will requier new hardware, so don't waste money on over expensive 3d card for Medieval 2 Total War

Current Attila Configuration

Operating System: Windows XP Professional
System Manufacturer: IBM
BIOS: Phoenix FirstBios(tm) Desktop Pro Version 2.0 for IBM ThinkCentre.
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1022MB RAM

Card name: Radeon X1600 Series
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: Radeon X1600 Series AGP (0x71C2)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Display Memory: 512.0 MB

Rome Total War German Chronicle 67 The Broken Alliance

This battle started a short war against Carthage. I violated an alliance treaty with Carthage to take the only Carthaginian city in Spain. By starting a war I was making sure to keep peace. Because if I had left my ally alone in Spain, he would have started a war as soon as Spain would have been badly defended. So by capturing this city I was sure that any future treaty with Carthage would be respected, because water would have separated our respective territory.

On the tactical level this battle was interesting especially at the beginning. I started by enter on the Right flank, so that all enemies would concentrate them self on my phalanxes, and as you can see, the Carthaginian Sacred Band took good care to nearly decimating all a unit. So I had to move kick and attack those Sacred Band in the Back. So I rushed with all I had inside the wall engaging at the same time the poenie infantry. Once that poenie infantry broken I charged the sacred band in the back and did make sure none escape. Then I hunted as much troop as possible and prepared myself carefully to engage the town center. Some might think I was maybe too carefully. Well that's because the enemy had 2 level of gold peasant, that mean they were stronger then any of my melee units. So I wanted to make sure I would not get routed by peasant... The rest was historie.

Rome Total War German Chronicle 66 The Siege of Salona

The Siege of Salona is a relatively not important siege from a campaign point of view, because it is a minor city, but it had a lot of Brutii troops in it. By winning this battle I made a good "defensive" move by preventing any siege on my cities by those Brutii troops.

From a tactical stand point, I think that battle is a very well executed siege. One interesting aspect of it is my use of the Chosen Axeman as a distracting force to gain some time to deploy my phalanxes. As you might also notice, my phalanxes didn't really form well due to some kind of bug... but they still did what they had to do.

Rome Total War German Chronicle 65 The End of Spain

This battle shows the effectiveness of the general's bodyguard and also some tricks to attract the enemies outside the walls. So I tried to bait them out of the city and finally succeeded and even killed the general after a long fight. Over all it was a very challenging battle. It was a very hard battle because for some reason, the enemies had very strong morale, and my troops were always shaken by the enemies. I had to advance very carefully with a very close formation. This way every unit could consider themselves well backed up by my other units.

Rome Total War German Chronicle 64 The Brutii's counter Attack on Apollonia

This is the siege where the Brutii try to retake the city of Apollonia with a full size army. In this siege I deployed in a very advanced position because I was very confident my troop would be able to resist against overwhelming enemies. That's what they did. I think what is important to learn from this battle is that even if you really dominate the battle in an advanced position, it is important to at least keep one unit on the town center. The reasons for that are plentiful. The first reason is that, if the enemies flank you, you will have some troops to hold the center against them. The second reason is that if your army panics and flees for some reason, there will always be this one unit in the center that can't panic, so your troops will be able to rally in the center without you losing the battle because your entire army panicked. The third reason would be that that unit will fight to the death, so they will be able to inflict more losses to the enemies.

Rome Total War German Chronicles 63 The siege of Scallabis

There is not much to say about this siege except the fact that you realize how powerful the generals bodyguards are at Very Hard. They killed more troop then my troops killed.

Rome Total War German Chronicles 61 and 62 The siege of Apollonia

The siege of Appolonia is interesting on many aspects. From a Campaign point of view, it wasn't so much useful to lay siege to it at this point. The main reason why I attacked it was because I had the miss conception that victory was closer then it was. So I sieged many heavily protected cities to gain a faster victory.

On the tactical stand point I think this siege is really a great example of a progressive and methodical way to conquer a city that contains a lot of troops. The tactic I used is really what we could call a defensive offence. I advance by defending against counter attacks. The other other really interesting aspect was my way of deploying the units one after the other in what we could compare to the Roman tactic of changing the frontal row of the cohort so that the front line troops were always fresh.

So that tactic had many advantages. It kept the morale of my troops high, their stamina lasted longer, and the enemy could not break my advancing wall of spears. When my unit reached the street where most of the Romans were, I then could deploy the rest of my army to go fight for the town center, knowing my back was well protected.



As you can see in the second part I kept advancing in the streets to keep the enemy busy while my main battle force moved to the center of the city. The center of the city wasn't so hard to take, but still could have been risky since many Romans were legionaries. The decisive moment was my flanking maneuver with my axeman that decimated the enemies from behind.

Rome Total War German Chronicles 60 Siege of Rome (again)

Here is another siege of Rome. Same strategy as usual, but I think I never explained why I deploy the phalanxes in a / formation in front of the street on my right flank.

Well, deploying this way make at least 50% of your phalanx make a kind of "flank" attack, stopping the enemies charge. The rest kill the slowed down enemies.

Also by deploying this way your unit have a foot on the center, that means they can't panic, so they can resist overwhelming forces.

Rome Total War German Chronicles 59 destroying spains military power

This is one of 2 battles where Spain sent all of their forces against my troops. As you can imagine from this battle the second had similar results. You can see in this battle the effectiveness of the V formation. Those 2 battles gave me a free path to conquer a Spanish city on the West.