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.

Rome Total War German Chronicles 58 Last battle against the Julii

This battle is the last against the Julii faction. My army took advantage of the sacrifice of my previous army in Episode 49. The Julii, now weakened, sent two armies against my army. I destroyed the first one with my cavalry and the second one received the same treatment with some help from my berserkers. So I don't have much to say about that battle.

How to play custom Battle with the Medieval 2 Total War demo

This was written in November 2006, since then the mod don't seem to be available anymore.




Some people asked me how to make a custom battle with the Medieval 2 Gold demo. So here are what I found.

Here is how to play custom battle with Medieval 2 Total War Gold Demo.

First thing is to actually have the Gold demo
you can get it there:
Medieval II: Total War Gold Demo

Then, you must make sure you have the Microsoft .NET Framework Version 2.0 Redistributable Package


Then download the the mods: MTWII_GoldDemo_CustomBatt4.exe

(it's no more available, so you will need to find it by yourself, if it still exist somewhere)

With the installer

Extract MTWII_GoldDemo_CustomBattlesMod_V4.exe into the folder:
english:
C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War Demo Gold
german:
C:\Programme\SEGA\Medieval II Total War Demo Gold

There you have the file MedBattleSelector.exe. Start the game with it (not with the standard MTWII exe) and choose in the scenarios
- Agincourt
- Pavia
- otumba
- hastings_tutorial
the wanted battle.

The original pack file will be backuped (bak file) and the choosen battle will be inserted in the pack file.

To restore the original 3 Sega battle setup, push the restore backup file

More details about the selector in the file: MedBattleSelector.txt

Credits:
- shellshock, niko_twow_ru: medbattleselector
- agincourt: d3v, iplk, beastG33
- pavia: sinuhet, blackeyetolga
- otumba: dede_korkut
- hastings_tutorial: sinuhet, niko_twow_ru

The source of the information can be found here
in a post by Repman

I would like to thanks Deathomelet for helping me by finding those information.

Also note if it doesn't work, don't ask me for help, I'm not a modders, go on the post on the TWCenter forum

Rome Total War German Chronicles 57 Change of Style in Siege Warfare

In this siege I decided to test my troops effectiveness at defending the walls of Rome.

I knew that they were not really good enough, so I deployed my phalanxes in the street and I was confident that even if the Romans killed all of my troops on the walls, those phalanxes could still hold the line, and they did.

I would like to point out that the position I deployed them in, is the best position to have a forward defence of the city. The enemies must go through that position, and the arrows of the gate don't reach your position so if the enemies capture the gate, that won't play against you.

Rome Total War German Chronicles 56 Taking Spain's Capital

This siege started the war against my allies, Spain. As you may notice, like in most of my sieges, I enter the city and then wait for the enemies counter attack. Then I destroy the counter attack.

Now what is interesting in this battle is the mistake I made. I divided my troops to surround the enemies in the center of the city. But as you might see, it backfired badly. My troops didn't get into formation and the enemy general charged them, and routed them. This could have been a really bad thing, but in fact, when you consider it, it ended up being a positive thing. The enemy general, while pursuing my fleeing troops, could not help his own troops. Enemy generals, as you can see in this episode, is a very powerful unit. My fleeing troops were pursued and killed, but the rest of the army had plenty of time to kill all the enemies.

Also, the enemy general when he came back to engage my main battle group was tired, so he was not as powerful as before, so my troops could then kill him.

I do believe that if I had concentrated all my troop in one street, that general could have made all of my army flea, instead of just a small part of it.

The lesson of this battle is probably that sometimes the sacrifice of some of your troops can serve you to gain victory.

Rome Total War German Chronicles 55 Mans Wall

This was a great victory, nearly all of the Brutii forces were killed by my small army. It was really simple as you might see. I deployed my phalanxes in a strategic position to hold a force larger than my mine. I deployed my archers on a small hill, this way they can shoot arrows with less of a chance of hitting friendly troops.

In this battle I ordered my archers to concentrate fire on the enemy general. It was a good choice for two reasons: if I killed the general, the enemies would lose morale, and the enemy general's unit were cavalry skirmishers, so he was one of the rare enemy units that could kill my troops, the rest being stopped by my phalanx formation.

But while this city was hard to take, Brutii finally captured it by bribeing my troops with an ambassador. So now I will need to take that city back, but my main problem is that I have no army around.

Rome Total War German Chronicles 54 Crushing a Brutii Rebelion in Athens

Here is a small but effective battle. Basically what happened was that Athens rebelled, that wasn't a big surprise since I only left 1 unit to guard the newly conquered city. My goal wasn't so much to keep it as pillaging all Greek cities as fast as possible to finance the production of new armies.

In the early stage of the battle I rushed against the reinforcing army. Since they came from the city, it was important to me to kill them all. So it ended up as a race to the border of the map to prevent the enemies from exploiting high ground and having a stronger charge. Once routed the second army was easy to destroy, and ultimately no enemies left alive. That allowed me to recapture Athens with no resistance at all.

Rome Total War German Chronicles 53 Campaign Report

Here is the Campaign report many fans asked for. As you can see I expanded a lot in Greece, and I'm getting ready to expand in Spain.

As you can see in the evolution graph the Brutii that were the strongest faction now are losing power because of my invasion of Greece. Greece being a very lucrative place to be =)

Rome Total War German Chronicles 52 forced into the corner

Here is a very cheap tactic I rarely use. In general I use it against the phenomenal number of armies Egypt always has at Very Hard.

But I used it in this battle because I was surrounded by 2 full Brutii armies and I really didn't feel like losing a battle against them. So since they were in my front and in my back, deploying my troops in the corner seemed to be a fair move. Anyway, with an army 2 times the size of my army, they could have won easily. I was able to win but with many dead.

However,this victory wasn't a huge one since Brutii had many more full armies in that region and in the end they repelled my army into my newly conquered Greece regions where in fact my army was useful to bring order back into a city while retraining.

Rome Total War German Chronicles 51 On the path to Athens

Here is a very nice looking battle.

After a rebellion in Athens by the Brutii forces, I was forced to take the city back. This is the battle where I eliminated the 2 small rebel armies. I think that on the tactical level, I really did a good job in the execution, and for once in a rare time I used my skirmisher.

As you might have notice I'm not a huge skirmisher user.

Not much to say about this battle except that I exterminated the population of Athens and now they live in peace… In the video game Rome Total War, probably the best way to keep peace on your cities is “population control”.