Medieval II Total War Campaign Chronicles

Welcome To The Total War Campaign Chronicles Blog

2009-01-24T09:59:00.000-05:00

Welcome to this Medieval II Total War Campaign Chronicles Blog by Attila

This post is an update that explains what was this blog what you can find on it, why it was created and what you should find interesting about it.

The Mission
This Blog Was created to give more contextual information around the Video created by Attila16 on youtube. The original chronicles was the Carthaginian Chronicles composed of Carthaginians campaign videos and battles for a total of 87 episodes. Those video are currently exclusively available on youtube.

Following the great popularity of that series of video base on the video game Rome Total War, the German Chronicle started. Since the strategy use by Attila brought a lot of question, he created this blog to give contextual information about his German Chronicles.

With the publishing of Medieval II Total War by SEGA and Creative Assembly, Attila moved to this new video game. He then created a Sicilian Chronicles compose of 17 episodes showing the learning of the game and some really nice battle.

After this exploration Attila improved the concept with the Polish Chronicles with 37 episodes, showing both the campaign and the battles with very good explanation of the strategy use and motivation behind them.

The 47 Turkish Chronicles then followed and probably were the most complete chronicles showing both the campaign level of the game and the battle. After the victory, the chronicles skipped ahead to the war against Mongols. So this Chronicles was one of the favourite and worth a look showing some useful strategy to fight the Mongols.

Finally the last chronicles from Attila was the Holy Roman Empire chronicles with 19 episode was done by democratic choice and was publish on dateyourgame.com

The move to dateyourgame.com was made to allow people to contribute to the blog and share interest about a larger diversity of video game.

The move to dateyourgame.com also mean that the Medieval II Total War blog is no longer active but still contain a lot of really useful information about how to play and we encourage you to read it and check the Archive on your Right

Enjoy the battles and feel free to leave comment =)

Empire Total War System Requirement

2009-01-24T08:42:00.000-05:00

This is the MINIMUM system requirement for Empire: Total War.

2.4Ghz single core processor

256MB Gfx card (DX9 compaitble)

1GB RAM (For XP, 2GB if using Vista)

So in Clear, if you were able to run Medieval II Total War, you should be able to run Empire Total War.

Medieval II Total War: Holy Roman Empire Chronicles 01

2007-03-08T14:27:00.000-05:00

I choosed to make this new and last Medieval II Total War Chronicles available only here on the Dateyourgame.com Blog for simple reason. I have more control over it, it’s easier to participate and it’s far less work for me. So enjoy, this will be a short campaign, but I will try to write interesting and useful stuff.

See you on Dateyourgame!

Next Medieval II Total War Chronicles Faction

2007-03-01T17:51:00.000-05:00

The next faction for the chronicles will be The Holy Roman Empire.

This will be the last chronicles I will do and will be a "short" campaign. So I hope you guys will enjoy =)

Medieval II Total War Next Chronicles

2007-02-25T19:35:00.000-05:00

Here is a a poll many people asked. The next Chronicles will be a democratic one the faction that will have the most vote will be the faction I will play when I will come out of my break, tell your friend so that they can come and vote!

Ok, the poll I first posted was from a really bad services. Was very easy to abuse that was absurd, basically you could vote as much as you want for the faction you wanted. So I did some research and found an better way to make a poll, but you will need to come on my new blog http://www.dateyourgame.com/ to vote.

Sorry about that... but it's a lot of learning at once and this way it will be a more legitimate vote.

2007-02-18T11:37:00.001-05:00

Small note to those interested since a couple days, I created a new blog, that I plan to make more participative. It concern all all video game instead of being Total War specific like this blog here.
If any of you is interested to participate come take a look at Dateyourgame.com
If you want to post video game related text, videos, etc. subscribe and tell me what you are interested to do. =)
On the long term, this will maybe become a more "normal" website, then it's current blog format.

2007-02-17T08:58:00.000-05:00

Small question, how many of you would like to buy DVD with one series of the Chronicles with video at the resolution 512x384 and a far better quality instead of the current 320x240? Meaning it would look far better then the current one videos online.

I ask because some peoples told me a long time ago that they would be interested.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 38

2007-02-15T14:05:00.001-05:00

Here is the expected last episode of the Turkish Chronicles of Medieval II Total War. In this episode you can see one battle and some auto battle. The battle you see was a serious challenge, since there were 2 armies attacking me one from the fortress and one outside the walls. My force wasn't really expected to fight that battle. So it ended as a mutual destruction battle. I hope you will enjoy that ending =)

Since I'm now on a well deserve "break" for sometime, and I know many of you wonders how I would have play this faction or that faction, here is a "save" pack. Containing 42 saved games, I did since I started playing Medieval II Total War. Most save contain the Turn numbers, and some have weird name. =)

It contain save from:
Byzantine,
Danish,
England,
French
Moors,
Poland,
Turk,
Sicilien,
So Take a look, and check how I managed my empires.
Download Attila saved Games
(put the saved game in your Medieval II Total War save folder)

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 37

2007-02-14T15:07:00.000-05:00

Here is an ambush I did with a "support" army as you can see my army is made exclusively of cavalry and artillery, it wasn't in my plan that this army would end up leading the war on the Mongols but here is the first battle it did. The enemies simply could not resist the arrows rain and decided to retreat with my cavalry following and decimating them.

Now I must warn you, the next episode will be the last episode of the Turkish Chronicles. It will show the "end" of my reconquest of the territory taken by Mongols.

After that last episode I will explain what I will do next but be warn, I will take a very long break from making Total War Chronicles as they are because it's a lot of work and I can't sustain it much more without help and looking back on what I did, it is already intimidating as it is and just watching all them in a row would take weeks!

Now I know many people are addicted… so I will propose an alternative tomorrow... So don't panic, take it easy! =)

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 36

2007-02-13T07:57:00.000-05:00

This battle happens as my armies are getting in position for the "finishing move" against the Mongols. Since my army wasn't that good and I saw the enemies, I pulled back to this river "hoping" to resist the Mongols army near Vilnius.

This battle is a really good illustration of how effective is my strategy to hold river or bridge since it's a kill ration of 36 kill for one lost. I must say I didn't expect to have won that with so few lost.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 35

2007-02-12T10:28:00.000-05:00

Here is a very secondary battle in the war against Mongols. Basically it’s my Jihad army, that had captured Vienna earlier, that attack the Mongols jihad army. It's not a really good battle in my opinion. I was really disorganized, I could have play really better but from a campaign point of view, the number of dead in my army wasn't a big deal as long as I won. Right after the victory I disbanded my army, so that they no more cost me anything in upkeep. They were not useful in that region anymore.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 34

2007-02-11T09:24:00.000-05:00

(Small reminder here, for those who would have missed my comment a couple days ago. My 3D card is dead, so my future video will probably lag, until I replace my 3D card.)

Since my "new" sieging army was in position, it was important to keep any potential fight out of the open field. The Mongols have an army that came on the right, to make sure this army (all of unit had 3 silver level of experience) would not attack my sieging army in the back I sent my army from the episode 32 to hold the bridge.

As you can see it worked well and all enemies were kill, and it secured the siege of Kiev.

I think what is interesting in this battle is the fact that the enemies had rocket launchers and the psychological aspect of that. It seems to kill a lot of your men, but in that case, it worth holding the position under fire.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 33

2007-02-09T22:21:00.000-05:00

Here is the reason why I lost back Kiev in the first place. At the episode 28 I knew the Mongol's King was in the City of Caffa. I didn't troops to defend Kiev after the episode 28 and sent my victorious army directly to Caffa. This way I was sure to kill the king of the Mongols. The battle of the episode 32 was a siege to make sure the strong Mongol Army in Kiev would not come to save the Mongols King.

This battle was, as you can see by the result, hard fight since the King was 9 star of Command, and 1 gold level of experience. I had to be careful when entering and I was lucky to actually to be able to surround them.

Here was the death of the last powerful Mongol general.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 32

2007-02-08T22:04:00.000-05:00

This episode shows the last Mongols "gold" level of experience army lifting a siege on Kiev. I knew that my sieging army would not last long against them, so my goal was to weaken them as much as possible as I did in previous episode. I think the interesting thing you can see in the episode is how easy my infantry run away in front of the enemies. I took me 1 turn to recover from that battle, and 2 turn to get the same army and a very stronger army back to sieging Kiev.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 31

2007-02-07T08:22:00.000-05:00

Today episode is a short one; there is an assassination, 2 auto battle siege, and 1 small battle against isolated Mongols troops.

To give you some idea of what is happening in the rest of the campaign, the war against Milan after many battles is changing for a guerrilla war toward a conquest war where Milan fort and city fall very quickly in front of my troops. The Danish are getting weaker after sieging my forts in the north many times without success. The Christian weaken the front as they send troop to crusade against Portuguese. Taking this opportunity, I raise 3 Jihads army that charge toward those Christian empty frontier. The interesting impacts of that I that since Mongols are Muslim, the sent a Jihad. Meaning, they have a other isolated army that my Jihads will enjoy destroying once the target is conquer.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 30 Tour and Assasination

2007-02-05T15:02:00.000-05:00

Today, I can only give you a small tour of the campaign overall so that you guys know vaguely what kind of empire I have. And two battle assassination. (That’s also the action I had lately on that front). The Mongols are now very weak and it's just a question of time before they are destroy.

The Year is 1312 the turn showed are 115 to 117.

If you have questioned feel free to ask. =)

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 29 Counter Attack on Kiev

2007-02-04T15:26:00.000-05:00

(the video has wrong title, so don't panic...)

This is the counter Attack of the Mongols on Kiev. It was a hard battle since the enemies were 2 level of gold in experience. As you can see in the very long video, they fought to the last. The strategy I used was the same very effective one as before but this I had, cannon, I very much dislike cannons since they are not as effective in urban warfare as the catapult are.

Anyway Enjoy!

Conquer the City Under Siege! Tournement

2007-02-03T11:58:00.000-05:00

Today I found an interesting thing,
Conquer the City Under Siege! 1 vs 1 Tournament

Basically winner of Medieval II Total War Tournement Can win 700$ or 300$ in buying stuff at best buy.

It's a competition for All US and Canadian resident.

Of course since organizer were scare of me. They excluded Québec (where I live), so I can't make it in the tournament. (not that I really care, but nice of them to think about me (hehe)).

So, if you guys are interested you might give it a try and show that I the strategy I gave you by my videos worth something on the battlefield! =)
here is the link

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 28 Battle for Kiev

2007-02-03T10:07:00.000-05:00

Finaly! the episode 28...

In this episode you can finally see cannon. Basically what happened was that the enemies used a 2 unit to allow his the garrison to come out of Kiev and fight on the open. But I guess because of the cannon, the AI bugged there... So I just had too empty all my bullet on the enemies and once that was done wait until I was sure there was no time left for the enemies to make my forces panic to then engage them with my archer cavalry.

So in fact all the enemies died in that battle and I took Kiev without a siege...
To give you the global idea of the Mongols front, they have 2 city and one fort left (I gave them back Nuremberg, (just for fun)).

hmm, trouble...

2007-02-02T14:25:00.000-05:00

Hmm didn't posted a medieval II Total War video in 2 days!
No panic, stay calm!
Seem google video is having a hard time, and I had a hardtime to record the episode 28... I failed to record two battle... before the famous battle of the episode 28 finaly worked... Now that I got the video... it's the video hosting that doesn't work... great... so lets hope all that will be fix so that you guys can have your daily dose of Medieval II Total War...

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 27 Clearing the way

2007-01-30T18:29:00.000-05:00

After the previous siege, The Mongols are now very weak on the Eastern front. So I took my defending troop, and sent them to attack the remaining army of the Mongols on the East. So by this battle I now have the clear path to take back what I gave the Mongols. The only remaining Mongols after that will be huge army around Kiev, and some Army on the East that try to conquer the south, but they will be well welcome.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 26 Begining of the End

2007-01-29T17:25:00.000-05:00

This is an other siege defense, not much to add about the tactic, except that i lost a lot of soldier because of friendly fire but not really a problem, i will cost me less upkeep.

After this victory, the Mongols lost all strong army of on the far east. So I will lead my armies to take back the 2 fort on the East

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 25

2007-01-28T15:05:00.000-05:00

This episode is a victory against the Mongols, by wasting the Mongols against my forts, the Mongols now opened the way for so that I take back the east without any important resistance since the rest of them were more concentrated around Kiev instead of the far East.

For those who were a little doubtful because of my many defeats, note that from this point in the campaign, it's more then likely there won't be too many defeat anymore until I attack the region of Kiev. This region will probably be the last stand of the Mongols. (In a couple of videos (I guess)).

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 24 Counter Attack

2007-01-27T15:16:00.000-05:00

(hmm seem the video for some weird reason have some bug...)
At that point in the campaign the advantage switch side, the Mongols now weaken are producing normal units, and without all the original experience of early Mongols army, Mongols are no better then any faction, So I engage then like I would for any other enemies. So even without over whelming force, or elite troops, I can take back all that was lost. Of course there are still many Mongols armies to weaken, but now I can conquer back the East.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 23 The Trap

2007-01-26T16:43:00.000-05:00

This siege is the result of my previous organize retreat. The enemy Mongols reach my city weaken, and get kill to the last. Simple but effective strategy. As you all saw, see, and will see. =)

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 22 More Skirmish

2007-01-25T21:27:00.000-05:00

This episode show one assassination battle and one battle.

I think this battle show the impact of my previous battle and my global strategy. I think it's a good illustration of how much the Mongols are able to make my troops run away easily. But It also show that now the Mongols are getting weaker since I'm able to fight them for a long time. So even if I lost once more, this battle will lead to the next battle and the multiple defeat will switch into multiple victory on all front. On the German front against the cities I gave mongols I have 3 army sieging them. So I will conquer all the lost ground back. But it will take many battle I guess...

There is still some very strong army around, but most of the original elite Mongols are dead.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 21 Hold and Run Again

2007-01-24T12:05:00.000-05:00

Here is a battle that followed the previous one in the same turn. So this is my retreating army, once again under attack. That time I lost most of my army, but it cost half of the enemy army to do that, so it's a fair share. The impact of this defeat was that the enemy leaded his army toward my territory to siege a city.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 20 Hold and Run

2007-01-23T14:10:00.000-05:00

This episode give you a small idea of the empire, my army on the east retreat from the previous battle, the war goes on in Italy against Milan and Sicilian, but nothing really important happen there.

So this battle happens as I try to flank the Mongols from the north. They stop me before I can siege the city.

The battle is missing probably 10 min of waiting for the Mongols to do anything. That's the main reason why my catapults are in front of my infantry instead of the back of my infantry. But that small detail didn't really do much difference since my goal war to weaken the Mongols and then pull back. That Time I lost many soldier, but this battle and my retreat actually helped me attract the enemies on the North. As my army will retreat it will be attacked by an other army. Inflicting more dead to the enemies (next day) and encouraging them to attack one of my cities and get exterminated as usual.

Shogun Total War Trailer and mini Guide

2007-01-23T08:57:00.000-05:00

Here is a trailer that was made for Shogun, I think it show many aspect and principle that are the core strategy concept behind the creation of this series of game. There is also many strategic advice. So I think it's a good thing for every one to watch this to learn or refresh some strategy principle.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 19 Hit and Run

2007-01-22T12:13:00.000-05:00

Back the the regular programming ;)

This is the first battle of a series of battles that have the objective to weaken the enemy armies over time by inflicting casualties that the Mongols won't be able to compensate as fast as I will. Also the fact that the casualties the Mongols have are 3 levels of silver troops makes the lost even more important.

During the battle I use my missile units until I'm out of ammo. As soon as all my ammo is gone and my troops don’t have the moral to continue the fight, I start my retreat and make sure to leave some expendable infantry to cover my general and cavalry escape. So, this defeat is a long term victory that will serve me well.
(Apologies for the small radio music part...)

My birthday post 25 years old and an overview of my work since 5 months. Medieval II Total War and the rest!

2007-01-21T11:40:00.000-05:00

Today is my birthday, so I decided to make a special post where I will show some of the work I did in the past 5 months. I will be hard to choose them since I have now over 377 videos...

So one thing many people here don't know is that my background as a gamer is mostly in the First Person Shooter type of game. I always enjoyed Tactical shooter of the Tom Clancy series, until Ubisoft ruined it by bringing it on Xbox and the 360. So here are some good moment of game play I had in Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter at hard difficulty level. (WARNING It's long).

This is me in multiplayer DeathMatch. Was a little hard to record since recording was making me lag a lot.

There is also this good attempt to finish the Arma Armed Assault demo missions Alone that was very fun, since it's a "simulation" game used by some European armies to train soldier. I fail, but that sure was a good try. =)

Now I don't really limit myself to Tactical Shooter, I was also a big fan of Halo Combat Evolved.

Or also enjoyed F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon, moded it a lot and won a T-Shirt of It because of my maps. But I was better as a player as I am in many game...

Then there is alway the Real Time Strategy type of game, like Company of Heroes that I enjoyed a little

But I must say that Soldier Heroes of World War II was probably the best real time strategy game I played in the last couple years, even if it was a little limited sometime...

Then there is alway Rôle playing games like oblivion that I played a lot, and this video is making fun of it by showing how weak my character is in bow skill and the absurd result it lead to =)

But of course my favorit game of all time is the Total War series, and I played those a lot! (I think you could guess that by yourself.)

This is my "first video" (wasn't really... but who care...)

And here is an other of my really popular Rome Total War video showing one of the most chaotic battle ever.

Here is an other very popular video from Rome Total War where I show the Spartans At work =)

Then there is My first "campaign chronicles". Here is one battle I like with a battle oriented on assassinating many senate generals.

Not to forget the Challenge episode, where I challenged people to win a very very hard battle from that save game. And trust me If you can win It, your a great player =)
I did won it, but hehe don't ask me to show you the video right now! Try it first.

There is also the very enjoyed strategy from the episode 36 with the kind of box formation

And the series of battle of the Hamburger hill episode!

The there are alway Request I did for my fans, like the battle of Cannae.

Some multiplayer... (i'm not a fanatic...)

And then the endless battle on bridge with the german chronicles with the famous V formation

Or some Really glorius defeat

There is also some weird siege where the strategy allow me to kill the enemies until the last one.

Then there alway is the sicilian chronicles good moment like the charge of the Danish Army

Or some independant battle from different campaign like this battle against a Mongols army

And this very very popular video guide i did

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 17-18 The Storm

2007-01-21T09:52:00.000-05:00

This first part shows you some important element of the war against Mongols. As you can see, I have 2 armies infiltrating the Mongols Territory on the East from the North and The South in the goal is not so much to gain victory, against so many enemies but to divide the enemies. My center of the East front is weak for apply the strategy of the best offence is defence, leading to the following battle.

As for the West front, you can see I start consolidating armies to start sieging the 2 city I gave the Mongols earlier. Those Cities are mostly defended by Spear Militia. I won't storm them, just siege them. Encouraging the Mongols Army from the East to come try to help and by doing so dividing them even more.

This battle is probably the best example of how to totally decimate an army stronger then you. Those Mongols had 3 level of silver in experience. In clear they kill a lot. So that’s where the missile superiority reveals itself. I had 3 units of artillery and tons of archer cavalry. By defending this single street I made sure to make the enemy as compact as they could be so that all my arrows and fire stone would have a maximum effect on the enemies. Here goes a first Mongols army. Many more to go ;-)

Napoleon knew how effective cannons could be in the city street, well I think that show you explicitly how. =)

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 16 Skirmish

2007-01-20T11:48:00.000-05:00

This first real battle was a test I wanted to make before engaging my full forces. Since I had killed nearly all good general. I had to have an idea how easier it would be to win against the remaining armies. It was also a good test of my own force. I had to know how well my troop would do against so many enemies.

As soon as I had a good idea of those informations, I retreated, ready to fight an other day =)

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 15 Divide to Conquer

2007-01-19T10:29:00.000-05:00

Ok here we go for the Mongols Invasion part of the Turkish Chronicles

But first some context the "war" starts at the turn 79.
Since the turn 45, I control, Russia, Hungarian, Sicily, half of Germany and most of the Polish territory.

Now this part of the campaign will only show stuff related to the Mongols, so, the war against most of Europe will be skip.

Let’s begin by some strategy explanations. Since as we all know Mongols have many 9 stars general, many very experienced units. They are hard to destroy, also they move as a horde around pillaging everything and most of the time leaving city as rebel. So that leaded me to ask myself well how to stop that?

The answer I found was, well if I were them and I have nothing to defend, I would move as a horde, but when you have things to defend, you need to divide your force so that you don't lose ground. So I choose to star the war by giving the Mongols the fort of Bulgar as the video will show. But giving 1 fort still doesn't force the enemy to spread a lot. So I gave The Mongols the city of Nuremberg. Giving cities, also gave me an alliance with the Mongols. So by giving the city of Nuremberg to them, I was hoping they would star a war against European faction, making their army walk on my territory to reach that front. Of course I wasn't very convinced that this would work, but was worth trying.

In fact it worked but in an unexpected way. Since Nuremberg and an other city I gave them were more developed, well the Mongols made them Capital. So leaving such city without a governor is a bad Idea. So the Mongols sent most of their generals alone (trusting my alliance) toward those city in middle Europe. Seeing all those 9 star general moving alone was a very very very good target of opportunity. But I wasn't the one starting the hostilities. They did by attacking a fort on the East. As soon as they did that, I send my Archer cavalry to kill all those isolated Mongols generals, and killed right at the beginning of the war 7 generals in battles where my only lose were from friendly fire. Leaving probably only 4 or 5 generals far less powerful, the strongest being probably 5 star of command.

So the first video show show you how I killed those general, and the future video will show you the war against the powerful armies of the Mongols.

If you need some enlightenment, feel free to ask in the comment.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 14 Mongols Invasion Teaser

2007-01-16T16:39:00.000-05:00

Since every one was wondering what will happen against the Mongols. How I will defeat them, I decided to skip ahead in the Turn and go to the point. The War against Mongols. So I had to skip, the end of Hungarian, Venetian, Holy Roman Empire, Polish, Russian, France (not by me), England (not by me). It's a very weird game...

So... Like every one I hate Mongols, because they start very powerful in statistic. But they are far from invincible and as you will see in the future episodes I will use some really unique strategy against them. I never had to fight the Mongols with the Turk before, so I'm a little creative in my way to deal with them, and I'm sure you will "intellectually" enjoy the way I fight them.

Now I got something to ask to all fans of my chronicles. Spread the word of this blog around the net and to your friends. I have a really stable audience, but the bigger is the better. It's great to have your comments questions. So, talk about this blog, and explain why it's that great that you come back read it and watch it every day since 4 months.

By sharing the knowledge of this blog I think it can push Creative Assembly to improve the AI in the future, because of the "Attila Factor". Hehe (in all humility)
;)

So Get ready for the Mongols and some reading, because it will be a little different then the normal campaign chronicles and if I don't explain, people will all be "Hmm what just happen there?", "omg", "wow, how did you do that!?", "How did you think about that!", "Man that's weird","lol, Next!" etc.
;)

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 13 Turn 45-47

2007-01-15T14:33:00.000-05:00

Hmm, not much to say at that point. My counter attack against Constantinople is my main concern. All front are secure, Egypt is destroy. My "raiding" army advance against Polish. So confident of the situation I send my army to siege Constantinople against Hungarians. Since my army was mostly Spear militia Hungarian.

The siege of Constantinople is as you can see really laggy, I even had to pause some time to give order. But it was a great battle. The strategy was simple, Use the city wall to prevent any one from flanking my troop and use my number advantage to compensate the enemy good troop. All that under a rain of arrows. So enjoy the chaos

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 12 Turn 44-45

2007-01-13T15:11:00.000-05:00

After the last victory against Egypt the front is secure. Hungarian at that point try to counter attack me, but it's no big deal, since my goal is to pillage Europe more then holding it. Since Mongols will come to invade it's time for me to start preparing for them.

On the north front my army advance on neutral ground against with the ultimate goal of invading Russia. I also rush on the polish front so that I can have fort to start invading Russia, but I don't invest much attention on that point since the Position I will gain from Polish fort will be very expose to attack from Russia, Hungarians and The Holy Roman Empire. Leading to this battle.

This battle is really interesting, because I had more troops, but the enemy had far better troops. So I came outside the walls to canalize the attack from the siege equipment. But because I had forgotten about the running order my cavalry had, I had to engage the knight. I won at fist, but over time the enemies’ cavalry proved to be too strong for my very light archer cavalry. All my cavalry broke, but at least it gained some time make the enemies attack with only the battering ram. That wasn't what I wanted... But the enemies leaded the way. So my last hope what to break the enemy by ambushing them inside the walls. So I sent my infantry off the walls, but because a weird bug, they stopped on the way, and came too late. But I deployed my cavalry in all direction ready to charge the enemies and it turned out good. That was a "Heroic" victory.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 11 Turn 43-44

2007-01-12T12:14:00.000-05:00

After killing the polish army I'm able to capture the Polish fort without resistance. From That point I decided to make my north army a kind of raiding army to pillage every thing on the path.
On the East I advance on Neutral, both on Baghdad and Russian neutral part. Near Venetian territory I get ready to engage hostility against them.

The Egyptian front reaches an end with this battle

In this battle I divide my to surround the enemies and attack them in sandwich from both side. Food always inspire good tactic, be careful next time you eat ;)
So after killing a first general I engage my force to kill the second one that won against me one time and as you can see he still put up a good fight and get kill by an arrow. After his death, the rest is just some hunting of infantry that can't do anything against my archer cavalry.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 10 Turn 40-43

2007-01-10T11:15:00.000-05:00

At that point in the campaign the Egypt front is still my priority. The faster I will deal with them, the faster I will be able to redeploy my resource on the north front. So I recruit cavalry units in nearby city to quickly continue the fight.

On the Hungarian front I exploit the lack of defender to capture as quickly as I can city and fort. I totally ignore the fact that Constantinople is under Hungarians control for the moment since I can't do much about it for the moment.

After sending a spy on Poland territory I noticed the weak defence on the polish fort. So I will Start the war as soon as I can taking the weakness as an opportunity to conquer more land fast leading to this battle, I choose to lead personally so that I could capture the fort without a siege.

This battle is very easy since my archer did the entire job against an enemy that could not do anything except losing against so many arrows.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 09 Turn 36-40

2007-01-09T11:48:00.000-05:00

In those turn I reach the number of region necessary to win a "short" campaign. Meaning I could have end the campaign there. But since so many people seem to enjoy this campaign. I will continue it until I get too lazy to continue.

So at that point I keep developing my economy and advance on Egypt territory and Hungarian territory.
All those expansion lead to the battle you will enjoy a lot since I FINALLY! Have a defeat. =)

In that battle I take care of the first enemy army easily, but the second army engaged me fast and it is the enemy king that won the battle for them. He resisted all my cavalry and kills my general. So I retreated what could be save.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 08 Turn 32-36

2007-01-08T13:43:00.000-05:00

In this episode the war against Hungarian starts. But it's not much of a challenge since at the same time I finally destroy Byzantine. As for crusade you can see many of them south of Constantinople. As I said before I will take this opportunity to counter attack Hungarian and fight while those huge crusader are there doing nothing.

As you can see by diplomacies, since my Byzantine enemies were destroying, the other factions are intimidated by me and offer me peace and trade right.

At the same time I start consolidating my empire by reinforcing my force and start to move troop toward north both toward Russia and Hungarians territories.

One of the coming challenges will be to take back Constantinople from Hungarian since they did put a very big garrison in the city. So slowly but surely.

On the Egyptian front, I divide my force to finish them as fast as I can by going south and right into Egypt.

Here is a battle that I didn't really enjoyed, Hungarian trying to lift a siege.

The strategy is really simply, decimated them before charging them. The enemy was too strong to retreat, but was too weak to attack. Leading to This weird battle...

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 07 Turn 26-32

2007-01-07T13:47:00.000-05:00

After Chasing a fist Egyptian army out of my territory, I turn my eyes toward the south and send my army toward south totally ignoring on purpose the presence of an Egyptian army sieging a neutral city.

As you can see as the episode go on, I really quickly advance on Egypt territory, mostly because Egypt army are still busy on the neutral city.

On the West the war against Byzantine is going well and easily. I take the fort in Greece and the Balkan are soon to fall under my control.

As you can see, Christian start making crusade against Jerusalem and the armies come toward my empire. Since I don't want to invest into bigger army at that point, I build up fleet to control the 2 way into Turk territory by land. By controlling those positions I block all attempt of crusade and I can actually use the concentration of troop in the crusade to attack the undefended Christian territory. I also deploy small unit on the other side of the passage so that they can't come on my main territory.

In the end Egypt tried to lift a siege leading to this battle

In this battle Egypt force are divided because of the city. This was a good thing for me and allowed me to kill them all divided. The hard part was really to kill the enemy general that resisted a long time even with a lot of cavalry around him.

Medieval II Total War Tuskish Chronicles 06 Turn 17-26

2007-01-05T13:33:00.000-05:00

Now that the Turkish Empire is starting to take form with a less divided territory, I start consolidating my economy, my religion and prepare to continue my war against the Byzantine Empire. Constantinople is rioting and at this point it is clear that I won't hold it against a rebellion, so I evacuate it to continue my war against the Byzantines on the West. On my southern border, Egypt advanced on rebel territory posing a problem to my empire. That will need to be dealt with later.

At 15 min, Egypt starts hostility by walking on my territory and sending an army near a rebel city I am sieging. I decide to lift the siege and fight the enemy army on my territory so that I can counter attack Egypt as fast as possible and take the war to them.

In this battle my first target is to eliminate the enemy’s horse archers so that at least one flank is secure. Then I engage my infantry that easily win against the enemies. The quick death of the enemy general also speeds up the process. It's a rather easy victory.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 05 Turn 17

2007-01-04T13:27:00.000-05:00

(Small error in the video title... I'm far from perfect...)
So this is the Turn 17, a very small episode.
After destroying the Byzantine army outside the wall, I take Constantinople without a fight. By pillaging it, it gives me the necessary money to invest in all my cities. But pillaging also means I won't be able to hold the city against a rebellion that you will see in future turn.

This battle is against neutral trying to lift a siege, so I use the same tactic that I used in earlier battle except that this time I actually had good cavalry that could engage in close combat leading to a quick victory with very few lost.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 04 Turn 10-16

2007-01-03T12:42:00.000-05:00

Very early in the game it is important to develop your economy not so much to make money, but to sustain your future army. One mistake you might make is to actually believed that it is important to develop your economy to actually become rich. But it’s not the goal at all. Your economy is a way to sustain your empire, not to make it rich. Conquering territory is what makes your empire rich. The only goal you have when you develop you economy is to maintain a balance between the money you make and the cost of maintaining your empire.

So you need to invest the money you make from your farm, road, port, merchant, etc, into building your armies and the money you make from pillage to developing your building and economy to sustain your empire. And this episode shows in a way show that process.

Small detail here, for some reason a small part of the campaign is missing…
So in that missing part I destroyed Byzantine army near my newly conquered city. Build a boat and landed my troop near Constantinople. I then engaged the enemies outside the city wall leading to this battle.

This is an other night battle where I decimate the enemies from a far and rout the first army really quick.

Then I reform my army and prepare to engage the second army. It is important that no soldier of the second army escape so that I can capture Constantinople in the same turn, undefended.

This second army is better then the fist one and I use my infantry to keep the enemy infantry busy. During that time I can capture the isolated enemy general, leaded to a complete defeat of the enemies. The rest is just a pursuit of the routed army. Simply but effective plan =)

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 03 Turn 8-10

2007-01-02T13:25:00.000-05:00

In this episode the war against Byzantine front is my priority. As you can see, Byzantine have troop on my territory, but I choose to totally ignore them. By bringing the fight to them I make sure they will need to be reactive to me instead of proactive. I then attack a 9 star Byzantine general that has a less troop then me, but still can put out a good fight. I choose to make a night Attack because this gives my general a one star boost that will be really useful against the very strong enemy general. So, sorry if you don’t see much action in the dark…

In the battle I flank the enemy with my archer cavalry forcing the enemy to redeploy creating chaos in his rank. This chaos allows me to isolate enemy units, use my infantry against smaller number and decimate the enemies under a rain of arrows. Until the enemies retreat.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 02 Turn 5-8

2007-01-01T13:42:00.001-05:00

This second episode shows you what I was explaining before in the first episode. the expansion of the Byzantine on the West is a menace. So I took this opportunity to engage the Byzantine into a war that had to happen sooner or later. So, the first battles against Byzantine happen when they try to lift a siege. This battle wasn’t expected so soon, but played in my favor.

By engaging me outside the wall it allows me to use my archer cavalry mobility and superiority to decimate the enemies on the flank. At the same moment his cavalry archer where attacking me on my left flank But inflicted me superficial lost and were weaken by my foot archer at the same time.

An other, advantage I had was that by trying to lift a siege, the Byzantines were dividing their forces into two armies. So you could call that divide to conquer. =)

In this second part of the turn 8 Byzantine makes a minor victory again my reinforcement. Soon followed by an attempt to break siege by an other rebel fort.

The Tactic I use is the same as in the first battle of the episode one. I encircle the enemies and engage them on all side. I think what made that battle easier was the very early death of the enemy general. I won with few dead soldiers.

Medieval II Total War Turkish Chronicles 01 Turn 1-5

2006-12-31T23:35:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-28T16:16:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-27T11:29:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-26T10:35:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-21T17:36:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-12-20T13:35:00.001-05:00

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

2006-12-20T09:03:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-19T10:25:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-18T17:49:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-17T12:13:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-16T10:32:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-15T11:27:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-15T10:38:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-14T15:35:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-13T13:47:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-12T09:29:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-10T14:53:00.000-05:00

(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

2006-12-09T14:35:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-08T15:29:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-07T20:44:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-07T13:30:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-06T14:47:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-05T11:07:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-04T16:10:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-12-04T07:50:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-12-02T18:36:00.000-05:00

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

2006-12-01T11:14:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-29T13:25:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-29T08:29:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-28T19:54:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-28T16:18:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-27T11:58:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-26T19:11:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-26T16:35:00.000-05:00

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

Medieval 2 Total War Principles of Strategy: Part 1

2006-11-26T16:31:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-26T10:45:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-25T07:46:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-24T13:33:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-24T13:28:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-11-23T10:16:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-22T18:37:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-22T10:42:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-21T16:11:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-21T15:28:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-21T07:43:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-20T08:14:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-19T15:54:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-19T15:38:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-19T08:38:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-18T12:37:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-18T11:49:00.000-05:00

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

2006-11-18T10:36:00.000-05:00

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.