Medieval II Total War Attila's Battle Guide

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

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




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

Here is the filter for the Polish Chronicles

Here is the filter for Sicilian Chronicles

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

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

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

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

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicle 17 Taking Jerusalem and Victory

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

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

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

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

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

I hope to see some comment!

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 16 Resisting the Mongols

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

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 15 Storming a Citadel

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

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 14 Defending Against Spain

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

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicle 13 Destroying Sicilian Traitors

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

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicle 12 Conquering England

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

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicle 11 Charging under a Firestorm

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

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

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

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

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

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

Medieval 2 Total War Siclilian Chronicle 08 Charging the French Armies

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

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian chronicles 07 Attacking Danish

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

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 06 Undersiege by German Crusader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 03 Under Siege by Hungarians

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

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

Medieval 2 Total War Sicilian Chronicles 02 Under Siege by Spain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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