The Unofficial Medieval: Total War Thread

To all the English fans who say "Keeeel the French!" I say :mischief: to you.

I finnally played an Early game with the English and damn they own.

Taking on the Welsh Longbowmen with mostly Peasents/Militia early on is a pain in the ass though.

My conquest, in this order:

  1. Wales
  2. Sweden -bribed-
  3. Norway -bribed again-
  4. Denmark itself
  5. Saxony
  6. Scotland

I eliminated the Danish right off the bat, and had strong ties to the Spanish, Germans, Polish, and French. Yes, the French. Not once did they invade/reject a proposal.

Admittedly though.. I betrayed the Holy Romans a bit when I kept going after Danish Saxony and conquered most of their provinces:lol: .
 
It's usually a good move to bribe the welsh longbowmen. You don't have to fight them, and they can be a real boon early, as long as you keep them well protected.
 
The best bribe trick ever has to be playing as the Turks and trapping the Egyptian king, multiple times. Do it right and you can do it at least twice and then have a huge advantage b/c you never stop building or building troops as the Turks. Take out both Byzantium and Egypt by 1100 if you do it right.
 
lol. Probably one of the dirtiest, depending on perspective, tricks is Jihad spamming right at the start of each new king. You can do it more often, but I find it more interesting if its a new king initiative. Multiple Jihads can be launched simultaneously, only with the caveat that the territory was yours for a minimum of one turn.

Here is the trick for those who are not familiar:
If possible through some wierd naval gambit, strike at a territory that is as far and indirect as possible from your terriotries. For the Turks that would be some territory in north-west europe or england if possible. Also northern russia and scandinavia work for that direction. If you have decent zeal provinces, which you should be able to set up, then each Jihad when declared will contain plenty of troops for field battles. Concentrate all other building on fort busters and occupation armies. Take the one territory, lose it, then declare as many jihads as possible and start marching them through europe, africa, and eurasia. Have the fortress busters and peasant occupation troops follow in the wake of hiding and destruction that will ensue. You will have to fight lots of large battles and will los some piety and resepct because of jihads faltering. However the disruption caused by such spamming is very fun to observe. Even if empires are not destroyed, most of them will experience significant economic losses and civil wars. If you prepared the occupation army correctly, then you can afford massive gains in territory that can be developed in about 10-20 years for easy garrison. The best part about such strategy, proving you don't have some kind of piety crisis, is that you can do it in a few stages a few decades apart. While cheap, its fun to watch your zealous legions inspire fear into the heart of Christendom. Also, make sure you hav e a sizeable bankroll to afford the first ten turns of the onslaught.
 
haha! i LOVE that idea! Ive spammed Jihads at provinces near me that i lose, but I tend to only use it only on the defencive... this idea is just sadistic, but hey thats the fun part about this game!
Now one time as the Byzantines, I had an extremely large army that wound up a war in Hungary, I'd say about 7-8000 modern men (this was late early era), i mean like Pronoiai Allagion, Byzantine Inf, and a host of hired mercs. I didnt have the moneys to keep them, so i had some 'fun,' I blitzed all the way across Europe, from Hungary, down through N Italy, and up to SCotland, causing civil wars, killing kings, pilliaging and whatnot, it was fun, cause i got to Scotland with half my men, but then they got homesick, and wanted to go home! so they did...
 
Jihads, if planned properly, is one of the best offensive weapons. Simply take an army somewhere, especially across controlled oceans, to where the enemy will flee for one turn or you can force them to run. Then withdraw if possible and then hit them with tons of jihads. It will give you the troops for a few turns of serious grinding and a bunch of cheap units for garrison duty afterward. Very useful against Italy, Spain, and England if you are lucky enough to control their sea landings.
 
whoa within the civ fanatics site there is a forum for total war? and in that forum is a thread on *medieval total war*? lol

just letting you guys know the "official" forum is here, but its a pretty crappy and pretty inactive ez-board (but it is the one affiliated with total war soooo...):

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm5

anyway i have beaten the game as english, almos and working on turks now. i stopped playing halfway through. i always play early, and after a certain point the game gets too easy as the computer really has no chance of defeating me. i am at this point now. sure the golden hordes gonna come but i'll whomp on em good.

the thing is, i can always just bribe the bad guys once i have a bunch of conquered provinces generating cash (coastal provinces - set up trade, and destroy any factions trying to stop your trading). and if that fails, i can throw a bunch of fodder at them, auto calc, weaken their armies, and then send in my killers. usually during an invasion they go to civil war after losses. its only the early part of the game thats tough. the rest is just an exercise in technique. whether it be assassinating all their good generals, bribing the crap out of them, or throwing tons of units and using the autocalc.

yeah ............. i'm horrible at combat so i only like to command battles when i know i'm gonna win. i love bridge battles. or ones where i'm stationed on a hill. i throw up some arlabests and let em fly. i throw some spears and swords in front to stop them from doing anything silly like attacking me. the only other time i micro is when i have horse archers. i create an army of 8 or 12 of them, set the game speed to slowest, micro them, and use them to take out enemy units. this doesnt work so well when they have a lot of archers, but otherwise, your horse archers can wreak havoc for cheap (they wont win the battle as they have low hp and low morale, but will clear the way for your real armies)
 
You can win battles with some HA if you have some practice. Even against archers, 14 well managed Turcoman Horse and 2 Gullam cavalry can defeat any army. Just completely destroy the coherence of the enemy line by baiting and sniping from several directions. Soon you will be able to strike their more morale prone units with the Ghullam at little cost. Best part is usually they run themselves silly chasing your much faster horses. Replace a Turcoman with a Camel if you are worried about Knights and your Ghulams.

Of course you can just use 6 HA of any kind with a more conventionl army and use it for the same kind of disruption or rear strike.
 
yeah the problem with turcoman or plain horse archers is that i find they have some of the worst morale ever. whenever they're even getting charged (before even engaging in combat) the rout flag starts popping up.

when i started my campaign as early age turks on normal, i decided to strike against the byzantine. my horse archers got slaughtered versus their trezibond archers (EVEN in hand to hand!!). but i used them to great effect to slaughter their varangian guard, byz infantry, and kataphractois which were just big dumb slow moving targets. i find that they just eventually run out of arrows, and if engaged versus archers, tend to rout. i learned to just avoid the trezibonds and go for the main targets. my goal was to weed out the kataphracts protecting the king so that when the main battle came i could strike a decisive killing blow to the monarch and ruin their morale.

yeah versus horse archers just throw some archers back at them, if they retreat let them. eventually they will run out of arrows and at that point they are done for since they get slaughtered by about pretty much any other unit in hand to hand

there is one russian "horse archer" unit thats actually very good though, i forget what they are called but not only do they shoot arrows, but as i learned to my dismay when i casually sent some guys after them, they have really good meelee and morale as well
 
there is one russian "horse archer" unit thats actually very good though, i forget what they are called but not only do they shoot arrows, but as i learned to my dismay when i casually sent some guys after them, they have really good meelee and morale as well

I think, maybe, that your refering to the Russian noble/elite unit the Boers(Spelling?)?

I like them, there highly useful if you have good infantry backup.
 
Boyars?

They're good--basically normal heavy cavalry w/ bows--but if you want a more horse-archer-y unit that has decent morale and can still melee, the Hungarian Szekely is very good.
 
Szekelys are porbably the only thing worth building as the Hungarians for the first half of the Early Age.

Boyars are the Russian Royal unit, and I have to say that they rock. Heavy Armored cavalry who can duke it out with the best and when needed harass from afar, who can hate them? Now, you know whats not worth your time training is Lithuanian cav. Bribe them, or dont use them at all. Who needs three master'level buildings for light cavs, anyway?
 
Christians can also recruitTurocpoles if they build an Inn in some of the Holy Lands. Those things are pretty competative with Turcopoles and are the best counter to the mobile tactics of the muslims. They are also quite potent against the rather slow armies back on the mainland.

Only real drawback of Boyars is the fact they are normal speed cavalry and can be tired out/lose in the ranged duel with fast HA.
 
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