Medieval Total War

[Hrnac]

I recently picked up this game and am wondering if anyone here has played it. I am getting my arse kicked and could use a few tidbits of advice.

-Hrnac

[Kelric]

One of my favorite games until Rome came along and bumped it off the list.

What faction are you playing as? Which time period?

In general you want to make sure you have naval trade (you need one boat in each ocean spot (imagine it as a giant chain with each ocean a link) leading from your port to every port you want to trade with) as this brings in a lot of money. Obviously, make sure you have trade houses in that territory with the port.

Once you make the basic one or two farm land improvements, don't continue upgrading every territory - find out which produce the most money agriculturally and continue improving on those.

You have plenty of turns, don't be too aggressive. Especially when going against larger powers.

Make lots of alliances, but don't surround yourself with allies unless you're desperate for peace. You do need somebody to attack after all.

Try and find some territories that act as choke points to limit how much land you have to defend. A larger territory that blocks two or three enemy territories away from two or three of yours is pretty valuable. Make sure you have it and not the enemy.

Guerilla raids are useful. Attack a province you know you can take but don't want to hold (say it's just past a choke point you control) and then pillage the hell out of it. Destroy buildings, etc.

Try not to buy mercenaries until you can easily afford them except when the situation gets desperate.

Don't risk your king unless you have plenty of heirs. If the heirs are weak, hold onto your king.

Try not to autofight - you usually get screwed on this. Command your own battles. Remember that charging a line of spears with your horses is bad, bad, bad. Learn who fights best against what type of units.

That's about all I can come up with off the top of my head. I haven't played Medieval in many months.

[Hrnac]

I have been playing as the Danes in the early campaign. So far I have managed to move east and conquer Sweden, but that is where things have ground to a halt. The germans below me are a tough bunch and have mopped the battle field with my armies.

I seem to be struggling the most with the real time battles. I have had a few battles where I had more troops and have not been able to use that to my advantage.

-Hrnac

[Kelric]

The Danes? A gamer after my own heart! I loved playing as the Danes, easily my favorite faction because of their starting position. I'll tell ya how I always tried to play them in the early game.

First off, never fight with the Germans until you think you can beat them and this most definitely isn't possible early in the game. I found the best way to succeed as the Danes is to take over the two territories to your north as soon as possible. Get them solidly under your control and then start building a fleet for naval trade. If you're really lucky/kinda decent, you should be able to get an unbroken chain all the way into the meditteranean, though it will fall apart sometimes through fighting. Just keep churning out ships.

Also, with a navy like that you don't need all your territories to be touching each other over land - just make sure you have that unbroken chain of boats. Oh, and if an enemy you are fighting has a ship in one of the ocean spots, that counts as breaking the chain even if you still have a ship there. Kill that bastard immediately and get him off your ocean.

Anyways, the way I usually play it is to take over the territories immediately north, then strike into Scotland before the English do. Once I'm reasonably sure Scotland isn't going to revolt (keep all territories above the magic mark of either 100 or 200%, I forget what it is since I think they changed it for Rome) then I strike down into England. It helps here if you're allied with the French. But try to keep the French out of Britain - you want the whole island to yourself. If you can manage all of Britain, Ireland is yours for the taking. Just realize that it isn't developed at all and any troops you send there are going to be stranded for quite a few turns until you build yourself a port there.

So, now you have Denmark, the two countries north of it and all of the United Kingdom. What do you do now? Sit back and let the money get made in the naval trade and build up some of your territories. Remember what I said about choke points? You now control eight or nine territories yet only two where you can be attacked over land - Denmark itself and lower England. If you're lucky, the English managed to fight the French off a bit and control some northern French territories. If they do, feel free to try and conquer one or two of those. I think it's Flanders that gives the land connection to England, though I may be wrong. That's a pretty wealthy spot of land once you developed trade within it.

After that, the game usually goes one of two ways for me - I start fighting in France and Germany or, the way I prefer to do it, I go east across the Baltic and take land there. I prefer starting with the northernmost territory there since it usually is unoccupied except by Rebels or the Kiev/Russian guys - who usually aren't all that powerful. It gives you a decent base of operation and again, is a bit of a choke point - only one or two territories can attack it. Spread out from there.

The game should start swinging in your favor now. Try not to piss everybody off, just keep knocking down the stragglers and advancing by sea where you can. A naval empire is a pretty good way to win.

As for battlefield tips, I'm not sure I can give any. I'm a pretty decent general and certainly win more than I lose, but I use a lot of basic tactics. Archers are golden, cavalry should always be used to attack flanks if possible, etc. I'm much better at the strategic map and planning that out and use that to make up for any shortcomings on the battlefield. In Rome, with the suicidal AI, I can usually have a 4-1 battlefield win ratio. This accounts for some autocalculating I do as I don't always want to control mercenary armies against an unimportant enemy or ones that are hopelessly outnumbered.

Hopefully everything I've blathered about helps you out or at least gives you some new ideas.

[Hrnac]

Awesome info Kelric!

I have been reading the manual and am starting to get a better feel for the game mechanics. Hopefully the Danes will fare much better this weekend. My early strategy is pretty much the same as yours except that my horrible battlefield tactics have cost the Danes dearly and as such they often fail to conquer Norway. This means that I then grow impatient and start eyeing the Germans which ultimately proves to be fatal. I think a few "training battles" are in order tonight.

-Hrnac

[Kelric]

Yeah, you can definitely do some training battles outside of the campaign. Don't forget that you always want to try and hold the high ground if possible, but don't wear your troops out running to get there (and try to set up there before a battle if you can). If the map is completely flat, set up as far away from the enemy as possible when on defense (even when hilly, but in that case try to get the best height advantage) so that they have to march further to get to you and tire themselves out more.

If you can, get your archers a little ways in front of your main line to get as many volleys as possible off before running them a bit behind your troops. Just make sure they aren't charged by cavalry before they can get away.

I play with some pretty basic formations on the battlefield, nothing fancy. I borrow heavily from some old Roman tricks with one or two main battle lines, with one in front of the other, and cavalry on my main flanks. I never engage my cavalry except to chase off enemy cavalry/archers (but making sure they don't get near other infantry by accident) until my infantry have started fighting the enemy infantry. Once they are good and ready, rush those cavalry out and nail the enemy in the flank or the rear.

I'm not the greatest battlefield general, but I hold my own.