Medieval Total War

You guys are a lucky bunch. The moderator loves MTW!

Ricky, you have medieval total war???

I love that game!

But how can u defeat the english at stirling bridge losing one man?? :-?
What tactic do you use.

 

Ok, I was very lucky.

Bridge battles are easy. Block off the bridge with a unit of spearmen - the emeny will then all bunch up on the bridge attacking your spearmen, and make a great target for your bowmen. The fact that they bunch up also means that they get in each others way and, are less effectve and more vulnerable in hand-to-hand combat. Admittedly, only losing 1 man was very lucky, usually a bridge battle would cost about 20%-30% of the 'blocking' unit.
I was so impressed I saved it!

(should we have a new topic for MTW stuff? )

 

It wasnt that I dont believe you Ricky, its just very hard to imagine.
What I did was very similar to yours. Spearman up front, when their moral lags I send in my highlanders, supported by arcers. English on the run!

But one man dead! You mean the English arcers didnt even kill one?

 

Yeah, lets ave a topic!

 

Like I said - I got lucky. Very lucky. I doubt I could ever do it again.
I'll have to go home & replay the battle to see what happened.
I did not bother to counter-attack, as all I needed to do was hold the bridge. Plus, counter-attacking across a bridge can cause lots of casualties if any of the enemy units manage to rally at the far end.

 

I played Stirling Bridge in MTW, and indeed bridge battles are easy, but I played it differently. Having learnt from Sun Tzu I let half the enemy cross the bridge before attacking. Bad idea; he had time to form up his frontmost units and by the time my attacking force reached the bridge itself (having destroyed half the enemy's force) his g*damn 200 archers zeroed in. I lost hundreds of men.

On the other hand, when I finally got my pikemen shutting off that bridge and he launched his second attack, I held him off losing only 4 more men to close combat (and a few dozen to arrow fire).

One thing I learned in MTW is that highlanders and vikings are worth every trouble you have to go through to get them.

 

In the early stages, yeah!
I have won an offensive bridge battle by simply forming a unit of vikings into a triangle formation, then charging them across. It defeated 2 units of spearmen (with a little help from archers) and allowed me to get my troops across the bridge unharmed. Fantastic!

Sadly they are both a little disorganised and headstrong. Damn good at killing off spearmen (or lesser troops), damn good at destroying an enemy in a flank or rear attack, but I would be unwilling to pit them against Chivalric sargents, or halbardiers... Oh, and on no account go near cavalry.

I must say, I have found it an enormous advantage to have studied Medieval Warfare in depth at Uni when playing MTW!!

 

Yeah - some of the 'rules' of war are not quite played out. Notice how long it takes a unit of pikemen to kill off one Royal knight, simply because he is the leader. Also, units of swordsmen (like vikings, clansmen, men-at-arms, etc) should in practice go through pikeman like a claymore through a Sassenach (units of swordsmen was one method used to try and halt the supremacy of the pikeman), but not in MTW.

 

A few things.

What is a claymore and what is a Sassenach.

Vikings and Clansmen are both armed with axes, giving them huge advantages when facing armoured troops. I use them against every heavy force I encounter, if I have enough of them. Once I had 180 of them pitted against 106 Feudal Knights, and they completely wiped them out - and again the next turn, this time with maybe 20 less agains tthe same number of Feudal Knights. What you have to do is put them up a hill and as soon as the enemy start climbing (and slows down!) you let them charge at full speed. Oh the slaughter!

Indeed those Royal Knights are basically just annoying. When the enemy leader is a Royal Knight, your only chances at defeating him is swamp him and force him to run, then intercept him with cavalry of similar calibre.

What you basically want is plenty of Chivlaric Sergeant and Halberdiers, when pitted against European armies. However, using them against the arabs is a bad idea!

To stop the supremacy of pikemen, you'd historically need longswordsmen, not just any swordsmen. Long swords, small shields and light armour, and just cram 'em into the flanks.

 

Claymore is a whacking great sword used by the Highland Scots.
A Sassenach is an insulting Scots term for the English (literally: "Saxon")

Ah, you must have the 'Viking' add-on patch. My Vikings & Clansmen have swords.

Royal knights are best defeated by simply ramming a unit of men with big sticks (spearmen or above) into them and waiting for them to die and/or run. It takes a while, but it removes them from the battle.
Your battle line-up is good, though I personally prefer Billmen (when English) or Armoured Swiss Pikemen. Backed up with a good number of bowmen, and a mix of heavy & light cavalry, you can kill anything. Yes, they get tired quickly in the desert, but the archers & cavalry keep the enemy archers/cavalry away, and even an exhausted unit of pikemen can flatten a fresh unit of Nubian spearmen.
To kill pikemen in MTW (and in real life) the best way is to shower them with arrows (if you have catapults, or cannon, or whatever, that is a plus) before surrounding them. If you get 6 or 8 units of archers, you can reduce a unit by 60% or 80% if they are willing to stand still long enough!

 

Wohoooo , I love MTW!

Not surprisingly, I usualy play only Saracens.
I once managed to conquer the whole map except for the British Isles and scandinavia!! But then civil wars, revolutions and the English became too difficult to hold against.

Once, an English crusade reached Tunisia, I deployed My Sarracin Spearmen up front, with Nizarite archers back, and Khawarzem cavalry ready to charge out after the english get tired. The crusade consisited mostly of paladins and chevalier horsemen, with plenty of spearmen as support.

The result was surprising even to myself, I killed 2,000; captured 700; and lost 300!!! Im still proud of that battle!

 

Yes, Ricky, I'd love to use Swiss Armoured Pikemen once but I've never had the chance to train them! You'd need a County Militia or something I'm building one in my most recent game and it will be available in 5 turns. However, in that game I am Spain, I control 60% of Europe and every turn takes two hours (automating about a third of the battles, too!). A tenth of my empire rises up in revolt every turn. It's not a game of fast progress as you will understand...

Saracen Spearmen are awesome. I once bribed an army of 800 of them and put them to good use!

The most awesome battle I ever fought was one where my army of 1200 faced the enemy of 1000. They were well-equipped and had a balanced force but lacked archers. I had a well-balanced force and I was attacking. When I moved up they moved their only unit of 80 archers forward, beyond their line; I quickly decided that one unit of Mounted Sergeants was expendable for this purpose and sent them out to kill the archers. They stormed right into them, killed or captured the entire unit in very little time and lost just a few men. Now I expected him to move in his infantry and cavalry and crush my Mounted Sergeants, but he ran.

His entire army had fled the field before my 50 Mounted Sergeants. :lol:

 

LOL!

What civilization was this guy?

What I adored was this general I had, he had the maximum of eight stars!!! Naturally I heaped him with titles He was finally killed when he was surrounded with 120 paladins, but not before he killed 40 of them or so!

 

Ok, so I was talking rubbish. My saved version of Stirling Bridge lost more than 1 man. I do have a big bridge battle where I only lost 1 man, but it was not that one
Now I feel a fraud!

I assume you have tried lowering taxes and/or allocating more troops to the unhappy countries?

I found an amusing one in my 'saved battles' - I was the French, invaded by the Germans. I had 3 units of Chivalric Sargents, 1 of Spearmen, 4 archers and one royal knight (my general). The Germans had 6 units of spearmen and 1 of Urban Militia. I lined up my sargents & spearmen, put my archers behind them, and waited. The Germans ran up into the arrows. They sat there, moved a bit, reformed, moved a bit (always under arrow-fire) and then ran away! The entire battle was decided by 4 units of archers - nobody else moved!!! 8)

 

Hey i play that game too!

BTW how do you keep people happy so they don't rebel? Conquering three quarters of the map won't win you the game if half your provinces turn against you. (The rebellion was so bad half my empire was grey)

 

Lower taxes, more troops per country, have a good general as the 'duke' of that country - and keep him there.
Build watchtowers & border forts.
Have an assassin & a spy in each country - and maybe a bishop/cardinal/imam/etc as well.
Upgrading farmland & building churches/mosques helps too.

Recently conquered countries need to be better garrisoned, as they will be less happy under your rule at first. They do settle down after a few years.

 

Yup, Ricky gave all the answers to that one. I can only add that you should NEVER give a large army to a general with low loyalty!


Hey Ricky, you certainly are no fraud! I know that you just thought it was the battle of Stirling by mistake

 

low loyalty can be cured by marrying the general to your princess - however the Islamic factions do not have princesses.

Has anybody else noticed how truely scary the princesses look in their pictures?

 

You can also give them a number of titles. Although the saracens dont have princesses, you can marrry your prince to a Christian princess.

And yeah, some of them are really scary!

 

You can see who will rebel next turn by holding shift. Countries with low loyalty will be red while loyal countries will be green. Then you can move larger garrisons to the red countries and see their color shift.

Yes Ricky, I even have my eight-star General moving about killing peasants, but he's often engaged (war with the Turks and the Egyptians, I took their whole empires but they won't make peace). All my garrisons are now so large that my profits are -7000 per turn. Luckily I still have a treasury of 350,000 (no cheating!) I am also building churches, moving in bishops and inquisitors but they won't calm down. Now that North Africa is finally subdued France rises in revolt, and of course Scandinavia is continuously being nasty.

Indeed for some reason, when faced with a good line of spearmen or higher, the enemy will simply maneuver under arrow fire until they break. I've seen it happen, but in the end I charged downhill and killed them. Meh, got bored.

The civilization was something desert-ish I think. Possibly the Almohads. Sorry for humiliating your people there Desertwolf!

When you assassinate a princess, and get the message that she died, then suddenly they look GOOD, lying on a bed with a knife in her but hey. Try it.