Cheesy Tactics

[Forward Observer]

Ok, although I don't use any cheats, I have been known to replay a battle that I have already won, and take the new results if they are better. I never do this if I lose, but take my lumps as part of the game.

But along the way though, I have discovered a couple of slightly questionable single player tactics that I thought I would pass on. I'm sure some of you may have already discovered these anyway.

1. When on defense, and particularily if I am unsure of the outcome, if I have a unit of high valor troops that is too small (10 or less) to be effective, I will hide them in a woods somewhere and forget about them. I may have wait until I hit the start button to move them into hiding if no hiding place is within the starting fenceposts.

If I can hide them on the enemy side of the map, so much the better. A small unit of cavalry is best for this since they can move the fastest. The point is that many times after a battle has gone bad, and my army routes, the remainng attackers will stop and not search the map. The clock runs out and I get a victory because I still have troops on the field. It happened the first time by accident, but I have used it on purpose several times since. It does not always work, but it feels so devilishly satisfying when it does.

2. At various points in the game, particularily when you have been excomunicated, your loyalty levels will drop and you will have to lower all of your tax rates to prevent rebellion. Sometimes it also means moving troops around if lowering taxes is not enough, and even then this might not be enough to get to 100% loyalty.

A down and dirty fix is to quick save at this point, and completely exit the game to your desktop. When you fire the game back up, and reload the quicksave, your loyalty levels should be improved. The loyalty levels are a bit random and vary by the turn. Leaving the game completely and returning to the save will roll the loyalty dice anew each time.

I told you they were cheesy, but as I said in the description: All is fair in love and --Total War.

Cheers

P. S. Anybody got any others?

[insolent1]

Well I used 9 Jihads to reclaim Khazar from the mongols(who had tured rebel after i killed teh Khan) I got Khazar back without a fight captured 12,000 flithy mongols & made 93,000ish in confiscated lands. It was funny at the time as I had just got a new king & civil war was on the cards(not that it ever would have happened) & after that move my Sultan had 9 piety & 9 influence.
Btw i don't know if this is a cheesy tatic but i use it a lot, I retrain my JHI & JI straight after producing them & they come out with +1 valour, try it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[insolent1]

Oh about hiding units on map so AI can't find them or running cav around so they can't catch them till end of time is lame(I had a human player do this to me once in STW) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif

[Satyr]

All CHEESE. You don't need it. Learn to play the game the right way. Besides, those higher loyalty levels after reloading are inaccurate. Look again the next turn and you will see that they went back to where they belong. It is easy to get a rebellion on the first turn after a reload because your loyalties are incorrectly reported.

[ErikJansen]

Keep reloading?? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

[NewJeffCT]

Ok, I always feel it is a bit cheesy to drop a dozen spies in a province and watch the rebellion grow in a year or two (or three if it is a 200% province)

Or, when I get excommunicated, send a dozen assassins after the Pope, as the excomm will be null and void after a new Pope comes along. Of course, I did that once and failed each time, even though each assassin had a minimum 24% chance to succeed, and then the Pope gets the "hard to kill" virtue, +4 valour vs assassins, or whatever it is.

[some_totalwar_dude]

I sometimes place my army with it's back against the map edge. It impossible to be flanked when your on a very steep hill and even on quite flat groud it still difficult for the enemy.
But I try to use this tactic as a last resort, when I'm in real deep sh*t. It's more challeging to fight at your starting position anyway.

[ShadesPanther]

The hiding the units until the time runs out is beyond cheesy it is just lame.
The corner cheese tactic is ok and i would use it now and again as the AI always tries to flank and it just gets annoying

[Hamburglar]

I think reloading for any reason other than a game crash is completely cheesy. That is probably the WORST of the cheesy tactics. It essentially doesn't give the AI a chance. And not reloading when you lose just to take your lumps doesn't make it any less cheesy. The AI can be tough if you just accept what it does to you and never reload for any reason.

The clock is also cheesy. If you're afriad of battles taking forever just make the time accerlate. Viola They go faster. So there's no excuse there, especially HIDING a unit. The AI has WON the battle and in real life they would control the territory regardless if you have five men hiding in the woods when they have hundreds of them overrunning your farms and stuff. There were a couple dozen diehard German troops that hid in bunkers and ambushed Soviet troops after their government surrendered but you sure as hell won't say that the Germans "won" because they had a hundred armed soldiers HIDING in Berlin compared to the Soviet's hundred thousand. Its just cheesy.


I also think autocalcing sieges is VERY VERY CHEESY. Now don't bitch about time - SAY IT WITH ME PEOPLE - "Tiiiiiiiiinme Accelerationnnnnnnnn". Zip the time up all the way and it takes a few minutes. If you're playing a MTW Campaign, don't talk about how you don't have time to do stuff. It's a time consuming game and you knew that when you started it.

Hiding on the edge of the map can be cheesy and might not be cheesy - its hard to tell. The AI is incapable of attacking head on it seems and will always flank you so the player ends up shifting his troops around to meet up with the AI's flankers and they try and REFLANK you again and again all the while your missile troops are massacring his men. So I don't think thats cheesy. Plus, it seems like all the good hills are at the edges of the maps. I don't know why. Didn't seem to be the case in SHogun.

"Pruning" your royal family by killing off older heirs isn't cheesy either. I have read a lot in history that kings did pick a favorite heir and made sure he was set up to be King, sometimes making something unfortunate happen to the oldest son. Killing your own king though is kind of cheesy.



Reloading is still the all-out cheesiest tactic. Even if you only reload victories, the game is still gonna be a lot easier if you have 1000 troops survive the battle instead of 500. Having only 500 may lead you to a DEFEAT the next turn.



I know a lot of people reload when "bad stuff happens" even without the battle being joined. For example, attacking a territory only to find out that its a bridge. My answer - learn to read a freakin' map, your highness. Or reloading because the AI "cheated" by moving troops into the territory the same turn you attacked it. My answer - Deal with it - the AI moves its troops around practically randomly. Sometimes shit happens.

[insolent1]

I have to say i like to reload if theres a chance of getting a 3way or 4 way battle going ie u c ur allies invade a province held by another faction or rebels so i reload & throw in a small army to assist them btw its always funny to watch how bad the AI fights http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif

[andrewt]

There is nothing cheesy when playing single player. The game is a giant problem to be solved. Personally, I don't care if some of the best solution are historically inaccurate. Oftentimes, I would shy from some solutions to increase the challenge but I don't really care.

Multiplayer is a completely different thing as people should play fair. Some bugs make the game better, though. See Warcraft2 foundry hopping and the numerous other stuff you could do with asymmetrical maps as an example. I don't play CS so I don't know if bunny-hopping counts as a bug that shouldn't be fixed.

[desdichado]

Quote[/b] (Hamburglar @ April 08 2003,09:56)] For example, attacking a territory only to find out that its a bridge. My answer - learn to read a freakin' map, your highness.
reloading = pure cheese.

I am curious about how to read the map to figure out if a bridge battle occurs - I know that invading Saxony from Denmark will be a bridge battle and Kiew from Khazar but the rest I dunno.

Seems there are rivers all over the map but they are not always bridge battles.

Sorry this has gone a little OT so i'll rejoin now.

Timed battles I think are stupid in SP at least and using the timer to "snatch" a victory is pretty dull. I did use it against the horde once but only because first battle I had all infantry and the horde after losing its khan just sat at the edge of map doing nothing and there was no way I was going to march my army all the way over there to attack 25,000 fast horsies. They invaded me so they should come and finish me off if they can. Apart from that I never use it. Anyway, as soon as I put timer on the horde got a lot more aggressive and sent repeated waves at me so had a good effect on gameplay anyway.

I just had a good idea though - what if battles could be fought over a number of days - ie. night time falls without a clear victor and everybody comes back again tomorrow until a clear victor is decided and that doesn't include 5 peasants hiding in a barn http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif

[desdichado]

Quote[/b] (andrewt @ April 08 2003,16:14)]There is nothing cheesy when playing single player. The game is a giant problem to be solved. Personally, I don't care if some of the best solution are historically inaccurate. Oftentimes, I would shy from some solutions to increase the challenge but I don't really care.
Maybe if the AI was Deep Blue 2 but its hardly at that level so cheats just make the game easy - are these the same people who complain about lousy AI or brag how they conquered the world in 100 years. Do away with cheats and the game last for longer and is more entertaining - isn't that why we play in the first place - entertainment - I sure don't buy a game for the simple purpose of finding out how many bugs are in the game that enable me to beat the computer in the fastest possible time.

Hell, I love it when the AI thrashes me although you wouldn't know from the cursing I do when it happens. Some games make me want to throw my monitor out the window cause I lost again but you can bet I will come back again to try and win without cheating.

my 2 cents worth anyway

[Forward Observer]

Quote[/b] (Hamburglar @ April 07 2003,14:56)]---I also think autocalcing sieges is VERY VERY CHEESY. Now don't bitch about time - SAY IT WITH ME PEOPLE - "Tiiiiiiiiinme Accelerationnnnnnnnn". Zip the time up all the way and it takes a few minutes. If you're playing a MTW Campaign, don't talk about how you don't have time to do stuff. It's a time consuming game and you knew that when you started it.

Hiding on the edge of the map can be cheesy and might not be cheesy - its hard to tell. The AI is incapable of attacking head on it seems and will always flank you so the player ends up shifting his troops around to meet up with the AI's flankers and they try and REFLANK you again and again all the while your missile troops are massacring his men. So I don't think thats cheesy. Plus, it seems like all the good hills are at the edges of the maps. I don't know why. Didn't seem to be the case in SHogun.

"Pruning" your royal family by killing off older heirs isn't cheesy either. I have read a lot in history that kings did pick a favorite heir and made sure he was set up to be King, sometimes making something unfortunate happen to the oldest son. Killing your own king though is kind of cheesy.----------------



---------------Reloading is still the all-out cheesiest tactic. Even if you only reload victories, the game is still gonna be a lot easier if you have 1000 troops survive the battle instead of 500. Having only 500 may lead you to a DEFEAT the next turn.


Hamburglar:

You missed point of my post entirely. I was really looking for people to post their non-conventional or unique strategies, tactics, or unoffical cheats for the single player even if the premise of the said tactic is questionable, and I did not want a patronizing lecture on how I should play the game.

You proceeded to lecture me on what you think is cheesy and not cheesy. No offense, but who made you the grand expert of fromage'?

You also go off on a rant about how letting the computer auto-calculate a siege is a no-no, and that using the clock is all wrong while using time acceleration is a blessed event. It seems to me that all of these features, including time compression, are not realistic what-so-ever, but were provided as alternate gameplay elements by the designers of the game.

I generally always play the game straight up, and always on hard or expert, which by the way allows the A.I. to cheat to the max. I do occasionally indulge in creative ways of playing the game for my own ammusement.

You are certainly entitled to your opinions on how to play the game, but maybe you should chill out a bit, and realize that in war, and particularly in a computer war game, there may be more than one way to skin a cat.

I can guarantee you that if any great general, living or dead, could have won a battle by hiding 10 men in a woods, or using time acceleration to get to the good parts, the history books would be filled with such accounts.

Once again, no offense, but until I see your name as the author of the official rule book on how to enjoy the total war games, I'll play the game pretty well any way I want to.

Cheers

[pdoan8]

When I was playing on normal and hard, I banned all cheesy tactics.

After the third campaign that I lost in expert (the longest one was 75 years), I opened the cheesy tactic book once again. Not using all of them, but I use quite a few.
- Edge/corner camping when defend is the most common because I hate to see the AI try to flank my strongest side of the formation.

- Trading and dominating the sea comes in second because the Sicilian always ask for it.

- Third is baiting the AI when they try not to be stupid. It's fun when making a fool out of a fool.

- Reloading comes in fourth when the AI Crusade try to use my shipline when they are at war with me or when they moved North into my provinces while they should have moved South to the target.

- Make money from rebellions is the fifth because people are going to rebel sooner or later.

Not all good reasons, but I really use those tactics quite often.

[BDC]

A really cheesey way to compensate for gay, stupid, lazy heirs is to encourage a peasant revolt, then charge 10000 peasants with nothing but a bunch of royal knights. Maybe some back up to save them if things go wrong (not much though). By the end they should have so many extra bonuses for attacking that it will need to columns.

[Hamburglar]

To whoever asked how to find out about bridge battles.

Right click on the province you are attacking from, and then hold the mouse over the province you are attacking into. It'll tell you if it'll be hills, desert, river, etc. It comes in handy quite a bit. Also some "desert" provinces aren't necessarily all deserts. If you attack from a certain direction sometimes they can be Arid terrain.



And Forward Observer:

I think there's a difference in cheesy tactics. There are ones that exploit the game itself (reloading, waiting for the timer to end) and ones that exploit the AI's idiocy (dominating the seas). I think the ones that exploit the game itself are the worst.

But if you want some cheesy tactics:

1. Send a spy several times at the same enemy general or king. If theres no border fort in the provicne chances are he won't get killed. Regardless of whether you find out any secret vices on him he will build up bad vices just because you're spying on him. If you do it like 5 or 6 times (win or lose) he will get the Assassinator vice, which has BIG penalties on loyalty and happiness (-4 and -40 I think). This causes civil wars AND rebellions very quickly.

2. Build up a HUGE army of cheapass peasants. Invade your enemies and just rampage through their territory. The AI is only afraid of your numbers - with 200 men at arms they can beat 2000 peasants but the AI is gonna retreat no matter what so you can just pillage his land. If he does fight, autocalc it. With massed peasants, the autocalc always seems to get better odds than the player (just like sieges).


As for time acceleration, it's not the least bit cheesy or unrealistic. It gives me no advantage other than waiting 2 minutes instead of 10 minutes for my men to march up to his men. If anything, it gives the AI an ADVANTAGE, because the AI can think and give orders with time acclerated but the human player will have quite the hard time doing that.

As for a general using time acceleration in a real battle, it would have made no difference whatsoever because both sides move just as fast. I doubt any general would do that if he could because he'd probably lose if everything in the world moves 10x faster except his brain still thinks at normal speed.


I'm just saying hiding 10 guys in the woods is REALLY cheesy because people CAN do that in online games too. I know we humans aren't as dumb as the AI and we know to check the woods but in heavily forested maps and especially when the time is almost over I really can't go searching every tree for his 10 hiding troops. If I have 400 men on the field and he has 10, no one's going to argue that I have lost but the game says I did because I didn't clear it entirely.

[Hamburglar]

Another cheesy one is sending Crusades against crappy little pagan territories instead of invading them normally - it boosts your king's influence by one for each success.

[cugel]

I think all offensive uses of agents (spies, assasins) to attack other provinces/heirs/generals is cheesy. Really, this feature was carried over from Shogun. I don't think there's any historical parallel for sending 10 spies into a province to stir up rebellion.

As for reloading, I reload all the time and don't think it's cheesy at all. Usually it's because the AI has done something monumentally stupid and I don't want to ruin the game. For example, the AI may start a naval war, just because I have 1 ship in a sea zone where it has 2, even though I have a crushing superiority in overall naval strength. After I win the ineveitable naval war, that faction is doomed (no trade = close_to_support_limit AI personality, which means the AI can't afford to build any new units, etc.). Usually, game, set and match for me, which is no fun. After I've invested some 20-40 hours in a campaign, I'm not going to let the AI ruin it by making some stupid blunder. Another typical AI move is for a minor faction to attack one of my provinces (thus starting a hopeless - for it- war with me)then decide that it "cannot win the battle and is withdrawing". If it couldn't win, why attack me and start the war in the first place? Often, this is just because that AI faction doesn't happen to be at war with anyone else and the moment, and the AI seems to be "peace adverse". It'll attack when even a very dull human would conclude it's suicidal. If I go back 2 turns and pack the defending province with more troops, I can sometimes forestall the AI's blunder, thus forcing it to make strategically sounder decisions - and prolonging the game enjoyment (I don't like to win in 50 turns).

There are numerous other examples of this sort of forebearance, such as reloading and choosing not to attack a province, if the enemy king charges in to fight when he has no retreat, and that faction has no ready heir - thus provoking a civil war when I kill him (civil wars are too devestating to enemy factions and can immediately take them out of the game completely). Even worse, sometimes there's not royal blood at all and the faction becomes rebels. Rebels don't put up any kind of a strategic fight, they just sit there (unlike the aggressive rebels in Shogun, alas).

I'm always nervous about killing the enemy monarch, since the AI sometimes risks him even when he has no heirs. I'll almost always reload if the AI does something stupid like this.