Ack.. hard! Shogun guy new to MTW needs help

[Koga No Goshi]

Hey All...

I know I'm incredibly late, but I just picked up Medieval Total War as an early Christmas present from a friend. Had been meaning to getting around to trying it, seeing as how Shogun Total War is possibly my all-time favorite game, but part of that appeal had been the setting, so I kept waiting on MTW.

Now, I'm pretty set with basic Total War gameplay and strategy and such, but Medieval is just... I dunno, mixed bag I guess- some things easier, more things harder. Maintaining your clan of course, is easier- you have more time to do it, a wide variety of heirs and potential heirs through marriage, etc. Castles are far easier to defend. There's a few things I'm struggling with though.

AI Difficulty- Before anyone runs off about how the AI is "totally easy", bear with me here, I'm new. My problem with the AI isn't so much that it's a genius, but just that it is a lot like unpatched original Shogun Total War-- tends to build MASSIVE armies, and a few factions tend to tremendously outperform the rest and conquer huge amounts of the map by mid-game. Even on easy, which is what I've been playing while learning the game, the AI tends to chronically outnumber me and leave massive 30+ unit hordes along its borders, making invasions really unattractive prospects. I tend to have a lot of trouble matching this even in self-defense... I've had to stick to playing Danes, England, or Egypt just so that I can basically defend only one or two borders while leaving most of my provinces unmanned (with ships around to prevent ship invasions of course.) The AI also seems to be able to maintain armies like this as well as highly develop all of its provinces without really making any special efforts at trade- my trade fleet can outnumber an AI's 10 to 1 and I will still be chronically hard up for money if I try to develop like the AI does.

Required time for buildings- I realize that buildings were carefully assigned build times based on keeping available units and technology in line with history, but in two campaigns I've played so far, I actually ran out of time before my "main provinces" fully developed high-end castles and top-level training structures. Given, I had to take some time out for ports, merchants, etc. for the sake of making enough money to keep making new buildings in the first place, but still.. am I doing something wrong here? It seems odd that you wouldn't be able to reach Fortress with fully developed unit buildings by the end of the game when starting from Early. In Shogun, assuming a fair inflow of money, you could fully develop a troop production province by about mid-game, certainly well before Dutch traders arrive. I'm pretty used to that. In Medieval is it better to devote provinces to only one troop type each, and thus reach the high level buildings faster?

Seems hard to impossible to actually wipe out a faction- they keep popping back up, often with HUGE armies at their disposal. Nuff said.

Cavalry - Ok, I realize that the "heavy cavalry" was supposed to be the uber force of the Medieval period, but with that in mind, I guess my observation so far would be that they are too prevalent, too easy to get, and too overwhelming in the actual gameplay vs. AI. Often half or so of the already huge AI armies are cav (especially Muslim factions for some reason?), and since even spearmen units seem to only hold them at bay for a long time rather than actually slicing them up at a respectable rate, it ties up too much of your army trying to counter-cav while his anti-infantry units and archers and such are picking away at you. 20-man semi-elite cav units lasting nearly the whole battle and tying up 1, 2, or 3 of your units trying to destroy it for most of the battle just seems a bit extreme.

So please... any advice for someone who is perhaps locked into the Shogun playstyle and balance... and hopefully not just shredding me. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Fragony]

I suggest you start with a Byzantine campaign. You start with a catidel in constantinobel, and money shouldn't be a problem. The byzantines get great troops early, and their generals are great.

[Phatose]

AI - I encountered this the first time I played through too, and I had been playing the game the way I played shogun - build up tech in a few choice provinces, then charge when I'm fully or near fully upgraded. In medieval, it doesn't work. You practically have to expand viciously early on. And I mean super-viciously. Typically, I play as the spanish, and by turn two, I've invaded the Aragonese and killed their king, then proceed immediately to all out war with the almohads. You can't hold back, you need to overrun as much as you can early on. This is especially true with the Danish and English, since they're starting provinces aren't very wealthy at all.


Buildings - You'd be real hard pressed to develop a single province to be completely developed by the end of the game. There are just too many buildings, and even Constantinople would be hard pressed to do it. Instead, pick provinces to specialize in a certain troop type or type, and build only towards that. For example, in Castille I usually produce heavy Cavalary. So, I'll first build only the prereqs for training feudal knights, and anything that isn't neccessary for those doesn't get built in Castille (aside from the neccessary security and port structures). Then I'll start building up towards Lancers, and once I have the buildings for Lancers, I build structures that give bonuses - the metalsmiths and churches. Other units get built elsewhere, in other highly specialized provinces.

Factions are a pain to keep down. Manage it the way you'd manage rebellions, except consider anything under 120% loyalty suspect. There are plenty of topics around here on rebellions. This is unless we're talking about the Pope, who is essentially undead, and will always come back. Only effective way to deal with the pope is to kill him last.


Cavalary - Spears don't really ever shine at attacking. They're more for holding out, then outright winning. For heavy cavalry, your best friend and most efficient killer is the polearm. Halberdiers, billmen, Jannissarries, ect. Polearm units gain a bonus to attack cavalary - and more importantly, they're armor piercing, which means that they will rip armored knights to shreds. Ideally, to deal with knights have the spears there to take on the charge and hold them, they have the polearms attack from the flank.


Addendum - Also, be sure to manage your provincial and imperial titles well too. If you give a general with high acumen the title of governor of a province, he'll increase the amount of money produced there. If it's a 5 or 6 acumen general, it can make a big difference. This also helps with the millitary, since some provincial and many imperial titles give command bonuses. I've had games where I've had 8 9-star generals at the end through careful management of the royal bloodline, and gracing royal uncles with command increasing titles.

And as noted below, be sure to read Frostbeastegg's begginner's guide, and her units guide also. Both are tremendously valuable resources. Heck, both are probably more valuable then the game's manual, that's how good they are.

[castle]

It is best to move quickly early on, build ships as soon as you can. the best troops are jhi but it takes a long time to get them, battles only last a few minutes if you have a full stack of them.

[Vigi]

One imporant thing I didn't see mentioned: TRADE Trade brings in an absolutely enormous amount of income. I didn't play STW so I don't know how trade worked in that game, or if its like it does in this game. So heres how to do it: An example, I am the Italians:

I click Venice. I see it has 3 trade goods. Excellent. It already has a shipbuilder and a port, so all I have to build is a trading post and some ships. I build three ships and the trading post. I now take 2 of the ships out of the stack in the waters of Venice. I send them both ahead to the next sea zone south. I end turn. Now i break up that stack into 2 different ships, so I can move them bot individually. I take one ship, and move it into the waters of sicily. For the sake of this tutorial we assume Sicily is neutral to us. Now I have what is called a "Trading Link", that is, I have a ships in trading zones from sicily to venice. Now I end my turn again. I double click on my trader. I see it's making around 200-300. Great Now you're trading.

Trading Tips: Make sure the province you want to trade with has a port, and a trader. Make sure also that it has trading goods. The more the better and the type also makes a difference, depending on who you trade with. Trading is so powerfully important to any empire in this game. With a good trading province,(Flanders, Sweden, Lithuania, Venice, Constantipole, Egypt..there are quite a few) you can make thousands of florins a turn in that province ALONE. These funds will last as long as no ships are blockading your trade routes. If you are at war with someone and they ships in one of your trade zones, your trade will be interrupted until you destroy that ship.


As a final aside, Frogbeastegg posted an excellent guide on here that even players that are much better at this game than me are known to refer to. It has a wealth of information and I recommend to read and or refer to it if you have any questions. Don't be afraid to ask questions to anyone on the forums too, of course

[Red Harvest]

Some suggestions for strategic level considerations--I only play on expert and this is what works for me:

Money drives the game...
1. Focus on income from provinces when deciding what to go after. Provinces like Flanders, Constantinople, Egypt and such will bring in a King's ransom in short order. These are the sorts of provinces that you want to make sure have very high acumen governors (you might want to kill off a gov if he gets some bad economic vices, could save 100-200 florins a round in key provinces.) These are the provinces you want to do ag upgrades to. Typically I won't assign a title unless the recipient already has 4 star acumen.
2. Build mines and such when you can--the base level is a very good investment. Remember mines when deciding what provinces to go after and when considering ag upgrades. If the majority of the money in a province is coming from the mines, then the farm ugrade might not return much money over the long haul.
3. I keep taxes maxed in every province (except some very low income ones held only for strategic reasons.) Contrary to what many think, this is very effective. You can do this with minimal garrisons if you build watch towers and border forts. Keep a close watch on loyalty--be wary of the "loyalty not displayed properly on reloading a save" bug. Also loyalty drops will happen when enemy agents sneak in...a nasty assassin or spy might drop loyalty tremendously (gives you an idea that they are there.)
4. Denying an AI enemy his high income provinces should be a primary goal when you start an offensive. Target the first blows at the juiciest targets if possible. Often these will also have decent building upgrades so you will deny some excellent troop production as well. If you do it right the huge AI armies will rapidly end up in a money crunch.
5. First thing to build when you conquer a province: watch tower if it lacks one. This and the border fort greatly improve province loyalty. Build a border fort second. That way enemy spies and assassins won't kill good generals or plant nasty vices on them.
6. Governors with about 3 dread and 4+ acumen are ideal. Loyalty improves up to about 3 dread, and starts to fall somewhere past that.
7. Trade has already been covered by others, make sure you have trade goods before building a trader, make sure you have a port and a line of boats to ally/neutral port to allow trade.

Building your army
1. Decide what troop types you want and what provinces to build them in. Keep steadily advancing tech in those provinces. Don't build every troop building in every province--takes way too much money. If you have that much money you should have already won... Focus on building only what you need, use the extra money for further money producing upgrades.
2. Metalsmiths are REALLY important. I try to shift most troop production to provinces with metalsmiths as soon as possible. Takes awhile to tech up, so identify the iron containing provinces and start working toward the metalsmith. Skip armoury to get to metalsmiths. Take the AI's metal provinces from it before it starts building troops--this is a big deal on expert if the AI has metalsmiths and you don't, you will get slaughtered.
3. Armouries are not critical except when needed to produce certain troops (be familiar with your tech tree.) They do help reduce the losses from missile units. Armour SUCKS in the desert--your troups fatigue just standing in the sun. I keep armoury-less provinces just for producing desert troops. Armour is useful for many things, but it has some real drawbacks. By comparison, metalsmiths have no negatives...
4. Religious buildings are critical. Do valour and morale upgrades as soon as possible. Churches/shrines/monastaries/etc. will improve morale of your troups and they also increase loyalty of the province (allowing higher taxes and/or smaller garrisons). I build these buildings as soon as I can--even before building unit producing structures. That way the units produced later are worth something, rather than just being cannon fodder that route en masse when the enemy 6 star king charges them.
5. Do building upgrades for specific unit types when you can to improve valour. Makes a big difference on the battlefield.

Managing your generals and armies...
1. Be careful not to throw a king, high quality commander or heir into melee in a battle that he can't win. If he gets routed he gets a nasty "good runner" vice and his career as a general will become limited. If he routes in a 2nd battle he will get "dubious courage" and will be utterly useless. A third time gets him an even worse vice.
2. If you are losing a battle and your general will not be able to turn the tide, then use "withdraw from battle" on his unit to avoid a rout and "good runner" vice. (This would also be a good time to withdraw skirmishers that are behind your failing lines, so that they can fight another day.)
3. Recombine units to full strength after battle. Turn off the "tidy up units after battle" option. Manually decide what leaders and upgrades you want. For example, if I combine two remnants I will generally want the commander to be the one with higher acumen (or loyalty if one is really low). Dropping one unit onto another will assign the dropped unit commander to be the commander of the combined unit (unless the droppee has vices/virtues or a title or command stars and the dropper has none of these.) Within the same stack dragging one onto another will leave the command in the hands of the one being dragged too (unless previously mentioned conditions apply.) Also if one unit has armour or metalsmith upgrade then you might want to drop *onto* it because the combined unit will then have the upgrade.
4. Kill off bad generals/governors. Try to move their men out of the unit if you can by sliding them to other units, then kill off the remaining "good runner/inbred/drinker/pervert/whatever." You might have to kill off low loyalty ones at times to prevent a rebellion.
5. Bring the right troops to the dance. Don't bring heavy knights to the desert. Don't bring an army full of archers and men-at-arms to face a cavalry heavy army. Don't bring light spears to face men-at-arms and foot knights. Don't try to use archers to kill heavily armoured knights--save that for arbalesters or crossbowmen. Don't try to force a bridge crossing using light cavalry (foot knights might work if you dismount heavy cav.)

Manage your King's influence/loyalty:
1. Conquering provinces improves influence & loyalty. Losing battles reduces these.
2. Losing a crusade really hurts influence & loyalty. The AI often rebels when its crusade fails.
3. Builder virtues are a big help. When you have a new king build small castles and upgrades as soon as possible.
4. Don't let your king get cut off from his provinces. Keep him off of isolated islands where the sea lanes can be blocked. Don't let him get trapped in a siege. You can get nasty civil wars.
5. Move low loyalty heirs directly under the control of your king's stack to avoid civil war.

Diplomacy:
1. Try to get alliances early so that if the AI attacks you your allies side with you and break alliances with the enemy. This seems to work best when you have more allies than your new enemy (and when your other allies are not threatened by a massive army of the enemy on their own border.) The AI is more likely to accept an alliance when offered if you move a massive army to its border on the turn you make the offer... If the AI is strong on the shared border and you are weak, it probably will refuse the offer. If you are at war with the AI's ally it won't accept.
2. Assassins and spies are of limited use because border forts stop them cold. I will use them for limited work and occasionally target a king or general with one if the target province lacks border forts. I even will kill my own governors with assassins if I have one handy and the governor has gotten nasty vices that are costing me money.
3. Ending a war: the AI rarely accepts ceasefires unless it is within a turn or two from being wiped out. However, wars will end when you share no common borders and neither of you have ships in sea zones adjacent to the other's sea zone or territory. Sometimes you need to pull back boats to end a war. Or you might want to conquer some last insignificant remnant of disconnected territory nearby just to end the war (something like the Sinai, etc.)

[The Wizard]

It seems to me you tried to do what I did in Shogun as well... building every single building available in a certain castle tier until you ran out and then move on to the next tier.

That doesn't work with MTW, unfortunately. As Phatose said, develop some provinces only for one or two troop types, especially a troop type that gets a valour bonus in the province (such as Chivalric Knights in Toulouse).

In my current English campaign, Wales is where my longbowmen come from, Mercia is where my billmen come from, Wessex is my all-purpose province (kind of), and Aquitane is where my feudal knights are trained, just as Normandy, which also builds MS and FMAA, while Anjou is pumping spearmen of all kinds.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Red Harvest was right on the money on this one. Excellent tips. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

But don't forget Frogbeastegg's excellent guides. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Koga No Goshi]

Thanks guys, huge help in these replies.

And yes, shortly after posting this request (I pretty much came straight here and did it after having trouble playing the game, didn't check out the stickies) I saw the guides up there. They're really excellent, learned a lot that I didn't pick up either in the manual or in the gameplay.

One question, what is the method for increasing a general's acumen? Does it go up on its own through success in battle and age, or does it come strictly through marriages and governorships and such?

[Koga No Goshi]

Oh and..

yeah, during the interim between posting and reading the replies, I figured out you should try to split up unit production in provinces by type. I was just stuck in thinking I shouldn't do that because the cost and time required for castle upgrades seemed inefficient to do for just one troop type or so. The cost of castle upgrades is even more pronounced, especially by time, in Medieval than Shogun, so I figured the same rule would apply (i.e., get higher level castles only in a few key provinces where you will do ALL unit production, leave small/large lower end castles in every other province.)

To the guy who asked about trade in Shogun, it was profitable but came at a price, and relatively simpler. Trade happened simply through having ports (flat rate 200 koku per year bonus per province with a port) and then this was increased greatly by building Portuguese or Dutch Trading Posts. You could ignore farm upgrades altogether if you forcused enough on trading posts and possibly Churches/Cathedrals (got a bonus for having so many churches) but at least for me, this was never a preferred playstyle. I liked Buddhist warrior monks too much to want to convert to Christianity.

[The Wizard]

Quote[/b] (Koga No Goshi @ Dec. 27 2003,23:14)]One question, what is the method for increasing a general's acumen? Does it go up on its own through success in battle and age, or does it come strictly through marriages and governorships and such?
As far as my knowledge stretches, I do not know of a way to increase a governor's acumen, other than giving him titles and certain governships.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Quote[/b] ]As far as my knowledge stretches, I do not know of a way to increase a governor's acumen, other than giving him titles and certain governships.
Wizzy is right here. Unfortunatelly there is no other way of increasing acumen, except the several provincial and governement titles. That and hoping for a good set of Virtues (like Numerate: +3 to acumen, educated, etc...) to hit your general randomly.

[Herodotus]

There is no action to take to increase acumen (except with titles), but careful choice of Governor can be very effective. A governor with an acumen virtue is likely to pick up other positive virtues from governing a rich (developing) province. The most common virtues are steward and builder, steward ups agricultural production (good food supply has a positive effect on happiness and how long a castle will hold out in a siege) and builder which increases happiness.
Your highest acumen General should be given a province which you believe will be developed for farming and unit production, then he should also recieve a national title (Archbishop of Canterbury or whatever, just make sure it adds acumen not command). This done he will have very high acumen and every chance at gaining virtues through governorship.

[LordKhaine]

As said before, the trick is to be aggressive at the start. Build up your forces for just a few years and then spring an attack on someone. You can relax a bit later once you have an empire, but at the start you really have to expand and make that empire. And as always with these games, try to make your borders as small as possible. And plan ahead, you know the mongols will turn up around a certain date, so be strong in that area (or better yet don't even be there )