Help! Newbie English needs help!

[Zilfondel]

I've got a couple of questions - I'm a newbie, lost my game manual, have had the MTW cd hanging around my bookshelves for a couple of months before deciding to play it. Been playing STW a long time, so I'm familiar with basic gameplay...


Okay, Militia Sergeants. Are these guys better than spearman? I can't figure it out. Seems like I need to spend a few hours in the quick battle playing around, but what's the difference between spearman and militia sergeants??


Also, armor upgrades. So polearms are good vs. armored troops, and I read in the unit guide that spears are good vs. polearms because they aren't armored. But what happens when you do an armor upgrade +1 on a spearman? Do they suddenly get totally destroyed when fighting a polearm unit?
What is this bonus vs. armored troops??

Can anyone help me out? I'm in the early age, English, already destroyed the French, just got feudal men-at-arms and militia sergeants, am pumping out royal knights and have hobilar-heavy armies. I'm getting my butt handed to me on a silver platter by the Almohad muslims down south in southeastern Spain. All of their guys are like valour-5 level, with a 6-star general. My main army is led by a 4-star general (bringing up a 7-star now), 4 units of spearman, 4 MAA, 1 RK, some archers, topping off at 1230 troops (medium # of troops).

I always wiped out by charges of those Almohad militia, Ghiza infantry and Muwahid footsoldiers. Even Murabitin infantry beat me, but don't they have really bad stats??

I don't know how you take on such a high valour army. And this is the same one I have defeated (not wiped out, obviously) 2 times now. Ugh. And it's a bridge crossing to boot.

[TheDuck]

Read this Unit Guide (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=31444), it rocks.

[Dragoncrusader]

Basically the game works on Cavalry beats swords, swords beat spears, spears beat cavalry. So militia sergents are anti-armour swords and will beat spears but are better used against armoured swords such as knights.
Armour upgrade for spearmen will make them more vulnerable against militia sergents but remember that a spear unit is very big and it might be a phyrric victory.
Remember that an Almouhad army is mainly swords and not very well armoured ones at that. So use cavalry such as Mounted sergents and face their infantry with Feudal men at arms and foot knights. To get the best out of sword units have them in a line two deep so that they can overlap the enemy and get a flank bonus. Have a unit in the second line to plug any gaps that appear.
Download the beginners guide from the top level of the org website, it has a huge amount of information that will be very useful. Thanks to Froggy ~:cheers:

[HopAlongBunny]

A cpl other things to keep in mind.

Its hot in Spain (not as bad as the desert) and units will fatigue faster. High valour enemy units are best "shot to bits" with archers (lonbow if you got'em) AUM have poor morale, holding and hitting them in the rear helps a lot. Ghazi are suicide troops; high morale and attack_almost 0 defence...also vulnerable to missile fire.

When you do get to the desert, unarmoured highlanders/gallowglass and longbow will probably be your mainstay. Hopefully, by then you'll have Jinettes ~:)

You might try to kill the generals causing you trouble. Hit and run raids might help. You want to skirmish and try to draw the general into a trap...or just a pile of missle fire; hard to do w/o HA's or jinettes though. If you can't isolate the general just withdraw and try again next turn_your leader for these expeditions will get bad V&V's. ~:)

[Procrustes]

One thing that has helped me figure out how to beat XXX unit is to set up little custom battles. Make the AI the attacker so you can choose the location - give them one whatever and yourself one whatever, pick a battlefield that you like and start crashing one into the other. Only takes a few minutes each - gave me a pretty good idea as to their relative strengths and weaknesses.

The unit guide is fantastic.

Bridge battles are fun, but if you aren’t careful they can devolve into battles of simple attrition and stamina – two armies grind away in a very small space until one eventually breaks. Everyone has a favorite strategy for winning – generaly involving ways to support your melee troops with missiles. If you are interested, start a thread on the topic and you will get lots of replies.

HTH,

[Marquis de Said]

Okay, Militia Sergeants. Are these guys better than spearman? I can't figure it out. Seems like I need to spend a few hours in the quick battle playing around, but what's the difference between spearman and militia sergeants??

Yes, they are better in general. Militia sergeants should whoop spearmen's ass. Spearmen might hold a cavalry charge longer, but their crappy morale ensures that they will rout sooner or later. If you already have feudal sergeants, then there's absolutely no need to buld spearmen.



Also, armor upgrades. So polearms are good vs. armored troops, and I read in the unit guide that spears are good vs. polearms because they aren't armored. But what happens when you do an armor upgrade +1 on a spearman? Do they suddenly get totally destroyed when fighting a polearm unit?
What is this bonus vs. armored troops??


From what I recall from the unit guide, the bonus vs. armoured troops is just a bonus on the attack value of a unit. I.e. if normal attack is 4, with the bonus against armour it becomes 6 or something (I can't remember the exact figures, they're in the unit guide).

Marquis de Said

[Tomcat]

Zilfondel - Download and try this excellent "Unit Stats Comparison Tool". Lets you compare the stats of different units on a 1 on 1 basis in simulated battles to get a good idea of how different units perform against each other:
http://shogun.cafe24.com/medieval/

Tomcat

[EatYerGreens]

Yes, they are better in general. Militia sergeants should whoop spearmen's ass. Spearmen might hold a cavalry charge longer, but their crappy morale ensures that they will rout sooner or later. If you already have feudal sergeants, then there's absolutely no need to build spearmen.


Well I'm in a serious bind with regard to more advanced troop types. I'm new to MTW and my first campaign as the English had to be put to one side after three repeats of two battles and 10 naval attacks would crash to desktop each time before I could reach a fresh save point. I've restarted as the Byzantines and my troop choices are surprisingly limited. I can now get spears with better starting valour but that's about it along that line. The Town Guard building description didn't list any units it could build but I built one anyway, to see what happened. You know the rest. No Feudal-anything either. Have to make do with the mercenaries, which cost a packet during years where I'm neither attacked nor attacking but you can't guarantee getting them back once you've disbanded them...

Checking the unit guide which comes from the game tells me that Byz infantry are just 'Medium Infantry'. Initial good impressions against the likes of Turks and Vikings led to a disappointment against some French with a 7-star general and his UM/MS/Peasant rabble. Units routing with 70-80 men still left. Okay, I have the tech to build Varangian Guard in one province but the 2 year training time delaying other units coming out and the cost being nearly as much as a ship (for a 60 man unit) is off-putting, to say the least. Built three units so far, none have seen combat, so I'm still clueless as to their abilities.

In the meantime I've been upgrading my spears with armour (retraining during quieter years instead of disbanding and building from new, no idea whether there's a cost to retraining equal to fresh builds) so I was dismayed to read this....



From what I recall from the unit guide, the bonus vs. armoured troops is just a bonus on the attack value of a unit. I.e. if normal attack is 4, with the bonus against armour it becomes 6 or something (I can't remember the exact figures, they're in the unit guide).
Marquis de Said

Seems weird that 'upgrading' my troops might actually be making them weaker, in battle, if sent against the 'wrong' enemy troop types.

I can understand if the bonus meant they perform better against armoured (sword-type) troops than unit types don't show this description, i.e. MS will do better against CMAA than spears can. I can understand why an armoured spearman loses the benefit of that armour upgrade because polearms are good against armour. However I don't see why an armour-upgraded spearman should be weaker against MS (because of their attack bonus) than one who lacked the upgrade. The spear still has a longer reach than the polearm so the MSs should be getting killed before they can make a strike and the spears should win every time. A polearm has longer reach than a sword, so sword units should suffer against both polearms AND spears. Armouring only serving to give a boost to the opposition just seems daft to me!


I was going to start a fresh thread about armouring and effects on fatigue in desert conditions but this thread seems as good as any in which to raise it.

Should I be raising unarmoured spears/ByzInf specifically for desert fighting?

Also, I have various spear training areas. Silver armour in Constantinople, just recently got up to Bronze armour in two other regions and the colour I can only describe as 'gunmetal' in the places where I've done much of the re-equipping so far. The gunmetal ones are coming out as valour-1 and, more recently valour-2. I'm sure Constantinople has the same level of spearmaker, probably higher, but I just trained a completely fresh unit and, whilst it has the silver armour, it came out as valour-0.

Does retraining 'add 1' to the valour of the unit on each occasion I retrained? (I may have retrained some more than once, without realising). Or do I have a glitch with my spearmaker (guild level?) in Constantinople?

[Zilfondel]

Thanks for the help, guys. I left the Almohads alone for awhile, started building up most of my provinces with better governors, and then BAM! All of a sudden the Hungarians died out.

This threw central Europe in total disorder, although I was hanging out in France and England. A few years later, the Holy Roman Empire invaded me, but every one of my army they attacked had much better units and generals, so the germans retreated. Next turn, their entire Western Front collapsed when invaded 6 of their provinces. In about 10 years I pushed them back, now the *only* HRE province is Croatia. hehe...The Danes then attacked me, even though they only had 1 province, 1 army with 6 RK and 1 spear. I slaughtered them with upgraded Billmen and archers. ~:cool:

Interestingly, even though I completely wiped out the HRE, save for 1 province, the Pope didn't say anything. Interesting... The Almohads kept trying to invade my province, but I had a HUGE army sitting behind a river with catapults, so they kept running away. Their 6-star general turned into a -6 morale coward, so no worries there. I wiped out Italy for fun, leaving 1 island behind. The pope got mad, and the Spanish sent a Crusade against me. I hid my token garrison in Aragon inside my Keep + walls, and landed 3 massive armies to wipe out the Spanish. Oh, and in the meantime, the Almohads collapsed, cannot find any of their units; everything devolved into rebel factions.

I've got Feudal and Chivalric units coming out of 3 provinces, some boats, and there will only be 2 catholic factions left after the Spanish, who I'm going to kill off next time I play: Polish and the Pope.

Since I feel like being nice, I'll let them live. Go after some nice Islamic countries. I've been keeping peace with them for too long!

Oh, and I found something interesting - kept waiting for my Kings to get married, never happened even though I have full influence. So I married my sister. :dizzy2: When I was 25.

Yea. But now I have 3 sons, 5 daughters, instead of the paltry 1 son I was getting before when I was 57 years old. Now I'm about 40 and have 2 heirs already who are pretty damn good - full acumen, loalty, dread....

Difficulty=medium, this is an awesome game! I think English are too easy, however, as you can crush the French like pancakes so early in the game with Hobilars.

Cheerio
~D

[Ludens]

Seems weird that 'upgrading' my troops might actually be making them weaker, in battle, if sent against the 'wrong' enemy troop types.
There seems to be some misunderstanding that armour makes troops more vulnerable against armour piercing units. This is not the case. There is a formula for armour piercing (you can find it in the unit guide), but this gist is that an AP unit gets +1 attack when armour is 3, +2 when it is 5, +3 when it is 7 (against units on horseback it is +1 at 4, +2 at 6 and so on). So does giving a +1 armour upgrade to a 2 armour unit (2+1=3) make it more vulnerable to AP units? No, because the +1 attack and +1 defense (from the armour) cancel each other out. Does giving +2 armour to a 2 armour unit make it more vulnerable to AP units? Quite the contrary, the AP unit gets +1 attack, but your unit gets +2 defence.

So AP partially negates the bonus armour gives. Armour still protects the unit, but the bonus is less great than when facing non-AP units.


Should I be raising unarmoured spears/ByzInf specifically for desert fighting?
That would be advisable: the more armour, the faster your units tire. Armour upgrades are included in this calculation. But perhaps you should also change your unit line up and rely more on light troops like Trebizond archers. I always use many archers and crossbowmen when fighting in the sands


Does retraining 'add 1' to the valour of the unit on each occasion I retrained? (I may have retrained some more than once, without realising). Or do I have a glitch with my spearmaker (guild level?) in Constantinople?
I remember reading something about a glitch in the valour upgrades in vanilla MTW. This might be it.

[Marquis de Said]

I've restarted as the Byzantines and my troop choices are surprisingly limited. I can now get spears with better starting valour but that's about it along that line. The Town Guard building description didn't list any units it could build but I built one anyway, to see what happened. You know the rest. No Feudal-anything either. Have to make do with the mercenaries, which cost a packet ...

With the Byzantines you have a completely different unit roster, with its strengths and weaknesses. The town guard line doesn't produce anything other than urban militia for the Byzantines, so its pretty much useless.



Checking the unit guide which comes from the game tells me that Byz infantry are just 'Medium Infantry'. Initial good impressions against the likes of Turks and Vikings led to a disappointment against some French with a 7-star general and his UM/MS/Peasant rabble. Units routing with 70-80 men still left. Okay, I have the tech to build Varangian Guard in one province but the 2 year training time delaying other units coming out and the cost being nearly as much as a ship (for a 60 man unit) is off-putting, to say the least. Built three units so far, none have seen combat, so I'm still clueless as to their abilities.

Byz Infantry are quite good when you use them correctly. Since they are swordsmen they can't take a cavalry charge very well, but in hand-to-hand they are good, especially since there's 100 men in a unit as opposed to the usual 60 swordsmen. Their only problem is poor morale, which explains the 70-80 guys routing. Keep them supported from the flanks by cavalry. I would say Byz infantry should make up the bulk of your infantry. They are good value for money.

As for Varangian Guard, hear my words, my fellow MTWer: they are nigh invincible in early when supported by other troops. These guys can walk up to any infantry bar none and cleave them in half. Just make sure they don't get charged head on by heavy cavalry. Even then they will lose a few guys from the charge but will recover and work their armour-piercing axe magic on the cavalry. I've had battles where one unit of VG (my own or enemy) tied up 3-4 opposing units and would not rout. Only bad thing about them is that they're expensive, but having 1-2 of them in every important army is a good idea. Note: you can only build them in early and high.


I can understand if the bonus meant they perform better against armoured (sword-type) troops than unit types don't show this description, i.e. MS will do better against CMAA than spears can. I can understand why an armoured spearman loses the benefit of that armour upgrade because polearms are good against armour. However I don't see why an armour-upgraded spearman should be weaker against MS (because of their attack bonus) than one who lacked the upgrade. The spear still has a longer reach than the polearm so the MSs should be getting killed before they can make a strike and the spears should win every time. A polearm has longer reach than a sword, so sword units should suffer against both polearms AND spears. Armouring only serving to give a boost to the opposition just seems daft to me!

This has sort of puzzled me, too. But my experience of the game is that more armour is always better (except in the desert).

The logic of axemen and swordsmen beating spearmen may seem flawed at first, but I have read in some history books that some pikemen formations actually had swordsmen embedded in them, who would on contact walk up to the opposing pikemen, deflect their pikes with their shields, run in among the pikes and kill the pikemen with their swords.




Should I be raising unarmoured spears/ByzInf specifically for desert fighting?

Yes, leave the armour upgrades out. A good idea would be to leave one province with no armourer at all, and build the units from there. Don't take Kataphraktoi into the desert (except if it's a high-star general). They get fried and will end up losing to much lesser units. Byzantine cavalry is good for the desert, so are Byz Lancers, but you get those with VI. A good idea would be to expand into the steppes first, get steppe cavalry from there. They're good in the desert.


Also, I have various spear training areas. Silver armour in Constantinople, just recently got up to Bronze armour in two other regions and the colour I can only describe as 'gunmetal' in the places where I've done much of the re-equipping so far. The gunmetal ones are coming out as valour-1 and, more recently valour-2. I'm sure Constantinople has the same level of spearmaker, probably higher, but I just trained a completely fresh unit and, whilst it has the silver armour, it came out as valour-0.
Does retraining 'add 1' to the valour of the unit on each occasion I retrained? (I may have retrained some more than once, without realising). Or do I have a glitch with my spearmaker (guild level?) in Constantinople?


A master level building adds one valour to the units that are trained in it. Exception is when a unit needs more than one building for its training. E.g. Kataphraktoi need armourer's guild and horse breeders guild. Then you need a master armourer and master horse breeder. For some reason, this doesn't always apply, it's still a bit of a mystery. For example in recent game as Almohads, I got +1 valour for Ghulam Cavalry with a master horse breeder, but just spearmakers guild. It gets even trickier with units requiring three buildings. As a general recommendation, master level buildings are worth building.
Valour is also cumulative. E.g. Trebizond gives +1 valour bonus for Trebizond archers. A master bowyer will also give +1, so you end up with +2 valour for Trebizond archers.

(I just noticed that you mentined you had a Spearmakers guild in Const.)Maybe you have a glitch in the game. Do you have Viking Invasion? My comments are based on VI, since I've never played the vanilla game. If you have VI, install it. According to everyone on this forum it's better than vanilla MTW. Get the 2.01 patch as well.

[Marquis de Said]

There seems to be some misunderstanding that armour makes troops more vulnerable against armour piercing units. This is not the case. There is a formula for armour piercing (you can find it in the unit guide), but this gist is that an AP unit gets +1 attack when armour is 3, +2 when it is 5, +3 when it is 7 (against units on horseback it is +1 at 4, +2 at 6 and so on). So does giving a +1 armour upgrade to a 2 armour unit (2+1=3) make it more vulnerable to AP units? No, because the +1 attack and +1 defense (from the armour) cancel each other out. Does giving +2 armour to a 2 armour unit make it more vulnerable to AP units? Quite the contrary, the AP unit gets +1 attack, but your unit gets +2 defence.

Thanks for clearing that up, Ludens. I had the exact same thoughts, but didn't have the stats to back them up.

Marquis de Said

[EatYerGreens]

Thanks to Ludens and Marquis for the Byz tips.

I'll stop worrying about the valour-0 spears coming from Constantinople as that province will probably be kept busy churning out Katanks and VGs for the time being. With regard to the VG's, I'll bear in mind that they're time-limited. I'm up to 1274 now. When does 'Late' kick in again, 1300-ish?

Somewhat ironic that one of my bronze armourers is down in Arabia. Can't remember if I built it or captured it intact but maybe best to demolish it, in order to supply that locality. A pity, since I've got a useful vcariety of troop types coming from there. In the meantime, I'm doing daft things like moving armoured bombards and (newly acquired) gunners from there up to Europe and unarmoured spears, BIs and archers from less well-developed provinces like Lithuania down to the desert regions! A war with the Almos broke out, meaning I can't ship them to and fro as easily as previously. But that's another story...

I keep having to mention that I have a copy of VI but I haven't installed it yet. I'm given to understand that if you upgrade in the middle of a campaign, none of the gamesaves will work any more and you have to begin from scratch. I want to complete one campaign before I make these changes. Lancers sound useful. So far, my PronA have been somewhat less than stellar (or I've just been using them badly) at attack duties. I send them in to chop up some archers and they end up getting mobbed by melee troops because they won't disengage when I attempt to order them to... routers pursuit only for them, from now on, I suspect. Nicaean +1 PA's are only just coming on tap and I haven't tried them out yet.

[Marquis de Said]

When does 'Late' kick in again, 1300-ish?

Late starts in 1321.





Somewhat ironic that one of my bronze armourers is down in Arabia. Can't remember if I built it or captured it intact but maybe best to demolish it, in order to supply that locality. A pity, since I've got a useful vcariety of troop types coming from there.

You don't necessarily need to do that if you can keep sending troops there from less developed provinces. Look at it this way, if you get threatened down there, you can always churn out silver-armoured spearmen and Treb. Archers who have little armour to start with, so the armour will improve their defence without fatigueing them too much.




In the meantime, I'm doing daft things like moving armoured bombards and (newly acquired) gunners from there up to Europe

Historically speaking, that's a sound policy, because in those times the best handguns and bombards came from the Middle East and China. Unfortunately, the game doesn't reflect this in any way, as the Egyptians' Mameluk handgunners are pretty pants :thumbsdown:


I keep having to mention that I have a copy of VI but I haven't installed it yet. I'm given to understand that if you upgrade in the middle of a campaign, none of the gamesaves will work any more and you have to begin from scratch. I want to complete one campaign before I make these changes.

If you have the hard drive space, you can install another copy of MTW with VI to another folder, and have it both ways.


So far, my PronA have been somewhat less than stellar (or I've just been using them badly) at attack duties. I send them in to chop up some archers and they end up getting mobbed by melee troops because they won't disengage when I attempt to order them to... routers pursuit only for them, from now on, I suspect. Nicaean +1 PA's are only just coming on tap and I haven't tried them out yet.

Yeah, that's annoying with elite cavalry who like to dish it out to the last man, like a bunch of fools :charge:
Try double-clicking away from the enemy unit several times to get them to disengage. If this doesn't work, a radical solution is to order them to withdraw by right clicking on their unit banner on the bottom of the screen. But then you have to remember to order them to stop, otherwise they'll bugger off like you told them to ~D

Have fun with the Byz :duel:

[EatYerGreens]

Late starts in 1321.


Thanks. I've a few years to spare yet and things have slowed down lately with around three battles per turn, so I've only managed one year's worth of activity per session.




You don't necessarily need to do that if you can keep sending troops there from less developed provinces. Look at it this way, if you get threatened down there, you can always churn out silver-armoured spearmen and Treb. Archers who have little armour to start with, so the armour will improve their defence without fatigueing them too much.


It would make even more sense to me if the higher level armour upgrades meant better quality armour rather than necessarily meaning heavier armour. In other words, more structural strength, pound-for-pound or even as far as meaning better protection AND lighter overall weight.



Historically speaking, that's a sound policy, because in those times the best handguns and bombards came from the Middle East and China. Unfortunately, the game doesn't reflect this in any way, as the Egyptians' Mameluk handgunners are pretty pants :thumbsdown:


The poor old Eggys have been wiped out several times over in this campaign, so I've not come up against these units in battle myself. I've only generated two units of handgunners of my own and the army carrying the first unit of these was so generally oversized that it caused the enemy to retreat to their castle without stopping for a field battle, so I haven't seen them in action either.



If you have the hard drive space, you can install another copy of MTW with VI to another folder, and have it both ways.


That's something I wouldn't have thought of. Thanks for the tip. (If anything, I have an oversized HDD - "200 Gb" - so space is no problem... just that virus scans are painfully time-consuming as I never take the trouble to prune out stuff I no longer really need).



Yeah, that's annoying with elite cavalry who like to dish it out to the last man, like a bunch of fools
Try double-clicking away from the enemy unit several times to get them to disengage.


I'll give that a go, nect time I get the chance, though I'm sure I've had at least one disastrous experience with that sort of thing before. Attempted disengagement from an enemy unit which is still fighting is just about as bad as routing itself. Telling your troops to come to a halt, when they are pursuing a fleeing enemy unit is the only safe form of disengagement that I can think of. There's no button you can press which makes the unit back away from the enemy, though this might be useful, tactically, when you want to draw enemy troops down from a defensive position.

Instead, the movement command makes them do an about-face, to walk to the new destination and turning your back to the enemy first gives them an attack bonus (if I read the notes right) AND the attack from the rear is a rout trigger-event in its own right.



If this doesn't work, a radical solution is to order them to withdraw by right clicking on their unit banner on the bottom of the screen. But then you have to remember to order them to stop, otherwise they'll bugger off like you told them to ~D


Ah! That's useful to know. I've had trouble rescinding withdrawal orders in the past (greyed out icons when that unit is selected by itself) and I should have realised that it was something so simple.



Have fun with the Byz :duel:

I will.

It's a pity that so many other factions have fallen under the Almo yoke, so there's not going to be so much variety in the forthcoming conflicts but I'm going to have to be quick about grabbing more provinces, as I've had a negative profit margin ever since trade suddenly collapsed...

[Procrustes]

The guides suggest that you can get your cav to disengage with fewer casualties by double-clicking where you want them to go then immediately hitting "hold formation". The hold applies to where they are going. Supposedly this lets you disengage with fewer casualties than the other methods, but you still take some. (Remember to put them back on "engage at will" before you chage them again.)

I'm not so sure - all the methods seem to have problems. Basically I don't charge my cav into a melee unless I already have them engaged with something else, or unless I'm desperate. And I've just come to accept that my cav is going to take losses every time I use them.

You can use this against the AI, too. Basically any cav gets "stuck" when it starts to melee - if you are in trouble you can swarm their cav with any cheap troop that isn't routing while you race something armor peircing up to attack.