A few questions after finishing my first short campaign.

[Excalibur Bane]

Greetings,

Well, it's been awhile since I posted here. Anyway, I just finished my first short campaign as the English. I had tried the French on medium/medium difficulty, but I got slaughtered in relatively short order. Between the Inquistor running around burning the majority of my family members and agents, and all the foreign merchants destroying the local ones, it was very messy.

So, after taking a peek around here, I noticed you could change the amount of time per turn, so I changed to 2.0 (4 turns per year, I think) and restarted as English on Easy/Medium. I had a great deal more success this time around, since the Inquistors don't seem to be able to cross water. The foreign merchants seemed to leave my own alone for the most part as well.

The two most pressing problems I'm having seem to be combat and piety. No matter how hard I try, I simply cannot raise the piety of my family members. It always remains at 1 or 2, perhaps 3 at the most. I made a point of always having the best possible religious building and having at least two priests in every settlement or castle. This had no effect that I could see of. Alot of my priests ended up becoming heretics before too long. It would be nice to have a dialog box telling me this, it would be more helpful then wondering what happened to my priest in X town or castle.

Combat is something different entirely. My units don't seem to really try to surround the enemy, they space out no matter what I tend to do and most of them sit there while only a small portion of the unit is actually fighting the enemy. Is it designed to be that way or is that a problem that needs to addressed? Much the same applies for cavalry, they don't seem to pay much attention to formation. Now, I could very well be wrong about this but I had assumed that when one double clicks and has them charge the enemy, that they would infact close the gap as quickly as possible and then charge in for the kill. I've watched them, but they don't seem to do this. The lances are ready as they charge, but they lose cohesion and their lances never come down, they simply disappear and melee weapons are readied when they hit the enemy.

I checked out the stick at the top which says to have them walk upto the enemy and they will do their charge on their own. This seems to work, most of the time. It's sorta a hit or miss kind of thing and is truly making my cavalry useless, not that the English cavalry seems to be terrible effective anyway :)

The AI doesn't seem to have much problem making full use of their own cavalry, much to my dismay. In two seperate battles, I recall a unit of my Armored Swordmen being cut down by a single charge from French Feudal Knights. My general was considerably more capable then the French's general. Then in a different battle, I tried the same thing with English Knights on some Dismounted Feudal Knights of the French. My knights rode into them with only swords and promptly got cut to pieces to the last man.

Otherwise I'm having few other problems. Though a strange one popped up near the end. Freshly trained units would be available to be retrained over and over and there wasn't anything being gained. Not sure what causes that.

So, I guess my questions would be thus:

1) Is there any advice to better utilize my cavalry? Any way to mod the behavior so they always charge?

2) How does one build up Piety on family members? Leaving them in a town with a religious building doesn't seem to have much positive effect.

I'm gonna restart my French campaign on Medium/Medium and see if I do any better, now that I know a little bit more of the game mechanics. Perhaps observing the AI's use of cavalry might provide some insight. Any help is appreciated :)

[redstar1]

I'm by no means a veteran but I have played a very similar campaign to you. You aren't quite using the cavalry right. If you double click on a target, they will run to chargin range then charge, however the act of them running there will get them out of line and the charge may not even occur. Cavalry charges are, and were, fairly complex things. By all means run to the battle zone, but you must then stop and allow the cavalry to form up. One click to attack will set them in motion towards the target and when they are at charging range they will do so automatically. I discovered this late on in my game and it certainly does help to have a little patience with them.

I found that the only priests I could get increased Piety on were those I sent to the Muslim lands, and those who had vanquished heretics.

[Excalibur Bane]

I'm by no means a veteran but I have played a very similar campaign to you. You aren't quite using the cavalry right. If you double click on a target, they will run to chargin range then charge, however the act of them running there will get them out of line and the charge may not even occur. Cavalry charges are, and were, fairly complex things. By all means run to the battle zone, but you must then stop and allow the cavalry to form up. One click to attack will set them in motion towards the target and when they are at charging range they will do so automatically. I discovered this late on in my game and it certainly does help to have a little patience with them.

I found that the only priests I could get increased Piety on were those I sent to the Muslim lands, and those who had vanquished heretics.

Yeah, patience isn't my greatest suite. It doesn't help when catapults and arrows are raining down on my poor knights while they trot along without a care in the world to stop and try to reform. I'm guessing this a completely stupid question, but how can I tell when they are reformed and ready to charge? They seem to take a very long time to reform when I order them to a different position or order them to halt well short of the enemy to prepare to charge. I find it all very confusing :(

I'm not 100% certain that double clicking a charge from a distance, and letting them do the right thing themselves works at all. I've tried in at least a dozen battles, the lances are up and ready to strike, but they remain that way until they hit the enemy, they never come down and do a proper charge. I guess I'll have to try to perfect my timing. I've never been very good with cavalry, to be honest. I noticed even after a successful charge, the unit splinters off. I read another thread around here about the max number of units that can engage another at one time. I don't think it's very high, or I'm doing something wrong. I've had several hundred swordsmen just standing away from the engagement while only a fraction of them engaged the enemy. The AI seems to be doing it right, they don't seem to have much problems surrounding my men.

[Quin]

This is somehow stupid. Cavalry never galloped 200 meters, then stopped, reformed and charged from 30 meters! They needed those 200 meters to gain momentum and speed, besides they were usually highly trained units who knew how to keep the unit cohesion. Unlike lower "ranking" foot soldiers whose formations tended to break apart (this was one of the main advantage of cavalry formations). In this game it is quite the opposite - cavalry formations become all messy and broken, while even the lowest peasents and militas keep theirs when running for 500 meters!? :dizzy2: :dizzy2: :dizzy2: :dizzy2:

Lack of proper cavalry charges is one of the gamebrakers IMHO.

[Excalibur Bane]

Well, that was something of a disaster. I restarted on medium/medium as the French. I was doing well for awhile, but my defensive playing style was working against me. I had about 10 regions in total. My generally prefer to build up the empire's infrastructure and then attack once I have superior units, but somehow the AI was managing quite easily to meet and beat my units even though I was diverting all of my resources to constructing new buildings. I finally decided that I simply wasn't going to get ahead of them by keeping only a minmal standing army and diverting all my resources to infrastructure.

So, I tried to use spies and assassins to slow down the growth of HRE, Denmark, England, etc. Try as I might, I just ended up wasting resources as assassin after assassin kept on expiring trying to kill this person or the that person. Sabotage worked well enough, but I never get a skill increase as the result of it. I tried my hand and maintaining a decent network of merchants but that flopped as well. Either my merchants would start with a good trait and a bad trait that would cancel each other out and he'd have zero merchant skill or one of the invincible Danish merchants would stumble along and seize his assets. I quickly gave up on that.

So, about 50 turns after that, I decided to grab Caen. The English forces there were very primitive. Mostly milita, nothing terribly challenging. I laid siege to it, and as is my standard practice, I waited till they starved to death. It took about 7 turns if I recall. The odd thing, was that the English had several full stacks just miling about. Either getting on a fleet or getting off it, but not challenging my siege force until there was one turn left and the defenders had been completely wittled down from nearly half a stack to about 50 men in various units. I captured Caen and occupied it.

A ceasefire soon came to pass after that, and the Pope and the other Catholic factions didn't seem to be too interested. There was quite a bit of covert action at this point. I noticed alot of unrest in several of my border settlements between Paris and HRE territory. It never occurred to me to check for spies causing unrest. So I quickly built a several spies from the Marsielles which had a Thieves Guild in it. Sure enough, they were riddled with spies and assassins from Milan, HRE, Denmark. Squalor was upto about 80% already on most of my towns, which made it difficult enough. This should be capped at a much lower amount for Huge cities that have no feasible way of dealing with it.

Anyhow, about 20 or 30 turns after the brief war with the English, everyone apparently decided I was a tempting target, and launched a number of suprise attacks. The HRE, Denmark, Poland, Milan, Portugal, Spain and God know's who else declared war, or simply attacked even though we had alliances. I had two standing armies at this point, a northern army to deal with any threats from the English and a southern army to deal with any threats from Spain or the like. Needless to say, it was a mess. I fended off most of the attacks from all of them. I was hastily trying to assemble forces to defend against the combined forces of Milan, HRE and Denmark. It's more or less been a stalemate ever since. I simply couldn't produce enough units to defend everywhere at once, and any attempts for a peaceful resolution were always rejected. They had all formed a nice, handy little alliance. I spent the better part of 10, maybe 15 turns running my armies to lift one siege right to another. The development in all my territories quickly grinded to a halt, because I couldn't afford to churn out units and build up structures at the same time.

Meanwhile, throughout the whole game the Inquistor was having a burnfest roasting all of my agents and family members that it could get it's hands on. I lost my most experienced army, the one travelling with my King, after he died. The entire full stack deserted and turned into Rebels a few spaces away from one of my towns on the way to attack Milan. Why that happened, or that it happened at all, was unacceptable. Half my priests and bishops tended to become heretics as well. After the loss of my fortress at Toutlouse to the Portugal, I quickly gave up hope and I'm going to restart again.

I autoresolved alot of battles, I simply don't have the patience to micro manage cavalry that should know how and precisely when to charge properly. The few battles I did fight, were mostly sieges. There is no doubt about it, the AI has indeed been improved in both campaign and battle. They actually bring proper siege engines to battle, instead of just going with ladders and battering rams. They are very surgical about it too, which is nice. If he had a catapult or the like, he would always make sure to take out several walls, target and destroy each tower that would pose a threat if he tried to move through the breeches, then he would move in and try to take the castle. A nice change of pace. Not good for me of course, but good for the game :)

I really don't see the point in having relations listed if they mean nothing, the AI has no qualms about being excommunicated, they were almost always as such throughout the whole 200 turns or so of the campaign. They didn't care much for alliances either, they tended to break them at will. They always refused my ransom of prisoners too. Thousands died because their empire wouldn't give me the florin for them. Still, I do get a chuckle over hovering over the three options and listening to the prisoners beg and whine. That's a very nice touch. :laugh4:

The battles are still a mess, regardless of how you want to look at it. Historical realism should never compromise gameplay, as may or may not be happening here. I haven't really looked around to see if the virtually useless cavalry or the units wandering all over are bugs or features. In either case, I always tend to get much better results from autoresolving then from doing it myself, except when the odds are close of course. I've simply stopped using cavalry for the moment, I'm not going to hold their hands for each and every movement, making sure they are in formation and making sure they charge properly. I suspect if this was the case in the day, any unit who tried that would been promptly executed for incompetence if they are knights and couldn't manage to do a charge without the general running beside them telling them exactly how to do it :thumbsdown:

This time around, I'm going to simply go with Easy/Easy for the time being until a few things are addressed and the unpacker becomes available. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, but these things are severely detracting from the gameplay. I'm not a heavy gamer, and I like a decent challenege, but not when everyone and his mother's uncle are out to get the human player.

The first few things I'll be changing will be:

- Possibly remove merchants, or make them a little more restricted so they can't come and go from any empire they wish unless trade rights have been granted.

- Miltiary access will mean just that, no foreign armies will be able to cross into your territory unless they have a military access treaty or they will have to declare war first. I'm getting a bit tired of enemy armies roaming around my territory.

- Remove inquistors. I don't see any point for these units. A nice historical accuracy but they detract from the gameplay by running around executing people.

I'll probably do more when certain things come to mind. I'm sure you'll all burn me at the stake for my heretic beliefs :) but a game should be entertaining, and that comes before any historical realism.

[Myrddraal]

I think that to execute a proper charge, just line up your cavalry (as far away as you like) then single click the enemy. Your unit will walk towards the enemy, then trot, then finally lower their lances and charge.

[frogbeastegg]

:stunned: That sounds nothing like either of my campaigns! I've got one VH campaign/VH battles English, and one H/VH Venetian. So far both have been sane games, and enjoyable. I'm a builder player also.

The arms race is a thing of the past ~:) I used to play the arms race in the old games, and I tried it in this one only to realise in short order after looking at the relevant in-game information that it doesn’t work in this one. Low level units aren't invariably crap in this game; the second tier units are more than serviceable. The units you get with new buildings are often only a point or two better than the old ones, and there's been a small change to the way armour upgrades work. Each unit has a starting armour level which you can tell from their unit card picture and battlefield graphics. They won't gain any upgrades unless the armourer building offers something better than the default. For example mailed knights start with mail armour, so they will only upgrade when you build the level 3 blacksmith, as it gives heavy mail. Feudal knights start with heavy mail, so they would gain nothing from the same building. Now I build towards my core infantry (e.g. Italian spear militia) and then concentrate on getting armour upgrades for them. This means they stay current, and for a fraction of the cost. I'm further into my Venetian game than my English one, and I still have armies comprised mainly of Italian spear militia; they're now sporting their third armour upgrade.

The only time rushing to upgrade troop producing buildings is worthwhile is if the building opens up access to a good new unit style, for example your first crossbows.

Keeping big cities happy is much easier than in RTW, IMO. There are a lot of buildings which add to happiness and law, some of them a little unexpected; read the building descriptions to track them all down. In my Venetian game I'm finding that as long as I've maxed out my free upkeep garrison with militia units and then added a couple more paid for units (brings it up to about 30% garrison influence on the city info scroll; max influence is 80%), and built the most recent entry in each of the militia barracks/town hall/church/brothel families I'm good for happiness on very high taxes, even with a few enemy spies causing unrest. There are also buildings which add to happiness which I haven't felt the need to build yet.

Make sure you keep a couple of decent spies in any city which is attracting enemy spies. A level 3 and a level 4 are currently stashed in Venice and killing nearly every enemy spy which tries to enter the city, and a pair of level 3s are doing the same in Milan.

I've been dabbling with assassins myself, with mixed results. I did gain skill points sabotage buildings; using them in combination with a spy may help. It can take a few successful sabotages before any skill is gained, so keep trying. After gaining a few points princesses are generally easy targets; look for ones with little to no charm. Then move up to diplomats with no skill, then diplomats with a couple of skill points and/or very low level heretics. Missions with 100% chance of success do give experience, so they are a risk free way to improve agents, though sometimes it takes a couple of kills to get an upgrade. Getting an assassin's guild helps quite a lot; assassins then tend to start with 1-3 points. I've now got two killers nearly maxed out.

I'm not doing too well with merchants. In my English game I'm still not really ready to build them in quantity. In my Venetian one they world is full of good stat enemy merchants and mine get killed within turns, even with the boost of a merchant's guild.

If you wish to keep good relations with a faction you need to work at it. Give them the occasional gift of 500 florins, give them your map, etc. This undoubtedly works with the Pope; in my Venetian game he's beaming benevolently on my people as I war with two other Catholic factions, and all thanks to the occasional 500 florins.

Sometimes my cavalry work, sometimes they don't, regardless of how I give my orders or how much space I leave them to prepare for their charge. Sometimes they simply walk up to the enemy and do nothing, or halt at the last second though the charge launched successfully, or swap their lances for swords. I think it's a bug. The AI has no such problems. When the charge does work the result puts me in mind of that famous historical quote about Frankish knights being able to break down walls with their charge. :loveg: Hoping the patch will fix this issue.

I've only seen a few excommed factions in both campaigns, and the Catholic factions do seem to make some effort not to get that status. However, the Pope does not always intervene. If you're a high favour faction attacking a low favour one he may ignore it, or if two equally favoured factions enter a war again he may turn a blind eye. Or he may not. So far I've found the Pope to be far better than he was in MTW; this time his actions make sense, in my experience.



Hope that gives you some ideas for your next game.

[Quillan]

In my Byzantium game, England has managed to get excommunicated. I know this because the Second Crusade was called against the English-owned citadel of Toulouse. It fell to the Polish finally, the English took it back, and the Third Crusade was called against Toulouse, again. This time it fell quickly to the Milanese. Only time will tell if it will belong to the English and become the target of the Fourth Crusade.

[Excalibur Bane]

Thanks Frog, and others. I know about most of the stuff you said Frog, I was trying my best to keep up with the appropriate buildings, but the things are bloody expensive at the higher levels. I guess I'm just not used to all this yet. Or I'm just not as good as I used to be :)

I had a Master Merchant's Guild, several Thieves Guild and one Explorer Guild before my faction met it's untimely end. I kid you not, I can count at least 20 or so times the Catholic factions got excommunicated. The ironic part is, that according to the End Turn Report, I was leading in nearly every field. I had a large number of Cardinals, and my relations with the Pope were Perfect I believe. The last three Popes came from me as well. This may be why every second turn a faction was either being excommunicated or reconciled. It was complete and utter madness. :inquisitive:

It's worth nothing that I did change the turns to 1.00 from the default 2.00 in the strategy file. I don't know if this has any effect. I was just disturbed to have so many of my agents turning into heretics or just deserting. I can't remember the name of the city, but when I first put a spy in it, 3 enemy assassins and 4 enemy spies were ejected. It took a good 30 seconds for everyone to back out of each other's way into a free square :dizzy2:

The straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak, is when as I said, my last King died and the next turn my most experienced army all deserted for no particular reason that I can figure out. I haven't had much luck with Piety at all. I just can't do anything with it. I don't know what factors into it, but none of my generals or kings or anyone except Priests have any of it. This is a bit disappointing since it affects management this time around. I was always in good standing with the Pope and I was always building Cathedrals and the like to keep him pleased. I had at least two priests in every town or castle at any given time. I did focus on as you said, upgrading the armor of my units but it didn't seem to have much effect in melee. Dismounted Nobles with those poleaxes got butchered by a bunch of Levy Spearmen in one battle. The odds were nearly 1:1 too.

At any rate, I'm going to start my E/E game now. If I get my ass handed to me by the AI on these settings, I will never play a strategy game again because I'm too old :laugh4:

[Kobal2fr]

Squalor was upto about 80% already on most of my towns, which made it difficult enough. This should be capped at a much lower amount for Huge cities that have no feasible way of dealing with it.

Realistic enough, I'd say. Urban poverty is pretty much what triggered every single Revolution after all... Any crowd consisting of poor people bunched up with very, very rich people needs half a spark to turn ugly, and I'd consider an enemy provocateur to be spark enough :) But it *is* too hard to kill off an identified spy, I'll grant you that - even with good assassins that had 30-40% chances to dispose of experienced merchants and generals, the most I've ever managed on even a newbie spy has been a measly 16% percent, and given the facts that a) spies exp ultra fast and b) a killer can go from 8 to 0 exp in one failure...


I really don't see the point in having relations listed if they mean nothing, the AI has no qualms about being excommunicated, they were almost always as such throughout the whole 200 turns or so of the campaign. They didn't care much for alliances either, they tended to break them at will.

I've learned from TW games that alliances shouldn't be taken as "we're not going to attack each other" but as "we're going to hammer that idiot over there". In MTW, allies would routinely stab you in the back whenever convenient and otherwise profitable, but if you attacked a common foe bordering both your lands they'd consistently send a sizeable force to help (which, of course, could be exploited by sneaky bastards like myself, who'd let my "ally" attack my foe's larger force all by himself and get slaughtered, and only then attack the now-tired ennemy. Two birds, one stone and a sinister chuckle ~;p )

Bottom line is : if you expect your ally to be trustworthy, let him be far away from your lands, and attack with him.

Also, you can't ever, ever ever trust allies weaker than you are. Turtling, building huge armies and teching up peacefully and/or faster than they do *always* leads to your neighbours feeling threatened by your power and banding together to try and nip the menace you represent in the bud before it's too late. Don't you do the same when one AI faction is starting to turn into a bulldozer ?

[redstar1]

One thing that has to be said in all this.....

.... don't base your perception on Cavalry from Hollywood movies such as 'Troy' or 'Alexander'.

Cavalry charges were executed with precision, the entire column hit as one for maximum effect.

[Excalibur Bane]

Well, after much tinkering around and adjusting this or that, I seemed to have succeeded in at least figuring things out and adjusting my tactics to something that would match the AI. The castle and town difference is what threw me off, I suppose. I've been doing more research and then actual playing. I've started and restarted a dozen times.

I changed the turns back to default from my 1.00 setting, to make sure it wasn't having any effect on the AI or the like. I didn't notice any real effects, yet.

E/E will have to do for now, while I play around with things. In one game, I removed the Papacy completely. It seems to work well enough, except it can unbalance things unless you make sure you change the Papal States provinces to Rebel. In the end, it doesn't really make much difference to the AI whether or not the Papacy is there or not.

Autoresolve seems to be extremely efficient, it does a far better job then I can seem to do. I recall one battle between a Rebel force and one of my General's, the odds were just about even, save for the fact that my General had two Command. The autoresolve managed to come out without losing a single man. Until the issues with the cavalry and infantry are addressed, I'm only playing battles that are decisive and the autoresolve doesn't seeem to do well, like sieges.

Considering how well the engine runs, it's suprising to see CA was sloppy about removing all the references to all the old RTW assets. A few hours of play will generate a pretty sizeable log file in the game directory of errors. They should definately address that when the more serious bugs have been fixed. Still, they did an excellent job optimizing the engine. I ran equal simulations on BI and MTW2 with the same amount of men on both sides, using as identical settings as I could get. I'm getting twice the framerate out of MTW2 as I'm getting out of RTW. This is especially apparent in sieges with large amounts of buildings, it used to crawl in RTW, but now even with Bloom on it runs very well. They did a good job optimizing and tighting up the code in that regard, kudos to them for that. :)

The heavy focus of Religion is detracting from gameplay enjoyment so far. I'm either punished for having too much Piety or having too little. Merchant and diplomats are a good case in point. A town with a lot of religious buildings will produce intolerant traits that make the Merchants or Diplomats nearly useless. "Religiously intolernat" and the like should be removed, or lessened to a great deal, it makes very little sense to punish a player for being too religious. Better yet, make them only apply to different religions instead of a broad reduction to the appropriate skills.

AI behaviour is strange, to say the least. As someone above said, never trust the AI to not attack a undefended town. This does seem to be the case. This in and of itself makes a diplomacy simply a useless function if you can't rely on the AI to actually work with you, the "Relations" indicator is even more pointless. If my relations are "Perfect" and he attacks me anyway, what good is it? They have done this many times without reason or provocation. I've gone to a great deal of trouble to avoid doing anything to displease them.

Well, I suppose that went off topic but might as well share some observations, some one may find them useful. In my current game, I'm actually doing well for a change as France. I've been more or less keeping to myself and trying to otherwise keep everyone else happy, all the while observing the AI. From what I can tell, they pay little attention to the Pope. Less then 20 turns into the game, Venice and Milan had both been promptly excommunicated for attacking other Cathloic factions. They didn't make an attempt to appease the Pope at all, they simply continued on their rampage against the other factions. Not much point in having the Papacy if the AI doesn't pay any attention to it. Stiffer penalties would be better I think, so they have a reason to try and play with some sense.:inquisitive:

I reinstalled after playing around with all the various things that can be turned on and off. I'm enjoying it somehwhat now. The Rebels that keep spawning in my territory are grating on my nerves, I've tried in previous games to reduce or eliminate them by chaging the "Brigand Spawn" value (Something like that, I can't remember the exact variable) to different values but neither lowering or raising it had no effect. I tried disabling the "Rebelling_Characters_Active" value but that only resulted in a error if I tried to start a new campaign. The log file said something about "Must have at least two factions." I'm not a modder, so I don't know what that's about. :dizzy2:

I'll post more observations later and progress. :book:

[Quillan]

Well, if religion (specifically relations with the Pope and such) is causing you problems, play a non-catholic faction. Try Byzantium, Russia, the Turks, Egypt or the Moors. The Moors would probably be the easiest overall. The majority of Crusades seemed to be called against the Holy Land, so it's unlikely western Africa would be a target. That gives you two safe borders. You can run your imams into catholic Spain for piety increases, then call jihads against the city of your choice. If you prefer orthodox to muslim, Byzantium is a nice faction to play, assuming you don't mind being at war with all your neighbors at once, the potential for being a target of both Crusades and Jihads, and being a secondary target of the Mongols and Timurids. :laugh4:

[Arifel]

Regarding Cavalry Charges:

From personal experience, the only condition that's absolutely necessary to perform a charge is this:

That all of the knights in the unit can accelerate at the same rate toward their target.

This means that, for example, if there's one knight standing out of his spot and is blocking another knight in the formation, once the charge begins all other knights will begin accelerating while these 2 are lagged back. The distance between these two and the rest of the knights will become too great for the charge to continue before these two can catch up, and the charge will be aborted.

Walking allows the one knight here and there sitting in the wrong place in the formation to move to their rightful spots, whereas they would've been blocked from it had the unit stood still. Any one lagging behind will "Run" toward their places in the formation and catch up. Running the entire unit, doesn't serve this purpose so well since all of the Knights will travel at "Run" speed making it difficult for the knights lagged behind to catch up.

When your knights are well ordered and you've sure of it, you can order them to run to their target and they'll initiate their charge when they're in range without a problem, unless if the enemy moved cause your knights to turn, that chances their ability to maintain formation.

If you play on Huge unit size setting it may take a long time for knights to form up. And if you don't "walk" them they might never form up correctly, since it takes just 1 knight out of place to mess up the charge. On the other hand, playing on Small unit size setting you can flank-charge quite easily.

[Excalibur Bane]

Well, if religion (specifically relations with the Pope and such) is causing you problems, play a non-catholic faction. Try Byzantium, Russia, the Turks, Egypt or the Moors. The Moors would probably be the easiest overall. The majority of Crusades seemed to be called against the Holy Land, so it's unlikely western Africa would be a target. That gives you two safe borders. You can run your imams into catholic Spain for piety increases, then call jihads against the city of your choice. If you prefer orthodox to muslim, Byzantium is a nice faction to play, assuming you don't mind being at war with all your neighbors at once, the potential for being a target of both Crusades and Jihads, and being a secondary target of the Mongols and Timurids. :laugh4:

Actually, I'm a very vain person. :sweatdrop: I like Blue and I wanted a faction with guns. :yes: I thought it might be nice for a change to shoot the enemy instead of having to hack him to pieces. Why does the color matter so much? I dunno. I think it's a personality trait to have every factor precisely the way I want it :dizzy2:

[Grifman]

This is somehow stupid. Cavalry never galloped 200 meters, then stopped, reformed and charged from 30 meters! They needed those 200 meters to gain momentum and speed,

Methinks you've seen too much Hollywood. Here's a quote from a soldier who actually led cavalry charges:


No distance can be laid down at which to charge, it depends on so many different circumstances. When the ground is favourable and your horses in good condition you can strike into a gallop sooner; but the burst, the charge itself, must always be reserved till within 50 yards, for in that distance no horse, however bad, can be left behind, nor is there time to scatter, and they fall on the enemy with the greatest effect.British cavalry office, 1853

[Kobal2fr]

The heavy focus of Religion is detracting from gameplay enjoyment so far. I'm either punished for having too much Piety or having too little. Merchant and diplomats are a good case in point. A town with a lot of religious buildings will produce intolerant traits that make the Merchants or Diplomats nearly useless. "Religiously intolernat" and the like should be removed, or lessened to a great deal, it makes very little sense to punish a player for being too religious. Better yet, make them only apply to different religions instead of a broad reduction to the appropriate skills.

Couldn't agree more. It's one thing to be intolerant regarding another culture, but it shouldn't impact relationships within your own culture.


AI behaviour is strange, to say the least. As someone above said, never trust the AI to not attack a undefended town. This does seem to be the case. This in and of itself makes a diplomacy simply a useless function if you can't rely on the AI to actually work with you, the "Relations" indicator is even more pointless. If my relations are "Perfect" and he attacks me anyway, what good is it? They have done this many times without reason or provocation. I've gone to a great deal of trouble to avoid doing anything to displease them.

Relation status, while probably not taken into account in the AI realpolitik-driven campaining strategy, is important in diplomacy negotiations. A long-lasting ally will be less reluctant to cut your diplomat's head off at the mere mention of military rights, province exchange/sale, papal votes and the like for example, even more so if you have a trustworthy reputation I believe.


From what I can tell, they pay little attention to the Pope. Less then 20 turns into the game, Venice and Milan had both been promptly excommunicated for attacking other Cathloic factions. They didn't make an attempt to appease the Pope at all, they simply continued on their rampage against the other factions. Not much point in having the Papacy if the AI doesn't pay any attention to it. Stiffer penalties would be better I think, so they have a reason to try and play with some sense.:inquisitive:

There already are penalties for messing with the Pope, as many players complain about : lots of Inquisitors roving around, burning generals and agents. Other factions launching crusades on the poor sods. Maybe the factions defying the pope just feel they can deal with the retaliation, or that the overall profit outweighs the risks involved ? Maybe they'll have no qualms defying a pope who's old and about to die ? I really wouldn't know, so far I haven't seen that many excoms flying around, except for the HRE who starts on the Pope's blacklist anyway.

[Excalibur Bane]

There already are penalties for messing with the Pope, as many players complain about : lots of Inquisitors roving around, burning generals and agents. Other factions launching crusades on the poor sods. Maybe the factions defying the pope just feel they can deal with the retaliation, or that the overall profit outweighs the risks involved ? Maybe they'll have no qualms defying a pope who's old and about to die ? I really wouldn't know, so far I haven't seen that many excoms flying around, except for the HRE who starts on the Pope's blacklist anyway.

Yes, this is true. I understand about the inquistors running around, but the case in point, my current game they had nothing to gain by defying his wishes, I'm not sure if he sent much in the way of the inquisitors to either of the two faction, I wasn't able to call a crusade on either of them because there always seems to be one in progress, I've had two so far in the 100 or so odd turns. I watched the fools attack, get beaten back, probably got a warning that turn from the Pope, then the very next turn they send another small force to siege their new enemy and it gets beaten back again and they end up getting excommunicated. This is on Easy though, it's possible there is a problem in the routines somewhere at this difficulty level. They need to narrow the acceptable risk for a catholic faction to attack another. Of course, I could be horribly wrong too. My observations are based entirely on what my spies show me, and they are only valid for Easy and Medium difficulty. Time will tell. :yes:

[KhaderKhan]

An irrelevant post but can someone tell me how I can modify units stats? I ask because I have some elite units that have ridiculously low defense skill and I want to modify this at a more realistic level.

[Excalibur Bane]

An irrelevant post but can someone tell me how I can modify units stats? I ask because I have some elite units that have ridiculously low defense skill and I want to modify this at a more realistic level.

As far as I'm aware, they cannot be changed at the moment. You will have to wait for the upcoming patch and the included unpacker to access the data files. Hopefully, it shouldn't be too long :yes:

Well, after 8 hours of playing, this game has bite me in the ass like a rabid pitbull. I'm thoroughly enjoying it, despite using Autoresolve most of the time. It's actually not all that bad. I play the occasional battle, just to get a feel for the units for my next game. It's 8 am though, and I'm too tired to think straight but I'll post some more details later. Wacky, wacky game sometimes yet highly enjoyable..:inquisitive: