M2TW rarities

Post in this topic anything you observe and you found very rare. I.e. the AI doing something it never did before or you just seeing (or not seeing) something on the strat or battlemap.

My rarities: (Obviously only from not playing the faction in question myself)
- Sicilian diplomat. Never actually seen them build one. Only ever see princesses.
- Scottish princess. Never actually seen one ever. Do they even get any? :lipsrsealed2:
- English longbows. AI seems more interested in getting swordsmen and siege equipment...
- Scottish merchant. I think I've seen 1 or 2 ever.
- Assassins. In 1.0 they were abundant. In 1.1 there were less, in 1.2 the AI doesn't even bother getting them.

I just met a Scottish princess, who told me to keep my hands of her or something when I clicked her to see what kind of a strange creature it was. This is the only campaign I've met Scottish merchants as well, but that might be because I've never really gone as far West as to conquer any parts of Britain. They used to be my allies, perfect relations, but they did very foolishly and backstabbed me, so I had to take them out (if you really want that province, just ask!)... No Scots anymore, no princess either.

Yeah, no longbows. What is it with the siege engines TW AI's seem to love anyway? I remember the pope having maybe 10 trebuchets in his stack in the ole MTW most of the time, and I've met my share of gazillion-mortar-stacks in M2TW. I can't remember how it was in Rome, but it's beside the point anyway.

One rare thing I've seen only a few times is the enemy using Horse Archers aggressively by actively charging, retreating, skirmishing and doing other kind of stuff that Horse Archers are supposed to do. Recently they did, as I attacked one of my elite HA stacks that had gone rebel maybe 10 turns ago. They were against my Halberd Militia/Arquebus/Horse Archer stack, which got a bit messed up as I was doing other stuff at the same time (never a good idea while playing TW). It even felt like the AI was clever or something, though I know a lot of it was random effects of skirmishing. I was quite happy anyway, as my old elite cavalry just seemed to machine gun my militia down after charging the Arquebuses. My own loyal HA's naturally finished the enemy off...

I've seen the Moors move all the way across the map in response to a Jihad and take Bagdad!

Lol I saw the Moors answer a call to Jihad for Jerusalem once. The Egyptian Iman called it and they must've wanted to take it since they attacked the Moor's in a yr or two. Wonder why they never answered the Jihad...

I've seen a Scottish Princess and Scottish merchants. In fact in my last Russia game Scotland took all of the English Isles. They also had merchants on every UK resource so they at least had a lot of Merchants.

In a earlier Russia game I saw Portugal take all of Iberia! Wipped out the Spanish and the Moors. (I believe France and Spain were fighting so Portugal hardly did it alone.)

I've seen plenty of assassians. Maybe your spies aren't very high or something cause the AI uses tons of spies and assassians against me.

And in my new game I saw something really odd... Denmark took Bruges and Antwerp! Lol. The AI seems to be afraid of thosse places. Anyways just some thing's I've noticed, been suprised at etc.

I've seen a Scots Princess playing as Spain {not her playing as Spain of course , though that would be interesting to watch} .
In most of my games , the Danes always go for Bruges and Antwerp .
An unusual game would be where Denmark and Milan don't become superpowers . Yet to see that .

I've got a two turns per year Egyptian game where no crusades were called to the Middle East until after 1135 {that's 110 turns} whence every catholic and his dog showed up . I park a horse army my side of the Dardinells and Jihad Constantinople to block the other crossing , add a couple of fleets and the huge number of crusader stacks are now waiting for their generals to die of old age . Whilst the outcome is normal , the 110 turn wait was new {like waiting until 1300 in a vanilla game} .

In my current Denmark campaign, when I reached turn 261, the Polish have been my allies for 250 turns. To celebrate I gave them 250k florins, so for the entire game since I originally allied with them, they have never once broken the alliance or done anything to backstab me. I've been playing this campaign with 1.1 and then the 1.2 leaked patch. Now that isn't half bad at all.

Milan didn't become a superpower in my game, it was a constant battle for the territories between all the factions in that area until they started declaring war on me and so I've now established some peace in the region.

Oh I also have 2 Vassals, Scotland and the Holy Roman Empire.

The next most powerful county in this game next to me is The Papal States, they even destroyed Venice! The Holy Roman Empire narrowly missed becoming a past relic itself but very smartly they decided to become a client kingdom of mine. (its scary seeing all the papal states full stack armies waltzing around)

The Portugese have backstabbed me no less than 5 times, that's even with a marriage alliance.

They also had 2 full stack armies outside marrakesh and sieged it, suffice to say I didn't win the battle.

The Papal States changed their capital to Florence, so Rome is no longer the capital, with a decent diplomat I had managed to groom, I bought Rome for about 100k florins! :laugh4: :2thumbsup: :beam:

I also saw a Scottish princess with the name Julian.

I'd probably have more if I could remember them.

Oh and I've managed to keep my king as the the left most character in the family tree, and I have managed to keep my family well bred and always managed to find a decent princess to marry the faction heir, to do this requires alot of planning, and alot of early and unfortunate deaths for kings that are in the way :laugh4: Aside from King Knud the starting king, all my kings have died in battle or died tragically :beam:


thats all I can think of for now.

I think there are probably plenty of Scottish princesses waltzing around eating haggis and drinking Tennants Superstrength. It's just that they are mistaken for men due to their stubble and hairy chests. :sweatdrop:
More of a rarity for me is to see a Papal assasin, when I say rare... do they exist?

How could you say such an insult? The Pope is a man of God, how could he employ assasins?

I've never seen Milan employ something else than Crossbow Militia and Broken Lances (and sieges eq...). NOTHING ELSE.

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Originally Posted by edyzmedieval

I've never seen Milan employ something else than Crossbow Militia and Broken Lances (and sieges eq...). NOTHING ELSE.

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Would you?

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Originally Posted by Slug For A Butt

I think there are probably plenty of Scottish princesses waltzing around eating haggis and drinking Tennants Superstrength. It's just that they are mistaken for men due to their stubble and hairy chests. :sweatdrop:
More of a rarity for me is to see a Papal assasin, when I say rare... do they exist?

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Why use assassins when you have Inquisitors?

I have only once had a character get Ornate armour. -2 HP ugg!

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Originally Posted by Gaius Terentius Varro

Would you?

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No need for anything else, really. When I play as milan, my standard army is 5 pavise crossbows, 5 spear milita, 5 dismounted broken lances, 4 broken lances/famiglia ducale plus the general. An army capable of doing everything, and it is recruited completely from cities, so no need at all for castles.

I have never seen Portugal or Spain or the Moors take Valencia early, ie before 50th turn. Every time they send two or three unit army to attack the settlement and the get whupped. I have actually seen the papal states take it in 2 different campaigns.

I've seen the pope with about 5 asassins, in fact awhile ago I had a pope with 8 dread.

In my Venetian campaign I had secured northern Italy when I moved down a diplomat to Rome. What he saw there was a 10 piety heretic just outside the walls of Rome. I reckoned it was the second coming of Christ and panicked that he would root up my empire as had been written in the books.

2 turns later he had made Rome rebel and then continued to move up north. I knew there was no chance I could denounce him with my priests, so I had to call out troops to completely surround him and kill him. Once again the evil empires of earth had taken care of this messiah :oops:

I saw in some thread that other people too had seen the 10 piety heretic, so I guess it's a random event that may happen from time to time. Quite funny.

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Originally Posted by Czar Alexsandr

And in my new game I saw something really odd... Denmark took Bruges and Antwerp! Lol. The AI seems to be afraid of those places.

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Exactly... In my Hungarian campaign, Antwerp is Scottish-owned but only after turn 40, having stayed rebel all the way...

Scottish merchants I've seen but not one Venetian nor any Moor merchant.

I've yet to see the Russians try to grab any rebel settlement from the steppes (Ryazan/Smolensk/Bulgar/Sarkel/Caffa)...

Another rarity I've thought of : Guild missions... where are they ?

I know they exist but I've yet to see one in 2 campaigns when each time I had almost every single guild at one level or another...

Btw, it's on 1.1

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Originally Posted by Mr Frost

I've seen a Scots Princess playing as Spain {not her playing as Spain of course , though that would be interesting to watch} .
In most of my games , the Danes always go for Bruges and Antwerp .
An unusual game would be where Denmark and Milan don't become superpowers . Yet to see that .

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In a game as the Scottish using the 1.02 patch, the Hungarians just took out the HRE and are in the process of kicking the crap out of the Danes. Milan is still around, but hasn't done much.

First time I've ever seen the Hungarians do anything. Usually they're just sort of... there.

I had one game where the Pope went on his own Crusade to Cordoba and succeeded in capturing the city. Shortly afterwards, Sicily took Rome and the Papacy permanently relocated to Iberia. After about 20 turns, they controlled half the peninsula.

battle post 1.02

I was under siege and i got the message a spy have opened my gate.

Then, they AI march their capatus units to destroy my gate one by one (So they are marching around my whole city, destroy all the 4 gates)

After that they march in and killed my 3 militia units just second before time is up.

I've heard lots of talk about how the Danes seem to :smash: everything...

In my last campaign, if I had not gifted them some territory (after a reload), it would have been the end of the Viking Age...

So much for the Danish fighting spirit..:viking:

I don't seem to be getting requests for helps from my allies for battles even when my army is near theirs. I've gotten this request once in 1.0, but haven't had it since. On that same train of thought, I really wish the AI would be more proactive in asking for help/helping you when you're engaged in a war with a mutual enemy.

One thing I noticed in all my campaigns so far is that Mongols and Timurids are quite....passive. Like they never seem to declare war on anyone and the only way I can get to to start warring is by declaring war on them. And even then I can block all routes out of the mountain passes near Yerevan and they'll just stand around doing nothing.
Even when I didn't own the right side of the map but my ally the Turks did, they were completely quiet.

In my 1.1 installation with 1.2 AI files, the Danes were completely passive this time around. Using 1.1 files they'd go after Scandinavia and parts of Russia, but this time they were happy with Arhus and stayed there till the very end never expanding. Oslo and Stockholm were rebel till very late into the game - until I took em.

What's rare is being able to engineer a situation (outside of crusade-target sieges) where you can fight alongside an ally against a mutual foe.

I have tried several approaches:
1) requesting / offering military assistance, hoping their armies would dash over and join me, or hang about and wait for me to join up with them
2) gifting territories to allies in strategic locations and granting them military access, hoping they would happen to wander by at the right time..

nothing seemed to be working, except at sea where I had dozens of "exciting" autoresolved sea battles involving the papal navy

then I just happened to be invading asia minor by land and got to trebizond, chasing the last emperor of byzantium and his stack of HAs, when who should I discover but the Pope himself with a full stack of papal guard and cavalry. so totally by accident I had a great battle where we were two sides of a pincer movement and totally crushed the orthodox heretics....unfortunately all too rare

A female pope. Don't know how common that is, but it was the first one I'd seen. And let me tell you, I worked hard getting her elected as pope. Getting her Piety up, killing off... er accepting Gods fate for her opposition. Making generous donations to other factions. But it all worked she reigned as Pope for almost 20 years. Loved it.

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Originally Posted by Czar Alexsandr

And in my new game I saw something really odd... Denmark took Bruges and Antwerp! Lol. The AI seems to be afraid of thosse places.

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Shouldn't they be afraid? Whenever I play England, I'm afraid of Antwerp at least for a bit (since I have to focus on the British Isles first). IIRC they both get fairly nasty rebel garrisons.

Those settlements seem to get snagged in 1.2 all the time though, as do almost all rebel settlements. Certainly a lot faster than before, in general. It looks to me like the game more frequently gives out "take the rebel settlement" missions now, which probably accounts for the considerably better early-game expansion of the AI.

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Originally Posted by Bulawayo

In my Venetian campaign I had secured northern Italy when I moved down a diplomat to Rome. What he saw there was a 10 piety heretic just outside the walls of Rome. I reckoned it was the second coming of Christ and panicked that he would root up my empire as had been written in the books.

2 turns later he had made Rome rebel and then continued to move up north. I knew there was no chance I could denounce him with my priests, so I had to call out troops to completely surround him and kill him. Once again the evil empires of earth had taken care of this messiah :oops:

I saw in some thread that other people too had seen the 10 piety heretic, so I guess it's a random event that may happen from time to time. Quite funny.

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How do you kill a heretic with military units?

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Originally Posted by magnum

A female pope. Don't know how common that is, but it was the first one I'd seen. And let me tell you, I worked hard getting her elected as pope. Getting her Piety up, killing off... er accepting Gods fate for her opposition. Making generous donations to other factions. But it all worked she reigned as Pope for almost 20 years. Loved it.

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Happens quite a lot, in fact a bit too much IMO... but it's a laugh nevertheless

@ Jobst : Surround him on all eight squares with units and send a ninth unit right on top of him and hasta la vista....

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Originally Posted by Tristan de Castelreng

@ Jobst : Surround him on all eight squares with units and send a ninth unit right on top of him and hasta la vista....

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... D'oh! I suppose that works with every agent, doesnt it? For some reason I'd never thought of that... My peasants have something new to keep themselves busy with!!!

Exactly... It works with every single agent from the lowest to highest ranking, from thieving merchants to pesky inquisitors...

[EDIT] Oops... can't do it...

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Originally Posted by Tristan de Castelreng

Exactly... It works with every single agent from the lowest to highest ranking, from thieving merchants to pesky inquisitors...

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At first glance it seems kind of cheep, but if you think about it, why shouldn't you be able to send your men to kill an evil heretic, irritating holy man of another faith or enemy diplomat, or ne'er-do-well spy/assassin?

As for armies, I'd think it wouldnt work because you couldn't move onto their square without attacking them... The mouse would just turn into a sword on the army, and if you clicked right next to him your unit would go around, methinks.

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[EDIT] Oops... can't do it...

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Oh, heh heh, I guess you figured that out hte hard way, :smash:

No, just remembered that I should flex my fingers seven times before typing....

The sword part is right...

It seems a bit cheesy to kill agents like this, except for Inquisitors who can be cheesier by themselves (in 1.1 at least). I've seen maybe two generals able to withstand the wrath of the inquisitors thus far, so "inquisitors failing to take down your best generals" is a rare occurrence.

Dunno why, but in my first campaign (Venetians) maybe 30-40 % of my priests were "secretly female".

I got loads of guild missions - assassins' guild missions because I used lots of master-level assassins, I reckon, and a few merchants' guild missions, probably because almost all of my cities had a merchants' guild of some kind. With later campaigns the missions have been much rarer. I wonder if it has something to do with the faction you're playing? Just like I with guilds themselves it seems like that (didn't get a Theologians' guild before taking the first of the Aztec settlements and building a church there, playing as the Polish).

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Originally Posted by Caliburn

It seems a bit cheesy to kill agents like this, except for Inquisitors who can be cheesier by themselves (in 1.1 at least). I've seen maybe two generals able to withstand the wrath of the inquisitors thus far, so "inquisitors failing to take down your best generals" is a rare occurrence.

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Depends on your point of view...I sometimes do it to get rid of agents found but not killed ... like spies and assassins which are which are real p-i-t-a to kill with assassins...

So I imagine a sort of fox chase with units as chasers and the spy/assassin as the fox... Can't be very far from what happened in reality... Whenever a spy or assassin was uncovered every forces were certainly sent on huge hunts to track them down...

I've just of the most rare thing I've just seen last battle i fought : a real (and dangerous) flanking maneuver by the AI which I had every difficulty to overcome (once I had overcome my surprise...:yes: )

Last night I had my least skilled assassin take out a faction heir. Went from being a -1 assassin (if you read the traits) to being +3 after that hit.

Here I figured I'd be rid of this crappy guy who can't even burn down buildings and WHAM! Down goes the local gov! :2thumbsup:

NOTE: I'm not sure which is more rare. Having that crappy of an assassin to begin with actually being useful OR the +3 trait bonus.

Second most rare was a wonderful fight I had as the Turks a couple months ago. My general took 75% casualties killing 62 Byzantine troops and caputed 123. He gained 6 experience from that battle!

Recently one of my noble and young generals have kidnaped and married a young and beauty english princess!! :girlslap:

As of LTC 2.3, I've yet to see the Turks not become vassals of Byzantium in about 40 turns. Not conquered mind you, they still have that extensive empire of theirs. They just... give up, I suppose. Understandable since early Turkish units are really urk. I mean, what kind of sick joke are Azabs anyway ?

I recently had my first Papal mission that didn't involve building priests and churches and whatnot : "Assassinate this heretic". And failed it promptly, because I denounced him instead :wall: (read the mission too fast :sweatdrop:).

I've also seen my first witch ever a couple weeks ago :elephant:.

I have yet to see Spain, Silicy, Milan, the HRE, the Moops, Egypt, Russia, and Denmark expand very far. Oh, and I've never seen anyone aside from the Mongols and myself put together a stack that's half effective.

I'm playing the Scottish, and the pope called for a crusade to take Antioch from the Mongols (they had most of the holy land by this time). The message from the pope also said it had to be my King.

I took Antioch, and then Acre, and also Jerusalem because they were all lightly defended, but this stretched my crusading forces quite thin.

The next thing I know I get a message that a Jihad has been called against Jerusalem by the Mongols. This confused me because I'm pretty sure the Mongols were Buddhists when they actually practiced religion and a Jihad is strictly function of the Islamic or Muslim faith.

Sure enought a Mongol army shows up with a crescent banner and proceeds to take by the city killing my King in the process.

Maybe they converted. :gah:

apparently they were tolerant of many religions... (except daoism - nasty daoism!)

http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/mongol...a/china3_f.htm

not sure they were avid jihadis though...

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Originally Posted by Bulawayo

In my Venetian campaign I had secured northern Italy when I moved down a diplomat to Rome. What he saw there was a 10 piety heretic just outside the walls of Rome. I reckoned it was the second coming of Christ and panicked that he would root up my empire as had been written in the books.

2 turns later he had made Rome rebel and then continued to move up north. I knew there was no chance I could denounce him with my priests, so I had to call out troops to completely surround him and kill him. Once again the evil empires of earth had taken care of this messiah :oops:

I saw in some thread that other people too had seen the 10 piety heretic, so I guess it's a random event that may happen from time to time. Quite funny.

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I want you to know how funny I found that post. Hilarous. Thats sig worthy material right there.

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Originally Posted by Psiloi

Recently one of my noble and young generals have kidnaped and married a young and beauty english princess!! :girlslap:

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Do wot?

i have moors that ended up near my touluse when going into baghdad jihad. and now they think about capturing it...

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Originally Posted by Caliburn

It seems a bit cheesy to kill agents like this, except for Inquisitors who can be cheesier by themselves (in 1.1 at least). I've seen maybe two generals able to withstand the wrath of the inquisitors thus far, so "inquisitors failing to take down your best generals" is a rare occurrence.

Dunno why, but in my first campaign (Venetians) maybe 30-40 % of my priests were "secretly female".

I got loads of guild missions - assassins' guild missions because I used lots of master-level assassins, I reckon, and a few merchants' guild missions, probably because almost all of my cities had a merchants' guild of some kind. With later campaigns the missions have been much rarer. I wonder if it has something to do with the faction you're playing? Just like I with guilds themselves it seems like that (didn't get a Theologians' guild before taking the first of the Aztec settlements and building a church there, playing as the Polish).

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Its not cheese if its realism. If I had a heretic in my territory, my troops would seize him, then dismember him, throwing his peices into a body of water. You cant do that in this game, however, because certain people dont know how to make a game properly. Thats what modders (and innovative people on the forums) are for.

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Originally Posted by Kruniac

Its not cheese if its realism. If I had a heretic in my territory, my troops would seize him, then dismember him, throwing his peices into a body of water. You cant do that in this game, however, because certain people dont know how to make a game properly. Thats what modders (and innovative people on the forums) are for.

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then it would be to easy to kill heretics mate ^^

I think the whole point is that your not supposed to know their heretic's until you can prove it. Unfortunately that would be a bit too difficult to model in the game. Perhaps they should wander about looking like foreign priests or something until revealed for their true belief's.

I had a Venetian campaign in which the Byzantines became my allies in turn 20-something...and I never had to betray them, and they never betrayed me.

The Hungarians [of all people] decided to take Constantinople and Nicaea, then reverted back to being the usual Hungarians and promptly allowed both cities to revolt. I had Iraklion and Smyrna, due to a Council of Nobles mission, so I just marched northwards and took both cities over.

I figured all of this would backwater the Byzantines, but instead they just moved into Turkey and swamped the Turks.

Dunno how rare this is, but it was certainly random.

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Originally Posted by Didz

I think the whole point is that your not supposed to know their heretic's until you can prove it. Unfortunately that would be a bit too difficult to model in the game. Perhaps they should wander about looking like foreign priests or something until revealed for their true belief's.

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Hm, I disagree. If you want to convert people to Heresy, you gotta spread the word, there's no hiding their beliefs there. What should have been done is: Heretics should have been hidden like spies, except only visible by your Priests, no one else. That way, when you see the level of Heresy rise in your settlement, you start recruiting priests and search for the wretch. Once they find him it's supposed to be a 100% hit, if his teachings don't conform with the Church's there's no proving anything there, he's fried. Literally.

Oh, yeah, rarities. I once saw a really high-level witch, 8 or 9 Piety, I reckon. Checked her out with a spy and she had all three ancillaries associated with witches, Dark Apprentice, Lemegeton and my favorite, the Enchanted Broom.

I noticed in my Portugese campaign, that one of my allies was acting like he was prompting an attack on my lands (yeah, we shared a border due to conquering on both sides). As a countermeasure, i did the exact same thing he did, and he actually backed off! Same goes for when Milan attacked Genoa after i took it, i merely moved a stack of decent troops near Milan, and poof, he retreats his forces to take up a defensive posture with him seeing my forces in his lands poised to attack.

Kinda odd, since i don't ever recall seeing armies do that before, usually they just go ahead and siege regardless of me chopping off their retreat/supply lines (ok, so it doesn't work that way, but i like thinking it does)