Compendium: (under construction)

[Lord Preston]

Does everyone remember the first historical battle on M2, the English versus the French?

What deflects the charge, besides the stakes, is before you even approach the enemy, a hail of armour piercing missile fire tears these horsemen to shreds. Granted, those were rather good longbowmen, but good crossbowmen or massed javelins can accomplish the same thing, or better; they usually have much more punch than an arrow, and crossbows in particular seem to be very, very dangerous to charge towards, providing they fire at the correct time.

EDIT: Of course, perhaps any missile troop works better en masse. Don't just use one or two... make a line of these guys and watch the missiles fly!

True, some of your late xbowmen might not be able to retreat behind the line in time, but if you spread crossbows lengthwise (helps them all aim directly anyway, no crossbows in the rear...) they can more easily disappear behind a line of spearmen, who take the rest of the charge. Then they can continue firing at a safe distance, providing your spearmen are in a deep formation which leaves gaps to fire into and helps them keep formation when charged.

Best advice of all:

Try a bunch of custom battles, spearmen and missile units versus a bunch of cavalry and infantry. Play around with the units until you get the hang of them, and learn to cause the most damage. Win the battle!

Guess this was in reply to my post. Took me ages to win that battle

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I wasn't backing away from the spikes to give my archers the extra time to shoot while the enemy troops were slowed moving through the spikes

Typically how many missile units do you use? Early on (say < turn 30) using a european faction I only have 4 X-bow in a stack (usually < 12 units in stack till economy is up and running) as most of my gold goes towards replacing infantry to win seige fights.

Maybe this gets more effective as the ages go on, without looking at unit stats I would suspect the effectivness increases due to:

1. Early on units are typically un-armoured or low-armour so difference between AP and none-AP is minor.
2. Early on I think units are typically quicker so cavalry close quicker giving you less shots.
3. The improvement in missile damage over the ages helps more than the defensive improvements cav/inf get (while also potentially being slower) with AP reducing the armour value, skill not counting leaving only shield upgrades that are fully utilized yet can still be reduced by firing position.
4. Better trained troops so lines last longer (not as much death on contact or quickly routing) so more time to move missiles out to a flank to shoot into the rear of enemy troops. Using militia/early low quality trrops they typically die/rout so quick I don't have time to get missiles onto the flank making high shock better.

I remember some of my first games with England, there famous for longbowmen so I made use of them... i'd have 6 to 10 units in my armies, awesome for field fights but I ended up with most stacks having only 5 so I could do seige fights better.

[Marauder]

Well, I don't think its feasible to memorize the map layouts. It would be just smarter to take a look around in battle deployment and deploy your army so that it would have the most advantageous height advantage

My problem comes when I assault an enemy stack and have a couple possible spots and they all look good. Sometimes I attack and find that my entire possible deployment range is below a large hill and I have no choice but to attack uphill. It would be nice to avoid those situations when possible.

[TheDruid]

any idea on when the guide will be ready?

[Askthepizzaguy]

The Unit Guide is still under construction. Progress is being made, slowly but surely. I imagine I could finish the Unit Guide by the end of next month, perhaps by the end of the year.

It's a LOT of material to cover, and much of it is tedious. However, I'd like to encourage any and all suggestions, ideas, and strategies for the game. Ask me questions if you'd like some specific info in advance, so you don't have to wait.

Asking questions could actually help me get this done faster. Ask me anything you'd ever want to know about Medieval 2, and I shall respond, and much of that will go into the guide. Two birds with one stone, and all.

[Ethelred Unread]

Just a quick question - are you going to release it as a .pdf? I remember downloading froggys .pdfs for Med 1 and this format works really well.

Another idea i had was for you to integrate "exploit boxes" in the main text e.g. 8 stompo, merchant forts etc etc to break up the text.

I work in publishing (for the same company that does the bradygames guides - no questions please it's a different division) so I'm always thinking about page layout!

[Askthepizzaguy]

I'll attempt to make the layout readable. That's as good as I can promise.

However, I think I could make it more readable as a .pdf, if I knew how to make pdfs. I will probably release it as a .rtf.

[gardibolt]

I made the PDF of frogbeastegg's RTW Guide; when this is finished I'd be happy to do the same for this one.

[Drogo]

Hi askthepizzaguy, great idea and the guide would be a great help to someone like me who has just come back to have another crack at the game after being completely underwhelmed the first time I "charged" my heavy horse at a group of peasents and died. After reading much on this site I now understand that double clicking does not infact charge :)

I'm still very mixed on what strategies I employ with the game and would really appreciate some tips on the various styles (blitz, turtle and diplomacy) especially the blitz.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I'd be happy to help.

Took a brief hiatus from making the guide, being fired from work and all. But I should be back to work on it some more soon.

Testing out new strategies on the VanillaMod... no longer caught off-guard by the aggressive AI, I'm whipping their emotionless butts each time and learning how to use the diplomacy function effectively again.

Hint: everyone loves gifts, and won't ally with you if they are planning to betray you next turn.

[Marauder]

I'm whipping their emotionless butts each time and learning how to use the diplomacy function effectively again.

Never thought I'd read that line from you. VanillaMod must be that tough if you're using diplomats for something other than calling a Crusade.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Absolutely it is tough. However, I stopped using diplomacy when I thought it had been (effectively) disabled. Since then I've seen that you can manipulate the AI, and to a great extent.

Notice how the AI is full of cash? Hundreds of thousands of florins...

I know how to swindle 2000 florins out of every faction for every promise to attack a single faction, which adds up to a lot of money... then I bribe the pope and...

Biggest Crusade Ever!