newbie questions

[Navaros]

hi guys, just installed the Medieval Battle Collection (main game + expansion)

i played a bit and here are some questions that came up:

about the Options settings:

under Performance and the AGP Memory scroll bar - it is set to the lowest at the left side of the bar and i can not move it up at all. it list AGP Memory as 0 - what's up with that? i am using a brand new ATI 9600 XT.

about the campaign map:

i am using Almohads. i am wondering how i generate money. i always run out of money at the end of each year.

i am also wondering why i can only build certain buildings in a specific province and am not given the option to build whatever i want in any province, and how i know what-can-be-built-where

i also want to know why sometimes Emissaries offer bribes to buy Generals, and sometimes they offer diplomacy. i don't get how the game determines which is which.

as well, i am curious about how Generals are replaced. can i put to death a General who i do not like? when a new unit is made, is the General for that unit generated randomly? if so, what factors determine how good he will be? and how come sometimes when i make a new unit it comes with a General, and other times it does not?

how often can i distribute titles to my Generals?

is there any FAST way to select multiple armies on the campaign map to move them to other territories? ie: I do not wanna click on each army one-by-one - i want to be able to move many armies together in groups and only have to click on their destination province one time.

if a province with two of my armies in it is attacked - which army defends, or can i use them both?

if i have two units with Generals, how do i merge them? i had problems doing this. at least, that's why i *think* the units would not merge. i certainly was nowhere near the 16-unit limit when i tried to merge two separate units that would not merge in the way that the other units would when i dumped on onto the other. what's the deal here?

about the Battle Map tutorials:

i notice that during the tutorials, if you do something else whilst waiting for your men to take formation (ie: between the two red flags) - then it screws up the order and the men don't take formation. is it like this in the actual game too? do i have to wait until my men are actually in formation and still before i execute another command?

i am also wondering how to protect the General. is there any way to directly control him (i mean him APART from his unit)? it appears he always goes to the front of the unit which to me seems like a great way for him to die. how do i keep the General back from the fray whilst still having the other members of his units in the thick of it?

before a battle starts, how do you see your enemy's position so you know where to deploy your troops? on a couple of battles i could not see my enemy until they were inside my castle. on the pre-battle map scanning i could not find them.


i noticed on one of the tutorials that the pictures on my unit cards disappeared yet their valor and ammunition remained, and if i hovered the cursor over the cards then it still listed what that unit was with text. why did the pictures disappear? is this a bug? i am using Viking Invasion 1.02

[Gregoshi]

Greetings Navaros. Thanks for bringing your questions here. I can't answer all of them, but I can a few. First and most important, check out the Table of Contents topic in the Main Hall. Many of your questions will be answered there.

Generating money: the key to building up florin is establishing trade and you do that by building ships. You can make tons of florin via trade but it will eventually dry up once you are at war with everyone. Therefore you need to take some of this excess florin and build up your farming and mining for the hard times. Check the topics in the Table of Contents.

Generals: I think the general's stats are controlled random. Maybe others can give you a better answer than that. There are famous generals which will appear at a certain time in the game for each faction. I don't think you can kill generals except by assassin. You can use emissaries to remove titles from generals and spies to discredit them. Titles are assigned to a general until the general dies or an emissary removes the title. Then it can be reassigned.

Moving armies: you have to move them one by one unfortunately. Same holds true for spies, bishops, etc.

If you have multiple armies in a province when it is attacked, they all defend. Any in excess of 16 units will come on the battlefield as reinforcements. You can control which 16 start the battle in the pre-battle screen.

Merging generals: I think you are talking about merging two army units on the campaign map? There is a 16 unit limit, but there is also a total men limit too which is somewhere around 1000 men. Therefore, you can't merge more than about 10 units of spearmen (100 men).

Battle tutorial: to queue up orders, hold the shift key down to issue additional orders. You can't queue all orders this way though. I believe you can't shift between march and run (double click), i.e., walk here, then run there.

Protecting the general: you can't. You wouldn't want to anyway as he might pick up a bad V&V (vice & virtue). The general is usually harder to kill than the rest of the men in the unit, but they have been known to fall to an arrow or boulder.

I hope that gets you started. Others may be able to eloborate on or add to my answers (or correct any errors).

[Navaros]

thx for the help

i'm still wondering about why my picture icons disappear from my battlefield unit cards. ie: if i have unit of archers, the picture of a guy with a bow will disappear.

i think it may have something to do with ALT + TABBING since whenever i ALT + TAB this seems to occur.

does anyone else have this problem? and how do i get the pictures back once it happens?

also am still wondering about the AGP slider being stick at the lowest setting and the game saying my AGP card has 0 memory on that Performance Options screen

[Gregoshi]

I don't know about the AGP slider.

About the cards, I don't believe they recommend alt-tabbing out of the game. To get it back, try F7(?) which toggles on/off the unit cards.

[RZST]

hey navaros.

well that alt+tab thing happens to me too, dont worry they will eventually go back to normal, i usually just click one unit then just wait :).

damn, those are alot of questions.
download the newbie guide somewhere at the .org site. it helps :)

[Gregoshi]

Duh Thanks for reminding me Ky. How could I forget froggy's Beginner's Guide pinned at the top of this forum? Tons of good information in there.

[Navaros]

how do i DESELECT everything?

ie: if i've given a unit an order and i no longer want that unit tied to my cursor. i wish to use the cursor to click a spot on the map where i want the camera to go.

in most RTS games i play, i would RIGHTCLICK to DESELECT stuff, but that does not work in Total War and i haven't seen anywhere that says how to DESELECT stuff

is it even POSSIBLE to DESELECT stuff? that would really suck if it's not.

[RZST]

press enter :)

[Navaros]

Quote[/b] (Ky Kiske @ Mar. 11 2004,22:46)]hey navaros.

well that alt+tab thing happens to me too, dont worry they will eventually go back to normal, i usually just click one unit then just wait :).

damn, those are alot of questions.
download the newbie guide somewhere at the .org site. it helps :)

yeah it does go away eventually but the fact that this bug is there is a major bummer cuz i can't play SP Total War and have instant-messaging convos at the same time

normally in my SP games i just ALT + TAB out every minute or so to respond to my IMs. but since it takes like 5 mins for the unit pictures to return, that would mean it's not viable to play Total War and talk via IM's for me

[RZST]

well if people im you all the time then just dont play :p, doesnt that kind of ruin the game anyways?

[HopAlongBunny]

With the blank units; happens to me whenever I go to desktop and re-enter game; just group and ungroup a cpl of units and all the icons return to normal.

Like Gregoshi said: emissaries can remove titles from generals; rarely, this will cause the generals loyalty to dip and you might get a small rebellion_even more rarely you may get a civil war You can just disband the unit if you really want to get rid of him badly.

Princes are a bigger problem. Until they become normal generals you can't disband them...the worst of them I send on Missions of Glory aka committing suicide on some distant foreign shore. Sometimes they win against incredible odds

[Navaros]

what are the keys for ungrouping? i know G and holding CTRL groups, but i don't know how to ungroup

i have another prob new too. on the last mission of the tutorial you have to siege a castle - but i do not get to deploy the catapults where i want them. why won't it let me choose where to deploy them? the deployment that the game0 makes me stuck with is really crappy. i can only kill 3 of the 4 arrow towers. the one on the lefternmost side of the map never dies cuz only my lefternmost catapult can reach it and that tower always shoots down most of that crew before they can kill it :(

btw how come normal units can't hit arrow towers? when i tried attacking Arrow Towers with normal units it wouldn't let me

also, how come my units do not OBEY my commands when they are near an enemy unit? a lot of times i try to move units to better positions in the middle of an engagement and they simply won't move where i tell them to. that really sucks - how do i make them obey my commands?

how am i supposed to beat this mission, exactly?

[TonkaToys]

Hi Navaros

WRT the seige engine problem, post some cheaper troops in front of the leftmost seige engine, within range of the arrow tower. They'll probably draw most of the fire... Don't forget to set them on loose formation to minimise their casualties.

When I played it a while back, I think I took out the outer arrow towers first, then knocked down part of the outer wall. After that it was the inner towers and then inner wall. Or was it inner wall then inner towers? Then CHARGE

Don't forget you can aim at troops with your siege engines too... I think if the missile hits the troops then rolls into a wall behind it, the wall also takes damage. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

[mcveigh]

The key for ungrouping is G, the same as grouping.

Before any siege you can deploy your weapons anywhere you like. It needs some game experience to know where to deploy, just practice....

Also for protecting your precious crew you can deploy a row of peasants for the catapult to get the crew out of harms way. This is a very effective technique.

The units that cannot attack the arrowtowers are probably to far away, and to be fair i wont think an arrow can do much damage against stone towers.

To get the most out of troops fighting/defense you must deploy them right. Once they are engaged in combat its very difficult to change positions. Check out the newbie-guide for more usefull tips.

[Ludens]

Welcome to the Org Navaros.

Firstly, your post was a bit too much. I appreciate that you want information, but this way nobody can keep track of all your questions. You might want to spread them out over several topics or posts or at least number them. That will save people with weaker mind shields from getting a blinding headache .

Quote[/b] ]i am also wondering why i can only build certain buildings in a specific province and am not given the option to build whatever i want in any province, and how i know what-can-be-built-where

Check the tech tree. The only buildings which can be built in specific provinces only are armourer's and weapon smiths, which require iron, mines, which require ore, traders, which require a trade able item, and the port-shipwright-admiralty building-series, which requires the sea-side.

Quote[/b] ]i also want to know why sometimes Emissaries offer bribes to buy Generals, and sometimes they offer diplomacy.

An emissary will bribe enemy generals, but offer an alliance/cease fire to the enemy faction leader (the army with the horse-figurine).

Quote[/b] ]as well, i am curious about how Generals are replaced. can i put to death a General who i do not like? when a new unit is made, is the General for that unit generated randomly? if so, what factors determine how good he will be? and how come sometimes when i make a new unit it comes with a General, and other times it does not?

I believe general stats are random, but sometimes you get a hero. Check a hero-listing to find out when they appear. You can put your generals to death by assassins, inquisitors, (suicide) attacks and treason trails. For the latter, you need a spy.

Quote[/b] ]how often can i distribute titles to my Generals?

You can give a general a title, take it off him, give to him once more, and so fort, as long as you like. But I don't think said general will appreciate that much, or will feel very loyal because of it.
Once a general has a title, it stays his (or his successor, if you turn on 'green_generals') until you remove it with an emissary.

Quote[/b] ]is there any FAST way to select multiple armies on the campaign map

No

Quote[/b] ]if a province with two of my armies in it is attacked - which army defends, or can i use them both?

You will get the units of both armies in battle.

Quote[/b] ]if i have two units with Generals, how do i merge them?

You cannot get rid of generals with titles by putting them in another unit, under another unit leader. Perhaps removing the title will help? Off course, you can also put all of his men in another unit (merging) and then send him off alone to attack some enemies. But I think this highly dishonourable.

Quote[/b] ]i notice that during the tutorials, if you do something else whilst waiting for your men to take formation - then it screws up the order and the men don't take formation.

I think you are mistaken. They will form up again while moving. This is only an issue when using alt-commands while your unit is still moving.

Quote[/b] ]i am also wondering how to protect the General. is there any way to directly control him?

No. The general is the leader, so he should stand up front. You might want to keep out of battle entirely, but that usually earns him bad vices, while fighting improves them. The battlefield is a great way to improve a weak royal line. Anyway, generals are usually a lot tougher than normal troops, so you can risk something.

Quote[/b] ]before a battle starts, how do you see your enemy's position so you know where to deploy your troops? on a couple of battles i could not see my enemy until they were inside my castle. on the pre-battle map scanning i could not find them.

Your enemy always starts on the opposite side of the battlefield if you are fighting a field battle. When you are defending a castle, the enemy can deploy everywhere (like you deploy everywhere when you attack a castle).

Quote[/b] ]how do i DESELECT everything?

Press the enter-key

Quote[/b] ]normally in my SP games i just ALT + TAB out every minute or so to respond to my IMs.

Alt-tab is meant for windowed applications, unlike TW, so I don't know if it is wise to use it. You can do it occasionally, but it usually gives some problems.
My advise to you is not to IM while playing. This will increase you submergence in the game world immensely.

Quote[/b] ]what are the keys for ungrouping?

Press G again.

Quote[/b] ]why won't it let me choose where to deploy them (siege weapons)?

Because it is a tutorial.

Quote[/b] ]how come normal units can't hit arrow towers?

Because arrow towers are made of stone, and you can't do much against that with spears or bows. You can hit the 'arrow walls' though, but some off your units might get crushed under it.

Quote[/b] ]how come my units do not OBEY my commands when they are near an enemy unit?

You mean fighting an enemy or near an enemy? In the second case: I don't know. In the first case: how would you be if somebody was slashing at you with a sword, and your commander ordered you to turn your back against him? It is almost impossible to disengage infantry and difficult to disengage cavalry, and the game reflects this.

I guess that covers it all. Or at least the questions I could answer. But take my advise: read the manual, read the beginner's guide, and if you still have a question, look it up into the archives.
This way you won't need to bother other players with endless lists of questions .

[Navaros]

i'll number my questions this time.

ok i just played the tutorial mission again and i'm very mad about the results

in the end it was 6 AI Ghulam Cavalry vs. 6 Chivalric Foot Knights *AND* 8 Spearmen of mine. guess what? all my men routed in this situation that's after my spearmen were WINNING the fight and the AI Cavalry ran half way around the map and back before re-engaging my men (hence i could not kill them initially... because i could not *catch* them when they were losing the fight and running from me).

1. all i have to say about that is: WTF?

(note: the challenge is for another poster to reasonably answer the question posed, which is: WTF?)


what happened in this battle is NOT cool.

i could easily have finished off the enemy - but no - the computer cheats and arbitrarily decides to make my men lose automatically.

this is the only Strat game i've ever played that does that - and i am not impressed with that feature

2. why do men in the desert get tired even if i leave them TOTALLY STILL?

3. is there any way to RECOUP your fatigue status? i've left my tired men completely still and instead of RECOUPING their health as i expected them to - they actually got MORE tired.


4. why is there sometimes a a Horn option to rally routing units, and other times it's greyed-out?

5. what am i supposed to do when i see the wavering icon flash in order to make my men STOP wavering?

6. in multiplayer, are there options to turn off this lameness? (this lameness refers to the computer arbitrarily deciding to make a superior army lose to an inferior army automatically)

[RZST]

you know what, i feel really sorry that you lost the tutorial :p

moving on..
1. all i have to say about that is: WTF?
-too little info to actually help. ill try though. did you attack with the spearmen or did you hold position? usually when 8spearmen attack 6 chiv knights they tend to lose :p
ghulam cav are weaker than chiv knights so on a 1 on 1 fight ghulams loose. what was their fatigue level? were the knights tired? ghulams tired?

2. why do men in the desert get tired even if i leave them TOTALLY STILL?
-gee i dunno, i mean theyre only wearing really heavy armor under 100+ degrees of sunlight. if you dont like fatigue turn it off on the options menu (i highly suggest you dont turn fatigue off, kinda ruins the point of being in the desert)

3. is there any way to RECOUP your fatigue status? i've left my tired men completely still and instead of RECOUPING their health as i expected them to - they actually got MORE tired.
-from my experience they can recoup only to 2 bars instead of the normal 5.

4. why is there sometimes a a Horn option to rally routing units, and other times it's greyed-out?
-because theyre scared like sissy girls. low morale would be the answer to this one me thinks.

5. what am i supposed to do when i see the wavering icon flash in order to make my men STOP wavering?
-there are alot of things you can do, like sending other units to support the..attack from the flank/rear or enemy.

6. in multiplayer, are there options to turn off this lameness? (this lameness refers to the computer arbitrarily deciding to make a superior army lose to an inferior army automatically)
-i dont play mp but a superior army of peasants wont work against 3 groups of inferior gothic knights.

what happened in this battle is NOT cool.

i could easily have finished off the enemy - but no - the computer cheats and arbitrarily decides to make my men lose automatically.

this is the only Strat game i've ever played that does that - and i am not impressed with that feature
-hmm, expect alot more defeats in playing mtw (unless your playing easy which if you still loose then...well no comment)
if you cannot learn the game properly then just return the game to whereever you brought it and go play AoE.

just a thought, get the Newbie guide somewhere at the .ord downloads section. it will really help you if you still decide to play the game.

[Gregoshi]

Navaros, with experience, you will learn that your men routed for a reason. Winning or not, something changed on the battlefield that made your men lose heart and flee. Part of the challenge of the game is learning why your men rout and how to prevent it. The Total War games are not like other games where your men will always obey your command and fight to the death. Each unit and each man has its own AI and they react to what goes on during the battle. If you watch those wavering units closely, you will see some of the men stop fighting and start drifting to the rear away from the fighting. If you take steps to stop the wavering, you will see these men take heart and return to the fight. An amazing thing to watch, it is.

There are a number of things that will un-nerve your men:

1) being attacked from the flank or behind...or even an enemy unit being nearby and behind them (potential attack)
2) exhaustion saps the will to fight
3) your general being too far away cannot lend his encouragement to the men.
4) other men running away - epecially elite units routing
5) fighting without being supported, i.e., other friendly units very close by

These are but a few. The key to the game is using these factors against your enemy and preventing them from happening to you.

The rally button is greyed out because at that particular point in time, the men will not rally. Fear is overriding your command ability. If you watch it though, there is a chance the button will un-grey when the men get far enough from the battle that their fear subsides. Even though they rally, their morale will be quite fragile. The mere presence of an enemy unit may cause them the rout again.

Regarding fatigue, as Ky said, standing around in heavy armour in the blazing sun will do nothing to restore your men's energy. Not all units are affected this way. It is one of the advantages the lightly armoured Muslim units have over the tanks-on-a-horse knights that the Catholic factions have.

Check out a few of the topics in the Table of Contents topic in the Main Hall, namely under the sections Battlefield tactics and Combat modifiers.

What you are playing is a game much closer to real combat than any other game you've probably played. Enjoy

[Navaros]

right now the SP campaign keeps freezing on me during battle engagements :(

my computer totally freezes. there is no error message. no crashing persay. Total War just completely freezes my computer and all i can do is hit the reset button on my case.

this happens all the time, often just after i've won a battle with about 99% Kill:Deaths in my favor (but before the game switches back to the Campaign map and lets me save this victory). as you can guess, it is getting me VERY mad.

i checked the Readme's and they say turn the resolution to 640x480 but my computer is good enough that i shouldn't have to do that

here is my system specs:

512 MB DDR RAM
Athon 64 3000+ XP
ATI Radeon 9600 XT

can someone please tell me how i'm supposed to stop this freezing from occuring on my computer. PS: i'm not gonna shutdown everything else with Task Manager either because that would probably not help, and even if it did, doing that TAKES FOREVER so it's not like i'm gonna spend 10 minutes shutting down all my system processes EVERY TIME i need to play one particular game. hopefully someone here has a REAL solution to this problem

[katank]

the description of winning easily doens't mean a thing. I've often have units winning easily while not casuing any enemy casualties and droppiing dead themselves.

also, you may have chased after the cav with your spears which not only tired them and dented the spears' very fragile morale but also might have made them lose their formation and thus rank bonus which is important to their combat abilities.

BTW, did you have the CFK or the ghulams?

catholic tin cans definitely fry in the desert sun so don't cook yourself and expect to win.

the penalty for fatigue is very stiff with up to -6 to attack, and something like -8 to morale for the utterly exhausted phase IIRC.

that's why when playing as catholic factions, it may be worthwhile to bribe a desert army so you can fight without frying yourself.

also, though fatigue is bad, if you rush and managed to win quickly by sheer power, it wouldn't be that bad in that your units don't even get time to cook.

if you have the CFK and spears, the lack of cav was the problem as otherwise you could have chased the beaten ghulams off the map with them and not given them time to recouperate.

[Gregoshi]

Navaros, perhaps the workaround with the best potential is to turn off the hardware acceleration in your audio setting or at least turn almost off.

Where exactly does it freeze? On the post-battle screen or on the way back to the campaign map?

If the audio hardware acceleration trick doesn't work, post a separate topic describing the problem and your system and I'll move it to the Apothecary forum for the techno wizards. You will be able to reply to any topic in the Apothecary.

[Navaros]

just tried playing in 640x480 resolution and the freezing problem is just as prevalent like that

i am using all the latest drivers for my hardware and DirectX 9

what's up with that? this game is totally unplayable for me. it freezes about 2/3 of the time whenever i am on the battle map :(

[RZST]

having a bad time with mtw eh

anyways i have the same problem, try switching color quality from 32 to 16bit, that little thing worked for me.

other than that i dont know whatelse to say, try contacting activision for help.

[Navaros]

Quote[/b] (Ky Kiske @ Mar. 16 2004,23:22)]having a bad time with mtw eh

anyways i have the same problem, try switching color quality from 32 to 16bit, that little thing worked for me.

other than that i dont know whatelse to say, try contacting activision for help.

tried switching my desktop to 16 bit. that did not have any effect on the problem whatsoever.

guess i will have to call Activision altho i suspect that when i do they'll give me BS generic answers like install the latest drivers for your GPU and other nonsense which obviously i would have ALREADY DONE before calling them in the first place. calling them probably won't solve my issue.

it'd be nice if someone could ISOLATE the problem and tell me EXACTLY what's causing it rather than taking wild stabs in the dark at it. but after searing the Apo forum on these boards, it doesn't look like anyone on this site has enough of a technical background to be able to do that

[Gregoshi]

Quote[/b] (Gregoshi @ Mar. 16 2004,22:14)]If the audio hardware acceleration trick doesn't work, post a separate topic describing the problem and your system and I'll move it to the Apothecary forum for the techno wizards. You will be able to reply to any topic in the Apothecary.

I wish I'd have said that...oh, I did. Did you try the audio settings?

I still don't see a new topic describing your problem so I can move it to the Apothecary. Or you can post it in the If you can't post... topic pinned in the Apothecary.

You need to tell us more about your PC (hardware/software) and be more specific about where/when the battle freezes. Also, explain what you've already tried that didn't work. The only information we have to go on is what you tell us. There are a few people in the Apothecary who are quite knowledgable, but they can't/don't know everything. Also, with the Battle Chest coming out a couple of months ago, there appear to be some new issues with it that the tech folks haven't nailed down.

[Navaros]

tried turning off sound acceleration, that didn't help at all

it appears this problem is not with Total War after all. just realized that by spending some time playing other games with my new system. my bad for thinking it was. it's my AGP card to blame i'm pretty sure.

i posted about my problem today in the Post here if you can't post thread of the Apocathecary and 6 hours after making that post, no one has responded.

perhaps it's an issue of not enough people seeing. could you Greg please extract my post from that thread and instead make it into a new thread in that forum? that way a lot more people are likely to see it. i'd appeciate that. thx.

[Puffs]

Quote[/b] (Navaros @ Mar. 16 2004,22:17)]just tried playing in 640x480 resolution and the freezing problem is just as prevalent like that

i am using all the latest drivers for my hardware and DirectX 9

what's up with that? this game is totally unplayable for me. it freezes about 2/3 of the time whenever i am on the battle map :(

Sounds like a directx 9 problem.
There is a topic about this somewhere else.

Removing directx can be a royal pain, but I heard you are NOT supposed to install it as it is actually worse.

[Gregoshi]

Navaros, I don't have the ability in the Apothecary to split off your post into its own topic and I don't want to duplicate it by copying it. However, I did send a message to Kraellin, one of the moderators there, to split it and also to take a look into your problem.

You must understand that we are all gamers like yourself. This is also all volunteer so we don't have staff here 24x7 waiting to help someone. They come and go as they have time. You should not expect a 6 hour turn-around-time on your problem - though it is possible. We have people from all across the globe here so we have that time zone thing complicating the matter. Those with deep understanding of the technical side of PCs (both staff and regular patrons) hangout in the Apothecary and share their knowledge to help others as their time and ability allow. They have helped many people though their problems, but a few have been beyond their help. You win some, you lose some.

Please don't get discouraged. If you have a little patience, there is a good chance you will get your help.