patch wishlist

[PickledGecko]

Make it easier to get to the "list" scroll. Now I have to click the faction shield, then the tiny list button at the bottom, then the tab for generals/agents, etc. Unless Im missing it, it'd be nice to have a button in an agent or generals profile that linked to "list of all agents/generals"

Tip: Right click on Army, City or Agents tab next to your faction shield to open the corresponding page on the list scroll.


And while we’re on the subject of the list scroll; I would like it if selecting an agent and moving him, didn’t cause the list scroll to jump to the top and I would like the agent I selected to stay highlighted.

[Cennyan]

And while we’re on the subject of the list scroll; I would like it if selecting an agent and moving him, didn’t cause the list scroll to jump to the top and I would like the agent I selected to stay highlighted.

Amen...and furthermore....why don't the agents and generals show their movement points in a bar as they do in Rome TW??

The biggest problem with inquisitors isn't just that they are "overpowered" but moreso that they come in massive droves. I had 12 Inquis in my borders and finally got whittled down to 2 generals and finally restarted the game.

[magnum]

Really really really REALLY would like to see skirmish fixed, both for cav and for foot. I just sat and watched (wanted to see if it would actually happen) 4 units of cav archers sit there while 4 units of infantry WALKED up and engaged them. The cav archers never even moved. Code it to break firing animation, extend skirmish range, whatever, but when infantry can engage skirmishing cavalry by walkng up to them some thing is very wrong.

[Whacker]

More thoughts. If these are already the case in the game, then please ignore this. I haven't seen them during my gaming sessions so I'm going based on that.

- I'd like to see castles like in the original M2TW, where there are true, separate, concentric rings of walls that do not physically connect in any way. As it stands with the largest size castle, one can simply get on the walls and run all the way back to where the keep is, then come back down and potentially come in behind the enemy. I do remember there were castles shaped like this in the original MTW, but I prefered the big ones with concentric walls that didn't touch. Like I said, if these are in the game, then please just ignore this.

- Likewise, I don't recall ever seeing the keep structure shooting arrows or projectiles in M2TW. I *want* to say this was in MTW. Even if it wasn't, I still like the idea.

Cheers!

[The_Pope]

I said this in another thread, and Whacker (cheers) suggested i might put it in here. It seems you guys have touched on it, with the whole "get of my land" suggestions. I think it coud go a bit further.

I think a new feature should be an ability to inform other nations not only to get off my my land but also that their relations have worsened with me because of their transgressions.

E.G. In the case of a French blockade. A button on the relations scroll, to inform France of worsening relations. A warning if you will, that war may be coming if they continue.

The diplomacy has increased so much but as always a little bit further would be even better. Its one of the best games out.

[Rothe]

I have to repeat this as I tested this yeaterday with disturbing results:

Fix English infantry stats, particularly Dismounted English knights. It seems that Dismounted English Knights lose to any rabble, and furthermore it seems that they do not attack at all after they have ended their charge attack.

So once more, Dismounted English Knights do not seem to cause any casualties to enemies after they stop their charge.

Please, someone else test this too.

I also checked casualties caused after a battle. The DEK caused only 10-15 casualties and they were immersed in a huge melee, I had 3 units of them and they all performed extremely poorly.

Now, I did not check this for billmen yesterday, but I suspect that there is a similar bug on them. Not sure if it is just about the stats, or has something to do with the type of weapon they use (short poleaxe for DEK and bill for the billmen).

Also, do something about the fact that Feudal knights lose to militia in melee... I understand they can be mobbed, but not quite so easily as they die very fast as it is now.

[Quin]

These are just few I haven't noticed before:

1. Fix the spearman fighting cavalry bug. Spearmen's (billmen and DEK) weapon animation is somehow bugged so they don't fight cavalry at all.

2. Agents (army's and city's tab too, but they are used less frequently) tab is clumsy to say the least. When I'm using the menu to find my agents I tend to find one after another and then give orders. But as soon as I'm finished giving orders to an agent in the middle of the list the scroll bar jumps at the begining so I have to manualy search the list to find an agent whose turn it is... And after I find him and give him orders the scroll bar jumps at the top again, etc.
Also, movement points left from RTW would help. Why they were removed is beyond me.

3. Less micromanagement of agents. If I send a priest from Rennes to Jerusalem he will never get there unless I manually chek on him and move him every other turn, since he stops as soon as someone is blocking his path. Agents shouldn't block each other paths as this is HIGHLY unrealistic (maybe but just maybe only a highly skilled assasin could have a slight chance to block other agents). Roads and passes werent half a meter wide back then you know. And even if you must keep this silly path blocking issue, make it so, that my agent will automatically continue his travel as soon as path is free.

[Fearless]

Billmen definetly bugged rather fight mounted units with peasants

[anders]

yep, the english "cavalry-killers" dont work against cavalry. pretty weird fo units which istorical forte was to drag the knights down from their mounts and make holes in their armour, or just chop the horses legs of.

billmen sem to be pretty weak against infantry too.

oh, and not having units available in SP is plain irritating, especially the french dismounted archers, who as AFAIK rode to battle, but always battled on foot.

[Spendius]

An agent "pushed" by another unit (which IS silly, as has been stated), should at least be able to go back to his original location by himself. I'm luck I saw this merchant pushed away from his resource.

[geala]

Something rather special:

- change Hamburg port from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea, please!
- create a new rebel province, Frisia or something like that, using a little bit of the two rebel provinces with Hamburg and Antwerpen; MTW had this much better done

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Make a Ladder for MTW2 like they had for STW, that be a good MP Incertive. Mabye even offer a full suit of armour for the first person to actualyl get #1 in a fair way :) :)

[Bugout]

Just want to say that I am thoroughly enjoying the game and with that in mind I have a couple of suggestions for improvement.

I would suggest making blockading of ports only a decrease to relations instead of an act of war. As it is the AI kingdoms are more likely to declare war on you by blockading than by using an army to attack. They often blockade a port without having any army prepared to attack you which just leads to the person getting the jump on the computer, since many people play with house rules of not starting wars just finishing them .

The other suggestion is in regards to sieges, it is slighly frustrating to have cavalry inside the walls turn on the firing of the towers just by being close even when you have infantry on the walls or inside the tower in question. I for one would appreciate having the towers becoming inactive once you have captured one with infantry.

The last suggestion is, as it seems that guilds are randomly offered but that the thieves guild is always offered first, please change it so that other guilds are offered initially as well. I have found a thieves guild in almost every city I have seen either with spies or by conquering.

Thanks again to CA for giving me an excellent reason to sit at my computer for inordinate lengths of time.

[Grifman]

I think all treaties should have a time limit that is set in the negotiations, whether it be 5, 10, or 20 turns. And maybe the side desiring a longer timeframe might have to pay some money to the other side to get it. It could not be broken by either the AI or the player during that time whatsoever. What that limits you, at least then you know how long it will last, and you understand that it might not be renewed when it is over. I think that would take a lot of the mystery of what is happening. You get attacked and you know it is because the AI chose not to renew your ceasefire or alliance. That brings a bit of reason/logic into diplomacy. Now it just seems too random.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Make a Ladder for MTW2 like they had for STW, that be a good MP Incertive. Mabye even offer a full suit of armour for the first person to actualyl get #1 in a fair way :) :)

Also, Fix the Musketeers issues. They are way Way to Strong, just like the handgunners and such..

[de la fere]

I want Glorious Achievement mode back! ...

Yes, me too. Absolutely.

[---Loki---]

Hi folks,

since shogun i played all games of the total war series. despite i liked the game from the very beginning, there are also some flaws in the game:


FIRST OF ALL THE AI:
the ai is on the strategic map as well as in battle itself just too stupid.
ill give here just one example i experienced just a couple of days ago in medieval 2. i play battles on level hard while i play the campaign on level medium.
i had an HRE army in scandinavia, which was pretty much versatile in terms of units. i had catapults some bowmen, LITTLE infantry and strong cavalry. this already implies that this is not a defenisive army as my infantry line is just too weak. well, the danes brought up an strong army of only heavy infantry(huscarles and feudal foot knights) without any missile units, which is definitely an offensive army. Alltogether he shouls just overrran me. when he attacked me the ai waited just in range of all my missile units till they were depleted and half of his army shattered. just when my catapults ran out of ammo he started with the little rests of his army to attack me.....i easily routed the rest of his armay and won a battle i could have never win against even a reasonable acting ai.

on the campaign map it behaves unfortunately not very different.
alltough the ai waits to put up a strong army before a first attack, it beginns to annoy you with ridiculous small armies "sieging" your cities after you destroyed his first "real" army. you easily crush those little armies, so there no sense in this at all. it also leaves his cities unprotected and puts his family members to risk. a reasonable behavior would be, unless you attack him, to wait and to set up again a big army and give it a try again, but no that seems to be too compicated for the ai. this is a major downfall. as the ai weakens its elf. this is during all the games noticeable, as well as the first issue i described here.
some stated that the ai in battles would have improved, i can not say that. i dont see a major difference.

apart from that, i agrre on several issues already mentioned here:
its impossible for me to agree on a cease fire with a faction weaker than me and which began the conflict....i even offered mailand, which was nearly wiped out, its capital. YES i offered the faction, its own capital i occupied earlier, to get a cease fire...it rejected.
but still most of the problems lie in the definitely very stupid ai in battles as well as on the strategic map. i hope a patch or the next game in the series will fix that..........well, until then have a good battle.

[Lochar]

Other than the bugs, the one thing I would like to see is more diplomatic options.

For instances, giving missions to nations. Assasinate, Spy, Blockade,etc.

Possibly even giving troops to allied nations and asking for troops.

[Kraxis]

The game is a definitive step up from RTW... But I have my own list of things.

I have to say that most of what I want has been mentioned already, if not all. But I have to say it anyway.

- Fix the ladder lag (+ indecisiveness). It is terribly annoying and I have lost two cities to this (after waiting a couple hours I couldn't stand it any more and Esc'ed out). Seems the AI's best tactic to win my cities is to do this.

- Fix the deployment of troops in cities/castles. I know streets are confined and all, but it is terribly annoying to find that the order you just gave your troops is ignored because you can stretch the pink lines too far. Well, it should be simple enough as in RTW. Do not allow the player to stretch the phantom unit further than it is allowed.
Also in this department, a single line of archer/xbows is important on walls for accuracy, but at times when you relocate them they bunch up and refuse to spread out... several times until you move them. Takes a lot of time, and can be highly infuriating.

- Inquisitors less powerful or aggressive, or less numbers. One of these is enough, a little of each is enough. Please don't do all and nerf them too much. I like them, but at the same time I fear them killing my entire family in a swift blow. And I can't really do anything about them (can't kill them and can't get higher piety fast enough, which is with the good inquisitors not even enough).

- Remove the Elite training. PLEASE!!!! I feared the return of this as much as any other of the less stellar RTW features, yet it still arrived. I'm running around with a huge load of Golden units. How? Well, it is after all extremely easy to get it with knights if you get the enemy to rout. Even better if you have decimated them in the battle, then they will level up even faster. Then when you get them to a place of training, just retrain them... Voila! You have a three golden chevron knights unit.
For heaven's sake make every single replacement in the units be at the level of a fresh unit. Meaning a unit of two bronze at half size beign retrained in a province of no experience will end up with a SINGLE bronze chevron.
I'm surprised nobody else has noticed this.

- Diplomacy:
"Get off our lands!"
"Thank you for that kind ceasefire, we heartily accept. And no, we won't backstab you right away, we do care about our international relations." (I hope that was clear enough)
Relations to be more easily obtained. I'm pretty tried of being the HRE and nobody likes me at all. Even my 'best' friend England with Reasonable relations (cost me a load of money to get) ended up pulling a 'Blockade War Declaration'. And my only ally the Byzantines hates my guts, and have hated me ever since we became allies.

- Merchants to get a bit more income in trading, and get less from driving other merchats out of business. Say, level 1 Merchant gets 20 florins from trading a low comodity ware like lumber, and 'killing' other merchants gets you at best 500. Right now my merchants are hunting other merchants with a greater profit than actually trading. That should only really be for getting access to a particularly good ware (with 20 for lumber, silk and amber would be somewhere around 150 for a nicely experienced merchant).

- Diplomats to engage more targets each year... Including Merchants (for Trade Rights, in case of war no talk) and Priests (get out of here!).
And they should be able to bribe besieged garrisons... Hopefully more easily if the siege has lasted a while. Perhaps only to open the gates and surrender (not buying the units) for a lesser price.

- Be able to assassinate Spies. It is rather hard to get AI spies killed. You can't really use assassins, and pumping a city full of your own spies doesn't always work if he is experienced (which the AI spies tend to be since it moves them in and out all the time). Spies should be terribly vulnerable if they are visible. The easiest targets on the map.

-Be able to assassinate own characters, not captains of course. That lousy no-good Diplomat that has failed everything and is now -3 experience should suffer his lord's wrath for his bad work (he is after all expensive to keep going). Perhaps doing this will get the Faction Leader a Trait with Dread and penalty to agent recruitingcosts and morale for the troops. The same for generals...
Either this or some option to dismiss the worst agents (those who fail all the time... who would after all keep them on the payroll?), though the assassination would be best in my mind.

- I like the more complicated cavalrycharges. It makes you more attentive towards the cavalry. However like many others it is just not terribly great to see the perfectly formed unit of Teutonic Knights halt and do a little dance while two-three knights carry on with little effect until the main unit arrives and get half butchered in the process. Please make heavy cavalry lancers carry through with their charges if the bugle has sounded. If they arrive helterskelter and in a bad formation then the bonus will be diminished. And make it so that single-click charges are PERFECT if the unit has the distance and time to set it up. Also heavy cavalry should still use their lances if the enemy unit turns tail and tries to move away (like skirmishers). It is ok to use swords mainly for routers.
Otherwise I'm happy to see the removal of the 1 meter charges of RTW. So for me it is a step in the right direction, just a bit too far.

- Skirmishing to be improved. It seems like crossbowmen and archers just have to shoot one last time.
"Time to go lads... those knights are getting awfully close."
"Yes SIR! Just a moment, I'm almost finished loading my crossbow."
"Dammit, I said NOW!"
"Yes... In a moment, I'm aiming."
"Just let loose with it!!!!"
"Holy cow! They are really close! We better leg it..."
*choppity chop chop* *squish smash gurgle*
"Urghh... I told you to run... arrrrghhh....."
"But I had a perfect shot... had to take it.... gurrr......"

- I have also noted that something seem to be wrong with certain units in melee. Dismounted Feudal Knights (DFK) have a really hard time clearing walls of defenders. Their stats says they should rip any Spear Militia to shreds, yet both my own and the AI's Spear Militia have managed to get 2:1 lossrates against them, while both were fully on the walls.
As it is it seems that defenders get some kind of hidden bonus on walls so that the attackers don't use their entire strength. At least what I noticed was a general lethargy by the knights, in that they acted like they were 'Fighting to the Death' as in RTW. They would just stand there and get mobbed one at a time. The same with Armoured Seargeants against Flemish Pikemen on the same walls.
On the ground they dish out the proper amount of damage.

- On the topic of Dismounted knights... Do keep the Dismounted Knights as units, but also let us dismount knights just prior to battles. This is not only historical it also lets us use knights better. And the AI too. If I saw five units of dismounted knights coming at me after my walls had been knocked down, backed up by countless spearunits. GAH! And that is just the possibility the AI would have had many times.

- Make Morale visible in the unit cards. Since the descr files aren't terribly accessable we should be able to see how much punishment our units going to be able to stand.

- Fix the redeployment disruption.
Once I marched out of a city to face a single unit of Spear Militia and two units of Ballista. Well, my own three Spear Militia kept going and standing in 10-11 rows, and I suffered huge losses to the Ballistas as they knocked 7-8 guys out with each hit (I kept waiting for them to spread out into formation). I had dragged nice lines for my units, but somehow they refused the formation but kept the positions... Since there was but the gate as an obstacle I can't figure out when this happens.

- Make the buildingbrowser more intuitive. When the AI quickly popped up with DFKs at Bologna, I was surprised (kudos to the AI training and building priorities). I wanted my own DFKs, and since I had noticed that knights in general were dismountable and that the Sicilian DFKs were 90 strong as opposed to the 60 mounted knights, I was convinced they were trained as infantry. So I looked at the buildingbrowser. However, I couldn't find them. It was only when I built a Fortress that I noticed. There I could have directed my effort to building a Fortress right away had I known, but I thought I couldn't train them (this of course also comes from a lack of a techtree in paper).

- Make rebels less elite. I don't think facing Imperial/Chivalric Knights with Town Militia and Peasant Archers is terribly fun. Especially when they come in the particularly large rebel armies. Make rebels slaved to the local tech, with a minimum above Peasants (Peasant Archers, Town Militia ect).

- Make towers and gates change control as per troops on the walls. Who is on the walls near them. Not who is near them on the ground or walls. Capturing the gate because you are standing under the arch is rather less impressive gameplay.

- AI should not try to knock down the entire wall around the city/castle with artillery, it is long, tedious and not fun. One, two, three holes should be more than enough with no siege equipment. With it, a single hole is enough.

- Give generals less bodyguards. 20 is enough for the Large setting. And it is 20 for all save the leader who gets more according to his command/whatever determiens that. Generals are themselves far too powerful right now. They shouldn't be the prime shockunit since they replenish and are tougher than any other cavalryunit (but let those traits stay with them). They should be there to save the general in a tight situation, or add that little weight that tips the scales. Currently they are the best frontline unit.

- Make a return of the moneylending for ransoms. Yes, I know that it can be exploited but the player in a bad financial spot, but that is hardly gamebreaking, while it allows the AI (and the player) to buy back troops AFTER all other actions are taken (which is normally also the time for making the battledecisions). Often you earn enough money the next turn to recover the lost money for ransoms, the AI must be presumed to do the same (with the armies I'm continually facing they must).

- It can't be said enough... TITLES!!!! And as has been mentioned before by others, I don't care if it just for show. Handed out as in MTW or 'earned' as in BI... well I would prefer the first but the latter is fine as well (stay 3/5/7/whatever turns in settlement to get local title) for instance.

- Pope to allow you to take offensive action on own soil when engaged in a defensive war (one the enemy started). On enemy soil it is ok he gets tipsy.

- A new wish. Make devastating the enemy lands give you a cashback, lowering of upkeep or similar for the army doing it. Devastation is after all the abstraction of the army foraging for food and other things (loot and equipment is also counted in). So at least some of the troubles with paying the army would be solved (getting them food and perishable equipment/supplies) if only to an extent. Of course only enemy lands would be subject to this, and location would be important. Good farmland would give better results than wilderness (if at all).

- Of course I have join in on the unit cohesion. It is just terrible. While I can handle cavalry most of the time, it is a tough job for infantry.

- Be able to lock castle gates. At times enemies can chase routers all the way to the square (routers open the gates and enemies follow through, capturing said gates), thus negating the advantage of several walls. However if the wish about being on the gates and walls to capture gates and towers was implemented, then this could actually be fun, capturing enemy units on the inside.

Phiew.... *wipes forehead* That was a lot of stuff.

[---Loki---]

@Kraxis

well, i agree on several topics u mentionend but NOT all:

-do not remove elite training, i think its quite reasonable. if you have a rest of seasoned soldiers which are filled up by young soldiers this unit definitely benefits from being training by veterans and being in the same unit with those. apart from that it is really not easy to fill up units, especially if it is a unit u cant train everywhere.
e.g. it is a hussle to retrain your experienced gothic knights as they can only be trained in some cities and still u have to get them there and pay for it. i think this aspect of game is fine as it is.

- enemy spies: i disagree on that as well. i had no problems to assasinate detected enemy spies. of course youll need an assasine who knows what a knife is. apart from it is rather easy to get rid of spies in cities. just place your own spy in this city as well and wait for a couple of turns...normally the enemy spy will be detected and executed. same accounts for inquisitors despite they are indeed pretty tough to kill. despite my realtions with the pope are fucked up all the time i dont see my privinces swarmed by b erserker-like-inqs.

- i also dont agree on the generals bodyguard topic. its fine as it is. id never send my in my general at first, cause sometimes he just dies by chance even he has numerous guards(20+). so i hold him back unitl im able to attack his general or i might dont need him at all in battle if everything is going well. and still i think in middle age some genrals where indeed dreadful experienced veterans which didnt avoid combating themselves. apart from that its an advantage to you and the ai.

i aslo want to point out topics i strongly agree with:

- a diplomat should be able to target more persons in a singkle round when in range (of course not twice the same). any visible character should be able to be targeted(when in war with that faction that might change). REALLY nice would be to negotiate with sieged cities, as an army sieging your city seems like a really good pressurising medium to me.

-assasination of own characters is needed as well. despite its a way to cheat your agent to high experience.

- also i agree on the pope issue. it cant be me being fucked by the pope when attacking a faction standing on my soil who attacked me in the beginning.

- definitely there is sth wrong with skirmishing and group formation, some times a single unit does not follow orders when grouped with other units(e.g. it wasnt even possible to loosen up the formation of single units resp. the whole group). thats quite annoying. within cities its ok, as think its pretty tough to implement on the technical level and that it was indeed kind of chaotic in a middle age city when two major armies clashed.


BUT STILL ITS MAINLY THE AI IN BATTLE AND ON THE STARTEGIC MAP THAT MAKES SP GAMING NOT AS GOOD AS MIGHT BE

[Cesare diBorja]

Nice one, Kraxis! I laughedfor about five minutes before reading this to my lady........

- Skirmishing to be improved. It seems like crossbowmen and archers just have to shoot one last time.
"Time to go lads... those knights are getting awfully close."
"Yes SIR! Just a moment, I'm almost finished loading my crossbow."
"Dammit, I said NOW!"
"Yes... In a moment, I'm aiming."
"Just let loose with it!!!!"
"Holy cow! They are really close! We better leg it..."
*choppity chop chop* *squish smash gurgle*
"Urghh... I told you to run... arrrrghhh....."
"But I had a perfect shot... had to take it.... gurrr......"



I have also noticed this as well as a wishy-washy hesitancy of missile troops to engage in battle, even with 'Skirmish' off.

[Kraxis]

@Kraxis

well, i agree on several topics u mentionend but NOT all:

-do not remove elite training, i think its quite reasonable. if you have a rest of seasoned soldiers which are filled up by young soldiers this unit definitely benefits from being training by veterans and being in the same unit with those. apart from that it is really not easy to fill up units, especially if it is a unit u cant train everywhere.
e.g. it is a hussle to retrain your experienced gothic knights as they can only be trained in some cities and still u have to get them there and pay for it. i think this aspect of game is fine as it is.

Agreed, it is indeed rather hard to find places for certain elites to be retrained. But does that mean we should be 'compensated'? Personally I think not.
First of all, experience is experience. You need to have a reason for it other than that one man you formed the unit around was very experienced. It is a wellknown fact that experienced units that get green replacements in the real world suffer heavily for it. And yes green units suffer even more, but that is where the evening out comes into play. The experienced troops don't vanish, they are still very good, they just have a lot of lousy troops around them to soak up the arrows and the like.
Also, it removes the specialness of high experience units. You don't really want to take care of them, you don't wait for the perfect opening to use them ect. They are just that much better cannonfodder.
Besides, The AI factions never use this. Which in turn creates unbeatable player armies (as if we aren't good enough already). Why the AI factions don't do I can guess at, but the fact remains that their armies have extremely seldomly silver units. I have it all the time without doing this contiously.

- enemy spies: i disagree on that as well. i had no problems to assasinate detected enemy spies. of course youll need an assasine who knows what a knife is. apart from it is rather easy to get rid of spies in cities. just place your own spy in this city as well and wait for a couple of turns...normally the enemy spy will be detected and executed. same accounts for inquisitors despite they are indeed pretty tough to kill. despite my realtions with the pope are fucked up all the time i dont see my privinces swarmed by b erserker-like-inqs.

We all know how hard Inquisitors are to kill, well it seems spies are equally hard or harder still. My super assassin Fritz (level 10) had 27% chance of killing a 2 subterfuge spy. Now add to that that the AI spies continually upgrade themselveas, have guilds backing them and come in waves (it is not unusual for me to have three-four spies in my Italian cities and three of my own to kick them out). Generally they survive reentry, and at best I can hope for them being kicked out (and then they just enter once more).
A spy is a person who relies on his skills at hiding. When that is gone he is an easy target. As should our spies. Assassins would have all the chances to kill a spy in the open.
I don't think it should be 95% all the time, just more reasonable than 1% for a level 4 assassin against a similar spy.

- i also dont agree on the generals bodyguard topic. its fine as it is. id never send my in my general at first, cause sometimes he just dies by chance even he has numerous guards(20+). so i hold him back unitl im able to attack his general or i might dont need him at all in battle if everything is going well. and still i think in middle age some genrals where indeed dreadful experienced veterans which didnt avoid combating themselves. apart from that its an advantage to you and the ai.

The generals often didn't have any sort of bodyguard. Princes and kings did of course (I allowed the king to have a larger bodyguard, perhaps his heir as well). Generals weren't really always supermen in melee, they were generally the guys that could think and plan. Leading from the front was not a dead fact, far from it. As has been noted by many historians, Alexander was the last great commander that got into the thick of it all the time.
20 bodyguards are plenty strong for tactical maneuvers and that last push to get the enemy to break. But getting some 58, where regular cavlary has 60 is downright silly. 2 HP and stats that beat any cavalry they are likely to face.
Trust me, such knights wouldn't be riding around with a general... They would be owning their own contingents of knights.
Bodyguards give too much power in battles, and they make it far too easy to get all those nice HP upgrades and Dread increases for the general.
I had a Mad prince I wanted to get rid of. So I sent him to die against the Hungarians. Well, he and his 27 bodygaurds ended up killing 90 Dismounted Feudals, 180 crossbowmen (including pavises), a few town militia units and 224 armoured spearmen. Of those they captured perhaps 100 troops, mainly the militia. That was crazy.
He got so many traits and new members of the retinue that he was suddenly worth keeping. He even got the Dread Knight of all people... That should just not be possible. And that was just 28 men in all... almost 60 should be able to crush much larger armies.


Oh and I would like to this:

- Fix the abandon-rejoin-abandon-rejoin 'feature' of Crusades. Generals/family members can gain an unlimited number of Piety this way (by getting the traits and retinues for being crusaders) for no penalty. Make the second abandonment of a Crusade for a character cost him some penalties to various thing (piety, morale and authority is my choice).

[Bullethead]

I just wish for a patch in the very near future. I don't care if it doesn't fix everything, so long as it fixes some of the more serious problems.

[Whacker]

User interface nitpicking:

- The multiplayer screen does not give the option to save one's Lamespy password. Please give us a check box that allows us to select if we want it to do so or not.

- When attempting to connect to Lamespy without putting in one's password, the error message "Data not entered" or something roughly like that appears. The error message should be specific to which field(s) have not been filled out. Further, the error messages displayed when login failed should indicate what caused the failure.

- In the options menu, when clicking "back" to return to the previous menu level after having made changes but without saving, the dialog box should ask if changes should be saved or not. Irregardless of answer, the game should them go back to the previous menu screen and not remain at the current one.

(Sorry, I had an entire course in college on program usability and designing proper user interfaces where this was all hammered into me. )

[Barry Fitzgerald]

Being honest for the gameplay/units to be balanced well is going to take a few patches.

Ist one will likely deal with major issues...but we will have to wait..(as with RTW) to get the game up to par in most areas.

Some of the issues are pretty minor..like titles and years rather than turns, but these do add to the overall experience.

As far as I can see so far the A.I needs a major rework at all levels...I just tear it to bits on the map and on the battlefield. Flanking enemy units just seems so easy, they don't react at all most of the time. And an army full or crossbowmen isnt going to last long against knights...bit daft really.

Units need a big tweak too...already mentioned about peasants being too good, and billmen being weedy.

MTW2 is good, could be great and awesome...I hope CA do the work needed to get it there.

[---Loki---]

@Kraxis

most of the points we discussed may be subject to personla opinion and attititude...i just like it when my prince is able to fight......most of the other stuff is also of minor importance.

Barry Fitzgerald points out correctly that its majorly the ai, which has to improve a lot. if the ai does not use elite training that does not mean to remove it but to make the ai use it(i know this is the tiniest problems with the ai unfortunately).
the different difficulty levels, as far as i can see, dont work as well. it just increases numbers of units, money and other stuff for the NP factions, while it dimishes eg your chances for assasinating a spy with a certain level.
the ai does not get better.......just the numbers are changed.
and its really frustrating when the ai isnt even able to pick the high ground on a battle map when defending...........

i really like this game(thats why i played all predecessors) but im very unhappy to see the ai as bad as it ever was.............the developers have to put more effort into this than into anything else.........unfortunately i dont see this coming , as it didnt come yet despite its a well known problem ......

[Whacker]

Agreed, it is indeed rather hard to find places for certain elites to be retrained. But does that mean we should be 'compensated'? Personally I think not.
First of all, experience is experience. You need to have a reason for it other than that one man you formed the unit around was very experienced. It is a wellknown fact that experienced units that get green replacements in the real world suffer heavily for it. And yes green units suffer even more, but that is where the evening out comes into play. The experienced troops don't vanish, they are still very good, they just have a lot of lousy troops around them to soak up the arrows and the like.
Also, it removes the specialness of high experience units. You don't really want to take care of them, you don't wait for the perfect opening to use them ect. They are just that much better cannonfodder.
Besides, The AI factions never use this. Which in turn creates unbeatable player armies (as if we aren't good enough already). Why the AI factions don't do I can guess at, but the fact remains that their armies have extremely seldomly silver units. I have it all the time without doing this contiously.

My humble opinion gentlemen is the middle ground of your discussion. I think that retraining a unit at the same level chevrons is probably excessive, but putting in fresh newbies is not a good idea either. The middle ground would (to me at least) be giving the new men half the chevrons that already exist for the unit, probably rounding up for odd #'s. Full 3 gold would give you 2 silver chevron replacements. They aren't so new that they'll get slaughtered and be useless, but they aren't gods either. To me this makes sense, in that the new recruits aren't going to be vets right off the bad, but their more experienced counterparts should rub off on them.

Cheers!

[Vlad Tzepes]

Good news ahead, lads, patch is on it's way and getting closer, as announced by the Shogun at the .com ("Right just a quickie to say there should be some news shortly regarding the Medieval 2: Total War update. Thanks for being patient but expect some proper news by the end of this week or the beginning of next. I can't promise any thing but we will do our best!" - Shogun) - so hopefuly it will take into account the feedback expressed here.

[Kraxis]

So a single man (3 gold) will be able to create out of the blue a 2 silver chevron unit? It only a bit less silly...

I can't really see any good in free experience. Especially not when the AI doesn't get a similar benefit out of it. Why should we get it? Give me a good reason? The survivors have earned their experience, the new men have not.

What people used to do in STW and MTW was to cycle troops back and forth. Jealously saving up those veterans for combining. Even a single Valour was often enough for people to begin saving them. And trust me, it felt good to send in a full unit of quite experienced units when they were created that way.
You didn't have a lot of them. Right now half my troops are silver chevrons, facing green AI troops. And there is actually little I can do about it as I do need retraining, but even with combining there are usually a few units left over. Besides, the system seems to pull the greenest troops into the combining, leaving the best troops in the old unit. Meaning if I combine, I usually end up with a high experience unit to retrain.

So, even if I try to not to use this totally outrageous feature, I can't.

[Whacker]

So a single man (3 gold) will be able to create out of the blue a 2 silver chevron unit? It only a bit less silly...

Fair point, I didn't think about that. My thoughts were mainly towards maybe a 1/2 to 1/4 full unit being retrained. I can see both sides of this issue, positives and negatives, and I do agree that full chevron retraining is a bit excessive and would prefer half-chevron results. I still just choose to think of it as the experienced vets training and influence rubbing off on the newbies.

I can't really see any good in free experience. Especially not when the AI doesn't get a similar benefit out of it. Why should we get it? Give me a good reason? The survivors have earned their experience, the new men have not.

Keep in mind not all of us are that terribly good against the AI, and some of us need all the help we can get.