A few questions after finishing my first short campaign.

[Myrddraal]

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

[frogbeastegg]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Hope that gives you some ideas for your next game.

[Quillan]

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

[Excalibur Bane]

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

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

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

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

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