couple of noobish questions!

[Martok]

There is a downside to this: when your province has 960+ troops in unit by unit stacks and the province is attacked, the AI wil group those units into an army for you and it will stack them in order of their entry into the province.

Beware of this effect, or you may end up on the battlefield with a totally clumsy army composed of, for instance, 14 Spearmen units, one unit of 3 Royal Knights (whose commander is a 'Coward') and one unit of 11 Elite Crossbowmen...

Do you not have Viking Invasion, Adrian?

[Sensei Warrior]

I used to always retrain my units instead of regrouping vetran units. I've been playing a campaign as the Sicilians and started grouping vetran units together. Man it makes a big, big difference when the high valor units go into battle, especially when the majority of the soldiers have high valor instead of half of them being green.

Can't wait to get them shiny new equiptment, so I can watch them mow down my enemies.

Macsen rufus' suggestion about using valor increasing generals to boost the dregs could be used to give an entirely green army a boost so more survive, to gain valour, to merge with your high valor guys. I did that with an army where the peasant general had one of those virtues. How the General gained the virtue is beyond me considering he was on permanent garrison duty. Maybe he was just created that way, I wasn't really paying attention when it happened.

[macsen rufus]

When I can be bothered to go through all the micromanagement (not every camapaign, I admit!) I will ship all my "Famously brave" and "Proud" units into one province for a reall killer army. But you know how it is marching individual units from one end of the empire to the other, only have to march them back when war breaks out on the wrong border

And one other thing I try to do, but it only works if you have a lot of similar units (maybe five or more) in the province after a battle: empty the second weakest (valour-wise) into the weakest unit - this tends to leave behind the best men, and you often see the average valour go up. Repeat until you've found all the highest-valour fragments, then combine these into one unit - even if it's still a bit understrength it can come out a couple of points ahead. Don't move men around too much, as moving them back seems to set it so that they get spread evenly between the units. It's that FIRST move out that seems to filter the goats from the sheep.

[Adrian II]

Do you not have Viking Invasion, Adrian?

Sure, I have VI with teh fancy pre-battle screen, but not everyone else has - and besides, if you autocalculate a battle without checking your troops you can get the same nasty surprises in VI as in ordinary M:TW.

[Martok]

Sure, I have VI with teh fancy pre-battle screen, but not everyone else has - and besides, if you autocalculate a battle without checking your troops you can get the same nasty surprises in VI as in ordinary M:TW.

Ah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, you're right in that auto-calcing battles can be even more disadvantageous than normal if you separate multiple stacks by unit type. Believe me--I still remember when I first made that mistake when I had just got the game! It wasn't until after reading through some threads about the issue that I realized why I was losing auto-calced battles even though I had superior forces in the province I was defending.

[Adrian II]

Ah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, you're right in that auto-calcing battles can be even more disadvantageous than normal if you separate multiple stacks by unit type. Believe me--I still remember when I first made that mistake when I had just got the game! It wasn't until after reading through some threads about the issue that I realized why I was losing auto-calced battles even though I had superior forces in the province I was defending.

Another possible surprise when you autocalc is that the AI will skip your Jedi 3 star General with the ´Magnificent Warrior´ and ´Expert Attacker´ traits and put the 4 star loser with ´Screaming Girl´ syndrome and nine toes in command of your troops.

Still, I am amazed at the outcome of some autocalc battles. In some cases you bring an army that can not but lose, and you win. On the other hand, yesterday I lost a battle with my 500 Turks against 800 Byzantines on autocalc, but when I restarted the battle and did my own fighting, my THA´s shot a 400 man hole in their BI and Slav Warriors and I came away victorious.

[Martok]

Another possible surprise when you autocalc is that the AI will skip your Jedi 3 star General with the ´Magnificent Warrior´ and ´Expert Attacker´ traits and put the 4 star loser with ´Screaming Girl´ syndrome and nine toes in command of your troops.

Well that happens regardless of whether you auto-calc or not. Unless, of course, you've found a workaround for that of which I'm unaware (and in which case, it's time to share!).

Still, I am amazed at the outcome of some autocalc battles. In some cases you bring an army that can not but lose, and you win. On the other hand, yesterday I lost a battle with my 500 Turks against 800 Byzantines on autocalc, but when I restarted the battle and did my own fighting, my THA´s shot a 400 man hole in their BI and Slav Warriors and I came away victorious.

That's because the the auto-calc function doesn't seem to take into account the abilities of missile/hybrid units to kill from a distance--it only factors in their melee capabilities and (if I recall correctly) their valour level. Given that Turcoman Horse have only mediocre melee stats, that's probably why you lost that battle on auto-calc. I can't say that with absolute certainty, but it is (unfortunately) consistent with what I've seen in almost 4 years of playing this game.

[Adrian II]

Well that happens regardless of whether you auto-calc or not. Unless, of course, you've found a workaround for that of which I'm unaware (and in which case, it's time to share!).

Um, Martok, bear with me: pick up the Screamig Girl and move her into your next door province.

Bob will be your Uncle.

Just joking, I meant to say you get these car crashes if you autocalculate battle after battle without checking for any newly-acquired traits of your dynastic management. Your Jedi may become 'Strange' and then 'Unhinged Loon' within just two turns.

Edit
BTW I think you must be right about the AI autocalcing only on the basis of melee stats and valour. Certainly explains my experiences.

[caravel]

That's because the the auto-calc function doesn't seem to take into account the abilities of missile/hybrid units to kill from a distance--it only factors in their melee capabilities and (if I recall correctly) their valour level. Given that Turcoman Horse have only mediocre melee stats, that's probably why you lost that battle on auto-calc. I can't say that with absolute certainty, but it is (unfortunately) consistent with what I've seen in almost 4 years of playing this game.

Exactly. The AI performs a statistical battle of your units against the enemy's. This simply does not involve missiles of any kind. Melee stats, morale, generals command, number of men, valour etc is all taken into account and goes through the number cruncher. When it comes down to missiles it doesn't happen. This is why I never autocalc battles when playing as the Turks, because you lose battles you'd have won very easily if you'd played them.

[drone]

What is this "auto-calc" you people speak of?






















Another thing to note, the auto-tidy function seems to do the exact wrong thing when merging units with different levels of armor/weapon tech. Although some may consider manual manipulation for "free" upgrades cheesy...

[Sensei Warrior]

What I find terrible about the auto-calc thing is when I fight a battle manually, and after the battle is over I go back and autocalc the same battle.

The terrible thing is the auto-calc did better than I did kill, loss, prisioner wise. Of course this might have been due to operator error

In all seriousness, if the auto-calc doesn't take missile into account, wouldn't it be beneficial for less tactical players to auto-calc battles where the opposing army is comprised with a large number of missile troops. Typically missile troops have poor to mediocre stats? This less tactical player would like to know

[Martok]

In all seriousness, if the auto-calc doesn't take missile into account, wouldn't it be beneficial for less tactical players to auto-calc battles where the opposing army is comprised with a large number of missile troops. Typically missile troops have poor to mediocre stats? This less tactical player would like to know

While Caravel, Rythmic, or another more "numbers-conscious" player can probably give you an exact answer, I can still say with 99% certainty that yes, auto-calculating battles favors the army with fewer missile units (if all other factors are equal). As a result, I manually fight a lot more defensive battles than offensive battles (since missiles are generally more useful for the defender than the attacker).

[Sensei Warrior]

I fought a battle last night where I was attacking the French. I was outnumbered and the French had a horribly high number of Archers. I had typical early cannon fodder. Spearmen, Urban Militia, a couple of archers, and some hobbies. It was a tough battle since few of my troops were willing to charge into that much arrow fire. I won but now I can't help think I had a much better chance if I autocalced it.

[Adrian II]

Another thing to note, the auto-tidy function seems to do the exact wrong thing when merging units with different levels of armor/weapon tech. Although some may consider manual manipulation for "free" upgrades cheesy...

What do you mean 'free upgrades'? Do you get those with your Happy Meal? In my case, they are the reward for hard-fought battles and go at the expense of troop numbers.

Some people ..

[caravel]

Upgrades are always free anyway. There is no retraining cost for running your intact units through provinces with better armourers or metalsmiths. So it makes sense that "cheating" some upgrades through merging units should also be free.

Edit: Not so bad really. If they were under Tony Blair, they'd probably turn up for crusade with 10 men sharing a shield and breastplate.

[naut]

In all seriousness, if the auto-calc doesn't take missile into account, wouldn't it be beneficial for less tactical players to auto-calc battles where the opposing army is comprised with a large number of missile troops. Typically missile troops have poor to mediocre stats? This less tactical player would like to know

I'll give you an example, play a VI campaign as the Vikings. Autocalc every battle. You will win 80% of the time if not more. For the reasons Caravel gave, missiles are not taken into account, thus your uber Huskarls and Joms Vikings can defeat armies when outnumbered 10:1 if not more; even in situations where you could not as you would get shot up by those damned Kerns (or whatever).

[Sensei Warrior]

I guess that is another temptation I am going to have to avoid ... auto-calc-ing battles where the opponents have high numbers of missile units. It seems a little unfair to factions that have high numbers of missile troops, such as the Turks or the Mongols.

[Deus ret.]

It IS unfair. When playing as the Byz I regularly auto-calc especially in the beginning stages of a campaign, i.e. while still fighting the Turks. Suppose your army consisting of 3 units of Byz infantry plus ultra-slow katank general is attacked by a considerably larger force made up of mainly HA's of any kind. Since I'm not the best imaginable general, I'm pretty sure I would have a 90+% chance of losing when playing manually simply because the enemy would shoot my troops to pieces. But when I press auto-calc I lose less than one Byz infantry while killing off the largest part of the enemy army. Of course it's kind of cheap but then there are some constellations that you can't possibly win otherwise, and honestly can't be bothered to try yourself - trying to trap those HA's for an entire battle is already a tedious task with cavalry but with infantry I can feel a nervous breakdown approaching.

Speaking of it, this may be the reason why in my campaigns the AI Byz fare pretty well most of the times while they're still fighting the Turks but begin to crumble when they face more massive (Egyptian) armies.

[Sensei Warrior]

I often auto-calc when fighting the Horde. I really don't want to fight a battle with 8+ stacks of bad guys, especially the Horde with their HAs and everyone else that skirmishes. I never realized that some of the best auto-calc outcomes I had was while using infantry/cavalry heavy armies. Hmm.

[The Unknown Guy]

To answer your fist question, I believe only certain provinces which contain the Iron resource are able to fully build up the weaponsmith buildings.

As to your second, once you hold a certain percentage of the map, the game tries to make it more challenging by dropping the happiness levels in your settlements - it's not a bug, it's an actual feature. It usually happens when you own around 60 % (or was it 80%) of the map. Irritating, but bound to happen sooner or later. It's basically why a lot of people prefer GA mode over conquest mode...

So THAT is the reason why when the AI in the other side of the world conquers a huge empire it tends to implode, and many of the slaughtered factions reemerge from the rebel remnants? I thought it was the AI doing something horribly wrong (I tend to turtle, so I didn´t encounter that yet)

In a byzantine vanilla game, it allowed me to get the Iberian Peninsula as byzantium by buying the rebelling armies which had been my Italian ally´s former grand armee. The Italians themselves were beaten and hamstrung, as that rebellion had synchroniced with a papal reemergence all through Italy. So the Italians themselves ended up being left with a few provinces in... Scandinavia, I think. :p

[caravel]

It's called the bloat effect. The ways to counter it is to build happy buildings (Town watch, religious buildings, border forts and watch towers, brothel) in advance, plant high valour spies on all of your provinces, increase garisson size and give governors' titles to high dread generals. Distance from the faction leader is another factor. Keep him in the central provinces.

[Digital]

When your empire gets big, the position of your king has a very direct influence on the loyalties of provinces you hold. You should make sure that your king can ideally travel to anywhere of your empire within a turn or one year. To see this effect, try isolating your king on an island, cutting off all shipping routes from that island and check the loyalties of your provinces. Some remote province with a small garrison may even revolt.

[caravel]

When your empire gets big, the position of your king has a very direct influence on the loyalties of provinces you hold. You should make sure that your king can ideally travel to anywhere of your empire within a turn or one year. To see this effect, try isolating your king on an island, cutting off all shipping routes from that island and check the loyalties of your provinces. Some remote province with a small garrison may even revolt.

Getting your leader cut off from some of your provinces is disastrous to loyalty (provinicial happiness). Also you may have noticed that as the Byzantine, starting in early, that the three islands of Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus start with quite low loyalty due to them being isolated. An enemy ship arriving on the scene where none of your own ships are present will cut loyalty in half. The most important thing is to ensure that the faction leader can reach all provinces whether by land or sea, irrespective of the number of years it would take him to get there. They must be connected in one way or the other. This solves the first problem. The "distance from faction leader" provincial happiness penatly is a separate issue, as is the "bloat effect" happiness penalty. The bloat also sees an increase in vices such as "family favourites" and other corruption related vices.

[gunslinger]

. . . give governors' titles to high dread generals.

I prefer to give the titles to high accumen generals. The increased tax revenue easily pays for a few extra units of peasants or vanilla spearmen to garrison the place. I always leave enough of a garrison to keep taxes on very high with happiness around 200%. That way if I get an unexpected excommunication or my king gets cut off, I have plenty of wiggle room to temporarily reduce taxes to normal or so and prevent rebellions.

[Kavhan Isbul]

An important thing to keep in mind is that you should have the province where you would like to have your new ruler appear better developped than any other provinces you own. If you happen to conquer a highly developped island or far away province (for example you play with the English and conquer Constantinople, which the Byzantines have built up), it is imperative that you destroy some buildings there - painful, but not nearly as painful as having your new ruler assume the throne in Constantinople, while at the same time a naval war breaks out and he is effectively cut off from the rest of the Empire.

[caravel]

I prefer to give the titles to high accumen generals. The increased tax revenue easily pays for a few extra units of peasants or vanilla spearmen to garrison the place. I always leave enough of a garrison to keep taxes on very high with happiness around 200%. That way if I get an unexpected excommunication or my king gets cut off, I have plenty of wiggle room to temporarily reduce taxes to normal or so and prevent rebellions.

Obviously. Under normal circumstances you will want to find those with both high dread and accumen, if they've got very high dread however you may want to use them as a temporary solution to help stabilise a province like Lithuania or Portugal when the bloat effect hits.

[Ripken]

An important thing to keep in mind is that you should have the province where you would like to have your new ruler appear better developped than any other provinces you own.....

I should probably know this, but what determines where your new ruler appears when your old one dies? It doesn't seem to have any relation to where your heir was the turn before...?

[Martok]

I should probably know this, but what determines where your new ruler appears when your old one dies? It doesn't seem to have any relation to where your heir was the turn before...?

He appears in your most developed province. (This is why your new rulers often appear in Constantinople if you've conquered it.)

[Sensei Warrior]

Agreed. The King appears in the best developed provence. It's always funny to see the King trapped in Constantinople because he was cut off by a Naval faction you're at war with. The rest of your not-connected Empire (the English for example) rebells, and you're left with a provence of one. Although one could argue that since the one is Constantinople it might not necessarily be a bad thing.

[caravel]

Agreed. The King appears in the best developed provence. It's always funny to see the King trapped in Constantinople because he was cut off by a Naval faction you're at war with. The rest of your not-connected Empire (the English for example) rebells, and you're left with a provence of one. Although one could argue that since the one is Constantinople it might not necessarily be a bad thing.

One of the best campaigns I've ever played worked out like this. I was playing the English/Early/Hard and had crusaded to Constantinople, early in the campaign. The king passed away and the new king reappeared on the other side of Europe... and I had no way to return him to England, which rebelled. The French then seized the advantage and decimated the English, and I was left with nothing but Constantinople and the crusaders that had arrived there, whom of which were slowly expanding into the rest of Byzantine and Turkish Territory. In that particular campaign I didn't return to England until the late era. It was a case of billmen, Chivalric Foot Knights and longbows vs the Mongols in Gerorgia. Truly memorable campaign. I may try and intentionally do it again, which won't be quite the same, but should be interesting nonetheless.