beginner with scotland

**boschmj** · 01-19-2007, 08:54

hey everybody, i'm new to this forum and the total war series.

i just started with M2TW and love it.

after some very bad campaigns i now started a campaign with scotland and are doing very well. just defeated the english on the isle of britain and in france in just a couple of turns.

now i'm at war with the danish and france. not a big problem yet but i'm having financial problems and inquisition problems.

can someone tell me what to do with the management of settlements and castles?? For now i have auto-managed on all of them but that way they intend to spend alot of money on buildings and retraining units.

The inquisitors can be killed bij assassins, but when i send an assassin i only have a success rate of 5%! how can i increase this?

And in general: do you need the merchants at all? at the moment i don't have any.

**sapi** · 01-19-2007, 09:35

Welcome to the Org!

General management tips:
- specialise your cities/castles
- build the +law series of buildings in cities

Assassins have to be trained on weak targets to have a chance against inquisitors

As for the merchants, i'm of the same opinion as you and generally don't bother with them.

**DESTROYER!** · 01-19-2007, 18:08

tips to increase assassin skills...
>sabotage enemy buildings. get a spy first to enter an enemy settlement, then put send your assassin to sabotage a couple o buildings. do this a couple o times till you get about 3-5 "eyes"...then go after captains, again, get a couple till you increase your "eyes"...then move up the ladder to priests/diplomats/princessees and then finally..KINGS!

as for merchants, its not NECESSARY but its fun. if you manage to conquer the whole british islands then might as well build merchants and have em sit on resources till they get skilled.

oh and never NEVER auto-manage. the AI sucks at auto managing. usually i just leave york and wales as castles the rest as cities.

**Snoil The Mighty** · 01-20-2007, 00:24

Originally Posted by boschmj

hey everybody, i'm new to this forum and the total war series.

i just started with M2TW and love it.

after some very bad campaigns i now started a campaign with scotland and are doing very well. just defeated the english on the isle of britain and in france in just a couple of turns.

now i'm at war with the danish and france. not a big problem yet but i'm having financial problems and inquisition problems.

can someone tell me what to do with the management of settlements and castles?? For now i have auto-managed on all of them but that way they intend to spend alot of money on buildings and retraining units.

The inquisitors can be killed bij assassins, but when i send an assassin i only have a success rate of 5%! how can i increase this?

And in general: do you need the merchants at all? at the moment i don't have any.

Well to answer the management question, I would reccomend that 1) You never let the AI auto-manage whether by checking the option before playing or by dedicating a few generals to run certain groups of settlements. 2) Don't be afraid to convert some spare castles to cities, when I'm Scot or English I usually go one castle on the islands and the rest all cities as they all have ports for good income.

Assassins need to be trained up a bit before going for high value targets like Inquisitors/Generals, etc. Try knocking off a few small-unit captains and see if that helps a bit

Merhcants are not strictly necessary, but they are a fantastic source of additional income if you use them correctly. There are several good threads on this already in the Citadel.

Welcome and good luck!