Elite/heavy forces less effective than previous TW games?

**CVD** · 03-01-2007, 20:25

This is a bit of a newb question, but I am having trouble reconciling my style of playing RTW with MTW2. I'm used to the good old days where an elite force of heavily armed and armored soldiers would simply smash a lesser group. A solid Cohort could be counted on to stand in a breach and make the enemy pay for every inch. Now when I commit my elite units in MTW2 I am a little shocked to see how ineffective they are compared to the elite units of past Total War games. I watch in horror as my foot knights, clad head to tow in plate, get absolutely mauled by lesser units. This includes everything, archers, crossbowmen, militia, I even watched as a unit of armored sgt's was destroyed almost completely by a group of peasants. I've watched a single pavise crossbowman kill 3 elite soldiers in rapid succession before any of them even engaged him. Even when things are clearly in my favor, I still take a real beating. It used to be that a poorly organized rebel army would leave 10 men on the field for every one of yours. Now I feel like losing "only" 500 knights to 1000 militia is a major success. My militia on the other hand still seem to get stomped on even I have a tactical advantage. It just seems that in a drag out melee I always have the short end of the stick. What gives?

I have played the Total War games since Shogun and never had this steep a learning curve. One that I am still having difficulty overcoming. Am I playing incorrectly? Is this game all about massed formations of cheap units? with previous games I would never think of using anything with the word "militia" in the title for anything but population control or severe emergencies.

I'm playing as Germany with campaign set to the hardest setting but battles set to medium. I feel like I must be doing something wrong though, could someone shed some light?

**Tristrem** · 03-01-2007, 20:39

well my first question would be have you patched your games. This can lead to very different outcomes for your battles.

As far as weird things happening like knights losing to milita and armoured sargents losing to peasents, those are bugged at the moment. These bugs are known as the sheild bug, and the 2hand animation bug. For some bug free battles you should try using soem mods like Carls problem fixer, or lands to conquer mod.

Hopefully the next patch should fix these issues, but for now mods work decently and fix most problems. Hopefully this helps explain these odd moment you have been having.

**Carl** · 03-01-2007, 20:44

You can find my ProblemFixer in my Sig.

As has been noted their are major bugs affecting anyone with a sheild or 2-handed weapon who is on foot, and theirs issues with pikes too.

**chickenhawk** · 03-01-2007, 20:50

The advantages of good units might show up better on battles set to VH. My understanding is that fatigue and morale matter more on the higher settings.

Peasants do not have much of either.

Patch will restart all of these discussions from scratch, most likely.

**Mega Dux Bob** · 03-01-2007, 22:48

Mounted knights are the real elite units of the game and are vastly more powerful than the mounted units in the other TW games. They can literally plow threw just about any infantry outside pikes. Your infantry is pretty much there to be sword fodder or an audience to applaud the knights are they slaughter the other side.

**Whacker** · 03-01-2007, 22:58

Originally Posted by Mega Dux Bob

Mounted knights are the real elite units of the game and are vastly more powerful than the mounted units in the other TW games. They can literally plow threw just about any infantry outside pikes. Your infantry is pretty much there to be sword fodder or an audience to applaud the knights are they slaughter the other side.

I gotta disagree with you here my friend. Cav in M2 is significantly nerfed from RTW IMO. My stance is that the heavy cav in M2 should decimate anything it hits, short of braced spears or pikes head on, just like the heavy cav units in RTW. The lighter cav units in RTW were overpowered and should have been less effective.

**Quickening** · 03-01-2007, 23:03

Originally Posted by Whacker

I gotta disagree with you here my friend. Cav in M2 is significantly nerfed from RTW IMO. My stance is that the heavy cav in M2 should decimate anything it hits, short of braced spears or pikes head on, just like the heavy cav units in RTW. The lighter cav units in RTW were overpowered and should have been less effective.

Agree with you there. After all it was cavalry that dominated the Medieval world for quite some time. It never sat right with me that my sword and sandal Generals in Rome were more devastating than my full plate armoured feudal knights with their lances in MTW2.

**chickenhawk** · 03-02-2007, 01:07

This is getting into an endless historical argument but the Romans had armies of trained professional soldiers with logistics, effective signaling, and, and .... It makes a huge difference.

**TevashSzat** · 03-02-2007, 03:40

Umm.....People Cavalry in M2TW will basically kill or severly depleat any unit with a good charge. It was significantly more powerful than those of RTW. If you played on vh/vh in RTW, some of your cav would literally die from charging the back of a hoplite unit due to the insane attack bonuses the ai gets.

If you were playing on easy mode, your cav might seem better but you recieved an attack bonus from being on such easy difficulty, and if the ai cav seemed too powerful at vh/vh, it was because they recieve attack bonuses at that difficulty