Muscling through mid/late game

[Dalthius]

Long time reader, first time poster. Cliche, cliche.

How the heck do you guys muscle through the mid-to-late game? I just can't seem to do it. I've played England, France, HRE, Hungary, Byzantine Empire and Scotland all to the point where I am dominating everyone...then it I quit. It just seems like you get to a point where you steam roll everyone and everything, even on the hard settings. Especially with Scotland...sheesh, that was an easy game. I have yet to finish a single game. Even the Mongols are not that challenging, once you figure them out. Plust the city management gets quite demanding; I'd use the AI, but even with all the little tweaks and tools at your disposal it seems like the AI spends all your money, even when you put the spending on low.

I'm not whining (well, maybe a little), I'm seriously just asking if you guys have any advice on how to deal with mid/late game. I get to just a little after gunpowder and call it quits. I'd like to see the New World open up, guess I just don't have the patience. Oh, and I'm no strategy genius, either, maybe just fair to middlin'.

Anyway, love the series overall. Started with the original Medieval, then messed with Shogun and fell in love with Rome. I'm a Roman history "buff" so that game was heaven for me. I've been thinking about firing that puppy back up. My favorite aspect of the entire series is the management/tweaking of the generals, and I think that by far Rome really catered to that. I wish they would bring back titles from the original MTW.

[dismal]

I get satisfaction from extinguishing my enemies. Maybe trying out some of the advanced units.

It needn't take too long to finish out the game.

If you can resist the temptation to micromanage, and spend most of your time taking cities.

[CountMRVHS]

You've nailed it, Dalthius. The struggle to keep up interest towards the end has been a problem since MTW (possibly Shogun too, though I never played it), and, to be fair, is not a problem with only Total War games. After awhile in many strategy games you're going to get quite powerful, your empire will get huge, and you'll begin to lose interest because you know that even if you lose a battle here or there it's just a matter of time until you can muster your massive forces and crush your enemies for good. Once you lose the sense of danger and possibility of defeat that you have in the early stages, the game becomes much less interesting.

There are a few things you can do to counter this malaise. In the original Medieval, you had the option of playing Glorious Achievements, and if you played a semi-Ironman style (i.e., no rushing, no conquering beyond your goals) it would be a ton of fun because your empire would be small enough that every battle would *count*. M2 doesn't have that option, but it does have the short campaign. It's not as nice as GAs, but at least there's a way for you to win without taking all of Europe. The key to keeping it fun with a short campaign is staying small and expanding slowly -- turtling. You can use the Noble Council missions to help you out here. Usually you get a mission right off that consists of taking rebel settlement X in 15 turns. A lot of times you can take it far sooner than that. I like to wait until the last possible minute to actually take the settlement, if I take it at all -- instead, I concentrate on teching up my cities and castles, keeping my realm free of bandits, setting up watchtowers, etc. Take it slow, and let your neighbors get a bit stronger; it'll make for more interesting situations later.

I usually only attack when I have a "proper" army. Just like in earlier TW games, it's possible to spam a ton of cheap, low-level infantry early on and grab all the nearby cities before the AI gets off its duff. If you do that, you're guaranteed a win on any difficulty level, but I find it rather boring. If I'm playing the English, for example, I'll want to get a good mix of billmen, armoured swordsmen, knights, archers, etc., before I do any attacking. Taking this a step further, I limit myself to only making Longbowmen once they're available in Wales -- even though I could get them quite sooner in Caen. Some people deride this kind of playing; they don't like the idea of having to handicap yourself just to make things more interesting. I can see the logic there, but the bottom line is that we play the game we have, not the game we wish CA had made, and if our options are to make it more fun for ourselves by means of some restrictive house rules or blitzkrieg with spear militia because that's the way to get an easy win, I'll go with the former.

I tried a short campaign in this style with Poland pre-patch and had a blast. You might think a short campaign would be over before you get into it, but not necessarily -- you need 15 (or 20) territories plus the elimination of another couple factions. As Poland you need to eliminate Russia and Hungary I believe. Of course, due to the politics of the area I needed to keep at least one of those guys as an ally some of the time -- my main threats were coming from the west, as Denmark was going crazy. There were some very tense years when I had lost Krakow and was sure a combined Dane/Hungarian attack would be the end, but thanks to luck and some shuffling around I managed to hold on, drive Denmark back, and see the game through to the New World and the Timurid invasion. Of course, by that time Hungary had expanded down to Constantinople and I didn't feel like pursuing them for the victory, so I started a new campaign.... but if I'd played a long campaign, or played more aggressively in the early years, I know I would have gotten bored around turn 100. I guess the bottom line is... do whatever you have to do to keep things interesting. And in the end, there's nothing wrong with starting & abandoning campaigns when they get a little boring. I will say that the real shame is that there is no option to start in the "High" or "Late" eras, like in MTW.

There you have it. Your unnecessarily long answer to delaying M2TW ennui. Good luck!

[Dalthius]

Thanks Count, your advice seems well thought out. I've thought about just reverting back to short campaigns, but I feel like I wouldn't really be "beating" the game. My approach to the game is changing, however; I find that it is easier to just think of it as a sandbox-style game with no real ending. You simply play the game till you get bored, then start a new game. I'm really curious to see how the patch will increase the depth, and the expansion will (hopefully) be even better and, uh, less buggy.

[HoreTore]

Ok, what do you want from this game? It's a very fundamental question. My answer, is that I want to fight huge and exciting battles. If that's what you want, then this is what you can do:

Fight field battles. It's as simple as that. Don't take settlements, there's no point in that. Keep fighting their armies in the open. You will have much better AI armies quite soon. However, if you take half their lands at the same time, then they'll keep sending town militia at you. Don't release their soldiers of course, that won't solve anything. If you're chivalrous you can ransom. They'll rarely accept anyway.

Take the settlements you want, and let them keep the rest. The missions are a good guide here. For example, in my current Milanese campaign, it's now past gunpowder and I have only 19 provinces. I have italy and the levant, plus bern, tunis, timbuktu and now, Dijon. I got a mission to take Dijon and Bern, that's really the only reason why I took them. I'm raping egypt, but that doesn't matter, as I'll soon encounter the real terror of the middle east, the mongols. In europe, even the french send decent armies at me. Most of them consist of DFK as the infantry, backed by feudal/crusader knights, plus some crossbow support. They're very fun to fight, a LOT more fun than the militas at the start of the campaign.

[Swordsman]

Dalthius,
I agree completely. I've played all the games too, and love them. But the fact remains that once you hit "critical mass"-- whatever that is for you (20 territories, etc.)-- you are basically certain of victory and it slowly becomes less fun. Turtling is hard for me, as I always get tired of stupid attacks and want to smite my foe for DARING such a thing when clearly he has no chance at all.

There were only two exceptions to this for me, both in the original MTW:
1) Eras: I almost always started in "High", otherwise I would win (or reach critical mass) in the "Early" era and never make it to the cool units! If only M2TW would let me start at the equivelant of "High" I would be one happy camper!
2) Rebellions/civil wars/re-emergence. While certainly hokey in some ways, it sure kept an element of paranoia in play. No matter how close you were to winning, you could never be sure someone wasn't going to pop up with a bunch of stacks at the worst time in the worst place. Okay, maybe it seldom actually caused you to "lose", but the SUSPENSE.

Bring back eras!

[rosscoliosis]

Dalthius, the "sandbox" thing is pretty much the way I think of it. The victory condition is pretty darn trivial anyway. However, micromanagement does become quite tiresome once you have a large empire. But then if you stay small, you still have that countdown in the back of your head, ha. Well, that's how it is for me anyway.
I do like your idea, though, HoreTore, I'll try and use that in my next campaign. I'm really looking forward to the expansion because it sounds like the campaigns are going to be much more goal-oriented and allow for keeping a smaller footprint.
After beating the game with England, I think my next campaign will be with the HRE, seems like that will stay chaotic a lot longer with fronts on all sides, haha. ;-)

[Hollerbach]

I will say that the real shame is that there is no option to start in the "High" or "Late" eras, like in MTW.

I couldn't agree more. I've played maybe half a dozen campaigns so far and have never seen gunpowder, let alone the new world. I get to the steamroller stage and get bored with the campaign before then.

I could start slow, but you've still got to play more than 100 turns, which equates to many hours, to get to gunpowder regardless of how big your empire is.

I really don't understand why that option wasn't included, surely it would have been easy enough to do?

[Magraev]

I actually edited the events-file to make gunpowder turn up after 10 turns. It's not difficult to do if you have unpacked the files.

That's one way to try out those lovely musketeers. early on. Another bonus is that handgunners aren't totally obsolete when you get to build them 20-40 turns before you can even consider building musketeers.

[fenir]

There's a Late part to the game?




edit the descr file to create a high era start........?

I usually limit myself at the start of a map, abit like count.

I start my map, and build up slowly, teasing myself up i call it.....or tease play.
I started doing it when I seemed to smack every game i came across. Found it was to easy, not enough.
And like you, i found you reach a mass level.

So, i play the game, to the historical boundaries of that Kingdom/Empire, and if i don't get the provinces i need, i simply wait and use my spies, and presits.

I also play the diplomacy thing rather heavy, and like to know what every one is doing, i use my wealth, to maintain, and help other nations mimick their historical size.
It's alot of fun, espeically now, when we don't have GA's.

and of course other times I need to put the smack down.

fenir