Need Help ASAP with rereating The Battle Of Hastings

[Ktadie]

hey guys

im new here :P been "ghosting" here for some while, reading posts and threads

anyways,
i have a project in school, and i have chosen to recreate the Battle of Hastings. i will use Medieval 2 and play the battle, record it with fraps and then edit it, and making a documentary of it.

luckily the game already has a premade battle of it

BUT, they are inccorect with some things. i have done alot of research on this battle;
(which URL's i cant post due to me not having more than one post..) onesource is wikipedia
two of the my good sources there and it states that:

William first advances his archers and fire at Harold's shield wall, but they have no success. then William orders his infantry units to charge Harolds shield wall, but on the way, some of harolds men throw projectine and rocks down on them, so they get great casualties.. NOW thats the first FLAW, any suggestions on how i should do that?

William withdraws his infantry and orders his cavarly to charge into the shield wall. they get slaughtered and then slowly his army starts to flee. im going to do that by taking the specific units and ordering them to run quickly back. now the problem is that as soon as i charge with the horses, all of the Harolds units start to charge down.. anyways

William will quickly do a counter attack on Harold's army, which will be weak now and less effective, since they arnt in their shield wall.. now the problem is, in the game, there isnt anything called a shield wall. So i order my troops back to attack..
now some of Harolds army should stay in formation on the top of teh hill, while the ones that ran down to chase my fleeing troops will get killed rapidly. the problem is, the whole of Haralds army charges down as soon as i charge them with my cavarly.. now what do i do? =(

cos that is in the way of me performing the rest of the actual battle, where William tells his archers to shoot at the last flanks of the shield wall, where Harold gets hit with an arrow in the eye,and then William would charge the remaining shield wall and break through, and then win the match..

you guys have any ideas of how i should perform this? should i maybe choose another historical battle which the game has designed alitle more accurate and precise? im aware that it would be much better if a played a multiplayer game, but that would be kinda hard for me to arrange...

i even have the tip/advisory help on max, and in the beggining it says that i need to charge the two flanks where Harolds Huscarls are... which is also incorrect =(

thanks alot in advanced
Ktadie

[Kulgan]

Just to let you know... recent historical researchers tend to believe it is not harold that is shown with the arrow through his eye on the Bayeux painting ( what's the english term? no clue )

Pherhaps you want to incoorporate that in your work about the battle of Hastings.

[Rhyfelwyr]

The Shieldwall is in M2TW just like BI, you can add it to a units attributes in export_descr_unit.

[Ferret]

I'll play the multiplayer battle with you if you live in England (same time zone). You could give me exact instructions or phone me while we play. Should be fun.

[imnothere]

there are some opinions that :

* Actual event is that Normans' feigned withdrawal turn into disaster, Saxons charges, Normans counter-charge, Saxons counter-charges and so-forth until the hapless Harold was mobbed and hacked down by four knights from William's retinue. I do agree a bit because surely Saxons arent that dumb enough to keep charging out of shieldwall.

* Traditionally - it should be just the armoured spearmen/sergeants at the front, with the (unarmoured) sergeants and peasants at the back to do the pushing, so if the side or the back of the shieldwall got hit, the whole battle goes pear-shaped. Also bear in mind that alot of the best professional units lies dead or wounded at Fulford and Stamford Bridge, so what Harold can picked up in force march shouldn't be the best equiped units, as the best would have been marching with Harold to Stamford Bridge in the first place.

I have tried luring Saxons into the "box" created by my surrouding infantry and cavalry units, after my attacking infantry withdraw. But somehow it was too time-consuming and I always take heavy casualties. But I didn't use schiltron for infantry... that could be the reason why my infantry units keep running away from big huscarls with nasty axes.

Maybe it is better to concentrate on one flank, weaken them so that your cavalry units can work around and then charge at Saxons from behind, which I suspect would have been what happened.

Try asking bob- as the Saxons needs to be control by a human player. Try setting the Saxon spears to "hold position" - might work as ad-hoc shieldwall.

[TevashSzat]

AI will simply not work since it isn't programmed to fight historically.

Like the others, you need to do it online and even with another coordinated person, it will probably take you at least a few tries to get it perfect. The problems though may be with routing since you can't control it completely...