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...

[Ktadie]

thanks alot guys for the replies

i have decided to make a LAN game with myself (since i have two PC's)
thanks alot for offering though Bob_the_great

I will set one side to be Denmark (?)
and the other England

Harolds army would be denmark.. the shield wall will be consisted of spearmen and then i'll put some peasents behind them for the push. for huscarls, i'll use... dismounted huscarls ofcourse :) i will mix them up with some nrose swordsmen also.

Williams army will be england, for the his cavarly i will use Fedual knights, and then for him and his group, i will have Dismounted Fedual Knights (since he falls of his horse) the rest of the army will consist of... armoured segmeants and then some billmen militia? ( william needs to beat harold, and i think that if i only gave him armoured segments they'll be pwned by harolds norse swordmen and huscarls) and then should i have longbow men as the archers? or normal peasent archers?

now the question is what map i should use? i am alitle dissapointed that there are so few maps to choose from.. anyhow, i was thinking of the Scottish Glen, but there needs to be a forest nearby where Harolds fleeing troops would run through.. then there is Spanish Plain, but the trees there look too exotic for england.. Andalusia and Lombardy maybe?

Harolds death should be done in the classical way imo. so i will make a differnt battle with him and his troops (what troops should he be with btw? the spearmen or should i get some stronger men to represent his bodyguards? e.g. dismounted knights?) against a group of like 5 longbow units and then just keep firing at him until he gets hit, and then i'll somehow get that in with the rest of the other battle.

[TevashSzat]

I would think that there is a way to play on the map used in the Battle of Hastings in game

[Ktadie]

well ca you help me out? been loking around, cant realy find it.

[imnothere]

hmmm, i will suggest longbowmen for the special effect. it maybe overkilled but peasant archers just don't have the same feeling nor effects. but still, perhaps peasants archers will still be OK since you are controlling it if you give the archers 9 chevron for higher damage.

i was thinking of Mayan jungle but too much plants. Try the other scenario that has jungle, but has slope and is in the new world. there are not enough trees on both sides but otherwise it is alot more suitable than the other scenario. unless you can somehow find and download scenario that will be the most suitable one.

just tell your class that thw world need to be more eco-friendly as the greenhouse effects + over-logging just killed off alot of the trees even at the time of William-the-Conqueror.

i will search it once i get home tonight in 7 hours time and let you know which one i was talking about.
(work and part-time study *sigh* )

for Harold's bodyguard, it is perfectly acceptable for either Huscarl, swordsmen, DFK or spearmen. Although I'd use the Huscarl for simplicity's sake, and then just move all archers to the LEFT side where he will be stationed. 1000 arrows can't be wrong.

historically, there are dispute about who really finishes off Harold - the archers or the knights. IMHO i think that Harold was downed by the arrow and mobbed by the Knights, so you can choose to go with either. if you want some humor, just mobbed the remaining bodyguard with 3 -5 units if he refused to go down.

the grunts on the Norman side can be the spears. you can add some swords but not sure about billmen. Normans are not depicted with two handed weapons (beside bow and spears) in the Bayeux Tapestry. just give your swords higher chevron to mow through the English spears(Denmark)

Edit:
Edelwais - not my ideal Hastings, but then again there is no definate place of Hastings. So pick any hill you like.

[ReiseReise]

Easiest way: Play the Hastings battle a few times, maybe a dozen times. Instead of showing a movie of the whole battle, simply edit together close-ups of certain events from the multiple battles and tell a story out of it. You can make the Saxons playable in the Hastings desc_battle file the same way you unlock factions in the campaign. Play as both sides to get them to do what you want, it won't matter what the whole battle looks like at the moment, all you have to do is show a close up of them them charging, holding spearwall, getting charged by knights, shooting arrows, getting hit by arrows, etc. That way you can use footage from any battle it happened in.

Terribly difficult way:
Perhaps with a little modding (of which I know next to nothing), you could make the SP Hastings battle into MP. Use the MP 100 Years War descr_battle as a template and replace the map and army information with those from the Hastings Battle.

Just a few ideas, I have never tried anything remotely close to this, but there must be a way. The History Channel had a series a few years ago where they recreated famous battles in RTW, which is the same.

[imnothere]

or maybe just get screenshots and do a presentation, with some extract of the movie for special effects if you prefer.

how did the project go???? do let us know!

[Budwise]

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...

Routing isn't really a problem either due to the ability to turn on ARCADE MODE, turn down the difficulty or just mod the Morale penaties to a much lower level. When its time to have them rout, click on the rout button to have them do so.

[Ktadie]

ah sorry guys, really really busy these days,
havnt really looked into the project yet.. been really busy with other work,
and next week im gone for a volleyball tournament :S

i planned to try the battle out this weekend, but i have alot of other work to complete, i'll keep you all updated though!

thanks alot again