Originally posted by Stephen Asen
In fact, the game makes a good demonstration of the superiority of the English military, which historically resulted in the success of a small 4 million England against 20 million France.

I do not envy the French in high and late.
Not surprising considering the nationality of the developer, however for the record, by the end of the 100 years' war the French military was light years ahead of the English one.

In terms of game representation i find the longbowmen nicely represented, however the Billmen are overpowered.

Hstorically the strengths of the English were:
organisation, discipline, leadership, specialisation, combined arms tactical approach.

The French had an edge in terms of:
numbers, cavalry quality (and quantity), impetuousness and at the late stages technology.

The French lacked in leadership and training for the most part although when they were properly led by people like Bertrand du Guesclin that used the size of the areas the English had to occupy with their small numbers against them and avoided to give pitched battles in which the English excelled, or Jean D'Arc that favored frontal attacks and utter aggression that caught the English longbowmen unprepared at Patay and cleared the Loire valley with a swift stroke of determined assaults, they were capable of great feats.

The French in game terms in high and late have nothing special, but don't lack anything either. Their lack of unique units can be balanced by the closeness of Switzerland, that makes fine Pikes/Armored Pikes and most importantly halbs that eat the bills for breakfast.

I have not tried the Chivalric men-at-arms but I doubt they will be successful against the billmen.
Considering their stats and availability CMAA are probably one of the best heavy infantry (if not the best heavy infantry) in the game. Of course there are better units like CFK and JHI etc, however the former are too slow and have small numbers and high upkeep while teh JHI are scarce due to their build requirements.

CMAA should win against billmen most of the time.


I am really content with the Pronoiai Allagion
Pronoiai are ok but nothing special really - they will have to do though because by late the Byz have nothing else left (Kataphraktoi are antique and Byz lancers unavailable).

Statistically they have the same stats as Feudal Knights with one point more armor and reduced charge (6 instead of 8) iirc, so you need to soup them up with upgrades a bit to stand against late era cavalry.


I need to test the Naptha explosives
Although fun to use - they are a wild card - sometimes they'll do more damage than good and sometimes they'll draw more attention to them (in order for you to use them) than they deserve (you could use that attention to other units/parts of teh battle with better results imo).

I am not even sure whether they affect the defense in a hand-to hand combat.
They are in fact the best type of upgrade you can make and iirc they add +1 defense and +1 armor per armor upgrade.

You can check this easily by pressing F1 (or was it F2?) on the battlefield; this brings up a very comprehensive table of stats for all your present units. Check the defense stat against the base defence stat (which you can find in the crusaders_prod txt file or in frogbeastegg's unit guide).

The only times armor upgrades are not good is if you are going to fight in the desert - then they really make things worse for you as fatigue (and with it morale) drops like a lead ballon, or when you are focusing on speed/stamina (say for example you want your horse archers or swift chargers lik Alans, Byz lancers, mounted seargents etc to remain as speedy as possible).


On a different issue, the problem of the Late campaign is that when you finally manage to secure yourself financially (bribes!), the game is going to be over.
Try blitzing - its a whole different world and it has its fun - it needs a different set of skills than playing slow - yet it is satisfactory in its own way.