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So I recently picked up medieval 2 on sale, thinking it was just like rome. I started the game up as Venice (because italian heritage) and after about 40 turns in I'm poor as dirt, at war with the HRE, Hungary, Byzintine and Milan with everyone hating my guts to the point they dont want peace. Now Hungary is stomping my armies with dismounted feudal knights I have no clue how to get and I can stop the wars everyone wants with me.


So what did I do wrong and what should I do to make my faction stronger? I heard venice has the best militia but I seem to get slaughtered by other armies really easily and I dont know how to getsuch units. Also whatsup with the friggen politics and Crusades? the pope said to launch a crusade against Cairo so I sent over an army to Cairo and took it over, but then it said the Crusades were canceled and I had no rewards!


So completely different than rome.

First off;

What you're doing wrong? You're playing Medieval 2 Total War

More seriously, if I remember correctly, Venice as a state does have good militia, but militia are NOT as strong as standing military units, something that Venice has difficult access too. One thing to keep in mind is that Venice is a faction that benefits more from cities than from castles, as most of their good units come from cities. In fact, baring the innate defenses of a castle, there's little reason to have one as Venice. This will also increase your income massively.

You'll want to conquer Italy and Greece fast, as M2 uses the same basic map as Rome, and those two regions held together are a mountain of money. Do NOT attack the Papal states however.

The wars are unavoidable I'm afraid, as the AI in M2 is very aggressive.

Okay, but how do I get everyone to stop hating my guts?


and that explains one part. I had, like, 3 castles as I started out.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
Okay, but how do I get everyone to stop hating my guts?

The dark ages aren't really known for peace and love

Yep, Venice has some of the best militia in the game. Don't bother making the weakest variety, they have spearmen militia with about 7 attack and 13 defense or so, which is almost as strong as sergent spearmen that you make at castles. Upgrade the baracks fast. Consider making one of your cities have low taxes to get the next level for a better barracks that has Pavise Crossbowmen who are a powerful ranged unit that can fight in melee if needed. Also you don't need castles.

Each city can support a few militia unit with no upkeep, they have a different coloured unit card when they're in a city, bigger walls let you have more free upkeep units so check that out and try to always have at least that many units in the city.
Note: the city has to actually be able to make the unit for it to be free. Castles cannot do this at all.

To fight dismounted feudal knights, just let your crossbowmen skirmish them (flee & shoot) and don't let them get into combat, even with your spearmen, till you're ready... or they run out of ammunition.

You can make your own Feudal Knights if you really want to with a Castle with Barracks. Almost all Europeans have that unit type there.

To join a Crusade you have to select an army of at least 8 units or so and click the "Join Crusade" button. It's a little bright blue button with the Cross. it doubles the army's movement speed, gives them free upkeep (except mercenaries) but the HAVE to keep moving to the Crusade target. Also, if you've been excommunicated, well, problems can arise, such as the Pope launching a Crusade against Cairo that you control.

People like you depending on what you've done. Such as attacking their allies. Having a high Dread Faction Leader is also a problem. Being on good terms with the Pope can help you avoid war. When I play Venice I just keep a massive army (maybe 2) near the Capital and chase away other Christians, if they start it the Pope gets mad at them. Though it's annoying to have the Pope get mad in the middle of my sieges. I suggest attacking armies 'next to' their cities to draw the local garrison out to fight you. If you wipe out everyone you can take the city without a siege.

Also, when moving an army through neutral territory, try to avoid having them end their turn there, they hate that.

I never noticed the crusade button! thanks for that tip that makes a lot more sense as to why I didnt win that mission,


as for the dismounted knights, how does one get them though? I had a barracks and all I could recruit was spearmen. but it's good to know about the militia!

If you click a City or Castle and open up it's scroll, there should be three little buttons at the bottom. One of them opens the building browser. Click it, it might be wise to get familiar with it.

You can select 'Barracks' from the list and it will show you 2 columns, one for City Barracks, one for Castle Barracks. Right-click any barracks and it will display a list of the units it can make, which is useful to know which building chain you want to start on. Unfortunately, the only way to see how strong they are is to exit the campaign and go to 'custom battle' and compare stats there.

Though you probably already know most of this, since it's the same as Rome.

Oh, also remember to always have your Diplomat/Princess roaming and getting Trade Rights from every faction you can, or make a second and send one in each direction. Priests can also be a good investment against the Byzantines as they convert the population to Christianity quickly, the Pope likes this, he also likes high Piety/Chivalry Faction Leaders, try to make sure that your Leader and Heir don't go around butchering everyone. Priests can turn 100% Orthodox(Byzantine Religion) to 90% faster than they can turn 10% to 0%. Select a Priest and hover the cursor over some regions you control/want, if the level of Christianity is less than 50% it's highly recommended you do something about it. This makes your enemies unhappy and your own people much happier, which means higher tax rates for you. You start off with fleets, you may want to use them to tie up enemy ports, which gives you a tiny bit more money and stops some of their trade.

And the Crusades, they're not mandatory by any means. Plus that area will get very intense very soon, so I like to avoid it, at least in the beginning.

I hardly use the building browser in my games, so I'll look into that. It will probably help a lot more knowing what i'm getting.


also, I need more diplomats rather than soldiers I guess. I only had at most three and only used two priests, so I should get more I guess. man I relise I did a lot of things wrong.


is it good practise to ransom or release captured armies? slaughtering them makes everyone hate my faction so I don't want to do that, but at the same time they will have more guys if I release them.

When it comes to Slaughter/Ransom/Release it really depends on how confident you are in your situation. But Vinice is a city of Merchants, so Ransoming must be the most logical choice yes? If they agree to the ransom you get money and they get their soldiers back, if they refuse, you execute the soldiers but get no dread or bad reputation for doing so. I suggest ransoming every army you believe you are capable of fighting again and winning, though that's not to say you should chase them down again and finish them off... only if you want to...

2 or 3 Diplomats are fine. Try to get Map Information from them as well, you can give them your own Map Information in exchange if you're not worried about them knowing where you are. It's quite handy to know where all their cities are before you move into their land and lets your Diplomats know where to go next.

Also, I feel I should mention watch towers. When you have a large territory it becomes hard to see all your borders, so move a general out to the edge, click the big fortifications button (bottom right) and make a watch tower for 200 gold, they're permanent. It's good practice to have each tower be within line-of-sight of another tower/city because if bandit or enemy armies get there they go blind and bandits love towers. It's important if you take over a place like Tripoli or playing as Russia as you control very large pieces of land. They can even see into enemy/neutral land, so you can see a threat coming. Of course, these aren't useful with small territories, so use where appropriate.

Forts are also key. One of the biggest mistakes I made in my current playthrough as France is not having forts at key checkpoints.
Without forts, any army can just walk into your lands without you knowing about it.

Venice has a couple of choke points near the HRE territories that make great fort areas.

I read someplace that you could buy bolonga early on, so is that a wise strategy?

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Forts are also key. One of the biggest mistakes I made in my current playthrough as France is not having forts at key checkpoints.
Without forts, any army can just walk into your lands without you knowing about it.

Venice has a couple of choke points near the HRE territories that make great fort areas.

The same can be achieved by having the Follow AI Movements (or whatever it's called) option turned on when starting a Grand Campaign and planting watchtowers around. Also, the game sometimes derps and, whilst following the AI, will give you a brief glimpse of their route by showing you the coloured arrows that plot movements on the map if it takes more than a turn. I've had a few enemy stacks walk near a castle, only for the game to briefly show me they're planning to bypass it completely and instead head deeper in towards a city, or an army from a neutral faction walk around their border and show me that they're going to siege my adjacent town next turn. It doesn't happen every time, but it's a nice little bug (I assume it's a bug, anyway) in an option that I don't think I could play the game without; following AI movements is immensely helpful.

I keep forgetting to mention the Merchants Guild, they're cool, they give a boost to your economy and they let you train light cavalry in cities, which is nice, since now you'll be able to train Medium Spearmen, Heavy Crossbowmen and Light Cavalry from your city. The only other factions that can make such powerful armies from cities are Milan, Sicily and the Turks.

Turks are my favorite faction but have the most dangerous starting area.

And in the building browser, you might notice that some buildings don't unlock anything that the lower level one can't. This may be because it's meant to make a gunpowder unit, which isn't available at the start

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
I read someplace that you could buy bolonga early on, so is that a wise strategy?

Only if you care about your reputation with the rest of the Christian club and if you like seamless borders. Bologna usually gets a strong army and it's nice to only have to fight the Holy Roman Empire from the north if they ever decide to attack. Naturally, this requires saving up a lot of gold and stunting your growth for the first few turns, I don't really worry since the Bologna militia can't beat your own, even if the army looks really big.

yea I like seemless borders, so I just might buy it and use it to boost my income. After all if I get another city It will probably give me more money.


Is it kosher to attack an excomunicated army? What happened with me is I attacked byzinteen that was allied to almost all my neighbors and they lost so much faith in me they attacked.

Sure, everyone loves attacking Excommunicated Christians. I always see the Hungarians allying with Byzantine, other factions less often. If any are excommunicated then you only need to worry about their allies getting mad, no one else... well, if they're allies with Milan and the new Pope is from Milan THEN it becomes a problem. But the Pope eventually distances himself from his home faction and it balances out again. Even if the Pope is from Milan he doesn't actually care if you attack Milan if they've been excommunicated. You only have to worry about newly elected Popes.

If a faction that's still in the christian club attacks you or sieges your city then you have the right to defend yourself, no penalties.

Keep in mind though, that if you kill an excommunicated Faction Leader, the Heir may be high in Piety/Chivalry and they may be reconciled quickly after. There isn't really much you can do about this, just felt I should mention it.

I played with Venice. Quite tricky to get started.

Here's what I did.

Convert Zagreb to a castle. It's easier to defend this way because once you upgrade it to a certain level you'll be able to train dismounted feudal knights. Hungary can then hammer themselves against it in vain as long as you keep it decently garrisoned.

Take Durazzo to the southeast before Byzantium does.

Convert Ragusa to a town. From experience, it won't come under attack because Zagreb and Durazzo are closer to the other factions, so they'll go for those. As a city it'll make you more money. Keep constucting buildings that'll improve your economy generally, and send your diplomat around getting trade agreements.

Milan will definitely attack you. HRE... not always. Keep Venice garrisoned as well as you can without breaking the bank.

Its difficult to take on Milan first, so I went for Byzantium. The AI tends to only keep a few units in the settlements it has that aren't under obvious threat so what I did was surprise them and land an army in southern greece to take Corinth. Byzantium will then send some units down to try and take it back so what you can do is either defend Corinth or march up to meet them (depending on how many there are). Once they're dealt with you can take Thessalonica. I'd go for Sofia after that, because you dont want heavy units attacking Thessalonica. Hungary will then probably start attacking that, so keep it decently garrisoned. You'll probably be generating enough income from these for you to take on Milan next, so build up an army and leave it in a fleet (so the AI can't see them and chicken out) near Venice. After Milan sends one of its huge armies to attack Venice, let them attack and when you've beaten them in the Siege land the army and take Milan. You can probably then go for Genoa.

You should be wary of HRE. But in my experience they only attack when you havent got a big enough garrison in Venice.

Hopefully this will help get you started. I had to try a couple of times as Venice before I got going and this strategy seemed to work.

Edit: Don't bother with crusades. They're too much hassle

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
yea I like seemless borders, so I just might buy it and use it to boost my income. After all if I get another city It will probably give me more money.


Is it kosher to attack an excomunicated army? What happened with me is I attacked byzinteen that was allied to almost all my neighbors and they lost so much faith in me they attacked.

Excommunicated nations are fair game. Whenever a nation gets communicated, take as much land from them before the pope changes his mind.

The only problem I have with Venice is keeping away inquisitors from the miscreants I have as a faction family
I haven't picked up the game in a while, but I remember I first expanded in Greece and in the mediterranean isles. I liked the Reign of Sicily cause they kept sending princesses and diplomats so I just allied with them.
Milan tried to betray me so I had to wipe them out. As far as I know, Milan will always betray you though.
Last time I played I was trying to buy Bologna from the Germans. Maybe I should merely buy their armies instead.

I found the AI to be beneath me in that game. I simply destroyed their armies because I quickly learned all the AI tactics on the field.

I ended up building 4 types of armies.

City defense which was stationed in all my frontier provinces.

Assault. Which included units suited for taking provinces.

Land war armies. Cavalry armies that simply destroyed huge armies by simply flanking and eating enemy units one by one.

Generic. These guys where my reserves. Whenever my armies had a bad match up they would stand in, or whenever I needed men immediately they would be there to die as a way of weakening enemies and so forth.


I play as Spain but playing the above even on harder difficulties proved easy. Simply crushed so many armies that where numerically superior to me over and over. Slowly expanding. Diplomacy was a waste of time as was the pope etc.

Just generate lots of cash first off and then support large armies and slaughter your way around. Im usually at war with the majority of factions, means I can attack whoever whenever etc.

Its a boring way to play though. Against humans is far better.

Vetril wrote:
The only problem I have with Venice is keeping away inquisitors from the miscreants I have as a faction family

Assassins. Lots of assassins. Assassins out the wazoo.

Also, load up on spies. Spies everywhere. In your towns. In their towns. In the Pope's sock drawer. Everywhere.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Assassins. Lots of assassins. Assassins out the wazoo.

Also, load up on spies. Spies everywhere. In your towns. In their towns. In the Pope's sock drawer. Everywhere.

I remember one of my first play-throughs. I was the Holy Roman Empire and I sent Assassins everywhere, killed diplomats for practice, killed Cardinals so I would get all the votes. The game let me see the list of Cardinals and gave me the exact location of each one. This eventually lead to one of my own Cardinals getting voted in by a large margin and giving me a perfect relationship with the Papacy.

Unfortunately, this give the Faction Leader a lot of Dread and that relationship quickly deteriorated. So much for that plan.

Inquisitors have not been a problem for me for a long time. My family is a beacon of faith that other people look up to as an exemplar.

 Lotet wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Assassins. Lots of assassins. Assassins out the wazoo.

Also, load up on spies. Spies everywhere. In your towns. In their towns. In the Pope's sock drawer. Everywhere.

I remember one of my first play-throughs. I was the Holy Roman Empire and I sent Assassins everywhere, killed diplomats for practice, killed Cardinals so I would get all the votes. The game let me see the list of Cardinals and gave me the exact location of each one. This eventually lead to one of my own Cardinals getting voted in by a large margin and giving me a perfect relationship with the Papacy.

Unfortunately, this give the Faction Leader a lot of Dread and that relationship quickly deteriorated. So much for that plan.

Inquisitors have not been a problem for me for a long time. My family is a beacon of faith that other people look up to as an exemplar.

On my latest England playthrough I completed a crusade on Cairo and set about stabilising the region and churning out priests as fast as I could, building right through the church line. I was blue face for the majority of the time and saved by making the races more often, loading up on garrison units etc.

A few turns later an Inquisitor appeared, killed my family member (crusading hero, pious, all that) which completely destabilised the region, then set about executing all the priests I'd trained there for heresy. I had to quickly take Alexandria and start retraining them all, but he was killing one for every new one I trained. So I had to train an assassin and have him murder a few rebels before he was skilled enough to off the Inquisitor, and even that saw several failed attempts.

Alright so a quick update on my restarted playthrough.


pretty much turn 1 I allied with Milan, HRE, Papal states, and got tradeing rights to everyone I could find. I bought bolona around turn 10 for about 10,000 gold, but at this point it was pocket change. All my cities are pretty prosperous except durzzwhatever, and right now I launched a crusade on Cairo.


I ended last night sieging cairo but should I continue going around conquering stuff before ending the crusade?

From personal experience Cairo and the surrounding lands are too volatile to hold unless you exterminate the populace, which damages relations with everyone. I recommend that you take it, sack it, knock down all the buildings you can in it to get more cash, remove your army from it, and gift it to the Papal States, since you can always use more influence with them. You can try taking the surrounding lands, but there's little point if you can't hold them without riots. That said, if there are any rebel settlements like Jerusalem still untalented, it might be worth having a go, or better yet the rebel castle around that area for the reduced issue of public order.

If you manage to take and hold one of the settlements then build churches, priests by the dozen, and set about converting the areas around you to prepare for your inevitable taking of the Middle East.

The only thing you should be wary of is the Mongol invasion, since it could happen after you discover gunpowder (which is fine), or before (which is really not). Rushing ballista towers in preparation to upgrade them to cannon towers (Cities only) when the gunpowder event rolls around is a sound strategy, but it means keeping your cities in the Middle East on low taxation for the population boost and hoping your city is big enough when the time comes.

Quick warning though - there appears to be a bug where cannon towers and ballista towers do not work.

At least they didn't on my first playthrough as England.
On my second and current playthrough as France, the ballista towers work and they are awesome.

It looks like they are shooting fire balls ^^

Also, in this same playthrough, the Mongols have set up base just north of Jerusalem, which is being held by the Polish.
I hope they take it so I can steal it with no reputation penalties xD

I'd advise only conquering the surrounding areas if you:
-Have a bunch of priest in the area
-Have more than 1 general with Chivalry or other traits to keep people happy
-Exterminate the populace

Any single one of these will do fine, otherwise it may be difficult to maintain public order as you take over more an more places. Speaking of having multiple generals in the area, when a son comes of age to become a general they will appear in the city that their father is in, but if their father is wandering the fields the son will appear in your Capital. Might want to keep this in mind if your empire is split and you want another general in a far off land.

Using any local racetracks that the Islamists have built costs you far more than its worth, not including yearly races, which are free. So don't rely on them unless you have to.

Also, the Horde likes that area... good luck.

Yeah, if you are planning on holding the Egyptian lands you better have a large army, cause those cities are just going to rebel. I had about 2 revolts before I gave up and sold Alexandria and Cairo back to Egypt for a Ceasefire and trade rights (though not before destroying all of the buildings).

Next crusade I took back Cairo, exterminated Alexandria and just started rushing priests and Cathedrals. That seems to have worked.

The cannon towers can take care of the Mongols through a trick I like to call "Giving the AI a taste of its own medicine", named after how annoying the AI can be at times.

When a city with cannon towers is besieged, sally forth. When deploying, ensure that nobody is deployed near the walls (very important) and that all ranged units have fire at will turned off. The AI then, for some reason, marches forward and takes up waiting positions within cannon tower range. This is where you march your units close enough to the walls to activate your towers, speed up time, and go and make a cup of tea or something to eat.

When you come back the Mongols should have lost a healthy portion of their armies, and hopefully even their powerful generals. The game counts as a draw, so you don't lose the city, but the mongols lost a LOT of men. Next turn, you can repeat.

It might also help to have a few cannon units (preferably Basilisks if you get them, or Culverins if not) around to sally out and sit very close to the gate and snipe the generals, or any trebuchets the Mongols have (since they're gone forever until the Mongols have a technology to build them in whichever place they settled, vastly reducing their capability to siege your settlements). You might get the odd horse archer unit running towards your walls if you sally your Bassies/Culverins too far out, but stationing ranged units on the walls to cover them should ward them off.

You could also fight them bye using sharpened stakes. There are a few Archer units that can do this. The only ones I can remember right now are some varieties of British Longbows and the Turkish Janissary Archers. Sharpened stakes at a gate murderlize their cavalry when they rush through.

Though in my last game I just completely avoided the East, let them take over everything short of Constantinople, then just fought a conventional war against them, since their forces were spread like a normal powerful faction.

None of these anti-horde measures are very cool, are they?

I suppose it's because there's not supposed to be an anti-horde strategy; they historically tore everything they came across a new one.