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Only the English longbow line (so Longbowmen, Yeomen, and Retinue Longbowmen) and Turkish Janissary Archers get them, AFAIK.

They're used during army deployment, so can't be used if you're laying siege and the enemy sallies out, since you don't get to deploy for that, or once the battle has already begun.

To place them you need a bit of space in front of the unit, and when placing them in settlements it's best you line the archers up against the walls in formation, and inch them further and further back until their Flaming Arrow ability changes to the Sharpened Stakes ability (you do get the Flaming Arrows ability back once the battle begins, though). Just bear in mind that you cannot deploy stakes and then try and redeploy the archer unit; the archers must be deployed with the stakes they place.

If you want to try getting the hang of placing them then do a custom battle where you're defending a settlement with longbows against anything, and fiddle around with them during your deployment.

I'm kinda hoping Medieval 3 total war changes how deployable defenses work more like Rome 2.

So Longbowmen would give you stakes you could deploy seperate from the Longbowmen themselves.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
That screenshot is from a short-length game; 33 regions after 76 turns.

I also got a chance to finally defend in a siege (as opposed to being the aggressor by besieging or by sallying) against a Polish stack made up of good quality cavalry, and piss-quality infantry. I was a bit worried until I realised I had longbows in the city, not the mercenary crossbows I thought I had.

One set of stakes set at the gate during deployment later, I let their ram break down the gate and the majority of the enemy army proceeded to kill itself on the stakes. Also works for Mongols

Their siege tower burned to a crisp, and their ladders drip-fed the crappy peasants and militia to my own militia on the walls, whatever cavalry got through the stakes fell to my guard-mode spears sitting behind, and whatever infantry tried to get through the gate got stuck in the mass of routing cavalry, routed themselves, got stuck on the stakes, got shot, or got stabbed by spears.

37 Casualties to 770+. Got to love a good massacre.

Oh that sounds hilarious. I love making death piles.
What unit size do you use? I go for Huge, because those numbers seem a bit more realistic to me. If not, it's still an impressive sight.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
This is what setting up a Theologian's Guild in Cairo and pumping out priests from there like it's going out of fashion gets you in the next Papal Election (spoilered for size):

Spoiler:

And that is how I managed to get a Scottish "secretly female" pope in power

Speaking of priests, I don't understand all of these modifiers.

What is violence? What is purity? The only stat that's visual is Piety; there's no Unorthodoxy stat, no violence stat, etc etc.

Those basically matter, IIRC, once that priest is Pope.

Violence makes that Pope more likely to call crusades.

Unorthodoxy, IIRC, makes you less likely to be a Papal candidate.

I think that's about right as well.

I also seem to recall Violence gives a bonus to success against Heretics and Witches too. Or maybe burning heretics just makes you more likely to become Violent.

Unorthodoxy also means the probability of the priest turning into a Heretic is higher.

At the same time, orthodox popes are probably less likely to put up with gak from you, IIRC.

Indeed. But if they liked you previously, they'll not like your enemies. And you can do whatever you want with people the Pope doesn't like. Although if Excommunication is lifted the Pope's relationship with a faction is reset and continued aggression will result in the Pope losing favor of you.

The Papacy is a very tough mechanic to play to your total advantage. Since typically you'll eventually only have 1 rival in Europe, who also is on good terms with the Pope, and you'll run into public order problems if you piss off the pope by attacking them. EVEN IF THEY WERE THE AGGRESSOR!

 Melissia wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
This is what setting up a Theologian's Guild in Cairo and pumping out priests from there like it's going out of fashion gets you in the next Papal Election (spoilered for size):

Spoiler:

And that is how I managed to get a Scottish "secretly female" pope in power

I got one of those in once; nobody was any the wiser.

I've been looking through my screenshot library, and wondered if anyone had any M2 screenshots we could merge into this thread?

I've got a few:

The single greatest general I've ever had:


"Here we see the classic and much feared Danish Conga-Line of Doom as it achieves absolutely nothing whatsoever." - Seriously, all they did throughout the game was reshuffle that line a bit. Nothing else.


Presenting the world's most diplomatic person ever:


Pike fight:


"They looked at me funny."

Yeah, the Danes are fun. I've had some good battles against them as the French.

Sadly, in my current 900-turn HRE campaign, the Danes somehow managed to destroy themselves. When I explored their territory afterwards, I found they only had one well developed town, and did not capture Stockholm 0_o

 Grey Templar wrote:
Indeed. But if they liked you previously, they'll not like your enemies. And you can do whatever you want with people the Pope doesn't like. Although if Excommunication is lifted the Pope's relationship with a faction is reset and continued aggression will result in the Pope losing favor of you.

The Papacy is a very tough mechanic to play to your total advantage. Since typically you'll eventually only have 1 rival in Europe, who also is on good terms with the Pope, and you'll run into public order problems if you piss off the pope by attacking them. EVEN IF THEY WERE THE AGGRESSOR!

Sit a diplomat next to Rome and gift them about 1000 florins a turn, maybe the occasional Map Information. Build steadily up the church line and churn out priests to convert other lands. If you want to take out a Catholic nation then the best way is moving spies into their settlements, positioning 1 army per settlement close enough to be able to all besiege on the same turn, and let rip when you're confident that your spies will be able to open all the gates (I've had 97% chances of opening fail before). If you're high enough in favour then you may get another turn if one or two didn't open, or you misjudged the distance, but don't rely on it. Using that tactic is what got my the HRE and French lands in my first screenshot. The Pope can't do a thing, the enemy nation just lost a whole bunch of their settlements (I prefer to target their castles first, both to stop the enemy producing good troops, and to allow me to retrain my own during the downtime when the Pope tells you to lay off), and any favour loss with the Papal States can be fixed by gifting them a thousand or so florins before you end your turn.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, the Danes are fun. I've had some good battles against them as the French.

Sadly, in my current 900-turn HRE campaign, the Danes somehow managed to destroy themselves. When I explored their territory afterwards, I found they only had one well developed town, and did not capture Stockholm 0_o

That's strange, in my current one the Danes also managed to destroy themselves. I thought that the HRE had gotten them, but when I was leading an invasion of the HRE from the North I caught a glimpse of Aarhus and saw it was rebel-held. The Danes hadn't taken Stockholm or Oslo, either; they still had their original rebel garrisons.

Was it a super long game, or the normal 200 turns?
Maybe it's a bug involving the extra turns.

I did notice that the Danes kept their faction leader near Antwerp along with a huge stack. They did not try to attack it though, which was odd.

I did have control of Hapsburg, so maybe that broke the AI, due to borders or something.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Was it a super long game, or the normal 200 turns?
Maybe it's a bug involving the extra turns.

I did notice that the Danes kept their faction leader near Antwerp along with a huge stack. They did not try to attack it though, which was odd.

I did have control of Hapsburg, so maybe that broke the AI, due to borders or something.

Normal game; happened very early in. I last remember seeing a Danish force before I took Bruges and Antwerp, but it was only a general wandering around aimlessly. I remember because he was blocking the sodding bridge between Antwerp and Bruges for two turns before buggering off.

The only problem I ever really had was getting a decent income fast enough to matter. Really because in order to maintain good public order you have to have more troops then you can afford.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The only problem I ever really had was getting a decent income fast enough to matter. Really because in order to maintain good public order you have to have more troops then you can afford.

I have every single one of my cities, except those in the middle east, on very high tax. Have done since turn one. Even the middle East supports High on most of them now the populace is catholic and there are law and happiness buildings around.

The cities back in England only require the number of troops I get free upkeep for, and even though half my armies are Mercs I'm still stinking rich. Once I eliminate France I can turn Angers into a city, shift troops East, and disband the vast majority of what remains, starting with the Mercs.

I admit that my best moments came after editing the hell out of save files to give "secretly female" to certain English kings...

I don't have those screenshots any more though. I don't have the game on Steam so theyw eren't saved to a cloud.

Public Order is a lot easier to control in M2TW than in Rome. In M2TW you can get away with 6 garrison units, provided there is no religious unrest and you have a few Public Order buildings.

Good luck doing that in Rome.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Public Order is a lot easier to control in M2TW than in Rome. In M2TW you can get away with 6 garrison units, provided there is no religious unrest and you have a few Public Order buildings.

Good luck doing that in Rome.

I remember not caring much about taxes in Rome 1. Then I suddenly couldn't move for people, and if I wasn't upgrading the main settlement building then I was trying to churn out as many temple upgrades as I could. I've been a high-tax player since then; cut population growth down to a manageable size, actually be able to find time to build other buildings, not constantly having to shuffle peasants around the map to control population overgrowth.

In M2 it's better to have lots of people paying lower taxes, but having everyone on v. high suits me down to the ground; I can get everything built before the next level of walls, instead of having a large city with small town-level trade buildings. Leaving farms until last helps control the population a bit, too.

Always build farms ASAP in castles, though, and stick high chivalry generals in them for the growth.

Speaking of lady-popes



Purger of Heresy...
So, I guess she's a Sister of Battle.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Public Order is a lot easier to control in M2TW than in Rome. In M2TW you can get away with 6 garrison units, provided there is no religious unrest and you have a few Public Order buildings.

Good luck doing that in Rome.

Both are very difficult public-orderwise compared to Rome2. Rome 2 made the great change of grouping territories into provinces.

And there is ALWAYS unrest of some kind in M2. The biggest problem is squalor I think. If you don't upgrade your towns/castles, squalor increases. If you do, it only wards off the inevitable result on needing 7-9 units to maintain order. At which point the city will lose you money.

And that's discounting any need for a garrison that can hold off enemy attacks.



Another gripe I have with this game. Pikes and Halberd armed units are crap. Their formation doesn't seem to ever provide a bonus. The enemy just gets into melee and then the units just die. Spear militia seem to be the best defensively, even though I think the Schiltrom looks like crap visually.

What faction are you in M2? What's your preferred build order? What taxation level? Are you leaving Generals in your settlements as governors? If yes do they have any -public order, -trade, or -taxes traits? Are there any rebel armies in your lands?

I usually play Scotland myself, and I rarely have unrest...

 Melissia wrote:
I usually play Scotland myself, and I rarely have unrest...

Sort of linking into Grey's pikes comment, how do you find the scots pikes?

I've read various things online about how to use them (utter tosh given my own experiences with trying the 'advice'), how to mod out the bug that makes them drop the pikes as soon as so much as a gnat contacts them by removing their secondary 'butter knife' weapon (purportedly turning them into overpowered killing machines), and all that, and I've never found them to be of any use whatsoever.

It seems like half the players find them utterly useless, and the other half find them remarkable and if you don't then you must be gak at the game etc. etc.

Personally, every time I use pikes the enemy AI will just stop in front of them (that's how I got the pike fight screenshot; I laid my Tercios out and waited, and the scots pikes stopped a hair's breadth from my pikes, and in doing so brought out their own) and sit there motionless. There's no phalanx movement either, so if I want my pikes to move forward the spears come up and they all jog forward at their own paces, and then it's a pain to get them to reform and get the pikes down. Any brush with combat sees them drop their pikes and out come the butter knives.

So...the AI is being clever in my game. Scotland keeps sending over ships to attack hapsburg. They then call for a ceasefire so they can keep building forces on my shore, safe in the knowledge that if I initiate combat the Pope will get really annoyed.

It's a clever move, but I wish the AI recognizes that they are on my borders >.<

Also, scottish pikemen aren't great. I'm having no problems against them.

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I usually play Scotland myself, and I rarely have unrest...

Sort of linking into Grey's pikes comment, how do you find the scots pikes?.

I use auto-resolve for the most part, so I don't really need to use them outside of sieges, where they're useless anyway except when the enemy is sallying out.

I build mostly archers and swordsmen anyway it seems.

If you're playing medieval 2 then the retrofit mod is a good one to pick up. It includes all the kingdoms changes to balance and bug fixes in the base game. Makes the HRE playable in the late game (all those 2handed sword units were bugged in the base game).

In the base game I just spammed mailed knights early on, that was as both the HRE and france, the europeans don't have great early game units otherwise.

my basic army builds were

Siege forces- 70% Dismounted Feudal Knights (optimal, armored sergeants do the job as well) 30% Archers

Siege Defense- 80% Militia 20% Archers (cluster everything around the gate and create a bottleneck)

Open field Forces- 50% Knights (Teutonics for HRE, Chivalrics for France) 40% Armored Sergeants 10% Archers

Depends on which Europeans you're talking about, and how early you'd say early-game is.

Both Milan and Venice can field excellent early armies, and once Caen gets access to Longbows the English can pretty much murder everything (hell, if you can get a Fortress up quickly they get Armoured Swordsmen, which also murder everything for a fraction of the cost of the inferior Feudal Knights). Never played as France because I dislike the French, nor the HRE because I dislike the idea of being surrounded by France, England, Denmark, Poland, Venice, Milan, and probably Hungary too.

Spain and Portugal get Jinetes, which wipe the floor with pretty much everything they face and if you're not using them, or only using a small amount, then you're wrong and should be ashamed of yourself. Poland get Polish Nobles fairly early, which are basically Eastern Jinetes, just a bit slower but better armoured. Scotland and Denmark get their axe-wielding infantry that can annihilate most early units on the charge, and in the case of dismounted huscarls, stick around pretty well too. They also get highland and norse archers, which are probably only second to English longbows in effectiveness.

Both France the HRE, from what I can see, don't really start to shine until they get their late-game units like the French cavalry, and the HRE two-handers and, probably best of all, their Reiters. To say that the Europeans in general don't have great early units, though, is a bit of a stretch.

HRE are France are very powerful and fight a lot of wars. I enjoy both.

Saying Europeans was a poor choice of words, I mean those tww really, they're the factions I have played the most.