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oh god there are more mongols than i thought. wow. I have no clue how to defeat them. and Antoich just got a cathedral.


I have a full crusade army about to fight 5 full mongol ones.

Wait till the Timurids show up if you think the Mongols are bad.

I decided to see how cool the Greek Firethrowers from M2: Kingdoms - Crusades were:

The answer is: very.

As for those whom said Haleberds are useless, well they are my go to unit for dealing with heavy cavalry and heavy spears. But they MUST have good armour if they are to last in said role I have to admidt, when playing with Hungary I normaly use them in cooperation with pavasie crossbow men and hussars.

And the Danes are great to play as, so much good mele infateri but their ranged units leaves much to be desired I dare say.

Halberds are great. I always build garrisons out of them.
They do have pretty poor armor, but they are militia units, so that's expected.

Is there a way to make other factions stronger mid game? My HRE is currently dominating central Europe, and I have Russia as an ally and Poland as my Vassal.
If I feed the French money, will they build a super nation? I really don't want to end the game at only 200 turns out of 900.
Will it be a good idea to feed the Vatican? I mean, I will have to take Rome at some point. Might as well make it a good fight.

Halberds are okay (much better in Kingdoms) but then again, anything that can form a spear wall will stop a cavalry charge, so the cheaper the better. That said, I prefer to just throw spear militia at cavalry; the cavalry doesn't die as quickly as they do charging onto pikes, but they're a lot cheaper, available to pretty much every faction, and easily retrainable. For defending a city pikes are good in the narrow streets, but on an open battlefield they lose most of their usefulness.

I had fun as the Danes up until the HRE randomly declared war (no ports blockaded, none of their diplomats nearby, none of my spies or assassins tried to hit them, none of their armies attacked a settlement... it was as if the game went "Oh, by the way, you're at war now. Thought you ought to know."), Poland started kicking up a fuss, Scotland took offence to the fact that I existed, and my generals are being assassinated by an assassin none of my spies can seem to A) Spot, or B) Catch in the act.

The only plus side is that I took Inverness (rebel settlement at the time) and Scotland threw their entire army at me. 3 Generals, a ton of infantry, and some archers. Twice. I beat them back both times with a handful of dismounted huscarls and raiders, with my general helping out where he could. In both sieges I lost about 200 of my 400 (600 during the second siege; I'd trained a few more units for the inevitable pathetic second attempt) to their 1000+.

Huscarls on the walls defended against the ladder attackers, a unit of Huscarls on guard mode held the enemy at the gates and were slowly pushed back just far enough for the raiders on either side to charge into the flanks. As their generals pushed through the ranks, my general charged forward to kill the bodyguards as they trickled through one by one, and to toot on the battlehorn whenever it was off cooldown. They also lent a hand killing whatever tried to casually run through the fighting.

Two of the most heroic victories I've had, with the most heroic being when I defended Antioch from the entire Mongol horde on my Milan campaign. Cannon and cannon towers took care of most of their trebs, and every time they assaulted my Italian Spears would slaughter their cavalry as they came through the gate, and geneose crossbows would hold the walls and shoot whatever was waiting outside the gate. There was one siege, however, where a lone trebuchet survived long enough to knock a hole in the wall. At this point my army was woefully undermanned, with the near constant besieging disallowing me from retraining more than 2-3 units during the one-turn or so downtime I got between beating back a few stacks, and having them re-siege.

It got to the point where I was finally beaten back to the city square, where I just about held. The remnants of my spears (the max I had left in a unit was about 30 or so from a unit of 112; the rest were in the teens) held against charges, supported by the crossbows I managed to pull back off the walls. Because the road up to the centre is sloped, the horse archers had to fire upwards, severely reducing the casualties I took. My general was run ragged between chasing infantry and horse archers around the city and rushing back to the square to intercept flankers or lend a hand during an assault.

I can't remember how I won, but I have a feeling the siege timed out in the end. I finally got a relief force from Gaza at that point, and it was pretty much the final assault where the mongols had both siege engines, and enough men. Most of their generals had perished in the previous sieges, the only settlement they held was a horrifically underwhelming Baghdad, and their invasion force was reduced to scattered units that had fled the previous battles in enough numbers to stick around on the campaign map.

My most heroic victory was defending some East European castle from mongols with, they were using several armies and I had like half of one. A few units of veteran archers, a few units of veteran pikemen, and a unit of scottish nobles on foot.

The moment that victory was assured was the time the nobles charged after the enemy had finally chewed through one of my pike squads. Everything in their way died, and their morale had been reduced by the fighting thus far to the point where that broke them and they ran.

Mine wasn't in MII but in Rome 1 (Total Realism mod). I played as Scythia against the Selucides (I'd just finished off Greece and Macedon). Naturally, my armies were pretty much all cavalry. It worked well until I began staring down 8 full stacks of spear men with only 3 Horse Armies to face them.

So began a terrible bloody multi turn campaign of sieges (my cities were held by foot archers, sometimes with no walls) field battles, and lots of murder, with very little time to rebuild damage to my main combat forces (the horses who took 2 turns to build in TR). About 10 turns in, I'd refused 8 stacks to 3, but now had 8 more stacks coming at me.

The war only ended when Egypt began pushing into Turkey because the Selucides had sent everything at me for the past 40 turns in an endless war.

That bought me about ten turns to take a few more cities in Eastern Europe and rebuild before I got to repeat the whole bloody mess with Egypt. I was lucky that Rome was too busy the entire time with Gaul and Carthage to pick a fight with me.

What makes it amusing for me is that castle wasn't an important place... thus why it didn't have much defense. I didn't care if I lost it, I just put some units there to bleed the Mongols a bit.

The fact that I won that battle in spite of the fact that I conspired not to made it even funnier. That's where the spine of the Mongol invasion was broken-- and completely on accident.

I am currently playing as the HRE in Medieval 2. I had only played the Britannia expansion previously (I know, play the main game before playing the expansion! But I wanted to play as Ireland )

It's quite a lot of fun, but the Papacy element is new to me, because you can be as aggressive as you like in Britannia with basically no issues.

The Danes have Hamburg, and I'd really quite like to take it off of them (and maybe destroy the Danes as a faction at the same time). How much trouble will I get into if I just invade them?

Also, I've got trade rights with a load of factions. I'm starting to get worried that this is not to my advantage. What is the disadvantage to agreeing trade rights? I assume that if I go to war with them, my incomes will drop due to reduced trade. Will it effect how other factions see me as well? Is the diplomacy AI that good?

Early on, the papacy doesn't interfere as much because everyone has roughly the same influence. But win quickly.

I tried to do spain and hungary but couldn't really enjoy them for some reason. they seem very poor and the infantry don't seem that good =(

Spain has amazing late game infantry, but till then you are kinda stuck.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Spain has amazing late game infantry, but till then you are kinda stuck.

Agreed, they are stupidly good but until that point every battle will se a lot of dead spaniards,

yea, I can tell. too used to venice I guess! don't know how your supposed to blitz the moors first with all those weak soldiers


anyways, going to try HRE soon and hopefully they have better infantry

I didn't think Spain was THAT bad, but it was a bit of a rough start to be sure.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
I tried to do spain and hungary but couldn't really enjoy them for some reason. they seem very poor and the infantry don't seem that good =(

Spain are powerful from the get-go because of their Jinetes. They're stupidly fast cavalry and are loaded with javelins, which are absolutely deadly against pretty much anything, especially armour. They do take some getting used to, though.

First off is to exploit their speed to get behind enemy units before throwing javelins (believe me it makes a hell of a difference). Secondly, you want to be able to micro them fairly well, or have the hotkeys for auto-fire and auto-skirmish memorised if you can't micro very well (although don't be afraid to hit Pause mid-fight so you can go and give a few other orders out without abandoning your Jinetes). I prefer to manually order attacks and and move orders, but I can't be everywhere at once, so sometimes auto-fire and auto-skirmish (which unfortunately isn't the most intelligent of abilities, as I've seen skirmishers run anywhere from parallel to the charging enemy, to right into another enemy who happened to be standing around admiring the scenery) if I need to. Thirdly, don't be afraid to charge them into melee, especially against things like archers. You have a decent attack and good defence for light cavalry, and you also have more of a chance to charge them what with your Jinetes already being all up in the enemy lines throwing sharp sticks around. Fourthly, also don't be afraid to have them chase down other light cavalry. Cavalry archers especially can string along heavily armoured knights for forever and a day before they get caught, but Jinetes will have a much easier time of catching them, if only to hold them in place so your heavy cavalry can swoop in and finish the job. Fifthly, chase fleeing enemies down with them. Their speed makes this an easy job, and can save you the hassle of having surviving stacks roaming around your lands sowing devastation or being a general pain. They're also handy for killing or capturing fleeing generals.

The only thing you really need to worry about is timing. If you get the timing for a manual movement wrong then one or two of your Jinetes might be caught in an enemy charge (it's a fault of the game that happens with a lot of units - if you order a run move order backwards then most of them will turn and run, but a few will turn and move at a snail's pace for a few seconds), which triggers the rest of your running unit to suddenly swing around and, retaining momentum, run headlong into melee with the charging enemies. This is dangerous, especially against spear infantry. Your saving grace is that you're fast, so if it happens then immediately keep spamming run orders a good distance away, and you should get out with only a few casualties. Due to the range of javelins, however, and the fact that you want a LOT of Jinetes in your army, this sort of thing will be an ever-present danger.

The main targets for Jinetes are armoured units like general's bodyguards, heavy cavalry, and heavy infantry. Getting around the back of and subsequently hurling javelins into AI units is surprisingly easy, and once it happens they start dropping like flies - even the 2HP bodyguards. If and when they start fleeing, chase them the hell down.

You might want to try some custom battles with them first to get a handle on how they play, but scenes like this (hijacked from http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?170823-How-to-use-Jinetes):


will not be uncommon once you get used to using them, sometimes to the point where you can obliterate the enemy without losing a single man.

The nice thing is that, while they are also vulnerable to shooting from other light cav, they are better in melee.

Don't waste their ammo on light units like archers. Use their melee on them. Save your ammo for the heavy units.

I havn't even given those guys a second thought! too used to lining up legionaries and charging them towards the enemy I guess. Might need to restart and try them again, only a lot more focused on calvary.

You like Jinetes? Try them in God Mode... Use Byzantine Vardarriotai. The best horse archers in the game.
The most epic victory... A campaign of annihilation against incoming Mongol Hordes in the narrow passes of Armenia. Byzantine Archers and Sperarmen to hold the line with the rest being Cavalry. Vardariotai are equal to Mongol Heavy Horse archers and can melle with the best of them.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
too used to lining up legionaries and charging them towards the enemy I guess

Yeah, you really have to unlearn some habits to play them.

konst80hummel wrote:
You like Jinetes? Try them in God Mode... Use Byzantine Vardarriotai. The best horse archers in the game.
The most epic victory... A campaign of annihilation against incoming Mongol Hordes in the narrow passes of Armenia. Byzantine Archers and Sperarmen to hold the line with the rest being Cavalry. Vardariotai are equal to Mongol Heavy Horse archers and can melle with the best of them.

I'm partial to Russian Dvor Cavalry myself. A bit harder to get hold of than Vardariotai but absolutely brutal.

I grabbed Hamburg, but the damn venetians declared war on me at the same time. Bologna is one of my most profitable cities, so I don't want to lose it, but all my troops are off in other places fighting and it's difficult to get that far south that fast!

Edit: Okay, Denmark is a smoldering ruin, so that's good. But when I responded to the Venetians attacks on me by besieging Venice (a fair cop, I thought), the bloody Pope was all "Oh, don't do that or I'll excommunicate you!"

So, I guess this is the infamous Diplomacy AI I have heard so much about. Venice doesn't seem to be a direct ally of the Papal States, so I can't figure why they're siding with Venice when they are the aggressor. Should I train up some diplomats and go make nice with the Pope? Or try to overthrow the Papacy?

Makes me understand why Protestantism caught on

yea the pope is strange when it comes to getting attacked. glad your having fun as HRE!

I started a new game as spain taking into account the tactics about the missile calvary, and decided to blitzkrieg (wrong nation?) Portugal. the war was over in a few turns and it ended with me slowly strangling it's last town in a siege. Now I'm gearing up to attack the Moors but the main footsoldier army just revolted and I need more ground pounders, but i'm doing miles better.


the only thing is france keeps asking for peace then blockading my ports! I even became a client kingdom for them and they still attacked me! it's pretty annoying.

The papacy are basically big jerks in this game. Doesn't matter if the other guy started it.

If you aren't allied with the Papal States by about turn 10 then you need to get on it. Dedicate a Diplomat to standing next to Rome and gifting them about 1k florins each turn, in addition to trade rights when you first meet them. You can also gift them map information instead of the first 1k after you meet. Keep doing this until your offers of an Alliance are at least a 'Balanced' proposal, preferably Generous/Very Generous.

Since most Catholic factions will be at war with other Catholic factions, having an Alliance with the only faction that doesn't arbitrarily go to war, and yet is the most important faction in Europe, is a Godsend. Having a high level of popularity with the Papacy also grants you some leniency when it comes to waging your own wars on Catholics, and at the highest levels you'll find most Catholic factions that attack you incur hefty penalties to their own papal rankings and subsequently are more likely to lift sieges and stop attacking you, giving you ample time to load their cities and castles with your spies (to open gates), train assault stacks, and position them to grab all the settlements in range in one turn.

Once you grab the settlements sack them (for quick income without the penalties associated with extermination) and if you can hold on to them, do so. If you think you'll be swiftly kicked out again in the next turn or so, demolish every building you can for more money (and to deny the enemy the buildings) and walk right out again.

At this point, you can choose to either leave it to be re-captured, or gift it to the Papal States. Gifting the city not only repairs any relationship losses you took from the attack and sacking of a catholic settlement, but also denies that settlement to the enemy without you having to babysit it. The only downside is that if you want it you have to try and get it to rebel, or war with the Papacy for it (or buy it off them, if you can). Gifting them settlements has also been noted as potentially giving the Papal States a taste of expansion, but I've yet to see them do anything except sit there in all my games.

If you do attack another Catholic faction, wait until the end of your turn to gift things to the papal states. This way you make full use of the relationship increase to repair any damage it suffered.

Also bear in mind that with a high enough relationship with the PS, you can request Crusades. If your sworn enemy finally gets excommunicated, request a Crusade be called on his ass. This means that your crusading army moves further, can move across catholic factions' lands without penalty, and has no army upkeep. Use it to conquer tricky settlements, or even just to force them to move troops away in order to fight off other Crusading factions. Also, take advantage of the exp boost that a successful crusading army gets, as well as the traits a crusading general obtains. You want high chivalry generals to govern your castles, since chivalry increases population growth and castles are notoriously difficult to populate, even with full farming upgrades, so having a crusader general (likely with max or nearly max chivalry) around will help you advance any castles you have.

konst80hummel wrote:
You like Jinetes? Try them in God Mode... Use Byzantine Vardarriotai. The best horse archers in the game.
The most epic victory... A campaign of annihilation against incoming Mongol Hordes in the narrow passes of Armenia. Byzantine Archers and Sperarmen to hold the line with the rest being Cavalry. Vardariotai are equal to Mongol Heavy Horse archers and can melle with the best of them.

Russian Dvor cavalry will like a word with you, because they will MURDER anything that is foolish enough to linger in their prenceses

Thanks for the advice guys! I've got a diplomat making his slow way down from Frankfurt to Rome at the moment, so hopefully I can mend the fences with his Hattiness before things get too hairy. He's called a crusade in the meantime. Maybe if I do well enough in that, he'll like me a bit more. Cairo is awfully far away though- I think I'm going to need a fleet to get across the med.

Assuming you managed to keep hold of Bologna, training a few cogs to get you across the sea would be nice, but if you're strapped for cash then have your Crusading army move to the shoreline in the Venice region (if Venice aren't excommunicated then they can't attack your crusading army, so you're safe) and purchase one of the 100 florin mercenary boats that Crusading armies get access to in the Mercenaries tab. Also load up on Crusader Sergeants (or Mercenary Spearmen in a pinch), and Pilgrims to push rams.

If you can, also try and get hold of some Unhorsed Knights; they're high upkeep after a crusade, but their statlines rival the English Armoured Swordsmen and beat the generic European Dismounted Feudal Knights, so they're deadly effective, although they're only usually found on the Mercenary tab around Acre, Aleppo, Jerusalem, and Antioch. Around Alexandria (where your army will disembark) and Cairo, the only mercs you'll normally have access to are Sudanese Tribesmen, but despite what the name might imply, they're still very capable troops with good morale.

That said, Cairo has never had a large garrison whenever I've Crusaded against it, and I've always ended up with a full army stack against a handful of basic units. You'll need all the garrison you can get if you intend to keep Cairo, though. It might be easier to pawn it off on gift it to the Papal States, since you're only likely to keep hold of it through exterminating the populace.

I do recommend sending a diplomat over with the army, though. The last few times Egypt has asked for a ceasefire very shortly after I took Cairo, and I recently discovered I could get them to agree to a ceasefire in exchange for them giving me Gaza. It's a castle, so even with the huge difference in religion and culture you can keep the population happy, and it's usually fairly well populated to begin with, often close to a fortress upgrade off the bat. With the chivalrous general you have lurking around post-crusade, you can get Egypt to give you Gaza, gift the troublesome Cairo to the Papal States, and move in to your new fortified position in the middle east.

The chivalry of your general, plus farming upgrades, will give Gaza a huge growth spurt and allow you to produce your higher tier units quickly, allowing for a swift annexing of the Egyptian lands when required and giving you a strong base of operations for the Mongol and Timurid invasions.

Spam priests out of Gaza to convert the population of Jerusalem (the closest city) in preparation to take it, then use that to churn out yet more priests, making sure you demolish the thieves guild that the AI are so fond of putting in every one of their cities so you can build a theologian's (and eventually, master theologian's) guild there. With your super-charged horde of priests converting the lands, and with most of them being cardinals (or being promoted when a space becomes available) once you get a master theologian's guild set up, you'll eventually be able to start conquering the middle east without having to exterminate every city AND you'll have complete control of the papal elections.

Just be aware that you'll only be favoured by your own pope to start with; he'll waste no time excommunicating you if you start messing around, but any factions you're at war with *cough*Venice*cough* will have a huge penalty to their papal standings. Rigging the elections by controlling near every cardinal is mostly only to stop other factions getting one of their Cardinals elected; everything else is icing on the catholic cake.

ohhhh is chivalry part of the growth thing? because all my kings are evil bastards after I have been using all my assassins to kill lots of things...


anyways Reconquestia is completed 200 years ahead of time and now I need to flip a coin to decide if I want to finish off the moors or start killing frenchies.

speaking of popes the two I had in my game were freaken excommunication happy! in about 2 years they excomunicated milan, france, the HRE and I think denmark