Medival Total War 2 help

[Traab]

I have a question i wanted to ask. Ive gotten to the point where I can achieve the lesser victory, (owning 60% of the map) with any of the playable races. The trouble pops up when I go for total victory. It seems like all of my provinces drop 50%+ in morale and suddenly half my territory is revolting against me. Including lands ive held and developed peacefully for the last century! Is there any way to prevent that from happening, short of being forced to garrison 2k troops in each land I own? Am I missing a tactic of some sort that makes them like me more? Here is my general strategy.

1) I build each place up to castle level.

2) I develop all military units to that point.

3) I have usually built the farmland 60% at least, better if its good for the eco of the province. Same for any mines.

4) The castle is always fully stocked with troops.

5) The taxes are generally at their highest setting, but up until I go for total victory, morale is maxxed out!

By that point im usually making insane levels of cash due to owning the waterways and having trade routes to all the countries along the shore, (Its nice when egypt alone nets me almost 3000 florins a year from trade) I always have a full queue of troops just about everywhere, (some provinces suck for troop production till you build really high end) And vast armies moving all over the place massing for invasions of everywhere at once. But then the revolts start happening and I spend the next 30 years stamping them out by placing stupidly high levels of troops everywhere, and even lowering taxes to extremely low levels.

[Leecros]

Go into Settlement Details and see what's affecting public order. Here's some of the major factors which may get you in trouble with Public Order.

1. High Taxes. I Rarely use High Taxes except in times of war when i really need it, and i Never use Very High Taxes because of the massive hit to Public Order.

2. Are you a Catholic Faction? If you are, have you recently been Excommunicated? While not as huge as high taxes are, oftentimes the discontent with excommunication is just enough to push regions over the edge.

3. Squalor. This is one of the things which you can only check through the Settlement Details screen(i believe). Since you build up a lot of farmland it may be an issue. Farmland = more people; more people=more squalor. If it is a problem and you have maxed out city/castle size, there's not much you can do with it except hope for the best.

4. Is your Capital centrally located? If it isn't your fringe settlements probably have a massive distance to capital hit to their public order.

5. Since i'm going over major issues, i might as well bring up this point. What's the religion like in the affected regions? Religious Unrest is one of the largest hits your Public Order can take and all it would take is a Heretic or Witch to pop up in one of your territories and you to not notice it.

In all likelihood it's probably a mixture of several issues.

P.S: We have a Total War Thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194396&page=4)

[Traab]

Ah see, I thought that was for one of the newer medival games not the older one. As for your points.

1) Ive always gone very high taxes as soon as I could do so without getting low morale, and ive never had problems with revolts until a couple hundred years later, usually shortly after I choose to go on for total victory. Morale tends to stay steady at 200% until then. And by the time they revolt its usually too late to lower the taxes, it doesnt raise morale enough to avoid a new revolt every year until I can bring in massive forces. Ill try leaving taxes lower fromt he start to see if that helps any.

2) My faction is variable, it depends on my mood, but when I am catholic, by the time the total victory choice comes through, I have generally been done conquering the other catholic factions for quite awhile, (I leave the papal states alone since they keep coming back every few years) So if I HAVE been excommunicated, (I generally manage to avoid it by annihilating an entire faction before the warning) its usually happened to the grandfather of the current king.

3) Ive never actually checked this out, ill have to do so. Would building up to the next level past castle help reduce squalor? Building more random structures?

4) Centrally located? Not unless im playing germany or something. By this point I have control of england france, germany, italy, spain, the almohlads egyptians and turks, usually sicily, (I hate those guys, they send out assassins constantly) So my empire covers most of the map except for the byzantines poles, hungarians and danes in general. (Unless im starting from that side of the map) So centrally located capitol is generally a no.

5) Occasionally ill have a religious issue in one of my provinces, but I dont pay much attention to them, ive never bothered to build stuff like bishops and inquisitors and such. I basically go pure military force and leave it at that. By the time ive wiped out the muslim factions and built a couple shipyards to establish trade routes everywhere im making enough cash to build up huge armies and wipe out entire factions in a handful of turns. If the places I conquer dont like me, I crank down the taxes, barrack a lot of troops in the area, and build stuff till they love me. Doesnt usually take me very long and by the time im done I have yet another province providing me with even more troops.

[Leecros]

Squalor does drop when you upgrade your city/castle to the next level, but i don't think there's any special buildings that specifically reduce squalor, nor does it ever go away completely.

When i say centrally located i mean within your own empire. Not necessarily on the map itself.For example if you're England and control England, Scotland, and France? Then London is still a good capital since it's already centrally located, but once you start expanding into Germany or Italy it may be productive to move your capital to Paris. In order to prevent the Distance to Capital penalty from getting too high. It's usually a non-issue until late-game because most of your regions will usually be around your capital, but compounded with other issues it can be a problem.

Religious Unrest can cause massive hits on Public Order. I currently don't have an issue in any of my games with Religious Unrest so I'm running off of mostly memory of some of my earlier games, but Religious Unrest+ just 1 or 2 other(even small) factors can outweigh a full garrison in a city. I always make sure to build at least the first religious building and 1 priest in every city i have. religious buildings provides constant conversions of the population and the initial priest helps stave off the worst of religious unrest. I think some of the worst issues I've had with Public Order has been with Religious Unrest. Heretics and Witches spawn randomly and if left unchecked can cause lots of havoc in a territory.

Have you had the opportunity to check the settlement details screen before the region rebels? It usually gives a great view as to what's causing your issues. Outside of the issues I've brought up that can be a problem, I'm not too sure what's causing your trouble...

[Traab]

Ill be honest, the way I got the game it didnt have a manual so I had to figure things out for myself. I honestly didnt even know there WAS such a thing as squalor or settlement screens. Just the usual stuff like tax level, various religions, chance of revolt and morale, that sort of thing. As for moving your capitol, how do you do that? And as far as centralizing your capitol, how do you do that when your empire is basically a crescent moon shape stretching from the end of the german empire, to spain, then down around northern africa and into the end of the muslim provinces?

Technically I suppose spain would be the "mid point" of the empire, but its all the way on the left side of the map while my empire stretches all the way to the right, and is on both the north and south side of the mediterranean. With it setup like that, I would think somewhere in italy, perhaps right around the border of the papal states would be the best choice since geographically it would average closest to all the other territories as its relatively close to the other side of the sea, and is in the middle of the rather large assortment of european provinces.

[Arcanoi]

Ill be honest, the way I got the game it didnt have a manual so I had to figure things out for myself. I honestly didnt even know there WAS such a thing as squalor or settlement screens. Just the usual stuff like tax level, various religions, chance of revolt and morale, that sort of thing. As for moving your capitol, how do you do that? And as far as centralizing your capitol, how do you do that when your empire is basically a crescent moon shape stretching from the end of the german empire, to spain, then down around northern africa and into the end of the muslim provinces?

Technically I suppose spain would be the "mid point" of the empire, but its all the way on the left side of the map while my empire stretches all the way to the right, and is on both the north and south side of the mediterranean. With it setup like that, I would think somewhere in italy, perhaps right around the border of the papal states would be the best choice since geographically it would average closest to all the other territories as its relatively close to the other side of the sea, and is in the middle of the rather large assortment of european provinces.

A good practice is generally "Take Rome and Constantinople. Whichever is more centralized to your Empire, make Capitol."

[Traab]

Honestly, I avoid constantinople unless the turks managed to grab it at some point. I dont like to tick off the byzantines until the end because they have a huge navy and it crashes my economy to start a war with them. Not too mention the difficulty in moving troops rapidly since their boats are everywhere. When its time for me to take them down, I generally have a fricking MASSIVE army posted at all the borders of their empire I can reach then start piling in. Each move I make is to send troops deeper and deeper into the heart of their empire, not even bothering with wiping out the provinces I have already invaded, just leaving enough troops to ebat down the castle walls eventually. The goal is to take over all of the empire as fast as possible. I can then work on clearing a path to their islands afterwards by dog piling their ships until I have an opening at one of my provinces to land troops there.

[Leecros]

Ill be honest, the way I got the game it didnt have a manual so I had to figure things out for myself. I honestly didnt even know there WAS such a thing as squalor or settlement screens. Just the usual stuff like tax level, various religions, chance of revolt and morale, that sort of thing. As for moving your capitol, how do you do that? And as far as centralizing your capitol, how do you do that when your empire is basically a crescent moon shape stretching from the end of the german empire, to spain, then down around northern africa and into the end of the muslim provinces?

Technically I suppose spain would be the "mid point" of the empire, but its all the way on the left side of the map while my empire stretches all the way to the right, and is on both the north and south side of the mediterranean.

Understandable. Mine didn't come with a manual either so i was in the same boat a couple of years ago.

To get to the settlement details(and through there you change your capital). First you select your city then you go to the Show settlement Details button, circled below in red(note that my game looks a bit different from your since mine is modded).
http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/3260/part1.jpg

This is (in my opinion) one of the most important screens in the game. It shows you what's affecting your population growth, public order, and what the current religion percentages are.
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1968/part2ro.jpg

Since in this situation we're worried more about the negative than the positive i'll focus on that. In the city in the screenshot, my population is going down thanks to squalor(the second bar under population is the negative influences).
In Public order the negative influences is religious unrest from the region still being 62% Islam, which is the cross with a crack through it symbol. General Unrest, which is the flaming pitchfork, that's because the city i'm in i had just recently captured. Also the distance from my capital, that's the wheel icon, this region is ~5 or 6 regions away from my capital. Also, again Squalor affects Public Order.
To change your capital you press the icon that's circled in the second screenshot. It's a one-time cost of 2000(5000 on higher difficulties). Your capital doesn't have to be the perfect center of your empire(that's just the best place for it) and you can change your capital as much as you want as long as you have the cash.

I won't get into all of the possible icons, but any icon you don't know what it's about, you can highlight it and it'll tell you what's generally causing it and what the effect is.


A good practice is generally "Take Rome and Constantinople. Whichever is more centralized to your Empire, make Capitol."

That's generally a mid-late game solution though since early on you don't want to aggro all of Christendom and/or The Byzantine Empire.

[Traab]

Hmm, I think we are talking about a different game. Your world map seems to have slightly different borders and end points, and theres no listing for population or population growth in mine. Oh ack, I just figured it out, its medieval total war, not total war 2. Sorry, dont know why I thought it was 2.

[Crow]

Sounds like squalor.

Religious unrest is certain to be playing a part.

Possibly with distance to capital pushing them over the edge?

[Leecros]

Hmm, I think we are talking about a different game. Your world map seems to have slightly different borders and end points, and theres no listing for population or population growth in mine. Oh ack, I just figured it out, its medieval total war, not total war 2. Sorry, dont know why I thought it was 2.

Whoops, that would probably be why we're not synergistic with our descriptions.

Although the reason my world map has different borders and end points(even Via Medival 2) is because i have it modded(as i had stated).

[Crow]

Oh! I didn't realize it was Medieval, not Medieval 2. Now you're in my territory.

What is happening is that you are somehow cutting off your king from the rest of your territories. Any territories not "linked" to your king suffer a drop. So if you take your king and invade an island territory, which then strands your king until you build a port, you will suffer rebellions.

There are other ways to "strand" your king, but the island scenario is the most common. Having him range ahead past territories you are still besieging, or having enemies take or besiege a territory that "links" your king to his domain can do it too.

Easiest was to avoid this of course is to use generals or heirs.

[Traab]

Oh! I didn't realize it was Medieval, not Medieval 2. Now you're in my territory.

What is happening is that you are somehow cuttig off your king from the rest of your territories. Any territories not "linked" to your king suffer a drop. So if you take your king and invade an island territory, which then strands your king until you build a port, you will suffer rebellions.

There are other ways to "strand" your king, but the island scenario is the most common. Having him range ahead past territories you are still besieging, or having enemies take or besiege a territory that "links" your king to his domain can do it too.

Easiest was to avoid this of course is to use generals or heirs.

Thats probably it. I do often use my king in battle, as in many cases he is one of my better generals. Doesnt it suck when you have your 6-7 star prince out there wiping out entire nations and suddenly dear old daddy dies and your best general is now the king? I mean sure there are ways around having low star generals. Such as lord marshal titles or admiralities or whatever those structures are that give you a scroll you can drop on someone to give them a nice 2 star boost in command. :p

But even so, the fact that it doesnt ever happen until after I turn down the partial victory win and go for the whole world instead seems to suggest that there is a game mechanic that adds an extra challenge once you go for the gold medal.