Total War

[Wardog]

I haven't seen a Total War thread recently, so I thought I'd start one.


I've been playing around recently with Rome and Medieval II, and thought I'd share some of the more funny/surprising moments:


Rome: Barbarian Invasion
I was playing as the Sarmations. In anticipation of the imminent Hun/Vandal/Avar invasion, I started building up an army in my starting city, while sending a couple of small scouting units out to look for a suitible new home (or at least wealthy cities to plunder on the way there).

While moving about near Constantinople, I was approached by an East Roman diplomat, who offered a cease-fire. Now, I was planning on raiding them, and had no great desire for peace with them, so (for a laugh) I decided to make a counter-offer they would never accept:

Roman: We'd like to make peace.
Me: Only if you give me Constantinople
Roman: What? Never! Not unless you give us 1000 gold/turn for 3 turns.
Me: o_O ... er, okay.

So there I end up in control of Constantinople only a few turns into the game. Admittedly, it turned out not to be such a good strategy: I had trouble keeping order (due to religious/cultural differences), ended up heavily in debt for many turns due to the tribute and (more significantly) all the troops I had to raise to keep order, and couldn't abandon my starting city and turn into a horde when the bigger barbarians came after me.

But still, buying Constantinople so early into the game, when I probably had next to no chance of capturing it, was quite amusing.



Medieval II
Playing as Holy Roman Empire. Milan declared war on me, and seiged one of my Italian cities. I beat them back easily, then sent my Emperor and his army to besiege one of their cities (Genoa, I think). Before I could capture it, the Pope demanded we stop fighting for 6 turns. He also demanded I recruit a priest, and send my heir on Crusade. I wasn't in a strong enough position to risk fighting the Pope and the rest of Christendom, so I broke off the siege (leaving my army in place, in case the Milanese weren't so sporting), recruited the priest, and (eventually) decided to equip my heir with a large army and send him off the Jerusalem.

During the 6-turn Papal ceasfire, the Pope and the Milanese decided to form an alliance. Also, during this time, the Pope moved his personal army up next to my not-seiging-Genoa-honestly Emperor's army. When the ceasefire expired, the Pope expressed his gratitude that we had all complied, and hoped the peace would continue.

On the very next turn, the Genoan garrison attacked me, and the Pope decided to join in personally, excomunicating me in the process. (This also resulted in my son being kicked off the Crusade - which, amusingly, resulted in the whole Crusade being aborted, as I was the only one to have joined it).

So my Emperor's small army (Emperor, one other general I think, one unit of knights, a couple of mercenary spearmen and crossbows, and possibly a unit or two of peasant archers) found itself sandwitched between a smaller Milanese army (spears and crossbows, and possibly one cavalry unit of some sort) and a much larger Papal army (lots of kights, elite spears, archers/xbows etc).

I positioned my army at the top of a hill, close to the Milanese and as farfrom the Pope as possible. The plan was to force the Milanese to climb the hill (almost a cliff) in the face of my archers/xbows, wipe them out, and then abandon the battlefield before the Papal army reached me.

The first part of the plan worked perfectly, and I crushed the Milanese. The second part fell victim (as these sorts of plans typically do) to me thinking "Hmm... maybe with missiles and hit-and-run cavalry I can inflict a decent amount of damage on the other army before fleeing..."

It almost worked. In fact, it almost worked far better than expected, and if things had gone slightly differently, I might even have ended up beating the Papal army. Unfortunately, that just meant I stayed in the battle for longer than I should have, and ended up losing half of it and barely escaping back to the nearest city. Which the Pope immediately beseiged.

I didn't have a big enough army to defend against the seige, but I did manage to bring down a similar-sized army to attack him from behind, resulting in a small army + small reinforcements vs large army battle. It was quite a close-run thing, and my general (which I thought meant the Emperor) got killed, so I threw his bodyguard into the thick of the battle so they could do soemthing useful before dispersing in disgrace afterwards. (I have to confess - I couldn't resist shouting "FOR THE EMPEROR!" as I did so). I won the end (just - both sides had a lot of units go through the rout - recover - rout cycle), and killed the Pope in the process.

I had generally been playing "chivalrously" so far, but given I had lost so many men - including I thought my Emperor - as a result of this totaly unprovoked attack and excomunication, that I decided to execute all the prisoners. (Partly out of revenge, partly because I was now seriously under-strength and didn't want to face any more enemies than I had to).

I then discovered that it was the general of the relief army that had been killed (and subsequently replaced by a "man of the hour"), not the Emperor. Which was rather disturbing, as that meant I'd been throwing my Emperor head-first at elite spear units. :smalleek:

A new Pope was elected the next turn, who continued the war against me. I killed him too, a couple of turns later, and then captured Rome. Then, for the next few turns, a new Pope would be elected, spawn outside Rome, and I'd promptly crush him. Sometimes I was even able to kill two in one turn.

This continued until there were only three papal candidates left in Europe: one of my own cardinals, a Spanish one (my ally), and another hostile nation. The Spanish cardinal won the election, and made peace and ended my excomunication.

All this while, my Emperor maintained a very high "piety".

So, has anyone else got some amusing Total War stories?

[Flickerdart]

I had a fairly amusing thing happen during a Napoleon game as Sweden. The Danish declared war on me, as the AI is wont to do, and since Napoleon's map cuts off the vast majority of Sweden, it's a crappy little country with very limited resources. I'd used the revolution trick to generate an army of line infantry and cannons, beat back a Danish army of militia and cavalry, and then gave chase - but the cunning Danes looped back around and assaulted Copenhagen, which was defended with a very small regiment of line infantry. Because it was a pretty large city, it generated enough armed citizenry to make up the difference in numbers, but armed citizenry is crap at doing anything and has awful morale.
Because the enemy didn't have cannons, I put all my line infantry in a house, and situated the citizenry around it to avoid unseemly flanking. They collapsed like a house of cards as soon as the enemy was in sight, leaving three units of line infantry (fewer than 400 men) up against the entire Danish army of about two thousand strong.
Fortunately, the house was some kind of fortress (or just glitched) because, though two of my regiments died, one stabilized at 75 men and took no further damage as they mercilessly scythed through the entire Danish army. I ended up winning the battle handily with only those 75 men remaining for almost two thirds of it.

[sdimple387]

what is this which type of it.

[Leecros]

I used to love the total war series, I've played all of them except Medieval and Napoleon. Unfortunately i think the series is becoming rather stagnate. Partly due to their devotion to the same periods of history. I was not happy with their decision to remake Rome. I mentioned in an old thread for Shogun II that i fear the series is just going to start remaking games endlessly.

All i have to say is that i will not be buying Medieval III if that's the next game they decide to make.


as far as funny or interesting stories? I have one from about two years ago in Medieval 2 that has yet to be topped(In my personal experiences) thus far. I play using the Stainless Steel mod. I highly suggest it. It adds more regions, more historicalish nations and borders, and an improved campaign AI.

Anyways i was playing The Moors. I had conquered the Iberian Penninsula and North Africa all the way to the borders of Egypt. I had just kicked Sicily out of Africa so that's where most of my standing armies were.

Well, apparently England didn't approve of this, because they started shipping troops down to invade. Led by King Arthur of all people :smalltongue: . They shipped not one, but five full-stack armies down to Iberia and landed them near Pamplona (http://d1kfgis5luucg1.cloudfront.net/brochure-assets/europe/2013-2014/pamplona-closing-week-2-map-785x550.gif). I immediately started producing troops as fast as i could to counter this threat, unfortunately Pamplona was quickly taken. One of the armies stayed there and the rest pushed towards Zaragoza. I don't recall if Zaragoza is in vanilla, so here (http://travel4all.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/spain_map.jpg)'s a map so you know where i am and that map will work for Barcelona and Valencia, the final two places of mention.

So, three of the armies besiege Zaragoza and the fourth moved towards Barcelona. At this point i'm working on getting my armies pulled together near Valencia and my elite army from africa arrived near Barcelona and intercepts and crushes the english army advancing on the city. Zaragoza is lost and all three armies(minus a small garrison) push south to Valencia.

I've managed to pull together two full-stack armies plus the elite army from Africa in front of the city when the English show. Thus begins three full-stack armies vs three full-stack armies. The largest battle i've fought in any of the total war games and it was the most exciting battle i've ever played. There was fire everywhere and arrows, cavalry running around destroying units on both sides. Moorish infantry and English infantry clashing all across the countryside. It almost lagged the game to death. I was on the largest sized armies setting, so i was likely pushing the Medieval 2 engine's limits and it didn't help that Stainless Steel's textures are a bit better than vanilla's.

Eventually, despite literally thousands of dead on both sides, the English were crushed. My armies pushed back through spain and retook the cities before getting on the ships and sailing for England shores. The Moors conquered all of England, Scotland, and Ireland after that.

[Wardog]

I used to love the total war series, I've played all of them except Medieval and Napoleon. Unfortunately i think the series is becoming rather stagnate. Partly due to their devotion to the same periods of history. I was not happy with their decision to remake Rome. I mentioned in an old thread for Shogun II that i fear the series is just going to start remaking games endlessly.

All i have to say is that i will not be buying Medieval III if that's the next game they decide to make.


What I'd like to see is a truly epic Total War covering all of Eurasia and North Africa, from Ancient/Classical times up to the Renaissance/Early Modern era.

I'd also like to see more diverse victory conditions (rather than the curret conquer x terratories + a specific terratiory / eliminate a specific rival). A more complex government/succession mechanic would be nice as well, to distinguish between elected monarchies, strict eldest-son succession, appointed succession, and republican systems. (And also to have a risk of a succession cricis if for example the designated successor inferior to one of his cousins, or his illigitimate half-brother. Or if the heir to the throne is a woman).

I guess what's I'm asking for is the scope and strategic flexability of Civilization combined with the tactical detail of Total War.

[quote[I play using the Stainless Steel mod. I highly suggest it. It adds more regions, more historicalish nations and borders, and an improved campaign AI. [/quote]

I've tried that mod, but I found the "support" mechanism frustrating. I'd often find my nobles getting severe penalties just from a "go round your province building watchtowers" mission. Is there any way to disable that?

[Weezer]

I agree with Leecross. Medieval II, in my eyes, was the last truly fun and innovative total war game, and I still occasionally go back and play it, but once you figure it out, it becomes way too easy...
The more recent games just haven't been fun for me. They haven't produced anything that's both new and fun in years, and in the Grand Strategy niche CA has been just blown out of the water by Paradox Interactive's releases.

[Leecros]

I've tried that mod, but I found the "support" mechanism frustrating. I'd often find my nobles getting severe penalties just from a "go round your province building watchtowers" mission. Is there any way to disable that?

If by 'support' you mean the supply mechanics, i think that's mostly from Byg's Grim Reality.Stainless Steel 6.3 and 6.4 have a set up window that lets you disable or enable certain mods within the mod. Earlier versions may have had it as well, i don't know. I started playing at 6.3 and i've not had any support issues other than the flat -500/turn for sieges.


I agree with Leecross. Medieval II, in my eyes, was the last truly fun and innovative total war game, and I still occasionally go back and play it, but once you figure it out, it becomes way too easy...
The more recent games just haven't been fun for me. They haven't produced anything that's both new and fun in years, and in the Grand Strategy niche CA has been just blown out of the water by Paradox Interactive's releases.


I usually have fun for the first 100-150 turns with most of the total war games, but every one that i've played so far turns into me building a large army and auto-calculating all of the battles for the rest of the game. It doesn't help that the auto-calculation tends to have a much more favorable result compared to if you would have fought the battle(specifically for sieges).

I'd like to see an auto-resolve function similar to what's in Sword of the Stars II and likely some other games. You press the auto-resolve button and it loads up the battle and an AI takes control of your army and runs it against the opposing AI on the fastest speed setting. In this way you would both be able to skip through the battle quickly, and take more "Realistic" casualties. Also you may find it more viable to fight the battle anyways because the AI tends to be really stupid.

I would also like to see a heavier focus on tactics. The pitched battle set-up is okay for two large armies meeting, but not so much for smaller armies vs larger armies. Right now the mechanics of the game is Army A moves its army to attack Army B in strict formation and likewise the other way. Of course the player shines in this scenario because he can, to a limited extent, use more advanced tactics, but those tiny boxes that you've started your battles in in every total war game is just too limited in what space you get to make a true tactical gambit.

Defenders should get more of a choice on where they'll be fighting. I'm thinking, at the start of the battle they get a choice of two or three different maps. They should get the first look of the map, know which direction the attacking army is coming from and be able to deploy troops anywhere on that map. Attackers should move in from the side(similar to how reinforcements do now).Get rid of that silly pitched battle box of deployment! Both armies shouldn't be able to see everything on the map outside of how the terrain runs. Perhaps implementing some sort of fog of war mechanic. This kind of gives the defender a good bit of an advantage, but that's the point. Defenders should get the advantage, except in rare circumstances. Unit formations need to be more flexible. I don't know how many times in Medieval 2 i've had to struggle to get my armies to do what they want because their formation wouldn't fit....even when there was plenty of room. Fortunately Shogun II was too open to really have that problem.

Terrain advantages and disadvantages need to be more extreme, as does the effects of exhaustion, time of day, and weather. Right now i just treat these things as ambience. They need more extreme(and realistic) landscapes. I found the battlefields in Shogun II to be silly, because for the most part it was just semi-flat, hilly terrain, with the occasional rocky outcropping for cover. I was playing Medieval 2 last night and my army started on a mountain pass, well above the enemy army with only one way to me. It was a slaughterfest. So as far as terrain is concerned, they've really taken a few steps in the wrong direction.

The AI needs improved. They need to stop relying on their Cheating AI, where increasing the difficulty only allows the AI to cheat more. They need to actually design an AI that gets more challenging, not just cheat its way to victory. I've played enough RTS's to know that it's possible to make an AI play more tactically than charging your units at the enemy base blindly.

I've seen minor improvements to this in more recent games. The AI does react better to the situation....a little bit... and there's attrition during the wintertime, but the entire system just needs a massive overhaul. I don't think they'll do it though, not unless a large section of their fanbase start to get fed up with them. They've found a formula that makes them money and i don't see them taking the risk to change that formula until they absolutely have to.

[TrioThePunch]

What I'd like to see is a truly epic Total War covering all of Eurasia and North Africa, from Ancient/Classical times up to the Renaissance/Early Modern era.

I'd also like to see more diverse victory conditions (rather than the curret conquer x terratories + a specific terratiory / eliminate a specific rival). A more complex government/succession mechanic would be nice as well, to distinguish between elected monarchies, strict eldest-son succession, appointed succession, and republican systems. (And also to have a risk of a succession cricis if for example the designated successor inferior to one of his cousins, or his illigitimate half-brother. Or if the heir to the throne is a woman).

I guess what's I'm asking for is the scope and strategic flexability of Civilization combined with the tactical detail of Total War.

[quote[I play using the Stainless Steel mod. I highly suggest it. It adds more regions, more historicalish nations and borders, and an improved campaign AI.

I've tried that mod, but I found the "support" mechanism frustrating. I'd often find my nobles getting severe penalties just from a "go round your province building watchtowers" mission. Is there any way to disable that?[/QUOTE]

How about Australasia Total war.

[Flickerdart]

What I'd like to see is a truly epic Total War covering all of Eurasia and North Africa, from Ancient/Classical times up to the Renaissance/Early Modern era.
I find that Total War works much better when it's a tight, pared-down map. Shogun 2 and Napoleon were good at that, Empire not so much - when you have to constantly race your armies between theatres, life becomes so tedious that eventually it's just a chore to care about anything past a certain distance.


I'd like to see an auto-resolve function similar to what's in Sword of the Stars II and likely some other games. You press the auto-resolve button and it loads up the battle and an AI takes control of your army and runs it against the opposing AI on the fastest speed setting. In this way you would both be able to skip through the battle quickly, and take more "Realistic" casualties. Also you may find it more viable to fight the battle anyways because the AI tends to be really stupid.
Dear lord no. The only reason I ever use auto-resolve is precisely because I don't want to wait for it to load, watch it go for ten minutes, and then wait for it to load again merely to get past a battle that is a foregone conclusion.

[Wardog]

It doesn't help that the auto-calculation tends to have a much more favorable result compared to if you would have fought the battle(specifically for sieges).

I find the reverse to be true.

I frequently loose auto-calculated battles when I have a good troop diversity and much higher total numbers than the enemy.

On the other hand, I can frequently defeat spear-heavy armies with a small knight/general force, just by attacking flanks, using one unit to draw them into charging them, and hitting them from behind/the side with the other. And if I'musing horse archers, I can do it without taking casulties. The auto-calc seems to assume I'd just charge head-first into braced spear formations (including with horse-archers).
[/quote]
The AI needs improved. They need to stop relying on their Cheating AI, where increasing the difficulty only allows the AI to cheat more. They need to actually design an AI that gets more challenging, not just cheat its way to victory. I've played enough RTS's to know that it's possible to make an AI play more tactically than charging your units at the enemy base blindly.[/quote]

The AI needs to learn how to respond to sorties.

I've broken massive sieges by sortie-ing with a couple of balistae. You can move them out to the flanks and shoot flaming death into their general (or other important units) until you run out of ammo, and they'll just sit there and take it as long as you aren't hitting them too fast.

[Leecros]

Dear lord no. The only reason I ever use auto-resolve is precisely because I don't want to wait for it to load, watch it go for ten minutes, and then wait for it to load again merely to get past a battle that is a foregone conclusion.

There are ways to cut back drastically on loading times. They could use something like a sprite map, or just give you a view of the minimap(that's what SotSII does with it's tactical view). If the game doesn't have to fully load all the graphics it would have to do with you running the battle, loadtimes are nothing. If they did something like that they could push the runtime up to 10x or higher. There are plenty of ways to get it to work.




I find the reverse to be true.

I frequently loose auto-calculated battles when I have a good troop diversity and much higher total numbers than the enemy.

On the other hand, I can frequently defeat spear-heavy armies with a small knight/general force, just by attacking flanks, using one unit to draw them into charging them, and hitting them from behind/the side with the other. And if I'musing horse archers, I can do it without taking casulties. The auto-calc seems to assume I'd just charge head-first into braced spear formations (including with horse-archers).

I very rarely lose an auto-calculated battle when i have a much higher total number than the enemy. We may just have to disagree on this because of our differing experiences. Although in a sense us having very different experiences is yet another reason why the Auto-Resolve needs tweaking. The other is that of course it would just assume you charged head first into the spearmen. That's just about all the AI knows how to do....which leads into the next point.





The AI needs to learn how to respond to sorties.

I've broken massive sieges by sortie-ing with a couple of balistae. You can move them out to the flanks and shoot flaming death into their general (or other important units) until you run out of ammo, and they'll just sit there and take it as long as you aren't hitting them too fast.

The AI needs to learn to do a lot of things. I use horse archers instead of ballistae, but it's the same concept. On top of that it's impossibly easy to flank a defending army. Move your armies around once on an open field battle. The AI will always focus on the largest cluster of your troops. This makes it rather simple to flank with a force and the AI will barely compensate. If they're attacking they may send a unit or two to stop you.

[Lamech]

Ah... AI flaws the funniest thing ever.

Flaw 1: The AI charges one pack of units normally with everything. So you got two units of foot archers. As soon as the enemy gets close have them scatter. The one that doesn't get chased can open fire, while the enemy fails to catch the second. After all your arrows are gone walk away. You'll get several kills per archer. Or win even. Unless they have horses.

Flaw 2: Fail to deal with stakes well. They either run straight over them (and all die) or slowly walk around them. If they are smart just run your archers over the stakes and open fire on the horses. They edge around and you repeat.

Flaw 3: Sortie fail. You can just plink away. Maybe they'll chase. Then the unlimited ammo city towers open fire. Then you either run back into the city or run around the city and let your archers and towers shred the enemy. Then you get back inside. Repeat until the enemy runs.

My personal favorite problem in Total War: Against light infantry dogs would shred them. Even top tier pre-roman legion reordering they would at most take two to drop a legionnaire. Of course, those are the dogs. The handlers just run in the opposite direction and not a single one dies. Then next battle they spawn three new dogs. Oh and the dogs are completely inescapable for infantry. So for all your light infantry needs I used war dogs.
Of course, by the time the legion is reformed with heavy infantry, you have swarms of 2 hit point units which will shred any normal legionnaire or other unit.
At no point was the backbone of my legion the legionnaires.

[Traab]

Well, I only ever played the first medieval total war game, but I played the HECK out of it. My personal favorite thing to do was to play a christian nation attacking another christian empire. Then when the pope warns me to stop within 2 turns, i crush the remainder of the enemy empire before I can get punished. My second favorite strategy is to massively overbuild. Once I manage to attain near total control of the sea lanes, I am able to drop massive armies across the entire coastal length of my next target. Sometimes attacking as many as 6-7 territories at once with a full stacked troop or more. I think my personal best was attacking the polish, hungarian, and novrgood empires all at the same time.

I will be honest though, the game had a very halfback toss left feel to me. In other words, it felt like playing madden 92 football where you could use a single move 95% of the time and score huge. Bowman and spearmen. Thats all I ever used. I rarely ever bothered to upgrade them at all. I didnt have to. By the time I might normally be out teched by an enemy nation, I outnumber them 10-1 anyways. The only time I ever really got into that was when I used the cheats like 1 turn for all upgrades. Suddenly I have swiss pikemen and english longbowmen being trained at all my territories and obliterating everything on the map. The main downside to the game I hated was, if you turned down the minor victory option, I think it was holding 60% of the world map, suddenly territory happiness dropped 100% and I would have revolts breaking out everywhere, including in lands that have been held by my ruler for the last 4 generations and were always treated the same. I generally spend the next 20 years retrenching my forces until the happiness is forced up by sheer numbers of garrisoned troops, and then go back to killing anything thats left.

[Flickerdart]

The AI is pretty bad in field battles, yeah. In Napoleon, the first thing they do pretty much always is charge most of their cavalry at your artillery. I don't know why, but shooting at a rapidly moving wedge of horse seems a lot easier than at a slowly moving block of infantry, and I usually keep loads of guns around, so the cavalry always gets wiped out. And then the infantry starts walking at me, stops within canister shot range to engage my infantry, I send my cavalry around to take out their own artillery and then double back to hit the remaining infantry in the rear. Every fight.

If they would keep their horse back or send it out to flank and hit me just as their infantry was approaching (sending men walking across the map is fine because it's impossible to shoot them for very much damage with cannons annoyingly), then rush my cannons with bayonets and send in their horses from the rear, I'd lose. But they don't.

I find the battle scenarios a lot harder, since there's usually custom terrain and existing deployments (that are really dumb). What I wouldn't give for more artillery and less useless light infantry...

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

DarthMod AI for Napoleon seems to be muuuuuch better. Also 40-unit stacks, and gigantic unit sizes mean you can play with reserves and such. I've had epic battles where I made 3 lines of defense, each one further up this mountain. The first one folded and I retreated it back to join the 3rd. The 2nd one also didn't last all that long, so I ended up with one line of rested troops (half totally beaten up) and one mass behind that of resting troops in column formation. Eventually, though, when they were assaulting my 3rd line, their troops started to tire, and I realized that if I threw my columns forward I could break them, and I won, but JUST.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

Alright. Storytime.

It's Medieval II. I'm the English and I've just finished off the French. But I was just doing the short campaign (motivation to expand quickly, then settle into a long campaign), and I was 2 territories short. What is an English King to do?

Invade Spain, of course! I take one city easily enough, Zaragosa, I think. And then the Pope gets on my case. Tells me to stop fighting other Christians or he'll excommunicate me. Well, I didn't listen. I took another Spanish city (Valencia), and got promptly booted to the Pope's !@#$-list.

Now, that couldn't stand. I looked through my list of agents and found Stabby McStab (of the Nottingham McStabs). This guy was glutting himself on spies, merchants and generals, and he'd racked up a nice little body count. So I order him to Rome. Where he shot the Pope's hat with a crossbow. :smallannoyed:

On the plus side, he also left a snake in the Pope's bed.

So next Pope arrives and pardons me. My relationship with Rome actually goes up a notch. Stabby found a nice little bungalow outside of Rome and went into semi-retirement. And by that I mean, every single Pope who got elected died the second his butt touched the throne of St Peter.

There had to be a glitch, because every time a Pope died, his successor would hand out pardons and niceties like candy. After a few dozen Popes, I had a maxed out relationship with the Papacy, and a small team of assassins constantly building their skills throughout Europe with the hope of one day inheriting Stabby's job.

[Leecros]

The AI is pretty bad in field battles, yeah. In Napoleon, the first thing they do pretty much always is charge most of their cavalry at your artillery. I don't know why, but shooting at a rapidly moving wedge of horse seems a lot easier than at a slowly moving block of infantry, and I usually keep loads of guns around, so the cavalry always gets wiped out. And then the infantry starts walking at me, stops within canister shot range to engage my infantry, I send my cavalry around to take out their own artillery and then double back to hit the remaining infantry in the rear. Every fight.

If they would keep their horse back or send it out to flank and hit me just as their infantry was approaching (sending men walking across the map is fine because it's impossible to shoot them for very much damage with cannons annoyingly), then rush my cannons with bayonets and send in their horses from the rear, I'd lose. But they don't.

I find the battle scenarios a lot harder, since there's usually custom terrain and existing deployments (that are really dumb). What I wouldn't give for more artillery and less useless light infantry...

this does remind me of a time when i was fighting an enemy king and the king's bodyguard unit charged my cannons and a few seconds later the silly zoom in on general death thing they had in Medieval 2 happened and i saw the enemy king die with one of the gunners standing over his body with his tiny knife. :smalltongue:

[Flickerdart]

DarthMod AI for Napoleon seems to be muuuuuch better. Also 40-unit stacks, and gigantic unit sizes mean you can play with reserves and such. I've had epic battles where I made 3 lines of defense, each one further up this mountain. The first one folded and I retreated it back to join the 3rd. The 2nd one also didn't last all that long, so I ended up with one line of rested troops (half totally beaten up) and one mass behind that of resting troops in column formation. Eventually, though, when they were assaulting my 3rd line, their troops started to tire, and I realized that if I threw my columns forward I could break them, and I won, but JUST.
Better AI is good, but I don't use the large unit sizes as is. 20 seems like a good number of units per stack anyway - 40 units is tricky to pull together, and since the AI gets way more money than you, they'll be able to do it no problem regardless.

[Kudaku]

Playing DarthMod in Shogun 2 actually got quite tiring after a while - because he significantly (!) boosts the amount of troops in each card even small skirmishes turn into 800v800 battles that take forever to finish. It's fun to have a big battle every now and again, but when every single border clash takes an hour to resolve it gets old pretty fast. Currently I'm using the Radious Total War mod and I find that much more to my liking.

[Wardog]

I had another interesting battle yesterday.

I was playing as Russia, and fighting against Poland.

One of the Polish castles just outside my borders was defended by the Polish king, and nothing else. I sent a force to attack it (2x peasant archers, 1x merc xbow, 1x merc spearmen). By the time I got into strike range of the castle, the Poles had moved a small reinforcement force next to it (2x peasants, 1x Polish Nobles). I also realised at that point that my attack force didn't contain the general I thought it had. However, I had a spy in the castle who was going to open the gates for me, so I decided to attack anyway.

I deployed my forces as close to the castle as possible, and then ran them inside. The Polish King was sat in the centre courtyard, so I was able to get in unopposed, and put all my missile units on the walls above the gate. (For some reason I left my spears on the ground).

After a little while, the King decided to attack me, and the spearmen decided to charge him, rather than get up on the walls like I told them to. They ended up getting wiped out to a man, but not before they (and my archers) had managed to kill the king and most of his bodyguard, who retreated back to the centre courtyard.

About that time, the enemy reinforcements finally arrived. I managed to kill loads with my archers, until for some reason, my mercenary xbows (and possibly my peasant archers as well) all decided to get down from the walls and run outside the castle. Most of the xbows got killed and the survivors routed off the map. (Or, possibly, they all got killed, and it was some of the spearmen who survived and routed). I also lost a fair few archers before I managed to get them back up onto the walls. I did however manage to kill all the Polish Nobles, and a fair few peasants.

I was able to get a few more of them after that: I pulled my troops out of the castle, causing the peasants to chase me; I'd inflict a few casulties, causing them to rout back to the centre. This was repeated a few times until the battle timer expired.

The result was the enemy king dead, the castle empty, and the relief force severely depleted, but my army also baddly mauled and fallen back. I suppose I sould have seen my army's AI stupidity as balance/payback for all the times I've exploited the enemy AI, but it was frustrating enough that I reloaded and tried again.

This time, I managed to kill all the relief force (with negligable losses), but not the king (or even severely damage his bodyguard). I wasn't sure whether to retreat and try again next turn (all my archers were out of ammo), but decided instead to try risking throwing all my troops at the king. (Specifically, attacking the bodyguard unit from the side where the king himself was, in the hope of killing him so that the bodyguard unit would disband next turn even if I lost).

As it was, when I moved my units into the courtyard to attack the king, the "capture the centre" countdown started, and the king's bodyguard unit declined to attack me, so I just held my position until I had won.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Playing DarthMod in Shogun 2 actually got quite tiring after a while - because he significantly (!) boosts the amount of troops in each card even small skirmishes turn into 800v800 battles that take forever to finish. It's fun to have a big battle every now and again, but when every single border clash takes an hour to resolve it gets old pretty fast. Currently I'm using the Radious Total War mod and I find that much more to my liking.

Ah, see I get tired of any Total War game after just a few skirmishes no matter what, so they might as well be epic.

[Vaz]

There is a new one coming; Warhammer Total War, and one which is hopefully better than that terrible russian one. As long as Dogs of War are a faction, I'm happy.

I have a few stories;

Medieval 2 Stainless Steel
Playing a diplomacy/non combat game as Genoa; rules are no initiating combat against nonrebels or enemy factions on your own lands. My first few turns were build on maximising the profits of my small landmass, allying with Sicily, Venice, the Pope, the Crusader Kingdoms and France; of course leaving only the HRE. What few rebel lands were siezed by my generals, who then began to get old; so I figured it was time to create a war for my allies to prove themselves.

Calling a crusade, I very quickly got every single catholic faction aside from the two spanish and the portuguese to join in on stealing the HRE lands. Training Assassins and Spies like no tomorrow, I was creating insurrection and murdering governers and generals to sow confusion and make the battles easier for the rampaging Crusades. With the Crusader Kingdoms joining the fight (they eventually ended up capturing the Crusade target); that left a power vacuum in the middle east; the Kwarezmian Shah were attacked by the Egyptians, but crushed, the Turks stopped fighting the ERE and got a great many Crusader lands which spent the next 50 turns rebelling and being reoccupied. So the Greeks began expanding East and West, and North.

But this began to overstretch them; the Kievans and Hungarians fought back; but the Venetians began to crumble; losing all but Crete and Bologna. So; out came the assassins, priests and an Army residing in a large experienced navy just within distance to close to the Bosporus and to sieze Constantinople while more Agents aimed to force the Greeks out of Venice.

The Constantinople army was loaded with a half dozen priests, merchants, spies and assassins; combined with a ton of throwaway Town Militia, but also a Fierce General, two experienced Knights units and a hardened core of experienced, up armoured elite infantry. Surprisingly, the four spies were unable to open the gate, but with the two rebel generals murdered by the assassins and the cannon towers busted, I figured why not just horde it; so a swarm of 12 units of Town Militia carrying ladders charged at the walls; the enemy retreating to the centre as they were outflanked and destroyed on the walls for very little cost; a 7 dread general parading in front of the walls tends to do that. As they fled to the centre I ordered the Living wave of around 1800 militia to engulf the survivors (this stage less than 700). The city was won without any a valuable life lost; and I made a particular point of repeating similar tactics in field battles with elite units; using them to flank and commiting them into already engaged units who are fighting my dross. I eventually ended up with an army to end all armies during the Greek Wars.

I made my way through the game buying out cities which didn't rebel (I eventually bought off the entire English Isles off the Scottish in exchange
for around 60K and three dumps in the Iberian Peninusala); the Cardinal Council was essentially Milanese; with a master Theology Guild and multiple Cathedrals I was recruiting 6 and 7 Piety Bishops straight out. My Merchants were holding nearly every profitable resource while forcing the AI merchants off their patch and I had a horde of spies and assassins that could literally make the Night of Long Knives look like a fairy tale of peace and happiness (I killed all 12 Novgorod Family members in a single turn), while my Spy network allowed me to view any changes or potential threats growing on my borders with ease. My Diplomats and princesses were able to bribe or marry any general deemed capable enough while a peace could be brokered as if 70 years of war hadn't occured. Then I decided to tackle the combined horde of the Timurids, Mongols and Khwarz who had the entire Middle East apart from the Levant and North Africa.

With God Army and aided by a ton of dross armies from every location across the world, every victory won would push back the enemy, while every loss stalled my advance for 3-4 years in one particular frontage until I could gather enough forces to press home the advantage or shore up the defences. The last of the Mongol Khans were slain somewhere north of Jerusalem by little more than a half stack "patrol" of Pavise Archers newly arrived from Cyprus intent on aiding in the defense against the recently victorious Shahdom. The Mongol General was a poor fighter and commander, and with only his bodyguard and two units of heavily damaged veteran horse archers, 1200 Pavise Crossbowmen and the eight cannons killed him in the first volley; promotion for the Captain to general saw him ironically captured and released in the next few years; his loyalty gradually lowered by years of little military support as gains against the Timurids in former Cuman lands were pressed forwards, before finally falling for Bribery to the Shah's own Diplomats. Diplomat, Traitor and Shah soon fell to Assassin in response; but with the loss of his 8 pieces of cannon artillery and mangonel, I lost a few more cities until aid from my former Portuguese cities arrived and shored up the gaps while raids of Javeliner Cavalry half stacks managed to fracture enemy field armies or damage them into manageable chunks.

Meanwhile the God Army, augmented by attack waves of a dozen dross infantry hordes were prompty engaged by the might of the Timurid horde; War Elephants causing immense harm to my battleline until I trapped 4 of their largest armies and most scary generals into a Bridge battle; swapping in 10 iunits of artillery for much of the cavalry into one of the relief armies, over 7500 enemies were slain in half an hour as they advanced into Cannonball, mangonel and even a couple of units of greek fire, in return for less than a hundred of my own. With the Timurids battle line punched wide open, the God Army split into two; a faster all cavalry hunter force and another being a siege breaker.

For my final battle, I was swarming the Shah's Baghdad Citadel (I had personally made it into a castle to give me a base of operations, until my Mongol destroying traitor general retook it courtesy of his 4 units of cannons) with 5 hordes of infantry controlled by the AI, massed with a load of ladders, siege towers and rams. My Elite Infantry/Artillery army I kept quiet and rested until the best part of all 10,000 of my own "dross" were killed or routed. At which point, 1800 elite infantry and artillery moved into range of the final walls; the enemy forces little more than a half dozen heavily battered units numbering around 400. When the final gate fell, my infantry charged forwards; halberds and swords glinting in the sunlight. The already exhausted enemy fell quickly to the greatswords. As I tried to charge my Faction Leader to make a suitably hollywood finish for the game, it somehoe had the game consider the gatehouse in enemy hands, and pour down boiling oil on my Faction Leader; killing him instantly.

I still won, but it was extremely annoying.

Third Age Total War
Not much more spectacular than the entire Rhun Dragon Loke Units massing together. Facing off against Dwarfs in Siege Battles, I had brilliant fun, while
exterminating the Orcs of Gundabad in that awesome armour.

[Slipperychicken]

Empire (or The One-Shot Battle):

Started a battle with rebels in some Balkan region like Serbia or something (those guys never stop rebelling, seriously). So the battle started on this ridiculous 45 degree incline, with my guys at the top and the rebels at the bottom. I position to defend the hill, the rebels try to crawl up and get tired. The positioning meant it was clearly going to be a slaughter anyway, so I just shot some cartridge/shotgun cannon down the hill.

First shot kills the enemy general and most of his bodyguard unit.

The whole rebel army routs in seconds, I didn't even have to engage them in melee. Of course I ran them down (I always run down fleeing enemies and execute them afterward), but there's something hilarious about the image. These guys trudging up this hill to risk their lives for their revolution, then immediately crap their pants and start running once their general goes down.

Rome/Medieval II:

Because I quickly and intuitively learned the AI's kinks, I was able to win pretty much every battle without difficulty. For example, fire arrows' morale penalty doesn't care if it's raining flame-arrows, or if it's just a few, so you can lay those down over a cavalry flank and a Dread general and it's pretty much an instant rout against most units. Additionally, the AI does not know how to respond to ranged weapons, so you can just sort of pepper ~75%-100% of their troops away before you actually have to engage in melee. And I also always run down enemy units and execute them, so my generals have maximum Dread, so I can rout enemies faster.

This resulted in some hilarious battle stats, usually with like 4 casualties (mostly friendly fire. Damn pathfinding...) and zero enemy survivors. I lived for the battles when I could score 0 casualties, 0 enemy survivors.

I love the kinds of people my generals were.

Because I always executed all prisoners, with the exception of some high nobles who were worth >10,000 florins, and sacked every city I conquered, my generals inevitably gained maximum dread and were generally horrible paranoid bastards who had people tortured for fun. Since I usually rushed them into melee knowing their near-invincibility, they all would get up to Brutally Scarred (and thus be even-more-unkillable from the +8 bonus HP) in a matter of a few battles. Since I constantly recruited spies/watchtowers to see/know everything and open cities without siege equipment, and always upgraded thieves' guilds, all my kings would get maximum "paranoid" traits. Since I cranked taxes up to the maximum possible, they would all become miserly and cheap, extracting every dime they could. Often these generals entered my service with a modicum of chivalry, and left with maximum dread.

So my generals and royalty were all paranoid, penny-pinching tactical geniuses who mercilessly slaughtered POWs and civilians alike, wade through melee for fun, were surrounded by bodyguards and spymasters at all times, and to complete the picture were covered with horrible, disfiguring battle-scars. Kind of like if Scrooge, Lelouche, and a psycho-murderer all had a baby.

It really made me feel like the bad guy when I realized what I had done.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

... I never got the point of gaming the system like that. I mean, it's so easy even playing on same level as the AI without using exploits, or otherwise taking advantage of the AI.

Also I much preferred pretending to actually be a general in the age, roleplaying rather than going for world conquest... I mean, other than Rome and Napoleon, no country DID conquer almost the entire map, or even try. Oh, and Shogun I suppose.

[Slipperychicken]

... I never got the point of gaming the system like that. I mean, it's so easy even playing on same level as the AI without using exploits, or otherwise taking advantage of the AI.


It makes you almost feel like you have skill. Kind of like playing Assassins Creed and slaughtering guards for half an hour.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

It makes you almost feel like you have skill. Kind of like playing Assassins Creed and slaughtering guards for half an hour.

That makes sense, I suppose. VERY different approach to the game than mine, but still legit.