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[Cthulhu]

One thing I only saw in Medieval 2 that I kind of miss, it was thematic for medieval warfare but maybe not very balanced, was that cavalry killed routing enemies just by passing through them.  So during the rout you could set your knights to charge straight through enemy units and wipe them out.  The battle itself was just a quick contest, the massacre came after.

[Mech#4]

That was a bit of an issue in Rome 2 where cavalry would cycle through a unit over and over again because they had to get a killing blow animation to actually kill the fleeing unit, often getting a short parry exchange then they'd have to catch the unit again.


I was fiddling around with magic spells briefly. Casting a fireball at a swordsmen unit killed 14 (it went through the first rank and exploded near the back ranks), over charging the spell took about a quarter to 1/5 of the health off an empire general lord. The Searing Doom metal lore spell doesn't seem to do enough damage whether over charged or not. Over charging Plague of Rust however seems very nice with -30 to armour, up from -15.

[Cthulhu]

I think this is the first time I've ever been cheesed by a computer.  Move the doomstack as close as its movement poitns will allow, then move a fast empty unit up to attack, pulling in the doomstack via reinforcements.  That's fucking bullshit.  If he doesn't have enough movement to reach me how the fuck does he have enough to reinforce?

Okay, it seems like it's never worth making a second horde, at least not until you're so strong you can load it up right away with lots of dudes (which will never happen because of proximity attrition, but whatever)

It doesn't matter what they have to do to kill it, they will find it and kill it befor eit's strong enough to fight back.  They'll bullshit you to get it.  They'll give up capital cities to get the new horde.  New hordes are a waste of population points.

[Man of Paper]

It hit me after I moved from a Chaos campaign to an Empire campaign that, if you can move units between hordes, drop a good portion of your experienced, probably better by a tier dudes on the new horde and then recruit with the original one. That way at least the second one has some defense to it.

[Mech#4]

I just noticed on an army stack headed by Kholek that there is a buff for armies called "On Guard" that reduces enemy agent action success by -20%. It says for 1 turn but I don't know whether that's down or base length. I'm guessing this was gained in response to an assassination attempt.

[Burnt Pies]

yeah, any failed attempt by a hero to do anything like assassination, blocking, assaulting will result in the target, hero or army, gaining a stack of that. 1 turn duration in total, and I think it stacks. I've certainly seen armies with 2-3 stacks of it, and my own chances of influencing them with a hero were awful.

Think I've just about beat the game on normal. I might go for a world conquest after winning, or at least try to get all the shiny stuff for my legendary lords. After that... probably Orcz on hard.

[Cthulhu]

It hit me after I moved from a Chaos campaign to an Empire campaign that, if you can move units between hordes, drop a good portion of your experienced, probably better by a tier dudes on the new horde and then recruit with the original one. That way at least the second one has some defense to it.

THe problem is you can assume all of the enemies will have max-sized units, at all times, throughout the game.  If you give your guy enough to have a slight chance, your main guy is also fucked now.

You can give him a token group of guys which is basically throwing them away, or you can give him a bunch of guys and then you both die.

[Neonivek]

Ehh now that I don't HAVE to get the game, I am thinking of picking it up.

Though the big thing that keeps me back is just how much the AI cheats.

It was the major reason I stopped playing Shogun 2 Total war was because I kept getting messed over by the AI building units FAR beyond their ability to.

[Mech#4]

I remember with the Creative Assembly campaign video on Chaos they were running armies with a negative income, surviving by raiding settlements. I suppose though the difficulty is buying the units in the first place.

On combat, I'm finding things much more focused on moral breaking than killing whole units. Trolls are nasty melee but flanking with pistoleers and firing at them drops their moral really quickly. Going for the enemy general and defeating them is a big deciding factor in a battle. Even Chosen, with their high stats, still aren't unbreakable and don't have that much higher moral than my own empire troops who are sitting around 65 to 80 leadership.

I remember in the tabletop units like trolls weren't so much for charging enemy units head on as they were for flanking and support. Numbers were needed to win melee encounters and a unit of 20 swordsmen beats a unit of 3 trolls unless the 3 wound trolls killed around 12 enemies (I think this is how it works broadly. Going by 7th edition). There's other stuff but I'll have to see whether this works in the game itself.

[umiman]

Bright wizards are pretty damn cool. AOE flaming swords. AOE flaming armour.

I really hope a mod comes out soon that makes damage spells useful though.

Also, autoresolve is a bit borked right now. You're basically way better off autoresolving fights than fighting them as the results are better for you somehow. Also if you have demigryphs, the odds get strangely skewed completely in your favour no matter what.

The empire lord's tactics line of levels has a skill that buffs all your swordsmen and spearmen by a huuuuuge amount. Combine it with the blacksmith research that also buffs them by a huge amount and suddenly your basic swordsmen are superpowered. Also combine them with the woodcutter building thing that gives them bonus exp to start and the research that also buffs their starting exp and now you have ultra strong swordsmen / spearmen starting at silver chevron for almost no money.

[Neonivek]

Also, autoresolve is a bit borked right now. You're basically way better off autoresolving fights than fighting them as the results are better for you somehow. Also if you have demigryphs, the odds get strangely skewed completely in your favour no matter what.

It has almost always been that way. Auto-resolve has always been an insane oddity.

In Medieval 2 total war it was almost always a bad idea to autoresolve except in sieges against castles, where it becomes extremely advantageous.

[Cthulhu]

I autoresolve most secondary fights, cause they're always easy.  It seems like the battle AI is okay,b ut where it really shines is bullshitting you on the campaign map.  I guess the proper term is "outmaneuvering" but it feels like bullshit.  It feels like "lol you can move like ten feet per turn cause terrain or something, but I'm gonna go ahead and push you across the map and then have a single lord walk up and attack you to pull my 20-man doomstack onto you when you're out of movement points, which is immediately.

"Oh and after you lose I'll have enough movement points left to kill you again.  I will sprint a thousand miles into your territory to gank your new lord, walk back and get all my guys back, then surround you with guys I recruited for free because CA can't code AI and if I didn't have five times as many guys as you it'd be pointlessly easy to kill me.

[Neonivek]

Ok, I am going to admit... I kind of thought everyone here would be doing nothing but complimenting this game.

I am astounded that isn't the case... AND that the whole "Well it was always that way" suddenly stopped flying as well.

O_o balanced thinking? what the?

[Majestic7]

I remember Shogun: Total War, the first one. I was enthralled by it and the AI felt amazing. The trouble with Total War games is that AI has not advanced one bit from those days. They are still fun games and I still play them, but honestly it is mostly because there is no competition.

I kind of burned out with Attila regarding their money-milking schemes, tho and I have general aversion to the IP naziness of Games Workshop. So I'll buy this one when it is -75% off.

[Persus13]

One thing I only saw in Medieval 2 that I kind of miss, it was thematic for medieval warfare but maybe not very balanced, was that cavalry killed routing enemies just by passing through them.  So during the rout you could set your knights to charge straight through enemy units and wipe them out.  The battle itself was just a quick contest, the massacre came after.

That's because the cavalry aren't killing them, they're taking prisoners.