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[Wooty]

My most recent total war fun times:

As Scotland, I defeated England and then led a crusade to Antioch. Milan had a huge empire and declared war on me, so I spend the next 15 turns or so expanding in the middle east and fighting Milan. Then I have the perfect opportunity to destroy an army of only crossbowmen and easily take a huge and undefended fortress, and the pope demands I cease hostilities. I go ahead and kill everyone anyway, and the pope excommunicates me.
The next turn the pope DECLARES A CRUSADE on my city and all seven or so catholic factions join it, declare war on me, and send full stack armies down to Antioch. I spent the next 20 turns assassinating the pope, getting reconciled before the crusaders arrived, and fighting everyone in Europe at once.
The worst part? The pope was fucking Scottish. My own damn pope.

[Sordid]

Don't think you can actually defeat the Papacy in vanilla Medieval 2. He keeps respawning, all over the map. I guess you could kill all the cardinals that get elected, but that's again... a neverending cycle.

They key to victory is to have a) a lot of priests, and b) a lot of assassins. Priests are easy enough to train, just send them over to regions of different faith and they'll increase their Piety, and thus their chances of being selected for the college of cardinals and eventually elected Pope. Once you dominate the college, you can simply station a few elite assassins near Rome - the Pope never leaves, so you won't have to hunt for him all over the map. A new Pope from your own faction will start with maximum disposition towards you and leave you alone. Only when his disposition falls will he start to complain, at which point you can simply replace him.

[Neruz]

The worst part? The pope was fucking Scottish. My own damn pope.

You can never trust the pope; backstabbing bastard.

In the mod "Kingdom of the Scots", you can play as all the factions in Britannia in addition to 5 more of the Scottish clans. Completely ignoring the point of the mod, I set out to play as Wales. King Llywelyn (starting leader) starts out as a hyper-honorable supercommander with a huge command bonus against the English. Did I mention that taking English settlements gets Wales an instant spawn of ONE THOUSAND Welsh Skirmishers?

Knowing this info, I charge the English-held town of Cardiff and take it, earning me enough reinforcements to (hopefully) hold the town. Things don't go as planned, however, and suddenly Cardiff is besieged by Edward the Scarred, King of England. He has two full armies of armored Englishmen behind him, and enough siege ladders to coat my walls. What he DOESN'T remember, however, is that you can't attach a siege ladder to a wall made of sticks. Instead of swarming over my wall in a wave of steel, the English must trickle through the main gate.

I position Llywelyn and his cavalry in a sidestreet, 500 skirmishers in the main road, 500 skirmishers to the side, and my archer battalions get to stand in the middle of the street, flaming arrows activated.

Edward's men come roaring through the gate, only to be met by a hail of some 900+ javelins. Llywelyn flies in and crumples them into a hasty retreat, and my men go back to their positions. Unfortunately, Edward is able to rally his men for another charge.

Apparently, rams can smash up stickwalls. Because of this, my palisade quickly turns to cheese while my Skirmishers throw hundreds more spears at people. Nearly three thousand Heavy Infantry are inside of Cardiff, and my people are sprinting down streets, attempting to gather in the plaza. I start thinking all is lost, when Llywelyn, kickass Welsh King that he is, charges THROUGH three battalions of SPEARMEN, and takes Edward out with a single blow. The archers and skirmishers are trying to stop the onslaught by throwing rocks, arrows, and javelins, but the waves continue to get closer to the plaza.

I decide Llywelyn is awesome, but he isn't enough. For the hell of it, I say! Hordes of angry Welsh people charge the main road, where Llywelyn is unhorsed and hackin' up some Brits. My people save Llywelyn, and proceed to rout the ENTIRE army of England, who they then chase down and kill with thrown pebbles.

Shows how overpowered soldiers with melee, ranged, and pebble attacks can be, eh?

DISCLAIMER: I tired. Writing may suck.

Think back, you didn't happen to see a flying police box around there did you?

[Heron TSG]

Think back, you didn't happen to see a flying police box around there did you?

Huh?

The mod allows cavalry to get off their horses?

Only Faction Leaders, and only if their horses are killed. It only makes them slightly harder to kill.

[Jreengus]

Someone should make a mod which removes the "dismounted [name]" units and replaces the mounted versions special ability with a dismount command during the setup stage.

[Sordid]

Someone should make a mod which removes the "dismounted [name]" units and replaces the mounted versions special ability with a dismount command during the setup stage.

You mean the way it was in Medieval 1? That's another step backwards that the series took, and quite frankly I don't understand the devs' rationale behind it.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

I think it was, "We're too lazy to code it." 

[Neruz]

Or possibly 'Why would anyone want to dismoun their cavalry?'

Alternately it may have been a balance decision; if you can field a cavalry-heavy army and your enemy fields a spearman heavy army, you just dismount, poof, all of a sudden you're now an infantry heavy army and all his anti-cavalry weapons were for naught!

Think back, you didn't happen to see a flying police box around there did you?

Huh?

Doctor Who reference.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Or possibly 'Why would anyone want to dismoun their cavalry?'

"Knights! Dismount thy horses and assist the infantry in capturing the walls!"

"I'm sorry my Liege, my arse appears to be glued to this saddle."

[Jreengus]

Yes except you're now horribly outnumbered due to the fact cavalry are smaller sizes than infantry. Not to mention that enemy skirmishers will have a field day if you got rid of all your cavalry and if you didn't dismount all of them then you are even worse outnumbered. I doubt it would be that bad, anyhow it is a lot more realistic, commanders through history have proven willing to dismount their cavalry if they think it will be more useful to grab extra infantry.

EDIT: Reminds me of another thing bugging me about the game, the fact that they just added some houses and walls to the battle map for sieges. The mechanics work well enough for battles outside in bug open areas with hills and tress and plains. But urban warfare is a whole new kettle of fish, I really have no idea how to handle it better but the current system is kinda horrible and I generally just auto resolve siege assaults.

The small troop numbers are the real problem here I think, I can understand why they need to be kept down since you don't want peoples computers to implode but come on! I'm assaulting this castle I've supposedly been sieging without enough men to lay a damn picket line around the place.

[Neruz]

Oh i know it's realistic, i just question the balance implications. Medieval is, first and foremost, a game, and it has to worry about game balance.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Implying Total War series has ever been balanced.

Ah yes, flashbacks to memories of one unit in Shogun holding an entire bridge off against a host of enemies. 

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Oh i know it's realistic, i just question the balance implications. Medieval is, first and foremost, a game, and it has to worry about game balance.

It's first and foremost a game that (perhaps not accurately) is known for it's attempts at realism, or at least immersion.  Really, being able to dismount cavalry would hardly be unbalancing at all, if at all.  Cavalry would be stuck trudging around in cavalry armor with cavalry weapons, and has been pointed out already, they would be outnumbered.  All it does is give a realistic (which Total War claims to be) way to add just a little more infantry to a fight, and maybe come out on top if you're good enough.  Hell, if it's as you say and it was a game balance issue then it still comes down to laziness.  They were too lazy to make it work.

[Heron TSG]

Implying Total War series has ever been balanced.

Ah yes, flashbacks to memories of one unit in Shogun holding an entire bridge off against a host of enemies. 

Kind of like the Spartans in Thermopylae? That's not quite unheard of, as long as that was a good unit on a narrow bridge.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Kind of like the Spartans in Thermopylae? That's not quite unheard of, as long as that was a good unit on a narrow bridge.

Not one group of units, one unit.  Surely I'm not the only one that played Shogun around here.