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[Diakron]

I play as England with an archer heavy army. Set up a wall of spikes and 3 units of Heavy infantry behind them, use my general (or a unit of my best Heavy Cav) to counter ranged attacks... I took down a Scottish army consisting of the King AND Crowned Prince (killed king captured and execued prince) Plus over 1000 soldiers (somehow all units are exactly 50% bigger the stock... go figure) with only 88 casuaties (most of them from the 2 General body guards that i sent to harrass the enemy generals) and over 300 PoWs.

My other favorite tactic is using the French Late Heavy Calvary to swarm and scare witless all my enemies

Medieval 2: TW is easily my favorite, followed by E: TW with Darthmod.

[KaguroDraven]

How the hell did you get archers to be that effective? No matter how many archers I use, or what terrtain they are on. They get, maybe, 20 kills before they run out of arrows.

[Muz]

Yeah, IMO, England is my favorite in MTW2. I don't like playing England in EU3 because I prefer land armies and one that isn't sandwiched between France and Scotland.

English longbowmen are damn fun. Better than those crossbowmen elsewhere, because they can fight melee too.

Other than that, I like having big cheap hordes of meatshields. I think one of the Islamic ones were good with this, a lot of guys in padded armor with spears. But they got ripped apart by the English swordsmen when I expanded that far.

[Rilder]

I always preferred balanced/somewhat realistic armies then "Winsauce armies" in EB and M2TW/Mods, the AI isn't that good in the first place so sometimes you gotta handicap yourself with restrictions...

Lets see, a first line of Cheap spears and peasant levies, a second line of my more professional troops... a few archers that move between front and back line, and a couple cavalry to watch the flanks. (I don't like to rely on cavalry to much)

In ETW, replace Cheap spears with muskets, professional troops with muskets and archers with muskets, and add in a couple Cannons.

[Cheese]

M2TW, I usually brought a single unit of peasants to sieges for battering rams and stuff. I'm pretty much just a big fan of anything with big shiny armour and weaponry, so I'd generally have 4 expensive knight units or some such, behind some big line of spears that I use to hold the enemy while a few cavalry run around the back and charge. What's everyone's preferred mods? For M2TW, I <3 stainless steel.

[KaguroDraven]

Every mod I've found for M2TW needs Kingdoms installed, which I lack. So no mods for Kaguro .  Can someone tell me what I'm apparently doing wrong with my archers in M2TW? Becouse they can barly kill anything. Am I the only one who practicly ignores Spys, Assassins, and Merchants? I send out waves of priests and several diplomats, but I almost never make any of those three.

[umiman]

Other than that, I like having big cheap hordes of meatshields. I think one of the Islamic ones were good with this, a lot of guys in padded armor with spears. But they got ripped apart by the English swordsmen when I expanded that far.

Italian states were the factions with lots of meatshields (super militia). Even the crusader factions had more meatshields (pilgrims, etc.). Islamic states had lots of archers of all kinds, specifically the mounted variety. Also some of the best knights in the game (mamlukes).

You might just be influenced by how the AI merely builds lots of meatshields regardless of faction.

[Mephansteras]

I've been enjoying Rome recently (inspired by Jef's LP). I also picked up Kindgoms for Medieval 2, specifically so I could try out some mods for it.

I like the series, but I agree that the AI has always been pretty bad. Still, I'm looking forward to Shogun 2.

[dogstile]

Archers are more effective when in a really wide 2 line rows. That way the first set of archers get a more direct attack. If you're using archers you should really use professional ones too, they have the ability to either punch through armour or accurately skewer lighter spearmen.

It helps if you put them on a hill behind your troops too. Longer range + more of them will be able to go for the "direct arch" shot rather than the "shoot up in the air and let it fall on them" shot. The direct arch shot seems to be stronger.

If you don't have access to professional armour busting archers, switch to crossbowmen. Peasant crossbowmen are much better than peasant archers. Always.

[Toady Two]

So far Darthmod for empire is insane. I'm playing as the Ottoman Empire and I'm having a blast. My only problem were the fort sieges. They sucked in vanilla are bugged in the mod. I quickly built a fort in moldavia to scare off the Russian full stack I spotted with my trade route to Poland. I kept some cheap ass troops there to keep the province happy. Meanwhile Austrians built up another full stack at Transilvania(goes to show how good the campaign Ai is with the mod).

Istead of attacking Bosnia and Serbia as expected the Austiran stack of militia , line infantry and four cannons crossed the balkans in 1 turn and assaulted the fortified moldavia capital the next.

The resulting battle, in which autocalc gave me a 10% chace of success grinded my computer to a laggfest. Game was runninng increadibly slow due to 350 + units attamping to climb the walls and being met on top by 500+ units. The clusterfuck actually helped me. If the Ai had tried to tear down the wall and fight me in the open field I would have certainly lost. During the melee on the walls neither its numerical or troop quality adavantage could be made to use and the fort defended itself after a battle that lasted an hour IRL. I didn't even sit though it all. I went off to do something else while the laggy cluserfuck resolved in my favour.

As is - battles with the vanilla empire forts and darthmod take ages to resolve and favour the defender way more than they should. thankfully the mod includes an option to disable all fort battles and an option to turn all forts into wooden pallisades that are less buggy(im trying this option now, well see how it works).

[dogstile]

Yeah, I did always find it weird that you could pretty much construct a castle in a turn. Wooden palisades would make more sense.

[Toady Two]

In empire it takes four turns(2years) 4000 quid but what it does is it basically makes the AI uncapable of taking a town, and you too if you don't bring anouth cannons to totally level the walls. I thing the preice should be less steep, but for a smaller bonus.

[Neonivek]

Yeah, I did always find it weird that you could pretty much construct a castle in a turn. Wooden palisades would make more sense.

A stone encampment made in 6 months and lots and lots of cash.

Not unheard of.

Technically if you count each level of castle it means it takes many many years to make a grand castle.

[PenguinOverlord]

Europa Barbarorum mod for Rome. Awesome. Particularly if you use the submod that enables either usage of the Barbarian invasion or Alexander AI and engine.

The AI in all of the games is pretty bad though. I've defeated entire sieging armies with one general, one unit of slingers, and a little ingenuity, mainly because the AI makes no effort to actually stage some kind of attack when you sally out of the gates to attack them before they have siege equipment.

Other times, an army with a huge number of slingers can just decimate or even route an army without a single casualty by lining up and firing on them, and running when they try to counter. The enemy always returns to their battle lines, and waits for your infantry to engage.

And guess what? Spartan hoplites can hold a clear line almost indefinitely. But at least Romans aren't severely overpowered, and their expansion isn't necessarily inevitble. It can be halted if you play some nearby power like Carthage, strangled in it's crib by Phyrrus of Epirus, or halted by the two Gallic tribes. In Human hand's almost any faction is unstoppable, mainly due to the aforementioned AI.

Link to the better AI, please.

[Ampersand]

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?94861-ALEXANDER-EB