Medieval: Total War Tactics

Gangsta

This fabolous game must be the best Strategy game on the PC. I recently bought it (I know, shame on me!). I just wanted to see different tactics that y'al have. So what the best defensie stragety and wats the best offensive stragety?

Sand

Tactics really depend on the terrain your fighting on.

Basically you should never charge spears with knights, never charge knights with swords, and never charge swords with spears. There are permutations in troops and troop quality where it mightnt be an awful idea to do the above but as a general guide it is. I for example, never commit my knights unless the enemy has no spears left in reserve or they are so far away Ill be able to win the melee and escape before they arrive.

Light cavalry are good to lure away enemy heavy troops - charge their best infantry unit, then when youve got their attention halt and walk away - the enemy will chase you all over the battlefield - away from the real fighting. Youll need to micromanage to ensure that the cavalry never get caught and to keep the infantrys attention if they turn around to go back to the main fight but you keep can keep an elite unit tied up until youre ready to deal with them.


Defence can be summed up in most cases fairly simply.

1. Find a hill.
2. Stand on it.

Spears to the front, Swords mixed in, Missles behind ( some will put to them to front and retreat them after firing a few shots - I dont ) and a unit of cavalry or two to either chase down routers or maybe sneak around the enemy when theyre all tied up with your front line and mow down their lightly protected archers or charging into the rear of the enemy fighters - hopefully breaking them.

The enemy will try some false retreats sometimes to try and pull you off the hill/defence position - dont commit to chasing routers until youre sure theyre beaten - this is especially important when fighting huge battles against thousands of troops. Youll end up with your army scattered all over the filed killing routers, exhausted when their reserves turn up fresh and ready to butcher you - if youre lucky your victory will be certain by this stage and theyll retreat straight away, if not youre pretty much doomed. So be careful about chasing the enemy.

Attack is even simpler because the enemy will do much the same as above. Theyll always be sitting on some hill - usually a bloody steep one. Either try to lure them down of it by shooting them up with archers - this will only really work if they have no or few archers - otherwise youll end up much worse off - or split your forces, sending a some guys to march around near their front whilst the bulk of your heavy troops march up and around the enemy - this will be a long march usually and the enemy will either attack you while youre doing it or retreat to another hill.

If they retreat and become strung out then sieze the chance to grab one or two units with your knights and slaughter them. This will usually bring the rest of the enemy running to help out and then you can fight them on even ground in bad order.

Troop quality and armour/weapon bonuses are extremely decisive - dont build troops in every province, pick one or two provinces and invest in them to get them churning out high valour toops with morale, armour and weapon upgrades. Sure, itll look like the enemy has more troops but theyre usually low morale, low valour, no upgraded peasants which are only good for your better troops to slaughter. Other provinces should only be build forts, border forts, mines ( if possible ) and as many farm upgrades makes sense - if its only giving you a crap return the money you spend on increasing that crap return by 80% is better spent increasing that 80% in a richer province.

Be very careful as to who you pick as your general - a general with good command can turn bad troops into average, average into unbeatable. A general who gives a morale penalty should be strongly avoided, keep them at home or just disband them.

Make sure your best general has the rank to trump a bad general - if your princes are lousy generals then keep them at home dealing with peasant revolts until they build up the experience to be good generals ( you should keep a low income province and do your best to provoke revolts there - no fort, very high taces, slaughter all rebels etc etc, Scotland for example )- theyll revolt almost continously but theyll be beaten very easily and theyll give your princes victores to increase their command, which will in turn lead to an overall improvement in the quality of the princes you get later.

On the strategic map diplomacy is fairly pointless really - allies will attack you without warning if youre not strong enough, so invest more in armies than being mates with everyone - the strategic AI is woeful really. Trade is hard to buildup but it should be your goal as its a real money spinner when youve got a navy to support it. Navies are great to have to move your troops around quickly whilst also stopping a lot of naval invasions. If you control the black sea, or the baltic sea then youll be very hard to beat.

Use your emissaries to go princess hunting - you need these marraiges to keep your kings dynasty producing good heairs or youll ened up with 6 toed, three eyed morons who enjoy their sisters company far too much. Princessess will keep saying, no, no,no,no,no,no,no and so on but eventually one of them will say yes. Its micromanagement but its neccessary for a strong dynasty. Along with Princes practising in rebellions you should be producing 4 star princes relatively soon along with the odd 7,8 or 9 star one too.

Oh yeah, use the skirmish battles to test out units and stuff - you can buy them equipment and valour so you can see for yourself how a better equiped unit will chew up a normal one and how units stack up against each other.

Go over to TotalWar.org and check out the forums, theres a lot of FAQs there which go into even more exhaustive detail about game tactics and strategies. Theres an online community which play battles against each other but I dont know anything about that - Im purely single player. The tactics i mention above work fine against the PC, against a real live player things are undoubtedly much more complicated.

Fionnan

Hey guys,
Its the best game out at the moment. Any Irish servers for multiplayer? Would love to play after my exams in 4 weeks.

Creon

Cheers for that lengthy reply sand it must have taken u a while, much appreciated.

Gangsta

Indeed Sand, big up!

Basically what I do is attack enemy units with units that they r weak against (Cavalry V. Spearmen etc.). What do u guys think?

gaelic cowboy

The best advice I think anyone could do is read the unit and newbie guides written by Frogbeastegg over on totalwar.org I have being playing totalwar since shogun and there is even stuff I keep finding out everday.
http://www.totalwar.org
By the way depending on what cavarly your using I wouldn't charge spearmen they get a bonus defending so it is not a good idea. Try flanking them to crash into their rear and pepper them with arrows or crossbows and maybe a gallowglass assult on there rear too

joshcork

Basically 4 units of best spearmen flanked either side by some good attacking units with some fast or heavy cavalry and archers at the rear of the spearmen.
Defending use cavalry archers far out to hound the enemy on their march up your hill and then lay into them with archers. they'll be finished even before they get to your spearmen but once the spearmen are engaged flank them with your attacking units and come in from the rear.
Fast eastern factions excell in these tactics western armies can't catch the cavalry archers and even if they try to catch them enemy will usually send a couple of units to attack (Sun Tzu "If they are uited, separate them") this way they are split up and vunerable. Either way you win.
In Attack the same principles of flanking apply but knowlege of the enemies strengths and weaknesses is essential since you the aggressor you decide what elements are in play( as best you can anyway). If they have lots of cavalry bring lots of spearmen if they have lots of spearmen bring archers to weaken them (since spearmen just don't die easily but properly persuaded they can be routed) then have your spearmen finish them off. As with ying yang there is an opposite to everything, some units may be very very tough but they will die if poked in the right direction.
in any action you take balance is the key the AI never has a balanced force in that they have many units that don't really cover their weaknesses(such as urban militia marginally usefull but get totally raped by missiles 3 vollies and their finished)
anyway more than anything from manuals and stats a feel for each units ability will be the key to victory