Okay, I’ve been playing far too much Medieval Total War lately. It’s only my
first campaign and I started playing as the Italians mainly because:
- It didn’t seem too hard, or too easy
- Being English seemed
to easy, and too obvious - I had delusions of being able to start my
own in-game renaissance
So, having brought Italy from it’s
small beginnings to conquering most of Europe I have the following
advice
Don’t expand too quickly
I’ve made that mistake a
couple of times. As well as being difficult to manage, your much more likely
to have a rebellion occur when you’re already overstretched. The artificial
intelligence in Medieval Total War seems to keep an eye on how vulnerable
you are and will spring a surprise on you (e.g. an old faction re-emerging)
at the time you’d least like it to happen.
Occupy provinces for a
few years with a large force before moving on
It takes a while for a
region to settle down. It’s tempting once you’ve ‘broken through’ to go on
the rampage, but the provinces you leave behind will pretty soon revert to
their old ways
Don’t upset the Pope
In retrospect, I did
upset the Pope far too early in the game by attacking the Hungarians. It
meant he declared a crusade against me and then half the catholic world
declared war. I think there is probably a better way to use religion within
Total War than I have so far.
If you take over Rome, watch out for
the Pope
If you do upset the Pope then the best thing to do is
invade Rome and destroy the faction. That voids all excommunications and
crusades. The problem is, every few years there’ll be a really big rebellion
usually involving about 1000 highly trained troops. The good thing about
these is that the Pope usually makes a really bad general so the army is
often easy to rout. Which brings me to:
If you have to fight a large
force of knights…
…use plenty of missile power, and keep your
troops in formation.
It’s much better in this situation to be defending, so as soon as you see an
uprising fill the province with troops and try to fight it down in the same
turn it attacks. That way you can just occupy a hill position and rain
crossbow bolts and arrows down on the troops.
Don’t chase routing
troops
Unless you see the ‘The Enemy is fleeing the field’ message.
Reinforcements may be over the hill and being caught out of formation is
very bad.
Use the right troops
Spearmen or feudal seargants
are very good against cavalry, as long as the cavalry don’t attack from the
flank. The Medieval world is very vicious…
Watch out for the
Sicilians too
Despite invading and conquering Sicily there were a
number of resurgences of the Sicilian or rebel factions.
Build a lot
of ports and ships
As a Meditteranean nation, the Italians are often
fighting on a coastal region. If you have a string of ships and a port at
the start of the journey then you can move armies around the map almost
instantly.
This makes defending places like Rome and Sicily much easier. You should
still keep large armies in these places, though, as a deterrent.
Build ports in places that have a tendency to rebel
This
especially applies to Rome. It may be easy to push forces in from the
Meditteranean, but when things hot up you need to redeploy them equally as
quickly.
Build Royal Palaces
The Italians can train Royal
Knights. These are excellent against lesser trained troops. Remember not to
get them bogged down against spearmen especially, though. Charge in, then
charge out. During a battle, keep them on the flanks so they can run outside
the enemy and round the back.
Make the most of artillery when
defending
It’s not much use when you’re attacking, but for defending
a hilltop a couple of catapults can scare the shit out of most enemies.
Medieval peasants especially generally won’t be prepared for stones on their
heads.
Occupy the seas
Very important for the Italians, and
also good for trade. Try to maintain sea-going superiority. This gives
tremendous flexibility when attacking somewhere such as Spain.
Establish an Eastern border with some good castles
I’ve stopped
short of invading Poland so far and have some fairly big castles built up
along the border. So far, this has put them off any idea of invasion
Only fight one war at a time
As with Don’t expand too
quickly, if there’s too much going on then you’ll be seen as an
easy target. This can also be used to your advantage: weaken any of the
other medieval factions and a rebellion may pop up. This is especially
likely to happen if you manage to kill a faction leader.
Develop
Italian Infantry
You need to be quite technically advanced in terms
of castles and weaponry but Italian Infantry make very good fighters in
virtually any battle situation.
Go for technology over fast
growth
A well-trained force can often beat another army of double
its size.
My Italians have just fought off the Egyptians in a war with odds of 2-1.
Remember, there’s a limit on the number of soldiers on the field at any time
with Medieval Total War so you don’t need to fight them all of at once, just
one wave at a time
Keep an eye on archers’ ammo during battle
If you’re fighting a large battle with reinforcements available then
watch how your archers arrow stocks are going. If they’re low and there’s a
lull in the fighting then withdraw them and call on the reinforcements.
Harass footsoldiers with mounted crossbowmen
Just watch out for
any heavy cavalry around and get ready to withdraw them
Leave some
regions underdeveloped
Not ideal, but it’s better to spend the money
wisely in one area than to spread it too thinly. Some provinces are really
only any good for developing farmland. Tuscany, for example.
Concentrate on creating different warrior types in each province
E.g. Once an area is able to generate spearmen, try to make them better
spearmen. The next province can be given the task of making archers (for
instance) – give the region a speciality. This is especially useful where
you want to build shipyards as galleys take so long to construct; there’s no
point in being able to build every kind of troop in one region if the
throughput is low. Sometimes you may be under attack and need to build
hundreds of troops very quickly
Spread the generals around
It’s helpful to have a high (3 or more) star general near anywhere that
might start a war. That said, it’s also best to leave a provinces governor
at his home. Go for a combination of dread and acumen in governors and leave
the good generals free to fight the wars.
Merchants and trading
posts are most effective in port regions
And almost worthless
anywhere else.
Well, there you have it. The best collection of
Medieval Total War tips I can manage from my experiences so far.
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