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Captain Diarrhoea posted:What am I missing with merchants in M2/SS? When I park them on resources what little ability they started with always drops to zero and they get a load of bad traits. Literally one in ten will keep their ability and continue to generate a whopping 26 florins per turn or something like that until they die, or are eaten by one of the AIs super merchants. There was a kind of funny anomaly where every nation sent dozens of merchants into my barren Kingdom of Norway like it was the new USA for a while. Medieval 2 is not very good at telling you about merchants. Firstly, train merchants in your most developed towns. Merchants trained from cities without law-providing buildings have a higher chance of getting negative traits. If you get a merchant guild, train merchants from there since they'll get a bonus. You can keep your merchants safe if you park a military unit on top of a resource and have a merchant join them. This won't make any sense if the unit's upkeep costs more than the merchant generates, but you can stack multiple traders on top of the same resource that way. That'lle let them accumulate traits, and act as a honeypot to foreign merchants: you can out-compete the weakest ones and return to safety at the end of turn. Real money is made abroad, though, since traders get bonuses from that. Try sending your merchants all the way down to Timbuktu, where's gold to be traded. Alternatively, you can place your merchants on the Mediterranean islands: I haven't seen the computer ship its merchants around.
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Feb 14, 2013 22:28
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The main reason why you should join a crusade is to gain a foothold on the other side of the map where you can send your merchants to. Even crap resources will be highly profitable.
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Feb 15, 2013 01:16
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Merchants were a stupid idea, I hope they never come back. As for the Line of sight thing, it should make things interesting. Seems like the next step from what they were trying with the legendary setting having all units past a certain distance hidden (which was a terrible way to do it).Scouts are likely going to be more useful now, particularly with the larger battlefields.
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Feb 15, 2013 01:22
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Promontory posted:Medieval 2 is not very good at telling you about merchants. Thanks for the replies, I've had M2 for years and never had a loving clue about any of that. The true line of sight will add a great amount of depth for such an easy tweak, scouts will become a lot more than light cavalry. It might be over reaching but improving the system to accomodate infiltrators would be cool, and would mesh quite well.
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Feb 15, 2013 01:44
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I am playing shogun 2 and I like uesuegi but how do I kill my vassal and take over his sweet, sweet philosophy site without 1) letting someone else take it first or 2) getting everyone in the loving world -75 mad at me for attacking an ally and breaking two treaties at once? He's right in the middle of everything and he arrests my goddamn monks for no loving reason. "Very friendly" my dick!
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Feb 15, 2013 02:24
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Welp, got my butt thoroughly handed to me by Realm Divide. I spent too long on the strategy layer before getting started, so my fault there. Playing a short game, only decided to initiate it around 1567 or something, giving me so few turns. Just a few turns before that, I was trying to get my allies off the trading posts. While I have a few boats sitting beside one, pirates show up. I was thinking to myself that if I could do the full battle (I'm reinforcing), he could sink/route my ally's trade ships and I'd mop up. The fight was two medium bunes (pirates) against a medium and a sengoku. Maybe I should've hit autoresolve because it was slightly in my favour, because my medium got boarded and routed immediately and my sengoku bune got routed just as soon as she boarded another ship. So up until this point of the game, or a few years into realm divide, I had never actually really seen much of the Wako pirates, but holy poo poo, they came out of the woodwork. I had a few navies, but most of them were parked in the part around the Chosokabe island area to deter landing parties/raid some lanes. Here's the problem I have with navies in Vanilla S2: I don't have a drat clue how to use them, other than the basics of board to capture, set alight the rest. I understand the roles of most of the boats, but I guess a medium bune is just an all-around and can shoot/board just as well? The problem is that the "role" icon on ships tooltips doesn't actually change when you mouse over a new ship (if I start with a Fire bomb Kobaya, even the bow kobaya will say it's role is "bomb" rather than "bow/arrow"). It's also fairly confusing IMO as to why marines = archers/seamen = boarders, or maybe it's because I've been used to the Roman concept of marines boarding ships. I never bothered teching to get heavy bunes etc. (the penultimate naval tech in bushido). So should I have grabbed it sooner? Is there a way to actually play naval battles in vanilla or should I just stack good ships and hope autoresolve does the trick? It also doesn't seem like higher ports give +xp like higher infantry chain buildings do, so it feels fairly hopeless when I always encounter super high-ranked enemy navies. I also found cavalry are really fragile or whatnot, even sometimes with the armour bonuses. I know yari are probably best for charging/reforming/repeating, so any reason to actually build katana cav if they are just going to charge in and lose 60-70% of the men count against anything not currently engaged or anything except bow ashigaru? (the samurai seem to put up a decent fight). Infantry I seem to have a decent grasp with, but am I supposed to mostly forgo Yari Samurai for Naginata eventually? Also, are there any units that give better garrison repression bonuses like dragoons did in Empire, or should I just keep making yari ashigaru until I get some decent happiness? I think I actually overstretched when RD started. Provinces were easy since I'd march in a doomstack and autoresolve an assault and peacefully occupy, but I'd have to leave a season or two right after to keep pace. But not being able to deal with pirates really sucked for me, plus how do 2 doomstacks vs 2 doomstacks work in this game? I assume 20 unit limits so they'd have to reinforce one at a time right? I just autoresolved but that seem to have caused all my units to lose 30-50% of their count. I didn't actually 'lose' yet, but I can't find a way out of the red; looting just makes it worse (like even my core provinces are starting to revolt), so yeah. Maybe I'll give the campaign another spin. I think I understand the empire building mechanics a bit more now.
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Feb 15, 2013 04:59
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Sober posted:Welp, got my butt thoroughly handed to me by Realm Divide. I'm no expert on naval battles but I have some advice from my sessions in playing hard difficulty. Much more so in comparison to the land battles, naval battles are a lot about exploiting the AI. There are a few things the AI does that you can use to your advantage: 1. Keep your general behind your naval line and make sure he's never attacked. The AI will hunt down your general like a hawk if you leave him vulnerable. 2. This one is a little bit cheesy. When you're attacking and the AI is sitting back in line formation; send a fast ship to attack the side of his formation so some break off and chase you. At that point you're dividing his force and will have a much easier time. 3. If it's a smaller scale engagement you can have the enemy chase your ships. Then you will have to micro manage them in such a way that you slow down your ships to keep in archer range. As soon as you fire you speed up to keep him out of range of your ships. I'm not familiar with the problem you're having with the role of ships though. You're saying the Bow Kobaya has a bomb icon instead of an archery one? I remember the icons being very indicitive of their effective role. As far as boarding ships like the Sengoku Bunes and boarding, that can be a crapshoot because naval battles as is are a pain the way reinforcing them is tedious. Once you board with a ship you're almost always going to lose so many guys they'll be useless the next battle. Generally, I've found that boarding is only useful if you've already killed their general and have something that can kill their morale like the medium bune ability and a general with intimidation.
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Feb 15, 2013 05:29
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Sober posted:So up until this point of the game, or a few years into realm divide, I had never actually really seen much of the Wako pirates, but holy poo poo, they came out of the woodwork. I had a few navies, but most of them were parked in the part around the Chosokabe island area to deter landing parties/raid some lanes. It's strange that you hadn't had to fight them much before realm divide; wako pirates are incessant and relentless. They'll always be a thing, and they make holding the Kyushu trade points extremely difficult if you don't have a port on Kyushu to repair with or constantly send reinforcement fleets to replace your losses. Being able to wipe out the pirates in Empire for good was pretty silly, but also much appreciated  .There are, however, a couple of ways to make sea battles easier. Some people have reliable ways of fighting them in the battle screen, but I'll never understand them so here are the two major tips I can give: 1. take the black ship. It costs a thousand in upkeep but it can secure a whole straight all by its self indefinitely. You have to fight every battle manually which is a massive pain, but it is pretty impossible to lose or even take substantial damage with it. 2. and this is something I only realised the importance of recently- admirals. Seriously, dedicate a few generals to admiralship; you don't need more than a couple on land most of the time anyway. They drastically increase the chances you have in autoresolve, and drastically reduce the damage your ships will take. Sea battles have become much less frustrating now I use them regularly. quote:I also found cavalry are really fragile or whatnot, even sometimes with the armour bonuses. I know yari are probably best for charging/reforming/repeating, so any reason to actually build katana cav if they are just going to charge in and lose 60-70% of the men count against anything not currently engaged or anything except bow ashigaru? (the samurai seem to put up a decent fight). Some people swear by cavalry but I do not understand those people. Light cavalry are pretty essential for sniping generals and killing routers but I don't see why you ever need more than a couple at any one time. Yari cavalry have their uses if you want to do a hammer and anvil attack. Aside from those though ... bow and gun cavalry are good in a few situations but don't do anything that can't be done more effectively by other things, and katanas and the like are basically useless. At least according to me. I guess if you have more money than you know what to do with it be worth it to build fodder cavalry just to tie up their archers so your elite infantry don't take undue losses  quote:Infantry I seem to have a decent grasp with, but am I supposed to mostly forgo Yari Samurai for Naginata eventually? It depends on how you play; there are uses for yari samurai, but basically. Despite their description naginatas have no trouble ripping apart horses, which is one of the main reasons I think cavalry is so useless in this game. quote:Also, are there any units that give better garrison repression bonuses like dragoons did in Empire, or should I just keep making yari ashigaru until I get some decent happiness? Onna Bushi are the only unit with a repression bonus as far as I know, but they're not recruitable in the base game. Keep a couple of priests where you're expanding though, they're the best way of keeping provinces happy. Your metsuke can too but they should be squeezing money out of your heartland. quote:plus how do 2 doomstacks vs 2 doomstacks work in this game? I assume 20 unit limits so they'd have to reinforce one at a time right? I just autoresolved but that seem to have caused all my units to lose 30-50% of their count. It's a 40 unit limit per player, after that your units trickle in to replace losses.
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Feb 15, 2013 05:44
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WHy is it that none of my horse units are able to outrun charging yari ashigaru? Is there a button I'm not seeing that disables "dancing-clydesdale-trot speed mode" so they loving gallop out of danger, ever? Kind of silly.
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Feb 15, 2013 06:16
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Krinkle posted:WHy is it that none of my horse units are able to outrun charging yari ashigaru? Is there a button I'm not seeing that disables "dancing-clydesdale-trot speed mode" so they loving gallop out of danger, ever? Kind of silly. It's a few things. The first is that charging units get a 50% speed boost once they close into charge range and horses take time to get up to speed, so enemy units can close quicker than you think. The other is that if a single horseman is caught by a spearman, the unit will turn around and engage to defend their comrade. To tell them to leave stragglers to die, turn on "Guard Mode". Remember that unless you order the unit to attack, a unit on guard mode will only engage enemies that are next to the unit, rather than moving in to attack with the whole unit, which means they are much less combat effective.
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Feb 15, 2013 06:20
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Promontory posted:Medieval 2 is not very good at telling you about merchants. Firstly, train merchants in your most developed towns. Merchants trained from cities without law-providing buildings have a higher chance of getting negative traits. If you get a merchant guild, train merchants from there since they'll get a bonus. Fully upgraded merchant guilds are an easy way to get high level merchants that you don't have to sail halfway across the world to get experience. At first, I couldn't figure out how you were supposed to do that, but eventually I pieced it together. Early in the game, you'll want to pick your largest and fastest growing city (your capital is usually a safe bet). When the population increases enough for an upgrade, train a bunch of merchants while you're building the upgrade fortification. It doesn't matter where you train them, only that they get trained shortly before the city upgrade finishes. Try to avoid training any other types of agents during this time. The guild you are offered seems to depend on what agents you've recruited a lot of recently. Two more city upgrades and two more guild upgrades later, you'll get to the fully upgraded merchant guild (merchant headquarters? something like that) and you'll be able to recruit merchants that start at level 6-7, with occasional ones starting as high as 8 or 9. What you can even do is train a merchant every turn and only keep the ones that start out at the highest levels. Kill the weaker ones off by either sending them up against a high level foreign merchant or loading them onto a lovely boat and sinking it in a naval battle against a stronger enemy. This same basic strategy also works to get high level priests and assassins. And I guess spies, too, but I never cared too much about leveling up spies in Medieval 2.
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Feb 15, 2013 11:09
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There's always going "gently caress that noise" and using the tilda key. That's a slippery slope, though...
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Feb 15, 2013 11:33
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More screenshots of Teutoburg!   
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Feb 15, 2013 11:47
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This is gonna be one pretty game. why do you suck so bad, computer. whyy
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Feb 15, 2013 12:27
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That's it. My immersion is totally shattered. I see not a single prostitute, pack-mule or minstrel in those screenshots, and CA expect me to believe these are Varus' ill-fated legions? There's no way I can play this game until there's a campaign-wife DLC pack. 
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Feb 15, 2013 12:31
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The Germans are all very well and good but please, please can there be a recruitable Asterix & Obelix mercenary unit.
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Feb 15, 2013 12:39
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Captain Diarrhoea posted:The Germans are all very well and good but please, please can there be a recruitable Asterix & Obelix mercenary unit. I would buy the gently caress out of that DLC.
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Feb 15, 2013 12:57
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If they gave Obelix menhir throwing as his ranged attack I'll never need to buy another game.
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Feb 15, 2013 13:03
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Endman posted:That's it. My immersion is totally shattered. I see not a single prostitute, pack-mule or minstrel in those screenshots, and CA expect me to believe these are Varus' ill-fated legions? You say this in jest, but 30 seconds after the game is released there will be 20,000 very angry threads (and later, mods) about some mostly-unknown town in modern Poland being three pixels off on the campaign map from its real position for the three months existed before being burned down by Huns and re-founded elsewhere. Acute Grill fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Feb 15, 2013 |
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Feb 15, 2013 13:08
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So the sixth faction are the Suebi, so there probably won't be any Selucids.
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Feb 15, 2013 13:15
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Kalos posted:You say this in jest, but 30 seconds after the game is released there will be 20,000 very angry threads (and later, mods) about some mostly-unknown town in modern Poland being three pixels off on the campaign map from its real position for the three months existed before being burned down by Huns and re-founded elsewhere. This is why I steer clear of the TWC forums as much as possible. That and the incessant complaining about DLC and mod tools not being available immediately on release. Also, here's a charming photo of the newly announced faction:  That leaves two more spots that will (hopefully) be filled by Eastern factions.
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Feb 15, 2013 13:23
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Captain Diarrhoea posted:The Germans are all very well and good but please, please can there be a recruitable Asterix & Obelix mercenary unit. Only if they can send units into the air like the elephants in previous games.
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Feb 15, 2013 14:16
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I don't think we'll be seeing any "Eastern" factions, probably the eastern-most playable thing is gonna be Egypt.
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Feb 15, 2013 14:21
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Ham posted:I don't think we'll be seeing any "Eastern" factions, probably the eastern-most playable thing is gonna be Egypt. Parthia almost have to be in, seeing the importance they had to Rome and the unique roster they have.
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Feb 15, 2013 14:37
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Captain Diarrhoea posted:The Germans are all very well and good but please, please can there be a recruitable Asterix & Obelix mercenary unit.  
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Feb 15, 2013 14:38
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Sober posted:Here's the problem I have with navies in Vanilla S2: I don't have a drat clue how to use them, other than the basics of board to capture, set alight the rest. I'm starting to think that MAYBE one reason why people have trouble with naval battles is because they keep thinking of naval battles as being "shooting battles" like in Empire or Napoleon, where the point is to try and use firepower to disable the enemy. It isn't. Naval Japanese battles are essentially boarding battles. The whole point is to ram your samurai up against the enemy samurai and may the best samurai win. As such, to win a naval battle, you need to know your roles. Bunes are essentially your "line units" - their goal is to tie up enemy bunes, and victory ultimately depends on who held the line best. Kobayas, however, are your flankers - bunes endure, but kobayas are what wins your battles by breaking enemy morale. Your most basic fleet, and a fleet that can take on practically anything in the game without needing to upgrade, consists of a solid core of medium bunes and a few bow kobayas. You'll want at least 4-5 bunes to form your fighting core, preferably more, with 2-4 kobayas flanking (depending on the size of your fleet). In battle, your bunes are to identify the enemy bune closest to them and charge right at them to board. Your kobayas are to start off trying to skirmish and knock off the enemy kobayas, but if you're not certain about being able to wipe them out before the main clash, concentrate on keeping your kobayas alive. Once the main melee begins, this is where your kobayas shine. Target enemy bunes currently locked in battle with your own bunes, preferably ones which have been fighting for a little while, and then hit them with fire arrows - as many as you can get on target. This will ruin their morale, which gets further wrecked with the boarding action they're being hit with, driving them to surrender. Your bune is now free to provide supporting fire for your other engaged bunes, or else to take on a victorious enemy bune. Rinse and repeat until the snowball effect of supporting bunes proves too much for the enemy, and snaggle up a fat stack of captured enemy bunes to deal with as you please. Like I said earlier, you don't really NEED better ships than the starting ones, and I've gotten by fine myself without them. That being said, gun and bomb kobayas could, in theory, be better flankers thanks to their in-built ability to savage morale without relying on special abilities, while bigger bunes provide more marines to board with. Might be worth experimenting with, if you can afford them. Oh, and the sengoku bune is only useful for capturing fleeing ships. Never rely on one in the melee.
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Feb 15, 2013 14:52
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Ham posted:I don't think we'll be seeing any "Eastern" factions, probably the eastern-most playable thing is gonna be Egypt. I'm not talking East East here, but the first game's campaign map extended to just beyond Anatolia, touching on Western Iran. I think it's a reasonable assumption that this game's map will extend to the full reaches of the Roman Empire at its peak, and it would be strange if they didn't throw in a playable faction like Parthia at that edge. Then again, the factions are pretty packed on the Western side of the map already, so you never know.
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Feb 15, 2013 14:52
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Didn't they say somewhere they extended the map a little bit more east? would'nt make sense to not have a playable faction that far east. No celt-iberians pisses me off greatly, they put more of a fight than the iceni CA 
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Feb 15, 2013 15:18
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Tomn posted:I'm starting to think that MAYBE one reason why people have trouble with naval battles is because they keep thinking of naval battles as being "shooting battles" like in Empire or Napoleon, where the point is to try and use firepower to disable the enemy. It isn't. Naval Japanese battles are essentially boarding battles. The whole point is to ram your samurai up against the enemy samurai and may the best samurai win. Or the short version: Build the ships that have the best Auto-Resolve score. Naval battles are boring and terrible and should have never been added to Total War.
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Feb 15, 2013 15:37
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Kalos posted:Or the short version: Build the ships that have the best Auto-Resolve score. Naval battles are boring and terrible and should have never been added to Total War. Hey now, as it happens Napoleon is like the only relatively recent game that allows me to get my Hornblower fix. That alone makes them worth it.
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Feb 15, 2013 15:51
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Can't say I enjoyed the shogun 2 naval battles but I really did enjoy the Napoleon and Empire naval battles. Especially with some of the mods that made it so line ships took much longer to build, which added some actual consideration of what types of ship to make instead of just 'build doom stacks of 1st rates'. I'm interested to see how naval battles turn out in Rome. Maybe they will add some ramming ability which could be interesting.
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Feb 15, 2013 16:19
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Captain Beans posted:Can't say I enjoyed the shogun 2 naval battles but I really did enjoy the Napoleon and Empire naval battles. Especially with some of the mods that made it so line ships took much longer to build, which added some actual consideration of what types of ship to make instead of just 'build doom stacks of 1st rates'. The werid thing is that they have said that they will divide in the ships in squadrons, hopefully this means that it just gives you more ships while you can still control each ship individually.
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Feb 15, 2013 16:37
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Endman posted:That's it. My immersion is totally shattered. I see not a single prostitute, pack-mule or minstrel in those screenshots, and CA expect me to believe these are Varus' ill-fated legions? I'm actually wondering why they don't add any sort of civilians fleeing in the chaos of sieges and village battles. This would be an awesome thing to witness as you pillage enemy country-sides and assault their cities.  It's sometimes boring to see a battle in this massive empty city between these 2 groups of guys in some distinct corner.
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Feb 15, 2013 17:29
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Imapanda posted:I'm actually wondering why they don't add any sort of civilians fleeing in the chaos of sieges and village battles. o god my system requirements
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Feb 15, 2013 19:09
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Tomn posted:o god my system requirements Didn't they actually say they were sort of adding that with the Carthage stuff or am I misremembering? Graffiti and people throwing rocks from rooftops and stuff.
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Feb 15, 2013 19:16
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I didn't enjoy regular Shogun 2 naval battles but FoTS were pretty entertaining when you figured out that the front facing cannon on your kotetsu was the best gun in the game and could 1 shot basically any ship.
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Feb 15, 2013 19:22
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Shogun 2 Naval Battles are kind of boring because of the boarding system is pretty much click, wait and hope morale is good. I loved (tweaked) Naval Battles from the gun powder era games.
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Feb 15, 2013 21:07
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Endman posted:This is why I steer clear of the TWC forums as much as possible. That and the incessant complaining about DLC and mod tools not being available immediately on release.
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Feb 15, 2013 21:13
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Yeah Empire and Napoleon had fun naval battles because there was a mix of gunnery and boarding action and there was always a legitimate reason to take the risk of trying to capture a ship (prize money). Shogun's naval battles really just consist of mass boarding actions where you hope you brought more bunes than the enemy did. FotS is even worse, it just consists of a couple of rounds of shooting and then the side with less research done into explosive shells loses. e: Rome 2 has potential to do it well though; give people a choice between catapult bombardments, boarding actions and ramming attacks. Ships can vary between nippy triremes and behemoth quinqueremes.
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Feb 15, 2013 21:19
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Alchenar posted:e: Rome 2 has potential to do it well though; give people a choice between catapult bombardments, boarding actions and ramming attacks. Ships can vary between nippy triremes and behemoth quinqueremes. It's period inaccurate but greek fire ships would be wonderful. Maybe as the ultimate ship technology.
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Feb 15, 2013 21:31
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