9 BEGINNER TIPS FOR MEDIEVAL II

EDIT: Upon reading some comments and playing another round of M2TW, I can say that my tip of setting low taxes isn't always the best advice. Some settlements can grow too fast due to this.

Here's some help for anyone new to Medieval II: Total War. Pretty basic tips, nothing fancy here, no finessing or magic tricks. Just plain old basic advice to keep these backstabbing bastards from taking your shit.

[gerardogorospe]

Me: “as a seasoned veteran why am I even watching this.”

Also me 30 seconds in: “wtf how did I not know this”

[madma]

Several years of playing this game and I didn’t know that having inns and brothels gave your general negative traits. I just thought standing in one citie just gave them bad traits like lazy.

While I knew the rest of the tips you showed off it was still an entertaining video!

[OriginalGazGoose]

Or if you have enough money, just pay the Church a generous "donation".
You'll quickly turn from the Pope's favorite punching bag to their best friend.

[corndogrequiem]

I really love the fact TWM2 is getting attention after all these years! I really want a 3rd, but I'm a bit worried about how it will probably turn out...

[addochandra]

Another useful tip is you can disband a few units in a safe area, then recruit them somewhere needed. It's a lot faster than move them and you will saving money (in the long run). I mean the game allows player to recruit >1 unit per turn, better make use of it. Btw nice video, have a good day...

[christopherwebber]

The No. 1 tip for inexperienced players is that you don't have to pay salaries of garrison units in towns. You can tell which ones they are by the colour of their icon, but basically, they are units that can only be built in towns - you have to use peasants to garrison castles, they are the cheapest to pay. Note that all agent units except merchants have a salary that has to be paid every turn, so don't use too many assassins, spies, or diplomats. Diplomats can be loss makers unless made to pay back their salaries by selling map information to all and sundry.

[hellshing]

Another fair point. If you're going to charge an enemy general's unit, ALWAYS charge from the left. Doesn't matter what sort of gymnastics you need to do. The general will always be on the left. If it's an infantry man, a heavy cav charge can one shot him as soon as contact happens. And even if you don't kill him instantly, the fact is, you will put him on the first line of the fight which will kill him more quickly.

This also works for Rome Total War but on the right side.

[dimo]

Hi, love the video. All of your tips were great even as a TW2 veteran, just one i have to disagre with is low taxes. You should always put evrything on very high taxes, exactly because of the lower growth. Since that means its easier to deal with squalor, also the income difference is huge. If you have around 5 settlements and put alll of them on very high vs low you can see a around ~3000 or more difference(thats a extra army).
And the last one you were wrong about was that you get better traits, you do actually get worse traits. I know this since i am a modder for the games and have seen the files, in fact there are around 3 really powerful traits (more taxes, less contruction cost and less squalor) that can only trigger if you have very high taxes and the settlements i at disullusioned happinies(blue).
A cool extra tip i could give that no one uses is, convert Castles to Cities it does cost you a little bit. But Cities are so much more profitable than castle and you dont need half of your settlements to be castles to have a lot of good armies.

[urosmarjanovic]

If you don't have assassins and enemy agents are swarming you, you can always use your military units to encircle them so they don't have a map square to retreat and then move one more unit to their place. They die instantly. Very very useful hack.

[daarom]

Tip: create a band of 15-16 groups of archers and 4-5 groups of heavy infantry. Infiltrate enemy territory and position them somewhere on a river crossing (ideally) or bridge. Then just wait for the enemy to throw their forces at you and slaughter them at the crossing.

Another tip is to just run a group of cavalry far into enemy territory. AI will send all their troops to that place and meanwhile you just take their cities.

[micshaz]

if you desire the enemy generals head,
just remember - snake in the bed.
Shang Tsung Art of War.

[James-thoo]

Trade rights with everyone isn't actually a good idea. There's a wonky mechanic where if you have trade rights with someone, but you are unable to trade (because you don't border them over land and don't have a port, or enough trade fleets even if you have a port), you are considered to be a treaty breaker. This affects the relationship with the nation you are trading with, and POSSIBLY (not too sure) affects your global reputation as well.

One tactic that I use personally is that I convert a lot of the base settlements into towns. A lot of the base settlements are castles but in reality, you only need 1 castle for every 3 or so towns, and the castles need to be placed at strategic points of your territory (i.e. 1 castle in the middle of your empire, and the rest on borders or choke points). Good example being Byzantines, because Smyrna, Rhodes, Nicosia (Cyprus) and Corinth are all right next to each other and are castles. Smyrna and Rhodes should be turned into towns, Corinth is a good primary military base for your entire empire, and Nicosia is a good strategic castle for the Levant region. Northern Germany also has like 5 castles that border each other.

[TheBourbonWrench]

exceptionally well done video, hit me in the nostalgia feels

[jeroenwubbels]

Bonus tip: when Jihading or crusading, get as many armies involved when u are about to be succesfull, u'll get a nice xp bonus
2nd bonus tip, reinforce from similar unit with most xp and sent the understrength unit back for retraining, u'll keep the xp and spread xp over greener units
secret tip; When playing as Russia, get all units and characters at Petrograd and hire a for Scotland (wut!?)
U'll never survive the mongols at 1st and you can start of from a safe corner of the map. With woodsmen and spearmen u can take all of brittania easily and the pope can shove it since u are orthodox
With Turks u can do the same, declare a Jihad on Spain or Portugal and relocate to Iberia ( movement bonus), then take over Moors and North Africa and get monopoly on all trades there

[RockyX]

This is less of an issue in Medieval 2 since they fixed Squalor by capping it to -100 (rather than in Rome where the squalor penalty was UNCAPPED, something they didn't fix until Medieval 2). But you want to set the taxes as high as possible to avoid growth to avoid the annoying Squalor PO penalty.

[masterofthedeathwing]

my fav tip, if you put a row of spikes behind a gate, it will kill half of the cavalry that runs over them,
put in a second line of spikes right behind the first, and it will get 99% of the cavalry that runs over them

[HappyCupsInc]

Tip for giving governors good traits: keep the taxes low, until the turn before a building completes. Then set the tax rate as high as possible while still keeping blue or better public order. After the building is built, go back to low taxes. This avoids getting the "bad with taxes" traits, and I think gives other good ones as well.

[voidghost]

Not bad advice, just one or two things about the assasins: 1) killing merchants isn't such a good idea - you should use your own merchants to take them out. This increases their skill (and gives you money), and a merchant parked at a good resource can make you even 1000 gc a turn ( with skill 10+). The further the resource from your capital the better it pays and allied teritory pays better then enemy teritory. The best are gold, ivory and spices. 2) Even when your assasin succedes, the target can get info that it was you. 3) Trying to marry princesses is a good way to make aliances and get a clame on a foraign throne (if their royal line dies and you have good relations, you will get at least part of their teritory) so you might not want to kill them. 4) Heretics and witches can be killed by your priests. This is again better, because the priests get skill. Still, if you don't have a priest arround the area, but you do have an assasin it's probably better not to wait.

[TheFixten]

A seasoned veteran I should admit, my dear sir, you got me with the very first point. I shall be ashamed of all the dirty brothels I brought my commanders to

[bryanx]

Trade Rights... In the Stainless Steel mod (not sure about vanillia) If you can't actively trade with the other faction from shared borders or sea route this will be considered " unfulfilled trade agreements" and your relationship will worsen. Also, if you declare war on a country that you had trade rights with this will lower the relations other nations (this is considered back stabby)

So you should only seek Trade Rights with countries that you can actively trade with and have no intention on declaring war.