Your Total War tactic

[Airsoftslayer93]

In medieval 2? play as spain, conquer the entire peninsula then take out france and morocco.
Invest heavily in cavalry, get a few units of heavy infantry, and a few units of archers, but mainly heavy cavalry. always try to flank and become familiar with the morale system, it's far more effective to rout than kill.

 

[Phishfood]

I quite like the basic archers in the rear, something tough up front, cavalry way off to the flanks.

Enemy charges my toughies while getting bombarded with arrows, and if they are too much for the front line they get cavalry up the bum. They don't like cavalry up the bum.

Overall?

TAKE ALL THE CITIES!!

 

[MurderousToaster]

I just like to play it as it comes. Just see how it goes and react to it, take some cities, murder whoever irritates me, you know, the usual.

I also pulled off some pretty impressive shit in Rome: Total War. A superior force of Gauls attacked one of my cities and I only had 3 stacks of Town Watch, a Triarii unit and my cavalry. I left one unit to hold them back and retreated to the city centre and set up the Town Watch and Triarii down the road they were charging to take the beatings while I charged back and forth with my cavalry. I won, and I felt so badass watching the Heavy Infantry, Heavy Cavalry and whatnot flee from my puny force.

 

[Shilefin]

My Tactic? Fuck shit up.

I'm sorry, i had to let my primitive joke making instincts take over here for a second. I can hardly provide any real tactic because i play Medieval 2 Total War Heavily Modded(Stainless Steel) and it changes alot of stuff. I mostly play with the Byzantine Empire, because they have some really sweet elite units, such as the Siphonatores, who are the guys with the greek-fire throwing, i don't know, 'machines'. They are nicely upgraded in Stainless Steel, to the point in which they actually fire the damn things. They are useful during battles, and invaluable during sieges.

My general tactic would be to either rush at the start or wait a little longer and build up your economy.

Also, a tip here, don't go to war with the Arabic countries unless you're already nicely expanded, because when they call the Jihad, and they will almost definetly if you fight with them for a while, stuff can get messy. It's like they use magic to spawn like 10 fully equipped armies near your capital.

 

[bauke67]

On my first playthrough as England, I fist defeated scotland, then started against France, halfway through France I got bored, and attacked the Hole Roman Empire, after that noone could beat me.
On the field, I just make a big group of heavy infantry and spearmen, then send my cavalry around the side and use them to spam the enemy to death, then I send in my infantry.
Victory.
I kind of neglect archers even though everyone seems to think they're so great.

 

[Ahomelessman]

Build up your starting cities and castles Train HUGE Armies . Then capture Cities or Castles and transform into cities then Build them Economically and use your Starting castles for reinforcements Should/when the get attacked. Now you will be in debt for several turns but when but when your cities are finished building up you will make 10-40k a turn or at least when i play

on to battle tactics

My armies are usually 6-8 Spearmen 4-6 heavy inf 2-4 archers/catapults and the rest heavy cav
And my army looks like this

cav Spearmen cav
heav inf
archers
Use the spears to hold the line and use the heavies to reinforce the spearmen if their getting butchered or to attack flankers and the cavalry to deal with archers/cavalry/generals and to smash into the back of the enemy army HEROIC VICTORY

 

[baddude1337]

on LOTR:TW as Easterlings, I basically stack up armies and attack Mordor from the rear if that counts. Awesome double-cross.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

So, I got Medieval 2: Total War from Steam when the Sega deal was on, and I'm loving it.

I was wondering about this though. What's everyone else's tactic in the Total War games?

Personally, I enjoy building up my armies and cities/castles while taking the rebel outposts surrounding me. Also, to make my lands safer, I killed Scotland as quickly as possible to prevent them from being a possible threat later on. As well as this, I took France in like 10 turns by just massing almost all my units on the coasts and started besieging all the coastal regions with at least two full armies.

I'm not sure where I'll go from here, possibly Spain or Germany.

I highly, highly recommend downloading the Stainless Steel mod for Medieval 2 and playing it over the vanilla game. You lose the eventual colonization of the Americas, but you gain significant complexity in the main body of the game. Stainless Steel also tends to be a little more difficult, and has some nice difficulty/AI options so you can tweak the AI to be a little less borderline personality.

If you want to play a diplomatic game and not immediately get bogged down in "Total War" (which can get tedious if you're playing out all the battles, not to mention it destroys your economy) I strongly recommend making as many trade pacts as you can as fast as you can, and ally with a good 5-6 factions as early as possible...ones you're not likely to go to war with any time soon (not your immediate neighbors, in other words) and ones that aren't likely to suck you into a lot of wars themselves (don't ally with Muslim factions if you're a Catholic, don't ally with Orthodox either, especially the Byzantines or Lithuania if you're playing Stainless Steel). The reason for this is you gain positive reputation every turn for each alliance, and negative reputation for each war. Get into 2-3 wars early without any allies, you end up with a terrible reputation, and then diplomacy becomes impossible and everyone is up your ass.

Other tactics are all pretty easy...the battlefield AI isn't really good enough to give you a serious challenge, and most of the things to do are just common sense. Using your cavalry as the hammer and your infantry as the anvil, for example. Don't over-rely on missile troops, either. In bad weather they're atrocious, and they get run over swiftly as the troop quality improves and heavily armored infantry takes the field.

 

[El Poncho]

Move my troops forward, ok take out their archers with hit and run cavalry send in to protect cavalry ...wait did I click it right? Shit I forgot to make the cavalry run away again! AH half my troops are half way across the battlefield I'm falling behind! Oh crap my archers are being attacked why didn't I notice AHHH.

Oh wait I'm on easy mode I win anyway! Wooo

 

[Ahomelessman]

Also in RTW if you as Carthage or Seleucid Empire you can be utterly undefeatable against non-phalanx armies thanks to elephants. Get 2 or three elephants any of the three types is fine and 2 or 3 Cavalry units (don't bother with Carthage's round shield cavalry worst cavalry unit in the game) to back them up. Simply charge your elephants with their cavalry close behind them and watch the enemy get annihilated.

 

[MisterMaster]

Rome Total War - just take heavy phalanxes, make a circle, put archers and onagers inside and wait for the victory sign to come up.

 

[Sewer Rat]

Can't until I beat them in the game, which I haven't yet, because I'm only on my first playthrough.

Or you can go into the games files and modify a few things, it's surprisingly simple and doesn't require high tech hacking skills. You just go into your steam directory, find Medieval II total war/data/worlds/maps/campaigns/imperial_campaign open the file descr_strat with notepad, find the info on unlockable factions, cut them out of unlockable, and paste them into playable. You can also play as the Papal States doing this. You may want to take the honest route and actually unlock them legally, but personally I think unlockable factions in this type of game is bullshit. Oh and if you do decide to do this, be sure to make a backup, just in case something goes wrong.
Now as per my tactics? I typically try to keep my border lands garrisoned and use agents like assassins to keep my enemies in check and eliminate potential threats. And pro tip, if you decide to join in a crusade and take Jerusalem.... Don't even bother trying to peacefully occupy it, it is not going to work. Jerusalem is easily the most temperamental province in the game. I cannot think of a way to pacify it without executing the populist, and even then they just get pissed off at you 10 turns later, so be sure to go in, execute, build as many buildings for local happiness as possible, and hope for the best.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

If you play as Scotland, here's my preferred army tactic: Sticky Pikes

Scotland has the best selection of pikemen in the early game, and once they get maxed out, their late era infantry are unstoppable.

Scottish Infantry aren't the absolute best in terms of performance, but my god, they make up for it by being cheaper. Highland Nobles are like a cheaper version of German Zweihanders, and they will make mincemeat of people they attack.

So here is the Strategy.

Get a row of Pikemen, preferably Noble Pikemen or Highland Pikemen.

Line them up and the field and place them in the Spear Wall formation with defense activated. Start moving them forward slowly until the AI commits to a charge.

Behind the Pike Wall, have a shit ton of Highland Nobles and mercenary crossbowmen. Scots don't get good archery units, so pick these guys up whenever you can.

Once the enemy commits to an attack, halt your Pikemen and let them sett up. Their pikes will keep the enemy at a distance, but they will still be locked in combat. Once they've locked in, send the Highland Nobles through the Pikemen and charge them. Watch the enemy start to crumble.

As the routs start, wait for a moment until a large portion of them break off, then send whatever cavalry you own around the flanks and hit them as they flee. This will kill a good chunk of the enemy, and free up your pikes and longswords to finish the rest of the enemy. Wheel your cavalry around and hit the remainder from behind and watch you get a heroic victory.

 

[Tharwen]

I've never really played against humans, but against the AI I find that the best way to take land is to simply punch through their borders, then charge into the lightly defended interior settlements with a single well-equipped and trained force. They tend to leave their armies hanging around outside the cities so you then have the advantage of holding their own walls against them.

As for the battles, it tends to come down to simple rock-paper-hill tactics.

 

[Knusper]

I always fight on the defensive - in terms of Rome and Medieval, that's a line of spearmen and heavy infantry right up in the corner with an onager behind them and archers just in front prepared to run back behind the line when cavalry get close, if I have missile cavalry, I'll use them to harass the enemy.

In terms of Empire, I simply have a thin red line of infantry, with a pucklegun in the middle and my second best infantry on the flanks and the best in the middle. Then, I have howitzers behind them and I send riflemen right out to plant stakes, engage the enemy and lure the cavalry onto the aforementioned stakes.

On Shogun II, I just do the same as on Medieval, except I'm too poor to have siege engines, so I have cavalry on the flank.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Here's a dirty Medieval 2 Trick. Want to attack a fellow Catholic City, but the pope threatens Excommunication? No worries. Just build up three Stacks of troops, plant them outside your target's main cities, and wait for the threat to run out of time.

Then? Blitzkrieg the shit out of them, take their cities, sack them, plant some city guards, and you've got three armies inside their borders pushing at their inner cities.

 

[The Funslinger]

I've only played Rome: Total War, but I'm a fan of getting cavalry around the back to kill their general and best units and then meeting whatever the've got left head on. This works best against phalanx-heavy armies.

I play Rome, too. One tactic I'm fond of is one my friend (annoyingly) calls the flank n'wank. Basically, I smash them with cavalry units (half on each side, to sort of sandwich their forces in) and bring in a column of men headed by spearmen, with swords backing to cut through the rich, meaty bottleneck. Being harried from three sides makes it hard to fight back, so I cut through to their general pretty fast. Of course, this means getting at least the enemy general into a position where I can do it. If possible, I round up the bulk of their army.

Captcha: cavalry. laxtie

Sounds weirdly appropriate...

 

[teqrevisited]

Total Annihilation. After a few games of having France backstab me (both politically and literally) with assassins and spies attempting to off my Generals and heirs to the throne I decided that nothing but complete destruction of any and all foreign powers would do.

In the Realtime battles, I favour heavy cavalry with pikeman & longbow support.

 

[veloper]

This one always works on the field:
Bring an equal number of cheap infantry regiments for every enemy regiment, then add some cavalry. Now you can always attack enemies from the rear, which is everything.

The foot only need to be strong enough to hold until the cavalry charges and does all the work. If no cavalry then flanking with additional foot can also do the trick.