Medieval: Total War Unit & Tactics Guide

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Glossary AP: Armour piercing. These units get bonus attack the more armour an enemy unit has. At 3-4 armour they get +1 at 5-6 they get +2 and so on. Below 3 armour these units get no bonus so send them after the heavy troops. They are extremely useful for just about any faction fighting the heavily armoured Catholic factions. Counter Fire: Fire directed at missile units by a missile unit. Most missile units themselves have poor armour and are themselves easy prey for missiles. Flank: The sides of a unit. Charging into the flank is much more effective than charging directly into the front. It is also a verb meaning to flank a unit, i.e. going around their side. Focus Fire: Targeting all missiles at a particular unit, or group of units to weaken them. This is used to kill off dangerous melee units and reduce their number before they reach melee to do damage. HA: Horse Archers. Line Infantry, or just line: This is a generic term for any infantry than can take and hold the enemy and fight them in melee for a long time, thus forming your battle line. Most Line have solid melee and defence, enabling them to hang tough in melee for at least a while. It also means troops you’ll use to form the bulk of your army and thus your line. Spearmen and swordsmen are line infantry. Line infantry are usually well armed and armoured as they will be in the middle of the fighting. They will often take the most casualties as well. M2:TW: Medieval 2: Total War MTW: Medieval: Total War, the second game in the series. M2:TW is a the sequel to this game. Meatshield: aka “Chaff”, “Trash” or “Fodder”. These are cheap, easily replaced troops you use simply to hold the enemy in place so you can shoot them, flank them, get into an advantageous position with the non chaff, or use weapons that are inaccurate and may kill some of the fodder. You don’t care about these troops; they are just there to hold the enemy or tire them. Expect them to rout, take massive losses or both. You can just recruit more after the battle. The important part is your useful troops take less damage. Plain Spearmen, Urban Militia and Pikemen are examples of fodder. Peasants would be fodder if they could hold a line. Any kills the fodder gets are a bonus, they simply hold the enemy still. Skirmish: A unit firing missiles and staying out of melee by running backwards. Skirmish mode, which all missile units have makes them run back to avoid melee if the enemy gets close. Units with javelins are usually called skirmishers. VI: Viking Invasion. The expansion to MTW. Version Info 0.1: 29/10/11: Started guide. 1.0: 28/12/11: First completed version. 1.1: 6/7/24: And 13 years later I pick this thing back up to fix a bunch of stuff! Added Sherwood Foresters, added a bunch of info like what faction has each unit or what you need to do recruit them. Expanded on many tactics sections. Added more punctuation and lots of other fixes and improvements. First version uploaded to GameFaqs & Steam and likely the final one unless I get notified of errors. 1.1.1: 16/07/24: Added unit accuracy, range and reload times. 1.1.2: 23/05/25: First version on Steam! Minor typos fixes. Tactical Considerations Counters : In short: swordsmen counter spearmen, spearmen counter cavalry, heavy cavalry counter swordsmen, light cavalry somewhat counter swordsmen, heavy cavalry counter light cavalry, archers counter everything at a distance, especially horse archers, but lose to most anything up close. Javalinmen are very effective vs armour but have terrible range and so are countered by archers. Polearms counter cavalry and anything wearing armour. Axemen counter armour. Hills : Like in the later games hills convey a big bonus to missile attack and missile range and drastically aid melee units, raising charge and attack. Melee units fight much better downhill than uphill and it boosts morale, so always claim the highland if you can. Forests : Forests make great cover from missile fire; most of the arrows will hit trees instead. Firing out of a forest is nearly useless for the same reason. Cavalry get massive penalties when fighting in trees, so keep them far away from it unless you want them to die. Most units can hide in forests; making them invisible to the enemy until they get close enough. Charging out from concealment grants an ambush bonus. Bridges : Bridges are a massive pain to assault and a boon to defend. A bridge forces units crossing them into a tiny area and bottles them up into a dense mass, making them a perfect target for missiles from which they will take heavy losses. Units on bridges also get a penalty to attack as there is no space to fight properly, although this usually counts for the enemy as well since the AI often runs out onto the bridge to meet you. Units that must maintain a coherent formation to be effective, such as spearmen suffer the most; they are very easily disorganised and few ranks can get into melee at all. If you have to fight across a bridge you should have missiles ready to shoot the enemy as much as possible, you should lead with your heavily armoured troops to take missile fire and aim to win the battle on the bridge as quickly as possible. Once you have some space on the other side of the bridge you can run your other units across the bridge and set up on the other side. Avoid using spearmen unless you have to. Cross at every bridge on the map at the same time to force the enemy to split their force, expect very heavy causalities and bring a LOT of troops. Anti-cavalry missiles : All missiles from arrows to javelins are much more effective against cavalry. The horse is a big target and usually unarmoured, so any missile fire targeting cavalry will shred them quickly, even very tough units like the general’s bodyguard. Never leave cavalry in melee if there are archers firing and try to chase the archers with your cavalry. It is usually a sound tactic to pin the enemy cavalry with your infantry and then shower them with missiles. This is especially effective with crossbows. Armour A unit’s armour protects it from non AP attacks, including missiles. Well armoured units like Feudal Men-At-Arms are tough for units like archers or spearmen to kill; as their armour stops the foe’s attacks. Same armour swordsmen who do not piece armour take a long time to kill each other because of their mutual armour protection. Unarmoured units, such as javelinmen and peasants will die much more quickly and will fare a lot worse against enemies with a purely high attack, such as the aforementioned Men-At-Arms. Remember that your troop’s armour adds to the attack of opposing AP infantry so keep well armoured troops away from units like axemen or polearms. Use lighter troops or missiles on them. Armoured foes can shrug off high attack non AP troops more easily since their amour often protects them from the attack anyway. Armour also drastically reduces deaths from regular bows that do not pierce armour. Crossbows, longbows and especially firearms will pose a much greater threat however. Note that MTW doesn't have any units with 0 armour. 1 is the minimum and means the unit is unarmoured. Even Peasants have 1 armour. I guess the filth encrusting their clothing helps. Armour Piercing Armour piercing is handled differently in MTW than in the later games. Units with an AP attack include javelins and axemen among others. They get a bonus to their attack based on how much armour their enemy has; 1+ attack for each 2 points of armour starting at 3 armour. While this is insanely helpful and makes axemen very valuable troops it can’t substitute for large differences in skill. For example Vikings can put up a good fight against a unit like Gothic Foot Knights, killing quite a few of them because of their AP axes but they are unlikely to defeat them alone. There is a large difference in the cost of the units however and coupled with a flank attack or some spearmen taking the knight’s attack the Vikings should be able to slaughte