Total War: Medieval 2 is an old PC game Feral ported to Android and iOS mobile devices in 2022. A new generation of players is now enjoying all the thrills and spills of medieval battles on their smartphones and tablets. To complete campaigns in Total War: Medieval 2, you’ll need to win most of your battles one way or another. Although there’s an auto-resolve option for campaign battles, that’s not especially reliable for more evenly matched encounters. These Total War: Medieval 2 tips for battles will enable you to get better results on the battlefield.
Read also: 7 Handy Total War: Medieval 2 Cheats You Can Activate
Keep Your General Alive
What is your army without its general? It will often be a hopelessly routing hoard of men. Your general is vital to maintaining your army’s morale, which is crucial to winning a battle. Never throw your general into combat during the early stages of a battle, for losing him early on or in the middle of a scrap will often cost you dear.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you should never throw your general into melee combat. However, only do so when it’s clear you’ve won the battle. Use your general to mop up routing units or assist with finishing off remaining enemy divisions preventing the battle from ending.
A general division
Keep Your General Close to the Fighting
Although it is important to keep your general safe, don’t leave him too far away from the battle. Your army’s general has a +1 positive morale effect on units within 50 yards of him for each of his stars. For example, a four-star general will boost morale by +4 for his units within a 50-yard distance from him. However, his morale-boosting effect is half that for units more than 50 yards away. So, place your general just behind your front battle line to keep him close to the fighting and maximize his morale-boosting effect.
Eliminate Missile Divisions With Cavalry
Unprotected missile divisions are very vulnerable to cavalry attacks. One or two cavalry divisions combined will mow down missile units with ease. So, targeting missile units with your cavalry when the battle opens is an easy way to quickly rout some units, which will hurt the enemy army’s morale. Attacking missile units behind enemy lines can undermine their army’s morale even more and leave you in a position to strike other units from the rear.
Arquebusiers missile units
Keep Your Army Together
It’s important to keep your army together during a battle. This means keeping most of your units close together to prevent any from becoming isolated. If your army gets too dispersed, individual units in it can get outnumbered and surrounded by multiple enemy divisions. Units will inevitably rout more easily under such circumstances.
To keep your army together, don’t spread your army out all over the place and focus your attacks at specific points to overwhelm enemy units. Your army can also get dispersed when its units start chasing fleeing enemy divisions. So, stop units from chasing down routing divisions to keep them focused on enemies that are still fighting.
Heavy Cavalry fighting
Rout Divisions with the Hammer and Avil Battle Tactics
The hammer and anvil tactic (otherwise flanking) is one of the most tried and trusted methods for winning battles in Total War games. That involves pinning the enemy down with infantry attacks and hammering them from the rear or flank (side) with cavalry when they’re engaged in melee combat. Hitting enemy divisions pinned down in such a way with a cavalry group can devastate them.
To execute the hammer and anvil more efficiently, group and position most of your cavalry on the right or left side of your army’s line before the battle starts. They’ll be better placed to strike from the flank and get behind an enemy’s line. Grouping your cavalry into a single force will also increase the potency of their attacks, enabling them to overwhelm individual units.
Cavalry charging at a flanked infantry unit
However, executing the hammer and anvil tactic isn’t always so straightforward when the enemy also has cavalry. If you’re not careful, your cavalry can get caught in a hammer and anvil when you haven’t dealt with the enemy’s knights. It can sometimes be prudent to let the enemy’s cavalry attack infantry units (spearmen especially) to present opportunities for hitting them from the rear or side with your knights.
Remember the Rock, Paper, Scissors Battle Formula
There’s an element of rock, paper, and scissors to Total War battles when it comes to what units are most effective against. The cavalry beat swordsmen and missile units, missile units (when firing arrows) and swordsmen beat spearmen, and spearmen are most effective at combatting cavalry. That’s a basic rock, paper, scissors formula triangle to remember for fighting more effective battles in Total War: Medieval War 2. Order divisions to fight the unit types they’re more effective against.
Spearmen unit description
Bring Cannons Along For Large Fort Siege Battles
The largest fortresses have multiple walls and big tower defenses, which makes them tough to take without cannons. So, make sure you bring heavy gunpowder artillery along when attacking large fortresses, with which you can blow through gates and walls with relative ease. Utilize your cannons to blow down the towers beside fortress gates, which can inflict significant losses on approaching armies.
Identify and Kill the Enemy General
Identify what division includes the enemy army’s general at the start of a battle. That will often be a smaller cavalry division tucked up just behind the army, but it can sometimes be a different unit type. Then place a bullseye on that target to kill off the enemy general whenever a good opportunity to attack it arises. Killing (or routing) the general in the early to middle stages of a battle will often tip the fight in your favor so long as your army’s leader is okay.
Sometimes the enemy AI gets stupid (it often does on standard battle difficulty) and throws its general unit into combat shortly after the battle gets underway. In that scenario, killing a general nice and early with multiple divisions is straightforward. However, utilizing a cavalry group will often be your best bet for killing off a general division.
You’ll probably win most battles by sticking to those Total War: Medieval 2 tips. They’re not especially advanced battle tips, but they’ll be enough for defeating the enemy AI armies on standard to hard difficulties in balanced battles. Remember that morale is often crucial to determining the outcome of Total War: Medieval 2 battles, much the same as in Rome TW and other games of the series.
