Sega MEDIEVAL II TOTAL WAR User Manual

OUT NOW on PC/MAC coming soon on PSP & Xbox 360

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© Sports Interactive Limited 2006. Published by SEGA Publishing Europe Limited. Developed by Sports Interactive Limited. SEGA and the SEGA logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of SEGACorporation. Football Manager, Sports

Interactive and the Sports Interactive Logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Sports Interactive. All other

Medieval II: Total War Key code:

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MAN-S037-AU

SEGA PC DISC – NOTES ON USE

HEALTH ISSUES

Use this software in a well-lit room, staying a good distance away from the monitor or TV screen to not overtax your eyes. Take breaks of 10 to 20 minutes every hour, and do not play when you are tired or short on sleep. Prolonged use or playing too close to the monitor or television screen may cause a decline in visual acuity.

In rare instances, stimulation from strong light or flashing when staring at a monitor or television screen can cause temporary muscular convulsions or loss of consciousness for some people. If you experience any of these symptoms, consult a doctor before playing this game. If you experience any dizziness, nausea, or motion-sickness while playing this game, stop the game immediately. Consult a doctor when any discomfort continues.

PRODUCT CARE

Handle the game discs with care to prevent scratches or dirt on either side of the discs. Do not bend the discs or enlarge their centre holes.

Clean the discs with a soft cloth, such as a lens cleaning cloth. Wipe lightly, moving in a radial pattern outward from the centre hole towards the edge. Never clean the discs with paint thinner, benzene, or other harsh chemicals.

Do not write or attach labels to either side of the discs.

Store the discs in their original case after playing. Do not store the discs in a hot or humid location.

The

Medieval II

Please do not play the discs on an ordinary CD player, as this may damage the

game discs contain software for use on a personal computer.

headphones or speakers.

* Also read the manual on your personal computer.

* The game discs may not be used for rental business.

* Unauthorized copying of this manual is prohibited.

* Unauthorized copying and reverse engineering of this software is prohibited.

MAN-S038-AU

Published by SEGA Publishing Europe Limited. SEGA and the SEGA Logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of SEGA Corporation.

CONTENTS

HAIL COMMANDER! WELCOME TO MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

INSTALLATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

How to Install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Installation Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

STARTING MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The Main Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Single Player Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Multiplayer Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Load Game Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Options Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

HELP, ADVICE & THE TUTORIAL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Learning How to Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

The Tutorial – ‘Hands On’ Lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Your Advisors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Receiving Advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Advice Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Asking for Advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Using Help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

CAMPAIGNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

The Grand Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Starting a Grand Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

PLAYING THE GRAND CAMPAIGN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

How to Win a Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

The Campaign Map View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Moving the View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The Control Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The Review Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The Mini-map Panel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Starting Play - Your First Turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Before Ending Your First Turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

EVENTS & MISSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

What are Events? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Your First Event Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Who Gives Missions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Mission Rewards & Penalties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Faction & World Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Historical Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

CHARACTERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

The Characters of Medieval II: Total War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Viewing Character Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Military Class Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Generals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Captains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Admirals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Agent Class Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Priests/Imams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Diplomats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Princesses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Spies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Assassins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Merchants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Character Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Improving Your Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Traits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Retinue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

USING ARMIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Total War Armies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Who Commands in Battle? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Unit Types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Forming Armies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Moving Armies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Merging Armies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Splitting Armies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Merging Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Unit Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Hiring Mercenaries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Building Forts & Watchtowers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Picking Your Ground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Setting an Ambush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Attacking with an Army . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Using Reinforcements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Multiple Attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

USING FLEETS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Total War Fleets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Who Commands in Naval Battles? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Moving Fleets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Using Fleets as Transports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Merging & Splitting Fleets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Attacking with a Fleet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Blockading Ports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Trouble at Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

RUNNING SETTLEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

What do Settlements do? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

How Do I Manage a Settlement? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Settlements on the Campaign Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

The Settlement Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Understanding Cities & Castles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Castles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

The Governor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Constructing Buildings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

The Building Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Repairing Buildings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Recruiting Units, Ships & Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

The Unit Information Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Recruitment Buildings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Retraining & Upgrading Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Upgrading Armour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Armour Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Upgrading Weapons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Weapon Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

The Guilds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Faction-Specific Buildings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

The Settlement Details Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

The Trade Scroll & Trade Resources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Converting Settlements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

City Upgrading & Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Castle Upgrading & Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

USING AGENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Using Merchants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Using Priests & Imams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Using Spies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Using Assassins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Using Diplomats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Using Princesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

RELIGION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Religion in Medieval II: Total War. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Spreading Your Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

The Pope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Excommunication & Reconciliation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

The Papal States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

The College of Cardinals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Papal Elections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Election Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Special Religious Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

CRUSADES & JIHADS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Crusades. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Requesting Crusades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Joining or Leaving a Crusade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Crusading Army Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Ending Crusades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Jihads. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

DIPLOMACY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

The Diplomacy Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Demeanour – Reading Their Reaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Making Proposals & Declarations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Proposal Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

Proposal Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

MANAGING YOUR EMPIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

The Faction Overview Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

The Diplomacy Overview Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

The Family Tree Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

New Family Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

The Faction Rankings Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

The Rosters Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Your Job as Faction Leader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

How to Make Money . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Rebellion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

How to Deal with Loyalty & Rebellion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

BATTLES IN MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

How Battles Work in Total War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

The Battle Deployment Scroll . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Attackers & Defenders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

How to Win Battles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Deploying your Units for Battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Placing Units During Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

The Battle View & HUD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

The Battlefield View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

The Battle Control Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

The Battle Review Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

States & Effects on Units in Battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

The Battle Mini-map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

The Battle Cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Morale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Routing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Factors that Reduce Your Morale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Factors that Increase Your Morale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Ways to Attack the Enemy’s Morale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Fatigue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Giving Orders – Moving & Attacking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Multiple Selections, Grouping & Formations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Selecting & Ordering Multiple Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Using AI Assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Using Formations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Attacking other Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Using Special Abilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Taking Prisoners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Battle Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Prisoner Ransoms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

SIEGES & SIEGE BATTLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Launching a Siege . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Victory in Siege Battles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Using Siege Equipment & Artillery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Capturing Walls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Defending in Siege Battles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Sally Battles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Using Defensive Fortifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

HISTORICAL BATTLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Playing a Historical Battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Winning a Historical Battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

CUSTOM BATTLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Choosing Conditions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Customise Battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

Selecting Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

MULTIPLAYER BATTLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Setting up a Multiplayer Battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

The Multiplayer Lobby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Using Chat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Hosting a Multiplayer Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

CREDITS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

HAIL COMMANDER! WELCOME TO MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR!

Medieval II: Total War is a truly epic strategy game that puts you in charge of one of the powers of the middle ages, allowing you to lead your soldiers on the field of battle, as well as plan the expansion of your empire across the Old World. Unlike most other strategy games, Total War games separate the action of battle from managing your empire’s affairs. These are the battle and campaign sides of the game respectively. Medieval II: Total War offers the complete warfare experience, with realistic battle mechanics and historical accuracy. You will need to master the same tactics that actual field commanders used in real combat situations, and you will do it with exactly the same sorts of troops, armour and weapons that took to the field of battle in the middle ages. This is the time of great leaders such as Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. This is the time of noble knights, mighty castles, acts of chivalry, religious crusades and deadly treachery. This is your time to conquer the world!

INSTALLATION

Requirements

Please make sure your computer system uses either Windows XP or Windows 2000. Medieval II: Total War is not compatible with earlier versions of Windows, or non-Windows operating systems. Medieval II: Total War also requires the latest DirectX 9.0c compatible drivers for your DVD drive, sound card and video card to operate at its best. If you have any problems running the program, older sound or video drivers are the most likely cause.

How to Install

• Before installing, close all other applications.

• Insert Medieval II: Total War DVD 1 into your DVD drive. If you have Autoplay enabled, the

title screen will display shortly after inserting the DVD into your drive. If Autoplay is not enabled, simply launch the game installer. On the title screen installation process and then follow the on-screen instructions.

• After Medieval II: Total War is installed, your computer will install Microsoft DirectX 9.0c

drivers (if you do not already have them). When DirectX installation is complete, you may need to restart your computer for the new drivers to take effect. For more information on DirectX 9.0c, see the relevant Help file.

• Now you can run Medieval II: Total War from the Start menu or by DVD title screen. Please note that the game requires you to have a Medieval II: Total War DVD in your DVD Drive at all times in order to play the game.

double-click

on My Computer and then

click

the Install button to begin the

double-click

clicking

on your DVD Drive to

Play on the

Installation Key

Your copy of the game came with an installation code, which should be located inside the case. When you install the game you will need to type in this key. Your installation key is unique and without this key, you will not be able to play the game. Please enter the key exactly as it appears on the case. Keep your installation key safe and private - do not give it to anyone else as this may impair your ability to play multiplayer games.

STARTING MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR

The Main Menu

• Single Player – This will take you to the SINGLE PLAYER MENU from which you can start a Grand Campaign, Custom Battle, Quick Battle or play a Historical Battle.

• Continue Campaign – This will automatically load your last saved campaign game/auto-save and allow you to continue your conquest.

• Multiplayer – Accesses all of the multiplayer modes available. For detailed instructions on getting started with multiplayer, see the Multiplayer Battles section of this manual.

• Load Game – Allows you to load saved campaigns, custom battles and battle replay movies.

• Options – Adjusts the options available for Video, Audio and Game Controls.

• Quit – Exit Medieval II: Total War and return to Windows

Any options that you cannot currently access will be 'greyed-out' until you can use them. To quickly quit the game hit the ESC key on your keyboard.

Single Player Menu

• Tutorial – The recommended way to start playing Medieval II: Total War! This will guide you through how to play the game.

• Grand Campaign – This begins your epic conquest of the Old World as the ruler of one of the great powers of the Middle Ages.

• Custom Battle – Fight the battles you want to fight, the way you want to fight them. Choose the place, the conditions, the rules, the armies and create your dream battle scenarios.

• Quick Battle – Instantly teleports you to a battlefield and a pre-assembled army awaiting your command. You must adapt your tactics to the troops you have been given to become victorious.

• Historical Battle – This gives you a chance to relive the greatest battles of the medieval era. An opportunity to prove that you yourself could have defeated the superior French army at the Battle of Agincourt.

Clicking

on the ‘Back’ button located in the bottom left corner takes you back to the main

menu. This option will be available in many of the menu pages. Alternatively, you can press the ESC key on your keyboard.

Multiplayer Menu

• Online Battles – With an internet connection in place, you will be able to test your skill against other aspiring strategists across the world using the GameSpy

engine.

• LAN Battles – ‘Local Area Network’, will allow you to battle your friends across a LAN connection. All users will need a copy of Medieval II: Total War on their computer.

• Player Name – This is your game name/call-sign that is displayed within LAN and Online battles.

• Email Address – This acts as your register to play online and across a LAN.

• Password – For a secure gaming experience your password is used to protect your account, this stops other players from using your account online or across a LAN.

DO NOT give out your password, it should be kept private!

www.totalwar.com

• Visit downloads, and links to our user forums.

– Here you’ll find information, hints and tips for your game,

Load Game Menu

• Load Campaign – This will load any saved games that you have made while playing in the Grand Campaign. This will also include your auto-saves that are created at the end of your last turn.

• Load Custom Battle – This allows you to load your saved preset custom battles and your last quick battle. You are able to save your settings for custom battles when setting them up in the custom battles menu.

• Load Battle Replay – Loading replays will allow you to watch your victories or defeats. While viewing your replay file you are unable to affect units in the battle but you are able to speed up and slow down the battle. This is a great way to learn from your mistakes or savour your victories.

Save games can be made throughout different parts of the game. Campaign save games can

be created while on the campaign map. Battle replays can be made at the end of each battle. Custom battles have more saving options that will be explained in a later section of this manual.

Options Menu

• Video Settings – This contains all your game settings in regards to your graphics and overall look of the game, for advanced visual options Options’ icon under Graphical Quality.

• Audio Settings – This contains all your sound settings. Use the sliders to adjust the various sound levels in the game.

• Keyboard Settings – This lists all the game shortcut keys for the camera, battles, campaigns and other miscellaneous controls. To save/load your new keys ‘Load/Save Settings’ button. If you want to revert back to the game default keys the ‘Restore Default Settings’ button.

• Game Settings – Use the sliders to adjust your in-game camera movement speed - left being slower and right faster. This menu also contains an adjustment for your game unit size, which increases or decreases the amount of units your armies have on the battlefield. Another feature allows the user to play with minimal UI to view more of the battlefield.

• View The Credits – This will present you with the list of the fine men and women that made this game.

Some ‘Video’ and ‘Audio’ settings will be able to be changed via the in-game options panel. This is accessible by pressing the ESC key and choosing the relevant menu option.

click

on the ‘Show Advanced

click

on the

click

HELP, ADVICE & THE TUTORIAL

Learning How to Play Medieval II: Total War provides a very deep strategy experience with countless options.

To ensure that you can focus on ruling your empire rather than reading this manual repeatedly, there are three features to explain how things work:

• The Tutorial

• Your Advisors

• Help Buttons

The Tutorial – ‘Hands On’ Lessons

The first option in the Single Player Menu takes you to the Medieval II: Total War Tutorials – The Norman Conquest, a Prologue that comes in two parts. Starting off is the ‘Battle of Hastings’ where you will receive lessons on how to fight battles in Medieval II: Total War. Then secondly, ‘The Norman Conquest’ where you will receive hands-on lessons on how to control your empire in a campaign including two siege tutorials, one for a city and one for a castle. It is very strongly advised that you play through both parts of the Tutorial before starting to play a Grand Campaign.

Your Advisors

Like any medieval king or sultan, as the ruler of a vast realm you will have advisors to assist you through your reign in Medieval II: Total War. Since there are very different skills to master on the battlefield compared to planning your strategies across the campaign map, you have two different advisors to assist you:

• Sir Robert is your trusty battle mentor. He will give you advice on how to use the battle controls and, more importantly, alert you to situations that arise in battle that require your attention. Listening to Sir Robert is a sure step on the path to victory.

• Lady Gwendolyn is your voice of wisdom when controlling your faction on the campaign map. She can advise you about settlements, recruitment, your empire, diplomacy, religion and anything else you deal with in the strategic side of Medieval II: Total War.

Receiving Advice

When an advisor has something important to tell you, their portrait will appear on a small panel in the top left corner of the screen. The message will also appear as text in a speech bubble beside their portrait. Sometimes at the end of that speech bubble is a checkbox – to avoid hearing advice on that topic again in future. You can reset all the advice being blocked in the Game Settings, by hitting the ESC key during the campaign.

The controls that surround the advisor’s portrait are:

The magnifying glass button will show you the location that is relevant to the advice being offered.

Click

on this button to have the advisor demonstrate how to carry out an action in

the game. They’ll take you through a step-by-step process so you can see how a part of the game works.

This Advisor Speech & Text button toggles between offering advice as speech & text, text only, or speech only.

The X button dismisses an advisor, closing the Advisor Panel. The panel will return when new advice is being brought to your attention.

Advice Preferences

You can adjust the amount of advice you receive before starting a Grand Campaign or during a campaign in the Game Options. You will find these settings when starting a Grand Campaign.

• Turn Advice Off - Stop the advisors from appearing on screen at all. The only exception is when you actually request help or advice.

• Only Vital Info – Your advisors will only give you warnings and vital status updates.

• Get Me Started - Your advisors will give you enough help to play the game, but give you room for your own experimentation.

• Tell Me Everything – Your advisors will provide detailed instructions and explanations of most aspects of the game as you play.

Asking for Advice

The Settlement Scroll has an icon of the advisor that you can receive a construction or recruitment suggestion. If you are unsure of what to recruit or build next in a settlement, you can for help. The advice given will be determined by whether the player has selected the Construction Panel or the Recruitment Panel.

Using Help

Throughout Medieval II: Total War you’ll see a ‘?’ button on scrolls and information

panels, typically in the top-right corner.

about the relevant part of the game – This help will arrive via your advisor.

click

on this button

Click

on this to bring up help information

click

on it if you wish

CAMPAIGNS

The Grand Campaign

The Grand Campaign is the ‘main game’ of Medieval II: Total War, where you not only lead your armies into battle, but also manage an entire empire. These two things are handled quite separately – You take your time planning where to send armies, and managing the affairs in your realm. However on the field of battle, you need to react swiftly and decisively to any threats or opportunities. Your overall goal in the Grand Campaign is to lead your people to become the most dominant empire in the world, seeking to control a huge area of land, and either have control of a certain region, or outlive a particular opposing faction. Victory in the Grand Campaign is a truly epic achievement – they generally take days, or even weeks to complete.

Starting a Grand Campaign

From the Main Menu, select Single Player, then select Grand Campaign. Before you start playing, you must select a faction. This is also where you decide on any special settings you’d like for this particular campaign. Once you’ve adjusted the settings for the campaign you are about to play, corner of the screen to begin!

The campaign settings & options include:

• Campaign Rules: Choose between short and long

• Advice Level: Determines amount of advice given in the campaign.

• Difficulty: The higher the difficulty the more effective AI controlled factions are,

• Battle Difficulty: The higher the difficulty, the more effective AI controlled opponents

• Manage All Cities: Selecting this will allow you to manage cities without having a

• No Battle Time Limit: Selecting this will remove the time limit from campaign battles.

• Show CPU Moves: Selecting this will track the movement of armies and characters

click

on the ‘Next’ button in the bottom-right

victory conditions. Conditions vary, from faction to faction.

and the more other factions will take offence to diplomatic transgressions.

are in battle.

governor in residence.

visible to the player during the CPU factions’ turns.

PLAYING THE GRAND CAMPAIGN

How to Win a Campaign

Your main goal in the Grand Campaign is to expand your empire by conquering regions of land, either near or far. Your secondary goal will be either to take control of a certain settlement, or ensure a certain faction is utterly wiped out. That secondary goal will depend upon whether or not you selected to play a long (standard) or short campaign. Let’s look at understanding what’s in front of you at the start of the campaign to get you on the road to conquering the world!

The Campaign Map View

The first time you play the Grand Campaign, your campaign advisor Lady Gwendolyn will give you a tour of your lands, and show you some ideal targets to think about striking at first. After her tour, you will have control of the campaign map view yourself, and this is your basic window to the world in Medieval II: Total War. You will see that the campaign map has all sorts of climates and terrain types over it, and that the lands are divided into different regions, marked out by borders. The colours of the borders show you which faction controls the land either side.

These are the following things you will see around the campaign map as you play Medieval II: Total War:

• Settlements. These appear as either cities or castles on the map, with a name plate.

The amount of filled colour on the banner above the settlement indicates the power of the force garrisoned within it.

• Armies. These appear as a military figure with a banner above them. The amount of

filled colour of the banner above the army indicates its overall power. Command stars beside an army represent the experience of the General leading it.

• Agents. These include all the non-military character types such as Spies, Assassins,

Priests, Merchants, Diplomats and Princesses. Some types of agent are only ever controlled by the CPU, such as Heretics, Witches and Inquisitors.

• Resources. Around the map you will see various trade resources out in the countryside.

These show what goods can be exported from the region they are in, and also where Merchants can stand to earn trade bonuses.

• Sea-Crossing Points. At various points around the map there are green arrows that

represent points land-based armies can cross without a fleet.

• Dark Areas. These represents areas of the map that your faction cannot see, due to not

having a character close enough to show who or what is there. The completely black areas are totally uncharted.

Moving the View

You can move your view of the campaign map the following ways:

• Move the mouse cursor to the edge of the screen to move the view in that direction.

• Use either the arrow keys or the 1, 2, 3 & 5 keys on your numeric keypad to move the

view in the appropriate ‘compass point’ direction.

• Use your mouse wheel (or + & - keys if no mouse wheel present) to zoom the view in

and out.

Click

on the mini-map (bottom left of screen) to instantly move the view to that

•

location in the world.

You can also get more information about what you see in the area you’re viewing by:

• Mousing-over a character or object to receive more information on it in a pop-up

tooltip.

• Right-click-and-hold over the map without a unit or settlement selected to get

confirmation of what sort terrain is at the cursor’s position.

The Control Panel

In the bottom right of the screen you will find the Control Panel – This is where the basic controls and information for the campaign can be accessed.

Click

• Faction Shield button.

faction, your relations with other factions, and if you’re playing as a Catholic faction, information on the Pope.

• Selection Information & buttons. The currently selected army,

settlement or character will have its name displayed here. the buttons either side of the information to cycle through selectable settlements and characters.

• End Turn button. it shows the current turn number.

• Construction button. scroll with its construction options. outside of a settlement to build a fort, or a watchtower.

• Recruit button. its recruitment options. settlement to hire mercenaries.

• Finances button. while the number beneath it shows your current treasury amount.

Click

on this to open a panel that has information on your

Click

on this button to end your turn, while the number beneath

Click

on this when a settlement is selected to open up a

on this when a settlement is selected to open a scroll with

Click

on this to bring up your faction’s Financial Details Scroll,

Click

on this with a General selected

on this with a General selected outside of a

The Review Panel

In the middle of the bottom of the screen you will find the Review Panel – This is where you can see what units, buildings, agents and fleets are in a given location. This is where you will transfer units in and out of your armies.

At the top of the panel you will see the Review Panel Tabs:

• Army/Navy Tab.

or settlement. Rightfaction’s armies.

• City Tab.

click

• Agents Tab.

army or settlement. faction’s agents.

• Fleets Tab.

Click

to see what units are in the currently selected army/navy

click

to open up the Military Forces Roster to list all of your

Click

to see what buildings are in the currently selected settlement.

to open up the Settlements Roster to list all of your faction’s cities and castles.

Click

to see what non-military characters are in the currently selected

Right-click

Click

to see what ships are in the currently selected fleet or settlement.

to open up the Agents Roster to list all of your

Right-

The Review Panel Display Area is the large area below the tabs. This display area changes based upon which of the tabs you have selected. For example, if you have the ‘Army’ Tab selected, you will see military units. If you have the ‘City’ tab selected, you will see the buildings within a settlement.

The main way to use the review panel area is to get an Information Scroll on that unit, building or character.

The Mini-map Panel In the bottom left of the screen you will find the Mini-map Panel – This is where you can quickly look to see what faction

owns each region that your own faction can presently see. It also plays home to the Missions button.

Click

• + and - buttons. the mini-map display in or out accordingly.

• Missions button. will find a record of all current missions your faction is undertaking (see below).

• The Mini-map. that location.

Starting Play - Your First Turn

The part of Medieval II: Total War that is played on the campaign map is turn-based – simply meaning that each faction in the game takes turns moving its armies and managing its settlements and affairs. This means you can take as long as you like to plan out your moves on the campaign map, there is no time limit at all.

Each turn you will usually do the following things (all detailed in later sections of the manual):

• Check your event messages

• Move armies and fleets, and attack with them

• Move agents, use their skills where appropriate

• Recruit units in settlements

• Select buildings to construct in settlements

• Check that your settlements are free of problems

• Work towards completing a mission

You will also sometimes have the need to do other things like:

• Engage in diplomacy with other factions

• Hire mercenaries outside of a settlement

• Upgrade the armour or weapons of your units

• Repair buildings and retrain units

• Combat Heresy

Before Ending Your First Turn

There are lots of things you can do, even in the first turn of the game. Details on all of your options are covered in the following sections of the manual, but here is a quick overview of wise things to do before considering hitting the End Turn button:

• Look for idle armies and agents that you may wish to put to use this turn. You can do

this quickly by using the selection buttons on your Control Panel.

• Check for settlements that have an empty construction queue or recruitment queue.

You can do this quickly on the Settlement Roster Scroll.

• Look for foreign armies and agents that could threaten your settlements or armies, and

ensure that you are prepared for what they might do.

on these two buttons to zoom

Click

on this button to open up the Missions Scroll. There you

Click

on the panel to centre the campaign map view on

right-click

on any card in the panel area to

EVENTS & MISSIONS

What are Events?

In Medieval II: Total War, events are reports of something happening within your faction, or news from around the world. These events arrive as square icons that drop down the left side of the main display area, which you then could be anything from information about a declaration of war, news on a natural disaster or announcements of royal weddings. There are literally hundreds of events in Medieval II: Total War to face as a ruler in the medieval era.

To use event icons:

Click

to open an event icon to see the full description of whatever has

• happened.

Right-click

•

Your First Event and Mission

The first event icon that appears when you start a campaign is a mission –

That mission will be given to you by your Council of Nobles to take control of a nearby Rebel settlement within a certain number of turns. All missions have a time limit.

Important Tip: Completing missions is always optional. However ignoring them means failing them, and sometimes there is some sort of penalty for failure. You can always check on your current missions by the corner of the Mini-map Panel to view the Missions Scroll.

Who Gives Missions?

Missions can come to you from several sources, and they may vary in importance to how you’re managing your faction.

The sources of Missions are:

• Council of Nobles. These missions are essentially advice from the nobility of your realm as to what they believe would be in the best interests of your people.

• Guilds. Guilds are essentially trade powers and knightly orders that will interact with your faction throughout the game, depending on what you build and promote in your realm. Their missions will typically involve their ‘trade’.

• The Pope. Catholic factions will receive orders from the Pope. As you would expect, he takes your success or failure in the missions he gives personally.

• Faction Heirs: You may be approached by the successor to another faction’s throne, asking that you help speed up his ascension to power by killing his current Faction Leader!

Mission Rewards & Penalties

When you complete a mission, there is always a reward that comes with it. Not all missions have a penalty for failure, but any mission that does will have the penalties detailed in the Missions Scroll. It is always wise for you to assess what the rewards or penalties will mean for your current plans for your faction, and what effort will be required to complete the mission. If something happens that would prevent you from being able to complete the mission, it will be cancelled – this does not count as failure.

Rewards may include things such as:

• A financial reward

• A bonus unit

• Improved relations with another faction

on an event icon to dismiss it.

click

on to get the full message – Which

clicking

on the Missions button in

Penalties may include things such as:

• Excommunication from the Catholic Church

• Having an Inquisitor sent to your lands

• A deterioration of relations with another faction

Faction & World Events

Most messages are going to be reports about things that have happened in your faction, such as what units were recruited, what buildings were completed, family members that died, or a mission to undertake. You will also receive news of diplomatic happenings, such as declarations of war, or an announcement that some foreign power has become the richest kingdom in the World. Reading these messages will help ensure that you are aware of things going on both within your borders, and far beyond them as well.

Historical Events

Sometimes a message will be about a discovery in the world, or an event that heralds new possibilities or problems. An example would be the discovery of gunpowder, which is arguably the most important advance in the history of military technology. Some historical events will just prove to be amusing, interesting or terrifying, but ensure that you read these messages to be informed of new opportunities that arise as the game progresses.

CHARACTERS

Every figure seen on the campaign map is a ‘character’, and they fall into two basic classes: military characters and agents. Using these characters will be explained in the Using Armies and Using Agents sections of this manual, but here you will learn their role, and how to read information on a specific character.

Viewing Character Information

When you campaign map, or Review Panel, this calls up a scroll that has information on the selected character. Here you can access all the key information about this individual.

The Character Information Panel details shown include:

• Name: The character’s name, which may alter

• Age: The character’s age in years. Nobody lives forever.

• Character Class: This shows what type of character it is.

• Attributes: The names of the attributes are listed on the left, with the meters to

• Retinue: The personal followers and items that go wherever the character does.

• Traits: Traits can be everything from physical characteristics, through to a representation

Military Class Characters

These are the characters that appear as soldiers, or ships on the campaign map. Their use is covered in Using Armies.

double-click

depending on their title, or an epithet they are known by.

the right filling with images as the attribute is increased. More on attributes below.

These affect the character’s attributes.

of experiences and natural abilities. These can be positive or negative, and they affect the character’s attributes.

Generals

Available to: All factions Role: Commands armies and governs settlements Generals are the most important characters in your faction, as they are the only ones who can recruit mercenaries, build field structures and govern settlements. They also have a positive effect on troops being led into battle. The way you use them will greatly

on any character on the

right-click

on their card in the

determine what sort of leaders they will become, and what their strengths and weaknesses will be. Generals that weren’t bribed to join your faction are considered to be a part of your ‘Family Tree’ and can become successors to the throne of your empire.

Captains

Available to: All factions Role: Temporary commander When an army has no General a Captain from within one of its units will step forward to lead the army. Captains do not earn traits from accomplishments in battle unless they are promoted to a General – something that may be offered to you during play. Armies led by a Captain are more prone to bribery from foreign Diplomats.

Admirals

Available to: All factions Role: Naval commander An Admiral commands a fleet of ships into battle, and can develop their combat ability in the same way that a General can – by winning battles. They cannot govern a settlement like a General, they are a purely naval commander.

Agent Class Characters

These characters are specialists that perform tasks away from the battlefield. Mastering their use can help to ensure that aspects of your faction’s workings such as religion, trade and diplomacy all run smoothly.

Priests / Imams

Available to: All factions Role: Preaching and Denouncing Priests and Imams are religious men who ensure that their people’s faith is spread throughout their lands. They are also the only characters aside from assassins that are capable of dealing with heretics, except they perform a heresy trial, rather than a physical attack.

Diplomats

Available to: All factions Role: Diplomacy Diplomats are refined men who are sent to negotiate with foreign dignitaries. Although Princesses can also enter diplomacy, only a Diplomat can attempt to bribe a foreign army, settlement or character, and are thus extremely useful for wealthy factions.

Princesses

Available to: Catholic and Orthodox factions Role: Marriage and Diplomacy A Princess is a member of the ruling family of her faction, whose main ability is to marry a General. This can be as part of a marriage alliance to a Faction Heir, an attempt to ‘steal’ a foreign General or to marry someone within her own faction. She can represent her people as a Diplomat.

Spies

Available to: All factions Role: Espionage and Propaganda Spies are intelligence operatives that are capable of moving undetected by foreign forces. Their main task is to infiltrate foreign settlements, where they will report on the buildings and garrison behind the walls. When within an enemy settlement, Spies inspire unrest in the population, and may also be able to help disable wall defences. Finally, spies are also the most effective character at spotting other hidden agents.

Assassins

Available to: All factions Role: Elimination and Sabotage Assassins are similar to spies in that they have a good chance of moving and operating undetected, except that their job is to directly target a person or building for elimination. Assassination attempts are considered an act of war.

Merchants

Available to: All factions Merchants are men who serve your people by travelling to far off lands to find resources and establish a lucrative trade route back to your capital. Merchants can attempt to put a foreign merchant out of business – however this does not count as an act of war, nor does entering foreign lands.

Character Attributes

The attributes shown on the Character Information Panel are your most direct means to assess your characters’ weaknesses.

Command

Used by: Generals and Admirals This is a measure of a General’s ability to lead troops in battle and the higher his Command rating, the better the morale of his troops and the greater his ability to rally his troops who are routing (see Routing).

Piety

Used by: Priests/Imams and Generals This shows how devout a character is seen to be. For Generals this affects the happiness of settlements he governs, and also his chances of surviving an inquisition. For priests, it affects how effectively they convert the populace to their religion, as well as their chances of denouncing a Heretic or Witch.

Chivalry / Dread

Used by: Generals This shows how honourable or dishonourable this man’s actions in both rule and war may be. Letting prisoners go free, showing bravery in battle and abstaining from taxing the people harshly are examples of chivalrous behaviour. Executing prisoners, exterminating large numbers of people and ruling oppressively are examples of dreadful behaviour. Dread generals can cause fear to inspire a morale penalty in their enemies, while chivalrous generals can inspire a morale boost in their own troops. Chivalry and dread also have an effect upon the population of a settlement governed by a General with either attribute.

Loyalty

Used by: Generals This shows how seriously this character honours their role of servitude. During the course of Medieval II: Total War there will be numerous situations that will test the loyalty of your Generals, and the higher this attribute, the more likely they shall honour their pledge to you.

Authority

Used by: Faction Leader This shows the amount of respect commanded by a Faction Leader. A Faction Leader with high Authority is more likely to retain the loyalty of his Generals, while a leader with low authority is more likely to face rebellion.

Charm

Used by: Princesses This shows how effective this woman is at swaying those she deals with. The higher a

princess’s Charm, the more effective she is in diplomacy, and the more likely she will be to successfully convince a General to marry into her family.

Influence

Used by: Diplomats This shows how effective this man is at convincing others to accept diplomatic proposals during negotiations. The higher a Diplomat’s Influence rating, the more effective is his diplomacy.

Subterfuge

Used by: Spies and Assassins This shows how effective this man is at performing acts of stealth and espionage. For Spies it affects their ability to infiltrate an enemy army or foreign settlement undetected. It also determines how much unrest they cause via propaganda once behind the walls, as well as their chances of opening the gates in a siege. For Assassins it effects their ability to successfully eliminate a target marked for assassination or sabotage. Both Spies and Assassins use Subterfuge to remain unseen from other characters, as well as spot hidden foreign agents.

Finance

Used by: Merchants This shows how efficient this man is with money and trade. It affects a Merchant’s ability to acquire a foreign merchant’s assets, and also the amount of income generated from standing on a trade resource.

Improving Your Characters

As your characters do things in the campaign, they will begin to develop traits and gain followers as they either succeed or fail. Sometimes they will develop traits just as a result of sitting around, or being in a certain environment. With both logic and observation, you should be able to see a connection between what you do with your characters, and what sort of traits that they develop. Leave a General in a town with a big tavern forever and he’ll eventually turn to drink. However, pro-active behaviour is the way to develop positive traits and gain more useful followers.

There are literally hundreds of things that can lead to receiving traits, followers and items. Here are some examples of them:

• Hereditary traits, both through bloodline, and also the parents’ beliefs.

• The outcome of a battle

• Personal involvement in battle

• Getting married

• Succeeding or failing at agent missions

• How you have Governors manage their settlements

• Completing certain missions

• Building certain buildings

• The environment the character lives in

Traits

Traits can come in several different forms. It is important not to think of these as abilities earned but side effects of the character’s life up until this point. Your involvement with your characters’ traits comes in making decisions as to where they will be, and what they will do. If your characters develop negative traits, the best way to deal with them is to either acknowledge it as a weakness of the character, or attempt to redeem themselves with positive actions.

Examples of types of Traits:

• Physical characteristics

• Personal beliefs

• Leadership styles

• Experience in an activity

• Insanities

• Fears and hates

Retinue

A characters retinue is their entourage of followers, as well as their personal belongings that they keep with them on their journeys. Some of your followers and items can be transferred from one character to another by the portrait of another character. Of course, there are some items that characters will not part with, and there are followers who simply will not be told who they will accompany.

clicking

on the item or individual, and dragging them onto

USING ARMIES

Total War Armies

Your armies are your primary weapon in the Medieval II: Total War campaign. Each army contains 1-20 military units that move and fight together. When you select an army on the campaign map, you will immediately see what units it contains in the Review Panel.

Things to know about armies on the campaign map:

Click

on an army on the campaign map to select the entire army.

•

• Any gold stars to the left of the army show the Command rating of the general in charge (0-10); the more stars, the better the General is at leading in battle.

• The banner colour and symbol shows the owning faction.

• The darker colour that ‘fills’ the banner from the bottom shows the strength of the army. The stronger the army: the more of the banner will be filled from the bottom.

• There are certain things that armies led by a Captain cannot do. Only armies led by a general can hire mercenaries and build fortifications.

Who Commands in Battle?

The commander of an army is determined by the following rules:

• The General with the highest Command rating is the commander.

• The only exception is when the Faction Leader is present, he is always the commander, regardless of his Command rating.

• The commanding General’s unit card will be marked with a gold star.

We will cover commanding armies in battle in Medieval II: Total War Battles – this section covers forming armies, and using them in the campaign map.

Unit Types

There are several different classes of unit on the battlefield, and it is vital to understand the basic role that they play. Some types of unit are very effective against other types. It is best to know this before you begin recruiting units.

The basic types are:

• Light Infantry. These are troops who are lightly armed and armoured, and are best used in support roles to attack or defend in unison, rather than be used in an important position in a front line.

• Heavy Infantry. These are troops who are heavily armed and/or armoured and are generally good at engaging other infantry.

• Spears. These troops are specialised infantry armed with lengthy pole-mounted weapons that are ideally suited to forming a defensive line, especially against cavalry. Their role makes them vulnerable to missiles.

• Missile. These are troops who are armed with ranged weapons that can strike enemy targets at a distance. They are usually very vulnerable in hand-to-hand combat.

• Light Cavalry. These are mounted troops who are somewhat lightly armed and armoured, but extremely swift and mobile. They are excellent at chasing down routing enemies, but poor against spears.

• Heavy Cavalry. These are mounted troops who are well armed and armoured, and used as a strong, fast attacking force. They are poor against spears.

• Missile Cavalry. These are mounted troops who are armed with ranged weapons such as bows. They are generally poor at melee combat but can hit and run, making difficult targets.

• Artillery. These are mobile war machines or cannons that can be used as powerful ranged weapons on both enemy troops and settlement walls and defences. They are poor at defending themselves and typically require defending infantry to protect them.

Forming Armies

To form an army, you need to either recruit new troops in a settlement, or hire mercenaries with a general outside of a settlement. Troops can be pulled together from multiple places and merged together to form a larger, more capable army.

Tips on how to have a balanced army:

• Always try to have a mix of infantry, spears, missiles and cavalry. This will ensure you have a unit to counter whatever the enemy sends at you.

• When first building an army, start with infantry. Most missile, cavalry and artillery units are poor at standing their ground without help.

Tips on how to produce an army for a special purpose:

• If you’re creating a siege army, include artillery units capable of destroying walls. This is more reliable than building siege equipment during siege.

• If you’re creating a defensive garrison, missile units are extremely effective from walls and can be defended with little infantry.

• If you’re looking to capture prisoners, ensure you have multiple cavalry units to make chasing down routers easier.

Moving Armies

Select an army by some involving attacking or merging with other armies:

clicking

on it. Once selected, there are numerous ways to move the army,

• The highlighted area shows every place in the game world that the army can move during the current turn. All actions (moves and attacks) cost movement points, and as these are used the distance an army can move for the remainder of the turn will reduce.

Right-click

• the proposed route for the army.

Right-click-and-drag

• changes.

Right-click

• will change into a sword to show that an attack is possible. Attacking a neutral army or settlement is a declaration of war on that faction. See Battles in Medieval II: Total War to learn about how to command in battles.

Right-click

• selected army into the stationary one. There are further details about merging armies that are covered below.

Right-click

• with the settlement garrison (if any). The army will move into the settlement, and if the army has a General and the settlement doesn’t have a Governor, then the General will be automatically appointed as the new Governor. See the Running Settlements section for more information.

• Red highlighted areas are in enemy zones of control, which means that they are adjacent to an enemy army. Movement in red highlighted zones is restricted. Armies cannot move directly between red spaces on the map. They must move away from their enemies (or neutral armies) before marching back into contact.

Right-click

• order. The route will be shown as normal, except with a multi-coloured line,

on the spot where you want an army to go. A large arrow will show

to show the route changing for an army as its destination

on an enemy or neutral army or settlement to attack it. The cursor

on another of your faction’s armies (not an ally!) to merge the

on a friendly settlement (not an allied settlement) to merge the army

beyond the green highlighted area, to set a multi-turn movement

with each colour representing one turn’s movement. The army will move as ordered unless its path is blocked, or is given new orders.

• Armies that can move no further will have no highlighted zone around them when selected. They will kneel to show their resting state.

• Armies are also shown as kneeling figures when they are hidden in woodland terrain and ready to ambush any passing enemies.

Merging Armies

Move an army onto another friendly (same faction) army or settlement to merge the two forces. It may be useful to merge units before attempting to merge two armies. You can’t merge units at the same time as merging armies.

• The general with the highest Command rating is always in charge of a merged army. When an army led by a Captain is merged with a General’s army, the Captain is reduced to the ranks and disappears.

• If fewer than 20 units in total (in both armies) are involved, then the merging process is completely automatic.

If there are more than 20 units (total, in both armies) involved in the merging, then the Merge Armies Scroll will appear.

• Select the units in either army that you wish to move to the other army. You can make multiple selections holding down the CTRL key as you

• Some units may be greyed out. These have already moved as far as they are able this turn, and therefore cannot move (merge) to another army.

Click

on the transfer arrow button in the middle of the scroll once you’re happy with

• the army compositions. You can also drag-and-drop units between the two armies on this scroll.

• Once you are happy with the merged armies, hand corner of the scroll.

Splitting Armies

There will be times when you need to take some units out of a large army or garrison, and send them elsewhere – This is splitting armies.

• Select the units you wish to move using their unit cards in the Review Panel in the centre of the Control Panel at the bottom of the screen.

• You can use the SHIFT and CTRL keys while selecting to make multiple selections. Hold down the CTRL key and all the units of that type.

• Move the cursor to the spot you want the selected units to go, then them to move there.

• You can also drag-and-drop the selected units from the review panel to an appropriate location in the game world.

• In both cases, the new army that is breaking away from the original one will appear next to the force it is leaving and march to the new location.

Merging Units

After battles, there is a strong chance that you will have taken some casualties, and not all of your units will have their full compliment of men in them. Even if a unit has only a few men remaining, it will still take up one of your 20 unit slots, and may be too small to engage effectively anymore. To deal with this, you can merge two units of the same type together.

Click-and-drag

• men in the unit being dropped are added to the target unit.

one unit onto another in the Review Panel, and the two will merge. The

double-click

on a unit card in the review panel to select

click

on the ‘tick’ button in the lower right

Right-click

to order

• The dragged unit may vanish if all its men are used in this way. Any ‘spare’ men remain in their original unit.

• You can auto-merge depleted units in an army by pressing the M key.

Important Tip: Be aware that the experience rating of the two units being merged will be averaged out in the process.

Unit Experience The number and colour of the chevrons on the unit card in the Review Panel show unit experience. A unit with experience can be relied on in combat, and will usually beat an

otherwise identical unit. Chevrons can also be gained by units under Generals with high Command values, or as a result of good training facilities (buildings).

• No chevrons indicate that the unit has little or no battle experience.

• Bronze chevrons show that the unit has some experience in battle.

• Silver chevrons show that the unit has much battle experience, and is composed of highly experienced soldiers.

• Gold chevrons show that the unit is full of veterans of field warfare who can always be relied upon.

Hiring Mercenaries

An army led by a general can hire mercenaries when outside of a settlement. Using mercenaries can be somewhat expensive, however they offer you immediate support away from a friendly base.

Click

on the Recruit Mercenaries button in the Control Panel (it replaces the Unit Training

button that shows when a settlement is selected). When there are no mercenaries available the button is greyed out.

• This brings up the Army Details Scroll, showing the General and the list of

available mercenaries.

Click

on any mercenary unit to select it and add it to the ‘queue’ of

• mercenaries to be hired. You can deselect a mercenary unit for hiring by

clicking

on it once again.

•

Right-click

Click

•

on a mercenary to bring up details about the unit.

on the ‘Hire all queued units’ button at the bottom of the scroll.

Things that affect what sort of mercenary units are available:

• The region of the world the general is in.

• Recruiting on the coasts allows the hiring of mercenary fleets.

• Being on a Crusade or Jihad - some units will only join a general on a religious cause.

Building Forts & Watchtowers

Only an army under the command of a general can build watchtowers and/or forts. When this is not possible this button is greyed out.

Clicking

•

• Watchtowers are permanent structures that you can erect in your lands to give

• Forts require a garrison to remain in play. If it is empty and does not have a

• Forts do not actually belong to any faction. If one faction constructs a fort and

•A general can build as many watchtowers and/or forts as you want in a single

on the Construction button brings up the Field Construction Scroll.

From here you can select either a Watchtower or a Fort - Each has a cost associated with it.

your faction a better view of incoming foreign armies and characters.

garrison at the end of any turn it will fall into disrepair and be removed from the campaign map.

leaves it empty, another faction’s forces can move into the fort and take it over – be aware this is a declaration of war.

turn, limited only by movement points (his ability to move to a new site).

Forts can be extremely useful in defending strategic ‘choke points’ such as mountain passes: an enemy will have to lay siege to the fort before he can advance. It’s even possible to build a ‘wall’ of forts to isolate an area.

Picking Your Ground

An important thing to note about the campaign map in Medieval II: Total War is that the terrain that you see is very much a reflection of what you’ll see in the battle map when two armies do battle there. If you position your army on hills and an enemy army attacks you, you will have the opportunity to position your troops on hills – a reliable defensive tactic. Some unit types are less effective in certain terrains, while others are more effective. For example, a unit of archers can fire further when shooting from higher ground, but are very ineffective when firing at a target in the woods. Finally, positioning troops next to a friendly or allied army will see them join as reinforcements during battle should one ensue. See Using Reinforcements below.

Tip: When you have no unit or settlement selected, map to check what the terrain type is at that point.

Setting an Ambush

When an army is moved into ‘Woodlands’ terrain, it can become hidden from the enemy – This is considered being placed for an ambush in Medieval II: Total War. The ambushing army will attack any enemy army that moves next to them, without giving them an opportunity to position their forces before battle.

Attacking with an Army

When you have an army selected attack:

• The most important piece of information is the Balance of Power in the centre of the scroll. When you move the cursor over the crossed swords you can see the odds for the coming battle.

• The Battle Deployment Scroll will appear. This gives a breakdown of your forces and the enemy arrayed against you.

• Reinforcements from adjacent armies are also shown here. See Using Reinforcements, below.

Click

this button to fight the battle for yourself, taking control of your

• units on the battlefield. This gives you the most control and is – we think – the most fun!

Click

this button to have the CPU fight the battle out automatically for you and

• give a result. Casualties may be heavier than if you fight the battle for yourself, and you cannot protect your General from harm, so he may be killed.

• You can cancel your attack. When you do this your army will withdraw to a nearby location.

• If you’re attacking a settlement, then this is dealt with in the

Sieges & Siege Battles section of the manual.

Using Reinforcements

Reinforcements can join an attack. When a battle is auto-resolved, their strength is simply taken into account. When a battle is fought out in detail, they will actually join the battle in some context:

• When one army attacks, any other friendly army (yours, or belonging to an ally) that is adjacent to the army or settlement under attack can be reinforcements.

• The army that attacks is the one that you control directly. Make sure that your forces are all in the red zone of control of an enemy army, or cancel the attack and then move up another army to act as reinforcements before entering battle.

right-click

right-click-and-hold

on the enemy army or settlement you wish to

on the campaign

• Any adjacent army that is commanded by a General or a Captain can be placed under AI control on the battlefield by the ‘AI control’ icon. This will see that army arrive as one complete force on the battlefield.

• Any adjacent army that is not under AI control will give the player total control of the reinforcements that arrive. Remembering that there is a limit of 20 units per army, reinforcements will appear as and when a ‘slot’ in your army is available, either through casualties or because a unit has run away.

• Reinforcements on the battlefield always appear from a direction that matches their position on the campaign map.

Multiple Attacks

You will notice that most times when you defeat an enemy army that they retreat a few steps rather than vanish. It is very important to be aware that your armies are capable of attacking multiple times per turn, provided that they have the movement points required to do so. Thus instead of allowing a defeated army to scamper away to rebuild itself and bother you later, you can move in to attempt to wipe the force from the map.

clicking

on the checkbox next to

USING FLEETS

Total War Fleets

The naval ships that you see on the campaign map seas are fleets. Each fleet has an Admiral, who has his own Command rating for combat at sea. Fleets engage each other in the same way that armies do, only that the battle is always auto-resolved. Fleets serve two other very useful roles aside from assaulting enemy fleets:

• Transporting. Fleets can be loaded up with a full army, and agents to take them to

distant shores they otherwise cannot reach.

• Blockading. Fleets can be used to close the passage into foreign ports, cutting off the

sea trade of the settlement in the same region.

Who Commands in Naval Battles?

As stated under ‘Admirals’ in the Characters section, there can only be one Admiral per fleet – So he always commands the fleet. The basic things to know about Admirals are:

• Admirals earn Command stars from winning naval battles, improving their performance in future conflicts.

• Once they earn a Command star, Admirals cannot merge with another Admiral.

Moving Fleets

Fleets move much like armies, but there are a few key differences due to the nature of being at sea. After you have selected a fleet:

• A green movement area will surround it. The fleet can move to any point within this zone during its turn. Coastal squares will be included in this zone when there are passengers on the fleet, as they could disembark into one of these land squares.

• Red spaces in the movement zone are adjacent to enemy fleets.

• You can order a fleet to move beyond the green zone, in which case it will remember its orders and a coloured line shows where the fleet’s headed. Each colour segment shows a turn’s worth of movement.

• The Review Panel in the centre at the bottom of the screen will change to show the ships in the fleet along with characters and military units on board.

• The movement rate of your Fleet changes as they enter deeper or shallower waters. Travel around the shallows is much quicker and safer.

• At the beginning of the game, no faction has a ship capable of making ocean voyages. This will change with certain events during the game, and eventually the following ships will become available to make such a journey: Baghlah, Caravel, Carrack and

Grande Carrack.

Using Fleets as Transports

If you want an army or agent to board a fleet, you will have to bring them to the shore to do so. Select the land-based army or agent and move the cursor over your fleet. The cursor will change to a boarding symbol to show that this move is possible.

Right-click

• include its passengers.

• To disembark passengers, select the fleet and then aboard a fleet will then disembark at this spot. Any and all agents will be attached to a disembarked army.

• If you want to partially unload a fleet select the units or agent(s) in the review panel, and then disembark.

Merging & Splitting Fleets

To merge two fleets, simply move one fleet to the location of another. If the two fleets have more than 20 ships in total then you’ll be asked to decide exactly which ship ends up in each fleet. In every other case one large fleet of 20 or fewer ships will be created. Keep in mind that you cannot merge two Admirals into one fleet if one of them has earned a Command star.

If you wish to split a fleet, select the ships you want to form a new fleet in the Review Panel and then drag-and-drop them to the destination for your new fleet. They will automatically leave and a new admiral will be appointed for the new fleet. Any passengers stay with the original fleet.

Attacking with a Fleet

As previously stated, all naval battles are auto-resolved, meaning all you need to do is select a fleet and set them towards the enemy. To start a naval battle, select it, and

• Fleets that lose ships in combat will lose any military units or characters that the lost

• The Command rating of the fleet’s Admiral influences its fortunes in battle.

• After combat the losing fleet will either sink, or pull away from the victorious enemy.

Blockading Ports

It is possible to blockade an enemy port and cut its trade links with the outside world. The blockaded faction will not receive sea-trading income each turn that the blockade is in force.

• Select a fleet, then

• You can lift a blockade at any time by moving your fleet away from the port.

• You can break enemy blockades by successfully attacking the blockading fleet.

Trouble at Sea

Aside from the fleets of enemy factions, there are two major perils at sea – pirates and storms. Pirates are Rebel ships that will aggressively assault your own forces. Storms however can cause Fleets to lose entire ships, and any military units they are carrying on those ships will be completely lost as well. Although the effects of a storm are less severe in shallower waters, avoiding them altogether is the only truly safe way to deal with them.

to confirm the boarding order. From now on, movement orders to the fleet will

right-click

on the campaign map on the coastal area where you want them to

on a coast. Everybody

click

right-click

ship(s) happened to be carrying.

placed around the port to show that a blockade is in force.

Victory will break the blockade.

on the fleet you wish to attack.

right-click

on the port you wish to blockade. A barrier will be

on your fleet to

RUNNING SETTLEMENTS

What do Settlements do?

In the Grand Campaign, settlements serve as both military training centres, as well as your money making machine. They form the central population centres from which you will recruit men into service, tax the populace and establish an infrastructure to support trade. There is always one settlement per region, representing the civil centre for that area of land. Medieval II: Total War allows the owner of a region of land to maintain their settlements as either cities or castles – with the ability to change between the two, with certain limitations. You will need both cities and castles in your realm if you are to be successful, as they both play very different roles.

How Do I Manage a Settlement?

Firstly, to properly manage a settlement, you need to install a General to serve as Governor (unless you selected ‘Manage All Cities’ in the Grand Campaign settings prior to starting). If you do not do so, you will not be able to control any of the following tasks that are involved with properly managing a settlement:

• Recruit units for your armies, and agents for your non-military tasks.

• Construct new buildings, which will improve various aspects of its workings and

capabilities.

• Adjust the tax rate in cities to ensure that they generate as much income as possible

for your faction.

• Retrain units, to replenish their ranks and also upgrade their weapons and/or armour if

the right buildings are present.

• Repair buildings that may have been damaged by siege attacks, rioting or ominous

disasters of terrifying proportions.

• Keep control of public order. If you do not do this, you will face the prospect of riots

and possibly even a rebellion in the settlement.

All of these things will be explained throughout this section of the manual.

Settlements on the Campaign Map

Cities and castles are represented on the campaign map with a figure that looks appropriate for the size, type and culture of the settlement. Each settlement has its own label that includes basic details about the settlement’s status. These details are:

• Settlement Name - The top line includes the name of

the settlement, and will also show an appropriate icon if it is suffering from revolt, or the plague.

• Income - The number beside this icon shows the income

generated by the settlement each turn. A negative value means that the settlement is actually running at a loss.

• Public Order - This icon shows the overall happiness of the settlement population: Green – happy, Yellow – content, Blue – disillusioned, Red – rebellious.

• This icon shows whether or not the population of the settlement is increasing in numbers or not: Green - Indicates the population is growing, Amber/Orange - Indicates the population is stable, Red - Indicates the population is falling. This is a matter of concern.

• This icon appears if a unit is being trained in the settlement. Green indicates training is in progress, Red indicates the recruitment queue has stalled.

• This icon appears if a building is being constructed or repaired in the settlement. Green indicates construction is in progress, red indicates the construction queue has stalled.

• This icon appears if the settlement is being auto-managed.

The Settlement Scroll

Regardless of whether it is a city or a castle you wish to examine, to view it’s Settlement Scroll, the Settlement on the campaign map. Here you will see the Governor Panel at the top of the scroll, followed by the basic details and settings of the settlement, and then finally the Recruitment / Construction Panel. The basic details displayed for settlements are:

• Income. The amount of florins this settlement is

generating for your treasury per turn.

• Public Order. The percentage shown here represents

what level of public order is being maintained, with 100% being considered stable. The further this drops below 100% the more likely the settlement is to experience rioting, or possibly even rebellion (losing the settlement to Rebels). The higher this is above 100%, the happier the population is with their situation.

• Population. This is the number of people living in the settlement, and has a direct

effect upon upgrading all cities, and some castles.

• Population Growth. The percentage shown here represents the current population

growth, or decline per turn. A settlement with high population growth will be able to be upgraded sooner.

• Automanage.

tasks under CPU control.

• Tax Rate. This shows the current level of taxation on the people in the region: Low,

Normal, High, and Very High. Only cities can have their tax rate adjusted - Use the arrows to cycle through the settings. Higher rates yield more tax income for your treasury, but also result in a direct drop in public order.

• Race Settings. Certain Islamic factions create facilities to support horse racing festivals.

Use the arrows to adjust how often the races are held – More frequent races improve happiness, but cost money to hold.

Understanding Cities & Castles

Cities and castles are very different sorts of settlements, but the way you improve them is identical – by constructing buildings. The difference lies in what buildings you can construct within the two different types of settlement. Being able to choose where your cities and castles lie can be very useful, and the smaller ones can be converted to the other type of settlement. Note that it is very important to understand that if you intend to convert your settlements in the future – some types of buildings do not belong in both settlement types, and therefore won’t survive a conversion. There will be more on constructing buildings and converting settlements below. Firstly it is necessary to understand how the two different settlement types work.

Cities

Cities are settlements that revolve around supporting trade and a large population. In fact, it is population that drives these places - When a city reaches a high enough population it will be ready to grow into a larger settlement with the construction of better walls. Inside cities you will find constructions such as inns, markets, town halls, religious buildings, and schools of alchemy. Aside from bringing wealth to your realm, these buildings offer access to agents that can be of great use to your faction’s cause.

Cities provide the benefits of:

• The ability to set the tax rate for the region as desired.

• Several types of buildings that support and improve trade income.

Click

on the checkbox to put the settlement’s building and/or construction

double-click

• Buildings that spread your faction’s faith greatly.

• Buildings that allow you to recruit spies, assassins, priests, diplomats and merchants.

• Buildings that allow the recruitment of militia and siege artillery.

• Free upkeep for some militia units while garrisoned.

Cities come with the problems of:

• Public unrest leading to riots, or even rebellion.

• Corrupting Governors with a wealthy environment.

• Usually lacking in buildings to recruit cavalry and missile infantry.

• Only one defensive wall for sieging forces to breach.

City upgrading works as follows:

City Size Population Required Wall Required to Upgrade

Village - N/A Town 400 Wooden Palisade Large Town 2000 Wooden Wall City 6000 Stone Wall

Large City 12000 Large Stone Wall Huge City 24000 Huge Stone Wall

Castles

Castles are military settlements with strong defences that oversee the surrounding lands, collecting the taxes at a set rate with a rigid regularity. This makes them the ideal place to train men for military service, and make a stand. Castles can be upgraded to a larger size that can play home to more effective structures, simply by constructing the next level of castle in the Construction Panel. That is until you wish to upgrade to the two highest castle sizes, ‘Fortress’ and ‘Citadel’. These also require a certain population already in the settlement before you can construct them.

Castles provide the benefits of:

• Naturally high public order.

• Very strong defences, including multi-ring walls at the higher levels of castle size

Castles come with the problems of:

• Not being able to adjust the tax rate.

• Usually lacking in buildings that improve trade.

• Usually lacking in buildings that recruit agents such as Spies, Assassins, Diplomats and Merchants.

• Usually lacking in academic buildings.

Castle upgrading works as follows:

Castle Size Population Defences Required

Motte & Bailey - Keep only Wooden Castle - 1 Wooden Wall Castle - 1 Stone Wall

Fortress 4500 2 Stone Walls Citadel 9000 3 Stone Walls

The Governor

Your Generals take on a very different kind of leadership role when you move them into a settlement to become its Governor. His Command rating may be what makes a General capable on the battlefield, but it is actually his reputation for Piety and Chivalry or Dread that will make him a better man for the job.

• Governors with a high Piety rating are better at reducing disorder caused by religious unrest and provide an influence bonus to the public order of the settlement.

• Governors with a high Chivalry rating provide an influence bonus to the public order and population growth of the settlement.

• Governors with a high Dread rating provide an influence bonus to the public order of the settlement.

• Governors can also have traits and retinue that improve various aspects of how the settlement functions, detailed in their tooltip displays.

• The General with the highest Piety rating will be installed as Governor. The people generally prefer to serve under a man of faith – They are both spiritually sound and generally educated as well.

Constructing Buildings

Settlements are a collection of buildings and the way to develop and improve your cities and castles is to construct various buildings and facilities. This is done by tab labelled ‘Construction’ to open the Construction Panel.

Click

on the Construction Tab to see what buildings are available

• for construction.

• The number of different buildings shown in the Construction Panel depends on the type

of settlement, the size of the settlement and what you have already built there.

Right-click

•

Building Information Scroll to see what benefits you will receive from the available construction options.

• Buildings with construction costs that are beyond your treasury are greyed out, but can still be added to the queue for construction when funds become available.

Click

• can afford the buildings, and there are no other items currently waiting to be built, the cost of the building is immediately deducted from your treasury.

• The leftmost building in the queue will be shaded to show that work has begun, and the number of turns until completion is shown. The shading is gradually removed as progress is made over a number of turns.

Click

• allocated funds are automatically returned to your treasury.

• Buildings in the Construction Queue are completed in left-to-right order. You can alter the order of construction work by dragging-and-dropping the building pictures until you are happy with the construction order.

• Some buildings can only be constructed if you are approached by a guild, or a knightly order.

The Building Browser

At the bottom of the Settlement Scroll is a button that will open up the Building Browser. This is where you can find all the information you need on all of the things you can construct. The Building Browser is split into two parts - the left panel provides an image display showing what buildings of the currently selected building type are available with the different sizes of settlement. The panel on the right is where you can see all the building types that are available in a city or a castle, depending on which tab you have selected.

• The settlement images on the left show what level your settlement is currently at. Greyed out items represent the sizes your settlement can grow to later.

• The building images beneath the ‘City’ heading show which levels of this type of building type are available in a city. Greyed out items represent buildings you have yet to construct.

on a building in options or the Construction Queue to bring up the relevant

on a building in the Construction Panel to add it to the Construction Queue. If you

on a building in the Construction Queue to cancel the construction order. Any

Right-click

on any building image to see its Building Information Scroll.

click

ing on the

• The building images beneath the ‘Castle’ heading show which of this type of

building are available in a castle. Greyed out items represent buildings you have yet to construct. Scroll.

• If a building image does not have an equivalent building in the other type of settlement for that settlement size/level, then the building will have to be destroyed if you choose to convert the settlement.

• When this icon is coloured, it shows that you can currently construct this type of building in your settlement.

• When this icon is greyed out, it shows that you cannot yet construct this type of building in your settlement.

• The types of buildings that you currently have constructed in your settlement have their name shown in black in the panel on the right.

• The types of buildings you have not yet constructed in your settlement have their name shown in a lighter shade in the panel on the right.

Repairing Buildings

Buildings can be damaged through rioting, natural disasters and siege assaults. It’s quite possible to damage a town without taking it and, the longer an assault takes, the more “collateral damage” is done during the battle. Repairing buildings works in a similar fashion to new Construction. The cost of repairs is usually substantially less than the cost of a new building, both in terms of cash and time.

Click

• This will be greyed out if no buildings are damaged.

• Instead of being presented with Construction Options, there is a collection of

Buildings Needing Repair.

Click

on any damaged building to add it to the Construction Queue. It can be dragged-

• and-dropped in the queue, and clicked to cancel the work as described above for new construction work.

Recruiting Units, Ships & Agents

To form armies, construct ships and enlist the service of agents, you will need to recruit them in a settlement. Recruiting units and agents costs money, which will be deducted from your treasury to cover their training, equipment and starting wages – Once recruited, units, ships and agents go into a Recruitment Queue.

They will arrive for service in the following turn, so long as they are in one of the recruitment slots. There are several key things to know about how recruitment works before you begin:

• Recruitment Slots – As a settlement grows in size, it gains more recruitment slots, allowing it to recruit more units per turn.

• Recruitment Queue – As you select units to recruit they are added to the Recruitment Queue.

• Recruitment Pools - Units are recruited from a ‘pool’ of men that are ready to be trained into service, the number in the top-right corner of the unit image represents how many units are ready to be trained right now. When you take men from the pool to recruit a unit, it will replenish back up to its limit over time.

• Recruitment Effects Combine – If you have two buildings that can recruit the same unit in one settlement, that unit will have a larger recruitment pool limit, and will replenish more quickly.

• Buildings Allow Recruitment – You will need to construct buildings in order to recruit units.

Right-click

on the Repair Tab to see what buildings require restoration work.

on any building image to see its Building Information

• Agent Limits – There is a limit to how many agents, such as Priests/Imams and Merchants, you can recruit. When you construct higher level churches and markets respectively, you will increase the amount of agents you can put into service. You will find these limits on the relevant Building Information Scrolls.

To recruit units & agents in your settlements:

Click

on the Recruitment Tab to see what units are available for hire on the

•

Recruitment Panel, with the Recruitment Queue shown at the bottom.

Click

on a unit in the main section of the Recruitment Panel to add it to the Recruitment

• Queue. If you can afford to train the unit, and there are free recruitment slots available, the money is immediately ‘spent’. The men required to recruit the unit are removed from the pool immediately.

• Units with recruitment costs that are beyond your means are greyed out, but can still be added to the Recruitment Queue when funds become available.

• Units may also be greyed out if there are insufficient ‘spare’ men in their unit pool to form a unit. Mouse over the unit you wish to purchase and you will receive a tooltip that will advise how long until you are able to recruit this unit again.

• All ships are treated as military units, but they appear at the port in the settlement’s province.

• The leftmost units in the queue will be coloured to show that training has begun, and that they will arrive next turn.

Click

on a unit in the Recruitment Queue to cancel the training order. The unit will

• disappear from the queue, and any allocated funds are returned to your treasury.

• Up to nine units can be entered into the Recruitment Queue. When the queue is full, all units in the Recruitment Panel will be greyed out and unavailable.

• You can alter the order of recruitment by dragging-and-dropping the unit cards.

Right-click

•

The Unit Information Scroll

This scroll shows information about a given unit. This includes historical background, and the unit’s in-game effects, including the all-important training and upkeep costs. The Unit Information Scroll also allows you to disband your units. This saves your faction upkeep costs of the unit.

on a unit card to bring up the relevant Unit Information Scroll.

Click

on this button to disband the unit. The soldiers in the unit are added

• back to the unit pools for the region’s settlement. This allows the men to be available for recruitment again if the need arises, although it does ‘cost’ any military experience that the men might have gained.

Recruitment Buildings

If you want to field the best units available to your faction, you will need to know which particular buildings will provide you with the ability to recruit these troops. The three lists below show building types that can always recruit units, types that can recruit agents and finally some factions that get bonus recruitment from some types of buildings.

BUILDINGS TYPES THAT RECRUIT UNITS:

• Walls – Cavalry units

• Castles – Knight (Cavalry) units

• City Barracks – Militia Infantry and Gunpowder units

• Castle Barracks – Infantry units

• Ranges – Missile units

• Stables – Cavalry units

• Siege – Artillery units

• Gunsmiths – Cannon units

• Military Academy – Special Elite units

• Horse Racing – Cavalry units

• Plaza del Toro – Cavalry units

• Knights Templar – Knight (Cavalry) units

• Hospitaller Knights – Knight (Cavalry) units

• Teutonic Knights - Knight (Cavalry) units

• Knights of Santiago – Knight (Cavalry) units

• Hashashim’s Guild – Special Infantry units

• Woodsmen’s Guild – Special Missile units

• Masons’ Guild – Special Militia Infantry units

• Merchants’ Guild – Special Cavalry units

BUILDING TYPES THAT RECRUIT AGENTS:

• Churches/Masjids – Priests/Imans

• Inns – Spies and Assassins

• Markets – Merchants

• Town Halls – Diplomats

• Academy (castle) – Spies, Diplomats and Assassins

FACTIONS THAT CAN GAIN SPECIAL RECRUITMENT OPTIONS FROM CERTAIN BUILDINGS:

• Holy Roman Empire – High level Town Hall buildings

• Milan – Town Hall

• Venice – Town Hall

• Turks – Town Hall

• Russia – Town Hall

• Hungary – Assassins’ Guild and Inns

• Denmark – Churches

Retraining & Upgrading Units

You can replenish a unit’s numbers and ensure that it has the best weapons

and armour that a settlement can provide by retraining it. Replenishing a unit’s numbers requires that you have a building present that can recruit the type of unit you want to bring back to full strength. Upgrading weapons and armour requires you to have a certain building, the funds to pay for the upgrade, and finally satisfy some other conditions (see Upgrading Armour and Upgrading Weapons).

A unit in a garrison is eligible to be retrained if it meets one of the following two conditions:

• The unit is numerically under strength: it has taken losses and has fewer men in its

ranks than when it was originally trained. Under-strength units that are retrained may have any battle experience ‘diluted’ by the raw recruits who enter their ranks.

• If a unit is able to upgrade it’s armour or weapons (see below).

Important Tip: Be aware that retraining costs money, and can be quite expensive when you wind up upgrading and replenishing your units at the same time.

Upgrading Armour

The obvious advantage of upgrading a unit’s armour is that it becomes better at taking damage in battle and surviving – useful for any unit on the field.

• Different units have varying levels that their armour can be upgraded to. The higher the

level a Smith building is, the higher the level of armour it can upgrade a unit’s armour to.

Armour Types

These are the levels of armour available to units, and also the Smith building required to upgrade to that armour level.

Armour Types Smith Building Required

Unarmoured None Padded or Leather Leather Tanner Light Mail Blacksmith Heavy Mail or Breastplate Armourer

Partial Plate Heavy Armourer Full Plate Master Armourer Advanced Plate Armour Factory

Upgrading Weapons

There is only one level of weapon upgrade capable for any given unit. To upgrade a unit’s weapon, you simply need to have the right kind of building present, and not already have the upgrade.

Weapon Types

These are the types of weapons that can be upgraded in settlements – If you want to check to see what weapon type a unit has, you’ll find it listed on its Unit Information Scroll.

Weapon Type Weapon Upgrade Building

Melee Swordsmiths’ Guild Gunpowder Troops Alchemists’ Lab Cannons Alchemy School Artillery University

The Guilds

In medieval times, the Guilds used their widespread influence to regulate trade throughout the western world. Each Guild represents a particular trade, study or order – such as the Masons’ Guild, Theologians’ Guild or the Knights Templar.

• All Guilds offer benefits. You can look in the Building Browser to see which guilds are

available to your faction, then check the benefits that come with each guild available on their Building Information Scrolls.

• Some Guilds are only available to certain factions. The Knights of Santiago for example

are specific to Spain and Portugal.

• Guilds are ‘invite only’. Guilds approach you about constructing a guild house in your

settlements. They are more likely to offer to do this if you support their trade or cause.

• Guild Houses and Minor Chapter Houses. These are the lowest ranks of a guild building,

and cost 1000 florins to build. They can exist in any settlement in your faction.

• Master Guild Houses and Major Chapter Houses. These are the second ranks of a guild

building, and cost 2000 florins to build. Only one can exist in any given faction’s lands.

• Headquarters. These are the highest rank level of guild building, and cost 3000 florins

to build, but offer incredible benefits. Only one of these will exist in the entire world at any given time.

• Keep working for upgrades. You will need to continue to support your guild’s interests to

receive an offer to upgrade it to the next rank of building. Thus, only factions that truly focus on something find a guild headquarters in their lands.

Faction-Specific Buildings

There are a series of special buildings that are only available to a small selection of factions, sometimes even just one, that are called Faction-Specific Buildings. These structures offer benefits that are often unique, and thus, can help their faction to develop an edge in a certain aspect of their empire. For example, the Turks, Egyptians and Moors can all construct Horse Racing buildings to recruit cavalry in cities - a genuine advantage.

The Settlement Details Scroll

This scroll allows you to review the settlement in detail, and see what factors are contributing to the overall Population Growth, Public Order, Income, and Religion of the regions.

• For each of these four areas of interest, the positive factors are shown above the negative factors.

• The exception to this is that the Religion details show the dominant religion on top, and the breakdown of the minority religions in the bottom row.

• Move the cursor over each icon and a tooltip will appear telling you what it represents. Use this information to discover what is preventing your settlement from running at its best.

• The other important, perhaps vital, piece of information shown beneath the Religion details is the length of time that the settlement can withstand a siege. This represents the surplus food that the settlement has in storage.

Click

this button to bring up the Trade Summary Scroll. This will allow you to see

• how your settlement is generating taxable income.

Click

on this button to make this settlement your capital. This is where reward

• units from Missions will appear.

The Trade Scroll & Trade Resources

There are two ways to raise the income from a settlement: one is to change the tax rate (through the Settlement Scroll); the other is to improve the economic structures in a settlement. Taxable trade income is improved by having better traders and markets in your settlements, and by the quality (and number) of connecting routes to other settlements (roads and sea routes). There are three potential generators of taxable income: trade, farming and mining. All of these can be improved by constructing different buildings, although all three also rely on the resources in the province.

• Any resources in the surrounding province will be traded automatically, if only within the local settlement.

• Mines can be built to extract precious metals that can be seen on the campaign map as metallic resources. These need to be constructed like any other building.

• Farms increase the income from farming and the growth rate of a settlement as more food is generated. However, not all regions are equally fertile, so don’t expect farms to have the same effects in all parts of the world. That said, a settlement always benefits from farming improvements.

• Market buildings in a settlement improve the efficiency of trade, and the amount of money it generates. It will also allow you to recruit Merchants.

•A Port (and its subsequent upgrades) allows trade goods to be moved greater distances, with a consequent increase in the value of exports and imports. Ports always appear on the coastline of the region, although they are part of the settlement. They also help train naval units, of course. Finally, landlocked regions cannot have ports.

• Sea Trade buildings also increase your overall trade income after you have constructed a Port, and allow more trade fleets to connect to your settlement via the port.

• Roads allow trade goods to be carried to neighbouring settlements automatically. They also allow the faster movement of armies and agents as well.

• Merchants can also be sent to distant trade resources to earn extra trade income for your faction. This is covered in detail in the USING AGENTS section of the manual.

Trade routes are shown on the map as convoys of wagons moving along roads, or as dashed lines between ports. Trade routes can be blocked by enemy armies (including rebels and bandits) on land, and by enemy fleets at sea.

Converting Settlements

One of your construction options will often be to convert your settlement from city to castle, or vice-versa. This involves re-arranging the basic layout of the settlement defences, and takes both time and money. It is very important to note several key things about converting settlements:

• When a city settlement has grown to become a ‘Large City’, it can no longer be converted to a castle.

• Be aware that when you convert a ‘Citadel’, it will convert to a ‘City’ – a lower level settlement.

• Use the Building Browser to check to see which of your settlement’s constructions can exist in both settlement types.

City Upgrading & Conversion

City Level Population to upgrade to this Level Conversion to Castle…

Village - Motte & Bailey Town 400 Wooden Castle Large Town 2000 Castle City 6000 Fortress Large City 12000 No longer possible Huge City 24000 No longer possible

Castle Upgrading & Conversion

Castle Size Population Required Conversion to City

Motte & Baile - Village Wooden Castle - Town Castle - Large Town Fortress 4500 City Citadel 9000 City

USING AGENTS

Agents are not military characters, but have their own form of aggressive ability in Medieval II: Total War. For most agents, using their ‘Active’ abilities is as simple as

their particular target – whether it be a city to infiltrate for a Spy, or a General to kill for an Assassin.

• Agents move and merge into armies..

• When an agent succeeds or fails when using an ability there is a chance their traits will be adjusted – Directly affecting their main attribute (eg. A Spy who infiltrates successfully may see an increase in their Subterfuge rating). It is best to send agents on easier tasks at first to help them develop some experience.

• The number of Merchants and Priests that a faction can recruit is limited. Building larger Markets and Churches respectively will raise the limits.

• Princesses arrive for service when they come of age. You can check your Family Tree (covered later in the manual) to see when your next noble daughter may be due to begin serving her people.

Using Merchants Trading - Passive ability

Merchants generate trade income for their faction when they stand on a trade resource on

right-clicking

the campaign map, sending the precious goods or minerals back to their faction capital. There are several things to know about how trade works:

• Checking income per turn. You can see how many florins per turn the currently selected merchant will earn from a trade resource by mousing-over the resource and reading the tooltip.

• Finance rating. The higher a Merchant’s Finance rating, the more florins they will generate per turn.

• Trade rights. Having trade rights with the faction that owns the resource a merchant is trading increases the amount of florins generated.

• Resource value. The amount will vary based on the actual resource itself. Resources like gold and silk are valuable commodities.

• Distance bonus. The further the closest instance of a trade resource is to a merchant’s capital, the greater a bonus he will get to the trade income he will earn from it.

Acquisition – Active ability Acquisition is when one merchant attempts to forcibly seize the assets of another merchant, putting them out of business. Success means an immediate financial bonus, and control of any trade resource the foreign merchant may be standing on. Failure could either mean an annoyance or the end of the aggressor’s career.

Right-click

•

of success will be shown on a panel – press the Acquisition button to proceed.

• A merchant’s Finance rating is the primary factor in determining success or failure.

• Acquisition is not an act of war, though it may well annoy the faction that you are attacking in this economic manner.

Using Priests & Imams

Preaching – Passive ability

Priests and Imams are constantly spreading their faith in the region they are in, which effectively ‘converts’ a percentage of the population from the other religions, over to his faction’s religion.

• Piety rating. A Priest or Imam’s Piety rating directly affects how great a percentage of

the population that they can convert.

• More is better. Multiple Priests or Imams can work in a region together to convert the

population more quickly.

• Preaching is not a transgression. Preaching in another faction’s lands is not considered

a diplomatic transgression or an act of war.

Denouncing – Active ability Priests and Imams can rid their lands of Witches and Heretics by attempting to denounce them at a trial for Heresy. Success means the blasphemous individual is put to death. Failure to denounce a Heretic can result in him escaping, or converting the Priest into another Heretic. Failure to denounce a Witch can result in the woman escaping, or worse, destroying the Priest.

Right-click

• The chance of success will be shown on a panel – press the Denounce button to proceed.

• A Priest or Imam’s Piety rating is the primary factor in determining success or failure.

• A Priest or Imam that has traits stating they have some Unorthodoxy is more likely to become a Heretic during denouncement attempts.

on a foreign merchant to make an Acquisition attempt. The chance

on a Witch or Heretic to make a Denouncement attempt.

Using Spies

Infiltration – Active ability

Spies will attempt to infiltrate any army or settlement they are moved into, unveiling information about the target. Success means the information is gathered and displayed immediately. Failure will mean that the Spy will either be driven away before they gather information, or killed in the event that they are caught in the act.

Right-click

• chance of success will be shown on a panel – press the Infiltrate button to proceed.

• Subterfuge rating. A Spy’s Subterfuge rating directly affects their ability to infiltrate a settlement successfully.

• If a Spy infiltrates a settlement, they will begin to spread propaganda to instil a small sense of unrest – affecting Public Order.

• Act of war. Unlike most agent actions, if caught, an infiltration attempt will be counted as transgression. If the spy succeeds however, the enemy is none the wiser – secrecy is part of the success.

• Leaving voluntarily.

Agents tab on the Review Panel, then Details Scroll. He can be moved out of the settlement as normal.

Stealth – Passive ability

Spies are constantly attempting to remain unseen by other factions, so even though you can see your spies on the campaign map all the time, the other factions cannot.

• Subterfuge Rating. A Spy’s Subterfuge rating directly affects their ability to both remain

hidden, as well as detect other hidden agents, such as Spies and Assassins.

• Constant, not foolproof. Even though stealth is a constant effect, it is not foolproof, and

there is always a chance of being detected by a foreign character.

Using Assassins

Assassination – Active ability

Assassins are capable of targeting any one character on the campaign map for termination, regardless of whether they are out in the wilderness or inside a foreign settlement. Success means the targeted character is killed, and their faction will be unaware as to who was responsible. Failure will mean that the Assassin will either be driven away without completing the job, or killed in the event that they are caught in the act.

Right-click

• The chance of success will be shown on a panel – press the Assassinate button to proceed.

• Subterfuge rating. An Assassin’s Subterfuge rating directly affects their chances of assassinating a target successfully.

• Assassination traits. Some traits that an Assassin can earn will improve or worsen the chances of success for assassination.

• Act of war. Unlike most agent actions, if caught, an assassination attempt will be counted as an act of war. If the assassin succeeds however, the enemy is none the wiser – secrecy is part of the success.

Sabotage – Active ability Sabotage works much like Assassination, except that the target is always a building in a settlement. Success means the targeted building is destroyed, and their faction will be unaware as to who was responsible. Failure will mean that the Assassin will either be driven away without completing the job, or killed in the event that they are caught in the act.

Right-click

• will be shown on a panel, if not button to proceed.

• Subterfuge Rating. An Assassin’s Subterfuge rating directly affects their chances of sabotaging a building successfully.

on a settlement, army or agent to make an Infiltration attempt. The

Double-click

on a settlement, army or agent to make an Assassination attempt.

on a settlement to make a Sabotage attempt. The chance of success

on the settlement your Spy is in, select the

click

on your Spy on the Enemy Settlement

click

on the ‘Sabotage’ tab – press the Sabotage

• Sabotage Traits. Some traits that an Assassin can earn will improve or worsen the chances of success for assassination.

• Act of war. Sabotage is an act of war, with similar consequences as described under assassination, should the assassin be caught.

Stealth – Passive ability Assassins use Stealth in exactly the same way that Spies do (see Using Spies).

Using Diplomats

Diplomacy – Active ability

Diplomacy is the act of negotiating with other factions in Medieval II: Total War, and is very different to all other agent actions – It is covered in its own section of the manual (see DIPLOMACY).

Right-click

•

• Influence rating. A Diplomat’s Influence rating has an effect on his chances of making

successful proposals during diplomacy.

• Able to bribe. Diplomats can attempt to bribe foreigners over into their own faction’s

service during diplomacy. No other character can do this.

• Only Generals, Captains, Settlements and other Diplomats can actually be approached to make a diplomatic proposal. All other character types can only be approached for bribery, and some characters cannot be bribed at all, such as Princesses, Faction Leaders and Faction Heirs.

Using Princesses

Marriage – Active ability

This is a special kind of marriage, where the Princess attempts to marry a General – either a General from her own faction, or a foreign General. If the General is from her own faction, he will always accept. If she succeeds in marrying a foreign General he will leave his faction to join hers. If she fails, she will either continue to serve her people, or be disgraced and never to be heard from again.

Diplomacy – Active ability Princesses use Diplomacy in exactly the same way Diplomats do, except:

on an army, character or settlement to enter diplomacy with them.

Right-click

•

will be shown on a panel – press the Marriage button to proceed.

• Charm rating. A Princess’s Charm rating directly affects her chances of making a

successful marriage attempt. If the General is from another faction, his Loyalty rating also has an effect on the chances of success.

• Princesses cannot attempt to marry Generals from an Islamic faction (Egypt, Turks, Moors) or factions that do not have Princesses.

• A General who marries a Princess receives a Loyalty rating bonus, making him less susceptible to bribery and thoughts of rebellion.

• After suitable marriage targets is presented. Press the Enter Diplomacy button on the bottom of the panel to initiate diplomacy instead.

• Princesses cannot bribe. Unlike diplomats, a Princess cannot attempt to bribe other characters during diplomacy. They can however enter a marriage alliance.

• Charm rating. A Princess’s Charm rating has an effect on her chances of making successful proposals during Diplomacy.

on a General to make a Marriage attempt. The chance of success

Right-clicking

on a character or settlement from another faction, a list of

RELIGION

Religion in Medieval II: Total War

Although your victory conditions in the Grand Campaign do not involve any religious goals, religion is something that you must treat with respect, even as the ruler of a vast empire. Faith played an enormous role in both daily life and politics in the medieval era, and this is represented in the Grand Campaign. Your basic concerns with religion are:

• Ensuring your religion is dominant in your regions.

• Ensuring Heresy does not get out of hand in your regions.

• Considering how your actions may affect your relationship with other factions of your religion, or the Pope.

Spreading Your Faith

To ensure that your lands are free of religious problems, you will need to invest some money in building Churches or Masjids, and also in recruiting Priests or Imams. Churches and Masjids will help their faith spread so that a percentage of the population that follows other religions will change to your faction’s religion. Priests and Imams have the same effect in the regions that they stand in.

• You can check the religious breakdown of the population of a region by looking at its Settlement Details Scroll.

• It can be advantageous to send a Priest or Imam into a region you plan to conquer if the population there has a different religion to your faction. This is not considered an act of war or diplomatic transgression.

• A Heretic will spread Heresy in the regions they enter in the same way a Priest or Imam spreads their religion.

The Pope The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and the Faction Leader of the Papal States, which are the lands belonging to the

Church. As an individual with a huge amount of power, the Pope’s personality will have an effect on all of Christendom. He may believe in ‘holy’ war against the people of other religions, or he could abhor violence altogether. He may also be a shining example of righteous beliefs, or corrupted by the power his position has afforded him. It is also important to note that the Pope was once but a humble Priest. The experiences during a Priest’s life will have an effect on what sort of spiritual leader he will become should he one day be elected as Pope.

click

• To see an overview of the current Pope,

Control Panel, then

• The Pope’s age, plus anything known about the Pope’s personality can be found beside the Pope’s portrait.

Click

on this button, left of the Pope’s portrait to request that he call a Crusade

• (see CRUSADES & JIHADS below).

• The columns of crosses in the lower part of the Pope Overview Scroll represent the Pope’s view of the Catholic factions. The more crosses, the more he respects and admires that faction.

Excommunication & Reconciliation

The reason that maintaining a healthy relationship with the Pope is so important for Catholic factions is that if he deems that a Catholic Faction Leader is behaving poorly, does not support the faith properly or is actively opposing him, he may excommunicate the Faction Leader in question. When the Pope excommunicates a faction, it is only the leader that he has a problem with. However, this is no consolation for the people of that faction who are still cut off from the

click

on The Pope tab at the top of the scroll.

the Faction button on the

Pope, their spiritual leader. In fact, when a Faction Leader is excommunicated, his people will be upset with him for allowing problems with the Catholic Church to go so far, rather than annoyed at the Pope for excommunicating them in the first place. Reconciliation is when the Pope ‘forgives’ the faction that he had excommunicated, and is the opposite of excommunication.

• Both your population and your Generals will not be pleased about your faction being excommunicated. It may lead to public order issues and rebelling Generals.

• An excommunicated faction will not receive any missions from the Pope.

• An excommunicated faction may have a Crusade called against it.

• Catholic factions can attack an excommunicated faction without fear of repercussions from the Pope.

• It is possible to request to reconcile with the Pope during diplomatic negotiations with the Papal States. There is also a chance the Papal States will offer reconciliation as well.

• Excommunication is a personal thing between the Pope and a Faction Leader. If the Faction Leader dies, or a new Pope is elected, the Pope may decide to reconcile the faction again.

The Papal States The Papal States still exist today in the modern era, as the ‘Vatican City’. In Medieval II: Total War, the Papal States are considerably larger, and work like a normal Catholic faction

in most regards. However, there are some very important differences as to how the Papal States works that you will need to be aware of when you’re thinking of dealing with them:

• The Papal States cannot be wiped out, ever. If they lose their last settlement, the Catholic Church will seek out a new home for the Papacy, and will even ask Catholic factions to grant them a region. Obviously, that will have a massive positive effect with that faction’s relations with the Pope and the Papal States.

• Attacking the Papal States is almost certain to bring the wrath of all Catholic factions upon you… and there are a lot of them, so think twice about choosing the Papal States as an enemy.

• The Papal States do not have a family tree. Instead the Pope is its Faction Leader, and the Cardinals (see below) are the potential ‘heirs’.

The College of Cardinals

The Catholic Church has a council of the highest ranked Priests within the faith, called Cardinals. These men form a collective called the College of Cardinals, of which there are never more than thirteen.

Click

on this button at the bottom of the Overview

•

Scroll to bring up the College of Cardinals Scroll. This shows who the current Cardinals are, and where they are from.

• A Catholic Priest must have a sufficiently high Piety rating to be considered for promotion to a Cardinal by the Pope.

• The College of Cardinals does not have to have all thirteen seats filled. If there are not enough Catholic Priests in the game of sufficient Piety, then there will be fewer Cardinals.

• Cardinals are immune to the effects of Heresy, and can never become a Heretic character. This makes them extremely useful at getting rid of Heretics from the campaign map.

• When the Pope dies, a new Pope will be elected from the College of Cardinals (covered below).

Papal Elections

When the Pope dies the College of Cardinals will convene for a Papal election to elect a new Pope. This is a moment where the rulers of the Catholic factions have an opportunity to seriously improve their relations with the Papacy. There are only ever a maximum of three candidates for the Papacy – these men are called the Preferati. Any faction that has a Cardinal can vote in the Papal election. Even though you can simply vote and see the results, there are opportunities here to wheel and deal with other factions in an effort to control the outcome of the election.

• The Papal Election Scroll will only appear when the election takes place and you have a Cardinal to give your faction a vote.

• The faction of each Preferati is shown beside their portrait. Faction symbols to the right of that show which factions are known to support that candidate. Mouse over any of these shields for extra information about this faction in a tooltip.

Click

on this button to the right of a Cardinal you wish to vote for.

•

Click

on one of the Faction shield buttons along the bottom of the scroll to

• enter diplomacy with that faction.

Election Results

It is good to have a sound understanding of the results of a Papal election, because voting for the loser could have a negative effect on your relationship with the Papacy. It may not always be in your best interests to back an ally if they will lose:

• The Preferati with the most votes becomes the new Pope.

• Preferati from other factions will always vote for themselves in the election.

• If there is a tie for votes, the Preferati with the highest Piety rating will win. If there is a tie for Piety as well, the Preferati from the faction with the best relationship with the Papal States will win.

• Factions that voted for the winner will have their relations with the Papal States improved.

• Factions that voted for someone other than the winner will have their relations with the Papal States worsened.

Special Religious Agents

There are two sorts of blasphemous characters that wander the campaign map, leaving a trail of strife and spiritual unrest in their wake – Heretics and Witches. Both of them encourage the spread of Heresy in any region that they stand in, but have their own unique effects as well.

Heretics

A Heretic is a man of faith who has adopted a different take on one of the major religions, or has even attempted to forge an entirely new one of his own will. He is utterly convinced that what he is doing is correct, but he is also aware that the major religions find his attempts to spread a message of faith other than their own to be blasphemous.

• Heretics may appear suddenly in regions with high Heresy.

• Heretics spread Heresy in the regions they are in.

• Heretics can be denounced by a Priest or Imam.

• Heretics have a chance to convert a Priest into a Heretic should the Priest fail to denounce him.

Witches

A Witch is a woman believed to have magical powers, granted to her through the practise of foul, blasphemous arts. Once a woman is deemed a Witch, she is essentially an outcast, being forced to wander in an effort to escape religious authorities that would seek to end her heretical practices.

• Witches may appear suddenly in regions with high Heresy.

• Witches spread Heresy in the regions they are in.

• Witches move about the campaign map, approaching people of interest.

• Generals approached by a Witch may end up being cursed… Or at least believing that they have been stricken by some unholy affliction.

• The higher a Witch’s Magic rating, the more likely she is to curse a General.

• Witches can be denounced by a Priest or Imam.

• Witches have a chance to kill a Priest if he fails to denounce her… At least that’s what the peasants will report happened.

Inquisitors

An Inquisitor is a special sort of Priest, sent by the Catholic Church to deal with Heresy when it becomes a serious problem in the Pope’s eyes. These men are charged with the right to attempt to denounce any man or woman they suspect of blasphemous behaviour through a trial for Heresy – including your Generals, or even your Faction Leader! It is definitely better to avoid having an Inquisitor coming to visit in the first place than finding a way to get rid of them once they are there.

• Inquisitors work like a Catholic Priest in that they spread the Catholic faith throughout the regions they travel through.

• Although an Inquisitor can attempt to denounce Generals and agents, they will move to Heretics and Witches first – the obvious purveyors of Heresy.

• Inquisitors also work like a Priest in that their Piety rating directly affects their chances of denouncing a character, regardless whether they are a General, Heretic or Witch.

• A General’s Piety rating directly affects his chances of surviving an Inquisitor’s denouncement attempt.

• An Inquisitor can be assassinated, but be aware that he represents the Papal States, and there may be serious consequences for attempting this.

CRUSADES & JIHADS

Crusades

A Crusade is a religious quest, a holy war undertaken with Papal sanction. The mission statement of those who join is to capture a certain settlement in the name of Christendom. This could be because the place is rife with Heresy, or because there is a Catholic population there that requires some spiritual rescue in his Holiness’s eyes. Sometimes the Pope will call a Crusade on his own initiative, but he is also open to suggestion from the Catholic Faction Leaders. Being a religious cause, Crusades inspire men to push themselves far beyond their normal capabilities. Once a Crusade has been called, it is up to Catholic Generals to take up the cause and lead their zealous soldiers to victory in God’s name. Any man who can lead a successful assault on a settlement targeted by a Crusade will be the toast of Christendom for years to come!

Requesting Crusades

A Crusade is an incredibly serious event, and not something that the Pope will approve lightly – After all, he is essentially asking the able bodied men of Christendom to travel a great distance and potentially give their lives for this cause. Here are some things to know about requesting a Crusade:

• You can request that the Pope call a Crusade via the Pope Overview Scroll. (see The Pope) You must then select a Crusade target settlement before the Pope accepts or

rejects your request.

• The chances of the Pope agreeing to a Crusade request are strongly affected by the Pope’s relationship with the faction that makes the request.

• The greater the percentage of the population taken to Heresy in a settlement, the more likely the Pope will approve a Crusade there.

• The larger the Catholic population in a settlement owned by a non-Catholic faction, the more likely the Pope will approve a Crusade there.

Joining or Leaving a Crusade

Because there are some serious penalties and benefits for an army on a Crusade, it is important to know how to join a Crusade:

• There is a time limit within which to join a Crusade.

• All Catholic Generals have the option to join a Crusade, provided that their faction is not excommunicated.

• To have a General join a Crusade, he must first be outside of a settlement, and have at least 8 units in his army. Then Army Details Scroll, and of the scroll.

• This Crusade marker will appear at the top of a Crusading army’s banner.

• It is possible for a General to abandon the Crusade, although doing so will cause his units to begin deserting. This can cause the loss of a huge military force, so be very careful

Crusading Army Effects

Once a General has joined a Crusade, his army experiences the following effects:

• Crusading armies can move at twice their normal movement rate.

• Crusading armies do not pay any upkeep for their units.

• There are special units that are only available to Crusading armies. If a Crusading General attempts to hire mercenaries, he may see new units available

• If a Crusading army does not make sufficient progress towards the Crusade target each

• If a unit in a Crusading army is ordered out of the army, then it will vanish after one

Ending Crusades

Crusades can end several ways:

• A Crusade succeeds when a Crusading army successfully captures the target

• A Crusade fails if no Generals have joined the Crusade within the time limit to join.

• If the target settlement belongs to an excommunicated faction and it reconciles, the

• If the target settlement falls to a Christian army not on Crusade, then the Crusade

• Factions that participate in a Crusade can receive a variety of rewards, depending upon

Jihads

A Jihad is a Muslim Holy War against the infidels that would make themselves the enemies of Islam. Jihads have almost identical effects to a Crusade, however the way that they are called is very different. Since there is no singular spiritual leader within Islam, Muslim Faction Leaders do not have to seek someone else’s approval to call a Jihad.

that wish to join the Crusade for a nominal fee.

and every turn, it will begin to lose troops to desertion. These men are utterly committed to the cause, and will not wait to serve a man that lacks their conviction.

turn, disgusted at being asked to abandon their holy cause. The only exception to this is when a Crusading army captures a city, it may leave units there to form a new garrison.

settlement of the Crusade.

Crusade ends peacefully.

ends uneventfully.

their involvement. Simply participating can earn positive rewards, even if another faction is the one that takes the target settlement.

• Any Islamic faction that has an Imam with a sufficient Piety rating can call one.

Click

on the ‘Declare a Jihad’ button at the bottom of the Imam’s Character

Information Scroll.

click

on the ‘Join the Crusade’ button at the bottom

double-click

on him to open his

• Islamic Generals join a Jihad in exactly the same way that a Catholic General joins a Crusade, via the ‘Join the Jihad’ button on their Army Details Scroll.

• A Jihad army experiences exactly the same restrictions, bonuses and effects that a Crusading army does.

• Jihads end for exactly the same reasons as a Crusade, except that there is no equivalent of excommunication.

DIPLOMACY

Although it might be your destiny to conquer the known world, your faction is but one of many in the Grand Campaign. Sometimes it will be better to attempt to deal with other factions in a more civilised manner to further your plans of conquest. This is where diplomacy comes in. Diplomacy in the Grand Campaign works by a system of proposals. One faction makes a proposal of some sort, and the other faction accepts, refuses or counters it. Choosing to counter is the way to haggle in negotiations. Throughout diplomacy you will hear the other party speak to you, and their tone will help give you an idea about what they thought of the last thing you proposed to them. It is quite possible to insult someone badly enough to make their faction think less of you, should you push things too far…

The Diplomacy Scroll

Once you enter Diplomacy, there is plenty of information made available to you about your faction, the other faction and the individual you are negotiating with, and the proposals you make yourself.

• Your faction’s details, and the items you can put into a proposal are shown in the panel on the left hand side of the Diplomacy Scroll.

• The other faction’s details, including a display of their enemies and allies, as well as any treaties you have with them, are shown in the panel on the right hand side of the Diplomacy Scroll.

• Your current stance of allied, neutral or at war with the other faction, and the number of turns that this has been the case is displayed at the top of the scroll.

• The speech bubble shows what the other faction has to say to you throughout the negotiations. Some of this will come as actual speech.

• The Demeanour display below the speech bubble will give a description to confirm what the speech you heard was implying.

• The two negotiators will have their name and diplomacy-related attribute shown.

• Details: Relations – This represents the relationship you have with the other faction.

• Details: Reputation – This represents this faction’s reputation throughout the world. Factions that break treaties become known for it.

• Details: Power – This faction’s total military might, including that of their allies. It may well be worth considering who has the most ability to back their threats.

• Details: Wealth – For your faction, your treasury value is shown. Thinking about what the other faction can afford is worth factoring into your proposals.

• Details: Priorities – If you happen to have an insight into what the other faction may want from at this moment, it will be displayed here.

• Private Dealings: Bribe – If this is shown, you have the option to bribe the army, settlement or individual you are dealing with.

• Make Offer – The items listed here are things you can offer in your proposals. Some items may or may not be much of an actual offer, depending on the circumstances.

• Make Demand – The items listed here are things you can ask from the other faction in

your proposals. It may or may not actually be demanding to propose these.

• Make Declaration – The items listed here are treaties that you can cancel, by putting them into a ‘proposal’.

• The centre scroll is where you actually form proposals, and the items you include in a proposal are shown here.

• The buttons below the scroll select how you put the proposal forward – as a gift, a

proposal, or a declaration that you are cancelling a treaty.

Demeanour - Reading their Reaction

A large part of negotiating is figuring out what the people you’re dealing with are thinking, or are prepared to accept – This is where Demeanour comes in.

When you start diplomacy, the first demeanour reaction you receive from the other party will be a greeting, which will vary depending on whether or not you are at war, allied, or neutral. From that point on, all demeanour reactions you hear and see on the demeanour display will be relating the reaction to the last proposal you made.

Making Proposals & Declarations

The centre scroll shows the proposal that you are going to put forward. You build up a treaty by selecting items from the two lists to the side of the scroll:

Click

on items under the ‘Make Offer’ heading in the left hand column to add

•

them as offers in the proposal. These are things that you’re willing to give to the other party, including land, cash, information, military support or access, an alliance, and other such things.

Click

on items under the ‘Make Demands’ heading in the left hand column to

•

add them to the proposal as demands from your opposite number.

Click

on items under the ‘Make Declarations’ heading in the left hand column

• to add them to the proposal – although this is not a proposal, but rather a declaration that you are ending a treaty.

Click

on an item already in the proposal to remove it.

•

• As you add and remove items, you can see the ‘Proposal Balance’ shown beneath the offers and demands you have added to the proposal.

• Proposals do not have to be balanced, but you’ll find proposals that are obviously imbalanced in your favour are rejected more often than proposals that offer the other faction something genuine.

Click

the Make Offer button below the proposal text. Your opposite

•

number will then respond. He will do one of three things: refuse

• If you’re simply offering money, territory or map information and not asking for

• When you want to bring an end to a treaty you have with another faction, such

• It’s quite possible that your proposed treaty was interesting, but not quite what

• Once a counter offer treaty is on the table, you can accept it or make your own

• It’s quite possible for negotiations to go through several rounds of offer and

• If you make an offer or demand without adding the other type,

outright, accept immediately or make a counter-offer.

anything in return, you can offer these as a gift to the other faction. This will usually make the other faction see your people in a better light.

as taking away their military access or breaking an alliance, you can do so by selecting these items under the ‘Make declaration’, and then Cancel Treaty button instead of making an offer.

the opposition wanted. In this case, observe their demeanour as they make a counter-offer to you. The demeanour will help you get an idea of how close you were to success.

proposals in response as a counter offer. Again, you can change the treaty by

clicking

on either the offers, the demands, and on the proposal scroll itself.

counter offer before a deal is reached. Be mindful, though, that not everyone’s patience is endless and one man’s haggling is another man’s waste of time!

Offer button. You will be asking the other party what it would take for them to accept what you’ve suggested.

clicking

click

on the

the Make

Proposal Items

The items available on the left that you can enter as offers, demands or private dealings will change depending upon what situations are available. Here are some things to know about special situations and proposals:

• Offering Trade Rights is an ideal first proposal for neutral factions.

• Only a Diplomat can attempt to bribe a settlement, army or character.

• Only a Princess can offer herself in a marriage alliance, and she can also be approached personally for one as well. A marriage alliance is serious, and both parties are expected to honour the deal.

• Military Access means granting passage through a faction’s lands, without it any longer being considered a hostile action.

• If you are negotiating for Papal election votes, relevant offers and demands will appear here.

Proposal Balance

The ‘Proposal Balance’ displayed at the bottom of the proposal scroll is a very useful tool in that it lets you know how generous or demanding your suggestion is. The information shown relates how balanced the proposal is on raw terms – in other words, without considering the situations for both parties. Thus, what normally may be generous may be unappealing to the faction you are dealing with now.

MANAGING YOUR EMPIRE

In the Grand Campaign, you will discover that as your empire becomes larger and more powerful, it will also become a more unruly beast for you to tame. You will have to deal with increasing numbers of enemies, the prospect of rebellion within your realm, deaths in your ruling family, and much more! This section of the manual covers how to get a grip on your faction’s empire - from knowing where all your forces are through to who your allies and enemies are.

The Faction Overview Scroll

Click

on this button to get an overview of your faction. The Faction Overview Scroll

displays some information about your faction, and opens access to other scrolls relating to your faction’s state:

• A host of information and stats about your faction, from who your greatest General is, through to what year it is and your victory conditions.

• Access the automanage controls which allow you to have either the taxes or construction in your settlements managed by the AI. There is also a slider to adjust the spending policies when using automanage.

• Tabs that open other overview scrolls, such as the Diplomacy Overview where you can see the current stances for all known factions in the campaign at present.

Click

on this button to view your Family Tree Scroll.

•

Click

on this button to view the Faction Rankings Scroll.

•

Click

on this button to view your Rosters Scroll.

•

Click

on this button to view the College of Cardinals Scroll.

The Family Tree Scroll

The Family Tree Scroll shows all the important characters in your faction—the men who can be Generals and Governors, as well as your noble daughters who will become Princesses.

• Portraits in colour are living characters; those characters shown in grey are dead.

• The two most important characters are the Faction Leader and the immediate Faction Heir, and the status of these two is marked on their portraits. The Faction Leader is always the most senior General in any army, regardless of actual Command ratings.

• All the larger portraits are characters in your faction that you can use in the campaign now. Move the cursor over a portrait to see the character’s name and abilities displayed at the bottom of the scroll.

• Select one of the larger portraits by ‘Show Me’ button to reveal character’s location on the campaign map.

• The smaller portraits are wives or children who have not yet come of age.

New Family Members

During the Grand Campaign you will have characters and family members die, but you will also have new members join the ranks of your ruling family. Sometimes your direct actions will expand or change your family tree, while other times promising Generals, keen suitors or women of noble breeding may be presented to you, seeking to join your nobility. Ways to join your Family Tree include:

• Being born in. Characters born into your Family Tree become either a General or a

Princess when they come of age, depending on their gender. They may have traits as a result of their parents’ influence.

• Being married in. Characters can join your family by marrying someone in your Family

Tree. This may be a direct result of the player’s actions, such as attempting to marry a General with a Princess, or seal a marriage alliance in diplomacy. It could also be because a suitable husband or wife has become available.

• Being adopted in. Characters that lack their own children may choose to adopt a

younger man and make him his ward, someone that they would be prepared to have serve his family’s interests, and potentially name as a potential successor to their wealth and estates.

• Bribed characters do not join the family. It is important to note that bribing a General

does not actually bring him into the family tree of his new faction. The only way that these Generals may join the family is by being married to a Princess within the faction, and this is limited to European factions.

The Faction Rankings Scroll

This scroll gives you a way of seeing your progress in the game, and comparing your strength with that of your rivals in several different ways. The graph shows your faction’s power over time as an absolute value; it does not show the proportion of the world’s ‘power’ that you control.

• The ranking choice allows you to choose an aspect of your faction’s power: production, territorial, financial, population and overall.

• The faction choice lets you choose which collection of factions you wish to compare: your own, all factions, the top five, neighbouring factions and a custom selection.

• You can use the faction symbols to toggle the graph lines on and off for any particular faction(s). This can be very useful when reviewing your progress in a war.

clicking

on it and then

click

on the

The Rosters Scroll The Rosters Scroll is actually three roster lists rolled into one location. You can access the

rosters either via the button at the bottom of the Faction Overview Scroll, or by on the tabs at the top of the Review Panel:

• Military Forces Roster. This roster lists the Generals, Admirals and Captains for your faction. It also displays their attributes, their status and location, and how many soldiers they have under their command.

• Settlements Roster. This roster lists the settlements for your faction. It shows the level of settlement, population, public order, income, Governor (if any) and icons to flag when construction or recruitment are taking place.

• Agents Roster. This roster lists all the agents in service for your faction. Also displayed are their attributes, their character type, and where they are located.

Your Job as Faction Leader

There are countless options as to what you can do in the Grand Campaign, and it would be incorrect to say that you have to touch on everything to succeed. In fact, the more focused your actions, the more effective they are. These are the primary tasks you have as the ruler of your faction:

• Ensure you have enough troops. To conquer other lands and defend your own, you will need armies and garrisons. It is up to you to ensure that your empire has the facilities to recruit these units.

• Ensure you have enough money. Without finances you will find that there is very little chance of success in the Grand Campaign. Money may not be one of your goals, but it will be required to reach them.

• Deal with other factions. The agreements you make with other factions can have a huge effect on your situation. An aggressive allied faction can drag you into huge conflicts, or a timid one might not back you sufficiently when you could use their help.

• Deal with threats of rebellion. Good leaders find out about trouble within their own ranks before it happens. Keep an eye on your Generals and settlements to see if they are loyal and content.

• Plan conquests. You will need to have an idea of what’s going on both in your lands, and those beyond your borders so you know where the opportunities lie to expand your empire.

How to Make Money

There are several ways to make money for your faction in the Grand Campaign, though it is important to know that doing some of these things may have other repercussions. These are some of the basic ways to improve the amount of money your faction is generating:

• Establish trade rights. Send your Diplomats and Princesses out to establish trade rights with everyone you can.

• Increase your tax rates. Just ensure you’re not going to send your settlements into a state of riot and unrest by doing so.

• Construct buildings that improve trade income. Constructing trade buildings may cost money, but they pay themselves off over time and then make your settlements more profitable.

• Disband surplus units. Most troops require that you pay them an upkeep cost each turn. If you are keeping units you will never put into action, disbanding them will help cut down your military expenditure.

• Ransom Prisoners. When you fight battles, attempt to capture lots of prisoners and then ransom them back to the enemy.

• Use Merchants. The amount of money that you can generate from sending Merchants out onto valuable trade resources can be significant.

Rebellion

Not everybody is content to remain a servant, and there may be times that you are faced with characters, armies or settlements that actually rebel against you. This is usually

right-clicking

because they are either disloyal to begin with, or are in a position where their loyalty is being strained.

How to Deal with Loyalty & Rebellion

There are several ways to prevent rebellion; having to recapture a settlement or lose a General who you were counting on can be a true setback. Here are some ways you can avoid rebellion:

• Marry a Princess to a General. This will boost his loyalty significantly.

• Don’t leave Generals stranded. If you leave a General to fight in very difficult odds, he won’t appreciate it. Ensure they have the troops they need to not be in too much danger.

• Keep disloyal Generals close. Generals with a loyalty problem should be kept close. If you send them far away, they are more likely to become rebellious.

• Keep the people happy. Try and build everything you can to improve the settlements you have, install Governors where there are issues and having a decent garrison of units helps there.

BATTLES IN MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR

How Battles work in Total War

Realistic large-scale conflicts are what Total War battles are all about. Unlike many realtime strategy games where you can continually recruit troops during battle and use sheer numbers to overwhelm your opponent, battles in Medieval II: Total War involve using the same sorts of tactics for field and siege warfare that commanders of the period had to master themselves. As a commander you’ll be doing things like:

• Making sure your units are organised and positioned to do their job.

• Looking to the terrain for places where you can use one unit to hold back many enemies, or higher ground to defend and shoot from.

• Choosing the right units to do the job. You don’t want to send cavalry charging into a row of spears formed into a wall of spikes for example.

• Paying attention to what the enemy is doing, and moving to counter his plans.

• Looking for opportunities to outnumber and outflank enemy units to take enemies down more easily.

• Ensuring that you don’t let your men get too exhausted or break their morale. Your men are no good to you if they are spent, or running for their lives!

• Using your Generals (if present) to rally troops and influence the battle.

The Battle Deployment Scroll

When you have an army selected on the campaign map

right-click

This will bring up the Battle Deployment Scroll:

on an enemy army or settlement to attack.

• The strength comparison bar in the centre of the scroll gives you the overall battle odds. Move the cursor over the crossed swords to see the exact odds.

• Reinforcements are also listed (and taken into account in the odds calculation). These are drawn from armies that are adjacent to the site of the battle or siege.

Click

here to take control of your units on the battlefield.

•

• You can have the game work out the result. Auto-resolving a battle is speedy, but your tactical skill is obviously not taken into account. Casualties may be heavy, and you can’t protect valuable Generals.

Click

here to cancel the battle. If the other army was the attacker, your force

• will withdraw a short distance to a safer position.

Attackers & Defenders

In every campaign battle there is an attacking army and a defending army. During sieges the besieging army is usually the attacker. The only exception to this is when the defenders sally out, or a relief force attacks the besiegers. In this case the besieging army is the defender. Attacking and defending armies have different victory conditions in battle and have different deployment rules.

How to Win Battles

Generally speaking, in a field battle you need to drive the enemy from the battlefield in order to win. You can press the ESC key at any time to end a battle.

• This may involve killing many enemy troops, although a crisis of morale (the death of a General, for example) will make the enemy flee the battle.

• As an attacker, there is a time limit. If you haven’t defeated the enemy before the timer expires, you lose the battle.

• As a defender, the timer works in your favour. Remain on the field until it runs out and the attacker is automatically defeated.

• During a siege battle, victory is determined by control of the central square or plaza in the settlement. The attackers must take this square before the timer expires.

• During a battle you can press the F1 key to see information about the battle, including the victory conditions.

Deploying Your Units for Battle

At the start of the battle you may be given a chance to deploy your troops. The rules of deployment work as follows:

• As an attacker your army will always deploy on a section of the battlefield that matches the line of its approach. March onto a battlefield from the north, and that’s where your forces will deploy. There is an exception to this in siege battles, where you will approach from the side of the settlement that has a gate.

• As a defender, you’ll deploy in a complementary area of the battlefield.

• Units must be positioned within the boundaries of your deployment zone. This is the area on the map bordered by your faction colour.

• If you are ambushed, then you will not be able to manually deploy your units at all.

• Reinforcements always appear on the edge of the battlefield that matches their position on the campaign map. It can be very worthwhile, for example, to position supporting armies on the campaign map on the flanks or in the rear of an enemy position before you attack.

Placing Units During Deployment

There are several controls to understand so that you can actually deploy your units in a sensible manner:

Click

on a unit or its card in the Control Panel, and then

• want it to occupy.

• You can select multiple units for deployment.

• Hold down the CTRL key and

(in the Control Panel) you wish to select.

• Hold down CTRL and

all units of the same type in your army.

Click-and-drag

• to select. All units surrounded in this fashion will be selected.

• If you select one card then hold down shift and will select all cards in between.

• You can deploy multiple units by You can also

right-click-and-drag

on the battlefield to have a yellow box around the units you wish

click

double-click

on a unit card (in the Control Panel) to select

right-clicking

the units out as a line.

on the units (on the battlefield) or unit cards

right-click

click

on the ground you want them to occupy.

on the ground you

on another card, then it

The Battle View & HUD

What you see on screen during a battle can be divided into four main sections:

• The Battlefield View. The actual display of the battlefield. Much of the controls in battle

• The Battle Mini-map. On the left are the mini-map and game speed controls.

• The Battle Review Panel. In the centre are the unit cards, each of which represents one

• The Battle Control Panel. On the right are the controls for individual units, groups of

The Battlefield View Medieval II: Total War’s battlefield offers a realistic and direct take on what’s happening in

the battle itself, but when there’s a lot happening, being able to recognise exactly what everything is can be vital:

• You can

• Some units also carry smaller flags showing your faction colour and symbol. These

• Terrain has exactly the effects you would expect in real life: marching through snow is

• Weather also has realistic effects: A blazing sun will heat plate armour; fog will

• The out-of-bounds area of the map is marked by a bright red line that is visible when

The Battle Control Panel

There are two sets of buttons to use on the Battle Control Panel – Unit controls, and Group controls:

Unit Controls

clicking

involve

of your units on the battlefield.

units and the army as a whole.

middle of tense hand-to-hand fighting. Different shaped banners are shown for different classes of unit (eg. Cavalry and infantry use different banners).

show a combination of its experience and upgrades to weaponry and armour.

tiring, as is marching up hill; charging downhill is more effective than charging uphill; positioning artillery and archers atop hills and cliffs gives them a range bonus and clear shot, etc.

obscure or even hide units at a distance and rain will make missile fire less accurate, etc.

the camera is close to the battlefield’s edge. Units cannot be ordered beyond this line, although they will go there if running away or withdrawing.

•

on the actual men and terrain.

click

on the large banner to select the unit – this can be quite useful in the

Clicking

on the portrait of your commanding General or Captain immediately

moves the camera to a position behind the Generals’ unit.

Click

here to cancel the current orders being carried out by the selected unit(s).

•

You can also press the Backspace key for the same effect.

Click

here to make the selected unit(s) withdraw from battle in good order. The

• units will retreat into the out of bounds area of the map. A unit that is given withdrawal orders can be stopped and recalled to the fight up until the point it leaves play.

Click

here to toggle the unit formation from ‘tight’ to ‘loose’. This alters the

• spacing between men within the selected unit(s).

Click

here when a unit is selected to toggle the unit’s movement speed between

• walking and running. A unit that runs will tire more quickly than one that marches at a steady pace.

Click

here to set the selected unit(s) to guard mode. When this is toggled on the

• unit(s) hold position and formation at all costs, and let the enemy come to them. A unit on guard will not pursue fleeing enemies. This can be useful for holding an important location (such as a gateway).

•

Click

here to toggle skirmish mode on and off. A missile unit set to skirmish will

seek to keep a safe distance between itself and the enemy (usually the range of its missile weapons). If a unit cannot skirmish this button will be greyed out.

Click

here to toggle Fire at will mode on or off. When this is on selected missile-

• armed units will fire at nearby targets without further orders. When a unit without missiles is selected this button will be greyed out and unavailable.

• These buttons are reserved for a variety of special abilities, depending on the type of unit currently selected. See Using Special Abilities.

• This displays the number of prisoners you have captured during the battle.

Group Controls

click

• When a group of units is selected buttons.

Click

this button to group the selected units. This button is greyed out unless

• multiple units have been selected.

Click

this button to toggle CPU control for the group, and the game will

• independently issue orders to the units once you have given the group some orders.

The Battle Review Panel

Each of the cards in this section represents one unit on the battlefield. When a card is highlighted all men in the unit on the battlefield are highlighted with a circle, and an arrow showing the direction they are facing.

• The number is the current number of men in the unit. The artwork on the card shows the unit type.

• Large portrait unit cards are always Generals accompanied by their bodyguards. A gold star on the unit card identifies the commanding general in battle. Any other generals have a silver star.

• Units that have gained experience and/or improved weapons or armour have this shown on the unit card as chevrons, swords and/or shield markers.

• All units that are armed with missile weapons have a bar across the bottom of the card that shows their current ammunition status. This bar always starts full, and as the unit fires missiles the bar empties.

• Artillery units have an ammunition status bar, just like other missile units. The number on the card is the number of men in the unit, not the number of artillery pieces. Each artillery piece requires a minimum number of men to crew it.

• Units can be grouped together during battle. By in the group can be selected and controlled as one.

• Unit cards can have action icons superimposed to show what the unit is currently doing (covered below).

States & Effects on Units in Battle

The unit cards in the control panel also give you a way of monitoring what your units are doing without having to dash to each one in turn. Each unit card can have a superimposed symbol as ‘shorthand’ notification of what is happening to the unit:

• When a unit takes casualties the number of men in the unit shown on the unit card will turn red.

here to bring up the Group formations

clicking

on the tab all the units

• A single arrowhead at the top of the card shows that the unit is moving at a steady march towards its ordered destination.

• A double arrowhead at the top of the card shows that the unit is moving towards its ordered destination at the run, or is charging an enemy unit and is yet to make contact.

• Crossed swords show that the unit is engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

• A bow and arrow symbol shows that the unit is firing missiles. (This symbol is used even if the unit is using ammo other than arrows).

• Arrows show that the unit is under fire. It may be worth moving the unit out of range or ordering it to attack its tormentors!

• This symbol shows that the unit is currently hiding and may not be spotted by enemy forces.

• The white flag symbol shows that the unit has suffered a morale crisis and is now routing: running from the enemy. The unit banner also changes to white on the battlefield. It may be possible for a General to rally troops that are routing.

• These symbols only appear on unit cards during sieges. To find out more see SIEGES & SIEGE BATTLES.

It’s quite possible for more than one of these symbols to apply at any one time. If this is the case, the symbols that apply are displayed in turn.

The Battle Mini-map

The mini-map gives you a view directly down onto the battlefield. Terrain on the battlefield is taken from the campaign map location. You’ll see distant mountains and bodies of water in the correct places beyond the battlefield.

• The mini-map is always oriented so that north is at the top.

• The arrowheads in faction colours show the position and facing of units on the battlefield.

• Selected units are always highlighted on the mini-map.

• The two blue lines show the current view onto the battlefield.

• The markers on the mini-map indicate if the unit is yours (green), the enemy’s (red) or ally (blue).

• The shadowed area at the edge of the mini-map is out of bounds during a battle. Units may only enter this part of the map if they are withdrawing from battle or routing.

• It is possible to issue movement orders using the mini-map. See Giving Orders – Moving & Attacking for more details.

Drag-and-click

•

The other data and controls in this section of the panel are:

• You can zoom in and out of the mini-map using these buttons to change the

• Three buttons adjust the game speed. The ‘plus’ and ‘minus’ speed or slow down

• The hourglass timer shows how much time remains before the battle ends. If

• Just above the game speed controls the power bar shows the relative success or

on the mini-map to adjust its displayed view.

map scale.

the action respectively. ‘Pause’ stops the battle, and then becomes a ‘Play’ button. The number shown is the game speed multiplier. Hit CTRL + T to toggle between standard and the fastest speed setting.

you speed up the game, the timer speeds up, too.

failure of your army in disposing of the enemy.

The Battle Cameras

The default for the battlefield camera in Medieval II: Total War is an RTS-style camera, which can be controlled by the mouse or keyboard controls (there is a second mode which will be discussed below):

• Moving the cursor to the edge of the screen alters the camera view. The cursor

will change shape to show that the view is being altered. The view will move in the same direction as the side of the screen the cursor was moved to.

mouse-wheel

• The

automatically pitches (tilts) downwards as its height is raised above the battlefield.

• The / and * keys (divide and multiply) on the numeric keypad also alter the camera height in the same fashion. The - and + keys (minus and plus) on the numeric keypad alter the camera tilt towards or away from the ground without altering its height.

Clicking

• look at the unit nearest the cursor while the button is held down. When the button is released the camera moves back to its previous position. (On some mice the mouse-wheel acts as the centre button).

• The cursor arrow keys on the keyboard track the camera view left, right, forward and back without changing the viewing angle. down the left or right arrow keys to pan the camera rapidly.

• The numeric keypad also changes the camera view. Check the key settings by pressing the F1 key during battle for the camera controls.

Double-click

• behind that unit. Pressing the End key also has the same effect.

Click

on the General’s portrait in the control panel to move the camera to a

• position directly behind the General’s bodyguard unit. If no General is present, there will be a Captain.

• The blue lines on the mini-map showing the visible area of the battlefield change as the camera position alters.

• The camera view can be changed when the game is paused.

Pressing the Delete key toggles the second camera mode – locking the view onto the selected unit(s). This will be familiar to players of earlier Total War titles. Virtually all camera controls are the same, with one important exception:

• The up and down arrow keys on the keyboard track the camera view forward and back

without changing the viewing angle.

• The left and right arrow keys on the keyboard pan the camera (spin on its vertical axis)

without changing its position.

Morale

Morale is an area where Total War differs from most other strategy games. Total War battles simulate the psychological factors that affect soldiers in some detail, and it’s important to have some understanding of these factors. Not only will this keep your own army fighting longer, but convincing the enemy soldiers to run away is a much safer route to victory than having to actually kill them. How your units react will depend on their particular training and disposition, so read the unit descriptions carefully.

• In general, peasants and militia are likely to run away at the first sign of trouble, whereas elite units such as knights will fight on in sticky situations.

• You can see each unit’s morale on the unit tool tip. If it says eager, then everything is fine. If it says, “wavering” then the unit is likely to run away soon if you don’t get them some help.

(if your mouse has one) alters the camera height. The camera

the centre (third) button on the mouse zooms the camera viewpoint to

Click

on the ground and hold

on a unit card to make the camera move to a position directly

Routing

If your men become too scared or disheartened and their morale drops too low, they will break and rout. The tool tip will show their action as “routing” and their morale state as “broken”. They will attempt to exit the battle as quickly as possible and you will no longer be able to select them, or give them orders. It is easy to spot units that are routing, as their banner will flash white. If they reach a place where they feel safe, then they may rally and return to your control. Units won’t rally when an enemy is close by, so chasing after enemy units will ensure that they don’t return to the fight.

Factors That Reduce Your Morale

Morale will naturally fall over the course of the battle as units take casualties and become tired. There are some specific things that directly affect morale as well:

• Losing your General.

• Being engaged in a losing melee battle.

• Being outnumbered.

• Being under fire from artillery, guns and flaming ammo.

• Having allies flee nearby. Note that routing can work like a chain reaction in the worst-case scenarios.

• Threats from enemies at the rear or flanks.

• Frightening foes such as elephant cavalry and savage natives that practise live sacrifice, etc.

• Being hit by a nauseous gas cloud from a cow carcass.

Factors That Increase Your Morale

The best ways to bolster morale are:

• Being engaged in a winning melee battle.

• Outnumbering the enemy.

• Keep your forces concentrated so that units can support each other.

• Keep your General near the action.

• Use your General’s Rally ability.

• Position high morale units at the end of your line, as this is the most exposed position.

Ways to Attack the Enemy’s Morale

Your aim is to clear the enemy from the field of battle, so be sure to use some of these techniques to get them routing:

• Concentrate assaults in one place so you can overwhelm certain enemy units.

• Concentrate missile fire on one unit to increase the chances of breaking it.

• Look for ways to get several enemy units routing at once to create a mass panic.

• Get units behind the enemy to undermine the morale of the whole force.

• If the chance arises, kill or rout the enemy General.

Fatigue

When your men are tired, they don’t fight as well, and are more likely to run away. The fatigue level is shown on the unit tool tip. If a unit is exhausted, you should try and give it rest. Things that affect fatigue include:

• Units get tired when they fight or shoot.

• Units get tired when they run a long distance, or climb a steep slope.

• If a unit has become tired, then leave it standing still for a while, and it will recover.

• Units do not become tired walking on flat ground, but nor do they recover.

• Troops used to the cooler climate of the north, or who are wearing heavy armour will tire out if fighting in the heat of the desert or the tropics.

Giving Orders - Moving and Attacking Medieval II: Total War uses the same basic controls for both tasks:

on the battlefield for a destination or target.

click

to select, right-

click

•

Click

on a unit on the battlefield or a unit card in the Review Panel to select the unit.

Right-click

•

Right-click

• change based on the unit you have selected, and the way it will attack.

• You can review movement orders for all units by holding down the spacebar key. The coloured chevrons will show all unit destinations for as long as the spacebar is held.

• When you order a tightly bunched selection of units to move to a point, they’ll keep their formation, and move so that the centre of the group of units is the point that you clicked. If they’re widely spread, then they’ll arrange themselves intelligently around the point you selected.

• The cursor will become green when targets are in range of a selected unit that uses a missile attack. The cursor will be red if the target is out of range.

Multiple Selections, Grouping, and Formations

Understanding groups and formations is important if you wish to be an effective commander. These features allow your units to work together more effectively, and let you control your army more easily. It’s usually best to set up your groups and formations during the battle’s deployment phase.

Selecting & Ordering Multiple Units

There are several ways you can select multiple units at once:

• Hold down the CTRL key when

units already selected.

Click-and-drag

•

• Use one of the shortcut keys to select all the units of a particular type. The default shortcuts are

• CTRL + M to select all missile units.

• CTRL + C to select all cavalry units.

• CTRL + I to select all non-missile infantry units.

• CTRL + B to select all artillery units.

• CTRL + A to select all units.

Once you have multiple units selected, you can order them all together in the same way that you’d order a single unit. This includes moving, attacking, and the various special order buttons.

Groups

When you have multiple units selected, you can easily turn them into a group by the Group button on the control panel. Once you do this, you’ll see that the unit cards rearrange themselves on the review panel, with a border around them and a convenient tab that you can use to select the group in future. There are several benefits to grouping your units.

• You can create a group with a specific number, by selecting the units you wish to

group, then holding down CTRL and pressing the number you desire. You can alternatively hit the G key to group the currently selected units.

• It’s easy to select them again by

select the group by pressing the number key that corresponds to the number on the group tab.

• To remove a unit from a group, select the unit, and

• To split a group into two, select the units you wish to split off,

remove them from the group, then

• To add units to a group, you must reform it. Select the existing group, then hold down

the control key and select the units or groups that you wish to add. button or CTRL and a number key to form a new group with all these units.

• When grouped units move, they all move at the same speed, and attempt to maintain

their formation.

on the ground to have all the selected units move to that point. on an enemy unit to have all the units attack it – Note that the cursor will

clicking

on a unit or unit card. This will add it to those

on the ground, and drag out a box to enclose several units.

clicking

their tab on the Review Panel. You can also

click

the Group button again.

click

it again to form them into a new group.

the Group button to

Click

clicking

the Group

• The group remembers the formation it was in when formed, making it easy to reform

again if the units have been dispersed.

• Groups can be given a preset formation, making it easy to organise your units.

• If you order a group to attack an enemy unit, the units in the group will intelligently

assign themselves to attack surrounding enemy units too. A common situation that occurs in the game is when two lines face off against each other. If you group the units in your line, then will intelligently match off with the enemy unit facing them.

• The group may be placed under “AI assistance”.

Once you’ve formed units into a group, you can still give orders to individual units within it, if you temporarily need them to do something different. Units always obey the last order that they’ve been given though, so whenever you issue an order to the group, this overrides any individual orders you’ve given units.

Using AI Assistance

You can place a group under “AI Assistance” (computer control) by selecting the group,

clicking

and care of controlling these units for you. You can give high-level instructions to the computer by selecting the group, then enemy you’d like it to attack. If you don’t give any orders, the group will defend the spot where it currently stands.

Using Formations

A ‘Formation’ is an arrangement of units, where each unit type has a set position for the current formation. Knowing how to use formations makes keeping your forces in a certain shape quick and easy.

• Create your own formations – To create your own formation, arrange your units into the

desired positions before assigning them as a group. The units in the group will always move back into that formation when you give it an order.

• Using preset formations – Once a group is selected,

to reveal a selection of 8 preset formation buttons. arrange the units into the formations as described by their tool tip. The units arrange themselves instantly in the deployment phase.

• Formation stretching - If you’ve assigned a preset formation, you can vary the width of

the group, by dragging out a line to define exactly where you’d like the group to go, and how spread out you’d like it to be.

Using Special Abilities

Some units have special capabilities that you can call upon in battle, ranging from actual attacks, through to unique formations and actions like trying to rally your allies.

• Rally troops – This ability is unique to Generals and gives a temporary morale

boost to all nearby friendly units. This may stop wavering units from breaking, or encourage routing units to rally.

• Sharpened stakes – This ability allows missile units to place down a row of heavy

wooden stakes in front of their current position during deployment only. This forms a defensive wall that is ideal for deterring cavalry charges.

• Spear wall formation – This ability allows a spear-wielding unit to form up a

deadly wall of spikes that makes them extremely difficult to attack from the front. While in this formation, the unit cannot run and moves slowly.

• Fire flaming ammo – This ability allows units with missile weapons to set fire to

their ammo, causing a drop in accuracy, but adding extra fire damage to shots that connect.

• Fire exploding ammo - Exploding shot is an advanced form of munitions that

detonate on impact, creating a deadly hail of shrapnel, killing most troops caught in the blast.

right-click

the “AI Assistance” button on the Control Panel. The computer will now take

right-clicking

on the unit in the centre of the enemy line, all your units

clicking

on the place you’d like it to defend, or

click

on the Group Formations button

Clicking

on one of these will

on the terrain, holding the mouse button down, and

clicking

on the

• Barrage fire – Allows gunpowder artillery to fire many individual shots all in one

attack.

• Rotting cow carcass – Loads a decaying bovine carcass into a trebuchet, which

will create a cloud of nauseous gas. Units affected by the gas suffer a morale penalty.

• Circle and shoot – Causes missile cavalry units to ride in a circle as they attack

the enemy, making their shots slightly less accurate, but also making them much more difficult to hit themselves.

• Wedge formation – Forms cavalry into a narrow wedge that is ideally suited to

moving through enemy lines, rather than stopping to engage.

• Schiltrom formation – Forms a spear/pike wielding unit into a circular formation,

with all troops facing outwards. This is a useful defensive formation when outnumbered or surrounded.

Taking Prisoners

Battle Results

When a battle ends, whatever the reason, a panel will appear giving you information about the result. The following details and controls are available here.

Dealing with Prisoners

If you were the victor, and thus the captor, you will have a decision about what to do with the prisoners you have taken in battle.

Ransom

Choosing to ransom asks the other faction to pay for the return of their troops, and possibly Generals or even Faction Leaders or Heirs. This is considered common and acceptable, neither noble nor nasty.

Release

Choosing to release lets these men go after the battle, showing mercy. This is considered to be a rather chivalrous thing to do, although letting the enemy go is not always wise.

Execute

Choosing to execute the prisoners is quite obviously a dreadful thing to do, but if you can’t afford for the enemy to be regaining troops, this can be the best course of action.

Things to know about how you deal with prisoners:

Whenever an enemy soldier that is routing is brought down by one of your men, the enemy is taken prisoner. Note that you only get to take prisoners if you are victorious, as the winning side is in a position to reclaim their men that were taken themselves.

• Statistics about the battle you just had, whether you won or lost, and if it was a close battle or a slaughter.

Click

this button to exit the battle entirely.

•

Click

this button to save a replay of the battle that just took place so you can

view it later to relive your more glorious moments.

• The option to save a replay does not occur in campaign battles.

Click

this button for more detailed information about the battle that

• just took place.

• The faction that actually captured the prisoners is the one that decides to ransom, execute or release them.

• The only decision the faction that lost the battle makes is whether or not it pays the ransom, should one be offered.

• Generals, Faction Leaders and Faction Heirs are worth far more money than standard units in ransom calculations.

• Declining to pay ransoms when you can afford it can be considered somewhat dreadful, while choosing to pay a large ransom is considered quite chivalrous.

• If you can’t actually afford a ransom, nobody will think worse of you for not paying.

SIEGES & SIEGE BATTLES

Sieges occur when an army assaults a settlement or attempts to break into a fort. They have much in common with field battles, but with the important qualification that one side is ‘safely’ behind a set of defences. All the normal rules of the battlefield apply to sieges; orders for attacks and movement are issued in the normal fashion. There are, however, extra conditions that apply during sieges, and new weapons and tactics for both the attacker and defender to consider.

Launching a Siege

When you attack a settlement with an army, you are launching a siege and will receive a special Siege Details Scroll that comes with options not found in field battles.

• Any defences including walls or improved towers will be displayed here to show what you’re up against.

• The number of turns that the settlement can last before having to surrender from starvation is shown below the defences.

Click

on this button to have your army withdraw,

• calling off the siege.

Click

on this button to launch your attack now with the forces and equipment

• you have now.

Click

on these buttons to begin building the siege equipment shown

• on them: Ladders, Rams and Siege Towers. Items selected will appear in the construction queue below, and points will be deducted from the army’s build points total.

Click

on this button to have your siege army maintain its position, holding the

• siege. This can be used to build more siege equipment, wait for reinforcements, or even attempt to starve out the defenders so that they will surrender.

Victory in Siege Battles

The victory conditions of a siege battle are different to that of a field battle. You can still win by killing all of your opponent’s troops or routing them from the battlefield, but controlling the settlement is actually what a siege battle is about.

• There is a square in the centre of every settlement, indicating which faction the square, and thus the settlement belongs to.

• The besieging army must have at least one of its units in the square without any defenders in the square to actually take control of it.

• When the besieging army takes control of the square a timer will appear, counting down the time remaining before they have fully taken control of the settlement itself. If the remaining defenders do not reclaim the square within that time limit, they lose the battle, and the settlement.

Using Siege Equipment & Artillery

There are two basic types of machines that you can employ in siege battles – artillery units that are capable of attacking walls and structures, and actual siege equipment. Artillery can target walls, defences and buildings like any other unit in battle. Siege equipment however works quite differently depending on the equipment being used:

• A unit equipped with a ram can be sent against a gateway or wooden wall.

The cursor will change to show a suitable target gate for the ram. The ram affords the men using it some protection from missile fire.

• A unit equipped with ladders can be sent to scale a suitable stretch of wall

(not a tower). The cursor will change to show a suitable length of wall to

assault. The unit will march towards the walls, raise their ladders and then climb up onto the top of the walls. They will have to fight any defenders on the walls after climbing up.

• A unit equipped with a siege tower can be sent to assault a suitable wall (not a

tower in the defences). The cursor will change to show a suitable wall to attack. The unit will push the siege tower towards the wall, bring it to a halt next to the wall, and then clamber up it before launching an assault directly over the battlements. They will have to fight any defenders who are present on the wall.

• This cursor appears whenever it is possible to target walls or defences with a selected artillery unit. The artillery unit will continue to fire until its target structure is destroyed or it runs out of ammunition.

Click

on this button in the Control Panel to toggle flaming missiles on and off.

• Flaming missiles can set buildings on fire, often ensuring that they will be totally destroyed.

Capturing Walls

Wooden palisades serve only as a barrier to keep out attackers. However, settlements with proper walls men can walk upon and can be actively fought over by the attackers and defenders:

• Any infantry (i.e. non-mounted) unit can be ordered to move to the top of a wall, or ordered to attack defenders on a wall.

• If an attacking unit is in sole possession of a wall, gatehouse or tower it will capture the structure.

• The defenders can recapture walls.

Defending in Siege Battles

Even though being under siege is not a good thing, having the advantage of walls and defensive structures is. When armies are evenly matched, the defender actually has a huge advantage, as it is not they that need to take a risk – it is up to the attacker to find a way in.

Sally Battles

Sally battles occur when the settlement garrison emerge from behind their walls to drive off their besiegers. In the case of a sally battle the garrison are always treated as the battle attackers and the besiegers as the battle defenders even though, in strategic terms, the situation is the other way round. The besiegers will appear on the battlefield outside the settlement, and they will not have a chance to position their troops for the battle. For the attackers (sallying out) to win, they must kill or drive off all the defenders (the besieging army).

Using Defensive Fortifications

Defensive fortifications need to be manned in order to be activated – It is not enough to simply build the fortifications in the first place.

• If a unit of the defending faction is near a tower or gatehouse, the defensive missiles installed there will fire on enemy units that come into their firing range.

• It is possible for the attacker to take control of fortifications once they gain control of the central square.

HISTORICAL BATTLES

Historical Battles are battles taken from history that are brought to life in Medieval II: Total War. These battles come as special scenarios where you play as one of the sides in an epic

battle where you have to make the most of the situation at hand. Being based on the actual historical events, history itself has shown us a winning tactic in these scenarios – apply those tactics and you should prove victorious!

Playing a Historical Battle

To begin playing a Single Player Historical Battle, go to the Single Player Menu and then select Historical Battles to see the list of currently available battles to play. Multiplayer Historical Battles involve the same process as below, except that the ‘Select Army’ screen includes information to show which player is controlling which army.

Click

on the battles listed under ‘Select Battle’. This will bring up the basic details of

• the battle in question.

Click

on the ‘Next’ button in the bottom right to go to the ‘Select Army’ screen.

•

• Mouse-over the faction shields to see which armies are playable in this battle. their shields to see that army’s units – the last selectable army you with a glow.

• When you are ready to begin the battle,

Winning a Historical Battle

The rules of Historical Battles are only slightly different to that of any other field battle or siege:

• The deployment is always pre-determined. Part of the challenge with these battles is winning from a poor starting position.

• Reinforcements may appear to arrive in a manner that looks unfamiliar, so keep an eye out for them – They may be close, but well hidden.

click

on the ‘Next/Start’ button.

click

Click

on will pulse

CUSTOM BATTLES

Custom Battles give the player the ability to fine-tune a battle scenario to their liking, for both Single Player and in Multiplayer Battles. To start a Custom Battle, Player’ in the Main Menu, then your Custom Battle can begin: the conditions, the teams and the armies.

Choosing Conditions Screen

There are a wide variety of conditions that can be adjusted to tailor the battlefield to your needs. Once you are done, to the Customise Battle Screen.

Custom Battle Conditions Settings:

• Choose Battle. This selects a battle location. Locations marked with a cross before the

• Load Previous Battles.

• Game Type. Chooses between victory conditions of ‘Last man standing’ (survive to win),

• Season, Weather & Time of Day. These adjust the basic season, weather and time of day

• Time Limit. Allows varying time limits, or a ‘No time limit’ battle.

• Level. Allows varying settlement levels to be included, to play the battle as a siege. Set

• Culture. Allows the settlement culture to be set to Northern European, Southern

• Defences. Allows for the inclusion of improved towers in siege battles.

• Difficulty. Sets the battle difficulty – the higher the difficulty, the more capable and

• Period. Works as a unit filter. If set to ‘All’, all units are available. ‘Early’, ‘Late’ and

click

on the ‘Next’ button to continue

name includes a specially defined settlement. Locations without rivers can have settlements added to them.

settings of a previously fought battle.

‘Scored resolution’ (score based on units involved and combat results) for field battles. Siege Battles will always be set to ‘Siege Assault’.

for the battle. Some weather and time settings have an effect on how combat works.

this to ‘None’ for a field battle.

European or Middle Eastern.

dangerous your CPU opponent will be.

‘High’ all refer to a medieval time period. Late period units are more advanced, early period units are more primitive.

click

on ‘Custom Battle’. There are three things to set before

Click

on the ‘Load Previous Battles’ button to quickly recall the

click

on ‘Single

Customise Battle Screen

This is the screen where the teams are set up for battle. You can have up to 8 factions and 4 teams in one battle using the controls on screen as follows:

• Team details are shown down the left. Aside from seeing which player is in which team, you can also adjust the amount of Florins that team can use to spend on units, and whether or not that team plays as the attacker or defender.

• Player details are shown in the middle of the screen. shield or player name area selects that player – Then you can select a faction for that player by of the screen.

• These shields show which team that player is on. to change teams.

Clicking

• player slot.

Click

on the ‘Next’ button in the bottom-right corner to continue to unit

• selection.

Select Units Screen

This screen is where you select the individual units that will be in each army. There are certain things that will limit what you can select, or affect the costs of the units:

• Faction and Florins Left show the currently

selected faction, and its remaining budget for unit selection and upgrades – This is not the team budget. As units and unit upgrades are selected, this value will drop accordingly.

• The area in the centre of the screen is where teams and factions are selected.

a faction shield to change armies and select another force. The army currently being selected has a glowing faction shield. The panel below the shields shows the units that have been added to this army.

• The area to the right of the screen shows the available units for that faction. Mousingover each card shows information about that unit both in the displays above, and on a tooltip. The number on the unit card is the number of men in the unit.

Click

on an available unit in the right area to add it to the army. The unit cost is

• immediately deducted from the available money.

• The first unit selected is always the army leader.

Right-click

• is credited to the available budget.

• You can drag-and-drop units within the lower army box. You can drag-and-drop a unit into the ‘first’ place in your army (the upper left hand box) to make it the commander’s unit. This can also help the organisation of your army when you have a few identical units.

• If you recruit more than four of one unit type, that unit will begin to cost more and more as you continue to recruit more of them.

• You can upgrade some units in an army. This costs money for every improvement that

you make. Not all units can be upgraded:

•

Click

on the arrowheads next to the chevrons to change the unit’s experience

rating. The more chevrons, the greater the unit’s experience. A grey chevron indicates no experience.

Click

on the arrowheads next to the sword to upgrade the unit’s weapons. Not all

clicking

on a faction shield in the ‘Factions’ area at the right

on this button will remove that player from the game, emptying that

on a unit in the central area to remove it from the army. The unit cost

Click

on a unit in the army to select it – not a right-click, this

removes the unit from the army!

Clicking

Click

on the arrows either side

on the Faction

Click

units can have their weapons upgraded.

Click

on the arrowheads next to the shield to change the unit’s armour quality;

• grey indicates standard armour, while bronze, silver and gold indicate 1-3 levels of increased quality respectively. Not all units are capable of receiving armour upgrades.

• In siege battles you can give siege equipment to the attacking army:

Click

on the arrowheads below each of the siege equipment

items to add them to the attacking army.

• Note that these have no cost at all – They are useless without units.

Click

on this button to clear the selected units in an army and start again.

•

Click

on this button to make the computer select an army for you. It will do its best to spend your budget as efficiently as possible and create as flexible a force as possible. You can make adjustments to the CPU’s suggested force.

Click

on the ‘Load & Save Battle’ button to save this custom battle set

• up, or load a Custom Battle you created earlier.

Click

on the ‘Load & Save Army’ button to save the current army’s

• unit and upgrade set up, or load an army you set up earlier.

MULTIPLAYER BATTLES

Multiplayer games allow you to battle against other people, either over the Internet or across a Local Area Network (LAN). You can create Multiplayer Custom Battles, or fight one of the special Historical or Balanced Multiplayer battles that have been included with

Medieval II: Total War.

Setting Up a Multiplayer Battle

To begin playing Multiplayer battles, through the following steps:

• Enter your details – Include your player name that other players will see in game, your

email address and GameSpy password (only needed for online play).

• Select Online or LAN – Choose between online play over the Internet via GameSpy or a

Local Area Network game. Once you multiplayer lobby.

The Multiplayer Lobby

The lobby is the ‘hub’ of Multiplayer gaming where players meet before the battle. The screen lists games being played and allows you to sort them by several different criteria. You can also host and join games from here.

Click

on any game in the central display area to

• select it. Mousing-over it will give additional information about the conditions and settings.

• If a game is selected, button will take you into the relevant team or Unit Selection screen, depending on the battle type (see Hosting a Multiplayer Game below).

Click

on any of the buttons at the top of the lobby to sort all the games by the

• information in that column.

Using Chat

At the bottom of all Multiplayer lobby screens is the chat area, with messages being displayed on the left, and the people chatting listed on the right. You can type a message and it will appear on screen for everyone in the lobby. There is also a ‘Private’ chat mode, allowing you to send messages to specific players.

clicking

click

on ‘Multiplayer’ in the Main Menu and then go

click

on one, you will then be taken to the

on the ‘Join Game’

• To use the chat filter toggles, ignore, then

Click

• or more people aside from those in the lobby.

Click

• be marked with an icon.

Click

•

Click

joining your game.

Click

•

• Toggle to filter lobby chat

•

Click

again to minimise the chat window.

Hosting a Multiplayer Game

Hosting a Multiplayer game is almost identical to playing either a Custom Battle or Historical Battle depending on game type. To host a multiplayer game, go to the Multiplayer lobby, button, then proceed through the following steps:

• Game Name –

display and enter a name for the game to be shown in the Lobby.

• Set Players & Password – Set the maximum number

of players, and enter a password if you wish to set up a private game.

• Unit Scale – You may wish to reduce this if one or more of the players has an older PC

or graphics hardware.

• Custom, Historical or Balanced –

to host.

• Selecting teams, armies and units – Subsequent screens from here involve simply

choosing teams, using the same basic setup screens as you would have in a single player Custom Battle or Historical Battle – except with options to lock any vacant slots.

A WORD OF RESPECT TO THE FAITHFUL

We here at the Creative Assembly want to make it clear from the outset that we are aware that certain game elements and events within Medieval II: Total War may take liberties with how the different religions are handled. The way some things in the game are described may not adhere to the mandates of those faiths. This is because Medieval II: Total War is not a game about religion; it is simply a strategy wargame that represents an effect of religion. No one religion is better than another in Medieval II: Total War, and the effects of religion work the same for all faiths within the game system. We sincerely apologise to anyone who finds the portrayal of their faith offensive, it was never our intention.

click

on the appropriate toggle button.

to toggle between public and private chat modes. This lets you talk to one

to toggle the selected player(s) as a private chat recipient. Their name will

to toggle filtering of all messages from the selected player(s).

to toggle between blocking or unblocking the selected player(s) from

to toggle directing all your messages to team members only on or off.

on this to maximise the chat window for long chat sessions.

click

Click

on the ‘Game Name’

click

on a player’s name you wish to filter or

on the ‘Host Game’

Click

on the type of multiplayer battle you wish

Click

on it

CREDITS

The Creative Assembly Brisbane Australia

Project Director & Lead Designer

R.T. Smith

Production

Prasant Moorthy

Studio Manager

George Fidler

Design

Penny Sweetser Dan Toose Richard Lagarto Dan Lehtonen

Programming

Ken Turner Craig Allsop Andriy Doroshchuk Dmytro Dudnikov Dan Glastonbury Artem Kulakov Grigoriy Podgorny Martin Slater Martin Valigursky Adam Bryant Scott Lowther Iain McManus

Art

John Carline Jason Dalton Zaquri Foster Brendan Rogers Nick Smith Viktor Sylak Taamati Hanson-Pou Denzil O'Neill Damien Paon Simon Pennington

Animation

David Zwierzchaczewski Andrew Bedford Shane Oakes Mathieu Walsh

Music & Audio

Jeff van Dyck Richard Vaughan James Vincent

Quality Assurance

Ashley Parker Kim Sellentin Jason Turnbull William Hamilton Kevin Stoker Stephen Berg Mark Burns

Christian Carriere Sean Davidson William Davis Thomas Doig Daniel Driscoll Terry Greisbach Chris Harvey Craig Hughes Rohan McAlinden Vana Prayitno Mikhail Raspaskovski Mathew Ray Mark Taylor

IT Support

Matthew Pawlowski

Special Thanks

John Harmon Paul Greasley

The Creative Assembly Southwater UK

Development Director

Mike Simpson

Design

Ian Roxburgh Jeff Woods James Whitston

Testing

Graham Axford Dion Lay James Buckle

Art

Peter Brophy Nick Tresadern Pawel Wojs Roland MacDonald Joss Adley Tunde Glover Ranulf Busby Howard Rayner Paul Abbot

Animation

Ben Potts Greg Alston

Pre Battle Speeches

Mike Brunton

Marketing & PR

Mark Sutherns Richie Skinner

IT Support

Gareth Hailes Simon Allan

Additional Support

Chris Waller Moran Paldi Alistair Hope Melvyn Quek Sophie Blakemore Lara Sweeney

Special Thanks

The entire Rome Dev Team

Outsourced Roles

Motion Capture Actors

Simon Johns of YoungBlood Tim Klotz of YoungBlood

Scriptwriter

Antony Zwierzchaczewski

FX Animator

Allen McKay

Medieval Combat Consultants

Joshua Cavalchini of Knight Fight Kit Cavalchini of Knight Fight

Voice Casting

Andy Emery of Side UK Cheryl Prince of Side UK

Voice Direction

Andy Walsh of Side UK Olivier Deslandes of Side UK

Sound Engineer

Phil Evans of Side UK

Vocal Talent

Tim Bentinck Steffan Boje Walter Bonacker Emmanuel Bonami Brian Bowles Angelo Cola Stephane Conicord Maria Darling David De Keyser Olivier Deslandes Ken Drury Chris Fairbank Javier Fernandez Wayne Forrester Jon Glover Framboise Gommendy Simon Greenall Stephen Grief Stephan Grothgar Sarah Hadland Togo Igawa Jessica Juffre Jonathan Keeble Jonathan Kydd Dhafer L'Abidine

Aletta Lawson Lewis Macleod Neil McCaul Graham McTavish Olag Mirochincov Alex Norton Lucy Robinson Kerry Shale Slav Shumor Philippe Smolikowski Luis Soto Robbie Stevens Dai Tabuchi Keith Wickham

In-Game Font

Kevin King

Islamic Advisors

Aksaa Ltd, Management and Training Consultants (Specialist in Islamic Cultural Awareness Training)

Additional Thanks

Andy Bagley and crew at Musiclab Liam Byrne at Creative Labs

Special Thanks

A big thanks to the Org, all the moderators on the official forums, and all the fans that have helped make the online community as great as it is!

And of course, endless thanks to our families and friends for their understanding and support throughout the entire production of Medieval II: Total War.

SEGA Europe

CEO

Naoya Tsurumi

President/COO

Mike Hayes

Development Director

Gary Dunn

Creative Director

Matthew Woodley

Director of European Marketing

Gary Knight

Head of External Studios

Jim Woods

Production

Darius Sadeghian Simon Mathews

Director of Brand Marketing

David Miller

Senior Brand Manager

Darren Williams

Assistant Brand Manager

Rhonda Karl

European PR

Lynn Daniel Kerry Martyn

UK PR Manager

Stef McGarry

Creative Services

Alison Warfield Tom Bingle Morgan Gibbons Arnoud Tempelaere Akane Hiraoka

Head of Operations

Mark Simmons

Purchasing Manager

Caroline Searle

Operations Assistant

Natalie Cooke

Legal Counsel

Nicola Steel Mark Bennett

Head of UK Product

Tina Hicks

UK Product Manager

Grant Gie

Head of Development Services

Mark Le Breton

Localisation Manager

Marta Lois Gonzalez

Localisation Coordinator

Giuseppe Rizzo

QA Supervisor

Marlon Grant Stuart Arrowsmith Julie Metior

Mastering Group

John Hegarty Jigar Patel Roy ‘Papa’ Boateng

Senior Team Lead

Ben Howell

Team Leads

Phongthep Boonpeng Tony Langan

Assistant Team Lead

Jide Alabi

Testers

Hercules Bekker, Clinton LittleJohn Paul Rogers Faesel Saeed

Amir Hafeez Trevor Kite Stuart Fenn James Caudwell Titus Samkubam Andrzej Lubas Chris Jones Michael Beirne Jania Moudrak Clint Gibson Colin Perman Zahra Al-Naib Dean Powell Tristan Carree Arian Barvarz Oliver Bennett Robert Williamson Jacob Barker Jasmine Lillywhite Samuel Morgan Paul Kershaw Chris Bien Aidan Howe Hayk Galstyan Nahiyan Al-Muhaymeen Hany Gohary Bryan Fevrier Robert Thompson Jiten Patel Ross Green Adrian Daly Andrew Sparks

Additional QA Documentation

Rickard Kallden Mark Day Remi Mckenzie

Special Thanks

Brandon Smith Helen Camilleri Lau Glendinning Kylie Weeds Kim Curran Tony Enright Jackie Davis Ian Archer

Senior Language Leads

Sven Wittmaack Jean-Baptiste Bagot

Assistant Team Lead

Jaron Scholz

Language Testers

Tina Ferraro Caruso Javier Vidal Clement Hardy Christian Hensen

WARRANTY

WARRANTY: SEGA Europe Limited warrants to you, the original purchaser of the Game, that this Game will perform substantially as described in the accompanying manual for a period of 90 days from the date of first purchase. If you discover a problem with the Game covered by this warranty within the 90 day period, your retailer will repair or replace the Game at its option, free of charge, according to the process identified below. This limited warranty: (a) does not apply if the Game is used in a business or for a commercial purpose; and (b) is void if any difficulties with the Game are related to accident, abuse, virus or misapplication. This limited warranty gives you specific rights, and you may also have statutory or other rights under your local jurisdiction.

RETURNS WITHIN A 90 DAY PERIOD: Warranty claims should be made to your retailer from where you bought the Game. Return the Game to your retailer along with a copy of the original sales receipt and an explanation of the difficulty you are experiencing with the Game. At its option, the retailer will either repair or replace the Game. Any replacement Game will be warranted for the remainder of the original warranty period or 90 days from receipt, whichever is longer. If for any reason the Game cannot be repaired or replaced, you will be entitled to receive your direct (but no other) damages incurred in reasonable reliance but only up to the amount of the price you paid for the Game. The foregoing (repair, replacement or limited damages) is your exclusive remedy.

LIMITATIONS: TO THE FULL EXTENT ALLOWED BY LAW, NEITHER SEGA EUROPE LIMITED, ITS RETAILERS OR SUPPLIERS ARE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING FROM THE POSSESSION, USE OR MALFUNCTION OF THIS GAME

Information in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, is subject to change without notice. Unless otherwise noted, the example companies, organizations, products, people and events depicted herein are fictitious and no association with any real company, organization, product, person or event is intended or should be inferred. Complying with all applicable copyright laws is the responsibility of the user. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this document may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), or for any purpose, without the express written permission of SEGA Europe Limited.

PRODUCT SUPPORT

Please check

www.sega-europe.com/support

or call 0870 010 8002

for details of product support in your area.

www.sega.co.uk

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competitions, email updates and more.

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NOTES

PAN EUROPEAN GAMES INFORMATION (PEGI) AGE-RATING SYSTEM

The PEGI age-rating system protects minors from games unsuitable for their particular age group. PLEASE NOTE it is not a guide to gaming difficulty.

Comprising two parts, PEGI allows parents and those purchasing games for children to make an informed choice appropriate to the age of the intended player. The first part is an age rating:-

The second is icons indicating the type of content in the game.Depending on the game, there may be a number of such icons.The age-rating of the game reflects the intensity of this content. The icons are:-

VIOLENCE BAD LANGUAGE FEAR SEXUAL CONTENT DRUGS DISCRIMINATION

For further information visit http://www.pegi.info

PARENTAL CONTROL LEVEL

This game is classified according to the PEGI rating system.The PEGI rating marks and content descriptors are displayed on the game package (except where, by law, another rating system applies). The relationship between the PEGI rating system and the Parental Control Level is as follows:

PARENTAL CONTROL LEVEL

9 7 5 3 2

PEGI RATING AGE GROUP

Sega MEDIEVAL II TOTAL WAR User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual