I always use heavy cavalry in combination with longbowmen, a deadly combination. I'm not sure if that's an option for you Memnoch, since that would force you to be English. :D

And of course you don't have those type of units early in the game, so you'll have to improvise until the moment comes. Cavalry is my favourite choice anyway, so from early on my armies mostly consist out of hobilars, plus a few cohorts of spearmen to stop the enemies' cavalry. Hobilars don't have a very powerful charge however, so prepare to lose a battle or two, especially when your opponents are Arabic fighters on camels. Also important is to control all waterways surrounding your lands so you can drop armies whereever they are mostly needed.

Rome Total War demo comes out on Monday.

Maybe we should start warming up then, play the Medieval campaign as the Italians. :D

he just pulled the same s**t on me!
if i got this right, his troops show up in provinces with zeal over 90%? (or it was just a strange coincidence in my case).

anyway, the guy just shows up with ~10k troops (everything from archers and spearmen to royal cavalry, mounted archers and a couple different kinds of riflemen) in four of my provinces, so i'm like 'WTF?!?!?!' [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img] . luckily, i had one of my armies in one of those provinces and two other armies are nearby (will engage him the next turn). the one army that was already there however, was attacked by some 3900+ troops, against my 1900; but i figure i'm on defense so i should be able to take them [img]smile.gif[/img] . so i start with 4x20 royal cavalry (including my king) and 12x60 chivalric men@arms. i grab a good defensive position in a big forrest on top of a hill and about four hours (!!!) later the last unit of enemy spearmen are fleeing from the battlefield. end result - 3150 enemy killed or captured against just 185 of my own killed!

a brilliant strategic victory if i do say so myself :D . that po(o)pe can just kiss this [img]graemlins/finger.gif[/img] . as soon as i kick the crap out of his three remaining armies that is. one of which is about 4-4.5k troops, the other two are about 1.5-2k. can't wait to take them on [img]smile.gif[/img] . i can always eat and sleep another day... god i love this game!

Yeeeeaaaaahhhh!!!!

(I got the game [img]tongue.gif[/img] )

And I have to say, I am VERY impressed! I've started a game as the Egyptians. My initial plan was to send two armies - one heading west along the north of Africa, taking Spain from the bottom to sweep over Europe. And another to head north and do a circular motion opposite to the other route. Eventually, they would meet up and move out throughout the rest of Europe. Oh, how wrong I was...

Almost immediately, my neighbour to the west offered an allegience. Of course, I could not refuse this - I would gain guaranteed protection of anyone invading from Africa or some Spanish explorers. With that taken care of, I focused my attention on going the other way around. However, one country went a bit out of their way to stop that from happening as much as possible.

... The Turks [img]tongue.gif[/img] . It took a lot of battles and reinforcements, but eventually I sieged their forts and forced them off the land... and the neutral Byzantines just spectated happily [img]smile.gif[/img] .

Well, that's about all that's happened so far. I'm thinking of starting a separate game as more of a European country so that I can experience conquering very well known places ASAP.

And I haven't tried any of the real-time battles yet (except in the tutorial) because I'd get my ass kicked [img]tongue.gif[/img] .

*Sigh*... nothing can stop my thousands of camels...

Good onya J! Welcome to the ranks of the converted. :D

But you should play some of the real time battles - they're heaps of fun!

And they aren't that difficult once you get the hang of it, you just have to remember which troops to use against each enemy.
Cavalry against swordsmen. (usually called men-at-arms or footknights)
Swordsmen against spearmen. (usually called spearmen or sergeants)
Spearmen against cavalry. (usually called knights, but they're the guys on horses, you can spot them pretty easily)
And archers are just for causing disruptions in the enemies formations, you can do without them, but they're nice to have in some cases.

And Egypt isn't such a bad nation to play as, they get some nice trade, and you can make it even better by conquering Constantinople.

CATASTROPHE!!!

My king died last year, and his heir assumed the throne - and he looked like he was going to be a GREAT king. Guess what happened this year - he croaked it!!! :mad:

End of game apparently...how unLUCKY can you get...my empire's now degenerated into a bunch of rival squabbling factions apparently, because he died of an illness without an heir. Just when I'd started my attack on the Turks, after disposing of the Germans and Italians. I must have about 65% of the total land area, and my empire disintegrated just like that. :(

Thank God I have a save from a few years earlier. [img]graemlins/showoff.gif[/img]

and don't forget that if you let the computer handle the battles you will usually loose a lot more troops than if you take control yourself. using terain to your advantage, flanking the enemy and using proper unit combos will take down your losses several fold!

I'm glad I save regularly (after each turn) - I can't believe your game can be over, just like that... [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img]