Does this game have any mods?

Oh and i noticed that every battle has the AI turtling in a corner of the map unless they massively outnumber me.

Is that supposed to happen? Because every battle just has me rush my pike/swords into melee supported by archers and then i raise game speed to 10 and watch the fireworks.

I don't know of any mods I'm afraid.

Yes, that tends to be how the AI works, however there are better solutions than just piling in:

Firstly you'll notice that the turtling process begins with different groups of units, so it tends to leave the archers behind, which can be intercepted by a group of knights, or perhaps macemen.

Secondly you'll see that if you send in your archers the computer will respond by bringing his archers forwards. If you shield your archers with a wall of pikemen, then you can take these guys out relatively cheaply (the same tactic is true of sieges).

Thirdly you'll see that there is a point where once you've shot at them enough, they break turtle formation and chase you. If you've superior missle troops, you can use this to bottleneck them into a bridge or similar, thus minimising your losses.

Thanks for the help. How do i get the AI counties to rebel though?

I starved a county to near death over several years by burning all their fields and industries, yet it never rebelled....

When I played LOR2, I witnessed rebellions in neutral counties, which were not caused by me.
However, I've never seen AI counties with this. Maybe, a difficulty buff.

Just like that. They will rebel at some point but it takes forever. I would imagine the AI gets a benefit on that which the player does not. But contiune to destroy everything, fields, industry, huts, everything and they will break off eventually.

The quickest way I have found is to make a number of one man armies and station them near each industry and cluster of fields. Once it pops back up, smash it again. You dont have to worry about huts if youre doing this. Once you hit them the first time they will never have the population to create more anyway. Usually you will know revolt is close when the AI pops a large peasant army from the village and hurls it at you. His last ditch to get any value out of it.

Its somewhat amusing to take one of these counties after the fact and try and rebuild it before they revolt again. It is not easy...

Btw, the seige pack added a lot of castles for skirmish mode, but i'm not allowed to build them in custom games? Why is that?

Good question. Bumping this post. I'd like to know the answer.

It is very, very difficult to get AI counties to rebel, but not impossible, except for the Bishop, who is a special case. He does, indeed, have powers that we know not of. Other nobles' counties will rebel. My favourite tactic to accomplish this is by stationing my own troops in his county and pillaging all of his food sources. Let his population grown, as this is only more mouths to feed with dwindling resources. As I said, the Bishop is nearly impossible to starve out, it will take years and years to do so, but with the other nobles you can do it. It takes time a patience but is most easily accomplished early in the game. I notice that the Countess, Baron and Knight are more prone to this.

I have made the county of the Bishop rebel, but only after much hard work. He seems impervious to the mechanics of the game, raising small army after small army in any county in which he does not have a castle. I have watched him raise a stalling army against another computer player for many turns in a row. How he does it without dropping happiness to the point of rebellion is a mystery. That dude has some wicked mojo. He is also the most useless ally ever. He never, ever comes to your help and is the master of obsequious messages. You can always count on him to abandon you in your hour of need or pontificate uselessly. I especially enjoy wiping that smug grin from his face and hear him beg for his wretched life.

I used to play this game years ago, and I distinctly remember peasant mobs revolting and charging across the land, but I can't seem to reproduce it now. Anybody got any ideas? Is it a setting or something?

I think I only played the vanilla version many years ago.

Are you sure you're not thinking of LotR 1? In that you get mobs rising all the time.