aww hen, you cannae say poof noo. The wee cock munchers dinae like it!

Build farms, ports and roads in towns first, equals more money.

You can't have too many spy's, have spy's everywhere. If your kingdom has a lot of money, pump out assassins and hit anything over 20% chance to kill ratio, even if your assassin dies, hit em again next turn with the next assassin. They can do some serious damage.

Make supply lines, designate troop creation towns, castles are better. Create troops every turn and send them in a big long line every turn to where ever you need more reinforcements.

Destroy religious temples in towns you take over and build your own sides temple on top of it, equals more happiness.

Use merchants and look out for gold deposits to sit them on.

A unit of troops is usually better than archers or cannons or whatever. March an entire block of troops into most more even armies and you'll total them. And cavelry on the flanks.

When attacking big cities it's best to have more than one battering ram, they will burn it.

You can move your capitol city to whatever city you want, the closer a city is to your capitol the happier they will be.

I've used real tactics of Alexander the Great to win battles where I was outnumbered.

My personal preference is to play on Hard campaign difficulty, it's more realistic and you run into more interesting tactical challenges on the campaign map. But you might want to start on Normal anyway.

Lower tax rates on cities will give you more money later on because of more population, higher tax rates will give you more money now but less later, you can choose there. I've defended with low tax rates to grow my cities and attacked when I was strong enough before.

You should look at some of the mods particularly Stainless Steel for the Medieval period and Third Age: Total War for a Middle Earth setting, Medieval II has the best modding community of all the Total War games so there are a lot to consider.

You should've started with the first one, with Shogun . It's simpler, and also more atmospheric .

Holding off until the very possible chance of GOG getting the Total War games.

Something tells me you're gonna wait for quite a while...

After buying F.E.A.R, Metro Redux, Star Wars Dark Forces 1, and Morrowind on Steam (the last of which I got from Steam 2 times)

All of a sudden GOG gets them later :P

Yeah I'll just stick with the 2 games, Medieval and Empire and mabye Warhammer if my PC is powerful enough for it.

If you want to keep your standing with the pope then you want your faction to be well represented in the college of cardinals. This can also increase your chances of getting your own pope, which really can be advantageous.

In order to get your priests up to scratch, send them off to the most heathen parts of the map you can find. The more conversions they score up the higher they fly up the Vatican corporate ladder. So go convert those Orthodox Christians in Russia and Muslims in southern Spain and maybe your Priests will be the next CEO of the Vatican.

Attack is the best form of defence. Don't squander your units on defending settlements unless attack or rebellion is likely. Go all out and keep taking settlements as fast as you can. Any loses from this strategy are eclipsed by the advantages.

Don't trust anyone. In this game alliances don't last forever. Especially if you've just run out of enemies. When it comes to enemies, the game likes to keep you well stocked. As England you can easily score an alliance with France, for instance. But it might not even last as long as it takes for you to take the rebel territories that surround them.

In battle the most important strategy is to pin your enemies down with your melee units and use your cavalry to both take out the archers and then ride straight into the back of the pinned down enemy units. Do this repeatedly. Don't just ride them in and leave them there. The charge bonus is important here.

Also it should be noted that you may need to protect your archers from similar attacks.

Early on you'll have to use your leader as a cavalry unit in this capacity. Luckily they're a hardy unit and it will survive most threats. Just so long as your leader survives so will the unit. But lose the leader and the unit's gone too.

Remember you're primarily looking to break the enemy. Killing their general is by far the best way of doing this.

Don't ignore agents. They're key to building relationships with other factions, building trade routes and generally making you more prosperous and less isolated. Many of their actions are reliant on percentage chances of success. This can encourage save scumming.

The main campaign is turn based so make the most out of every unit and settlement every turn. Always give everything a once over to make sure you're getting the most out of it.

Might as well plan your funeral whilst you're at it. It'll be a long time.

One of the tactics Alexander used was to push your entire force straight through the middle of their army like a "V" and take out their general.

Another was to push around sideways until you can flank their center and attack their general again.

Both strategies work agains't a larger force.

There are some AWESOME mods out for M2:TW. Search on Modb.

One cool strategy I thought up is to have two units doubled up, occupying the same area. A double powered unit, two units against any one unit they come up against.

A few tips:

* Send diplomats and ask enemy factions for trade rights (before wars break out) in the beginning. If you're playing as mighty faction (England, France, Holy Roman Empire, etc.), you can even charge them for it. Although, this is related to point 4 (see below) If they reject, it's often because you don't have any markets, docks, etc (and therefore unable to trade)

* Also, you may want to ask for alliances. They will buy you time to plan your economy.

* Auto-resolve sucks. Save before auto-resolving and then reload and deal with the situation (if you lose, that is)

* If you take over a settlement, always sack it (really overpowered) unless it originally belonged to another religion (then you must exterminate) or public order will cause you trouble.

* Focus on stability early on: roads, mines, docks and all that. Also, churches for public order, squalor and whatever. Tax the shit out of your population from the very beginning, but keep public order in the yellow/green. It'll serve you in the long run.

* Make sure you use your free upkeep units. When selecting a settlement your "walls" or the main building (usually the first one in the slot) will tell how many you can use. Train them. Keep in mind that forts/castles don't have any free units.

* The AI's proposals are often useless. Don't get tricked into accepting something useless :P
They can't be trusted and they suck at what they do.

* Don't bother with merchants :p

Is this the same game whore dlc was in humble sega bundle?
Whose. I meant whose.

I'll be honest, aside from the dummy AI, I find Medieval 1 more fun overall than 2 is. For me, it's the perfect mix of complexity and simplicity, and essentially the same, although expanded, formula from Shogun.