Having seized control of the Abbasid Caliphate from the Buyids, and utterly crushed the Byzantines at Manzikert, the Turks have restored unity to the eastern Islamic region, making them arguably the greatest power Arabia or Persia has seen for centuries.Settling down has been the Turks' secret to asserting their dominion.

You get more money, less squalor, less disorder, and BONUSES for lack of religious diversity and having a 'chivalrous' run the place while killing thousands of civilians and sparing a few dozen soldiers.The Turks may very much be relative newcomers to both Anatolia and the Holy Lands, but the impact that they have had upon these realms since they migrated from the steppes east of the Caspian has been profound enough to shake the pillars of the oldest and mightiest neighbouring dynasties. Send in your priests to pre-convert the population and then sack the town. Even better, if you release prisoners or successfully ransom them off, you can get chivalry points. The city will rebel and go into anarchy, but that's fine, because you're not there to take territory, you're there to pillage and plunder and destroy the faction you're crusading against. If you're playing, say, Spain or England and are on a Crusade to Jerusalem with one or two armies, it might make more sense to invade cities along the way, massacre the populace, sack the town, destroy every structure in the city for money, and then keep on going without leaving any troops to garrison. It really depends on where you're attacking. Some Middle-Eastern factions can enslave the populace instead, which is functionally the same thing.

In Medieval II, this kills off lots of people, gives you the same amount of money as occupation, brings the settlement's public order up a lot due to fear and a massive fall in squalor, and greatly reduces the value of the city.

Evil Pays Better: Instead of occupying a settlement with a minimum of fuss, you can choose to sack it, looting and tearing up the place while eliminating part of the troublesome population.

If you work like the Mongols, then you can use all horse-mounted ranged units and you can combine the circle and shoot and retreat when pushed options making you unable to get charged while dealing massive casualties.Д®vil Pays Better vs. This will at least make his company weak to a later assault charge.

Keep your general back and focus on the company that contains their general (especially if it's just a captain). If the enemy has siege equipment, use your cavalry to wipe them out (any engagement will cause the enemy to charge towards your lines and break the stalemate). Then rush then while collapsing your lines into a tight formation to get a surround on them. Since the enemy is less likely to spread their lines, they will receive MASSIVE causalities from a straight-on ballista shot. All you need to do is spread your army as thin as possible to reduce arrow casualties and wait them out. You can sit back for 10 minutes cutting down the enemy and since it takes so many arrows to take someone down, then siege equipment (like ballistas) are more effective the longer they can shoot (plus the 20 people in a siege company are hard to hit and have decent armor). As your archers die, their arrows are transferred to the still living company. If you have more archers/crossbowmen/javelin throwers, wipe out 90% of their long ranged units. This is especially true if the enemy has archers themselves as that causes them to sit back and wait for the archers to finish. No matter what difficulty you are on, the enemy will not attack (unless you hit fast forward and the line accidentally hits you in one of their false charges). One of the finest exploits in the game is to put archers on the front line and NOT have them retreat. Exploitation of the So-Called Annoying Arrows

Medieval 2 total war squalor