[Medieval 2 TW] I always do worse in manual battles than automated ones

[snowdog]

As title, I always do worse than the ai, often having trouble with simple stuff.

How do you guys counter crossbows when you happen to have heavy infantry only?

How do you guys properly use archers, mine are always out of range or just able to fire 1 arrow before being charged @.
I take my archers behind my heavy infantry and then they're useless, if I let them shoot they kill my own guys or aim into the sky hitting nothing.
I can use crossbows effectively but archers are always useless for me, how can I make my longbowmen effective?

Finally: I'd like some hints about how to kill the papal states, I'm nr.1 in military but when declaring war they seem to be sending massive armies of papal guards wich are very hard to kill, I usually lose cities intead of winning, even if I have 5 full stacks of heavy cavalry, cannons, heavy infantry and good archers @ start when declaring war.
This is my situation:

Turn 162, I'm england, with the pope peed off at me and often in war with me when I kindly refuse his demands.
How can I conquer rome and kill the pope?

Any other hints greatly appriciated, what should I do in my campaign, I have no ''targeted'' enemy's except papal states.

 

[snowdog]

Hide in dense terrain, or flank them quickly from both sides.

Will try, but I ended up exhausting my Dismounted knights last time afetr chasing crossbows for 10 mins then the enemy general finished em off in 1 big charge ( wow I've never seen exhaustion being so effective.).

Keep them on the flanks, backed up by cavalry. Fire at the enemy from multiple angles to break up their charge.

OK thanks, will do, feeling so stupid lol, I've never tried archers on flanks.

Don't attack the Papal states until you've dealt with everyone else.

What do you think I should do then in my situation? I'm about to take the HLE's last city, and building the dock building (forgot name) needed for carracks to explore the far west ( just had the message about the world being round), but in the meantime my armies are just standing by doing nothing, what do you think I should do atm I have about 3 full stacks of mixed troops (verterans too) war eager as me.

Papal states are the only people really annoying me, I really just want to finish em off and punish the pope for ordering me around, I mean, if I'd have listened to him France and Spain would still be alive and the HRE would be invading Britain.

 

[snowdog]

Why would you have 5 stacks of heave cavalry in an army?

I don't re-read my post, I'm saying I've got 5 stacks with a mix of heavy cav, heavy inf, archers and cannons...

Are you using some kind of advanced AI because it never seems to take advantage over me like that.

Nope v1.0 medium ( or hard, can't renember) ai.

Defending towns is simply a matter or having enough men to keep them from the walls and enough archers to prevent their battering rams getting through the gate....

What if it's a city and it's cut off from your territory, under siege of 2 papal states full stacks, and filled with only a full stack of spear militia and 1 or 2 archer groups?
( and in that situation, it was a counter-attack, I still hadn't repaired the walls, and to make it even worse, even if I had walls they were open coz of spies.).

Infact I've lost 700 units I think or more while just killed 100
The papal guards slaughtered my spears with no problems.

Why would you only have heavy infantry?

See my original question, all archers for me are always worthless, in battles wich I lose I only kill 2 or 3 guys with my archers while losing 80 of them. I just stopped putting archers in ''halfstacks'' wich are supposed to deal with medium attacking stacks in the field, will retry using em.


About crossbows: but it's hard to kill crossbows because they keep running when I come too close
, anything but cavalary is useless against them when I play. But the enemy always seems to keep his general and spears protecting them.

My archers or gunmen - I put them in front of my infantry to get into range. If the enemy charges at you then you can always pull your archers back behind your infantry.

I do that, but it's useless, they kill 2 or 3 onstroming enemy's, then they have to get back and do nothing, the enemy always in my case seems to charge when they are in my archers range, limiting the time they are in effective range for just 1 shot.

The main brunt of the battle comes down to numbers and strenght of your core battleline units, if you are outnumbered or completly overpowered it can be extremely difficult to win, however if you are defending a hilly area and can utilise your archers well you can swing the favour of battle your way.

I lose ''even'' battles always though, also I often seem to end up in a damn valley with the enemy on a hill, the terrain is always in the ai's advantage of the battles I've played recently ( most of the campaign on the map was actually all auto battle done, I've only played a few battles myself)
Hell I even lose battles where I outnumber the enemy.


Papal guards are the main pain, I lose one on one battles with them even if I outflank em, I mean, I've had this battle once, I had 1 full group of armoured swordsmen and one group of dismounted knights, I ligned up the swordsmen from the side, while letting the dismounted knights face the papal guards, yet when both groups engaged the papals, the papals managed to reduce my dismounted knights group to just 3 soldiers, before routing themselves .

 

[snowdog]

Do not take over a region unless you are fully capable of defending it. Waste of time otherwise.

Are you sure? Is it not worth the loot? I mean I prefer to have a brighter economy for 2 turns and a 20k loot from plundering the city reather than keeping the military, wich in some cases are just militia capturing stuff oppertunistic.

As for the rest of what you said, will try to apply it all.