Medieval total war 2 - release iminent!

Branoic

Yes, I know that, but I didn't want to. I kinda like "role playing" during the game, and it seemed like making a stand would be the thing he'd do

Besides, while he could potentially have been further groomed into one kick ass general, I didn't particularly need him, and this way, two french generals are removed.

Pyr0

Im about 70+ turns into the campaign with france gone along with portugal and the moors, milanese are barely holding on. How many turns until you discover America ? Gun powder has been discoverd also.

BlitzKrieg

40 turns in with England.

Sort of disapointed cause I havnt had much oppurtunity to take advantage of the more diverse campaign features yet...(Princess, merchants, assasins etc.) been trying to get them up, but only got my spies and priests on a role (already converted 25% of jerusalum.)

My saga will be one of wealth and faith. Having turned only 3 of my cities into castles (the ones facing my enemies in france and scotland), I have churned some very profitable cities and have stayed firmly in the top 5 rankings, and at the top financially (was overall number 1 for a while.)

But now that finance is rolling into resources as I used a chunk of it to fund a crusade to jerusalum, which I must complain that no one else joined me despite announcing they would. Had to hire alot of mercenaries to take the city and the 3 armies gaurding it in the end.

I was surprised at the crusades model, in the original it was this uncontrollable object you hated cause it passed through your land taking your best troops. now its a mad race to get to the goal before everyone gives up.

But anywho, took jerusalum and am converting it slowly. I like the new economic system and castle/city techlines, makes it easier then previous games where you try to make every settlement an ultimate multifunctional utopia. Religion is fun, France went from heritics to saints by a simple change in pope, and i'm stuck begging for scraps so I can take scotland as the final piece in my empire.


Though the battles have been mostly disapointing same old stuff


Company of Heroes is still the best RTS this year, but Medieval 2 could be the best turn based empire building one.

Elessar

Bought this game on a whim on Wednesday and I'm really enjoying it. It plays suprisingly well on my Macbook Pro. I was initially disappointed (with the battles mainly) but the campaign map more than makes up for it.

Dunno why I bought it since I wasn't really into Rome, but I'm glad I did now. If only it would stop crashing! It crashed a second time last night after I spent about an hour having my cavalry being chased around a city to tire the enemy down until they eventually gave up. So frustrating.

Crashing for anyone else?

garrethg

Ri_Nollaig wrote:

wat does the map look like when you have "discovered" america ? does it have full scale including the atlantic ?

Judging from screenshots the eastern coasts of the Americas appear on the strategy just as the European territories do but the distance between the continents isn’t to scale.

In any case you'll probably finish the campaign long before Europeans discover the New World. I finished my first campaign just as the Black Death swept into Europe (1347 AD), whereas the infinite mercy of both God and Spanish steel weren’t introduced to the Americas until the 1490’s.

Elessar wrote:

If only it would stop crashing! It crashed a second time last night after I spent about an hour having my cavalry being chased around a city to tire the enemy down until they eventually gave up. So frustrating.

What I don't understand is why they took out the pre-battle quick save function added in Viking Invasion. At least with quick save only the last battle of the turn had to be replayed after a crash.

BlitzKrieg

not for me.



Just up to my 80 turn.

Still havn't conquered all of Britain (one provance left.) Damn Scots proved a bit difficult.

Lost Jerusalum to the Egyptians, though I gave them a seriously hard fight for it (i'm talking 80% casualties for them before they finished me off. Sucked to be them when the Mongols invaded 2 turns later


Early in the game I sent a priest on a pilgramage to Jerusalum by foot, by the time he got there he was a cardinal pretty much pumped up on peity and purity, was gonna try and get him elected as pope when the goddamn inquisition burned him! WTF! he was a goddamn cardinal and they burned him.

Also I like the stereotypical diplomat voices, really helps in knowing how far you have to push them, also when you have to choose to execute troops or not, the whimpering is satisfying (esp the Scots) 'Aii you can expect a Scot to pay you!'


I find the game is easier to start out then Shogun or Medieval 1, pretty much like Rome, but unlike Rome its quicker to get yourself mobilizing in a specific direction and plan (for me my targets = Scotland, Jerusalum, France) and even better though you always feel like your making ground, its never on a scale as taking 3-4 territories in 2 turns as it was like at the middle point of Rome.

Assassins suck, but they've always sucked. Someone tell me the easiest way to get assassin stats up? I swear its blind luck if they kill anyone. And the Scottish prince was willing to pay me to assassinate his father and I just couldnt do it, had 3 of them on him and none of them could kill him. Turned out his father was a paranoid old jerk.

I like the heritic system and the pope system, works a lot better then the Senate did, also being able to be offered missions from other sources (your own nobles, treachorous heirs) is pretty cool. Priests are not too difficult to level up (move them to low catholic regions for a bit of preaching then send them heritic hunting.)

I have not been able to get a single princessess yet, they are always being married off to suitable suitors, I always click yes cause I never see them as a character and fear if i click no they'll turn into old hags. Do you need to click no here to get one or should they be appearing all the time. Seriously wanted to try and create a French Civil War.

Spies level up at a good speed (compared to Rome anyway) leading to better use of their skills (they opened the gates of edinburagh for me, lovely)

Havnt really used Artillary units much. But have been the victim of some wonderful sieges involving and not involving artillary, including one that was mostly infantry on both sides, led to a wonderful battle on the walls.

Overall i am enjoying it, I hope the other sides offer something different for replayability.


Still sad at the lack of naval options, but happy to see they've fixed the combat (Rome suffered from some bizarre naval battle results which always pissed me off.)

humanji

I'm really pissed off with the naval combat. It's really terrible and frustrating when you try to sail somewhere and twenty different rebel fleets appear out of nowhere and keep attacking you. I missed out on a crusade because of those jerks! All the more incentive to wipe their seed from the earth!

Maximilian

BlitzKrieg wrote:

not for me.

Assassins suck, but they've always sucked. Someone tell me the easiest way to get assassin stats up? I swear its blind luck if they kill anyone. And the Scottish prince was willing to pay me to assassinate his father and I just couldnt do it, had 3 of them on him and none of them could kill him. Turned out his father was a paranoid old jerk.

Sabotage. Percentage chance to sabotage a church is usually in the 70-95% range. Next thing you know, you have Jason Bourne.

Zillah

humanji wrote:

I'm really pissed off with the naval combat. It's really terrible and frustrating when you try to sail somewhere and twenty different rebel fleets appear out of nowhere and keep attacking you. I missed out on a crusade because of those jerks! All the more incentive to wipe their seed from the earth!

They're pirates! The idea is you have to keep a large fleet on the payroll and have them patrol the seas and destroy any pirates that crop up. If you don't do that, then yeah, pirate ships will be waiting to pounce on any ships that you do commission.

humanji

Zillah wrote:

They're pirates! The idea is you have to keep a large fleet on the payroll and have them patrol the seas and destroy any pirates that crop up. If you don't do that, then yeah, pirate ships will be waiting to pounce on any ships that you do commission.

That's why I'm against computer game piracy. Bah-dum Tissshhhhh!

Fidelis

I just tried the demo and it's pretty impressive looking, although I have a question about the campaign combat. In the demo, you get no time to position your troops as you would like, granted these are historical battles so that's not practical. Also, in the historical battles, the enemy attacks within about 5 seconds, forcing me into pause mode for a few minutes until I can figure out what to do.

So my question is, is the campaign combat different? Do you have the opportunity to maybe hide a few hundred men in the surrounding forest or even the time the re-position archers etc? I haven't played the TW series since Shogun, but I don't remember it being so frantic.

Pyr0

Fidelis wrote:

I just tried the demo and it's pretty impressive looking, although I have a question about the campaign combat. In the demo, you get no time to position your troops as you would like, granted these are historical battles so that's not practical. Also, in the historical battles, the enemy attacks within about 5 seconds, forcing me into pause mode for a few minutes until I can figure out what to do.

So my question is, is the campaign combat different? Do you have the opportunity to maybe hide a few hundred men in the surrounding forest or even the time the re-position archers etc? I haven't played the TW series since Shogun, but I don't remember it being so frantic.

Yeah you've time to do all that. Cool thing is you can't switch on "arcade" mode like you could in RTW, but yeah you haven't played that. Basically the moral is taken away and archers etc have infinite arrows, rocks, cannon balls. So it's a fight to the death a lot of the time.

Zillah

Pyr0 wrote:

Yeah you've time to do all that. Cool thing is you can't switch on "arcade" mode like you could in RTW, but yeah you haven't played that. Basically the moral is taken away and archers etc have infinite arrows, rocks, cannon balls. So it's a fight to the death a lot of the time.

Why would you start talking about Arcade mode and confuse the poor newb?




Yes, you can do all sorts of positioning before the battle. The only time you don't get a chance is if your army is ambushed and when an enemy army sallies out of a castle siege.

Pyr0

Zillah wrote:

Why would you start talking about Arcade mode and confuse the poor newb?




Yes, you can do all sorts of positioning before the battle. The only time you don't get a chance is if your army is ambushed and when an enemy army sallies out of a castle siege.

Just thought I'd throw it in there.

Fidelis

Pyr0 wrote:

Cool thing is you can't switch on "arcade" mode like you could in RTW, but yeah you haven't played that. Basically the moral is taken away and archers etc have infinite arrows, rocks, cannon balls. So it's a fight to the death a lot of the time.

So you have a limited amount of arrows and cannon shot in Medieval 2?

Zillah

See?!


Yes, yes you do. Overall the battles are quite realistic like that.

BlitzKrieg

and its a good thing too, I discovered some AI armies like to spend the entire battle pelting me with catapults instead of attacking and its better to wait it out until it runs dry then trying to stop the damn thing.

Zillah

BlitzKrieg wrote:

and its a good thing too, I discovered some AI armies like to spend the entire battle pelting me with catapults instead of attacking and its better to wait it out until it runs dry then trying to stop the damn thing.

Ha, you just reminded me of a great battle. I had a fairly small army under siege in Antwerp, bloody Danish were assaulting. They had two huge armies, one on either side of the city, and there was no way in hell we could hold them both off. One had a load of siege equipment, the other had a single unit of catapults.

So I positioned my army against the force with lots of siege equipment, and sent two family members on absolute suicide runs against the catapults. They got wiped out by the enemy army but not before they massacred the enemy catapult. An army of 2000 men then had to sit there and do nothing as they had no means of getting in

BlitzKrieg

my last 2 battles in the middle east were epic stories of tragedy.


long ago at around turn 30, my king had a son who was useless, so when the call for a crusade to jerusalum, not wanting to displease the pope but also not wanting to let someone useful die, I sent my useless son with a bunch of spare soliders off on the crusade. Shockingly he turned out not so useless and actually conquered jerusalum. So now I had one lame provance on the other side of europe which was constantly in dispute.

Soon after my now amazingly impressive son got married and had a son. I discovered that sons appear in the same cities as fathers (a cool but not mentioned feature, and it doesnt apply to son in laws i think.) so I now had a 2 family members in jerusalum, so I conquered a nearby rebel castle, which also proved to be a lame duck full of disputes and riots. finally he had a second son, who went on a second crusade to Antioch. The son died peacefully in Jerusalum, his brother back in London became king. Soon the first son found running both jerusalum and the nearby rebel castle difficult and lost jerusalum to a large egyptian army (the battle an epic bloody battle of two large foes.) The second son, enjoying great success sent an army to conquer a turkish castle to defend his city and was enjoying much profit. The first son soon found that he could not appease the islamic horde in his castle and had to abandon it to rioters, the egyptians soon claimed it from them. after which the first son rode to the second son's castle, followed closely by a large egyptian horde.

The castle only has a wooden wall, which still has a hole in it from my own battle to claim it. the egyptain horde vast in its number consisted of 2 catapults, 1 spearman, 2 light cavalery, 2 heavy cavalery (including a prince), 3 missile cavalery and at least 6 light soldiers.

They first tried to spread my forces thin by bringing down more holes in my castles walls, forcing me to move my small forces (2 heavy soliders, 2 heavy cavalery, 1 missile cavalery, 1 group of fanatics.) to cover the walls. But they still did not attack, instead the catapults continued to pound into my walls bringing down the towers. So I decided to to send my cavalery out after the catapults, the second my forces appeared over the ridge his army mobolised. I called the cavalery back and his army stopped and reorganised itself to continue using catapults. To my advantage he had moved his spearmen away from his infantry (the spearmen already low in number due to my missile cavalery picking at them.) so once more I took my heavy cav and i ran them fullforce into his large infantry mass, the slaughter was glorious, my caverly snet many of them to early graves before his own cav and spear men flanked them and enveloped them in death. His infantry shakened, he sent his cav to attack, it met the walls of my heavy infantry but alas, infantry cannot stand against cavalery and they were washed aside, then the fanatics and finally the missile cav.

He had won. But at a cost to most of his infantry and at 3 times the size of the forces i put on the field. After he took the castle he marched on my city.

The city which now had stone walls and reinforced forces inside, the city that the castle bought an extra 3 turns to prepare itself, the city of the second brother.

An army of 3 heavy cav, 2 missile cav and 4 spearmen waited him. Still outnumbered...but

Again the egyptians used catapults to make a hole, and then they took out the towers. Meanwhile the second son with his 3 heavy cav exited the city by a side gate and started to travel towards the enemy.

The egyptians out of ammo on their catapults charged with all their cavalery (missile, heavy and light.) only to find all my spearmen at the hole in the wall, they were driven back, my missile cav picked at his missile cav and little infantry, while with his cav stuck at the wall my own cav charged his remaining infantry from the side, causing panic and they routed, his catapults were burned and his cav and prince trapped.

I killed them all.


Now I have only 1 province left in the middle east, the second son is old and without a son, he will soon die and the turks are coming. I intend to give the land to the french as a gift, so I may claim their allegiance.

awhir

wow you must of been baord man

BlitzKrieg

no this is what total war games do to me.

you should have seen my posts for the first time i played through medieval, huge sprawling descriptions of the battles and my campaign.

Pyr0

BlitzKrieg wrote:

no this is what total war games do to me.

you should have seen my posts for the first time i played through medieval, huge sprawling descriptions of the battles and my campaign.

Heh you can bet they were boring and very uneventful

BlitzKrieg

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=176444&referrerid=&highlight=M%3ATW

HAHA!

found them.

Reading them makes me want to go back for a few games.

never got to finish the story

it ended with just me and France (golden horde etc dead.) and we just couldnt make a dent in either's armour. Hopefully M:TW 2 wont be the same.

Zillah

We clashed with the Mongols. We killed their general and wiped out one of their armies. When another three armies arrived as reinforcements we decided to make a tactical withdrawal, burn the middle east behind us and let those damn towel heads deal with Khan.

Unfortunately Prince Edward, heir to the throne, along with two full veteran crusader armies died when his fleet was attacked and sunk by a combined force of Egypt, Byzantine and Pirates. We left a couple priests behind to keep an eye out on what developments come of the hoarde.

Pyr0

Zillah wrote:

We clashed with the Mongols. We killed their general and wiped out one of their armies. When another three armies arrived as reinforcements we decided to make a tactical withdrawal, burn the middle east behind us and let those damn towel heads deal with Khan.

Unfortunately Prince Edward, heir to the throne, along with two full veteran crusader armies died when his fleet was attacked and sunk by a combined force of Egypt, Byzantine and Pirates. We left a couple priests behind to keep an eye out on what developments come of the hoarde.

Jesus I hate when that happens. I was going to attack the sicilian capital, which was a citadel with three garrisons, brough over an army of Gendarmes, Chivilaric foot knights and cav, with Bombard cannons etc. Threw them in a huge fleet, got there and was attack by three huge Egyptian fleets before I could land my troops, eventually I was beaten back and unable to land my troops anywhere, so I lost them ALL. Pissed me right off it did.

pimpy_c

Got this game over the weekend and am enjoying it immensely but I can't shake the feeling that I've seen it all before in RTW, especially moving armies around on the Campaign map. I really enjoyed the 'Risk' style of the original medieval and also shogun.

One little "improvement" should be avoided however. The option at the beginning of a campaign to put a time limit on battles should not be available! And this is why:

I began a campaign with England and foolishly selected no time limits on the battles. Little did I know that I had sewn the seeds of disaster!

The campaign was proceeding as planned. Scotland was beginning to fall in line and the Fench were on the retreat. I decided to offer my enemies some respite and take a nearby rebel settlement. With the Scots and the French reeling from recent attacks from my generals I decided it was safe to divert a number of men from the front to capture this settlement.

I marched my men to the gates of the rebel castle and laid siege. The defenders numbers were comparable to my own so I opted for the 6 turn long haul as oppossed to a frontal assault. I needed most of these men to return to the front to continue oppressing my enemies once the settlement was mine.

On the final turn of the siege, as expected, the dwindling numbers of the rebels sallied from the castle in a last vain attempt to win free and drive me back. My men were more than up to the task of repelling wave after wave of rebels as they desperately tried to find a gap in my lines. My men held firm and drove the rebels scurrying back into the city.

But this is where the story turns sour. The remnants of the rebels fled behind the walls and simply stood there, waiting for my army to expire perhaps. And that was it. It was a stand off! I had no siege weapons to force my way into the city and there was no time limit that would have given the defenders (me, as the rebels were attacking) the victory. So I stood there and waited for inspiration but alas, none was forth coming. I was left no option other than to withdraw from the battle and suffer extra, catastrophic casualties because I had fled, eventhough most of my army was still intact before the stand off! With my army decimated, I had no choice but to put my plans of expansion against the French and Scots on hold until I could rebuild. To make matters worse, the holy roman empire swooped in and took the settlement I had weakened.

And the lesson to be learned from this tragic tale? Make sure the campaign battles have a time lmit OR be sure to always build some siege weapons, even if you're planning to starve them out.

BlitzKrieg

the lesson is to give me back my avatar rawwwwr!

Pyr0

A fight to the death is in order here.

brianon

Bought the game and installed at the weekend. Have very little time right now what with out newborn but have heard that the game is quite buggy.

Some saying its not worth playing until the patch is out. Anyone found this to be true ? My time is like gold dust right now so I might just wait until the patch if its just gonna be wasted time right now.

Ri_Nollaig

great stories BlitzKrieg

i have started off as england (sorry ), im currently at war with france and milian but got a great victory against the scots.
About 95% of their army just rebelled leaving edinburgh only defend by the king and his gaurds which i quickly went in and took.

@brianon
i havnt noticed many bugs other then the unusual ai tricks in main battles and for some reason all siege equipment disappear when reflections are turned on with my 6800GT...