Medieval II: Total War
 

Anyone playing?

First thoughts is they made it tougher off the bat than Rome: Total War...I would capture all of europe without much resistance then get spanked by the Egyptians, but Im having a very hard time in the new version.

I like the tenious relationship the Catholic states must keep with the pope, but nothing beats convincing Rome to call a crusade and have all of Europe do your dirty work for you when you need the Turks to catch a beating.

Or is this a strictly console crowd?

I've been playing it. I am playing through a campaign as England. I love the game. I've played all of the Total War games, and I like this one best, so far. I think the added religious stuff with the Pope adds more challenge. It's been fun trying to take over other countries, while trying to stay on the Pope's good side. I liked it when I got to send a crusade to Scotland when they got excommunicated. I also liked it when the Pope told me to stop attacking France, then 2 turns later, they got excommunicated. At that point he said I could attack them all I want, because he didn't care anymore. :lol:

Right now I'm in a war with France and Denmark, but the Pope said I had to stop attacking Denmark for 7 turns. I've finally built my relationship back up with him. The previous Pope called for a crusade against Sicily, which I joined, and automatically put me at war with them. Well, of course that Pope died. I voted for the loser in the Pope elections, and the winning Pope was from Sicily. So, it took him a while to warm up to me. ;)

That kind of stuff makes this game so much fun.

For a long time I thought creating priests was useless...until I had no one on the College of Cardinals and have been frozen out of the Papal elections for years.

To add insult to injury, on of my cardinals was elected pope, and he died the next year.

I was getting my ass handed to me by Milan and Sicily...Milan had taken my capitol, Venice, and I was stuck with 4 minor cities in the balkans and 3 islands with a negative cash flow, so I couldnt afford to even build a navy to get my generals off Crete.

I razed my OWN cities on the mainland, combined my forces, convinced the new pope to attack Milan (excommunicated) used the profits from destroying my own buildings to hire some mercenary religious fanatics and took back Venice and thier Capitol Bolognia under the banner of the church before he decided that they had enough. now on to sweep down the boot and kick Sicily's ass...probably will just raze the towns for money

Is this a turn based game like Civilization or a RTS like Age of Empires? I've never heard of the game but your descriptions make it sound like something i would really enjoy. Of course my ancient computer probably couldn't run it. :(

Its the best of both worlds...movements on the map and strategy moves are turn based (just like civ) but once you attack or get attacked, the game focuses in on the region and battles become Real Time, with you controlling all of your units on massive battlefield.

the AI is superior, as archers will stand thier ground until mele units approach when they will retreat and run behind your infantry. You can also choose stuff like setting your arrows on fire, concentrating your fire on certian enemy units, and can use forests and other terrain to your advantage (hiding in forests so the enemy mistakenly is drawn into your main force while you pepper them from behind, setting your mounted troops out behind a hill for them to suprise flank the other army, starting out on the high ground is a HUGE advantage)

Plus, as units start to get beaten, if thier general is weak, they turn and run, so at the end of battles you have the choice of just letting them flee or using mounted cavalry to chase them down and slaughter them)

If your computer cant handle it, try ROME: Total War, as it is similar, plus some units in the Roman game are cool, like the Flaming Pigs (cause no damage, but FREAK the other army out and drive war elephants nuts) and war dogs.

PLUS, sega has a Medieval Total War website, where you can download the demo, which is only the battlefield part, but is the most graphisc intensive, so it would be a good barometer

It's a great series. I'd agree with Tommy that it's the best of both worlds. I'd sum it up as Civ-like, but with real-time battles. The whole empire building, city management, troop building, is all done on a turn-based world map. The battles are real-time. You can have the computer auto-sim the battles, but I get better results if I do the fighting myself.

Like Tommy said, there is a demo out, but it's only a demo of the real-time battles, but that's the part that is graphically demanding. Medieval 2:Total War uses an updated version of the engine for Rome:Total War. Rome might run better on an older machine. It came out in 2004. There should still be demoes out for that one too. You don't have all the Papal stuff in that one, but you do have to keep the Roman Senate happy and compete with the other families of Rome for control.

There is also the Total War Eras collection, which includes Shogun, Medieval 1, and Rome Total War games and all their exapansions. Shogun and Medieval 1 use an older engine and lack some of the newer features and fancy graphics of Medieval 2, but they are still fun.

Well then i will have to keep this in mind when i upgrade my computer. The Papal stuff sounds really really cool.

I just saw something in the game that boggled my mind

A little background for those who dont play:
-Your empire is run by the adult males in your family, if there killed or dont have male children you eventually dwindle down to nothing
-Only an adult male can be a govener or general
-Armies without good commanding generals tend to panic more and cities without goveners revolt easier, plus they pull in less money
-Sons tend to inherit thier fathers attributes, so if you have a good family tree branch...you must protect it and put them to good use
-Besides the typical attributes (command, loyalty, etc) your males also have an entarage...and the characters in the entarage add or subtract attributes from the character

So anyway...my kick ass general Doge Barteromo the Mauler conquered 5 cities for me before he died of old age while on campaign...fear not, his son Gerrardo the Mean inherited his military accumen, and he lead my army for 30 years, conquering 4 regions himself, and decamating every army he encountered.

So imagine my frustration when Gerrardo the Mean is pushing 60 and has no children...I decide to chech out his character details and in his entarage I find this character

'FOERIGN FRUITCAKE - The men tend to lose respect for a commander who is seen with a woman not his wife, especially when that woman can grow a beard (Lowers chance of having children)'

So basically my kick ass family tree branch dies (Gerrardo was hit by a lucky flaming catapault shot) because my best general liked banging trannies

:lol: The game has a sense of humor. I was in one battle where the advisor guy came up and said. "You know the only thing better than killing the enemy general? Doing it with artillery!" My firt volley kills him. Then when another general showed up on the battlefield, my first volley at him killed him as well. It wasn't as funny when the same thing happened to me in a later battle though. :(

I've managed to have peace with the French and Spanish for a while now, but I'm at war with Denmark. They took Antwerp and Bruges from me, but I took Frankfurt from them and killed their king. I sent two armies to take back Bruges. I had one army with one general and the other army had 2 family members. I made the mistake of not taking the checkbox out of "AI control" for army with 2 family members. I ended up taking the town, but lost all 3 generals. That sucked, but at least I decimated his army. I lost plenty of men taking the city, but his army is nothing now. I think Denmark only has maybe 1 or 2 large armies left now. Most of their cities have hardly any defenses, and I've killed the king and at least 2 other family members.

My only problem now is Denmark is the new Pope. Denmark was excomunicated by the last Pope. Well, he died and there were 7 Cardinals from Denmark on the Council of Cardinals, and one was up for Pope. You can guess who won that election. So, the new Pope hates me now, and Denmark has been reconciled and is now considered the ultimate Catholic nation. I know I'm going to get the mission to stop attacking them soon. I guess I'll have to re-direct my armies to Spain, who decided to attack me once I sent most of my armies toward Denmark. Luckily they don't have that great of a military. Last time I did war with them, I blockaded 4 of their cities' ports. Took over one city, then demanded they give me another city for a ceasefire.

I love this game. I'm playing Zelda on the Wii also, but I keep stopping to come back and conquer more of Europe.

I have a 9 year old plays lots of sim type games, pretty smart, could he get the hang of this?

I like how being decimated really only means losing 10% of your forces.

Some other things I don't like is that you can only queue up constrution orders when a general is in town, but you have to pre-pay for builings and units, so usually you can't afford it.

Also setting army sizes on huge quickly depopulates your main cities and bankrupts them.

talking about getting killed by the egyptians in RTW?

I just got it a little while ago and playing on medium. My favorite army breakdown is 1 general, 4 archers, 4 legionary cavalry but lately i'm not liking them and the rest praetorian or urban cohorts.

egypt is big on chariots. book says to use velites. i set my cohorts on auto fire and when the chariots attack i get all my archers to aim at the chariots. they attack first so there is time to attack other units later. the fire arrows and the javelins the cohorts throw decimate the chariots so they attack once and then retreat. then my archers concentrate on the hoplites or numidian spearmen to decimate their formation before mopping them up with swords.

Maybe. Has he played Civilization, other empire building games, or games with lots of micro-management stuff? Like I said earlier in the thread, I'd say the empire buidling part is similar to Civ. I'd say their complexity is similar.

Are you talking about Rome? In Medieval 2, you don't have to have a governor to queue up construction, you just have to uncheck the boxes that tell the AI to manage it.

Also, as far as I've noticed, Medieval doesn't deplete you population when building armies, like Rome did.

Hes never played civilization and such, maybe i'll start him on those since their less expensive

Do you still have to deal with the Golden Horde in II? I remember playing the first one and I was wondering who these units were in eastern europe...of course they proceeded to kick my arse...

Busted!

who were you playing as, the byzantines?

I never played I but I keep hearing rumors about the Mongols sweeping across the east.

BTW, Egypt wasnt a huge problem to win individual battles in Rome, it was just resupplying fresh troops and generals, plus the cities are so far from your home that its impossible to keep the citizens happy.

And last night I tried to pull a longshot and finish off Milan by sending a weakened traveling force to take thier last city. Unfortunatly my newest kick as general died of the Black Death on the way and I fought a MARATHON (I forgot to put battle time limits on) war of attrition which ended with the city having 5 heavy cavalry and 10 Dismounted feudal knights left while all I had was 3 units of archers out of arrows and a mortar without any ammo.

He kept the city with 8 troops left.

BTW...CANNON TOWERS kick all sorts of ass...gone are the days of the Ram breaking down my gates.

ANOTHER THING....foerign diplomats sometimes offer you a ceasefire in exchange for becoming a VASSAL...what does this do, exactly?

Has anyone used the Trebuchet to fire the 'rotting cow carcas'?

No, but now I'm going to have to try it when I get home!

Right now I'm having hard times in my campaign. I'm one cross away from being excommunicated. Denmark, France, and Spain are all attacking me, and I can't convince any of them to stop. Denmark is the only real threat though. France and Spain are weak. Denmark has many of my ports blocked, so my trade revenue is hurting pretty bad. The Pope keeps telling me I'm not allowed to attack any of them, so I can't stop the blockades. I can defend my cites, but I can't retaliate. I keep sending diplomats, but so far they won't accept a ceasefire. I even offered to give up the city I took from Denmark, if they'd just backoff a while. I'm hoping the Pope dies soon, and I can get one that's not from one of those countries. I'm pretty sure I could wipe out France if the Pope would let me attack. They only have like 4-5 provinces left. Spain is one mistake away from excommunication too, so hopefully they screw up and I can take them out.

I really need to work more on my assasins, so I can just take out their good generals. I used to do that all the time in Sogun: Total War. I'd send geishas all over Japan, killing off the other leaders and their heirs.

In my campaign, the mongols have taken over most of the east. I think they've taken out about 4 Islamic nations. They control Jerusalem, Antioch, and all the rest of the cities on that side of the map.

So my computer can't handle this game at all. I have never played any of the earlier games so which of those earlier ones would you guys recommend? The Shogun sounded neat but so did the one I looked up on ebgames that said something about Vikings.

Shogun was the first one, and it's fun. The Vikings one is an add-on for Medieval 1.

I'd suggest Rome, if your PC will run it. It has a lot of the features that Medieval 2 does, since Medieval 2 runs on an updated Rome engine. You don't have the religious stuff, but you have the Senate that gives you missions, and the other families of Rome who you are competing against. You can also play as the Greeks, and some of the other ancient nations. You might be able to run it. They did a lot of graphical updates in Medieval 2.

The older games are fun too, but use an older engine. If you don't care about graphics they are a good choice, and can be found cheap. They use 2d sprites for the units in the battles, instead of 3d units in the newer games. Also, the campaign maps are different in the older games. They were more like a Risk board, where you moved pieces around. They don't have some of the features that the newer games have, but they are still fun.

You could also pickup the Total War Eras collection. It's Shogun, Medieval 1, Rome and all their expansions. I didn't see it on ebgames, but I've seen it at the stores.

Well my computer is pretty old. My computer is a hand-me-down and i believe is running some old motherboard overclocked to 900 mhz. :lol: I'll try to snag the original Medieval used or something.

Obviously the graphics and the like don't bother me - i still play Starcraft. For good graphics i game primarily on my 360.

No, I used Germany (The Holy Roamn Empire to be exact). I had conquered lands east of Poland, when the horde showed up. I wasn't expecting anything like it...