Medieval 2: Total War (Cont.)

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Bought the expansion now, currently installing. Looking forward to Empire: Total War though.


EDIT: Now I'm at about turn 110 of the Teutonic campaign, playing as Novgorod. Quickly allied myself with the Mongols in case they were half as dangerous as in the original campaign; they weren't.

Got in an early faux war with the Teutons, got a cease fire after about ten turns. After that, it was a lot of rebel conquest and buildup until I got gunpowder and bought a small village from the HRE that I made into a castle. They've declared war on me about five times after that to take the castle back but no dice. Each time I've gained an advantegous cease fire where I've asked for florins.

Bought a couple of coastal towns from Denmark in present-day Russia and Estonia since I lacked any coastal towns in the beginning and then I took Finland and Gotland from rebels. Now the Teutons have attacked me again and I just defeated them in the first battle between us. They outnumbered me 1.5-1 with a lot of heavy infantry but I had my godsent Cossack Musketeers that tore them apart.

In the meantime, Lithanua have became Catholic instead of Pagan and have fought almost constantly against the Teutons and the Mongols are having rebellions everywhere so soon I'll turn south to take their villages after I've finished off the Teutons.

All in all, it's a good expansion, at least that campaign, but I still don't understand why the Swedes are not an independant faction here.

[ September 02, 2007, 01:36: Message edited by: Register ]

 

So, any other reviews on the expansion?

 

It's worth the money, trust me.

 

I bought it, but haven't had a chance to play on it yet. My brother wrested it from my fingers as soon as I walked in the house. I haven't seen it since. I'm sure it rocks though, it's a Total War game and they never let you down.

 

I've been waiting to see what the fans say before I pick it up, but I think I'll be doing so soon. In fact, I went by the local Best Buy yesterday, just to see what would happen if I held the box (would I resist, or give in), but they were out of stock.

I'm pretty close to wrapping up my Venetian campaign. Currently in turn 180 or so, finally "discovered" the Americas. I control 160 regions or so. So I think I'll be ready to start a kindgoms campaign shortly. I'm just not sure which of the 4 I would start with (Teutonic, Crusades, Britannia or Americas).

 

Are there even 160 regions in the entire game?

 

Sorry, I'm tired. Wife is out of town, and I'm taking care of the little foppish Marceror, as well as our 4 year old.

Make that around 60 regions.

 

OK, what gives? I just got the expansion, and all the additional campaigns seem to work fine, but what if I just want to play the regular game with the new factions? I can't do that?

I figured the "play medieval II" option would do it, but it only gives me the options of the same factions that I always had. What's the deal?

 

The expansion did not modify any content of the original game. Apparently there is a mod out there created by one of CAs staff members, that makes Kingdom's content available in the original game, but I'm not exactly sure how it impacts what factions are available.

I think it's currently featured on Creative Assembly's Total War Website (www.totalwar.com), so you might see if that does anything for you.

 

Right, finally got my hands on the expansion, but it arrived a day late, so i didnt get to waste my free day playing it. Got an hours play out of it yestarday, and first thought is that Scotland have nothing new or exciting. Gonna have to play Wales to try their new units.

 

I'm currently around 8 turns into a H/VH Welsh campaign, and so far enoying it immensely. The Welsh get some great early units, several that are capable of fulfilling multiple roles well. Saethwyr and Meirionnydd Spearmen are particularly great units.

 

After playing Rome: Total War for the last month and a half I started playing Medieval II again last night.

I started a game up as the Spanish and had my two princesses running around playing diplomat to boost their charm scores to avoid the "wife is a wretch" trait when I finally married them off. The only problem was that I wasn't really paying that much attention to their ages and when I checked they were getting up into thir late 30s. Fortunately I was presented with a pretty good candidate for marriage so that took care of the older one (who proceeded to turn out a kid a year for the next three years).

I wasn't getting any offers for the second one and she was pretty far from home so marrying her off to another faction's general would have resulted in a general whose treck back to my territory would have been a diplomatic nightmare. But then the French decided to declare war on me and my problem was almost solved.

I used my princess to snatch up a mediocre French general from a poorly defended city, had him hire the two available mercenary units, and then had him besiege his former home. The almost solved comes courtesy of the Pope who decided to step in and order me to stop attacking the French.

As a result I broke off the siege and had the general make a run for my border - but he didn't make it. He was ambushed on the way by a French army led by the French king. The odds were not that bad actually 4:5 according to the bar, so I figured it was worth fighting and sure enough the battle ended with the French king dead and my seduced ex-French general alive and well. Quite a nice payoff for a desperation "I had better marry her to someone while she is still capable of bearing children" pick-up.

 

Always nice taking down a king like that...

I really should make another run at the game. Seems to be I was stuck on the Sicilian campaign...

 

I can't believe it. I managed to get the general from my last post back to my own territory and the very next turn he died of natural causes. So my attempt to marry the princess off quickly so that she would be able to have children in fact produced no children and one dead enemy king.

My usual assassination squad approach has actually backfired on me this game. My main army was busy with Portugal when my assassins finished off the French and next thing I know Milan has scooped up three of the four formerly French settlements.

 

Still not a bad trade. She was getting up in years anyway, so you basically traded an old princess for a dead enemy king. Is there an official age in which princess stop having children? I notice that you don't have women in their 50s having kids, but is there an actual cutoff where it's impossible to happen?

You have to be quick with princesses - especially with Spain where you have two to start the game with. You only have about a dozen turns before you have to consider marrying them. Of course, there's no harm in marrying them to an enemy prince to form an alliance, even if they have low charm rating.

I just *can't* do the assassination thing. It just seems so cheesy, and tedious. I refuse to use powerword: reload when my high level assassin fails against an easy target, and that usually just makes me really annoyed and I turn off the game. It's generally more trouble than it's worth. The only time I will use assassins is against the Mongols, because they're cheesy too.

The campaigns I enjoy the most are actually playing the HRE, Milan, or Venice, because none of them require holding Jerusalem, meaning you can usually avoid any Mongol conflicts (I don't know about you, but the vast majority of times it seems like the Mongols come through the southern way as opposed to the more historically acurate northern route.

 

Assassins are not that cheesy if you don't reload when one dies. They are a lot of work to train up properly. In my current game my assassination squad is down to only two after spending the time and effort to train a dozen of them up to at least 6 subterfuge. If you add the cost of the assassins that didn't make it to 6 subterfuge it probably would have been a lot more cost efficient to just hire more soldiers. Of course that would upset the Pope. I had almost forgotten how annoying it is to have the Pope constantly raining on your parade.

 

well, I tried the Sicillians again today. Does my council of Nobles have any understanding of growth? I find I'm having to keep building a bigger army to satisfy the Council and stagnates my attempts to build a decent economy. And to make things worse, the HRE declares war way earlier, and Milan gets themselves excommunicated, resulting in a crusade to toulouse.

I end up taking 4 castles and one city, and when I gave up the game, I'd had one army (led by a king) sunk by the Germans and Milan declare war again, putting my king at risk. Two castles waiting for the money to convert to towns and a forward base in south western Europe well ahead of schedule. Economic ruin and two much larger nations openly hostile? Maybe Sunday I can make another run at it...

 

Ha, as I noted a couple posts ago Milan was looking pretty dangerous but I managed to almost effortlessly strip away all of their non-Italian territories.

They declared war against me but in doing so they got excommunicated. Naturally I called a crusade against them. I hired some cheap crusade mercs and started towards my target. Milan sent a diplomat to try to get a ceasefire and I agreed in exchange for Rheims.

Naturally I instantly turned around and violated the ceasefire by having my crusade army besiege the crusade target. I then waited the siege out and watched as the other Catholic nations sent six crusade armies which proceeded to slaughter almost all of Milan's armies.

That left things wide open for my other army to come in and pick off a couple of weakly defended cities. The crusade target's siege timer ran out and I picked up the city without a fight.

At this point they had their diplomat offer me another ceasefire and I agreed in exchange for their final non-Italian settlement.

That left Milan with just Milan, Genoa and Florence but, to add insult to injury, the Vatican turned around and sent out an army and conquered Florence. I don't think I have ever seen them actually send out a conquering army before.

That really leaves me with next to no serious opposition in the immediate future. Scotland has had England on the ropes for most of the game, I took out France and Portugal but not before Portugal managed to severely maul the Moors, Milan had the HRE down to only four territories, and now Milan has been left toothless. The only real problem now is that the Mongols took the southern route and judging from the power graphs they are annihilating the Egyptians.

 

I just dont understand what you are doing Gnarff, are you playing on very hard very hard? I in no way shape or form am trying to say that you are bad but I just cant understand how it is possible to fail. One of my biggest problems with the game is that it is too easy, that if I want any fun at all I have to put personal restrictions on my self on what I can and cant do. Even then the only remotely challenging thing in the game is to play as Egyptians/Turks/Russians and be prepared to deal with both invasions.

The absolutely easiest way for you to just win would be to just zerg, take that first army, hire mercs with all your money and then just conquer and sack and live on sacking money. You will win in no time.

 

I picked up the game fairly recently again too. This time, I decided to play with the Venetians, just to see what it's like to have no need for any castles at all. So far it's working out like a charm, I'm the richest faction almost all of the time, even when I build new stuff in towns as soon as it becomes available.

The fact that the largest part of my army requires no upkeep is doing wonders for my treasury. In fact, the only problem is that the council keeps rewarding me with cavalry units, which drives up the upkeep costs. I could disband them, of course, but until a few of my towns grow significantly larger, I can't build any cavalry in them, so I feel obliged to keep them. They do a decent job of thinning themselves out through the various battles, though.

I decided to keep one castle, in Ragusa, so I can have a comparison between the units I can train there and the units I can train in towns. So far, I've found that, again, the stable buildings are fairly useless in castles, as the castles can build cavalry of themselves.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that with the newly installed patch, the other factions took a more active role in conquering island territories. Well, not so pleasantly when I first discovered an invading army of Byzantines besieging the isle the Venetians get from the start, which I had previously emptied of most of its garrison in the erronous assumption that I'd be safe from any attacks there. The problem was fairly easily solved by momentarily changing the isle to my capital, thus receiving some cavalry units there, which the council had so wisely awarded me with.