Medieval 2: Total War

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Makes you wonder why they made Scotland playable but not Wales or Ireland. None of them ever really got an empire going, you know what I mean, so youd've thought they'd all be there or none at all.

Check this out, I thought we'd seen the last of this fella

http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/3444/0007xm3.jpg

 

Hows the campaign going? Any more news on your American conquest? If I get this new computer I could be playing it in a week or two.

 

It's not mate really, I've been a bit busy and haven't been able to play it.

 

You need to get your priorities sorted out!

 

Yeah, BA, there are those of us without access to the game that rely on you to keep us posted!

 

Sorry Friday and Saturdays usually involve pubs beer and football you'll have to forgive .

We've not heard anything from Aldeth yet, I'm sure he'll peel himself away from the game soon and fill you in!

 

Man, I played a lot of Rome and liked, the barbarian expansion I tried but didnt like off the bat. Interesting that they made a Medieval 2 instead of a new setting. Would have thought they made Napoleon: Total War or something instead just for varieties sake.

Will try to get my grubby little fingers on this pearl, sorely lacking in funds though. As for requirements if you can play Rome ok you can play this one right?

 

To be honest mate, ever since Rome came out with the brand new engine I've been praying for them to revisit Medieval and remake it with the new engine and ideas. They did that and more!

I'll be praying for one now in the Napoleonic era. I think they'd be well capable of making one like that.

 

I can see it now.... British Empire: Total War. It'd be nice to fight for complete world domination and the factions could include vastly different cultures and military's. Complete gunpowder warfare would also be cool, what are the musketeer units like in Medieval 2?

As for the system requirement's my mate could run Rome fairly well but when playing Medieval he can only zoom in so far on the battle system for some reason, probably because his system cant handle the textures when close in. It's also pretty slow on the campaign map, like when you end turn it takes a while for the computer factions to complete theirs. So it looks like it is more demanding than Rome: TW. The requirements are: 1.5 GHz processor, 512MB RAM, 8x Speed DVD-ROM drive, 9.0 GB of hard disk space, DirectX 9.0c, 128 MB video card, monitor must be able to display 1024x768 resolution or above.

 

The hand gunners / musketeers in Medieval are... so-so. The thing is, if you can get a unit of arquebusiers nice up and close and unleash a volley, they can be devastating. But, they're poor from distance and can't fire well in rain at all. So the weather's got to be right and you've got to be very close.

Plus (and this is the worst thing) you can't protect them very well. With archers, you can stick a unit of spears in front to deter a unit of cavalry just riding through them. With gunpowder units, they will (seems obvious) shoot anything in their line of fire. So you can't easily protest them from marauding cavalry. Personally, I don't bother with them. Cannons can be useful for sieges, but that's the only time I use gunpowder units.

 

OK, the game is a bit hard. Perhaps the problem that I'm having is that I have the difficulty set to medium, where there may be some skills I need to master on easy first. I also probably have to read through the game manual more thoroughly because I have no clue how the economy works in this game. I'm operating in the red every single turn, and relying on the plunder of towns to make up the difference. The cost of even basic upgrades seems prohibitively expensive.

I just started my second game, because the first one didn't go well at all. I decided to start with the Spanish, because they have the Moors directly to the south, and since the Moors obviously aren't Catholic, I'd figure that would be a good idea to not tick off the pope. I lost my best general in the second battle. He must have got caught by a stray arrow or two because his unit was barely damaged when he got hit and went down. The king's only has one son, and he must be gay or something because he doesn't have any potential princesses to marry, so maintaining the familial blood line was looking grim as well.

So, in the second game I took Barmy's advice and went with the English. I already like the way things are working better. For starters, the only way you get to control a town's production is if you have a governor in the town. A governor can basically be any male associated with the royal family. The king at the beginning of the game is William the Conqueror, who, while getting up in years, runs the capital. He has two adult male sons, who are also eligible for governors. His adult daughter is married, and her husband is a governor too. There is also a 3rd son who is only 12, but presumably he'll be able to become a governor one day too.

One thing that seems obvious is that it really helps to have a very large royal family, because otherwise you have tons of towns where you cannot really control production. Supposedly, you can use daughters to woo generals from other nations to marry you and have them join your nation, but I haven't been able to accomplish this yet. That seems to be the only way to get additional leaders for the nation. I also don't know if there is anyway to increase the number of children produced in the royal family. Since I've been playing, there has only been one royal birth in the family (the oldest son's wife), and it was a girl, so that's not a definite future leader.

EDIT: Also there's really only five playable nations. For individual battles you can play just about anyone. I think there are 33 nations or something like that. However, the main game is called the "Grand Campaign", and there are only five playable countries in this scenario: English, French, Spanish, Roman, and Venetian.

 

when you there is really only five playeble nation, do you meen you can only take does or does are the easiest?

 

For the grand campaign you can only play one of those five nationalities. The Grand Campaign is the main game. There are other sections, which include historical battles in which you can play either side. Also there is another feature called Single Battle in which you get to pick the sides as well as the starting units. For the historic and single battles you have all 33 - or whatever the exact number is - countries to chose from. But the Grand Campaign you are limited to five nations. Perhpas harder difficulties open more options, but only saw five on medium difficulty.

 

Aldeth, you unlock all the others by beating the grand campaign, or changing your descr_strat file in the Medieval folder.

Let me know if you want to unlock them and I'll tell you how to do it .

Edit - I'll help you with other stuff as well.

Money - Bang taxes up. Build anything that says 'Increases tradeable goods' in all cities. All coastal cities should have ports. All cities should have good road networks. Lastly, farms also help. But with ports/roads/merchants/anything that increases tradeable goods you should never be short of money. Send diplomats to organize trade rights with all nearby factions. I'd say a good 60-70% of income is from trade so crank it up. If you're using merchant guys, don't. They cost 550 florins and you'll only start seeing a profit after 20 turns or so. It's only worth it when you've already got a bit of money to play about with.

Governors - You can control a city even if it doesn't have a governor. If you click on it, they'll be 2 tick boxes. 1 for auto-build and 1 for auto-train. Untick them both. If you can't, take 'Auto manage' off (click the 3 Lions logo bottom right).

Also, don't be afraid to use an army without a family member in charge. In fact, winning battles with generalless (woo new word) armies is a very good way to get a 'Man of the Hour' (when the king adopts a fellow into it royal line due to his deeds).

Your family members will grow and grow throughout the game. I think i have about 20 family members atm. Also, when your money gets going, don't be afraid with bribes.

[ November 20, 2006, 19:12: Message edited by: Barmy Army ]

 

Yeh don't worry about the royal bloodline in Rome I had so many family members I sent them out in ships to be killed by pirates I had so many.

 

@Barmy - Thanks for the info on unlocking the other nations - as I quit my first game and have just started my second, I obviously have not beaten the game yet, so I didn't know you get more options.

Maybe finances gets easier after you get going. In the beginning even a simple marketplace is several hundred florins - about 10% of my total income for the turn. It seems like almost all excess money is going into the military. I don't build merchants - the only one I have is one I started the game with. He's standing on some resource and getting me all of 4 florins per turn.

Another thing I don't understand is how do you unlock new units? I'm playing the English right now, and I don't have the option to recruit longbowmen in any of my settlements, which seems like a crock, seeing as how I specifically picked the English to access this unit.

I didn't know that either. Good to know, as it is a source of new generals and expanding the royal family. How old do people get before they die of old age anyway?

 

A few hundred florins is sod all to be honest. Just wait till you're cities are upgraded and buildings cost 10,000 florins a time! Trust me though, once you get 10-15+ settlements with good trade, you'll have more money than you know what to do with. Get trade rights with factions. Get ports. Get roads. Get merchant-type buildings. Get these before you even consider the military side. Only get the bare minimum military units and buildings until your economy is running OK.

Right, that's another thing, upgrades. You mention not knowing how to upgrade buildings to unlock units. Look at your cities' populations. When these populations reach certain levels, you get the option to upgrade the settlement. This is how you access better buildings and unit types. By the way, do you have Wales yet? This is the first settlement to have access to Longbowmen.

You don't *need* to beat the game to unlock all the other factions. Go to your Medieval 2 main folder. Data>>World>>Maps>>Campaign>>Imperial Campaign>>Open descr_strat file (you might have to take Read Only off in file options to edit it).

Make this part...

campaign imperial_campaign
playable
england
france
hre
spain
venice
end
unlockable
sicily
milan
scotland
byzantium
russia
moors
turks
egypt
denmark
portugal
poland
hungary
end
nonplayable
papal_states
aztecs
mongols
timurids
slave
end

Look like this...

campaign imperial_campaign
playable
england
france
hre
spain
venice
sicily
milan
scotland
byzantium
russia
moors
turks
egypt
denmark
portugal
poland
hungary
mongols
timurids
end

unlockable

end

nonplayable
papal_states
aztecs
slave
end

Then save it. You can then play with all factions.

 

Thanks Barmy. Things are going a lot better now. Right now, I have about five settlements in northern France (all were rebel settlements so I haven't attacked France), and have posession of all but the northern most Scottish city in the UK. I also took Dublin, which evidently is the only settlement on all of Ireland. I do have Wales, although I forget the name of the settlement. So all told that's somewhere around 12 settlements.

I think I'm getting a better idea of the game now. At first, I thought the only difference among settlements were some were towns and others were castles. It now appears that only certain towns/castles can build certain units. For example, I thought any place I constructed a bowyer would be able to produce longbowmen. Such is not the case. Also, the financial situation is much better now. In most of the cities, the limiting factor now is how fast they can build things, not whether or not there is enough money.

Interestingly, one of my cities (Caen) that I didn't even have a governor controlling went ahead and made me 3 ballista units. The Scots are being a pain in my arse, and I'm going to bring the ballistas up to help in knocking them off the island. (Are ballistas any good against castles? I guess I'm asking if they are anti-troop versus siege units.)

Assuming I eventually dispatch the Scots, my next decision is who to go after next. William the Conquerer's youngest son Henry, is the freaking bomb. He started out leading a few campaigns out of necessity, and now, at just 20 years of age he has 8 out of 10 stars in leadership. That's better than his father (who is now 62, and his fighting days are behind him) and his two older brothers. Needless to say, for the rest of his hopefully long life, he will be the field general for all of my big military campaigns.

I'm a little leary of going after France. I've already angered the pope quite a bit. Not only have I made war on Scotland, but I am ultimately going to reject his call for a crusade. About the only thing I can do (and I don't know if this will work) is to send a group of peasants on a cog and say that's my contribution to the crusade. That or I can just blow him off entirely. My guess is that while my reputation with the pope isnt' great, it is better than the Roman Empire's rep, so if the pope decides to kick someone's arse, then the Roman Empire will be first on the list.

 

Tell me about city building. What kind of improvements are there available for your cities? Are they just set map-markers like in Civ4, or can you do a little city planning?

What the dilly, yo.

 

@DR - there are two types of settlements - towns and castles. For the towns, it's almost exactly like the civ games. There are various improvements to be built, some effect economy, some what units you can build, some to make people happy, etc. However, there is no production resource like in the civ games. Instead, you need money to build the structures. As as result, the number of turns required to build the structure is the same regardless of the size of the city. I haven't seen any structure that requires more than 3 turns to build. So it's really a question of being able to afford it. Also, you can recruit new soldiers and build a structure simultaneously. It's not like you have to forego city development to get troops. That's one of the features I really like. Just because you're building a tanner shop shouldn't prevent you from training new spearmen.

For castles it's a little different. While there are some civilians that live inside castle fortifications (especially the most basic castle type which is the mott and bailey), castles are naturally more of a military structure than towns are. So while towns are used to produce the lion's share of revenue, castles are generally used to produce most of the training for troops. Now there isn't a complete split in how these work. Castles will produce some food, and some revenue, and a town can produce some troops. It's just the strength and weakness of doing those things are reversed.

About the best desricption I can give is that the civil management of the empire is a lot like civ, but the battles are exceedingly more complex. It's totally different from civ in that you don't just attack something and the computer figures out who wins. Not only does the person have a large say it how things work out, but also the quality of the leader of your army plays a big role too. Strong leaders that are loved by your people and feared by other people help in battle in providing a morale boost to your troops, and a morale penalty to your opponents. Strong leaders are also better at rallying the troops at critical times that can turn the tide of battle to your favor.

EDIT: There are also upgrades available for both castles and towns. I don't have the progression memorized, but castles start as mott and baileys, and then (I think) the progression goes through wooden pallisades, stone pallisades, fortress and citadel. Towns go through a similar progression, but I think it's village, town, city, large city. (And I'm pretty sure I missed one there.)