Medieval II: Total War

[bulldog]

The sequel to the already fantastic Medieval: Total War, comes Medieval II: Total War. I'd just like to start by saying that this game is bloody amazing. Seven years have gone into this game; and it shows, everything you could wish for in an RTS is in this game. The graphics are superb, you can zoom and watch over the gleaming helmets of your brave horsemen, charging, kicking dust under their muddly heels as they do so towards the Barbarian Horde - and theres no more clone armies. The once mighty clone armies of Rome have been removed, and now all of your units are different, unique individuals; for example they have their own crested shields, different styles of helmet, breastplate and even their horses are different from one another!
Realism is everything in this game, all of the characters are historically accurate at the start, all of the units come along and are upgraded as time progresses, he who is the most technologically advanced wins, in this game.
Most of all is the gameplay, it really is fantastic, everything moves where you want it to, all of the units can be flexibly moved into positions you want them to be in, soldiers plunge their swords deep into the enemy, musketeers absolutely slaughter the enemy, you can actually -feel- the massive damage trebuchets cause when they fire, it's just amazing, something that's hard to say in words until you've been immersed into this truly magnificent game. Theres many things I haven't covered, but now I'm off to get another dose of this game. BUY IT! 10/10
www.totalwar.com

[DemonMage]

And when starting a battle, wait 10-15 seconds, unlike Rome you have to wait a bit before the before battle speech starts playing, but it's well worth it. They're even better than Rome's speechs.

[Edward]

It also has quite a few bugs if you read the total war forums. They should fix a lot of them soon though. Stuff like units dont charge sometimes, and two-hand weapon users dont attack really.

[bulldog]

Quite right Edward, there are certain bugs such as the ones you named but they're hardly noticeable; and only happen very rarely.

[Rookie]

I saw the commercial for this and would get it, but my computer is sooo slow, even on BFME2. BFME is great and all, but I'd like a game of Medieval II's caliber. But alas, i have a crappy computer.

[Aku]

I am almost done with my first game as the Venetians (man I love the doge). Overall it is a challenging game here are a few of the things I have found difficult. I mean these as complements to the complexity of the game, not complaints.

1. Cultivation of Assassins: I found this hard in Rome but doable. So far it I have yet to find a way to build an assassin's skills to the point where they are useful. They rarely are successful out of the gate and sometimes can even loose skill (rare, but it happens), when they miss a hit.

2. Use of merchants beyound resource farming. One in a while the AIs send in a merchant that will start buying out my locals. Whenever I stry to stop them, my merchants have the crap kicked out of them. As I play further this seems to be less of a problem, but still.

3. Effectively deploying my gunpowder units. Still have not gotten the hang of it. It seems a bit different than Medival 1 and Shogun.

4. Pray for divine intervention if you meet the Mongols or Timmerlands when they first come out. They are almost unstoppable. I took Jerusalem about 5 years before the Mongols showed up They just wandered out to the medetarranian and starting kicking the crud out of me, the turks, egyptians, and Byzantines. Right now I am trying to prevent a Timerland takover of my possessions in Asia Minor, when I should be concentrating on taking more provences so I can win this thing. It does not look good :(

[bulldog]

Yeah, assassins are tough to train up well. It's must, must harder than R:TW. They usually start with only about two or three on their abilities bar too, which is even more annoying. I find the deployment of gunpowder units is easy enough when you have hilly terrain (which is usually quite often), though I also find Longbow men are far more effective than Arbiquisers and Musketeers, and Trebuchets are far more effective than Culverins of Bombards. And by the way, England pwns Venice. :D

[Erling E.]

I agree. Fantastic game. Only negative thing I have to say about it is that its not THAT big of a leap from "Rome: Total War". Its basically a re-skinning with some better graphics. It would have been nice to see some more advancements in gameplay. But still, its one fantastic game!

[Edward]

Start assassins off on easy targets like low level diplomats, merchants, spies, other assassins, etc.. Save before you try, then keep reloading till it works. Eventually it will get up and up until your lil buster can take out anyone.

As for rival merchants, they can be annoying. A good solution to this is to start your merchants off by trying to take over other newbie merchants and hope you win (reload a lot). Another valid tactic is to use that handy assassin.

Gunpowder units are very effective, if you deploy them right. They cant shoot through troops (so they always have to be in front or not behind any units), their is a little reload bug that happens occasionally, but the patch fixed it I think. The best way to deploy them is as far out as you can, in two lines. This enables more of them to fire at once, and the Janissary Musketeers can take out 20+ of any infantry unit in one volley.

[Aku]

I am on my second game as England. I have tried a different tatic with my merchants, spies, and assassians. I just recruit out of one or two places for each type, (for me) London for Merchants, Nottingham for Priests, Paris for spys, and that city just to the east of Paris for assassins. It has garinteed that I have the best guild possible in each city, and send them out to where there is alot of potential targets, mainly in the hibs where alot of factions have their territories.

Now if I could only attract the guild houses for hospitlars or templars . . .

[Whytewulf]

you all make this sound fun.. When I get my new PC, I will need to check this out.

[MediaMogul]

I bloody hate the inquisitor, Worst thing is he killed my general while he was traveling to the holy lands.

I also found diplomacy to be very important. And has to be attended if not every round then every other round. Also hated that the dnaes kept declaring war on me and when I finally gathered a large enough army the pope interveened ... GAAAAH! DAmn you pope!

[Aku]

I bloody hate the inquisitor, Worst thing is he killed my general while he was traveling to the holy lands.

I also found diplomacy to be very important. And has to be attended if not every round then every other round. Also hated that the dnaes kept declaring war on me and when I finally gathered a large enough army the pope interveened ... GAAAAH! DAmn you pope!

I feel your pain. A Pope strategy is defenately a must. I try to produce alot of priests and send them to places as needed, eventually you will get a nice batch of cardnals, and hopefully a few popes from them which will keep you high on the Pope's list, thus giving you more leverage in most situations.

The diplomacy question is one I need more work on. For the life of me I can not figure out how you develop rep and reliability with fations, but I do know A) dont bribe people, B) dont doubble cross an ally. I wish there was some guide on the diplomacy system because it seemes fairly opaque.

[MediaMogul]

what also annoyed me was that my merchants kept getting bamboozeld by enemy merchants. And since it was close to impossible to get merchants skilled enough to defend them selves I kept going trough merchants like a pregnant woman goes trough snacks.

In general i felt the specialist system was totally FUBAR.

It takes alot of work to get alliances that hold and where they wont backstab you once they have rebuilt their army.

getting daughters and marrying em to suitable singel commanders is 1 option. But usually I found myself not risking my generals to begin with. Since I wanted to build up a large family so that my generals kept pumping out children. AKA do not send a general into combat that hasnt married and gotten atleast 1 child.

In general giving 1 gift each round seemed to work sorta. Give a second gift and they might get offended. also releasing caputred enem ysoldiers also improves relation ship.

In the end tough I said screw politics went and got 1 ally then just started conquering like mad.

[Edward]

Use assassins to kill other merchants, it works well. Also, if you're any nation that isnt catholic you dont have to worry about the inquisitors.

[Aku]

My personal strategy with merchants is to become the preditor, not the prey. Send out a merchant with a spy (the spy sees at least double the area of a merchant alone, perhaps more depending on the spy's level), and then take over Merchants as you see them. For every take over, you get some cash, the higher the enemy's Finance raiting, the more cash you get. This is why I try to avoid using assassins to kill merchants; its like throwing money down the drain.

If you get good at this strategy this could become a nice secondary income for your faction. AI merchants tend to congragate at places where there many states border eachother and where there is alot of resources. They tend to like Northern Italy for the linen, marble, and the dye and silver that is a turn's trip away around Austria, and French wine.

A nice thing about this strategy, other than the cash, is that it builds up your own merchant's Finance rating, which allows him to collect more cash when parked on a resource. For example I have a fully built up merchant sitting on a gold mine in the Sarahara that produces about 535 florins a turn for me.

Also, I use think the specialist system was messed, but I went to a system of dedicated cities, and now it works great for me. Lets take merchants. I allways have a city that has the best Market available, in which I have the Merchant's guild, pumping out my merchants. This garintees I produce the best merchants I can. As you produce more merchants from that city, you get upgrades to your guild, thus producing better merchants. Some, about 1/4th, of the merchants I produce now Have about half their Finance rating bar half filled when they are produced (I have a Merchant's quarters, and Merchant Guild World HQ in that city). You can do the same with spys (Thieves' guild), Assassins (Assassins guild for Europeans, It has another name for the Moslem factions), and Priests (Theologian's guild). If you want to attact a particular guild in a city, keep producing that unit type in that city untill it offers you that guild.

BTW, if you follow the same strategy I outlined with Merchant production with priests, you produce priests that make Cardnal easier. In my current game I have had the last 3 or 4 Popes come from my faction because of this. I currenty have 9 cardnals, so the next Pope will probably be mine also.

[MediaMogul]

problem is with the non patched version anywhos is that that doesnt really work all that good. Im never able to get merchants that outrank enemy merchants. they always better and by alot aswell.

[Aku]

Just patch it. I personally have not seen the problems that people talk about on their board, for the most part.