I got my hands on this game before Elemental, and i played just one grand campaign then moved on to Elememtal.
When i played that first grand campaign, i got a bit fed up with the overwhelming number of city build options, and the hideous AI diplomacy then when i first played Elemental coming from that game, i was so relieved by how vastly limited the city build options in Elemental are in comparison!
But after playing Elemental for a while, i came to feel that there is just not enough to justify why am i bothering to build up an empire and an awesome army. So for a while i do not know what to do? I tried downloading some cheap older games on Impulse that had high user rating but there was nothing to hold my interest for very long.
So eventually i begrudgingly put the Total war disk in the drive and fired up a new game. That was like 3 months ago now and i am still having sleepless nights because i have become so obsessed with this game! I think it is because the simplicity of Elemental has taught me to really appreciate the complexity of total war??
For anyone who doesn't know, Medieval ll total war is a combat RTS with turn based strategic planning and economy. It has fixed location provinces and cities clumsily based on historical fact and you start off as one of any number of various medieval kingdoms which then determines your geographical location and how many cities you start with and also influences what units and city improvements you can build.
The best part of it is the combat, it is the most realistic interpretation of medieval warfare i have ever seen! and the AI has limited weaknesses so that if your armies are equally matched, you really have to work hard to limit casualties. Also if you have an equally matched army but the AI is Mongol or Tumirids, they are so effective in battle even veteran players will be better off hitting the auto calc rather than facing them in the field! (but Depending greatly on many things such as how favorable the map is, or isn't and who is the attacker and the percentage of AI cavalry that is present/still present after other battles.)
The worst part about it is the diplomacy, there is not much point to it at all, but only because all the AI kingdoms are raving lunatics. If they were slightly more sensible then there is no reason the diplomacy system could not be called 'brilliant'. You would use diplomacy briefly at the start of the game to get trade agreements, but after that it is just an annoyance that occasionally pops up due to AI initiation to insult your intelligence before you click reject and move on with the game.
Get the Kingdoms Grand Campaign Mod. If you thought that vanilla campaign was good, well... bring a change of underpants.
Grand campaign Mod? I don't need the game to be harder, but it would be nice if there was a third invasion or rework the Tumirids to be vastly more numerous, come a bit later in the game and have their armies operate with pre determined territorial objectives so they don't suffer the Grand old Duke of York syndrome that the Mongols and Tumirids currently suffer. "Oh, The grand old Duke of York, He had ten thousand men; He marched them up to the top of the hill, And he marched them down again. And when they were up, they were up, And when they were down, they were down, And when they were only half-way up, They were neither up nor down".
I take it you never played Rome:TW?
I am aware there are some newer versions around, have been for some time now! When i will get to them i do not know?
Actually Rome is the immediate Predecessor to Medieval II, and is generally considered to be the best TW game (though Medieval II is also a favorite). Medieval II actually uses the same engine as Rome so it should be quite familiar to you. You can probably get the gold edition for dirt cheap now if you ever need more time to kill.
Empire, Napoleon and Shogun II are the Total War games released after Medieval II, though I haven't played any of them (I got Empire but quit due to technical issues that are probably fixed now, but I haven't bothered to try it again). Also these all require steam.
Steam? Errrmm, i absolutely do not like the idea of games being compulsorily subject to a platform like steam. It is the principal of the removal of choice from the customer, that can never be a good thing even tho i have no particular vexation against Steam (i even have it and use it). I have also refused to buy Civ5 for this exact reason.
I too must admit my love of Medieval II. For me I enjoy controlling and managing my generals, commanders, and royal family. Its fun to follow the "stories" that these character's develop.
For something truely different and amazing check out the Third Age mod.
Also, Rome was also a fantastic game. So simple, diverse, and engaging. Shogun II is good but lacks the diversity and flavor of Medieval II and Rome... it also really helps to be a big fan of ancient asian warfare. Personally, since Rome and Medieval II, I think they've been focusing too much on graphics and not enough on gameplay.
Yep the generals are fun, but it is allot of work upgrading them by attacking rebels, and ones with chivalry are kind of stuck in cities because they can easily be demoted for winning battles with rebels, which is a big flaw with the game in my opinion. Then there are my main army generals but usually i will have only two of those at best due to finance pressure forcing me to have only 1 full army for the first half of the game (not withstanding crusades, gotta love em!)
The game i am playing now, i am Sicilian, is quite remarkable how it has turned out. I had managed to take out the moors and Egypt and then the Mongols arrived, i thought i was a gonner but i had a leader whom happened to have the word 'wrathful' in his name, after all the conquoring he did, without me even realising, he was a nasty piece of work! I was stunned to be defeating the the Mongols with just Militia spearmen and militia crossbowmen! But the sicilian militia seem to be supreme in the game, i dunno?
In reference to my above post yesterday on defeating the Mongols;
I remember now what actually happened, i did not simply defeat the Mongols because of the sicillian spear militia and crossbow militia. There was a series of fortunate circumstances that allowed that to happen!
Naturally i can win the battles one on one with an isolated Mongol army, that is not even worth mentioning. It is the battles where the Mongol armies are grouped together (which they like to do) that are significant!
In one decisive battle i defeated 3 full strength Mongol armies with one crosbow and spear militia army. It happened in the mountains adjacent north east of that city (i forget the name) the city immediately north of Jerusalem. I was exceedingly lucky to be able to get very high ground, insanely high ground! and on top of that, i was able to blockade a full Mongol army of reinforcement coming in right there behind me! I lined up all my spearmen right on the red line, they had no chance! Then the other Mongol armies seemed to get very upset and confused by this event, they ran around crazy on the low ground and allowed me to unload all my crossbow ammunition into them from the high ground. Still, eventually i had to attack, and i only just managed to win by the barest of margins! Now that was one hell of an epic battle!!
There was another decisive battle whereby the Mongols besieged one of my cities with one reinforcing army. I had managed to prepare about 6 crossbow militia and 3 spearmen in the city. Then i sallied out 1 spearmen and managed to draw in huge numbers of ranged units who stupidly stayed near the walls after killing my decoy spearmen (This never works unless they have reinforcements, i don't know why?). I unloaded all my crossbo ammo and continued to pound them with towers until time expired. Then circumstances allowed me to position a large crusading army next to the city for the comming battle, but the cowardly Mongols withdrew their seige. It is quite surprising how skittish the Mongols really are, and if you have any kind of reasonable force they will almost never attack. They will run here and there chasing weak targets and then when you reinforce, they will run somewhere else and so on and so forth.... a little frustrating to say the least.
Me either, hence why I haven't invested any more in the series since Empire. Maybe if they ever get cheap enough where I wouldn't care if I lost out on being able to play them I would, but for the meantime that's it for me.
Yeah the AI in general sucks with siege battles (in all the games), fairly often they get stuck in their attack and just let your towers pound them, and even if they actually manage to assault their walls with some decent troops you can still repel ridiculous numbers of enemies. Some players use a house rule where you have to auto resolve any defensive siege battles its so bad.
Elevation can be a huge factor with range units, as you discovered. I wish you could preview what the battlefield looks like in advance because its such an important factor when deciding when to fight, but that's something that has yet to come out of a TW game.
Auto calc siege battles? Other than when the AI has reinforcements, i find them to be supremely effective at sieges. It is so effective, that in almost every case i will sally out, because if i have any kind of reasonable force, sallying out seems to bring the best result. I do actually always try to have cavalry milita for this very purpose of sallying out, since the AI is supremely weak verses cavalry in a sally out situation. If ever i do play a siege battle, it is usually when the AI has caught me with my pants down and i am in a hopeless situation where my goal is not to win but to cause as many casualties as possible so my army that comes to retake the city, has less work to do.
my other strategy is to sally out to kill siege weaponry and ranged units before letting them siege me. But this depends on how the AI deploys, and if I have cavalry or if i have superior ranged forces. If the AI has superior ranged forces and i have no cavalry or insufficient cavalry then this will not work.
When it comes to auto calc of siege battles, i do often use it, when i am the attacker! If my forces register over three quarters more powerful than the AI on the power scale, i will usually never be able to achieve a better result than auto calc, weird eh? Also i do use auto calc allot when fighting Mongols/Tumirids usually where multiple armies are involved on both sides. But only because of the unfair limitations imposed on the player of only being able to control 20 units at a time... which is a severe handicap in such battles.
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