Medieval II: Total War: Kingdoms

[Thunderclap]

I'm sure you've all heard of the first official expansion to Medieval II: Total War: http://www.totalwar.com/index.html?page=/us/medieval2/gameinfo/kingdoms/index.html&nav=/us/medieval2/1/4/

I believe it's hitting shelves Stateside at the end of August, meaning in two weeks. Any news if it will be on Steam, as its parent game was? That'd be quite convenient. If any of you liked M2:TW, this is shaping up to deliver four new excellent campaigns, ranging from the Russian wastes to the steaming tropics of the Yucatan.

I myself am looking forward to the Teutonic Knights: I can't seem to post it directly, but just follow the link and you'll see all the explanation you need as to why I'm playing them:

There's an excellent overview of the game here: http://pc.ign.com/articles/813/813335p1.html

So, I suppose this is the official thread for the impending expansion.

And if anyone knows if and when this game is coming to Steam, please mention it here! :thumbs:

 

[Rapstah]

Isn't it out yet? :|

 

[Thunderclap]

No...I don't think so...in two weeks...

 

[Gargantou]

I still wish they'd add a way to let battles be entirely computer controlled but still WATCH them, because the autoresolve method is severly flawed.

 

[Rapstah]

I still wish they'd add a way to let battles be entirely computer controlled but still WATCH them, because the autoresolve method is severly flawed.

You can start a battle then give all units AI control.

 

[Gargantou]

You can start a battle then give all units AI control.

It doesnt work the same way as the actual AI enemy routines, if you played around with it as much as I had you would notice this, I would like equal AI both sides and just sit back and watch.

 

[Shift]

I really did prefer Rome: Total War tbh. The Pope does my ****ing head in.

'Attack Scotland'
*besieges Edinburgh*
*Next Turn*
'Cease hostilities with Scotland' While the previous order still remainded. WTF.

 

[Thunderclap]

Oh the Pope, acts like the damn UN don't he?

I am remembering in Medieval 1 that he would not excommunicate you only if you were able to take out the enemy faction in one turn. Every game I ever played as the Holy Roman Empire, I would crush Denmark on Turn 1. You know, just to settle into the game, get my bearings, remember the little intricacies of battlefield strategy. I affectionately referred to Denmark as "Germany's whipping boy". I sincerely apologize to any real Danes on this board, but really, go play Medieval I. They're asking to have their asses kicked Turn 1. Anyway, I would always be obsessed with killing their king in the first battle, thus ending the royal line and plunging the country into chaos.

Next day the Pope would amble up, say "Oy! Stop harassing Denmark!" and I would innocently reply, "What? Denmark? Whatver are you talking about Your Holiness? Denmark ceased to exist as a political entity yesterday. How can I cease invading a country that doesn't exist?"

Damn. I think I'm going to fire up old Medieval 1 again.

 

[Evo]

Gotta re-download MT2 on Steam..didn't work last time i tried to run it

:hmph:

 

[Shakermaker]

Playing MTW2 at the moment. I am pwning everyone with Ze Reich. Just laid siege on Jerusalem. The pope lurves me since I was the first to arrive on his crusade party.

 

[Krynn72]

Im playing Rome right now. I actually am in good standing with both the Senate and the people. Usually im kicked out of Rome by this point. Things are looking good for the Julii.

 

[venturon]

Oh sweet. I totally forgot about this.

 

[Rapstah]

Am I the only one that hates Venice? They attack me no matter what country I play some, right now they've formed an alliance with Byzantium and are attacking me as Hungary. I killed both of their kings in outright battle, should show them.

 

[Thunderclap]

I once had a one-turn war with Venice. They besieged Milan. The governor led a sally, and annihilated them. My emissary walked to Venice, and demanded a ceasefire and a cash settlement. They agreed. Shortest war in the history of Medieval II.

Then we were amigos for the rest of the game. It made no sense, but it was still kind of fun. It was about the only 'limited-exchange' kind of war I ever had, not the 'to-the-death' total annihilation wars you usually wage in the series.

EDIT: This is an age of darkness...this...is TOTAL WAR!!!

u want moar, say plz

 

[Gargantou]

OMG its out? I gotta buy, did they add a way to only SPECTATE battles yet?*Dreams*

I hope Deus Lo Vult is updated to be compatible with the expansion!

 

[Thunderclap]

It is not out, I am drip-feeding you images from an outside source, but making it appear as if I already own the game. I love being in command of a battle, but I understand why you would want to spectate only. In custom battles, there's no pressure to win, so I can lovingly inspect the individual duels and uberwickedkewl finishing moves, which you don't have time for in the campaign.
Oh, and while I'm here:

 

[Raziaar]

There is one thing I always hated about this latest one, even though for some reason I still like it(despite not playing it even though I want to). I hate the fact that units scatter so much during combat... I have like 6 groups attacking some units and the distance between them gets further and further... It's better if they fight elbow to elbow in the bloodbath, at least if there is room to do so! But instead they seem to fan out in some sort of strange spaced out grid pattern.

 

[Rapstah]

I want the ability to found new cities (possibly naming forts that get a population up toi the point where they count as castles/cities).

 

[Evo]

Always sucked at the RTS side of the TW series, usually just auto-resolve it

D:

Love the Turn-Based section though :O

 

[Gargantou]

Same Evo, I suck at it, but auto-resolve is severly flawed(For example it doesnt take into account fortifications etc and walls), that's why it'd be nice fit hey'd add a SPECTATOR method, so you could watch the battle but not have to play it.

 

[Evo]

Same Evo, I suck at it, but auto-resolve is severly flawed(For example it doesnt take into account fortifications etc and walls), that's why it'd be nice fit hey'd add a SPECTATOR method, so you could watch the battle but not have to play it.

Yeah that is true =/

 

[Gargantou]

I really dont get why they dont implement a AI script, we already have AI vs AI battles(just set up a custom match with you, and two other countries on all each own team), so why cant they just do that but removing the player?

 

[Thunderclap]

Wow, it seems I'm the only guy who enjoys being in command and is halfway competent at it. I feel slightly better about myself. Thanks fellas! As a reward:

 

[HunterSeeker]

I enjoy the battles to, although I only command them if they are instresting or important. Currently playing as the people of novgorod (Russia) for the first time, lets see how it works out.

 

[Thunderclap]

Heh, I always command even the most insignificant skirmish. Don't trust an AI to do a human's job!

Most ass-kickingly, Ritterbruder translates to 'knight-brother'. They already resemble the Black Templars from Warhammer 40,000, and that's before you hear that their elite members are called Sword Brethren. I think you folks can guess which campaign I'm going to play first, although the Americas are shaping up pretty well.

ETA: Notice on the American campaign map that it's black! That's so cool! Every other map you have a vague shadowy outline of the continent, but not the Americas, because obviously you don't know what's there! I though it was a very subtle and very cool touch.

 

[Krynn72]

I have never auto-resolved any battle. If I could, I would even command the naval battles. I am much better at the RTS portion of the game than the turn based. I even did a few tests where I would fight two battle of a similar scale (size, unit advantages etc) and would manually control one, auto-resolve the other. I found that generally speaking, auto-resolving battles would result in about 60% more casualties than if I were to command myself.

This is in Rome though. I played medieval II for a while, but I dont really like RTS's that have guns and shit. I love the sword/spear/calvary charge that comes with Rome.

 

[Shift]

Auto-resolving on the higher difficulties is a bad idea, better to fight them yourself. Im a master of the Roman Army on RTW though xD Know all their strengths and weaknesses and how to get the best out of them in any situation, used to play it loads lol.
Not played it for a while mind tho lol.

 

[Rapstah]

If I had auto-resolved any of the Battles of Budapest, I've had a Clear Defeat.

Instead I got a Heroic Victory.

EDIT: If you upgrade your armour level to Plate, do all your units get it?

 

[Thunderclap]

I reiterate, never trust a machine to do a man's job!

@Rapstah
You upgrade armor by building the corresponding armory structure. Each armory is capable of producing a specific type of armor: leather armor, mail, partial plate or suits of full plate in the appropriate national style (the Gothic armor of Bavaria was the most famous and respected). Certain units are only available if you have the appropriate armory: for example, you need the top-tier armory structure to produce Gothic knights. Certain units can be upgraded, usually the more generic ones. Sergeant Spearmen for example, have no less than four arming styles, depending on the armory.

A unit is automatically equipped with the best armor the city they are trained in can provide. Thus a freshly-spawned Sergeant Spearman will have triple-A armor if he is produced in a major city with top-notch armor shops. However, a Sergeant Spearman trained in a backwater village will be wearing leather and cloth. If that leather-and-cloth Spearman drops by the big city and gets refitted (you put him under the Retrain queue when he's in garrisoned in the city), and next turn that guy's walking around in a full suit of mail.

 

[Gargantou]

I have a question, do you guys let your cities be AI(Governor) managed or do you micromanage'em?

 

[Shift]

Depends, early on i control all of them, but once your Empire starts getting really big and cities really start building up, just let the central ones under AI with the 'Growth Build' policy (better for the city and civilian's happiness). And move your generals away to the border cities as they have more potential to be unhappy, not to mention they are usually the cities you wanna be building things in, like infantry, to combat pesky neighbours.

 

[Shakermaker]

I have a question, do you guys let your cities be AI(Governor) managed or do you micromanage'em?

I always micromanage. Makes me more flexible. It takes a bit more time, but I make a lot more money that way.

 

[Rapstah]

I micromanage everything except for taxes.

 

[CR0M]

I hate the fact that units scatter so much during combat

I'm with you on this, the queuing of units behind the frontline of maybe 5 or 6 as they melee is just a ridiculous bug that has been there from the start and still hasn't been fixed. It didn't happen in any of the other Total Wars and there is no reason for it now. Watching your troops just stand there slowly fanning out behind the action is painful.

The only way I have found as a workaround is to double click behind the enemy group and let your men charge partway through them before making them attack. This isn't ideal as your troops are vulnerable when running, but it gets more swords into the middle of the battle where they are needed the most. As they start to fan out again, repeat. Also useful with cavalry if you want to charge down a group and don't want to risk the old 'pulling up short cos the enemy moved' thing.

This technique also works great if you want to kill the general and his unit, usually he's an horseback and runs away far too easily so I charge in 2 foot units, 1 from the front and 1 from the back to surround him, blocking any retreat. When he tries to run and can't, he falls easily.

As for automanaging and auto-resolving, not me, not ever. I like to micromanage everything, from taxes to battles, health to plague management. To me, that is a huge chunk of the gameplay and a lot of fun that would be missed out on if I auto'd it. Usually battles are few and far between but when they happen, victory is so much sweeter.

I love the look of the English campaign in Kingdoms, will def buy this when it's out - some nice pics there, thunderclap.

 

[Gargantou]

I like to micromanage in some games, such as business simulations in which I micromanage alot, like Capitalism 2 for example, but I just haven't been able to really get into the army building aspect of M2TW and RTW.

 

[Rapstah]

Two minutes ago the Venetian king besieged Bologna on his own, with me having a steady garrison of 500 men inside. He died. For the duration of the battle his morale said "Only a fool could lose this battle".

Bug or not? :|

 

[Shift]

Well the morale thing is never that accurate anyway imo. Wasn't as good as this legendry Carthaginian general he had been twatting the Eygptians (which is incredibly and rare on its own). Came down with an army to get a foothold in Africa, met me immediately. He led the charge into a wall of spears and died instantly, the rest of the force retreated soon after.

It was incredibly amusing.

 

[Rapstah]

Also interesting is how often generals seem to be the last living of their unit much of the time.

 

[venturon]

Also interesting is how often generals seem to be the last living of their unit much of the time.

Not always the case, but often true. If you look closely, Generals often have very good, if not the best, armour. It's usually not too difficult to kill them if they're on foot though. Nothing more satisfying than killing the General with siege equipment right off the bat.

I think my biggest frustration with M2:TW, apart from the unit scattering as CR0M mentioned, would have to be the pikemen. I hate it when my spear-walls decide to switch to swords (especially if they're guarding the gates! What!?)

I probably just need to patch my game.

EDIT: Speaking of patches, I am rather disappointed to hear the news about the 1.3 patch. Because of the imminent release of Kingdoms, the 1.3 patch will not actually implement any bug or balance fixes. To quote an official announcement from the Total War Forums:

In order to ship Kingdoms some of the original Medieval II data needed to be changed to support new features. Primarily some miscellaneous settlement blocks. By changing this data, this created a problem, not with Kingdoms, but with Medieval II multiplayer. When a player who has the expansion pack installed plays the original game against someone who does not have the expansion pack installed, there is an incompatibility between the two versions and they will not be able to play against each other. If we allowed them to, as our trials showed, desyncs are immediate and unresolvable.

In order to not 'split' the Medieval II MP community into two (those with the expansion pack and those without) we made the changes in the form of a patch called 1.3. This patch which is placed on the Kingdoms disk is the identical version to what will be separately publicly released. The Medieval II Patch 1.3 is no longer something we can continue to work on or alter as it has to be identical to the one released on the Kingdoms disk. This Kingdoms disk has just gone gold!

About 5 months ago we did consider adding bug fixes and balance changes but it was determined that this would be an impossible achievement to aim for. It would mean that we had two fluid code bases and fixes going on (med II and Kingdoms) which both had to be completed and mastered on the same day. This would have for certain overloaded our testing resources. For the rest of the development team, the loss of focus by dividing their attention across two projects would have been equally as detrimental to the Kingdoms project. Shipping just one of these products on its own is an incredibly weighty task that pushes the studio to its absolute brink. Trying to pin two moving targets was just too unrealistic and in hindsight it absolutely was the correct decision to make. When we made this decision 4-5 months ago we shared it with SEGA and they agreed that whatever 1.3 patch is found on the released Kingdoms will also be permitted to be released separately to the public as the 'compatibility patch'.

Probably still buy it though.

 

[Evo]

Anyone able to get MTW2 to work on Steam? Got it downloaded but it won't start up

D: