Yeah, I know this came out a while ago, but I've recently started playing it again and I was wondering what someone else thought about it.

Personally I thought it was a vast improvement compared to Medieval Total War I, where the graphics, especially the battles, were quite sketchy. Plus your assassins and spies died rather easily , as well as this the espionage with your spies were rather flawed as you'd get random messages telling you about one country attacking another the next turn, and then nothing would happen.

MTW II bares a strong resembalance to Rome Total War: your troops can only move a set distance (which is variable depending on the general's/Family Members characteristics), assassins are now capable of sabotage as well as killing people, significantly better graphics the voice acting is also of a good quality (I think, I know medieval Total War II's is but I haven't played Rome Total War in a while), plus the family members of your faction gain traits based upon their actions, so you have a lot more influence over what sort of person they are and this can be influenced by who their parents are. These are just a few of the more notable improvements.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) Medieval Total War II has been made siginificantly harder by the introduction of the Mongols and the Tumurids, these are basically huge armies (about 10 armies wth generals most around 8 stars or more) who show up about half way through the game (i.e. after a set number of turns have been played). While the Mongols did show up in Medieval Total War I they were only a minor annoyance as by the time they did show up you had a sizeable army and your generals were practically immortal seeing as they didn't age and could only die on the battlefield as a result. In fact the only people who could did of old age are the king and prince. Therefore it was realtively simple to acquire brilliant generals. But in Medieval Total War II your general's do die of old age.


On an an unrelated topic, does anybody have any suggestions on how to beat the Timurids? Currently I'm playing as the Hungarian's (Horse archers ftw) :awesome.

 

I prefer both Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis.

 

Yeah, actually. Wrap up the European politics ASAP (real easy if you have the papacy sucking shit from your ass from always letting captured enemies go free) and go on the offensive, even if you have a smaller standing army. Pick battlefields and bridges or forts, don't let them come to your cities. IF you have the money to raise cav quickly, wear them down in the field with mass cav. so that by the time they reach your cities, even if they sack a few, they won't have the energy for a sustained push.

Pretty much common sense, really, but then again, I tend to play western nations and make them into economic powerhouses right off the bat. Tips for that.. Always go for trade agreements with a four or more star diplomat or princess, and force them to pay an installment of, say, 500 or 1000 ducats a turn for 10 or 20 turns to get said trade agreement. Actively pursue alliances for cash with isolated nations. Use spies to expand your LOS to find weak merchants to level yours off of until they hit four or five stars, then send them off to distant lands for gold or spices or whatever.

Granted, all of this is said from having played it for ages with DarthMod, so I don't know how useful it is in vanilla.

Fuck yeah, EU. Played Magna Mundi Platinum yet?

 

I prefer Rome to Medieval II, can't wait for Empires though.

 

I've actually never heard of these...I'll have to look into them.

@ Tragedian.

I actually attacked the Bryzantines first and then I moved onto the Turks, as a result I had excellent relations with the Pope and I was able to call a Crusade on the Mongols, who had rather conveniently decided to take up residence in Antioch :banana:. Though it should be noted that every Crusade was demolished, rather thoroughly , but still managed to do some good damage .

Hmm, I wonder why I hadn't though of this before, quite a good idea if I can get the Timurids stuck behind a bridge...and it's plausible as I have the funds to sustain an army to continuously hold them there.

...:awesome

I've just started doing this oddly enough, usually I don't bother with merchants until I get an offer for Merchant's Guild and I already use **** loads of spies seeing as how horse calvalry can't use seige equipment and Hungarian infantry are **** so I use them to open the gates . I've also found that assassins are very useful, because if they continously sabotage enemy buildings then the enemy has to rebuild them using up their funds, already I have the Mongol's virtually penniless .

I've also found that at the beginning of your campaign that it's very beneficial to avoid recruitng any troops for the first 10 or so turns; this allows you to invest solely in construction and therefore create a firm ground for profits, I've alread got like 200,000 :banana:.

 

I found the Total war games to lack the AI (in both campaign and battle) to really present a entertaining and challenging game. However, the Total war games have great modding communities behind them that have done wonders to fix many of the problems as well as implement new features such as factions, supplies, more natural recruitment, more aggressive factions that invade with more than one stack of units, and other such neat additions. If your interested
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=216508
Is a good place to start or checking out the official forums under mods.

 

MMP is intense. But so is playing as the Irish on vanilla rofl. If England gets the conquer Ireland quest, you're fucked.

 

MMP?

...

...Are you high?

 

... You don't read much do you? Look up about five posts. Hint: It's at the end of Tragedian's post.

A misunderstanding that, once again, would be resolved by reading the actual posts. Why don't we look at it again?

MMP is intense. Simple enough statement.

Here's where it gets a bit trickier. It was probably the 'vanilla' that threw you off, though, whether it's a gameplay mode, campaign settings, server or mod, it's status as a game play modification is an easy deduction.

Keeping in mind you are playing as Ireland and their relative positions this statement is self explanatory.

For other questions and/or concerns please refer to Bio's PM.*



*does not take responsibility for any illegal/legal drugs or hallucinigens Bioplague may/has consumed.

 

My bad, don't know how I missed that.

Cheers.

 

Magna Mundi Platinum, a mod for Europa Universalis; as above post says, read end of Tragedian's post for the first reference to it.

Vanilla is always the original version of whatever game you're playing - without mods or expansion packs. IE, Civ IV Vanilla is Civilization IV without the Beyond the Sword or Warlords expansion packs and without anything except patches. No realistic world mods although you could use blue marble terrain packs or something.

As for the Irish v English, it's pretty simple - in a game that takes actual skill and takes actual thought there are actual challenges. Though the timeline may diverge from actual history from the first moment you start playing, certain empires are coded to potentially follow their historical counterparts. If you play as the Irish in Europa Universalis, you will be challenged. You will not be the #1 empire in the world but you will be trying to survive until the end of the game.

A real snag in this difficult task comes in the form of a quest the English empire may get - conquer Ireland. They can get it on Day 10. You will die. They can get it down the road; you may survive. You just hope to be ready and hope you don't get rolled by the Dutch or Burgundy.

There are more difficult countries to play as - and there over 200 to select with over 1500 provinces. It's a difficult game. I like it.

 

Cheers BioPlague

 

Don't you have anything more pertinent to say than "Cheers" ?