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Edit: wrong thread
Sankara fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 05:32
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Frankly posted:Just realized I've had Medieval II sitting in my steam library for years and I've never even booted it up, I'm giving it a go and I'm actually quite liking a lot about it despite the age of the game. I really like how the troops move around and fight, it's really nothing like the more recent games. I'm happy to work things out as I go along but are there any must-know things about the game that won't be immediately obvious? Is there some secret to getting cavalry to form up quickly and not trot in for charges? Cavalry need a good distance to get up to charging pace. Also, if you to charge something else, you need to reform them ,let them settle and use alt-click, or they will charge in using only their swords.
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Apr 21, 2015 05:51
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Gimnbo posted:The other important thing about M2 is that pikes are not anything close to the murderous steamrollers they were in Rome. They're pretty specialized to fight cavalry. They'll murder even the toughest, heaviest cav but will generally lose to infantry due to the fact that the engine allows them to walk between the pikes. One weird trick AIs hate: take a normal melee unit, preferably, sword or axe, and stretch them out in a thin line with pikes immediately behind them. Group 'em together and voila! A pike unit that won't end up in a Bad War clusterfuck in a matter of minutes.
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Apr 21, 2015 06:51
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Reading this thread reminded me I've also got Medieval II sitting around and I never gave it much love, I didn't really get the hang of Total War games until about N:TW. I've got the Steam version sitting around but I seem to recall it takes some serious wizardry to get it to play nicely with Windows 7, as I seem to remember the last time I tried to get it to work it and my computer had a very intense disagreement. Am I right about that or was I just unlucky or misremembering?
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Apr 21, 2015 08:12
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I can get Rome:TW running without problem on windows 7, I haven't tried M2 with expansion recently, but I think I was running it on windows 7 a couple of years ago, mods like Stainless Steel included.
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Apr 21, 2015 09:28
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I'm currently running the steam version on windows 7 no problems! I don't have the expansion though if that makes a difference. Thanks for the tips guys, things are going well in my English campaign. Working my way through the economy, diplomacy (buttering up the Papacy to launch crusades seems neat) and recruitment differences (gently caress you manual retraining) to the newer games and starting to get rolling on mainland Europe and about to turn on the Scots as well. I think it's pretty much TW tradition for me at this rate that I'll get a general killed in the opening battles because I'm too busy trying to relearn everything. This time my faction heir died shamefully to a militia spear wall which had formed within an enemy crossbow unit. not quite as rad as charging a general in front of my own firing cannons in Naploeon, but had the same effect of dead horses flying everywhere and the advisor telling me what a noble death it was actually.
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Apr 21, 2015 11:35
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I never had any trouble getting M2 to run on 7 (or 8 for that matter). The AI looks pretty dated but otherwise the game runs fine. sebmojo posted:Cinematics. I know it's barely relevant, but there's something so cack handed about the way they're done, which is bizarre given how long CA have been making these games. Wow really? I always thought, with the exception of the intro video (which is pretty ham-fisted), that the Rome 2 cinematics were amazing. Both the Hannibal trailers especially. CA always did cinematics well and now that their dudes actually have facial animations they're even better. Admittedly I haven't actually played the prologue so maybe they're garbage in that.
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Apr 21, 2015 14:41
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Medieval II stuff: -You probably shouldn't bother with Crusades. If you do, you should give the territory away afterwards, unless you're already in the neighbourhood. -Definitely don't bother with merchants. There are certain tips and tricks to making good ones and keeping the AI away, but it's just such a pain. Maybe you can get away with it as England (once the Scots are gone); I'm pretty sure the AI couldn't do naval invasions in M2. -Cav need a good long straight runup in order to actually pull off a charge. -If you make a million priests and just charge them off into heathen territory, the Pope will love you. You can stack the College of Cardinals in your favour, and win the papacy that way. -Either go full Dread, or full Chivalry (on a character-by-character basis). You don't start to get really cool bonuses until the higher levels. -Stainless Steel and Broken Crescent are probably the most popular mods. The LotR mod ("The Third Age") is pretty decent. "Europa Barborum" was a prominent Rome I mod that recently got a sequel on Medieval II, I haven't tried it out but the first one was quite good IMO. Almost all the good mods require the Kingdoms expansion (which is generally solid).
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Apr 21, 2015 14:57
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Correction: Portugal will constantly send invasion fleets to England.
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Apr 21, 2015 15:52
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Krazyface posted:Medieval II stuff: I was wondering about this since I'm playing the game for the first time. Is there any situation where merchants will make you a worthwhile amount of money? Is their profit based on how far from your territory they are or something, because I've only seen them net at most ~100 florins per turn. btw, thanks so much to everyone in the thread for all the advice. It really is appreciated! vvv That makes a bit more sense, but I sure as hell didn't need them to make bucketloads of dosh as Scotland. brocretin fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Apr 21, 2015 |
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Apr 21, 2015 18:10
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Merchants get you a ton of money if you park a high level guy on the other side of the map on a expensive resource. Yes, distance matters. It is a pretty boring minigame though.
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Apr 21, 2015 18:17
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Back To 99 posted:Merchants get you a ton of money if you park a high level guy on the other side of the map on a expensive resource. Yes, distance matters. It is a pretty boring minigame though. Yeah Merchants can be game-breakingly good if you use them correctly, but they can also be frustrating to use and deal with since they were CA's first real entry into the "fun" of agent-spam.
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Apr 21, 2015 18:21
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Arcsquad12 posted:Correction: Portugal will constantly send invasion fleets to England. So will Norway. There is a single line of text somewhere in the game files that determines whether or not a faction will use naval invasions, and ones that do like to use them a lot. I remember in an earlier version, Sicily, Portugal, Spain and Venice would go nuts and constantly try and conquer Sardinia from each other.
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Apr 21, 2015 18:54
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Kaal posted:Yeah Merchants can be game-breakingly good if you use them correctly, but they can also be frustrating to use and deal with since they were CA's first real entry into the "fun" of agent-spam. Every time I played as Scotland i'd just train merchants in egypt and plonk them on the resources there. Definitely worth it IMHO
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Apr 21, 2015 19:44
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brocretin posted:I was wondering about this since I'm playing the game for the first time. Is there any situation where merchants will make you a worthwhile amount of money? Is their profit based on how far from your territory they are or something, because I've only seen them net at most ~100 florins per turn. Recruit as much merchants as you possibly can, send a general with some units to North Africa\Asia, find a good resource and make a fort right on top of it. Put the merchants in the unit stack and they'll all collect that single resource without risking foreign competition
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Apr 21, 2015 22:17
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Great stuff guys, thanks again so much. Really starting to get a feel for the game. Took me a while to work out how to shut down towers in a siege, I think I like the MII system better than the newer 'capture point' system but it gets pretty annoying when you have long wall sections. Krazyface posted:Medieval II stuff: - Crusades - I had a feeling gaining a totally isolated city in the middle of hostile territory would be a bit hard to hold on to  I'm more hanging around to see if the other Christians actually group up and deathball into the east really!- Did not know the Pope would love me for spreading the faith but it makes sense! I've already sent a Diplomat who offered him Map Information as a gift and I'm suddenly the Pope's best friend though - Modwise I'd heard Stainless Steel was the way to go, once I play the base game enough to work out what I'd like to change I'll be giving it a go! (plus I need to get Kingdoms which I will next time it's on sale probably) With Merchants I'm just puttering the starting one across the globe, if he ever levels up I'll sweep across the known world and buy out the others but its good to know it's not required to make lots of money.
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Apr 22, 2015 00:07
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Frankly posted:if he ever levels up I'll sweep across the known world and buy out the others Oh you poor, naive fool
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Apr 22, 2015 00:25
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My dashing young bean-counter will be the Napoleon of Medieval Finance (???), just you wait!  But yeah if he just disappears one turn I won't be too upset.
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Apr 22, 2015 00:38
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Frankly posted:But yeah if he just disappears one turn I won't be too upset. That's basically what'll happen: an enemy merchant will come marching out of the fog and buy him out during their turn and you'll have no recourse. For the player, creating merchants, shuffling them around, attempting to buy out other merchants, and then building new ones when they inevitably get eaten quickly becomes an exercise in frustration. The AI obviously doesn't give a hoot about any of that and as a consequence it'll be conducting its own financial survival of the fittest across the game map, eventually running around with a bunch of high-level merchants that'll dominate yours if the computer decides to set its sights on your resources. About the only consolation is that the AI doesn't often go insane distances with its merchants (you probably won't see English merchants in Egypt, for example), so once you expand enough the resources that're furthest from your borders will have some degree of safety. I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer; Medieval 2 is easily my favorite entry in the series, but the merchant system is maddening and if you really want to mess with it you should absolutely cheese it using the surround + squash and fort-on-the-resource techniques.
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Apr 22, 2015 03:03
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Oh poo poo, thanks for the heads up. Definitely more frustrating than I'd expected. If I do decide to commit to this I'll definitely cheese it with the fort strategy, thanks!
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Apr 22, 2015 07:31
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brocretin posted:I was wondering about this since I'm playing the game for the first time. Is there any situation where merchants will make you a worthwhile amount of money? Is their profit based on how far from your territory they are or something, because I've only seen them net at most ~100 florins per turn. It all comes down to personal preference, really. Some people simply don't want to bother keeping track of merchants. I've found them to be very useful at times. If for any reason you need money (99% of the time?), then a merchant is one of the few expenditures that yields a return on investment and then some. Later in the game it is not uncommon to have multiple merchants along the silk road and in Africa generating upwards of 500 to 1,000 bones every turn. Multiply that by 5 or 10 merchants and... you get the idea. Edit: As for mods, Stainless Steel is excellent. Europa Barbarorum II is also amazing if you like history and a relatively slower pace game. EBII also feels very "deep". The battles are a breath of fresh air (lines clash and hold for minutes at a time, allowing you to use skirmishers, cavalry, and flanking maneuvers more often than in Vanilla, in which battles can be ended in less than 5 minutes). The music is also nice. It's not as polished as Stainless Steel, but the devs are working overtime and adding new content to the game as I write this, which makes it quite exciting (SS has more or less been in its present form for 2 or 3 years).            
Soaring Hawk fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Apr 22, 2015 |
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Apr 22, 2015 13:19
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Can't you assassinate enemy merchants in M2? You want to get a couple of good assassins to get rid of enemy priests anyway.
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Apr 22, 2015 15:01
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Metrication posted:Can't you assassinate enemy merchants in M2? You want to get a couple of good assassins to get rid of enemy priests anyway. Merchants are usually such a high level that your assassins will be useless.
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Apr 22, 2015 15:41
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here we go! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i4d3ignBNQ
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Apr 22, 2015 15:43
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quote:It's to be the first in a trilogy of Total War: Warhammer titles, apparently. That includes two additional standalone titles and additional content packs. I guess we'll be waiting until at least 2020 then before there is a Medieval 3. What a shame.
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Apr 22, 2015 16:12
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Total Warhammer would have been a much better name  .
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Apr 22, 2015 18:52
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Metrication posted:I guess we'll be waiting until at least 2020 then before there is a Medieval 3. What a shame. Mike Simpson says nope, different teams for each one. It'll be 2016-17 instead.
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Apr 22, 2015 19:43
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Metrication posted:Can't you assassinate enemy merchants in M2? You want to get a couple of good assassins to get rid of enemy priests anyway.
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Apr 22, 2015 20:18
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Mans posted:Surround the merchant with military units and then march a unit into the center of the square where the merchant is chilling. Since agents' movement is blocked by enemy units they'll have nowhere to go and die. This is also good if you're playing Stainless Steel and heretic Superman drops by your capital.
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Apr 22, 2015 20:32
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SeanBeansShako posted:Mike Simpson says nope, different teams for each one. I'm ready (my computer won't be).
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Apr 22, 2015 20:44
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I've started playing vanilla Rome:TW on a dare - some shithead said R2 and Attila are utter poo poo and Rome was a pinnacle of series, so I've decided to rip rose tinted glasses off his stupid face. It's pretty much as I've remembered it - pathing is poo poo in cities, archers are supreme missile troop choice, heavy cavalry can chew through an unit of sword infantry even without launching a charge, AI loves to charge front of my single hoplite mercenaries ignoring light infantry standing just beside them, and recruitment/replenishment of units is a chore. There's a very loose conection between unit upkeep and quality, it doesn't make sense to buy anything but the best, and on campaign map cities expand on a rate that makes filling them with buildings very hard. Rebels pop everywhere without any noticeable pattern. But as I've played I've started to notice stuff I miss: select multiple units, order them to move and they'll move in formation, even when not grupped. Campaign is fast! You don't have to park an army for many turns waiting for cultural penalties to drop. It's all the conquer all the time! Agents are a minor annoyance, and not the scourge they've become in Rome 2. And buildings - it's profitable to invest in them, it may be vastly oversimplified but not having to deal with food, squalor and maintenance cost was refreshing. It took me 80-100 hours to finish grand campaign in R2, it'll probably take similar amount of time to finish my Vandal GC in Attila, but in Rome I think I'll reach civil war in 20-30 hours and mop up the rest shortly after. As I wait for Witcher 3 I'll probably revisit other titles too, it was fun 2 evenings with vanilla Rome.
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Apr 23, 2015 09:37
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Anyone who's saying Rome 1 was good is either remembering the mods as the original game or they're insane. The only reason recent total war games will be poo poo by comparison is the lack of modability.
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Apr 23, 2015 11:57
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I like it's simplicity compared to newer games. And on release Rome was a good game (short of infinite squalor problem). I probably spent most of my RTW time on Rome Total Realism mod, which shared many design choices with Europa Barbarorum, so I know present games or the mods mentioned are the better games, yet still vanilla Rome is pretty fun for a short campaign. I wish limited soldier pool from RTR would be a thing, I remember ending up raiding lands I knew I was unable to take just to get that population influx from "Enslave populace" option after successful siege.
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Apr 23, 2015 12:25
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The need to send diplomats to make treaties and a giant grey rebel blob is what keeps me from playing any pre-Shogun game again.
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Apr 23, 2015 16:21
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But Shogun was the first game in the series 
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Apr 23, 2015 18:08
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Grand Prize Winner posted:Total Warhammer would have been a much better name Total War is the branding. Remember they tried to spinoff and called it 'Total War: Sparta: Total Warrior'?
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Apr 23, 2015 21:43
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So with Total Warhammer being announced, I want to murder some orcs and elves. Is Third Age still vastly better than the Warhammer mod for M2 or has it gotten better?
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Apr 26, 2015 10:48
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To me it's the opposite. Third Age has a terrible campaign that takes forever to go anywhere while if you download the Warhammer version with no major events script it's very stable.
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Apr 26, 2015 14:33
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Is this the version you're referring to? http://totalwars.ru/board/index.php/topic/24936-call-of-warhammer-total-war-151/#entry518825
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Apr 26, 2015 15:07
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Mans posted:The need to send diplomats to make treaties and a giant grey rebel blob is what keeps me from playing any pre-Shogun game again. I was kind of wondering about this - in Medieval II are rebels meant to appear no matter what in the base game? I've got every settlement at +150% happiness and still I'll be getting lovely 1-4 unit rebel armies appearing randomly. This is in Britain so maybe they're dropping in off boats somewhere? Or maybe they're appearing because historically speaking the English are dickheads? v v Diplomats having to be ordered about the map doesn't worry me so much, once they're at a major city most of the local powers will have reps there already if I need to talk. But really though I haven't been able to forge any reliable peace agreements so they're just there to bribe people and steal entire towns with unfair ceasefire terms. Looking forward to starting fresh in Stainless Steel to see what all the fuss is about! Spakstik posted:Merchant madness You weren't wrong! My starting merchant is currently the only guy I have still in business, he's only managed to do so by wandering east into the emptiness of Russia and then south into some spice trade for a monopoly. So far he's paid for a couple of the other merchants I've sent out but yeah it'd be pretty frustrating if I took the merchant game too seriously.
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Apr 27, 2015 05:36
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