Medieval Total War II

[Proteus_MST]

1.0 is definitely the unpatched version.

You should get 1.1 after installing the patch

[Ned]

Done. It now reads 1.1 when I start the game.

I'll give the AI a try next battle to see if it is improved.

[dannubis]

The "lands to conquer mod v2" really adds to the experience on the strategy map.

It fixes a number of bugs like broken triggers for character properties and such.

You really should try it Ned

[Ned]

Dan, might. But v. 1.1 is no better with the AI AFAIK. I tried my gambit once more, attacking with a single cavalry unit with a nearly full stack as reinforcements. The AI this time made no move whatsoever towards the enemy, even worse than before.

This game is a POS.

I will finish this campaign and put it back on the shelf until it is fixed.

[Ned]

I just checked over on the Total War forum about this. Apparently the bad AI remains an issue. The insiders ID the programmer who did this "mod" as the same one who did Barb. Invasions. This guy had nothing to do with the RTW 1.5/1.6 patches that "finally" made RTW an absolutely superb game.

(I was just thinking back fondly to the recent games played on RTW. Amazing! The Roman factions were conquering the entire map, finally. When it came to the civil war, it was indeed a slugfest among equals.)

[Proteus_MST]

Then just put MTW2 aside and play a campaign of RTW.

I do the same thing because I want to wait until the shield bug is fixed (and because in the near future I want to play some multiplayer battles of RTW against a friend who doesn´t have the hardware to properly play MTW2 and instead just has bought RTW Gold for 15 € )

I´m full of hope that the next patch(es) will fix the problems that still exists with MTW2, so that it can be in every aspect be regarded to be as good as RTW (or better).
(although I fear that even after the patches we won´t get boiling oil from the gatehouses)

[Gamecube64]

I'm pretty sure there will never be boiling oil from gatehouses because of how much defending in a siege was buffed. Settlements can hold out longer, siege weapons are easier to burn, towers are easier to keep, and the enemy can't use your towers unless they control the city center. I believe there was also sapping in Rome?

[Proteus_MST]

In Rome there was sapping.
But burning siege weapons was easier in Rome than in MTW2.

IMHO defending in a siege was easier in RTW,
Gatehouses were only controlled if foot troops entered them (not already if cavalry rode through them, which meant that,combined with the boiling oil, it was advised to climb the walls via siege towers or ladders (unless you chose to tear down the walls via catapults) instead of just destroying the gate and roll over the defenders with your cavalry.

And of course in RTW the towers were manned (and shooting) without any of your units having to stand besides them, meaning that you could concentrate your defending units on the vulnerable parts of the walls (i.e. the parts really attacked) without having to station some units in parts that were not attacked just to get the towers there to fire.

Therefore I think it´s easier to defend a huge city in RTW than a Citadel in MTW2

(especially later, considering that as an attacker you can get much more effective weapons that can tear down walls and towers with just a few shots without getting iinto range of the defending towers)

[Kropotkin]

I've just quite recently found the TW-series. The battles are often nice, but the campaign element is just so underdeveloped.

After playing a campaign with Spain, I'm not starting out with England. Doing a lot better. I also got a mod called lands to Conquer that made the gaming experience a bit better and less annoying.

The most irritating part of the game is the concept that you can't control a city or castle if you don't have a member of you family in it. Good that you can remove it - but not after you've started a game. Ended up spending a lot of the Spanish campaign getting rid of ballistas that got built in the 15th century all around my empire to lower my costs. As i lost some of my relatives early on it seemed almost impossible to get enough generals for both armies and towns.

[mactbone]

You can manage all the cities without governors. Just turn off the Auto-Build.

[Proteus_MST]

You just have to check for it every time the governor leaves the town/castle, as every time a govrnor leaves the computer switches the build queue autonmatically to autobuild.

The only thing you cannot directly managy after a governor leaves are taxes. But if you switch the prioritys of the city to "growth" you can set them to the lowest level possible.

[Snotty]

the campaign mode is much more developed than it used to be. I love the detail on the campaign map so you can see what kind of terrain you will fight on if you attack at different places. I dont know if that was a RTW addition.

I find it difficult sometimes to see agents on the map, and often end up forgetting to move them.

[Kropotkin]

mac., pro.:
Yes, yes I know. I just want full control damn it! :doitnow:

A amusing thing happened earlier today. i'm playing England, As I pointed out earlier.

I decided to take Scotland out of the game as they only had Edinburgh. So I moved up two armies. One smaller army from Iverness with a few spearmen, longbowmen and four units of newly hired mercenary crossbowmen. One larger force from the south under King Ralph.

They have quite a force in the town. As the entire socttish royal family is around, they have four bodyguard units. I lay siege and ends the turn. The scots are not to keen about staying put and decides on making an attack against me. He obviously takes on the weaker unit from the north. My king will show up as reinforcement but i have to take personal control of the weaker army.

It's a foggy day up in Scotland. I can't see ****. I place my units with missile units behind my thin line of peasants and spear militia. After a short while I spot hundereds of cavalrymen charging right at me. My troops fire arrows and bolts like crazy, but it's obvious that it will end in a total carnage when they hit me. Then the enemies decides to make a sharp 90 degree turn to the right about 20-30 yards in front of me and turn against my reinforcements that are miles away.

So there I stand. The enemies disappears in the fog and I have not a clue what's going on. In front of me there's about 120 dead enemies. I lost one peasant - from friendly fire I'd guess.

Both the scottish king a prince gets caught by my other army. I decide to give ransom - makes about 25,000 and starts the siege anew.

[Quillan]

Two of the most visually impressive battles I've fought have been in conditions like that. Both of these were my first campaign where I was playing the Byzantines. One, I had an army of one general and about a dozen horse archers against a larger stack of Hungarians plus a small stack of their reinforcements, both with the mid game artillery spam. It was raining and foggy. The end of my line couldn't see the center, much less the far end, and I was trying to encircle them. The rain was messing with missile effectiveness, the fog cut visibility down so their artillery couldn't fire on me beyond sight range, and it was a huge mess to control. But I absolutely loved fighting it out.

Another was my first battle against the Mongols; I was holding a bridge crossing they'd decided to assault, and the weather turned out to be a misty and foggy winter day. I couldn't see beyond the far side of the bridge, and here comes this mass of horsemen out of the fog racing across the bridge. I'd wanted to drop trebuchet fire on the far side, but couldn't see to target it. I did manage to drop a couple of rotting cow carcasses in the center of the bridge, and that was enough to make their morale very fragile in the combat.

[Ned]

Does anyone know what advantage a night battle gives an attacker?