Medieval Total War II

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


And yu seem to be the only person so far that hs this problem.

As I didn´t get such a message like you got during install (and Windows would inform me of such things) it has most definitely something to do with your hardware.

Two things:
1. Have you installed the latest driver vrsions of the important hardware (i.e. especially graphics card and soundcard). If you have, have you also tried to install older versions of your hardware drivers? (on rare occasions installing older drivers instead of the newer ones solves issues especially if newer drivers aren´t tested as thorougly as they should be)
2. Have you tried to install the game on another PC (to check if it works with other hardware present)

No

I got off phone with HP after 45 minutes to have some sweet lady tell me what others tell me in a short time, "WE DONT SUPPORT SOFTWARE"

Im just going to return it and see if it is a defective DVD.

I have posted all over internet and no one has seen this problem.

I had never seen it either

I usually gte a Prompt allowing me to continue which this one didnt

As stated earlier, Microsfaht, which in my dealings, has been most difficult softwar to install if a problem exists blew right through their two latest games, they play awesome!

I have already wasted more time than i should have but maybe between now and the time I return it the answer will magically appear

Thanks for offers, i may try it on my older pc since i ain't got nothing to do with my life.


Then if it does install, I am basically still stuck in da mud!

Oh the intricacies of gaming

Gramps

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


According to some postings in another forum, the problems with the pikes seems to be that the first ranks of pikemen drop their pikes and draw their swords as soon as the enemy gets too near to them, i.e. as soon as tzhe first ranks of pikes are penetrated a little bit, weakening the whole formation.

Obviously this seems to come to soon unless you use the highest unit size for your battles.

One counter to this found by the modders is to change their second weapon from sword to no second weapon at all.
Obviously this makes them nearly invincible against frontal atacks, just like the phalanx-formations in RTW were.

I successfully tested another counter to thios situation.
Multiple layers of pikemen.

To test it I chose the spanish who have tercio pikemen as well as militia pikemen.
I used a half hexagon formation against the borders of the battlefield (so that the enemy couldn´t outflank me)

---

Seems like a far-fetched way to fix a design error. I would prefer a fix in an official game patch.

[Grandpa Troll]

PROBLEM FIXED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok

All sorts of frustrating trying and found by re-reading posts and this was what fixed it and the problem that caused it:

For the umpteenth time I tried reinstalling, this time, since I got as far as Direct X, I decided to uncheck this option on install. Then game came up with no previous message of Windows Logo not being compatible with Windows XP.

What I got was a missing file: D3DX9_30.DLL

I went to Google, downloaded to desktop them located in SEGA file where this goes and unzipped it to there and now, I am a happy Non-Grumpy Gramps

Off to the game now

Grandpa Troll

[Chemical Ollie]

Are you guys using merchants at all? I've found them pretty unefficient. They cost 550 gold, while most trade resources give an income of 10-20 gold per turn. So the pay-off time for a merchant could be 25 turns or more. And quite often, some foreigner takes over his trade. There are some resources that give much more gold, like 150 gpt, but even then you still need 2 merchants to pay the upkeep of 1 knight. Too much micro management.

[Proteus_MST]

I do.

In my first game as spain and in my current game as England I prefer to send them to Timbuktu, which has two sources of gold and ivory as well as one source of slaves in this region.
The neighboring nation left of timbuktu has one source of gold and ivory as well.

It might be a long time till your traders get there, but an experienced trader can get around 1000 gold/turn out of the gold (and ivory and slaves can get you a good income as well) and you don´t have to fear merchants from other european countries in this area as they normally prefer trading goods that are located much nearer to their countries


@Grandpa Troll:
Congratulations. I predict a longer absence from the forum (as long as you don´t have a second coomputer just for surfing) followed by an eager discussion of gameplay issues

[Asmodean]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
Are you guys using merchants at all? I've found them pretty unefficient. They cost 550 gold, while most trade resources give an income of 10-20 gold per turn. So the pay-off time for a merchant could be 25 turns or more. And quite often, some foreigner takes over his trade. There are some resources that give much more gold, like 150 gpt, but even then you still need 2 merchants to pay the upkeep of 1 knight. Too much micro management.

Are you kidding?? Merchants are super at making gold for you!! What I do is fist have my merchant takeover some foreign merchants. This will train them and make them more proficcient at trading. Then when I have taken over a good number of foreign merchants, I send my merchant off to some far off resource - gold and ivory in Africa for instance. After that I just enjoy the 500+ gold per turn that just keeps rolling in! In addition to that, you will get a LOT of gold from taking over foreign merchants.

Asmodean

[Gamecube64]

The lump sum from taking over one merchant alone is enough to justify a merchant since they don't have upkeep.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie


Seems like a far-fetched way to fix a design error. I would prefer a fix in an official game patch.

Some people believe it was made intentionally to weaken them, so that people who don´t possess pikemen for themselves don´t have such a big disadvantage if they have to attack pikemen frontally (for example because they block a pathway without any possibility of flanking them)


Overlapping double layers of pikemen btw. seem to be effective also against the timurid elephants. Included a unit of them (the version with the arquebus-soldiers on the castle) in a unit full of timurid cavalry.
After they had shot all of their ammunition (i.e. after the pikemen were already weakened by the barrages of bullets and the conctant cavalry attacks they approached the line and first attacked without charging, resulting in the death of 5 elephants.
The remaining 3 elephants decided to flee, but regrouped at some distance from my pikemen and made a charge attack. They broke through, but because they lost another elephant during this attack and were under constant attack behind the lines they run amok and went straight into the few timurid cavalry units that still attacked me (allowing my pikemen to close the lines again and cause the remaining timurid units to flee)

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Gamecube64
The lump sum from taking over one merchant alone is enough to justify a merchant since they don't have upkeep.

How many merchants do you lose in the process? What chance does a noob merchant have to take over the trade from an experienced foreigner?

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie


How many merchants do you lose in the process? What chance does a noob merchant have to take over the trade from an experienced foreigner?

Interesting question, as I do it (if I do it t all) the other way round,
i.e. let my merchants gain experience with trading gold, slaves and ivory in northern africa and only then when they are at the age of 50 (and have around 7-9 experience) let them return to europe so that they could take over some eurpoean merchants.

[Quillan]

Well, it's an exploit, but you can create a "trading post". Just build a fortification on the resource (where the merchant would stand). Now he can't be taken over. That isn't really the exploit; the exploit is that now you can drop 20 merchants all trading the same resource! One in Constantinople on silk and one in Timbuktu on ivory and Poof! Instant 30K per turn in trade! Well, not instant. You still have a metric assload of merchants you have to build and get there. Up to you if you do it or not. Personally, I like the idea, but I think the limit should be at perhaps 3 merchants trading the goods.

[Chemical Ollie]

I made myself a colony in South America in yesterday's gaming session, and there are some nice resources there to exploit. Anyone has experience on those? You could apparently build gold mines as well, when you upgrade the town enough. Too bad it's in the very late game, only 35 turns left now.

[Asmodean]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
I made myself a colony in South America in yesterday's gaming session, and there are some nice resources there to exploit. Anyone has experience on those? You could apparently build gold mines as well, when you upgrade the town enough. Too bad it's in the very late game, only 35 turns left now.

You can edit the descr_strat.txt file in your \\M2TW\data\world\campaign\imperial_campaign directory and get a whooping 900 turns in the granc campaign.

Find the line that says:

timescale 2.00

And change it to:

timescale 0.50

That gives you 2 turns per year in the GC - 900 turns all total.

Asmodean

[Chemical Ollie]

Mod this and mod that? If the game doesn't work out of the box, it's a crap game. I don't cheat in video games. If I mod it, we are suddenly talking about another game.

It was the same with Civ games, if someone had a question about something in the game, some smartass said: you could change it in the editor.

[Proteus_MST]

Maybe this is the difference between your lines of thought and the modders lines of thought.

For example the workings of the Pikemen could be seen as design error, or as a design decision which was valid in the eyes of the designers (just as I said, to make pikemen less invincible against frontal attacks) but which you don´t like.

A modder would see it the latter way and would take steps to adapt the game so that he gets the maximum of entertainment out of it (while keeping the game still challenging).

Game designers cannot design their games so it fits every taste at least not if they want to make money with the game (the attempt to create the egg laying woolmilkpig is destined to fail, at least financially) but by keeping the game as moddable as possible they allow everyone to adapt the game to his own needs.

I understand that you would like the game to be perfect even in vamilla, everyone wishes but IMHO better to have an imperfect game which you can mod so that it perfectly suits your tastes than a game that is better when it hits the shelves but has no modding capability whatsoever.

Look for example at the Rome Total Realism mod for RTW, or at the Ages of Man mod for Cal to Power to see how mods can enhance an already good game