Medieval 2 Total War Kingdoms

[TehMac]

I dunno, I think it'd be good with the CA inspired flavor, their art design and game design is inspired and terrific, but I...I dunno, they'd have to make each playing side kinda unique, which is rather tricky, considering they all fought the same damn way, with a few differences. But I dunno. CA could def make it work. Don't forget Naval Battles!

I personally wouldn't mind seeing:
[Generic brand that sums up "Ancient World"] Total War
Hebrew Total War
Rome 2: Total War
Medieval 3: Total War
China: Total War
Shogun 2: Total War
India: Total War
Celtic: Total War
Greece: Total War
Egypt: Total War

iLos segunos son infinitivos!

 

[MarcVenice]

Shogun 2 would be cool. China, with the chinese wall would be cool.

I'll make screenshots in custom battles 2morrow. I've made a few screenshots fighting with the scottish versus the norwegians btw. I'll have them up on imageshack soon.

As for the scottish, hmz, I think the campaign needs some tweaking lol. First of all, I noticed that my merchants ALWAYS get owned, kinda sucks. Then, I ran out of cash SO fast, somehow the income sucks, and the upkeep of the troops is rather high. Almost no time to adjust, and get militia's instead that require no upkeep. When william wallace pops up you basicaly get an army for free to go own some norwegians, but errr, my upkeep went up with 3k a turn lol.

And I haven't seen any new swordsmen yet, perhaps they will show up in the custom battle section. I've just looked btw, and well, I doubt there are any real new units on existing factions you could allready play in the original campaigns. But the new factions do of course have a new units, like the Irish and the Welsh.

http://pcgamespecial.nl/users/marc/irish.JPG

That picture shows the irish units, ostmen, ulster swordsmen and galloglaich are sword units for example.

 

[TehMac]

Hrmm, it doesn't seem like there are many new units? Can we see what the Scots have to offer? Of course, it's not so much the new units, but the new gameplay styles. And yeah, that money sink sounds...depressing.

 

[MarcVenice]

http://img515.imageshack.us/my...200708061256005ek3.jpg

If you go there, you should be able to see all my pictures. Imageshack is kinda slow, but I'm not supposed to use the sites FTP for personal use, to much at least Those are scottisch units. Tomorrrow I'll line up all the scottisch units in a custom battle and give names. Now I've gotta wrap up a present and attend a party

When you see my page, make sure to click on MORE, otherwise you don't see any of the Medieval II pictures.

 

[TehMac]

holy crap, imageshack loads forever. But it's not so much the lack of new Scottish units that is bad, what's a bit disapoionting is that the Irish are rather lacking a few units themselves. But that doesn't matter, because they didn't have that many units anyway.

 

[TehMac]

I also saw how it seems the factions are very char specific, as in, if you're Scottish, you see some Scottish lookin' people (or how CA thinks they looked back then, lol) and if the Welsh, Irish, English, and Norwegians have that sort of thing, and the rest of the campaigns as well, this game could definitely make up for the lack of atmosphere I felt in vanilla.

Also, Marc, when and if you have time, I'd like some screens of the English units in the custom battle scene, or I mean...how would you get to see if there are any new units in the British & French expeditionary forces? Are they just random armies of [Late Period] Units?

If you could explore that New World Campaign for us Marc, me love you long time!

And have fun at the party!

 

[MarcVenice]

Yeah, the campaigns are pretty detailed afaik. At some point england will have a revolt, called the barons allegiance. Their units are exactly the same as the normal english units btw. England loses like half their territory at that point, and adds in a new faction to the mix you can ally up with or wage war against. That way you can take english settlements without pissing of England.

And in the scottish campaign you of course get william wallace to fight with etc etc.

 

[jandrews]

I love the game but the AI sigh just never seems like it will never be up to the par I am hoping . I will be buying it though I love these games.

 

[MarcVenice]

In a medium difficulty battle the enemy isn't to smart. They had like TONS of ally's showing up to the battlefied, and they kept coming at me 1 group at a time. With my cavalry I just rode down their archers and farmer like units. Then I singled out their general with 2 of my own general units and another unit of heavy cavalry and I completely obliterated them.

I've really learned to whatch out for those heavy infantry units carrying two handed axes though. I rode into them head on with a decent unit of heavy cavalry, and the initial punch was nice, but then they quickly started making mince meat out of my cavalry. I know they are well equipped to take on armored units, but it should be different against cavalry no? What other unit to use against them otherwise

 

[imported_Imp]

Yep, AI is pretty retarded most of the time on a few fronts. As you increase difficulty, they start making more and more miltia units. As fun as it is butchering thousands of peasants and militia, I want some challenge. The most fun I had was going toe to toe with mongols; not so much timmurids cause elephants are very very _ _ _. Everyone else, it was one militia horde after another. Even more annoying is when they "siege" a town, attack but just sit there for half an hour pelting your towers with one catapult. And finally, the infamous pathfinding, or lackthereof, during sieges. I can usually hold an entire town with 3 archer militia units (need almost full stack for Mongols or REAL attacks) cause they "probe" your towers; it'd be easier if I were smart enough to keep ballista towers and forget cannons.

 

[jandrews]

Originally posted by: Imp
Yep, AI is pretty retarded most of the time on a few fronts. As you increase difficulty, they start making more and more miltia units. As fun as it is butchering thousands of peasants and militia, I want some challenge. The most fun I had was going toe to toe with mongols; not so much timmurids cause elephants are very very _ _ _. Everyone else, it was one militia horde after another. Even more annoying is when they "siege" a town, attack but just sit there for half an hour pelting your towers with one catapult. And finally, the infamous pathfinding, or lackthereof, during sieges. I can usually hold an entire town with 3 archer militia units (need almost full stack for Mongols or REAL attacks) cause they "probe" your towers; it'd be easier if I were smart enough to keep ballista towers and forget cannons.

That is the sad thing, AI is EXACTLY what AI was 10 years ago. AI doesnt increase intelligence with difficulty which would be totally awesome, AI only increases how much it cheats as difficulty goes up. You get the SAME base AI always even at the easiest levels. They just cheat how much gold they get or how much units they make but the AI always sucks. The timurids/mongols are the only people who present even a miniscule challenge due to their powerful units and they at least properly siege at times instead of following moronic siege tactics.

 

[MarcVenice]

AI is developing, but I suppose there's no real need to game developers to enhance the AI in RTS/TURN based games since the cheating element often works just fine. To bad it doesn't work fine in the Total War series.

Btw, AI did do something 'smart'. When I was outnumbered, he went for my general with a lot of units, to lower my morale. He also used his own general unit and a heavy cav unit to flank me, and then continued to attack me from the rear. Not a bad tactic, easy to counter, If I didn't allready fight a dozen army's and was really lacking pikemen/spearmen

 

[TehMac]

What difficulty level were you playing on?

 

[TehMac]

Originally posted by: jandrews

Originally posted by: Imp
Yep, AI is pretty retarded most of the time on a few fronts. As you increase difficulty, they start making more and more miltia units. As fun as it is butchering thousands of peasants and militia, I want some challenge. The most fun I had was going toe to toe with mongols; not so much timmurids cause elephants are very very _ _ _. Everyone else, it was one militia horde after another. Even more annoying is when they "siege" a town, attack but just sit there for half an hour pelting your towers with one catapult. And finally, the infamous pathfinding, or lackthereof, during sieges. I can usually hold an entire town with 3 archer militia units (need almost full stack for Mongols or REAL attacks) cause they "probe" your towers; it'd be easier if I were smart enough to keep ballista towers and forget cannons.

That is the sad thing, AI is EXACTLY what AI was 10 years ago. AI doesnt increase intelligence with difficulty which would be totally awesome, AI only increases how much it cheats as difficulty goes up. You get the SAME base AI always even at the easiest levels. They just cheat how much gold they get or how much units they make but the AI always sucks. The timurids/mongols are the only people who present even a miniscule challenge due to their powerful units and they at least properly siege at times instead of following moronic siege tactics.

What do you play the game on, very easy?

 

[MarcVenice]

medium, medium

 

[TehMac]

Oh, I play the game on Hard/Hard, and if you don't have the right combos, things can get tricky. What I do is adopt an old Anglo-Scottish tactic--depending on what units I have. Pikes are deployed by each other in circular formation, with archers in the center, and swordsmen and highlanders buffing the pikes. This leads to very grisly results for the enemy. I also hide my horsemen behind hills, and usually have a good enough array that I strike the enemy's archers and ballistas.
Oh yes, my e-peen is teh massive!

Btw, any cool snipits on the New World? Or is some of that NDA?

 

[MarcVenice]

No such thing as an NDA. Thing is, there isn't a whole lot to tell. There's basicaly 4 new campaigns, and it's more of the same old thing. There's some historic accuracy, and it brings a few nice twists and turns, best portrayed by William Wallace becoming a playable general in the Britannia campaign.

I haven't played the Americas campaign a lot, so nothing has really caught my eye there. I started playing with Spain, and you have a whopping 2 city's to start with it, of which 1 is isolated between rebels and natives, and the other one is all alone on an island. Pretty good to churn out army's with and send em away on a ship, but losing 1 town would be devestating. Like I mentioned, spanish units are 30 man big, instead of 60-75. They are far superior to the natives though and with some decent cavalry you really plow right through them.

I would have to play some more to find out more stuff. I'm hoping to be done with the preview saturday btw, but readers don't like to many spoilers, if any at all, so it's basicaly going to be a preview of what to expect and what it holds in store for us when the retail version hits the shelfs.

 

[TehMac]

Well, does the game look/feel/sound more atmospheric? One of the things that DEF turned me off M2TW vanilla was the music--sooo tiring/boring. How does Kingdoms look from that respect?

 

[MarcVenice]

Let me play m2tw vanilla and then play Kingdoms, and I'll definately check it out. I know what you're saying about the music btw, the 1 string guitar music annoyed me as well.

 

[TehMac]

It felt like falling rain--very pissing.

 

[TehMac]

bump.

 

[imported_Imp]

I have played 3 full long games, once I even took over every single province including the Americas. My first time through as English was best on normal. I plain sucked, but the enemy seemed to make more of their unique and powerful units. Second time as Moors was a nightmare cause I wasn't use to relying on cavalry, and the infantry was crap. ~Played this on very hard/very hard. It was still pretty easy though, the battles were pretty non-memorable, but the gun cavalry was amazing. My last game as Byzantines was pretty good, but all I fought was militia; very very disorganized militia with 5/6 ballistas late in the game. This was on hard/hard cause I read somewhere they use less militia with lower difficulty. I specifically chose this faction cause of their proximity to the Middle East; I really wanted to go toe to toe with Mongols, and I did.

What they have to fix is siege AI and unit quality. More than 75% of the battles I fight are in cities cause either I get attacked or I am going straight for an enemy city. The only times I fight it out on the field are when the enemy attacks me, or I have a clear advantage (I started auto-resolving these cause they were so boring) or if I just want the challenge.

 

[TehMac]

Ah yeah, I know what you mean, the enemy doesn't seem to use it's units much of the time, I remember playing as the HRE on H/H and the Venetians would constantly throw mercs at me with Italian Militia, so it was kinda pointless. I eventually got overwhelmed, mainly because I was doing other stuff, like developing my army for an assault on Milan. Venice kind of pisses me off.

 

[TehMac]

Does anyone know if Controllable Reinforcements and Buildable forts are still in? *looks at MarcVenice*

 

[TehMac]

bump?