Medieval 2 Total War Kingdoms

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MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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I saw this yesterday, but couldn't confirm it, and I still can't. I tried playing a few rounds, and tried to go out with a commander and build a fort, but all I could build was a watchtower. Perhaps I need to accompany my commander with some troops to build a fort, so I'll try that later today. As for the controllable reinforcements, no idea either, haven't had reinforcements show up, I'll try to simulate a situation though and see what happens. According to the pressreleases/fact sheets both SHOULD be workable features in the game though.
 

MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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Oh and as for the game looking/feeling more atmospheric, hmz hmz, I think the music isn't working lol, it's deadquiet, but when a movie pops up from an assasin or spy I do get sound. During battle I didn't get sound either. Might be my PC, might be the preview version being bugged. So I can't really tell. The basic layout of the game is still the same though. When playing a campaign though it's pretty nice to see certain things happen, like the start of some kind of merchant's guild, during the teutonic campaign, and they are going to establish in city x, y, z, and you should try and obtain those regions to make use of that guild. Same goes for the britannia campaign were at a certain point a fleet of norwegian warrios will enter England, accompanied by there King. All those things do add something to the campaign and make you feel you are really playing part in it.
 

TehMac

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2006
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Nice, that's good. I think buildable forts only apply to a few campaigns, I know in Britannia, forts are already built but, that's all I read.
 

TehMac

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2006
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Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Oh and as for the game looking/feeling more atmospheric, hmz hmz, I think the music isn't working lol, it's deadquiet,
Maybe your version defaulted on the music and you have to enable it or something?

Btw, how's the New World campaign?
 

MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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Well, I just tried the first few turns with the aztecs/apachians/maya's and its pretty cool if you ask me. One thing I immediatly noticed was the population growth being HUMONGOUS for the aztecs, with 9k people the pop growth was still 9%. This could prolly still be made higher using different kinds of temples and such, if you know what I mean, that can increase pop growth, or public health and stability. This is most likely because of the vast amounts of troops you can crank out, for fairly cheap, so your population can recover quickly enough.

I must admit, that I haven't played it all to much. I've been rather busy, with my birthday being yesterday and having party-ed all weekend and monday :p You start with Hernan Cortes in the Americas Campaign, he told some kind of hot shot to piss off and went on to America anyways to conquer it whilst he wasn't allowed, and later on had an army send after him, which he took out fairly easy. Lots of other stuff happened as well, so I'm guessing those events will pop up in the campaign as well. I'll try playing muchos turn in a fast way 2night to confirm this.

Didn't disable the music btw, when I played with the apachians I did get music, kind of like some 'witches/shamans' chanting or something. It's a nice change from the normal music I guess ^^ I did quickly check out several units from the aztecs and the apachians. Some were pretty funny, you're gonna have to live without being able to use cavalry though. There's different ranks for example, and it's pretty easy to distinguish one unit from another because of the way they are dressed and have armor, or the lack thereof. One unit kind of stood out, they had huge 'arrow' like spears, which they used to throw at the enemy, doh, and they'd save the last one and were pretty good in storming the enemy.

There's really to much to tell though, simply summing it up would take a few pages :p
 

TehMac

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2006
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In the custom battles, is it possible to use Kingdoms included units? Could you take a pic of the British custom battle units?
And btw happy Birthday
 

jandrews

Golden Member
Aug 3, 2007
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Originally posted by: 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?
Umm actually I play on very hard very hard every single time and have beaten it on very hard very hard with most of the main factions including the byzantium empire which can be somewhat difficult. Since it was still too easy I installed a mod to make it even harder but that mod just basically gave the enemies even more gold so it just got boring. The enemies are just plain dumb frankly and while it can be somewhat challenging the first 4-5 cities you steamroll through the entire world quickly after that.

 

jandrews

Golden Member
Aug 3, 2007
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Originally posted by: Bateluer
I always get stomped if I play on anything higher than normal/medium settings.

Well here are some pretty solid strategies, no cheese or anything

expand fast fast fast!!! most countries are weak in the beginning, it really helps if you somewhat know the map and the layout of territories. Dont worry about going to war early if you can snatch up some provinces. Take them asap and then amass infrastructure.

Dont build just for the sake of building. Money can get very tight and you should only build major war buildings on each front to pump out units and dont waste the money.

Turn most castles into towns especially where you dont need military units

Never build any population increasing item outside of land clearance. Population grows fine by itself and its a waste of money and turns to build farms etc.

Focus on building economy helping buildings, wars are built on gold

family members are meant to be generals not lazy governors. If you leave generals in town to govern they usually get bad traits and hurt your town. Get your family members on the battlefield, they are basically free heavy cavalry especially early in the game where heavy mailed knights can take out 100's of men. Dont be afraid of them dying.


Have fun of course!


These games really are a great time and learning how to get better is a big part of the fun. So stick to those strategies and off you go.
 

MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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Hmz hmz, ya know, the crusade campaign is actually pretty cool though. Theres some 'powerhouses' and if you own one, you can make some really kickass units. To win, you need to hold x amount of regions, as well as some capitals/powerhouses, and not for 1 single turn, no for 10-15 turns in a row. Good luck doing that hehe. For some reason the Crusade campaign really looked like the most challenging to me.

And sure, I'll go make pics right now. Whats british though ? Irish/Scottish/English/Welsh ? Lotsa screenies I guess, if you pick though, I'll have those up first. And no, only units available from the playable factions in Kingdoms. Some factions are unlockable btw, not sure if you can use those in custom battles right away. The way I installed the preview version was somewhat weird though. I have each campaign installed solo, and it's not really like an add-on to MTW:II. Not sure if I have to have to original installed too :p I don't even know if all these new factions are going to be playable in MTW:II vanilla ... :p
 

TehMac

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2006
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No, I meant a pic of the custom battle UNIT setup...just take a pic of that menu, where all the units are presented to you. Sorry I didn't make that clearer the first time. :p
 

TehMac

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2006
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Yeah, I guess so, lol, thanks. In the Britannia Campaign, it looked like the British got a new unit--pikemen it looked...or something. :confused:
 

MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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hmz hmz, it might be possible they can recruit pikemen in scottish regions. Just like teutonic knights can only be recruited in regions where the catholic percentage is higher then 80%.
 

Semisonic

Junior Member
Aug 19, 2007
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Hey there!
Have you tested Norway yet in the Britannia campaign? Just wondering what troops and settlements they have.

Oh, and do you mind snapping a pic of Norway on the faction select screen? Would be great because there's little info out there. :)
 

imported_Imp

Diamond Member
Dec 20, 2005
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Grrr.. is this out now or this week? Just saw an ad "August 2007": not much August left. Damn you Bioshock for taking my time;).
 

Regs

Lifer
Aug 9, 2002
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Originally posted by: Imp
Grrr.. is this out now or this week? Just saw an ad "August 2007": not much August left. Damn you Bioshock for taking my time;).

hah, yeah I admit when I checked this thread again I looked at ebgames.com

http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=647032

8/28/07....which Tuesday. So you'll likely be able to get it on Wedensday once UPS ships it to all the stores.

Wow...it's almost sept all ready. Depressing!
 

AllGamer

Senior member
Apr 26, 2006
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i've been waiting for this for a while.... so finally tomorrow we might see it on the shelfs
 

MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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Heh I fired it up again last night when I wanted to do a little battle, I played the Crusades campaign as the byzantines. THey have the greek flamethrowers, and god do they PWN !!! I only had them in combat for like 30 seconds, and they scored 90 kill. I moved them up between some heavy infantry that would take on the Turk heavy infantry, and had them blast their fire on a unit of well trained spearmen. When the first hit landed it looked like all 3 units in the vicinity got scared shitless and commenced fighting to the death. Keep in mind, I only JUST engaged the enemy with about 2 or 3 units, my own horse archers were skirmishing with their horse archers, but that was it.

The greek flamethrower unit is only 20 man big, and still got 90 kills. OWNAGE.

As for the release time, official release date seems to be 31/08, or next Friday. Stores will probably have them earlier though, because my review copy is shipping right now ...
 

jandrews

Golden Member
Aug 3, 2007
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Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Heh I fired it up again last night when I wanted to do a little battle, I played the Crusades campaign as the byzantines. THey have the greek flamethrowers, and god do they PWN !!! I only had them in combat for like 30 seconds, and they scored 90 kill. I moved them up between some heavy infantry that would take on the Turk heavy infantry, and had them blast their fire on a unit of well trained spearmen. When the first hit landed it looked like all 3 units in the vicinity got scared shitless and commenced fighting to the death. Keep in mind, I only JUST engaged the enemy with about 2 or 3 units, my own horse archers were skirmishing with their horse archers, but that was it.

The greek flamethrower unit is only 20 man big, and still got 90 kills. OWNAGE.

As for the release time, official release date seems to be 31/08, or next Friday. Stores will probably have them earlier though, because my review copy is shipping right now ...

dang euro's/canadians always confusing me with their backwards dates. Anyway, I am almost positive the release date is tomorrow the 28th.
 

MarcVenice

Moderator Emeritus <br>
Apr 2, 2007
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@ semisonic, sorry I totally missed your post. I'll snap a picture right now for ya.

@ jandrew,

SEGA unveiled that Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms, the expansion to Medieval II: Total War developed by Creative Assembly, is set for release in the United States on August 28th and August 31st throughout Europe.

Looks like both of us were right :p