My performance went up considerably when I turned off SSAO in the graphics options (this setting is very calculation heavy). I went from acceptable frame rates that dipped in large battles to very smooth frame rates no matter the number of troops.
Damn…damndamndamndamndamn! Another ruined campaign. 
Was playing the Brits and it’s somewhere around the mid 1740’s. Everything is going well, have all of the Spanish new world possessions, conquered Sweden and Russia and have the Prussians on the ropes and am getting ready to invade and finish off Spain. Most of the tech tree has been researched (I have like 8 major universities now). Both my army and my navy are pretty much unbeatable due to tech advances (even though both are smaller than most of my opponents…well, than they USED to have).
However, now I can’t click on any of my fleet units. Oh, I can move them out of port and attack stuff, but if I click on any of the individual fleet units the game blows out to desk top. So, I can’t repair any of them and they are wearing away. I can build new fleet units but I can’t click on any to assign admirals. I seem to be in a complete dead end now.
I still haven’t managed to finish the US campaign. I’ve tried twice and each time I run into a similar dead end.
I hope these patches they are talking about fix the problems I’m having.
-XT
I bought the game on Thursday and have been playing it a lot since then. My machine is a bit too old to run the game well; I play on low graphics with the largest unit size. I have the same problem with the game “sticking” for a few moments, especially when I select certain fleets. In my new war versus France and Spain, I mobilized the warships in the trade theaters to take out enemy merchant ships, and now my indiamen are bugged. Oddly, I’ve been getting a lot of crashes this afternoon, even though I had it running for maybe twelves hours straight yesterday (:)).
Bugs aside, I’m really enjoying the game. After a couple of a couple of aborted attempts at conquering the wrong places (those Cherokee are can be tough if you don’t have a lot of soldiers), I started a campaign in which I quickly recruited some troops in London and had them make a beeline for Mysore. I was barely able to capture the province, but it was an ideal foothold. I could recruit new soldiers and artillery right there, and soon took over the Maratha-controlled south of the subcontinent. After building up the plantations there, I took over the Mughal territory. By this time, my economy had achieved a sort of critical mass, with my tax income growing every turn. This took about 40 years.
Meanwhile, I had almost totally neglected the Americas (beyond taking over the two pirate regions). The Hurons took Rupert’s Land from me, but I had hardly invested anything in it. The Cherokee had proven to be a force to be reckoned with; in addition to their original territory, they now controlled Florida and upper and lower Louisiana. Shipping my East India Company linemen over to the New World, I quickly added their land to my holdings, and went after the Hurons mostly out of spite. While the Thirteen Colonies were no longer my protectorate (they had gotten into a little tussle with the United Provinces and I didn’t want to intervene and lose my best trading partner), New France was the last region I needed to capture to complete my mission. At this point, France was particularly pathetic (feeble/destitute with a few new world holdings), but allied with Spain. My forces, now up in former Huron territory, stormed into Quebec and Montreal. The Thirteen Colonies did indeed join my empire, and I quickly absorbed the rest of Canada.
Paris was easy enough to capture, but public order in France is so low that an outright rebellion has formed. It serves me right; for some reason, I can’t upgrade any more schools to modern universities, and there’s one in Orleans I’m keeping intact despite the clamor for reform it generates. I hope I don’t regret sending my second strike force into Alsace-Lorraine (eliminating France as a power) rather than deal with the local malcontents.
Spain promises to be a tougher nut to crack, but I’m a little disappointed that their navy isn’t putting up more of a fight. They control half the Caribbean and most of Latin America, and their ground forces in Iberia are significant, but I think that my tech advantage will help me win the day.
Man this game is fun.
Does anyone know how to change government type?
-XT
You can’t - at least, not in any easy way. Government only changes through bloody revolution, and that only happens when clamour for reform and unrest gets way higher than repression. So if you really want to change gov’ for some reason, tech up a lot from the enlightenment tree, remove police from the towns, set taxes to “and their children too” and hire a loony for police minister. When the revolt starts, you’ll be given an option : either side with the loyalists (keep the current government, huge stacks of revolting peasants to fight) or with the revolutionaries (new gov, possibly stacks of loyalists to fight).
I’ve never had it happen to me mind you, so I’m not sure of the specifics, namely what gov is chosen. My guess is, if the higher classes revolt, you end up with parliamentary monarchy, while you get a republic if the unwashed masses stir up. Whether you can go back to absolutism at some point is unknown to me, nor the exact benefits of each system.
I gathered that government change works that way, but I haven’t seen it in action either.
The effects of government seem relatively minor to me so far (I’ve just “finished” my first campaign as the British, and am going to try my hand at the Maratha next). Constitutional monarchy provides a bonus to nobility to public order with no penalty to lower class public order; you need to hold periodic elections, and you can fire one minister per turn. If your cabinet loses an election they are replaced with a new one.
Absolute monarchy provides a bonus to nobility public order and a penalty to lower classes public order. You don’t need to hold elections, but you do have a cabinet. You can fire ministers, though I haven’t yet tried to fire more than one per turn. My observations suggest that industrialization also a negative effect on lower class public order that constitutional monarchy does not.
I have yet to try a republic, and can’t find any meaningful info online about actual government stats.
Interesting stuff; does it happen to the AI factions (either scripted or unscripted)? I’d love to wade into the French revolution as Prussia or something.
No idea, but I assume so on the basis that missions seem to happen to them as well (I’ve witnessed Louisiana and New Spain getting back in the fold, so, again, I surmise France and Spain completed their missions).
Unrelated yet interesting/disappointing/exploitable fact : according to the fellas at the .Org, the AI never ever invades by sea, though they may ferry troops around. Which means Britain and the Carribean are trouble free, and even more regrettably so is the whole of India (save for Portuguese and Dutch interractions, and possible invasion through Persia). Since this was the case early in Medieval II’s history, and got “fixed” heavy handedly* later on, I suppose it will be this time around as well.
- : In case you haven’t played M2:TW with the latest patches, the AI becomes very, very trigger happy with naval invasions. It’s not uncommon to see, say, Portugal sending troops in Flanders on turn 3, or the Rus invading Ireland. Or anyone sending a pair of spear militia units in your lands just for kicks, really. Quite annoying sometimes, but it does make life in Corsica quite interesting
Interesting. I patched up Medieval II, made for eyebrow-raising scenarios, such as the Moors launching a full-scale invasion of Genoa and Florence.
The most important question of all: Are pre-battle speeches still present? If so what are they like?
My favourite part of old TW games, especially with mad generals.
I haven’t noticed any pre-battle speeches. I still have my advice set fairly high at this point so I generally just get a lecture from the advisor on basic battle tactics. Some of it’s useful though…I couldn’t figure out how to put my guys behind a wall or fortification until the AI pointed out how to do this.
As for the change in government…the reason I asked (sorry it was so cryptic, it’s hard to post from a mobile device) is that I was playing the Prussian’s and the population was becoming more and more restive as my empire was falling apart. The computer was telling me I either had to lower taxes or change my government (which I couldn’t figure out how to do so). I had lowered my taxes to the point where I was in the red on funding…but I couldn’t reduce my military any lower as I had enemies on every border (I had wiped out Austria and Venice and this had pissed off the neighbors, even though they declared war on me). Eventually the entire situation blew up and it gave me the choice…support the rebels or support the monarchy. Either was a bad choice as at that point my entire empire fell apart, with enemies pouring in from all sides and roving bands of loyalists and rebels duking it out across the country side. Essentially the game was over at that point, despite the fact that I had a fairly good chunk of Europe under my control prior to things blowing apart.
I’ve found one interesting thing out so far playing the continential powers…if you don’t buy or research any Navy the game runs a LOT better. I was about as far into the game as my first Brit game and it was running a lot better, despite the fact that my continential armies were much bigger than the Brit units I had. The only difference I can see is that I had like 1 small ship (used solely to move my Prussian armies back and forth around Poland, since you start off the game with your territories split).
-XT
I’m well into my second campaign as the Maratha Confederacy. I found that maintaining public order was more difficult as an absolute monarchy, especially in regions with colleges. When my enlightenment technologies got to the point that large garrisons were no longer enough to maintain order, I decided to spark a revolution.
An earlier experiment of raising the lower-class taxes throughout the subcontinent was met with disaster. Many provinces had spawned armies under the “Maratha Rebels” banner, and a few of the recently-conquered northern provinces’ rebels were apparently trying to revive the Mughal Empire (which had been totally eliminated). Too bad my capital had the best public order and didn’t spawn any rebels. I decided to abort this experiment, reloaded to before the tax hike, and remained a monarchy for a while longer.
Now, a decade or so later, my lovely modern university was brimming with all sorts of crazy ideas. Rather than plunge the whole nation into civil revolt, I invited a coup. I marched my capital’s garrison out of the city (to the university near the border of the Portuguese enclave of Goa so they don’t try to pull a fast one) so that the lower class would get rowdy. Turn one they went on strike. Turn two they rioted (damaging, oddly enough, the university). Turn three, they revolted. Rather than just some AI-controlled rabble popping up, I got a big fancy dialog box prompting me to side with either the loyalists or the rebels. I chose to join the rebels, and luckily so did most of my line infantry. The fog of war closed in, shrouding everything outside of the capital province, and my government and diplomacy buttons were greyed out. My forces had a new flag. I stormed the capital, and after the battle I was treated to a cutscene featuring a stylish but disheveled-looking man being led to an executioner’s block. Back on the campaign map I found my new flag waving proudly over all of my cities.
Maintaining public order is much easier now. Republics get +1 to upper class and +3 to lower class order. Each election apparently temporarily reduces the clamor for reform, and I think I saw it reversed once right after an election (a public order bonus with the same icon labeled “recent political change”). I’m building a couple of extra schools now that I can cope with them. I’m also upgrading my cannon foundries up to the highest level with a great deal of anticipation. The Marathas get 12lb, 18lb, and 24lb foot cannons and regular and heavy mortars, but no howitzers. Normally this would disappoint me, but their very best foundries can build something called a 64lb great-cannon. I can’t wait to field test some of them on those jerk Persians tomorrow.
P.S.: The game does run a lot more smoothly when I have very little in the way of a navy. I hope I don’t regret expanding into the trade theaters tomorrow.
I did a little more research and yeah, apparently the main difference between government types (besides the obvious process of changing ministers + elections) has to do with clamor for reform : in absolute monarchy, every single province gets the full clamor generated by each university, in republic only the province housing the university does, and parliamentary monarchy is inbetween : the clamor is shared, but not all of it. Also, all three have different innate bonus to order/disorder (I think absolutism gives two or three points of higher class order, but 1 point of lower class disorder, with again parliamentary monarchy being inbetween, probably +1/+2 or +2/+2).
Still, I’ll take an absolute monarchy any day. The ability to choose ministers from a pool rather than trying your luck and more often than not ending with a subpar or corrupt guy is invaluable - I usually end up with a full 7 or 8 stars cabinet, while in my Dutch game I’m extatic when I have one five star guy in the rotten lot. The huge bonuses in all fields totally make up for needing a bunch of dragoons to keep the plebs in line.
My income did plummet after the revolution, and I think it was because of inferior ministers. I think that specifically it was because I lost a lot of military funding discounts. You can still fire one minister per turn as a republic, but not your president. Your president gets replaced when a new party takes power, which can be as much help as a hindrance. For the bulk of my first campaign, I had Queen Louise I on the throne, and she was awful. All she granted were -5 to diplomatic relations and -2 prestige per turn. I was counting the turns until she kicked the bucket.
I suppose that another factor is that a republic has much higher lower class public order, so that later in the campaign (when your homeland has all of its villages developed) you can raise lower-class taxes more to spur emigration to the colonies. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal if you have good agricultural technology, though.
Yup, but you can’t pick his replacement - it’s pure luck of the draw. Sometimes you get a four or five star one with a nice trait. Sometimes you get a blank 3 star useless bumpkin. And sometimes you get the starless, harridan-wedded, morally impaired asshole. OK, so you only get him for one turn - but the net result is that once you get a half-decent minister, you (or at least, I) tend to keep him rather than gamble him away with maybe a 5% chance to get a rock star of a minister and 80% chances to get someone equal to worse.
When you pick from the pool, you *know *the guy you pick is superior, and furthermore he’ll stay there for effin’ ever, not a mere 8 or 16 turns.
That, and the longer you keep the same guys, the higher the chance they’ll pick up mondo usefull ancillaries like personnal secretaries, tax farmers, secret policemen and the like. An 8 star, +% taxes +happiness treasury minister really is invaluable IMHO, and of course early on the faster research really helps a ton.
Speaking of research, I just got my first taste of “Fire by ranks” and…wow. Just wow. Get it. Get it as soon as you can, and milk it for all it’s worth before everyone else has it too. The land battle advantage is almost gamebreaking. It’s like bringing a machine gun to a fist fight, really. And I thought canister shot casualties were high…
It seems that revolution or at least riot is pretty much a given, at least with the continental powers. I started a game with Austria and I’m running into exactly the same issues as I did with Prussia. I’ve won huge swaths of land on the battle field, but everything is blowing up, despite lowering taxes to the minimum (and even making some provinces tax exempt…the bastards are STILL rioting). I’ve had several rebellions and a few provinces attempt to leave the empire directly (though thankfully no full scale rebellion as I had with Prussia…yet). And as far as I can tell the only method to calm the people is to lower taxes. There don’t seem to be many structures you can build that will make people happy (coach houses/brothels/pleasure gardens seem the extent…and you have to build them in place of something useful like a new manufacturing or college town)…and no other adjustments you can make. In fact, I can’t seem to figure out how to adjust the tax rate on a single province. I can make one tax exempt, but if I mess with the tax rate in a province it seems to reflect that throughout the empire…which seriously sucks when you are in the middle of a shooting war with 2 or 3 other powers.
I’m loving this game (when it plays right). Every game I’ve played has been an edge of my seat, nail biting experience. Allies and neutrals treacherously attack me suddenly pouring troops across the borders and assaulting my forts. Fleets sweep in to assault my shipping and blockade my ports. Rebellion foments just below the surface…and my dreams lately have all been about wheeling lines of infantry in a disparate attempt to hold off cavalry attacks coming in from the flanks that I didn’t see coming while trying to hold the line on the right near the apple orchard…
-XT
You can only set your tax rates on a theater-by-theater basis. You can have high taxes in America and low taxes in Europe, but beyond that you can only exempt individual regions.
Yeah…I didn’t realize that at first and couldn’t figure out why dropping the taxes in what I thought was a single state was killing my income for the entire empire. Now I just check the exempt button on problem areas…though this doesn’t seem to even work sometimes as I still end up with riots and such.
Still…this is a way cool game. If they can fix the slowness issues and issues with it blowing up I think this is going to be one of my all time favorite games. Since I’ve been mostly home this week I’ve probably put in 30+ hours on it already…and most likely will be playing much of the weekend on it (another long trip next week unfortunately). I’m hoping that by the time I get back from my next trip the new patch will be out and some of the issues I’m having will be resolved. I have noticed that playing the continental powers without a navy seems to make the game run MUCH better…I haven’t had any of the issues I had with either the Brits or the American campaign with either Austria or Prussia.
-XT
Thanks for the tutorial on governments here. The manual that came with the box is vague, and the in-game help is inconsistent. If anyone finds a write-up of the tech tree online please link it here. The box also included a poster with the building progression, but it was amazingly pointless. It basically just gave you the names for each building type in order … I guess they had not nailed down the research details by printing time. I have to wonder why they wasted paper on this poster though. I trashed it.
Still having fun. I played a short Maratha campaign on very hard/very hard, and found that I had to expand little by little with long periods to rest/develop. I had a little trouble with rebels, but taxes took care of it. I was starting to notice how bad it would be if I went bigger than India though. I had not paid any attention to the ministers at all. And the Maratha opening position leaves diplomacy sort of unnecessary. One funny diplomatic trick I found … bordering on exploit… Once I had stolen Goa from Portugal, they and others *really *wanted it back. They started offering me technologies for the province. That was the only way I ever got techs by trade. Of course, their new colony did not last long… like half a turn, haha! I was tempted to keep pimping it to other nations to see how much tech I could gain, and if the AI would notice my insincerity … but that felt cheap so I just did it that once. Hey they asked for it!
I’m very disappointed with the lack of naval invasions. I noticed the Mughal were timid about it, but now that I know it is absolute, it takes some of the fun out of things. I don’t want to play as Britain or Spain for knowing I can ignore my armies on islands. So I started as Prussia until they fix it. This one is a very diplomacy heavy game so far.
I wish there were more difficulty settings … I am *terrible *at naval battles, but comfortable with the rest.
How exactly does bankruptcy work? I hit bottom a few times by overexpanding, and after one of them I noticed my armies had been halved. I am curious if it was just one turn that did that, or what the rules are about running out of cash. (“Rule One: Don’t run out of cash!”)
About how long is the time in between turns?
I just upgraded my rig and it’s still taking about couple of minutes per turn. That’s rather annoying.
Did you turn off “show cpu moves” in the options menu?