I just bought Medieval 2 a few days ago. I know, I’m late. I’m impressed with the new functionality of religion, holy wars, character traits and stuff like that on the overview screen. What I don’t like is the new real time battle mechanics.
Individual soldiers of a unit will now wander far, far away from the main body of their troops. You can’t target these individual troops, as your charges and missiles all try to hit near the center of the unit where the flag bearer is. This has caused me a great deal of trauma, and I’m pretty sure I got eleven new gray hairs after losing a castle seige defense because 1 individual archer had strayed so far from his unit that it took him over a minute to get to the gate, during which time the gate stayed open awaiting the arrival of that single soldier. In the meantime, a pursuing unit of fast cavalry that was far, far behind managed to get one stray cavalry soldier to the other side of my gate, forcing the gate to remain open. It was impossible to target that single cavalry soldier and get the gates shut, because whenever I tried to attack or shoot it, my soldiers would aim for the main body of troops several hundred yards away.
So the gate stayed open, and the whole enemy army got to walk right in while my gates stood open for over 2 solid minutes for no damned reason. That baloney never happened in Rome.
Another problem I get is when giving orders to multiple units at once. The game rewards you for using more than 1 unit of cavalry in a charge, which I think is a great improvement. At the same time, it’s not possible to predict just where those units of cavalry will end up when you tell them to retreat. I began a charge with 4 cavalry units, but before they reached their target I ordered them back in order to avoid a spearmen flank. 3 of my cavalry units pulled back with no problem. The fourth stood there for a second and then started slowly meandering in a random direction until the spearmen and enemy cavalry managed to pin and massacre it.
That bullcrap CERTAINLY never happened in Rome. I never had problems with unit responses in Rome, but they seem to be all over the damned place in Medieval 2. It’s almost enough to discourage me from the game.
What I hate most about M2:TW is probably also related to the aiming-for-the-center problem – in a siege offense, sometimes you wish to have a cavalry unit attack an infantry unit that appears to be on the ground, in front of an open gate, but the majority is really still on top of the rampart. So the cavalry can’t target it cause it’s “in a building” :rolleyes:.
So I’m forced to send my cavalry a bit past the unit in question, and they naturally clip the unit I want to attack. I just hope I’m not getting negatives for touching a unit unintentionally instead of ordering the attack. (At least I know I’m not getting penalized for the unit being in “cover”, since I’d never win a siege assault if that was the case.)
I also hate it when I’m pursuing a unit that has only two members, both of which are far away from each other and my cavalry can’t figure out which to attack so stays between them.
The AI seems to be a downgrade from M:TW. I’ve played well over 1000 turns of M2:TW and I think I can count on both hands the number of times I’ve lost a settlement to someone not from Central Asia.
I’m recently getting into MTW2, and I’m similarly disappointed. The physics of the tactical map just feel sloppy and clumsy, and although my casualty rate has improved markedly since my last post on the subject, it’s still shamefully high. I have to remind myself that I felt the same way switching from MTW to RTW, but after alot of play, RTW felt ‘right’.
It would be nice to feel the crunch when my bodyguard cav does a full charge into the rear of an enemy heavy cav…as it is now they just sort of bump into each other crappily, and then some fall down. Of course, that’s assuming my cav doesn’t have to stop its entire charge because a single enemy crossbowman is routing and gets in the way.
You might want to check out some of the mods for it. I’m playing Stainless Steel right now, which is mostly a strategic mod as far as I can tell: more provinces, more units type of thing. Does vanilla MTW2 have flaming oil during sieges? I got to see that last night, it was great. But my next is going to be using Darth Mod, which from what I’ve read polishes up the physics and AI quite a bit.
I haven’t got the add on yet or any mods for the vanilla program, but I didn’t find the game to be that much of a step down. They tried to do some nifty things to the gameplay and they definitely addressed the problem of spamming huge armies.
I’d say that Rome, especially with the Total Realism patch, is a superior game.
Personally, I’d like to do more management of the cities and be more involved with the generals.
I, too recmomend Rome: Total Realism, with one caveat. The problem with it is that it aims to inevitably drag you into as many wars as possible. I.e., the Gauls will attack you when you eventually share a border, the Spainiards and Germans after that. You must defeat Pyrrus but the Greeks iwll never make peace with you, ever, beat them and the Macedonians are after you, along the way the Dacians and Thracians turn on you. The Carthaginians come after you and inevitably a couple other groups attack you along the way. All this happens MUCH faster than in actual history, making it a huge pain.
It basically screws the whole purpose of diplomacy, because the AI will alway turn on you if you share a border (or it sometimes a couple of target cities). Likewise, no matter how honorable I am, the AI is very treacherous. And the AI will NEVER make peace, even when backed into a corner and surrounded. And the new model makes it much harder to raise troops.
Lastly, I got very, very bored facing down Hoplites. They’re tough, yes, but pretty boring to beat. I’ve never lost a battle due to Hoplites, although they inctresed my casualties.
The whoel thing started out being very cool but it becomes honestly painfully tedious after a while. This is not a game, it’s a digital torture chamber.
You are correct on all counts. I’m big on diplomacy and end up controlling a lot more of the map than I could through conventional methods. With that being said, I like the uneasy, tenuous peace you get. It’s not like all these games had every other faction simultaneously turn on you when you got too powerful anyways. I’ve come to expect that paired with mass rebellions when I’m about to beat it. The computer, obviously, cheats.
Update: My crusading king was just killed in an autocalc battle against the Mongols that I didn’t bother personally commanding because they didn’t bring enough troops to scare me.
That’s my next complaint about this game. The autocalc feature punishes you vigorously. I think I’ll pass on the vanilla game for now and give the expansion a try.
I never got the awkward “this doesn’t feel right” sensation in the transition from M:TW to Rome, either. It was all new and exciting and strange, but it was like opening a christmas present and getting something you didn’t even know you wanted. M2 is more like opening a Christmas present that you expect to be a new pellet gun, but finding a case of beanie weenies instead.
I think this game should be remade so it can play on anything from a very basic system to something that only Crysis could run on.
The low version would be a lot like a prettier version of the old Romance of the Three Kingdoms games, with the way that regiments are moved at once by a symbol in battles and the interface and graphics are very simple, yet there’s lots of tweaking you can do in your cities. The middle version would be like the version we know and love. The high version…well, it’d be flippin’ gorgeous and have every single management mode turned on and able to be tweaked in each individual city and castle.
Ideally, it’d almost play like three separate and distinct games.
In my case I just honestly got tired. When I started to require 5 seperate campaigns, each of which required constant reinforcement, and the AI refused to ever consider peace even when it was in its best interest, I was just sick. And I looked at the ptrospect of playing the game for another 100 hours to try and nail down Spain and North Africa an then having to fce off against Egypt…
The first Medieval Total War, I’d own Spain, Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and be threatening Europe (but not at war with anyone) and all at once, I’d have rebellions all over the world simultaneously, the allies all declared war on me, and I was close to bankrupt because of my expenditures. The problem with that is that I own the richest places on the planet. How could I NOT have gobs of gold?
My sympathies. While M:TW wasn’t the worst, I absolutely despise the “random rebels instantly get the best possible technology and upgrades, even if no such facilities exist anywhere in the world” syndrome.
Yeah, that was pretty bad in M1. If present in M2 it’s mitigated by the fact the rebels are so passive and that tech upgrades aren’t worth as much (two words: Varangian Guard.)
2 Theories:
– Mercenaries? They’re around twice as expensive as normal troops to maintain, while in M2, they’re only 1 1/2 if that.
– Garrisonning with anything but peasants when it’s an internal province is also a moneywaster. And calculate if an additional peasant unit will bring you more cash in the form of increased tax capability and put them in if this is so.
I actually ran into that same problem. Thing is, there aren’t many “internal” provinces for most players (especially once you count sea power), and some of the provinces cost more to garrison than they offer in benefits.
If you have a huge empire and you’re exposed to your enemy’s sea attacks, you’re doing it wrong (unless you’re the Byzantines trying for a 20 year win, and people don’t get angry at you that fast.) (That could explain the cash shortage too – lack of fleets which in M1 add to your trade.)
But even so, once you’ve created a fort in the area, you can retreat to the fort if attacked, and then counterattack them. So 1/2 of a field army can serve as the defense for all the territories around it.
If you’re vulnerable to many field armies at once attacking you from the sea, you’re screwed anyway. If they are attacking from land, attack them first. The AI is not aggressive enough to attack consistently, and if you attack on a broad front, they will retreat in most places, and YOU just retreat in the one place where they fortify, since you can see the relative strengths before you commit to your attack. You will be removing your enemy’s source of income while besieging them, and your counterattacks will de-siege your own provinces, which will be better coordinated than the enemys weak counter-attacks.
I had no idea fleets add to trade. Where is this stated?
Second, I’ve been having trouble with the Byzantines attacking a heavily guarded city… with over 3000 men. Oh, I kicked their butts back up the Caucausus into Crimea and the steppe, and since Hungary and Poland and Novgorod also have fingers there, I’m pretty sure the support costs for their huge army shoudl blow their budget. The cheating PO’s me.
Am I missing something? I dutifully build all the merchant fleet buildings, and each of those buildings tells me that I’m being rewarded with extra merchant fleets, but it seems like that should be an interactive feature. Are they just sort of there, passively?
And I’ll break out the champagne when I can figure out how to get someone as a vassal. What’s the deal? Never, ever do they accept that, no matter how honorable I am or how many provinces I offer.
Oh, and I’d like it if just once in a while, I could get a ceasefire. Portugal blockades one port for one turn a hundred years ago and leaves, but I can’t trade with Lisbon now because we’re at war. What the hell?
There should be a “lock” feature with gates, like in Age of Empires II. Likewise, some way to control what your towers shoot at.
I seem to remember a vague reference in from the advisor in a “blockade the port” mission that blockading your enemies gets you some cash, but is that just by redirecting neutral trade from the enemy’s port to yours?
It is frustrating when your troops don’t follow orders correctly, but I wonder if this isn’t a realism thing- soldiers do get confused. Likewise, were those charging cavalry a type with the “may charge without orders” feature?
But just so this post isn’t all whining, just this: even on the minimum settings I play on; so pretty!
I’ve seen some of them going out on an apparent trade route after I’ve built the buildings but I also don’t know how to control them.
Yeah, what’s up with that?
I solve this by conquering them
Yup.
I never noticed this either. I just do it to either get the offered reward, or in the case of a lousy reward, to get the next mission which might be a high reward.
For all it’s faults it’s still tied for the best computer game I’ve ever played. If the AI and the “halfway between units/attacking falsely into cover” were fixed it’d be the best.
Shameless shill: you guys should all try Europa Universalis III instead (or as well). No tactical combat and not visually so pretty, but fantastic diplomatic, economic, dynastic, and religious content!
The tactical map in this game sucks cock. I hate the clumsy awkward interface of it. Why did they have to go and make it some big fancy 3D mess instead of sticking to something simple and streamlined? I actually liked the battles in this game but gave up on playing it quickly because of the shitty map interface.
Where is this stated?