Anyone else playing the expansion pack for Medieval II Total War yet? I’m surprised there isn’t a thread about it yet.
So far, I have only played the “Britannia” campaign. It is somewhat similar to the Vikings expansion pack for the first Medieval. An important difference is that the provinces are much smaller than in the regular Medieval II or Vikings, so it takes a lot longer to conquer. The difficulty also seems to be ramped up. For example, I usually play Medieval II on medium difficulty. I got my ass royally kicked on easy with Kingdoms, even though I was playing one of the “easier” factions.
I haven’t had any bugs or problems with the expansion pack, but now Med II won’t open. I’m still working on getting that fixed.
Yep, difficulty’s been ramped up. The other thing I noticed straight away was the merchants get you loads more money, especially when they move up in skill.
LOUNE, I am highly disappointed in you
Although I do want to thank you for posting that bit in another MTWII thread about trading maps for provinces - I could never figure out how to get someone to trade a province before, but that strategy works wonderfully! Revenant - the increase in income from merchants seems to really help. I was having a hard time financially until I realized how much more useful merchants were.
looks down sadly, stuffs his hands in his pockets and kicks an errant pebble
Shucks…
You’re rather welcome. I’ve traditionally been pretty good about digging up weaknesses in AI or developing a good strategy in these types of games. I don’t wanna talk about Europa Universalis III. Let’s pretend that didn’t happen, mmmkay?
I figured they HAD to do something with the merchants. Those are the most useless invention ever.
Yeah… Merchants in the non-expansion take up waaaaaaay too much time for the payback in money. I always end up getting bored and planting mine in some out-of-the-way resource and letting them sit, because it’s too much work to keep replacing them every two turns. I loved the Moors because the Timbuktu area was so isolated that your merchants never had competition and the resources were so valuable.
I just beat the Britannia campaign and I’m rather impressed with how much more aggressive they’ve made the AI. I played the England faction and was driven off of Ireland pretty early. Merchants are much more useful now thankfully and ended up pumping them out constantly it really helped to make money to fuel the war machine. Sadly in the end though I didn’t really feel like enough changed hopefully some of the other campaigns will be more like the other Xpacks that offer different play styles.
Got it the day it came out (didn’t notice this thread, but then I haven’t been on the board as much lately). First game is playing Scotland. Been a blast. Except when I randomly got William Wallace with a huge army. Problem was it drove my economy into negative numbers until I managed to finish off the Irish (by simply shipping Wallace’s butt over to Ireland and wreaking havoc with my Irish cousins).
I’ve nearly completed the conquest of England (I’ve already won the game…just want to finish the bastards off). Going to try the German campaign next.
Love the expansion so far. Definitely a must have for TW fans…especially until they finally finish the Total Realism expansion for Medieval II!
