Medieval 2: Total War

Are there any "must have" modes for this game?
AI-improvements would be nice too.

 

Third Age: Total War with Real Combat/Recruitment is impressive. The best Tolkien game I've seen since The Last Days for M&B. Playing as the Free Peoples is as hard as it should be, but every faction is awesome in its own way - untrained Elves are better than most elite warriors, Dwarves can reconquer Khazad-Dum and build mithril forges, Gondor is Gondor, Eriador is low-key with light infantry and Dunedain but gets Aragorn and Gandalf to save the day, etc.

 

I've tried many, but I always return to Stainless Steel: top notch job, very few bugs, no crashes (not a single one in my experience), excellent work on textures, slightly improved AI, improved diplomacy AI, but all factions may feel samey. I recommend you play it with the real recruitment/grim's mod which come with the installation.

Search the codex forum, there's an excellent topic on this.

 

Third Age is probably the best mod I've ever seen. I'd be happy to get that much content in an expansion.

 

Strange, I've never had problems with bsod.

While we're on the subject of bsod's and crashes, I liked Deus Lo Vult a lot because of how customizable it is, but the constant crashes really killed it for me. I suggest you try it, some people say it's pretty stable for them.

 

Sicilian Vespers is the codex approved way for MTW2.

 

Damn, you guys made me reinstall the game. Gonna play some SS now, downloading Broken Crescent 2.0 and the Third Age mod.

 

Are there any mods that add any story\plot elements? Any of them allow for Tourneys?

 

I think there are tournaments in SS, but they're just events that happen now and then if I remember correctly, you can either allow them or not and they have a very slight impact on the game.

 

Ok thanks.

While I liked M2TW, I tend to get bored of the micromanagement repetitiveness in real time strategy games. Love the medieval setting though.

Was just curious is there were any mods that might hold my interest. I might try SS.

Opinions on Broken Crescent 2.0? A Crusade mod sounds fun.

 

This, Third Age is shockingly good for a mod and better than some commercial games like Battle for Middle Earth II.

A good minimal balance/AI mod would be Lands to Conquer. The Kingdoms expansion is vital, in my opinion.

 

Broken Crescent is good. Really great setting and atmosphere.

Also, one of my personal favourites is For King Or Country, a mod set in the English Civil War. You can play as Royalists or Parliamentarians, and those are the only two factions available in the mod. Field battles are quite awesome, with there being only pikemen, musketeers and riders with sword and pistol. Very tactical, unit-spam doesn't really work. Cavalry rocks against musketeers and as light skirmishers, pike formations are great to defend against cav, it's all about positioning of your musketeers and maneuvering your pikes. Very enjoyable, especially if you like the period.

 

I loved the idea behind For King Or Country, but I kinda wish the mod creator didn't throw a fit and quit the Total War scene, because it really needed a lot more work.

 

I installed and played LoTR mod and it was quite good. It had, unfortunately, big problems with balancing of factions and units. Trolls and sardaukars ups I meant olokhai are so overpowered it's not even funny. Dwarfs are insanely slow, elvish archers not only own in ranged but also in mellee. Yea, I know that elves in this setting are like this but it's bad for gameplay. Also I had some issues with AI. And the biggest problem: it takes hundreds of turns to get to most interesting units. By this time game is practically over. Not fun to conquer Middle Earth with militia...

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

I ended up going with SS. The LOTR mod looks good, but Im looking more for a real medieval setting. I will probably give Broken Crescent a try as well.

Anyone play the Crusade expansion that comes with the Kingdoms cd? How does it compare to Broken Crescent?

ITs been so long since I played the vanilla M2TW campaign Im not sure what things are part of SS

It does appear enemy AI is much smarter. I was attacking a town and there were small roads in and out and they stayed back in the center of the town making harder for me to surround them. If I recall in the vanilla came they came rushing out from behind the walls.

Seems like some new factions as well. Tempted to play the Templars but they are so tiny probably not a good Idea for a first playthrough.

 

templars in stainless steel are good if you can get rid of the mongols and timurids fast (train a whole bunch of assassins and kill their generals before they can take a city)

alternatively move your whole empire west either by using your diplomats to exchange cities with other powers or by conquest

one of my favourite playthroughs was with kievan rus (in stainless steel 4.1, could be different now)... as soon as the mongols showed up, i loaded four full armies onto ships, razed my cities and took off on a plundering tour of the mediterranean (the treasury never fell below 30k... thanks to egypt) to finally settle where the moors had been

 

Moving a country is probably the most fun thing to do in any TW game. Moving from England to Israel and setting up shop there is a ton of fun.

 

As it is in all total war games. Desert Huscarls!

 

One of the best Rome Total War LPs I've read was one where the Seleucid Empire moved to Britain.

 

I occasionally get troops that have a line that says "No upkeep cost if garrisoned"

Does this happen random or do some troops come like that? It doesn't seem consistent on a certain troop type though.

Also, I see you can make money mining but I dont see a way to do that. Maybe Im not far enough into the game.

 

you get the garrison-for-free thing from certain buildings which need a certain city/fortress size and vary in amount of troops you can feed (only troops that have this ability though)

mining needs a certain size of city/fortress as well but you can send merchants to the mining site even without the mining towers (different regions get different profit from mining)

btw. post some pics

 

Stainless Steel has one really annoying problem: the wait times between turns can be horribly long, especially with all the factions the mod inserts.

 

Thanks Fens, I see the building browsers now show "free upkeep" units slots.

Being that Im still a newb at M2TW a couple of other questions;

1 - Do archers seem underpowered to you? Maybe its the type of archers I have? I have peasant archers and longbowmen.

I had at least 500 longbows firing over walls at a ramming unit and spearmen who were just sitting in the middle of the screen waiting for the door to get taken. My Archers were firing straight into them and I think I might have only killed 15 or 20 of them.

Seems like that many Archers firing into them should have done alot more damage.

2 - In the Stainless Steel campain when the "Early Campaign" I am playing ends is that the whole game or are there more campaigns after that? (Other than late campaign obviously).

Im just wondering how long the game is because I have played about 40 turns playing as England in the early campaign and I have not yet taken Ireland, Scotland or France. Game takes a long time!

I took Edingburg and Antwerp so far from the Scotts and took Dublin but the irish took it back due to my innefective archers.

How long does it take most of you to take out Scotland?

I have a hard time telling how well Im doing as well since factions rankings change based on current activity. (i.e. buying lots of troops lowers your finance stat that turn)

Ill will try and post some pics tonight when at home.

 

you firing at a shitty angle not gonna do shit that way

 

they're not just underpowered but were buggy in the versions of stainless steel i played. some just stand around instead of firing, especially when manning the walls.
if you can get crossbowmen, get those instead. they can't use fire arrows/bolts but dish out a bit more damage.

for unit roster spoilers go here: http://totalwar.honga.net/faction.php?v=ss6

once you're through with one faction, you can try another one. some are only available in the late campaign and their campaign goals vary as well.

you can look up how many turns you've played and how many you've left by clicking the faction button in the lower right part of the campaign map screen.

never mind the ranking. you can find out about the amount of provinces other factions control by sending them a diplomat and looking at the exchangeable provinces listed. the AI cheats though so you can expect the opponents to have armies they shouldn't be able to afford.

just get enough cardinals to control the pope... makes it easier to ask for crusades against your enemies (=everybody).