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Rob Zacny

Episode 390: Medieval II: Total War

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Three Moves Ahead 390:

Three Moves Ahead 390


Medieval II: Total War
Rob, Fraser, and Troy "No One Expects the Canadian Inquisition" Goodfellow return to the Total War series in a Patreon-patron chosen topic. Medieval II was far and away the most voted-for game in our options of the "middle" Total War games, and this week we return to what made the game so special. Was it the flavorful peasant models? The interesting DLC? The active modding scene? The galloping Scots? Find out as we blast back to 2006.

Medieval II: Total War, the rest of the Total War Series

 

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Great and rutheless episode.

 

Attila is still the only real Total War game I could get into. But I remember Rome having all those... traits. Creating characters. Context dependent. Character who fought Greeks could become Greek hater or Greek lover. Governor of a city with Academy could become interested in philosophy. The ones without a job became drunkards or deviants. Still remember some characters.

 

No game since had captured this feeling of characters. Not even Crusader Kings where characters feel just too random, formulaic and at the same time parameters do not seem to affect that much. Maybe EU Rome had some of that with real personal ambitions. And it seems Medieval 2 has it. Maybe worth a try.

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Ah, the one Total War game headlined by the -- at the time -- Australian (Brisbane) arm of The Creative Assembly. The off-shoot CA studio are also credited with supporting The Creative Assembly (UK) in developing Rome: Total War prior to Medieval 2: Total War. While perhaps overshadowed commercially and in the mainstream by RTW -- fair enough given RTW was not only a good game but also spawned side-media like the BBC's Time Commanders and the History Channel's Decisive Battles -- it is still considered by many in the Total War community to be the pinnacle of the series in several aspects. Certainly, the Kingdoms expansion is still to this day considered one of the best ever Total War expansion packs due to amount of good quality content delivered, over four different theatres of war, at the usual expansion pack price range.

 

Interestingly, M2TW also graphically modeled the various armour and weapon upgrades you could give to units in both singleplayer and multiplayer. You can usually visually tell apart Levy Spearmen that have received the leather armour upgrade from an armourer from those Levy Spearmen that haven't received any armour upgrades so far. So not only did M2TW improve graphically upon RTW by introducing model variety within units to decrease the cookie cutter appearance of individual combatants within units but it also improved upon RTW by visually showcasing what weapon and armour upgrades a unit have received, if any.

 

It is difficult to pinpoint what makes M2TW so special when there are so many factors but the vibrant modding scene has definitely helped significantly lengthen M2TW's lifespan, and with the Europa Barbarorum II mod -- sequel to one of RTW's most popular historical mods -- the game can even cover antiquity these days among many other historical and fantasy periods. Plus just when you thinking the ceiling for what is possible has been reached sometimes someone in the mod community shatters it and opens up an even deeper realm of possibilities; which isn't bad considering some of the hardcoded limitations and the age of both M2TW and the underlying engine. To this day it is still one of the easiest Total War games to get into when it comes to modding, and certainly one of the most open in terms of what you can set out to try and achieve.

 

Been a long day so I might come back at a later time to contribute some more points of discussion, appreciate the episode and M2TW is up there with Shogun 2: Total War as one of my favourite and most played games of the Total War series. Hoping that one day CA can revisit Empire: Total War in a sequel to rewrite the wrongs of the original because behind all of its technical flaws there is both the setting, premise and design elements for a great game in there.

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- I think that among the agents, the worst one was the merchant, because, his whole concept was about taking him far away as possible to generate extra income, since the total was based on distance. Most of time, they either died of age or by murder along the way, even if they manage, at best you would get a few turn before someone murder him.

 

- Kind like Medieval 1, 2 still suffer from a "issue", where, since most of your high level unit where draw from the most populated provinces which often also where you most far away ones, you need to move them to the front in order to use them, and move them back if you need to retrain them, this often made newer units "awesome, but impractical", which was kind "realistic" but also meant a lot of busy work, moving units back and forth, specially in Medieval 1, where you move a single province in each turn (also let´s not forget, I think that in Medieval 1 you can only train/retrain a single unit per turn, maybe more in 2) this was kind bad. Medieval 2 on the other hand, made this a bit easier, since the move range was very long. But another result was that most time you keep using the same units, the early ones, over and over again, since they are much easier to replace and retrain, at least that as good part of my experience, playing it as Milan, using the same Italian spearman and crossbowman over and over again.

 

- One thing I do remember is that most of early game was just facing the rebels repeated times, since each battle follow the same pattern, siege -> wait until the sally forth (which they always did) -> battle-> repeat, until you finally came across another faction. But once that happen, things do get better, except the diplomacy was bit broken, and the AI would almost attack you at random.

 

- Another fun thing I remember is that you could trade provinces, which was often all sources of abuse by the player - myself included, I often hold Jerusalem, just until the Timurids show up, when that happen if I felt I could not hold it, I simple give it away to some faction I didn´t like.

 

- Talking about Timurids, and the late game feeling like a Renascence warfare, I do remember defending Jerusalem with armies most formed of Pikeman and Crossbowman with some bombards (but no other fire arms), since it was all I could recruit there, this battle did that did felt like that.

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Good episode.

 

One thing I would be interested in is a discussion of how realistic the battle model is. Obviously, no fun/commercial game is going to be all that realistic, but what do we think of M2TW? I ask, as I've recently returned to the old King Arthur game which is quite similar to M2TW in many ways. An interesting quirk of that game is that archers appear to be incredibly powerful, so much so that there is a toggle in the games options to weaken them. It got me thinking about these things should be balanced.

 

 

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On 4/10/2017 at 6:53 AM, riadsala said:

Good episode.

 

One thing I would be interested in is a discussion of how realistic the battle model is. Obviously, no fun/commercial game is going to be all that realistic, but what do we think of M2TW? I ask, as I've recently returned to the old King Arthur game which is quite similar to M2TW in many ways. An interesting quirk of that game is that archers appear to be incredibly powerful, so much so that there is a toggle in the games options to weaken them. It got me thinking about these things should be balanced.

 

 

Of course archery is powerful, why else would England put so much effort to mandating longbow practice?

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On 24/04/2017 at 3:27 AM, 04048 said:

Of course archery is powerful, why else would England put so much effort to mandating longbow practice?

 

 

I never said it wasn't, or shouldn't be. I just said I was wondering what systems people thought were more accurate reflections of how we think things worked.

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After listening to this I went back and listened to the old Empire: Total War show (episode 3!) with Troy, Tom and Bruce (most notable for the coining of the term 'Chick Parabola' by Bruce that was much snappier than Tom's original name, the 'Bell-Curve of Fondness'). It's interesting how a lot of discussion in the show back then was about whether CA had been able to successfully marry the turn-based strategic layer with the real time battles, and whether the meta game imbued the battles with enough context to make them meaningful. Like Tom said in that show, why am I playing a crappy strategic game when I could just go and play Civ4 or EU3 (or Dominions 3 as Bruce suggests)? 

 

Since that time, CA have iterated over and over and done a lot of work on the strategic layer (especially with Attila and Total Warhammer) - indeed so much so that not only is this question not raised any more - but even with this retrospective - it's kind of glossed over that it was ever an issue. That's not a criticism of the show, but its always fascinating how the current state of affairs colours our view of the past.

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On 4/26/2017 at 3:06 PM, riadsala said:

I never said it wasn't, or shouldn't be. I just said I was wondering what systems people thought were more accurate reflections of how we think things worked.

That I don't know, and I was being a snarky doofus in my last post. Apologies if any offense was taken. 

 

Back on topic, I think that a lot of games don't really get into how effective mass arrow-fire can be after the history of roleplaying games nerfing ranged weapons.

After all, having melee troops is pointless if you don't have a way to get the into melee before being killed by projectiles. 

Perhaps the fire-arrows in M2TW are overpowered and weren't as historically-important as they are in the game, but their overpowered nature probably derives in part from the player's inability to tell their shield-carrying troops to "hold their damn shields over their damn heads" while advancing under fire.  

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On 7/9/2017 at 8:50 AM, preciousgollum said:

One word on the reason for a shift in the way that generals were treated in future Total Wars after Medieval II:

 

Multiplayer.

 

Why? What stops you from having single-player generals the way they were before? At least in Shogun 2 MP had big differences from SP and it was ok.

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Late to the party, but still why not!

The guys give the princesses a hard time during this show....because I think they dont know what princesses are for.

Princesses have one function imo - making babies; sending them off across the map as diplomats is a waste.

Merchants also are useful and dont have to go to the ends of the earth to pay their way. A merchant can reach a decent resource within 4 or 5 turns and reimburse his hiring cost in another 4 or 5 turns. Not a gold mine in the early game, but a steady earner. Later when you can get them to remote resources it gets better.

Rebels are fodder for training up spies and young generals. Before sending in the general to remove them I usually have a novice spy gain some ranks by spying on them them for a a few turns.

Overall a good show - as usual; thanks

 

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