Be Excellent To Each Other

Demo out now on Steam. It looks amazing, especially the new naval battles. I'm not sure if it plays amazing yet.

Any other fans of the series here? I've been playing since Shogun (the most beautiful game ever in terms of overall design), but Medieval was my favourite iteration of the series. It was summed up by one occasion on which a general I'd made Prince of Antioch became dissipated and corrupt. I stripped him of his title and he became disloyal, which was a threat as he was in command of a large army. So I sent him with a small expeditionary force to conquer Cyprus from the Byzantines in the hope that he'd die in the attempt, and he did.

I thought Shogun amazing, especially once it had been refined with the Mongul Invasion. I loved Rome as well, but could never really finish a game. The Total Realism Mod was pretty awesome though. Then I tried out Medieval TW2, and though I very much liked it at first, I began to weary of the sheer size of the game and the fact that once you had begun to steamroller, there wasn't much point to taking over the world. I found the AI too weak at both campaign and battle level.

Rather than declare that you should take over the world, I think a better more interesting idea is to set yourself a target of countries to take over to set yourself up as a new super-power, and then try to maintain them against threats both common and domestic. A more inventive AI would make for a more realistic, gripping, shorter game. Then there'd always be the conquer the world option for those with lots of spare time.

I think that's why I preferred Shogun, as I love sengoku jidai and Kurosawa hi-jinks, and I liked the Risk style board, the elegent limited number of units and the atmosphere.

HOWEVER, the Napoleonic era is my favourite era of history, and the British Royal Navy of the time my favourite historical setting above all. I absolutely adore the age of sail, Master & Commander and all that, so I can't wait to play it. They've promised a complete overhaul of how the AI works as well, promising a more cunning opponent. But then, they've promised that before. All the same, the setting means it's a must buy for me.

Rather tragic then that I can't, as my computer won't run it. I'm set on buying a new one in summer though so I can play this, hopefully with a deal similar to Mr Coffey's! Let me know how the demo plays and all that. I am unspeakably jealous.

Count of Six, do you mean to say that you've played it yet? Not sure what you meant. I certainly hope it plays amazing!

Yeah, I've played it briefly. Got through the tutorials (naval one looked beautiful but handling will take some getting used to) and had a crack at the demo land battles. They picked a strange one, the Battle of Brandywine Creek. It's a pain-in-the-ass bridge-fording effort with nary a green field in site. I got some serious stuttering despite my new, fairly top-of-the-range rig but that might have been due to having Bioshock and a million tabs open. Gonna have another go now.

I think you'll love it if the demo and previews are any guide, although it's immediately pre-Napoleonic (it's an open secret that the first expansion will take it into the age of Napoleon.) Also, there are very diverse victory conditions aside from world domination. And it's hard to overestimate just how sumptuous the naval combat looks. I'll grab some screenshots in a bit.

The first Medieval was my favourite game in the series. In my first campaign game, I was playing as Turkey and having spent 150 years or so subduing the Egyptians I was just turning avaricious eyes toward Byzantium when without the slightest warning 35,000 hairy-arsed Mongols suddenly bowled up into my Easternmost provinces.

One of my all-time most memorable gaming moments, in a game that was full of them.

Another time, I had an enormous enemy force turn up to beseige a fairly far-flung corner of my empire that had only a scratch garrison. Before I could ferry an army in relief, they stormed my fort - twelve hundred attackers faced with little more than 300 defenders. THey'd already breached the wall so all I could do was stuff the gap with my understrength spear units, back them up with the peasant levies, stick my handful of bowmen and ballistas on the higher ground inside the fort and hope for the best. The enemy forces were whittled down slightly by arrowfire from the ramparts as they picked their way slowly around the castle from their starting position, but nothing close to enough and they easily brushed aside the poor-quality infantry standing in their way. With the ammunition for my missile units close to exhausted, the only defence I had left was the garrision commander and his bodyguard, about a dozen heavily-armoured knights. They came thundering down the slope from the keep and smashed into the enemy holding the breech, routing them almost instantly. Rather than chase the fleeing foes, I pulled the knights back up to their starting position, ready to make another charge when the next attacking unit arrived. These enemies were stronger, fresher and hadn't been bloodied so the fight was longer and more gruelling, but once again the knights saw them off and once again the surviving horsement trudged back up the hill to make another charge. And another. And another. And another. And another.

Twenty minutes later, two thirds of the attacking troops were dead, the rest had fled and three exhausted knights were left standing in a breech choked with the bodies of the fallen, the sole, victorious survivors of the castle's garrison.


"Come on then! Who the fuck wants some?"

Yeah, a bit like that, in fact. I was so unbelievably, stupidly proud of my little guys it's frankly embarassing.

So yeah. Best game series ever. I got a new PC 2 months ago, and Empire was one of the reasons why.

This sums up Mediaeval pretty well, frankly (as does "I'm Vikings!", but that's possibly a tad too in-jokey). I've been playing one campaign on it for over two years now on my '98 PC (on and off, obviously - I only have one monitor, so only get the old '98 out every couple of months, if that), taking over Europe with my Viking hordes. The way you can get sucked in an identiy with your lads is fantastic, and though the AI could do with improvement, it's full of surprises and possibilities.

In my game, through a combination of cunning and luck, I'd disturbed the balance of power so much that the mongol hordes turned up on one turn, and were utterly obliterated in the next by the Egyptians, who then decided to go to war with me (along with almost eveyone else on the map) despite my genuinely peaceful inentions - I was happy with them having Africa and the East, and my having Scandinavia (apart from Finland) and the West, and everyone else being a convenient buffer in and around the balkans while we improved our farming and mining. But no, not content with merely sending a constant stream of (failed) assassins and failed (assassinated) preachers, they had to declare war and try it on. Well, fuck them and their tens of thousands of soldiers. I threw a few bajillion soldiers at two geographically crucial regions thanks to my overwhelming ocean superiority (and four hundred-odd Vikings, Irish, Scots, and Spanish light cavalry defending a thousand crossbowmen on a hill from the entire population of northern Africa), and now all they can do is shuffle three enormous armies around their forty under-defended territories as I pretend to build up on a different border every few years, and wait for their inevitable civil war.

And this isn't even counting the lone Lord whose army ran from the ridiculously overpowered French resurgency (seriously, how is it that a region capable of producing barely a peasant even before I invaded and trashed the place can suddenly produce several thousand units that are more advanced than anything on the continent, and would cost more to maintain than the whole country could afford if they won, anyway?), who decided to fight on alone, killing well over two hundred knights and infantry singlehandedly before some tosser with a crossbow showed up and spoiled the fun. I nearly wept, truly.

I am looking forward to Empire. I've not looked forward to a new game for years, but I may even upgrade my PC for it - I'm getting a video card anyway, and a new hard drive would be wise just for emergency use anyway. It's a fascinating era with a unique mix of swords and gunpowder, and if they pull it off well it'll be career-threateningly fun.

Impressions from demo - Empire: Total War? Empire: Total Loading, more like.

It looks like we're reaching the stage where a 32bit OS will not cut it.

Well this thread has persuaded me to part with £19.99 for the Medieval: Total War II pack from steam. So that's something.

Gosh, and it might be downloaded a week on Wednesday. *grumble*

Bit of mano-a-mano at Brandywine Creek

Uh... it was the first one we were talking about. The second one is reportedly ... less good.

I hate you all.

I had a good time with Medieval II. It didn't grab me to the same extent that the first one did, but I think that was an accident of timing mor than anything else. Getting a mod that slows down the pace of combat is a must, though, much as it was for RTW. Otherwise units are decimated and routed in what feels like seconds and a lot of tactical subtlety goes out the window.