Lords of the Realm package available at GOG (also, a question about the Siege Pack)

[Martok]

In what I almost have to consider an omen (in light of my thread (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=120090) I started yesterday), Good Old Games has released Lords of the Realm: Royal Edition (http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/lords_of_the_realm_royal_edition/) for $5.99. It's the first two LotR games plus the Siege Pack expansion for LotR2.


Now my question is this: Has anyone here played Lords of the Realm II with the Siege Pack expansion? And if so, is it worth getting, even if I already have the original game?

[Mailman653]

I have the game in CD form, its quite fun. If I recall correctly the siege pack adds several new maps, including *I think* maps of England, France and the whole world.

[Ramses II CP]

I remember these games. They were awesome in their day, too bad about what happened to this franchise after 2. The Siege Pack also adds some interesting new castle designs for you to defend. I enjoyed playing with it, but (And this is really a bit speculative, it's been 3+ years since I played) I believe there were bugs with some of them that were never fixed and caused some strange AI behavior. Not crash bugs, just odd things the AI would do that made them always lose or look stupid.

Oh man, I remember some epic motte & bailey defenses in my day. Huddling up with oil on the walls, holding the gates packed shoulder to shoulder with archers. Fun stuff, if perhaps a bit exploitative.

:egypt:

[Mailman653]

Has anyone played LOTR 3? I read that it isn't that great.

[Ramses II CP]

Has anyone played LOTR 3? I read that it isn't that great.

It's unfinished, broken, and just about as bad as gaming gets IMHO. The developers didn't have the money or the time to do the game right so they tried to cash in on the name with a hacked up bit of garbage. It's almost, but not quite, as bad as the Myth III debacle.

Do not spend money on it.

:egypt:

[frogbeastegg]

I've played it. I had the CD based Royal Edition of the game, which came with the siege pack. Unfortunately I can't help much; I got the game long after release and it never worked happily on my PC. Crashes galore. AFAIK the changes were purely on the battlemap side. New castles, some historical castles, maybe a few new units. If you're not fond of this side of the game it probably isn't worth it unless you have problems running your original version or want a version without a disc check.

I was pleased to see this go up on GoG; means I shall finally be able to experience this legendary game.

[Martok]

After I discovered I couldn't (re)install my CD of the original LotR2, I went ahead and purchased the Royal Edition a few hours ago. Long story short....I've only just now stopped playing. ~D

The game seems to run just fine on my PC. (I have XP Home Edition with modest hardware, nothing fancy.) I did get a CTD/error message when I tried to launch the game right after the installation was completed, but otherwise no problems so far. [*knocks on wood*]

I can't really say a whole lot about the Siege Pack yet. Having played a couple custom battles, my impression is that they aren't anything special, but they're all right. In terms of setup options, they're actually quite a bit like the custom battles in STW/MTW, which was nice -- the pre-battle menu is pretty intuitive and straightforward.


That's really all I can think of to say at the moment. Since I've always enjoyed the core game, it would be redundant for me to praise it further at this point. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go take a key border county from my good friend the Bishop. ~;)

[frogbeastegg]

I purchased mine and am waiting for it to download.

Has anyone played Lords of Magic? Supposedly it's the fantasy semi-sequel to Lords of the Realm. Only GoG have that for $5.99 as well ...

[Mailman653]

I love Lords of Magic SE! It's one of my favorite fantasy games, its not too complicated but not too simple to get you bored easily. I think an Ex has my copy.....

[frogbeastegg]

Lords of the Realm 3 has been added to GoG for $5.99.

[Ramses II CP]

Lords of the Realm 3 has been added to GoG for $5.99.

...but you shouldn't buy it or play it even if they offered you $5.99 for it.

:egypt:

[Husar]

...but you shouldn't buy it or play it even if they offered you $5.99 for it.

:egypt:

And I just thought it looks a bit nicer, then wondered why I hardly ever heard about it? Is it that bad and why?

[Ramses II CP]

And I just thought it looks a bit nicer, then wondered why I hardly ever heard about it? Is it that bad and why?

It's genuinely broken, and the last I heard most of the development staff was fired before they could release a single patch. It's possible some patching has been done since, but the game was rushed out to meet a deadline in the first place and it simply isn't worth playing.

All IMHO of course.

:egypt:

[aimlesswanderer]

LoTR 3 is a horrendously bad game, completely sheet graphics, dodgy gameplay, and absolutely no depth. I am completely astounded that anyone could be stupid enough to release it and think that people would buy it. One of the worst games I have played. A truly sad way to end a great franchise.

The first 2 games were fantastic, I still get out LoTR II every now and again.

[frogbeastegg]

:gring: I thought posting that bit of news would bring some life to the thread.

Now, tips for a LotRII newbie? All I have done so far is read the manual and feel nostalgic about the days when games had good documentation.

Also, is there any reason to play the original LotR if you have LotRII?

[Ramses II CP]

Hmm, tips. Okay, let's see what I remember;

1. The battle AI is, err, bad. If you really, really need to win you can probably figure out a way to exploit the AI to make it happen.

2. At the very start cattle are better than grain, but very quickly as you develop grain clearly becomes much, much better than cows. Even with bad years and famines and the like. I generally kept at most 1-2 fields for livestock and set all the rest for grain.

3. The speed advantage of macemen is deceptively powerful in field battles and offensive sieges, but almost useless in defensive sieges. Archers behind swordsmen work best there.

4. A motte&bailey can be more easily defended than a Norman Keep and is much, much cheaper. You'll figure out why after you try it a few times. AI M&Bs are fairly easy to capture, however, so don't fear them.

5. I remember using grain as a sort of 'bank' for gold somehow in trading with merchants, having to do with the purchase price vs the number of turns investment required to make a profit, but I don't remember the details. You can probably figure it out if you're interested in the math.

6. I also found it profitable never to let my people get to 100% happiness, but to keep them just happy enough that there was immigration from neighboring regions.

7. The AI has no answer for you sending numerous small forces (Defeated remnants, splits, etc.) to prosecute slash and burn tactics against his counties. Try it once for fun, but don't over indulge or you'll get bored.

8. Don't neglect your ability to micro work details to finish on exact turns. It can make a huge difference in finishing your repairs on time, or getting fields back into action after a loss.

9. Defending choke points become unecessary after you reach the motte&bailey. Let the AI come to your castle, as long as their line of march doesn't cross any fields, and keep your field armies on the offensive.

10. Alliances with the AI aren't worth the effort required to maintain them unless you're surrounded and outnumbered very badly.

Any specific questions? I really haven't played in awhile (At least 3 years), but I have a definite fondness for the games. I'm not sure if there was any advantage to #1, but I'd say there is plenty of gameplay hours in #2 to keep you busy if you like the game.

:egypt:

[Martok]

Ugh. LotR3 being all real-time would probably be reason enough for me to not want to get it, never mind all the other things wrong with the game. But I digress....



Now, tips for a LotRII newbie? All I have done so far is read the manual and feel nostalgic about the days when games had good documentation.
I concur with most of Ramses' advice, so I'll try to simply add to it while (hopefully) avoiding duplication/redundancy:


1.) Unless you feel you truly, absolutely can't afford it, drop your taxes to 0% the first few turns (seasons) until your home province's happiness is in the 90's. The same applies to counties after you've initially conquered them.

1a.) Personally, I like to keep happiness at 100% as much as possible. Ramses is probably right in that it's not necessary, but I find it's a lot simpler in the long run, and is that much less micromanagement to worry about. Once happiness reaches 100%, you can increase taxes to 7% and just let it sit there unless & until circumstances dictate otherwise.

3.) Unless the situation is truly dire, you should limit drafting your counties' population into your armies no more than once a year. Do so more often, and happiness will plummet rather drastically.

3a.) When you do draft men out of the population and into your army, try to do so in summer or autumn. I personally usually draft my armies in the autumn, as a lot of your people tend to die off the following winter, and reducing your population via army during the prior autumn seems to significantly reduce the overall percentage of "civilians" who die in wintertime. On the other hand, you nearly always get your biggest population boost in summer, so there's an advantage there as well.

4.) Mercenaries are more expensive in terms of both initial hiring costs and wages, but they're also stronger than your regular army troops. They're generally most worth worth hiring when you know you'll be going to battle in the next turn or two; their upkeep is generally too pricey to justify keeping around long-term.

5.) For castle garrisons, I find that the following ratio generally works pretty well: 10-20% pikes and/or swordsmen, 20-25% crossbows, and archers for the remainder (55-70%). Pikes & swordsmen are ideal for plugging any breaches in/on your walls, crossbows are best at taking out heavy units (knights, swordsmen, & siege weapons), and archers will kill pretty much everything else.

6.) In the early game, iron is generally more valuable than stone, as you'll need iron for weapons more than you will stone for castles. Henceforth, you'll want 2 out of your first 3 (or maybe 3 out of 4) counties to have iron mines as opposed to rock quarries (at least ideally, although admittedly this may not always be practically possible). Once you've conquered 5 or more counties, however, acquiring stone becomes much more important -- as you'll want to upgrade to stronger (and stone-heavy) castles -- and you'll subsequently want to bring your iron/rock counties closer to a 1:1 ratio.

7.) The merchants are your friends, as you can purchase and/or sell pretty much anything from/to them. However, I've never been able to predict when they'll stop in one's territory. So be sure to whatever business you feel might need to be done while they're in town, because it could be a while before you seen one again!

8.) The Countess and the Baron will usually be your most dangerous opponents. They're the best at developing their counties & economies, and subsequently usually have the most dangerous armies (as they can afford more and better-equipped troops).

9.) Once you've constructed a M&B in your county, don't bother upgrading again until you have sufficient wood & stone for a full Royal Castle. The other castle upgrades aren't really worth it IMHO.

10.) If at all possible, try and purchase grain from a merchant your first year and then plant at least a field or two that next winter. This will allow you to start stockpiling grain early, which can be crucial to success (and occasionally even survival).

11.) Save your game at least once every winter!!! You can be hit with all sorts of random events -- some good, some bad -- but far and away the worst of these is the Black Plague, and it always strikes in the spring-time. (You'll need to check every county too, to see if you were hit with it.) I'm not a big fan of the whole save-and-reload thing, but the Plague is such a pain to deal with that there are times when I'll cheerfully reload my previous winter turn simply to avoid the bloody thing.



....Wow. I didn't anticipate being that long-winded. Um, yeah. :oops:

Well like Ramses said, if you have questions about anything specific, just let us know!

[Mailman653]

I always cheated in that game :laugh4: I would give AI the biggest castles and most funds too.

[frogbeastegg]

Hmm, thanks. I've given the game a go and it's a little hard to tell what I should be aiming to do in those early turns - other than the advice that's been given.

How do I tell when I'm strong enough to conquer an enemy territory? My first bid at expansion saw my nice little army of swordsmen and archers got beaten to a pulp by a crazed mob of peasants.

For that matter, how soon should I expect to expand?

How urgent is it to raise an army and upgrade my starting castle to a motte and bailey?

What kind of body numbers should I aim for when raising an army? Same question for a garrison. I have already found out that anything under 200 is likely to get pulped by a simple peasant village; I don't want to go too far the other way and end up with overkill everywhere.

How good is the auto-calc on the battles? I've played one and I don't think I can tolerate many more - I found them rather poor back when I first tried the game, years ago. Nowadays :shudder:

Is there any reason why I shouldn't set every single field and resource into action on turn 1? E.g. does it take time to breed enough cattle to run loads of dairy fields?

I guess all resources are displayed on the campaign map at the start, so if there's no stone quarry (or whatever) in my province on turn 1 then there will never be one.

I chose campaign and got dropped in on a small 4 county map with regions named after paint shades. I thought there was an England map; how do I play on that and what other map types are there?

Roughly how long does a campaign take anyway? Should I expect to sink an evening into it or a week, or more?



Heh. My dabble this evening brought back some memories of the first, brief, time I played. The soldiers marching along to collect their weapons, the village screen with the drag and drop peasants, the merchant's screen. And, of course, that intro. I used to dream of the day when games would have in-game graphics as good as these opening cinematics :laugh4:

Wow, this game's age shows in the strangest of places. The graphics and interface all pass well enough, but there's no way to adjust the various audio volumes. On or off, that's the lot. A pain; the music is somewhat too loud.

[aimlesswanderer]

I'd concur with suggestions above.

If you find that the county you want to conquer is too populous, you can burn the villages on the campaign map. Check to see how many there are and it will give you a rough idea how many people there are. From memory, 1 house = 400 people, and the most I ever got in one county was a bit over 2,400 and 6 houses.

My priority at the start was to get enough food (and field fertility) to feed my people, then start exploiting the resources and getting weapons. A starting county without an ironworks is a big disadvantage, so make sure to save so that you can buy lots from the merchant, and consider making weapons with minimum iron.

In my armies I went for quality over quantity, so generally used swords for attacks when I was starting out. You normally don't want to conscript too many of your people, so make sure they are armed well.

Cows are good in that they take a fairly constant, medium level of work to maintain, so you can have a constant proportion of your people going other things and getting more efficient at them. Wheat is much more seasonal, but you can feed a larger population with it.

Keep an eye on the field fertility ratings in each county, and for wheat try and use only 2 out of 3, or fertility drops off. From memory, if you have 14 fields you can use 10 for wheat and not suffer a fertility drop.

I remember having a few very strange battles in half finished castles, I tried to avoid that!

Try and go for counties with more fields, some have only a few and are consequently far less valuable than one with 14.

I liked to keep happiness about 100, then I could set the tax rate at 7% and could conscript with less problems.

Keep in mind that the county your conquer may not have enough food production and or storage, so try and either attack when there is a merchant in town or if you have surplus nearby that you can send over.

From memory, enemy armies in your territory ate your food, but yours in a castle did not! Can't remember about your army in your land.

M&B castles are great, as the AI has serious difficulty attacking them. Wait for enough stone for a stone castle.

I rarely burned crops, as that makes a much harder job to get it back on its feet once you've taken it. But if you are desperate, then by all means, but they might do it to you too.

If you have lots of surplus in a resource and need money, sell it.

I must say that I missed being able to design your own castle as you could in LoTR I, but ours tended to be massive, and required so much labour and resources that they were only feasible when we had just about won!

I think I will reinstall it now and play it for a while!

[Martok]

Hmm, thanks. I've given the game a go and it's a little hard to tell what I should be aiming to do in those early turns - other than the advice that's been given.
Generally, you want to develop and built up your home county to a reasonable level before you go a-conquering. This includes (but is not limited to):

1.) Maxing out your farms. Whether you grow grain, cattle, or a combination of both, it's generally a good idea to have all your farm fields producing something. (For cattle, you want an average of around 20 animals per field.) Likewise, if you start with any barren fields, one of your first priorities should be to reclaim them as soon as is reasonably possible.

2.) Building a castle (and garrisoning it). Ideally, a Mott & Bailey with a full 200-man garrison is what you want before you begin expanding. While strictly speaking, building a castle first is only truly necessary if your home county starts out bordering that of another noble, it's still a good idea to at least construct a simple Wooden Palisade if nothing else. Aside from the obvious advantages to defense, a castle also increases your income significantly.

3.) Population. Personally, I usually start drafting troops once I'm over 1600 people, and try very hard to keep my population under 2000. If I allow the population to get much bigger than that, they start eating food faster than I can produce it (particularly if I'm still growing mostly cattle). On the flip side, if I draft troops *before* I get to 1600 people, I often end up with an insufficient labor pool for my regular needs (agriculture & industry).

4.) Weapons stockpiling. Try and make sure you have enough weapons to equip all (or at least most) of the people you're drafting into your army. If you can't produce enough weapons yourself, there's no shame in purchasing additional weapons from a merchant. (Tip: If you must do this, purchase only maces, pikes, and bows, as they're much cheaper. Manufacture swords, crossbows, and knights' mail yourself.)



Now onto your specific questions:



How do I tell when I'm strong enough to conquer an enemy territory? My first bid at expansion saw my nice little army of swordsmen and archers got beaten to a pulp by a crazed mob of peasants.

What kind of body numbers should I aim for when raising an army? Same question for a garrison. I have already found out that anything under 200 is likely to get pulped by a simple peasant village; I don't want to go too far the other way and end up with overkill everywhere.
It depends: Typically, I need around 300-400 troops to conquer a neutral county (especially if I still want to have an army left over to defend my new possession). For attacking a county held by one of my rival nobles, I usually end up wanting around 500-800 troops, particularly if the county has a garrisoned castle. If the county has a Stone or Royal Castle, I recommend bringing 1000-1200 men for the job.

Note: This assumes you have a reasonably balanced force, and are *not* employing large numbers of peasants in your army. The only time you should ever employ peasants in large numbers is for assaulting a castle, as they simultaneously serve as moat-diggers and arrow fodder.



For that matter, how soon should I expect to expand?
Since generally speaking, the smart thing to do is build up your home county first, it'll likely be at least a couple of years before you should look at adding territory. I'd say anywhere between 10 and 20 turns, depending on how aggressive/careful you are.



How urgent is it to raise an army and upgrade my starting castle to a motte and bailey?
As I noted earlier, it's partially dependent on whether or not your home county borders a county owned by another noble. Your adversaries are generally pretty quick to pounce on any perceived weaknesses, and a fully developed county without an army and/or castle to protect it is often too tempting a target for them to pass up. In that case, it's usually best to first build a M&B (and bestow it with a full 200-man garrison) before you hare off on foreign adventures.

If your home county is surrounded by neutral counties, however, then building a castle is a less urgent matter. In those cases, it's usually okay to raise armies to take those neutral counties first, and *then* go back and build castles.



How good is the auto-calc on the battles? I've played one and I don't think I can tolerate many more - I found them rather poor back when I first tried the game, years ago. Nowadays :shudder:
The auto-calc actually isn't too bad overall. It's not great, but neither is it complete :daisy: . In field battles, it accounts for smaller but better-equipped armies facing larger hordes of mostly peasants, so the results are fairly equitable.

It's in the castle battles where the auto-calc is rather wonky, as it heavily favors the defender....too much so, IMHO. No matter how effectively I deploy my forces in castle defense, I *always* lose more men than when auto-calcing that same battle. Conversely, I almost always have to command castle assaults personally, as the auto-calc not only invariably causes me to incur much higher losses otherwise, but sometimes even decides I would lose the battle outright.



Is there any reason why I shouldn't set every single field and resource into action on turn 1? E.g. does it take time to breed enough cattle to run loads of dairy fields?
Yes, it does take time for your cattle herds to grow. However, as long as you're only referring to cattle, then no, there's no reason not to activate all your fields right away. Grain is a different proposition, of course, as you can only plant it in the wintertime.



I guess all resources are displayed on the campaign map at the start, so if there's no stone quarry (or whatever) in my province on turn 1 then there will never be one.
Correct.



I chose campaign and got dropped in on a small 4 county map with regions named after paint shades. I thought there was an England map; how do I play on that and what other map types are there?
After you click on Singleplayer in the main menu, click on Custom Game; this will bring up a fairly extensive options screen. Campaign maps will be in the upper right-hand corner (just scroll through to choose which one). ~:)



Roughly how long does a campaign take anyway? Should I expect to sink an evening into it or a week, or more?
Campaigns generally don't take very long for me; I can easily complete one in a couple days. It mainly depends on the size of the map, and how many hours in a day you spend playing. I might take up to a whole week on occasion, but that's rare -- that usually means I'm only playing for maybe half an hour at a time.




Keep an eye on the field fertility ratings in each county, and for wheat try and use only 2 out of 3, or fertility drops off. From memory, if you have 14 fields you can use 10 for wheat and not suffer a fertility drop.
This must be with advanced farming turned on, which I never do. I know it's more realistic, but I find it's just too much of a pain to deal with.



Keep in mind that the county your conquer may not have enough food production and or storage, so try and either attack when there is a merchant in town or if you have surplus nearby that you can send over.
Good point, aimlesswanderer -- both about timing attacks so that a merchant will be in a county you've just conquered, and that you can send supplies via convoy.

It's also worth noting that in addition to the usual items, merchants also sell ale. Ale is useful for increasing happiness in counties, although you can only purchase enough to raise happiness by 5 points. This obviously doesn't matter so much in counties you've owned for a long time, but it can be very useful in newly-conquered territories who are less than thrilled with their recent change in ownership. ~;)

As for convoys, I personally like to send all my excess food to my frontier territories, as this greatly shortens the amount of time it takes to dispatch (often times badly needed) supplies to a newly-conquered county. I can't really comment on cattle (since I always switch to grain ASAP), but with grain, I'll usually consider any amount over 1500 or so -- 2000 at the most-- to be excess.



From memory, enemy armies in your territory ate your food, but yours in a castle did not! Can't remember about your army in your land.
I'm guessing this must be with foraging turned on, which (again) I don't do. It adds a level of complexity I can personally live without, although I applaud the thought.

[frogbeastegg]

Thanks to both of you. :bow:

That's all extremely helpful. It's joined the dots between the first round of advice and my messing around, and I feel like I have a much better understanding now.

[Ramses II CP]

I was working on a reply, but I think they've covered it all (And much better than my memory could have!). I might have to reinstall this game now, I'm sort of getting a hankering to see those old block figure archers popping a mad peasant rush against my Royal Castle moat.

:egypt:

[aimlesswanderer]

I had a bit of trouble getting it installed and running, but I eventually managed to. I'd say that the battles are the weakest part of the game, the rest has stood the test of time very well. I wonder if there will be another game like this in my lifetime.

I was surprised that, with advanced farming on, I could feed my population of 1,700-2,100 with double rations, with 13 or 14 wheat fields (6 or 7 fallow). I even had enough to export to frontier provinces.

I would also add that a look at the town centre will give you a good idea of how many people there are (and its food production). The more buildings are there, the more people (and usually their food). Fighting an independent county will means you will be fighting half the population, though approx half will be peasants. The largest counties will field up to about 800.

Sometimes it is a good idea to hire mercenaries, especially if your population is still low, you are still fixing up your home, and have few weapons. 200 pikes can be enough to take up to a medium sized county.

[frogbeastegg]

Hmm. I loaded the game up at the weekend, played again, did better, got bored, quit. It's nice for the first few hours and then realisation sinks in that there's no meaningful diplomacy, and that a lot of the things which appeared complex to begin with are actually quite simple. At that point it becomes hard to maintain an interest; all I was doing was adjusting the odd slider every other turn, sending out an army every now and then or fighting off an AI siege.

Maybe I'm missing something?

[Furunculus]

Good Old Games has released Lords of the Realm: Royal Edition (http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/lords_of_the_realm_royal_edition/) for $5.99. It's the first two LotR games plus the Siege Pack expansion for LotR2.


from the first GoG review:

As a whole, Lords of the Realm II remains one of the best combination of TBS/RTT game there was until the coming of the Total War series. All the ingredients are there from the strategic management of your realms (taxes and so forth) to the real-time warcraft-like battle sequences.... full review

why cannot M:TW be released on GoG? *sighs*

[Martok]

Hmm. I loaded the game up at the weekend, played again, did better, got bored, quit. It's nice for the first few hours and then realisation sinks in that there's no meaningful diplomacy, and that a lot of the things which appeared complex to begin with are actually quite simple. At that point it becomes hard to maintain an interest; all I was doing was adjusting the odd slider every other turn, sending out an army every now and then or fighting off an AI siege.

Maybe I'm missing something?
Maybe it depends on one's perspective, perhaps? Speaking only for myself, I don't find the game "simple" so much as it is "easy to manage". Yes, the sliders definitely keeps the management of your counties from being a tedious affair, but you still have to keep things balanced and make sure you're producing enough of everything: Grain, wood, iron, weapons, etc. Plus you have to balance population versus how much food you produce versus how many men you need to draft into your armies versus....and so on.

I suppose it could be at least partially a case of YMMV. There's no denying Lords of the Realm 2 is a little light on the complexity side, but for me that's one of the things I like about it. It's not quite so simplistic as to be a "beer & pretzels" game; but after playing more complex (and management-intensive) titles like GalCiv2, BOTF, and GGWBTS, I find spending a couple hours playing LotR2 to be a nice getaway from all that.

Also, it's fun to play the battles sometimes. They obviously don't have the depth of the Total War series, but they're definitely enjoyable in their own way. (Personally, I suspect the troops' voice-acting has something to do with it: You've gotta love how enthusiastic mace-men sound when you order them about; they're clearly men who love their job!)


I don't know. I've never found LotR2 to be repetitious (at least, no more so than any other game), but then I'm also careful to not play it too long or too intensively: I generally play it for no more than a couple hours at a time, if even that long. (Maybe you have too long of an attention span? ~;p )




why cannot M:TW be released on GoG? *sighs*
Indeed. Same goes for Shogun, for that matter.

With all the people who've complained about being unable to run the two older games on their PCs these days, GOG could probably make a fortune simply updating STW & MTW so that they'll be compatible with newer hardware (especially video cards). Would love to see that happen, but I somehow don't see Sega doing that anytime soon.

[frogbeastegg]

I don't think my second game lasted much more than an hour before I exited. By the time I took my 3rd province and realised that all it meant was my job of "check screen, do nothing" had grown by 1/3 I'd had enough.

After the initial turns building up happiness and swapping over to wheat farming I ended up in an endless round of "check happiness, fine. Check income, fine. Check pop growth, fine. Check weapon production, maybe change it. Check serf allocation per province, fine or undo AI reallocation. Drum fingers and feel like there should be something to actually do, fail to find anything, click end turn." Most of the time I wasn't needing to adjust anything, and consequentially could have gone without checking most of that. Now and then I'd levy more troops, which required a tweak of tax rates for several turns until it topped out at 100 again. After I'd conquered my first province I'd have a bit of a battle every two years as the AI hurled peasants at me in a bid to remind me I wasn't playing alone. Oh - and I built a motte and bailey castle in a province.

I don't like games where I feel like I set things up and then become superfluous.