Changing perspective made game better...

I've always been a "power player", meaning I master game rather fast. This was rather irritating with Medieval 2, as game is so big, complex and bug filled.

Now however, I tried RPing the game, and focusing on all details. This of course gave a much slower game, and every turn takes some time.

However, playing like this proved to be quite rewarding. Game UI is better too, if you care mainly about what happens to your emediate neighbours.

If you react fast to alliances, who wars who, excommunications and so on, and send diplomats, you can very often secure borders with diplomacy.

And if you cant, you will see the problems coming ahed of time.

It's also damn fun!

Like now, I have a Cardinal called "the warmonger". He was in the capital when my youngest son hit age 16. At the same time a crusade was declared to Jerusalem, and the cardinal talked the 16 year old son into joining it. So the cardinal and the now crusading 16 year old "born to command" set off to Jerusalem with some knights and huscarles (playing danes).

This crusade will be fun to follow, but is probably doomed given the distance between denmark and jerusalem.


My king and best general is off in russia, having captured all port provinces and now going for Moscow.


I have Hamburg as only border to the nordic countries, but somehow I also got Prague after some diplomacy with HRE.

Prague I use as intelligence-gathering main city, pumping out diplomats, spys, assassins...



all in all, a slow but VERY FUN game... Much more rewarding than blitzing through the game in 70 turns.

i dont even play to win anymore, just to see what happens.

i stop when i get bored, i wish there was more things to do with cities, would keep me interested longer, no matter what your outlook is when you start a game, you always end up at the same "well, guess i gotta go blacken some eyes" moment

playing byz and trying to go as long as i could holding the original provinces and taking no land, just trying to stay alive defending was probably the most interesting game so far, i am gonna try that same rules with hre soon

I played the blitz way once, and was thoroughly unimpressed. The major tactic seems to be catching the AI early, off gaurd, and forcing them back so they cannot respond or gather enough money to fight back.

As that goes, you end up fighting relatively easy battles, and the AI doesn't put up any sort of challenge.

I prefer to take it slow. I'll fight and scurry to the rebel provinces nearby, but I'm very loathe to break into war with neighbors. It makes me focus more on my agents, and more about what's going on within my borders. Often, if i war with a neighbor, I'll only take a city or two, and often consider returning them to their owner on the signing of a peace treaty.

I've changed to a more moderate pace too. At first I blitzed every province that had a city in it that the Medieval Maps said was in my faction's territory. After the first 10 turns at most I had doubled or tripled my empire's size, and my minimal/no existant garrisons (since I stripped the starting ones on turn 1 for massed invasions) made the AI more aggressive towards me - leading to either early wars of extermination or a lot of funny moving and reloading to keep the enemy off my back to let them live awhile longer. I even used canned Crusades/Jihads to raise chivalry to tech up my settlements at light speed.

Having played and gotten bored with the first 40 or so turns (about how long it takes me to get the game on lock trying to play it slow after the big blitz start) over and over I noticed a lot of trends the AI likes to develope along. So I made a list one day while sitting in Calc and started playing like an AI controlled faction. I target many of the same settlements they target from the get go when they play the faction and know what regions they're obsessed with so I can avoid early conflicts. I don't change Castles to Cities so I'm not a comparative economic powerhouse. I still blitz 2-3 settlements in the first few turns to get me going then I sit back and build up, taking settlements and expanding only at the direction of the council or as punitive expeditions against border territory. I keep comparitively large garrisons in my settlements instead of relying on constant pressure to keep the AI on the defensive. I play almost every battle out instead of Autoresolving every blitzed siege.

I think the changes have actually improved my skills at building and maintaining an empire. I actually win the (short) games now instead of getting bored and quitting 10 regions short of the long victory. Rebels aren't the huge annoyance they once were because I can form a moderate field army from my surrounding city's excess troops quickly, instead of having to build a new force or move an offensive force back from the front (though I still get ill when I see a half stack of Hussite and Imperial Knight brigands show up on turn 3). My economy might not explode from turn 2 on with all the sacking and sold trade rights/alliances, but it gets there, and seems even stronger when it does. I keep the bloodline pure, starting generals may get adopted/married into the family but no one else, especially if they'd be up for the throne. I might adopt to the faction ruler or older starting generals to the heir (so they die before they'd have a chance to become king), but other than that I just have to wait for the sons to come of age.

All in all, its alot more fun to try to play the game like the AI with just your build orders and tactical skills to keep you on top. I'd suggest it to anyone who's bored with the game, it sure opened up a whole new dimension to my play and probably gave M2 enough life left to last me 'til Kingdoms.

ive played like this since MTW

the factions in the east close to crusade targets and mongol and timurid invasions are best for slow games. theres always something happening to divert your attention. i just set ut a relatively small area as my kingdom. once that is acheived all i do is defend my borders and help out my allies and if playing s muslim defend the holy land from crusades.

Since as I also play MTW Gold (with the XL mod), and I turtle a lot in that (combined with periods of expansion), I'm going for the not-playing-to-win approach. As Sicily in M2TW, SS 3.2 (along with some modifications I made to region names and unit costs), I want to create a small kingdom around Italy and some of the surrounding lands, and then primarily not expand expand expand. It's more fun to create a kingdom that isn't uber large and then sit there and run it, dealing with whatever the AI throws at you.