The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - initial impressions from an English campaign

[TinCow]

I have been playing as the English as well and here are my initial impressions:

The Good:

AI – Much better all around. The battle map AI is better than any I have seen before. I still win almost all the time (playing on VH) but I need a proper army, proper tactics, and proper preparation beforehand. You can win consistently, but you have to earn them with skill. I have also had my butt handed to me twice by intelligent AI rather than stupid player. This has never happened to me before. Brief descriptions of the losses:

The first was a combination of the second and third battles of the game, during which I expected to completely eliminate Scotland. They attacked me with two small armies to relieve the siege of Edinburgh. Even combined they were smaller than me and I had a good defensive position on a hilltop so I put my main line facing the army I thought would arrive first and put two spears to hold the other army until the first was done. Unfortunately, the AI coordinated the armies and struck at the exact same moment. On top of that the main army broke half my line in the initial charge. I eventually rallied and won, but lost half my army in the process. Still on the AI turn, Scotland moved a 3/4 stack into the attack. I could have held it off with my full army, but with the huge losses from before it was hopeless. I lost my entire northern army and it took me about 10-15 more turns to finish Scotland.

The second was assaulting rebel held Bruge. I assaulted with 5 siege towers and a ram with about 10-12 units of spears ready to climb the walls. Unfortunately, the rebels had 4-5 very decent infantry units on the walls along with crossbowmen. They burned 2 siege towers and the ram, leaving me with only 3 assault points on the walls. They moved their heavy infantry to those spots and proceeded to assault my units on the walls from both sides. I kept feeding new spears into the fight (siege tower climbing is not slow anymore) but with heavy infantry on both sides of the assault points, it was a losing battle of attrition. I eventually withdrew with 2/3 of my army dead.

Diplomacy/Pope – Playing on H campaign, the diplomacy is very reasonable. Enemies know when they are beaten and offer truces and even pay for a ceasefire when they need it desperately. Allies do not betray you without cause (so far at least). The Pope is easy to figure out and the College of Cardinals is excellent! With proper planning, you can stack the College with your own countrymen, guaranteeing the next Pope will be from your nation or at least friendly to you.

Castle/City System – Works beautifully and requires you to think hard about what you want to do with a settlement. It is very costly to switch a well-developed Castle to a City, and tough luck if you suddenly need a castle in a region, but only have large cities which cannot be turned into them.

Missions – The huge variety of missions is wonderful. You can get missions from your Council of Nobles, from the Pope, and even from your allies. They can be very creative too, such as the Nobles asking you to increase the number of defensive units on a hostile border. The best one I have had so far was the heir to the throne of the HRE (my ally) asking me to assassinate his father for him so that he could become Emperor!

Castle Sieges – These are the most impressive things I have ever seen in a game, visually and tactically. The AI properly defends castles and multi-ring castles can be a major pain to take down. Once the AI loses one ring of wall, it will always retreat to the next ring, making you do it all over again. With the 3 ring citadel, this can make for an extremely costly attack. The only citadel I have managed to take by force so far required a full stack with 3 trebuchet units (6 trebuchets) and even then I barely had enough stones to make all the necessary breaches, forcing me to leave most of the towers intact. The days of the baggage train are back… any army that is going to be assaulting a Castle, Fortress, or Citadel absolutely must be carrying siege engines. Towers and ladders work on cities, but the game will not even let you bother trying to take a fortress without some kind of catapult or cannon. You cannot even begin the assault. Oh, and the sight of trebuchets slinging stones at a fortress is possibly the most graphically impressive part of the game IMO.

Settlement Development – Massive number of buildings to construct. The days of having perfect settlements are gone.

Movies – The assassin, spy, heresy, wedding movies are great. The assassin and spy movies in particular are lovely as they are incredibly varied and you never know whether you are going to succeed or not until about halfway through the movie. Even after 3 days of constant playing, I do not think I have seen them all yet.

Animations – Kill moves and more varied combat animations make watching the fighting close up actually interesting. It looks like an actual war now close up as well as from afar.

The Bad

Turns/Date – The lack of a date on the campaign map is annoying. I do not care that it is the 68th turn, I want to know the year. Why do I have to look elsewhere for that? Also, 2 years per turn? What happened to 2 turns per year?!

Crusades – They take a long time to get anywhere if you are in Western/Northern Europe. Even with the extra movement, your army will get stuck from the zone of control issue and lose all movement several times along the way. Given 2 years per turn, it takes a crusade 20 years to get anywhere, possibly 30 to get the job done. I have also seen French and Spanish crusades taking boats from the Atlantic coast, sailing to the North Sea, and then landing and embarking each turn until the Crusade finishes, at which point they walk home.

Campaign map movement – I agree with others, seems way too slow given some of the distances between settlements and considering that each turn is 2 years.

Delayed death reporting – The game does not count a man as dead until after his death animation is finished. Some death animations can take 4-5 seconds, which can make you scratch your head in frustration wondering why your massive cavalry charge did not kill anyone. This will probably be ok once I get used to it though… just remember that man count on units represent approximately 5 seconds ago, not the present situation.

Deployment in streets – You now cannot deploy in the area outside the roads, even if it looks clear. Again, this will probably just take getting used to, but for now it causes some aggravation in setup and when attacking settlement.

The Ugly

Passive AI – When it happens, it sucks and brings back memories of incompetent Rome AI. Let us hope the patch is out soon.

Attack reluctance – Sometimes, for reasons I cannot figure out, men will dribble into an attack rather than move as a group. Unit responsiveness also seems to be decreased sometimes.

Heir – You cannot pick your heir! My current heir is a wrathful slob who does not deserve a crown, but I cannot pick his intelligent and chivalrous brother over him. Given time, I might shift this to the “Good” category if it increases difficulty (and realism) but for now, I hate it.

Traits – Maybe it is just me, but the trait and ability system is a lot less colorful and informative than in previous games. With a few exceptions I do not feel like I have gotten many family members with personalities.


Overall – Best TW game I have ever played (I have never played STW). The idea of what this game will be with mods on top of the excellent base is exciting beyond belief.