Old player returning questions

[lancelot]

Hello All,

I bought MTW2 when it came out, quickly got frustrated with the bugs (Pikemen discard their pikes when charged by cav was my fav) so I left the game alone for a long time. As I was thinking of returning to the game I was hoping I could get some (hopefully unbiased) opinions/answers to my questions on the state of the game.

1) Is the game really playable yet or are crippling bugs (see above) still unresolved?

2) The Kingdoms expansion. Whats the word? I recall many moons ago outcry at invasive security software. What happened with that? Is it still a reason to leave the expansion alone?

3) If yes, are there any mods out there that add the expansion's units to the vanilla game?

Cheers in advance for any info that may be helpful.

[Galain_Ironhide]

1) Can't speak for Vanilla too much, however many of the mods have taken care of the annoying issues / bugs such as pikes. I would highly recommend playing a mod over playing vanilla.

2) If you ask me the whole Securom issue was a bunch of hooha - Something of which I must say I unfortunately, temporarily got caught up in. It probably stopped me from buying and installing Kingdoms for up to at least six months when the expansion came out -Thats six months I wont ever get back! I've had Kingdoms installed on my computer for a long time now and have no issues whatsoever - nor ever will. Not taking anything away from the endless threads that debated Securom's and Sega's integrity, however, don't get caught up with the hype is my opinion. The mini-campaigns are good to play around with too, however I generally only have Kingdoms installed so I can play Stainless Steel and now Third Age.

3) The best all-round mod I would recommend would be Stainless Steel 6.1 (Requires Kingdoms Expansion). It has a big extended map, loads of provinces, heaps of different units and about 30 playable factions. Also it has an Early and a Late Era option to choose from.
If you don't want to go with Kingdoms however, you could play Broken Crescent 1.05 which is just absolutely awsome. Also I think Factionheir's VanillaMod might also not require Kingdoms which is a good mod.

All the best, hope you enjoy it & may the power return to your sword swinging arm! (or maybe just your mouse clicking finger).

[Phoenix]

1. Pikemen and Western Halberds in vanilla are still bugged without modding but if you change their formation in the descr_unit file from "1.2, 1.2, 2.4, 2.4, square, phalanx" to "0.8, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, square, phalanx" they'll fight much better but aren't over-powered like they would be if you got rid of their secondary weapons. Of course, good mods like Lands to Conquer Gold or Stainless Steel fixes that problem as well and has better AI.

2. Securom has never caused any problems for me.