Medieval II: Total War Official Thread

[Mount Suribachi]

Just a minor correction


Urban was Hungarian;)

Well, my reference states that he was a German - the point is, he wasn't a Muslim.

A little correction, he's called Mohammad (el-fateh).

I've honestly never seen him referred to as Mohammad - only ever as Mehmet. Whereas Mohammed the Prophet is always referred to in English as Mohammed (or Muhammed).

And what I insist on being a huge factor of taking Constantinople, was the urging of muslims, they have sieged it many times, attacked it many times and lost many times. But still, they kept attacking it.

Your argument is contradictory. They besieged Constantinople many times, yet repeatedly failed - was their faith-inspired-bravery any the less the previous times? Or was it that when Constantinople finally fell that the Byzantine Empire was on its last legs, that the Ottoman Empire was on the rise, that they were led by highly talented and ambitious young man, and that they had a great big cannon with which to knock down the walls.

You need to look at things a bit more objectively. For every Islamic victory that you claim was won by their religious zeal, the good folks here at the Org can name you 2 defeats.

[jean_s]

great news indeed :)

I want to see the maaaapppp :D

[Vladimir]

For those of you interested in the rise of Islam I would recommend Henri Pirenne's book: Mohammed et Charlemagne. The Muslims, like Cortez, benefited a great deal from being in the right place at the right time. Byzantium had just exhausted itself by recapturing a large part of the Occident and fighting against the Persians. Local and religious politics also played a role as well. I'm not trying to take anything away from the Arabs mind you. The rise of Islam was also the catalyst for the onset of the Dark Ages in Europe when they closed the Mediterranean. Something which didn't affect the Italian traders too much.

[Kraxis]

To continually come back to a place where you have been defeated before has little to do with morale, but everything to do with persistence and determination.

Morale is the ability to withstand a scary situation (broadly speaking). Yes it would be scary to besiege Constantinople, but the ability to be there and not run away atthe sight of the walls, that is the only part that has to do with morale. Getting there, planning to go there and eventually figuring out how to get through the walls, has nothing to do with morale.

Constantinople was a case of determination.

[x-dANGEr]

Your argument is contradictory. They besieged Constantinople many times, yet repeatedly failed - was their faith-inspired-bravery any the less the previous times? Or was it that when Constantinople finally fell that the Byzantine Empire was on its last legs, that the Ottoman Empire was on the rise, that they were led by highly talented and ambitious young man, and that they had a great big cannon with which to knock down the walls.

You need to look at things a bit more objectively. For every Islamic victory that you claim was won by their religious zeal, the good folks here at the Org can name you 2 defeats.

I don't know where you can find that, it's a matter of miss-understanding what's written I believe (Or miss-clarification). As Kraxis just cut all the words I said putting it in one word, determination. I don't know what has got me their, but it surely has got nothing to do with morale. And really, what's the point of this "For every Islamic victory that you claim was won by their religious zeal, the good folks here at the Org can name you 2 defeats." What need I understand from it? And if that really happened, then Islam wouldn't have gone where it has, would it? Islamic nation kept going well till the late turkish govermont started increasing taxes more and more.. Pushing the people to a rebellion, allied with UK + France, of course, UK + France had betrayed the treaty and shared the Arabic countries among them (Along with Italy maybe) till rebellions repelled them one by one, and till UK gave Palestine to Jews and leaving us apart. No offence intended, just some bad feelings to those who 'support' those actions.

[Grim]

please, please, please make the AI on the campaign map better.
I am sooo tired of seeing the AI on R:TW laying siege to my cities and after a few turns, going away to pluck daisies.
I am so tired in M:TW to see the AI massing an impressive army against my nearly undefended border and sit there and watch the sun set decades over decades.
To all the modders out there: you are doing a colossal work but if the game is good then you won't NEED to mod it. I know and agree that there will always be room for improvement and it is human nature to tweak it just so you can say that you conceived of a wonder child and be a proud parent to show off your skills to us here. I just want a SP game that gives me a strategic and tactical headache from time to time instead of downloading this, unzipping that, fixing a bug here, trying to run it without success, asking for help receiving none... you get my drift. Sad to say but some of us are not very computer saavy... I've tried several times to get a mod to play only to bang my head against the intricacies that you guys eat for breakfast everyday

Think about it: less time to mod, more time to play.

[King Henry V]

And what I insist on being a huge factor of taking Constantinople, was the urging of muslims, they have sieged it many times, attacked it many times and lost many times. But still, they kept attacking it.

Hmmm, I think you maybe exaggerating the case a bit there. Admittedly the Muslim armies besieged Constantinople three times in the space of a few years (674, 674, 717) but that was during the peak of the full fervour that always accompanies a new religion. However, after 717 it would be over seven hundred years until the next time Constantinople would be besieged by a Muslim army and the main reason for those sieges was that the Byzantine Empire, with its stronghold of Constantinople, remained a threat to the Ottomans, not because of the Empire' power, but because it was able to send emissaries to the West with the same message: "Help, foul heathens are destroying a Christian country-Christians in danger, please send crusade."
It was not, as you seem to make out, that almost every generation the Muslims would send an army to capture Constantinople.

[econ21]

Islamic nation kept going well till the late turkish govermont started increasing taxes more and more.. Pushing the people to a rebellion, allied with UK + France, of course, UK + France had betrayed the treaty and shared the Arabic countries among them (Along with Italy maybe) till rebellions repelled them one by one, and till UK gave Palestine to Jews and leaving us apart. No offence intended, just some bad feelings to those who 'support' those actions.

I am very keen that this forum include historical information and debate about the period covered by MTW2, but the above is more like Backroom material. Please don't bring "bad feelings" in this forum - in here, we are all friendly gamers (or at least friendly would-be gamers waiting impatiently for MTW2).

[Mount Suribachi]

And really, what's the point of this "For every Islamic victory that you claim was won by their religious zeal, the good folks here at the Org can name you 2 defeats." What need I understand from it? And if that really happened, then Islam wouldn't have gone where it has, would it? Islamic nation kept going well

The point is that you come across as something of an Islamic fan-boy who seems to think that your boys can do (and have done) no wrong. From the posts you've made around the Org you seem to have a very narrow, biased knowledge of history - to the extent that you were unaware of the Moors & Timurids.

And you keep talking about the "Islamic nation" as if the Muslim world was one unified empire, which was, and is, quite clearly not true. After the initial 2 centuries where Islamic armies where near unbeatable followed a period of consolidation which many would describe as the high point of Islam, as personified by the Moors, followed by a gradual decline (with the exception of the Ottomans) as European civilisation flourished following the renaissance (sp?).

I just get a little wound up when fan-boys come along and start complaing about how [insert country of origin here] aren't some uber-powerful faction that can conquer everyone in sight, an omission they take as some kind of racial slur. It doesn't have to be Islamic, I've seen it with Scots, Danes, Swedes, Hungarians, Poles....

I mentioned the good people of the Org cos there are some incredibly knowledgable people here, people who know 100x more than me. And allied to that knowledge is a sense of perspective and objectivity. They don't attribute "their" countries victories to some inherent racial or religious superiority, and they don't make excuses for "their" sides defeats. They see the reasons on all sides, cause and effect, rationally and without predjudice. Mouzapherre and Faisal fall into this category.

[Azi Tohak]

On units, how exactly does CA do its research? Do they have a historical department devoted to finding what troops were where and when? It seems to me that many members of the Org know a great deal about various units and methods, which escapes (or seems to) CA much of the time. Does CA just pull stuff out?

I figure I might as well put this in the "Official thread" too. I'm worried about AI. MTW has very good AI. As in it can actually beat you. RTW has AI roughly analogus to my sister's Shih Tzu. Which is it going to be here?

Azi

[Leet Eriksson]

Mount Suribachi

Minor thing, Mehmet is the turkish version fo Mohammed. I believe we need a turk member to confirm it though.

[Arcanum]

Jesus christ... *cough*
Look at the unbelievable looking walls! Look at the walls!
So I'll end my post by saying:
"Tear down this wall Mr. Gorbatschov, tear down this wall! Reagan Smash! Reagan Smash!"

[gardibolt]

On historically accurate sites, I'm hoping that they do right by Acre in particular, though Jerusalem is obviously important.

Since they are using the RTW engine, papal missions seem like a natural progression. "Assault the Spanish and seize Aragon, and you will be richly rewarded with a mass said in your honor."

[x-dANGEr]

The point is that you come across as something of an Islamic fan-boy who seems to think that your boys can do (and have done) no wrong. From the posts you've made around the Org you seem to have a very narrow, biased knowledge of history - to the extent that you were unaware of the Moors & Timurids.

Yea surely I was unaware of Moors and Timurids, but surely I know them in Arabic. Sorry, but we don't study our history in english.

And you keep talking about the "Islamic nation" as if the Muslim world was one unified empire, which was, and is, quite clearly not true. After the initial 2 centuries where Islamic armies where near unbeatable followed a period of consolidation which many would describe as the high point of Islam, as personified by the Moors, followed by a gradual decline (with the exception of the Ottomans) as European civilisation flourished following the renaissance (sp?).

It once was and I hope it becomes so again.

I just get a little wound up when fan-boys come along and start complaing about how [insert country of origin here] aren't some uber-powerful faction that can conquer everyone in sight, an omission they take as some kind of racial slur. It doesn't have to be Islamic, I've seen it with Scots, Danes, Swedes, Hungarians, Poles....

Well, you do agree the muslims (Almohads) were down-graded in M: TW, don't you?

I mentioned the good people of the Org cos there are some incredibly knowledgable people here, people who know 100x more than me. And allied to that knowledge is a sense of perspective and objectivity. They don't attribute "their" countries victories to some inherent racial or religious superiority, and they don't make excuses for "their" sides defeats. They see the reasons on all sides, cause and effect, rationally and without predjudice. Mouzapherre and Faisal fall into this category.

Well, I salute such people, and you can always look forward to such men. I realise I got a little carried away, and I really do apologize for that.

[Mount Suribachi]

Yea surely I was unaware of Moors and Timurids, but surely I know them in Arabic. Sorry, but we don't study our history in english.

OK, sorry, I misunderstood you. Your English is very good, which has probably caused some misunderstanding on my behalf whereby, because it is so good, I take what you write at face value, whereas with someone whose English clearly wasn't as good I would be more cautious to check understanding

Well, you do agree the muslims (Almohads) were down-graded in M: TW, don't you?

Yes and no. I'll repost what I said in Faisals unit thread


"I know what you're saying though about the weak Almohad roster in the later game, I always interpreted this as CAs attempt to reflect the decline of the Moors in Spain - they did the same with the Byzantines."

AUMs are possibly the best unit in the game in Early - cheap, easily available, +1 Valour in Granada, Iron easily available in nearby provinces for weapon upgrades...The Elmos also have the excellent Desert Cav. Its very easy to win with them in Early. But they do suffer from their lack of decent Spears and Heavy Cav, especially once you get to high and late, but like I said, I attribute this to CAs attempt to reflict the decline of the Moors

The Egyptians - I've never actually played them, I find their roster and starting position to be a bit meh

The Turks - have an excellent spread of units through the game. Saracen Inf are a decent entry level unit, and we all know Jannisary Heavy Inf are one of the best units in the game, period. And they get better as the game progresses; again I see this as CAs attempt to reflect the rising strength of the Ottomans.

I think if MTW started several hundred years earlier and their relative strength was the same they would definately be underpowered, but as it is I see what CA was trying to do. Now, as to whether their units are historically accurate.....well I'll leave that to Faisal But every faction suffers from innacuracy to a lesser or greater extent.

Well, I salute such people, and you can always look forward to such men. I realise I got a little carried away, and I really do apologize for that.

Hehe, thats OK. I just sit in awe at the knowledge and ettiquette and fair-mindedness of some of the folks here (as long as we stay out the backroom ). Shadeswolf, Simon Appleton...

Now, back to MTW2...

[LeftEyeNine]

Mount Suribachi

Minor thing, Mehmet is the turkish version fo Mohammed. I believe we need a turk member to confirm it though.

"Mehmet" (or Mehmed, though words do not end with letter "d" in modern Turkish) consists of the letters "m" "h" "m" and "d" in Arabic. And it is traditionally pronounced as "Muhammed" in Arabic. However, it is just convenient (especially regarding the structure of Turkish) for a non-Arabic speaker to spell the name as Mehmet (m,h,m,t letters remain the same as you see..).

Hope this helps, master Faisal

[Kraxis]

Mt. Suri, I'm in agreement regarding the Almohads. Strong early on (damn I still remember the first time their AUM handed my Templars' rears to them) and weak later.

But I think the implementation was wrong. It wasn't as if the Moors were stagnant. They were politically unstable, had civil wars, did fall behind technologically and a host of other factors for making them 'weak'. Yet like the Byzantines they held out for ca. 200 years more than they should have.

Determination and defense of the home could be attributed to this... *ahem* success... But also because they were not that far behind their opponents regarding equipment.
If I'm not mistaken they made plenty use of crossbows, lamellar armour and to an extent knightly styled cavalry (thunderous charge). Sadly, none of this is reflected in MTW. They should not be keeping up with the Spanish, but they should also progress, if not as well as the catholic factions. That would in my mind reflect their true position, instead of fighting with something that can be equated to Dark Age troops.

[x-dANGEr]

Now I'm lost.. Who do you exactly mean by Ottomans?

@Suri: I'm 13 years old, played M: TW when I was 9 years old, and their isn't much that I remember.. All I can get back is my cav being crushed VS Khawarezmian cav..

[Mount Suribachi]

Well, for a 13 year old your English is damn good. And playing MTW at 9 years old is pretty impressive. Hang around the Monastary, avoid the Backroom and you'll have no better education in history

Kraxis - you make valid points about the decline of the Moors and Byzantines. I think lower loyalty generals/princes giving more civil wars and rebellions would be a better way for the game to reflect this decline. As it is I don't MTW has anywhere near enough civil wars for any of the factions, let alone those like the Byzantines who were crippled by them (I've only ever had1, when I stoopidly got my King killed by friendly fire).

I guess its something else to add to the million and one things we wish were in MTW...

[Trajanus]

Now I'm lost.. Who do you exactly mean by Ottomans?

History of the Ottomans

Hope that helps.

[Vladimir]

Kraxis - you make valid points about the decline of the Moors and Byzantines. I think lower loyalty generals/princes giving more civil wars and rebellions would be a better way for the game to reflect this decline. As it is I don't MTW has anywhere near enough civil wars for any of the factions, let alone those like the Byzantines who were crippled by them (I've only ever had1, when I stoopidly got my King killed by friendly fire).

I second that. While there was the 60% loyalty drop and civil wars for other reasons I think that the factions were much too stable. One of the mail reasons the "Christians" (quite often in name only) were unable to expel the Moors was due to internal upheaval; Spain was a cesspool of politics. Yes the Elmos or whatever you call them did suffer a decline later on as their culture/religion was very conservative and did not change rapidly enough. They were quite advanced in other areas while brutally oppressive in others.

Even early on the different Islamic regions did not always cooperate. They mostly received their guidance from the Caliphate in modern Iraq but they were far from one cohesive empire (much like Christendom).

On Muslim expansion and trade: MTW 1.1 was right to put a lot of emphasis on trade as the closure of the Mediterranean trade had horrible repercussions for Europe. It would be nice to see an AI that can trade better when at peace. Historically Christians did not trade with the Musulman (or however Pirenne spells it) early on except for the Venetians et al. I also think that the Black Death should feature prominently in the game. The increase in trade after tensions cooled allowed it to spread into Europe. After it hit, everything changed. I know the game should still be "fun" and that would be a real downer but more attention to the plague and the Medieval cooling period would provide another welcome challenge to the game.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I can understand the Moors being chosen as the name at least. The dominate force in North Africa circa 1080 would have been the Almoravids but they were to be slowly edged out by the Almohads around the 1160 mark. But i can understand just having one faction there.

I hope with the game they get rid of the faction colours in battle as i hated seeing the romans in blue, purple red or green or at least downgrade the brightness and colour.

Could any of the CA lads, IS, ECS, etc tell us if they plan to have more than 21 faction slots?

[Darius]

God this is great, I almost crapped my pants when I saw this while installing RTW:BI on my new computer! Can't wait to start zoomin in while my heavy cavalry starts mowin down unruly peasants in-game. I'd also like to hope that since the game is still in development, that by the time we get it, the graphics will have only improved and the AI becomes almost impossible to match (at least compared to it's predecessors) !

On a side note, I'm rather pleased they included the Americas, the Aztecs were always there and the Europeans had the ability to travel there for a good long time, they just never really thought about it (or even cared) to actually head out across the ocean. Naturally this will give the player somewhat of an advantage as they'll obviously KNOW that the Americas are out there and can gear themselves up toward headin there while the AI is undoubtedly going to focus on the more immediate problems (example: You) and more likely only find the Americas by pure accident as seems to be the case with how it worked IRL.

[Kraxis]

Perhaps more civil wars would be nice... I kind of loved to hate them. I was constantly thinking of them if I got a bad king, and as the HRE I got plenty of those. Then Civil Wars were just around the corner, but sadly they tended to come when another faction had decided to give it all to crush me.

Anyway, my point is that I believe the Spanish could still have won in the end even with no civil wars. Prior to them they were slowly taking back land and suffering few strategic reverses (but they did suffer tactical reverses often enough). So inherently it seems the Spanish were just a bit stronger, that woud in my mind equate fair enough to the Moors being slightly behind in technology, but not stagnant as in MTW.

So the Spanish get Chivalric Knights? Moors get a units that is somewhat weaker but stronger than their earlier units. The Spanish get CMAA? The Moors get an upgraded AUM.
This doesn't need to be fitted to M2TW directly but the system should work.

[x-dANGEr]

History of the Ottomans

Hope that helps.

Oh thanks.. Then Ottomans are the turkish? Not the Omaweyyeen.. (Anyone who can understand Arabic around the forums?? )

@Suribatchi: Thanks for your complements.

@Subject: I see you all are talking about things from the angle of SP, while I'm looking at them from another angle, which is MP. In the history of total war, the faction in North Africa was always 'weak', in MP at least. In M: TW, we got Almohads and in R: TW we have Numidia. Maybe give them Mercenary units or soo.. But if we are going to do this depending on historical accuracy, then we should just decide who won depending on it. I say (From a SP view), that the fair thing to do, is give every faction same possiblities, with variety. Like, some factions would have uber units but many rivals, and so on..
Practically, if we are to give every faction the units it acutally had after 300 years of the start of the game. Then, we simply aren't bearing in mind, that if that faction acutally did things in another way, may have had better millitary equipments and so on.. So in short, just build the starting world in the starting year on historical events, but not anytime forward. Because that should be decided by you, as the player, to what do next and what to achieve next.

[Subedei]

Practically, if we are to give every faction the units it acutally had after 300 years of the start of the game. Then, we simply aren't bearing in mind, that if that faction acutally did things in another way, may have had better millitary equipments and so on.. So in short, just build the starting world in the starting year on historical events, but not anytime forward. Because that should be decided by you, as the player, to what do next and what to achieve next.[/QUOTE]

I agree there, but -out to CA- integrate such things as the Marius Reform in R: TW, as it affects the gameplayin a positive way (it's fun 2 play with new units) too.

[Mount Suribachi]

Yes the Elmos or whatever you call them

lol, sorry about that. Way back when MTW came out, someone (I forget who) started referring to the Almohads as the Elmos, and the name kinda stuck. You'll often see 'em referred to as the Elmos round here ~:D

I think the argument about what units a faction should have available is an interesting one. To my mind there are 2 solutions to the issue of factions that were historically in decline, neither of them mutually exclusive.

1) All factions have the ability to recruit the standard, vanilla unit types throughout the game. eg the Byz and Almohads have no decent anti-cav unit in high and late. So give them the ability to recruit bog-standard Pikemen and Halberdiers, but they don't have access to the unique anti-cav units, such as, say SAPs or JHI (halberd equipped IIRC).

2) The RTW solution using mercenaries. I quite like the way RTW handles this, whereby any faction can recruit mercenaries, provided they are in the right part of the world. So Briton doesn't have cavalry, they need to recruit merc cav.

[The_B@fU$ ®]

Will we be able to kill pope like in medieval 1?

[JR-]

Maybe, but it'll be funny fighting them nonetheless. Again, hope there's no hard feelings about that.

And sorry about the Serbians thing, I always thought it was a real term.

none at all. :)

[Martok]

Perhaps more civil wars would be nice... I kind of loved to hate them. I was constantly thinking of them if I got a bad king, and as the HRE I got plenty of those. Then Civil Wars were just around the corner, but sadly they tended to come when another faction had decided to give it all to crush me.

I'd like to see more civil wars too, although they need to be a bit more realistic than what we saw in Medieval. For one thing, I don't want them randomly occuring simply because you're the biggest faction on the map. If my empire is bloated and over-extended, and/or I have a number of disloyal but powerful nobles/generals that could form the core of a rebellion, that would at least make sense. But please don't give me a civil war just because I've conquered a certain amount of territory!

Another thing: I really hope the Rebel side will act as a coordinated faction, as opposed to simply turning into a bunch of independent provinces! It sounds like Barbarian Invasion already does this, so hopefully CA has this implemented already, but I get nervous about assuming such things.