Medieval II: Total War Official Thread

[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...

[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.

[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?

[x-dANGEr]

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.

1) Nah, this will 'kill' the game. The way it is in BI, one of the main things I hate is the fact that all factions (Most of them) have the same/all kind(s) of units, from Cavalry, Infantry, Foot archers to Mounted Archers.. Which is a really annoying thing. And yes, they mostly all of them also have anti-cav units..

2) But still Mercenaries are too expensive, even in R: TW (Right?). I never played a campaign where I used Mercenaries so I'm not sure, though.

A good sollution would be, is to give every faction a specialisation. I find R: TW the best game in this area. Most factions had a fair roster and can kill any other faction. If they manage to make it that way, I'd be satisfied. Surely, they may need to outcast a faction or two, but I hope if they do, those aren't from the same religion/region. So their is still competetion in that religion/region.

[Trajanus]

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

History of the Ottomans

Hope that helps.

[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.