I have lost my patience!

[moomo]

Caravel,

I have the Gold Edition MTW, and for days I tried to make it happen...but after the TW logo intro it crashed - no explanation. Tried every other tweak but nada.. Almost lost all hope, and by pure accident stumbled upon this thread.

And it worked. Made two splendid quick battles.
Your award should be for patience and skill.
Goood Jobbb!!
Do you happen to know anything about the Serial number for the Gold Edition. I saw none in the package and the Spygame (MP) doesn't go anywhere without it.
respectfull

[caravel]

Caravel,

I have the Gold Edition MTW, and for days I tried to make it happen...but after the TW logo intro it crashed - no explanation. Tried every other tweak but nada.. Almost lost all hope, and by pure accident stumbled upon this thread.

And it worked. Made two splendid quick battles.
Your award should be for patience and skill.
Goood Jobbb!!

Test the full campaign and see if you can load the campaign map. That may be your next problem if not then you should have trouble free operation. Battles tend to be stable and free of problems, it's usually the campaign map that CTDs.

Do you happen to know anything about the Serial number for the Gold Edition. I saw none in the package and the Spygame (MP) doesn't go anywhere without it.
respectfull

I'm not sure about that, is there nothing on the back of the manual or on a sticker inside? I've never played MTW online, and come to think of it I'm not sure if you need a CD key or not to install! I seem to remember entering a CD key for STW but not MTW?

[moomo]

Hello again Caravel,

Not much interest in the campaigns. I've played them a lot some years ago and... never managed to win the map!!! This might be a good challenge. The battels were not so bad lately.

There is no trace of any cd-key number or anything in ERA'S case or anywhere.
Now (Gold) you have to log on through Gamespy and since I don't have a valid key to fill the space it seems that no "connect" or "continue" or "do something" button is activated/available. Nothing is "active" on the screen except "escape".
Some help there would be required of course.

The tweak with skipintro. txt is purely fabulous. Although logically I was arround the solution at some moment, I would have never thought something that simple could solve a problem that seemed insolutionable (tried to change drivers for gfx, disabled AGP Acceleration, set the Antialiasing to X2 even thought to create a new FAT 32 partition - I might do that for STW...)

[EatYerGreens]

@Moomo,

I don't have the Gold edition myself, so I don't know what the packaging is like and the answer, below, may not be of help. I'd be interested to learn that it contains a number of individual CD jewel-cases (exactly as the products were originally released) or whether it's a custom-made case, containing several discs.


Anyway, the CD key you require for multiplayer is printed at the foot of the back cover of the Medieval Total War game manual.

If you don't have one, I suggest you go to the CA website and find the contact address of the Customer Services department for your country of residence. Write/email to them to explain what you want and see what they say.

Stay polite, just in case it ends up with you having to send the product back, to get a refund.

[caravel]

Hello again Caravel,

Not much interest in the campaigns. I've played them a lot some years ago and... never managed to win the map!!! This might be a good challenge. The battels were not so bad lately.

I cannot recommend the campaign map game enough, I suggest you give it another try. It links battles together in a contiguous form and gives every battle some meaning, improving the immersion factor.

The tweak with skipintro. txt [skipcredits.txt] is purely fabulous. Although logically I was arround the solution at some moment, I would have never thought something that simple could solve a problem that seemed insolutionable (tried to change drivers for gfx, disabled AGP Acceleration, set the Antialiasing to X2 even thought to create a new FAT 32 partition - I might do that for STW...)

It is probably caused by Windows media player or codecs. I think that WMP has to be the default player, otherwise MTW crashes when it tries to play the movie. There are other ways of fixing this problem but this is by far the easiest and most people, at the .org that is, use the skipcredits.txt file even if they don't have problems viewing the intro, as it simply speeds up the load time.

[moomo]

Caravel,

The cd-key war where it was supposed to be and where even I saw it at first and forgot: the back cover of the TW: Eras. Which has the official (in advance at that time, I think) image of M2TW release and I think that fooled me once in the rush to get online. Also I can say I was sure dizzy because I have Eras and M2TW (full TW series!!!) and try to get online with everyone of them, patching, posting, threading etc.
Cd-key missing = False alarm!!

To install the MTW Gold you don't need the cd-key; to play online you do!!
MTW Gold only allows you to log in after entering the CD key. I haven't succeed yet because a Gamespy account problem. I don't wanna make another false problem with that.

Haven't tried the campaigns yet.

EatYerGreens,

TOTAL WAR: ERAS
is a very good looking black box with the image of RomeTW on the cover.
Inside it you have 2 jewell cases containing: one The Games and the other The Bonus Material. All three games (all the games and their official expansions: STW/WE, MTW/VI and RTW/BI) in a single case one on top of another. In the other is The Bonus Material containing RTW Alexander and a DVD Documentary "The Total War Story" where you can see Mike Simpson The Studio Director of The Creative Assembly talking about the TW games, and images from TW for about 40 minutes. You also have bonus printed material.

I must write this here: browsing the documentary in order not to dissinform any one (more then I usually do) I heard him (Mike Simpson) with my ears: "I hope the Total War goes on for ever" (toward the end of the interview) which was my own very thought yesterday when thinking about all this experience. Let's hope it does, in a way.

So, the content is pretty much this:

a. 1 PC DVD ShogunTW, Includes Mongol Invasion, GOLD EDITION
(With no cd-key that I know of but then again I also missed the one present.) The version is 1.02 as you can read above, although the number in the left corner of the Main Menu is flat old 1.00.
Note that for online play you need to download, execute and follow the instructions (courtesy of R'as) from here only to have the Internet Multiplayer put back in the MP Menu:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=81836

the discussion about version of STW Gold that is here,

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=67004

b. 1 PC DVD MedievalTW, Includes Viking Invasion, Gold Edition
Version is 2.01 with Cd-key and you can play online trough Gamespy. No cd-key, no online, you'll see why.

c. 1 PC DVD RomeTW, Includes Barbarian Invasion

d. 1 PC CD-ROM RomeTW Alexander as Bonus Material

e. 1 PV DVD "The story of Total War".
Approx. 40 minutes of talking (Mike Simpson seems a rather shy guy, convinced by his colleagues to do the talking) and images from the game.

f. 1 CD-Rom Musical Score
A collection of music from the TW games (43 pieces). (M2TW only one preview about 4.23 min.).

g. 5 Collectors Total War Postcards.
Rather big and shiny and fine.

h. A 52-page Total War Artbook selected from the Total War archive.
(Images, concepts, draws)

i. A Medieval II: TW A2 poster of King Richard the Lionheart.

j. The approx. 263 pages TOTAL WAR: ERAS instructions manual.
On the back of the last cover you fave the Cd-keys for Medieval and Rome TW.

You have a total of 6 discs (4 DVD games and 2 media CD's) and bounty printed material.

So (as you can see down to most of online game retailers page), the case of ERAS is very Total War one, a sort of Collector's Edition, containing the GOLD versions of Shogun and Medieval and all the above.
The price is around 40-50 $ depending on world region, country and vendor. I bought it with flat 80 bucks in my country currency.

I'm not advertising for TW I just wanted to have this and after some troubles (solved) I'm happy to have it. I hope any TW passionate will love it and feel a stronger bound to the concept.

Ready to give you any other information.

[EatYerGreens]

Thanks moomo,

I only wanted to know what the contents of the pack were like so that I could suggest a sensible place to look for the CD-key but it seems you found it in the end anyway.


I can only guess what went wrong with setting up the Gamespy account. It is so long since I set up mine that all I can remember is that there was something peculiar or nonsensical about the webpage where you put in your details but, in the end, everything worked okay. I can't remember if there was a step where they send you a verification email to respond to, or not but check your email inbox just to be sure (and hope that your spam filter didn't chew it up) as it could be that you're locked out because they are still waiting for you to respond to that.


You should able to log onto your Gamespy account at their website and do account maintainance, re-set passwords, your email address and so forth.

Make sure that's all working properly before you attempt to logon from MTW.



With regard to campaign battles: -
Undeniably, I think you'll find the AI a lot easier to beat than crafty human opponents, in terms of strategic behaviour but, since you're more experienced in MP, one thing which will definitely catch you out is the reliability of your own troops.

You're obviously used to 'valouring up' your units, which boosts their morale to the point that they'll fight to the last 10 men per unit, without question. In the campaign, you would need an 8-star general to boost a v_0 FMAA up to v_4 and they are quite rare in the game. With any lesser general than that, they'll typically be going into battle at v_0 to v_2 so they're a lot more prone to rout. Your expectations of what certain unit types are capable of will be heavily undermined by this, for a while.

Worse still, if every single unit under your command is routing simultaneously, for more than about 20 seconds (you get a little time in which to attempt to rally at least one of them) then you're deemed to have lost the battle, regardless of the kill ratio being in your favour or the absolute numbers of casualties, because not having your army routed is one of the standard victory conditions.

Conversely, you don't have to slaughter every last opponent to win the battle, you just have to systematically make every enemy unit rout off the map. Routing enemies can be captured for ransom (save most of your cavalry for this stage) and the escapees can be dealt with in sieges.

Siege maps don't go over big on MP (not while I was there anyway) and, if you've never attempted it before, you might find out why. Expect to be truly humbled in a 960 vs 200+ (in a Castle) battle - especially if you forgot to bring your siege equipment*.



* Catapults at a minimum - ballistas are pathetic and run out of ammo before they break down the walls.

[moomo]

Oh, this is a good one. I don't mind! I think I'll post it again in the Main Hall.

I'm just surprised how I can misjudge people's reactions and requests.

The Gamespy went well finally. I created a new account. It's not running smooth if you're only a freeware user.