Mountains and hills

[doc_bean]

Does anyone think we'll get back the steep hills of the original MTW ?

Looking at the screenshots I fear we won't. I know many people called them unrealistic, but in my experience, there are plenty of hills in Europe you just can't run up easily. I really felt that in the original MTW and (especially) STW the terrain contributed much more to the gameplay experience than the relatively flat terrain of RTW.

[Sun of Chersonesos]

i dont think you will get hills as steep as the sides of gibraltar plateau in RTW but i do think there will be relatively steep hills from time to time

[x-dANGEr]

Play RTW SP (BI is a better example I think), and you will get really annoyed by those hills camped at the top with 4 Sughidian Warriors units.. (A real pain for either ERE or Sass).

[Tamur]

yes, actually, I am almost sure that one of the videos about six weeks ago had some very rugged terrain, including soldiers marching in line along a cliff edge. I don't think I'll have time today to dig it up, but I'm sure it exists. Anyway, they have said that terrain has received quite a bit of work, and talked about a move back to the sharp dropoffs as in the original Medieval. Again, I know that exists in print on the web, time to do a bit of searching, tomorrow I guess.

[doc_bean]

Maybe I've just been playing the wrong maps in RTW then ?

Anyway, it's good to hear they're moving back to more MTW style terrain

[Stig]

We won't have it, some German video said that once, it's changed from RTW

[Furious Mental]

Watch the Byzantine Empire preview video on IGN- it shows a steep sided canyon very clearly.

[Azog 150]

There is that screen shot with a big path with cliffs either side leading to a city or castle or something. Looks amazing actually.

[Tamur]

Not only is there a steep-sided canyon, but if you watch carefully, the canyon is built out of cliff faces in two small hills, both of which drop very smoothly to ground level on the other three sides of the hill --- thus making the cliff edge perfectly accessible.

There is a gameplay video on youtube from the Leipzig conference which I cannot find (blast it all!) which shows this even more clearly -- an army coming down off a mountain with steep terrain on both sides.

[The Wizard]

We need to have terrain back. Where in MTW and Shoggy we fought uphill in a blizzard facing pavise arbalesters with nothing more than urban militia, you youngins had it easy with your Dutch battlefields and your praetorians, squaring off against head-throwing lunatics.

Good old days... kids got no more respect these days.

[IrishArmenian]

That would be a great feeture!

[Martok]

We need to have terrain back. Where in MTW and Shoggy we fought uphill in a blizzard facing pavise arbalesters with nothing more than urban militia, you youngins had it easy with your Dutch battlefields and your praetorians, squaring off against head-throwing lunatics.

Good old days... kids got no more respect these days.

LOL! We do sound like a bunch of old geezers at times, don't we?

But I digress. From some of the screenshots I've seen, it looks like the steep terrain has made a return to Medieval 2; and for that I'm glad.

[Azog 150]

i remeber shogun, and being pretty pants at it. The only clan i could win it with were the oda, but my favorate clan was either the mori and the takedawa(sp?) Still a great game though. Mongol invasion was too easy, i won the game as the mongols in litterally half an hour just auto-resolving the battles.

[Bagpuss]

steep terrain
Im also chuffed (Glad ) that we are going to have to set out strategies for fighting in these areas an mountain ranges like MTW, Hurrah .. :)

[blahblahblah]

LOL! We do sound like a bunch of old geezers at times, don't we?

I might sound like one too, because I've never played RTW other than the demo. And I love MTW a lot.

From the Agincourt in M2TW demo, I moved everybody to the very back where there's that mountain. The hills apparently affected the Frenchie's fatigueness and morale quite a lot when they run uphill watching the hail of flaming arrows come down.

I don't know what it was like for the terrain in RTW, but I'm sure it'll have a pretty drastic affect on how people use their troops.

[JR-]

good

[Empirate]

As far as I understand videos, screenshots and designer commentary, there will be "steep hillsides" as in "unaccessibly steep hillsides". Apart from these, terrain looks quite mellow to me. I hope there will be a lot of rocks and other stuff on the battlefield that most troops can't go over but must walk around. If there were skirmisher units lightly enough armed to scale cliffsides and rocks, that would be a cool feature! Especially if they had a missile attack...

[Barkhorn1x]

I too welcome the return of more varied terrain and am happy it will actually have some effect on battles.

To be fair to RTW, ancient armies pretty much did fight almost exclusively on open terrain. There were exceptions of course - but not that many.

Barkhorn.

[Ironside]

We need to have terrain back. Where in MTW and Shoggy we fought uphill in a blizzard facing pavise arbalesters with nothing more than urban militia, you youngins had it easy with your Dutch battlefields and your praetorians, squaring off against head-throwing lunatics.

Bah, those lightly armoured urban militia will have an easy time vs the exhausted pavise arbs.

A real challange is a peasant/archer army vs golden lancers sitting on a high moutain, without any forest, in a thunderstorm and they are led by a 8-star general.