Quickening, sorry, I haven’t heard anything about performance on older systems. The options are the same as in the demo, but overall performance for the finished game is a little better on my PC than it was for the second demo, and much better than for the first.

Tamur, presently I have no solid plans for a guide. I don’t have nearly as much time, and I haven’t firmed any lasting opinions of the game yet.





Having played a bit more here's some further thoughts. While not wholly positive I do feel considerably better about M2TW than I did about RTW after a similar amount of play.

Playing on VH/VH English campaign, 21 turns.

In no particular order, good mixed with bad and general observations thrown in haphazardly:

1. The AI on VH has one new tactic which made me when I first saw it. I told myself it couldn't be doing what I thought. Then I realised it was. This was both exceedingly good, and disappointingly bad.

The AI will now corner camp. Yup, it's stolen that cheesy old player tactic. This is good, IMO, so long as we have to have corners on the field and so long as it doesn't do it when it has a superior or equal force.

The bad is that it was corner camping with an army made up entirely of mailed knights and border raiders: a force able to smash mine if it charged and acted aggressively. The other disappointment is that this AI force was fighting with another Scottish AI force, and they didn't join together. If they had done so I'd have been massacred. Instead I picked off the smaller mixed army with my archers and knights, then formed up and approached the other force from the best ground possible, only engaging after shooting the crud out of them.

Before anyone screams "Passive AI bug!" I do know about it I'm hoping this failure to press the advantage is due to that. However, based on my understanding of the passive AI bug (basically you have to be moving and acting for the AI to react; if you stand still it may do likewise) it is not applicable in this case. I was moving, fighting, forming up, moving again, raining arrows down on the horses ...

2. Knights don't seem to use their lances very often. I'm going to investigate this one further in custom battles. I order my mailed knights to attack an enemy. I watch them march over, lances as the visible weapon. Close to the enemy they begin their charge - waving their swords. This happens however I order them to attack, one click or two, from a close or long distance.

3. Agent cap = marvellous. No more spamming the map with agents. It's handled sensibly as well; for each basic level building of the relevant type you have you may have one agent, plus one more for each level of upgrade. So there is no need to fear that large empires with advanced settlements will be limited to the same amount as tiny backward factions.

4. Campaign map AI is so far much improved, playing on VH. It uses consolidated armies made up of a good mixture of units; that mob of mailed knights and border raiders was an anomaly in my experience. They do go after rebel settlements; Scotland in my game gobbled up all the nearby rebel settlements except York (I got it first ) and then came after me as it has no other way to expand. I've no nice examples to give, so you will have to take my word for it that it feels like I am playing against a better opponent.

5. I like the look of the campaign map now. I've seen others, Econ21 included, say they find it ugly. Not sure if this is a video card thing or a matter of taste.

6. The more I hear the music the better my opinion of it grows. Ditto the voice acting and the atmosphere of the game in general.

7. There's an odd delay at the start of battles before speeches begin. Would be nice if they started right away as per RTW, instead of when the camera zooms to the general. The speeches themselves are good thus far, less Hollywood action flick and more serious historical epic. I do enjoy the added speech on the campaign map. I confess I click on random units belonging to different factions just to hear what they say. I love the way the comments depend on your status with their parent faction, and on your actions. While at war with Scotland a Scottish merchant told me "So, you want to trade with the enemy?" when I clicked on him. The leader of the main Scottish army started to say "I'd welcome a trial of arms on the field to settle this conflict" after I ransomed his soldiers back to him. The Scottish captain who said "I'm gonna rip off your head and spit down your neck!" make me grin. I killed his army two turns later.

8. Rebels! 7 turns in to my brand new campaign and a stack of rebels spawns in Normandy. With chivalric knights! That's a unit which cannot be built until well into the game; it's far more powerful than anything I can field. Ludicrous. It's also spawned with a goodly collection of friends, e.g. crossbowmen. I can't kill them until I field a massive army I can afford to have badly mauled. Spawn rate also feels a bit high for my preferences. I have very happy (145% or more) settlements with good garrisons and I have two lots of rebels in 19 turns.

9. Battles still feel significantly better. I haven't been defeated by the AI yet (am on VH) but I have had some nice action. I found it surprising when I saw the AI using moves I've been using myself since STW's demo: skirmishing, fainting with cavalry, inching forward into missile range. They form up well and stay formed up ... in general. In my last big battle the Scots sent a unit of knights after my reinforcements as they marched to join me. Fairly sound plan - except those knights were the general's bodyguard, and were going to fight a unit of spear militia and another general's bodyguard. But overall it's far better. Still waiting for the VH AI to do what it has famously done to others, and shred me.

10. I continue to like the new settlement system. Castles and cities feel very different to each other and have very different capabilities. You couldn't manage with all one type or another.

11. The recruitment system for fighting units has shown one more trait which gains my froggy favour: you can retrain any unit anywhere if it will gain an armour or weapon boost from it. You can only retrain for men in a settlement where the appropriate unit pool exists. For example you can recruit some mailed knights in a backwater castle and send them to your advanced city to shop for new armour. But if you want to recruit new knights to that unit you'll have to go back to your backwater castle, or to another with the relevant buildings. It's how I expected it to be, yet I had fears that maybe retraining would work differently.

12. The AI can do a mass cavalry charge quite nicely when it wants to, and with good effect. I now worry about heavy cavalry if the AI has it.

13. I like the increased details on the faction summery scroll at the start of each turn. Especially having some idea of how my faction stands overall, updated on a turn by turn basis compared to the previous turn.

14. Overall there does seem to be more information available; it is neatly presented and easier to get.

15. Missile units seem better balanced. They can do good damage if used properly and given time to loose volleys. They are not overpowered as per RTW: you don't drop 20 men per volley, and armour or shields cut down on damage from low tech archers tremendously.

16. Someone please remind the frog of the .ini edit to turn off the in-battle movies? I don’t want my game interrupted when I breach walls and kill generals!

17. The ghosts of where units will move to (hold down space on battlemap after giving a move order) disappear if you move the camera. Irritating – setting up larger armies and giving complex move orders requires the ghosts to stay put while I move the camera.

18. Diplomacy is improved. Factions didn’t act like I was trying to give them the plague when I offered trade rights to them, indeed they sought me out and offered them. Ditto alliances. Liking the extra information available during negotiations.

19. Diplomacy isn’t perfect. My allies, the Scots, attacked me without warning … but I was blocking their only route to expansion and we were nearly equal in power, so this one I’m willing to excuse and even call a good move.

My allies, the French, parked large armies in my lands and kept reinforcing them, turn after turn. The French also allied with my worst enemy, the Scots, an action which still forces an infuriating automatic peace treaty on the warring factions with no warning or even decent notification. If they must force peace on you in this manner there should be a message box which tells you a truce has been formed due to your enemy allying with your ally. Better yet you should be given a choice between continuing the war and ending the alliance, or preserving the alliance and ending the war.

20. The Pope is not as batty as his predecessor. When the Scots attacked me he excommunicated them. The number of times the MTW Pope excommunicated me because someone attacked me …

21. I like the missions. They are sensible, give good rewards without being too rewarding, and are so far varied enough to remain fun. The ones from my council of nobles have tied in to my own plans too, sending me after rebel settlements I already had my eye on, or reinforcing border settlements which were weak.

22. I don’t particularly have any opinion on the new turn system and counter. I like knowing how many turns I have played without having to calculate. I’d like to see a date as well. Other than that Maybe when I’ve had a few generations go from birth to death with it I’ll have a stronger opinion.


I still feel the game has promise. It’s beginning to emerge out of the fog and show its personality now. I feel better about M2TW than I did about RTW after a similar amount of play. What the patch does will be important, and I still say I need more time to play to form anything more than the random opinions and observations I’ve posted thus far. Perhaps most importantly, I still want to play it. I spent a good part of my day at work today mentally planning things to do in custom battles and campaign.



Anyway,. That’s enough for now. I want to go and test out some knights and see if they use their lances or swap, and to see if the alt+click alternate attack works for them as it did with certain cavalry types in RTW.