MTW 2 Review from an EB / RTR player perspective
Id like to give some insight about this game to those that attribute time to realism mods / historical mods, who have yet to purchase it.
Performance - First off, if you are accustomed to playing with huge unit sizes, you're comp will need an overhaul, specifically when fighting in huge cities / castles. Ive an x1300 radeon, 2 gigs ram, 2.6 proc and it chuggs sometimes when 2 factions have a huge city map filled with armies. nerfing the graphics helps a little, but not a dramatic impact with big settlement battles.
Graphics - Damn! if you can run the sytem fluently with high graphics options, you're going to have your socks knocked off, especially when viewing alot of the mid - high tier knights. Even with the graphics turned all the way down, i can say that the graphics still compare with alot of the reskinned units that modders have done to the RTW units. the battlescape graphics have been revamped tremendously. Not just the terrain, but the sky as well. Lighting is awesome. Fought a battle in the ingame evening time and as i was setting up units I scrolled my mouse around and ingame sun just exploded on my screen in great beauty. actually had to squint.
AI - Still stupid. You can hold the medditerranean islands / UK and practically not have to worry about invasion. I took cyprus from the Byzantines and was immediatly counterattacked by them, but thats about it for island action in 100 turns of play. On landscape battles, the AI still has a tendancy to let me shoot at their armies without counterattacking, so long as they have 1 or more soldiers left in a ranged unit. occasionally they'll stand still regardless of lack of ranged units to counter. Settlement siege AI has been somewhat improved however. The chance that the AI breaks off a siege is now minimal. that was an issue with RTW. More often than not the AI attacks on the second turn of siege. ive yet to have an AI attempt to starve me out.
Pathfinding - heres a tip: give huge AI sieging armies more than one path to your walls. I made the mistake of destroying every tower / ram and leaving the comp with 1 units of ladders and everything went to hell. System performance is not an issue there. there also seems to occasionally be unit response issues moving on walls. id say the system took a small step down on that from the RTW engine. RTW rubber band is still in effect, meaning that if just a few of your soldiers in a unit are separated from the majority of the body, then you cannot issue an effective charge on an enemy unit. Pathfinding seems to be partially better moving through settlements though.
Battle Engine - The kill rate seems to be somewhere between RTW vanilla and EB. There are no uber formations i. e. Phalanx. Pike formation is nowhere near as difficult to break as phalanx formation. The whole battle combo animation works fluently and is aesthetically pleasing. It helps with the believability with soldier to soldier combat. One thing worth noting is that when a soldier on the front has seen alot of action, the blood pileup will begin to reflect on their armor. When upgrading units weapon / armor via settlement buildings, those upgrades will reflect visually on the units on the battlefield!
Unit Balance - There really arent any super soldiers in the nature of spartan / gaesetae, and lack of phalanx really helps in that regard. Heavy cavalry will rape non spear infantry head to head if they get a good charge in with the exception of heavy infantry which arent wiped completely, but the unit will be in bad condition. Low tier spearman can beat most heavy cavalry once the charge is stopped, Just make sure that you dont let heavy cavalry charge you from the rear :) . Horse archers are still annoying as they should be. Once you get past the peasant level units, there seems to be a tighter knit of unit balance. Peasants are just kill fodder, while even militia can be effective if used properly.
Campaign Play - Identical to RTW with the addition of agents. in addition you have the choice of developing your settlements into either cities or castles. The papacy functions much like the senate in RTW. In addition you have other councils that assign tasks for you to keep you busy.
Cities / Castles - cities bring better income through its ability to access more trade developing structures and higher population to tax, but arent given the access to military units that castles are. Given however that cities will get access to some potent militia units, they arent the crack troops that are required from a castle if you are intending on breaking down an enemies heavily fortified citadel (unless you are patient to starve them). Castles have access to some trade structures, but its limited. Castles really shine in their ability to recruit quality units and their ability to take the brunt of foreign invasion on your border regions as the higher tier castles get multiple layers of walls that the enemy has to gauntlet through. FYI the tax level in castles cannot be changed, it is a default normal level, however this should not concern you as castles get a substantial happiness bonus if revolt is your concern.
New Agents:
Priests - Essential for converting population to your faith in regions in which they are present. Religion is a major factor in the game for if a region begins to fall away from your factions religion, it can become rebellious or even revolt, throwing you out of the city. Priests are also used to condemn heretics, which need to be contained or else you can have some serious issues with region pop loyalty. Lastly, priests can get promoted to cardinals, giving you a viable option at having great relations with the pope, as your factions cardinals have a chance to become pope.
Princess - Works much like a diplomat except in addition you can throw her body onto a foreign general to improve relations with that factions or onto one of your generals to improve loyalty.
Merchants - Supposedly you can put them on foreign trade resources i.e. furs, timber etc to increase income to your empire, and even vie with foreign merchants over those resources. Really havent spent much time toying with those.
Character Attributes:
Piety - shows how devout a general / priest is seen. For generals it effects the happiness of settlement they are governing and chance to survive an inquisition (Faction leaders can fall victim too!).
Chivalry / Dread - Shows how honorable / dishonorable a mans actions are in rule and war. Letting prisoners go, setting low tax rates in settlements, bravery in battles developes chivalry whereas doing the opposite, i.e. high taxes ransom / execute devoples dread. Chivarly is advantageous as it inspires moral in troops and happiness in governed settlements, whereas dread inspires a morale penalty in enemy troops (pair a high dread general with a heavy cavalry army and you have dynamite). Dread effects a settlement as well, not sure if its positive or negative effect yet.
Loyalty - Keep that in check certainly with the generals you give big armies to, as you dont want to lose that full stack of crack troops to a general that rebels.
Historical Accuracy - Not RTW inaccurate, but plenty of space for a realism mod to work in. the Baskin Robbins effect is still active (i.e. bright colored units to easily distinguish factions), but its toned down somewhat. CA can get away with it with the european factions for the most part as alot of nations did historically flaire their heraldry on their armies, but on a few units it might be too much for the historian in you, and it seems to get carried away with some of the islamic nations. Mercs are at least acceptable now as CA dropped the green and went with a brown that suits the occasion.
There are a few off the wall units i.e. "Sherwood Archers", but its not as bad as some of the fantasy units in RTW.
The New World - Havent been there yet but, from glancing at the map that came with my limited edition, it looks lacking. Only 6 regions there and geographically inaccurate and disproportioned.
theres some things I havent discussed such as crusades, jihads, and guild building events. Going to leave that for you to find out on your own.
Also, dont try to wipe out the pope. the papacy cannot be destroyed, ever.
Overall its a damn good game. certainly aesthetically pleasing and the campaign depth has been improved.
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Originally Posted by EdwardL
Re: MTW 2 Review from an EB / RTR player perspective
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