Roleplaying

[melvinio]

I would suggest the French as the 'goodies'. Mr. Kobal makes a good point about Louis, (he ran around keeping nobles 'in check' - i.e. breaking their castles) but 12th century France was 'where it was at' for noble deeds and scholarly thinking. This is how the Franks saw themselves. They also saw themselves as fierce warriors, leaders of the First Crusade, which meant some knights did a few less-than-noble deeds. Little bit of a contradiction, but I'm not gonna argue with the man with the broadsword...

[Grimmy]

Stuff that helps me rp my "kingdom" is to try to recall what it must have been like in those days.

Death was common and always close by. When someone died, there was no coroner's office to come pick up the remains and no mortician to clean and dress and make the corps ready for disposial. The immediate family did those tasks. Child mortality was high. Simple infections could kill and injuries that would be fully healable today would be crippling back then.

All this means that people had a different psychological relationship to the idea of personal mortality than is the usual today.

Also, it was often the case where any kindness or "leniency" from a ruler or lord was viewed as weakness and weakness was something to be exploited and exploited weaknesses meant that entire families and social networks got slaughtered. Cruelity was often seen as a sort of virtue. Fear helped keep your loved ones alive and safe.

Loyalty worked differently in some ways back then too. Peasants weren't loyal as such. They'd pay their taxes or get killed/imprisoned or driven off their lands. They'd answer a lord's summons to battle for much the same reasons. National loyalty wasnt much of a concept. People would be "loyal" to their nearest large town/city because that's where their livelihood originated and where their safety from ravaging/pilaging/marading armies/bands was found. A person that would betray their city was the person that would open the gates to the invader and cause the blood of everyone he knew to flow down the streets.

Anyway, how ever inaccurate the above may be, this is what I tend to keep in mind when making some of the decisons on "what would a king do" as they come up in my games.

I have also found that this game system lends itself well to this sort of play and is probably why I get a year or more replayability out of each of the TW games I've purchased. There's always a slightly different way to approach a problem or issue that can be tried out that can lead to very different end results.

I've done the "power game" thing long ago with TW and found that once you figure the "best of breed" approach the game loses all shine and becomes just another bunch of buttons to push for predictable outcomes. That will always be the case with power gaming and strat games. No AI will ever be so well designed that it can not be "patterned" and predicted.

[IrishArmenian]

If you want to play from the Bad (Kekvit Irae, please work your ridiculous magic)'s standpoint pick the HRE! That, or anyone else close to Rome so you can take Rome as soon as he excommunicates you.

[kvbrock82]

thanks for the advice... was playing as england and captured the british isles, france and normandy so wasnt doing bad. but over the past 20/30 turns it has become dragging now the game has turned into a battle-retrain-battle-retrain cycle with portugal/ HRE/ denmark over the same 3 chokepoints. With absolutely no trace of roleplay left it's becoming very monotonous, very fast.

I think ill start a new campaign and follow your advise.. roleplaying by the general's/kings attributes and jotting down all the important information.

Is it best to go for a short campaign or a long one? a long one would probably be too much to keep track of after turn 100

[KARTLOS]

on an only mildly related point - i think it would be good if you could get a rview of your campagin like you can in some versions of civilization if you retire.
in civ it plays an animation of the map filling up as new cities are built or conquered - it was just a nice way to rreview what had happened

a similar feature would be amazing for total medieval. you could watch each faction spread out over the map and maybe key battles could be highlighted.

i think that would be quite useful for roleplayers.

another nice feature might be to give you leaders a log book of thier achievements that you could see. something simple like which cities they conqured, rival generals killed or captured and maybe signifigant buildings built.

[kvbrock82]

on an only mildly related point - i think it would be good if you could get a rview of your campagin like you can in some versions of civilization if you retire.
in civ it plays an animation of the map filling up as new cities are built or conquered - it was just a nice way to rreview what had happened

a similar feature would be amazing for total medieval. you could watch each faction spread out over the map and maybe key battles could be highlighted.

i think that would be quite useful for roleplayers.

another nice feature might be to give you leaders a log book of thier achievements that you could see. something simple like which cities they conqured, rival generals killed or captured and maybe signifigant buildings built.

i agree completely, some userfriendly summarized screen of the generals with a big pic/attributes for each one would work wonders in keeping track of your generals and developing a slightly more 'personal' relationship with them.