EB comments on Medieval 2

[blacksnail]

One thing in MTW2 that really made me laugh was the voice-work, if it can be called that. Everybody sounds like an over-the-top stereotype of his or hers nationality, the Germans sounds like they´ve been taken from a Monthy Python movie about the Nazi´s, the and the rest have just about the same realism in them. Except of course the Danes and I think Poland, who sounds just like the Russians. Oh the Welsh sounds just like the English, and the Irish like the Scotts. Ridiculous.

I didn't have a problem because it was clearly supposed to be "cartoonish" - not saying that to put the game down, and "representational" is likely a closer word, but you just need to look to the movies and the bright, candy-colored units to give you the tone of the game. It was never supposed to be historically accurate; it was a game that allowed you to recreate huge battles using "miniatures" with medieval trappings. I generally feel that attacking M2TW (or RTW for that matter) on the basis of inaccuracy is like attacking Star Wars for not accurately representing space combat.

For me, M2TW only needs to be consistent within its own context - for example, I would be annoyed if it had da Vinci-based airplane units that could bomb your troops, because that is a science fiction trapping, not a medieval trapping.

[Bellum]

I don't like M2 because it's boring. The lack of detail makes the campaign boring. It's got no life to it.

The battles arenot only boring, because the generic units are bland, but also frustraiting, because the units don't do anything right. Don't they teach soldiers how to advance in formation in "how not to die in battle 101"? At least after a few battles, you'd think they'd learn something. How about "How to use a pike" or "How to charge the enemy in unison"?

[Mindaros]

Yeah, that's the thing. M2TW has no content. The campaign is very boring and boring in the exact same way, no matter which faction you play as. And since the Ai is so bad, you don't even get the feeling that you're playing against an opponent. Ai is just there waiting to be defeated. That's the problem. Medieval history is extremely fascinating and full of stuff they could've used to create a great game. But they chose to leave all that wealth out of the game. Why, I don't know.

[Cartaphilus]

Well, they let all the glory for the mods!
And that is great for us.

[Perturabo]

The base Medieval 2 is far too basic for my liking, however has several improvements that should make it a Nirvana for modders.

Marriage alliances at least in the later patches seem to hold very, very well. In DLV 4.0PE I had 3 marriage alliances, with Hungary, Poland and France. None of them attacked me for a period up to about 1230AD (I started a new game with them as allies still) despite poorly held frontiers in many cases. Since I was playing the HRE whom everyone enjoys attacking that should say something about the strength of alliances.

My gut feeling is that general alliances (non marriage) also hold much better. Diplomacy is so vastly improved that it should make EBII worth playing for a much longer timescale than EB1 which has all the massive diplomatic problems we know and love from RTW. I understand that moddability of diplomacy is good also (from Ludens comments).

The most obvious improvement is graphics, much harder for modders I imagine, however check some of the units from Broken Crescent to see exactly what can be achieved

AI is still substandard, however I note that DLV and BC both manage to have AI that manages a few clever strikes with cavalry etc at times. No worse than RTW in my opinion, possibly even a little better. Naval landings by AI are FAR superior in every possible way. Despite the stick they took on release (justified) from the fanbase, I think CA really did listen and make some improvements within the engines limitations.

Really, really looking forward to EBII.

[Xtiaan72]

The base Medieval 2 is far too basic for my liking, however has several improvements that should make it a Nirvana for modders.

Marriage alliances at least in the later patches seem to hold very, very well. In DLV 4.0PE I had 3 marriage alliances, with Hungary, Poland and France. None of them attacked me for a period up to about 1230AD (I started a new game with them as allies still) despite poorly held frontiers in many cases. Since I was playing the HRE whom everyone enjoys attacking that should say something about the strength of alliances.

My gut feeling is that general alliances (non marriage) also hold much better. Diplomacy is so vastly improved that it should make EBII worth playing for a much longer timescale than EB1 which has all the massive diplomatic problems we know and love from RTW. I understand that moddability of diplomacy is good also (from Ludens comments).

The most obvious improvement is graphics, much harder for modders I imagine, however check some of the units from Broken Crescent to see exactly what can be achieved

AI is still substandard, however I note that DLV and BC both manage to have AI that manages a few clever strikes with cavalry etc at times. No worse than RTW in my opinion, possibly even a little better. Naval landings by AI are FAR superior in every possible way. Despite the stick they took on release (justified) from the fanbase, I think CA really did listen and make some improvements within the engines limitations.

Really, really looking forward to EBII.

Very true.... This is a very old thread and much of the comments on this thread are pretty obsolete at this point considered the amazing mods that are out for it now. SS and DLV pretty much address the 'Depth' issues. The diplomacy and the skins really rock in the mods and EBII is going to be amazing... In the meantime I encourage people to give one of the excellent mods for Medieval a chance... If for no other reason that to see what is now actually possible for EBII gameplay.

[Dunadd]

I've not played Medieval 2 myself but my brother bought it and got Kingdoms too and he says that while the graphics are better the AI is still poor - plus it has recurring crashes which end your campaign sooner or later with 'unspecified error' messages and that these make it not worth playing since, as you don't even get told what the error is, there's no way you can fix it - and that Kingdoms doesnt sort these.

So (despite any improvements on RTW) since M2 and Kingdoms are so full of bugs that you can't finish campaigns in them it seems to me it wouldnt be worth the effort of modding either of them.