M2TW, does anyone like the original better

[Caerfanan]

EDIT: In fairness, however, I should add that I only defended a couple of siege battles; so the enemy using crossbows for taking the walls may have only been an anomaly.

Was your enemy the French? I read somewhere else in the forum something about a french general sending his xbowmen charging in a bridge battle!

What is the shield bug? I don't play M2 yet

[econ21]

Can anyone say if this has improved in M2TW?? I'm not saying that MTW sieges were anything special because they definitely weren't, but are M2TW sieges noticeably better, and does the scenario above still occur?

M2TW sieges are noticeably better. I've often been wrongfooted by the AI and had to defend a settlement with a miserable garrison (this wrongfooting almost never happened to me in RTW and is evidence of the improved strategic AI & challenge of M2TW). Typically, I lose the siege defence. When the AI has artillery it tends to stay out of range of the towers and make multiple breaches in the walls, destroying towers with any left over ammo. Only when the artillery has expended its ammo does it storm the settlement. Quite frankly, I've learnt from the AI in terms of a methodical approach to storming a settlement.

I can't say whether the scenario you mentioned happens in M2TW or not, as my experience of siege defences is not extensive. But in the couple of dozen or so I've played, I've never experienced it. The AI does concentrate on one side of the settlement though - at least while it has only modest sized armies (I recall from BI that sieges by multiple stacks could sometimes lead to multiple sides of the settlement being attacked).

The big problem I noticed with the BI siege AI was that it always seemed to buy a small amount of siege equipment - a ram, two ladders and a tower. That is just not enough to take down a settlement guarded by anything but a token Roman force. The virtual inability of the AI to take stonewalled settlements is a big flaw in BI. In M2TW, it does not seem to be so constrained.

[BlackKnight1234]

I have medieval 2 total war rome total war empire total war and medieval total war and all of them work very well

[oz_wwjd]

the first one is and will always be my favourite. It's only due to the fact that it refuses to work with Nividia series 8 cards that prevents me from playing it.

[Kaidonni]

I no longer have MTW Gold on the computer, owing to the battle mouse-over bug (fine, I did find a somewhat effective way to improvise, but wasn't motivated enough to play that way). Can't play M2TW because the disc drive doesn't recognise it (we have another disc drive that does, but it isn't connected). RTW...not bothering at the moment, might try some of the updated mod releases, but last time around I just didn't feel like playing it. Didn't feel like it had the correct variety. I am now a Stalker and a Civ III Complete player. Of course, should I get my own computer one day...I wonder, can you have two graphics cards? Because if so...

EDIT: Although, heh, talk about necroposting...meh, seen threads older than this reinvigorated.

[King Kurt]

Ah - so nice to be back in the Main hall

I have recently started playing MTW2 after a daliance with RTW and I must say I quite enjoy it. I like the range of things you can do - diplomacy, religion, trade, the castle/ town split etc. Unlike Martok, it does feel more like being in control of a Medieval Kingdom - especially if you play the short campaign. that gives you historic oppolents and you do not have to conquer the world.

As old lags of the Main Hall will know, I loved MTW and VI and was active here for several years before a change of PC moved mr on. I thought RTW was OK, but did not like the micro management of the settlements and loads of other things. However having moved on to MTW2 my enthusiasm is rekindled - I really want to play whenever I can and spend time reading the guides on the forum. I feel I have a lot to learn before I master the game. With MTW I did feel I had mastered the game - once you got beyond about a dozen moves you were always likely to win - I don't feel that yet with MTW2 - but it may come with time. Where RTW and MTW2 win out is the realistic move distance - no longer an army from Norway poping up in Egypt - you have to plan and you can use the terrian so much more - a recent RTW game had my small force guarding a river crossing and it driving back sucessive attacks as the only way to my city was over the river.

So - just my 2 pennyworth - and, as always, good to visit the haunts of my old friend Martok

Oh - and Martok - is Brett going to be a Viking????

[caravel]

TREACHERY AND PERFIDY! Well I'm glad to see you're liking the newer games King Kurt. Personally I could never get into RTW or M2TW - though I prefer even RTW to the latter. In my case the battles are the big game breaker.

About the movement issue; that's a valid point but I believe that a balance between the two would have been better. In MTW this was one of the big flaws along with the 1 year per turn system, which meant that some armies could jump from Scotland to Egypt in a single turn - literally this is fine as 1 year = 1 turn but in gameplay terms it's bad. Though with RTW it was painful walking your agents/army stacks bit by bit from i.e. western Anatolia to southern Egypt.

[Ludens]

I've recently picked up M2:TW + kingdoms for the sake of playing the upcoming Europa Barbarorum 2 modification. I haven't played either S:TW or M:TW (or unmodded R:TW for that matter) for several years now because I don't have much time for playing, and when I do I generally played Civilization 4 or Europa Barbarorum. So-far I have played a single campaign in vanilla M2:TW to try it out. It is definitely an improvement over R:TW. The battles are longer and more tactical, the A.I. is better and diplomacy seems to work. But I am not as involved in it as I was in the original M:TW.

On the campaign map there are many improvements over M:TW: trade and naval warfare work better, unit movement is more logical, the building tree is simplified but due to the castle-town system it offers more options, the diplomacy screen is far more informative and there are some nice options for Papal manipulation. However, micromanaging agents is still a pain and I am still not sure whether the 3D map is an improvement over the old province-based maps. Then there are some bad design decisions, like the merchant agent (an exploit and an annoyance at the same time), automatically worsening relations with A.I. factions at higher difficulty levels, and the decision to only have detailed information on other factions available when directly negotiating with them.

The character traits are a mixed bag. The traits & ancillaries seem a bit bare compared to R:TW and the descriptions are less clear and less funny, but it's still a better system than original M:TW. The loyalty trait is nice to have back, although I have not seen realistic massive uprisings like in M:TW. Instead, occasionally a stack led by a disloyal generals will simply join the rebels. This gets absurd when the crown prince decides to throw away his heritage in order to join the other rebel stacks in doing... well, mostly nothing. Administrative skill has disappeared, which I find annoying because now I have to search the character traits to see how good the character is at managing settlements. Piety is back and characters now have a dread-chivalry rating, which is a nice touch. Sadly, my kings always end up being high-dread because of the numbers of spies I recruit. Apparently being chivalrous means being blind. Or naive. Or stupid. The most annoying change is the fact that you cannot choose a faction heir. Instead, this is done automatically, with no regard for the bloodline. Even original M:TW was better in this aspect.

Naval battles have been improved from R:TW. I get the impression the auto-calc works better, but you still get ping-ponging fleets. I've had one fleet that was essentially being hit back and forth by enemy fleets four times in a single turn before being sunk. Still, it is easier to destroy fleets than it was in vanilla R:TW, which is an improvement. Battles are also more decisive, and the A.I. seems better able to organize its units and generals on the campaign maps (although you will still see some weedy moves). Strategic A.I. is still overly belligerent, and likely to gang up on the player. Maybe this is related to the automatically worsening relations, though. I'd say that diplomacy is better than in any of the previous games. You have more options and thanks to the improved diplomacy screen you have a better idea why they attack. I also have been able to get cease-fires when I had clearly beaten a faction, something that you could not rely on in R:TW. The pointless naval wars from M1:TW are thankfully also gone.

However, the main reason we buy this game are the battles, and here it does fall short of M:TW. The battle maps are not a varied as M:TW, although they are a lot better than R:TW's battle maps which were usually dominated by a single feature. The same goes for the A.I.: more capable than in R:TW, but still not very good. M:TW battles had me at the edge of my seat, M2:TW battles are routine, although so far a more enjoyable routine than R:TW. I may change my mind once I get to know the game (and specifically the A.I.) better and have tried out higher difficulty levels, but my current verdict is: a decent game, but not as gripping as its predecessor.

[MasterPhantom]

I don't. It to hard figuring out who's who in the original when the battles takes places. Graphics were horrible in the original.

[BlackKnight1234]

I can tell you that campaign is better than all
But battels! Battels suckkkkkkkkkk!

[blackfish]

Original is the best

[King Kurt]

TREACHERY AND PERFIDY! Well I'm glad to see you're liking the newer games King Kurt. Personally I could never get into RTW or M2TW - though I prefer even RTW to the latter. In my case the battles are the big game breaker.

About the movement issue; that's a valid point but I believe that a balance between the two would have been better. In MTW this was one of the big flaws along with the 1 year per turn system, which meant that some armies could jump from Scotland to Egypt in a single turn - literally this is fine as 1 year = 1 turn but in gameplay terms it's bad. Though with RTW it was painful walking your agents/army stacks bit by bit from i.e. western Anatolia to southern Egypt.

Treachery and Perfidy from Caravel - I'm honoured!!!

To be honest I haven't played that many battles under MTW2 yet, but they seem less challenging than under MTW. However I used to find that I didn't play many battles under MTW. For the first few years battles would be close and I would play every one, but once a campaign had got going the battles I felt the need to play drastically deminished as I would have stacks of good quality troops under 5/6/or 7 star generals and the results were always a foregone conclusion. The odd problem would crop up, but I did feel that within MTW, once your empire reached a critical mass, there was an inevitability in your winning/ conquering the world. I always dropped out at the 60% mark or there abouts, only once going all the way to a 100% victory. In contrast I have probably played, in proportion, more battles in RTW. In particular I remember a small Egyptian force defending a river line who held off a sucession of attacks from superior Selucid forces, enabling me to sucessfully beseige Antioch. Now you could say that the AI was a bit dumb by trying to do the same thing 5 or 6 times, but each battle was a close run thing with my small force holding off the larger. Moreover, you could not really set up a similar situation in MTW.

So I suppose what I am saying is that on a strategic level I am enjoying the newer games more than MTW as there is more to do, more to go wrong and more challenge. The shorter campaign gives you an option to face similar problems to history. Of the 2 I prefer MTW2 over RTW. RTW has far too much city micromanagement for me and I spend more time sorting revolting cities than I do conquering the world. As for MTW vs MTW2 - well the jury is still out. MTW was a game that really gripped me - I wanted to play it whenever I could. I feel a similar passion for MTW2 but not to the same intensity yet, but it is early days.

[caravel]

To be honest I haven't played that many battles under MTW2 yet, but they seem less challenging than under MTW. However I used to find that I didn't play many battles under MTW. For the first few years battles would be close and I would play every one, but once a campaign had got going the battles I felt the need to play drastically deminished as I would have stacks of good quality troops under 5/6/or 7 star generals and the results were always a foregone conclusion.

They're more frustrating than challenging. I find that battles are fundamentally broken due to the new style game mechanics. In M2TW the one on one combat is based on the animations and this is what actually ruins battles (it's also why there were so many bugs with certain units not being able to hit certain other units). STW, MTW and RTW have a simpler and better system where the fight animation is only cosmetic. When individual men in a STW/MTW/RTW unit are engaged they fight a target based on their stats (honour, defence, attack, charge, armour, morale etc). The M2TW men with a unit also seem to queue up to fight. Cavalry are also still too overpowered as they were in RTW.

The odd problem would crop up, but I did feel that within MTW, once your empire reached a critical mass, there was an inevitability in your winning/ conquering the world. I always dropped out at the 60% mark or there abouts, only once going all the way to a 100% victory. In contrast I have probably played, in proportion, more battles in RTW. In particular I remember a small Egyptian force defending a river line who held off a sucession of attacks from superior Selucid forces, enabling me to sucessfully beseige Antioch. Now you could say that the AI was a bit dumb by trying to do the same thing 5 or 6 times, but each battle was a close run thing with my small force holding off the larger. Moreover, you could not really set up a similar situation in MTW.

It is true that most players don't go for total domination in MTW because it gets fairly predictable after a time and you're essentially spamming huge stacks. But the same goes for RTW, I find that my faction has conquered a good swathe of the map and from that point onward my spam army is fighting my main opponent's spam army. Because every battle is not for a province in RTW/M2TW this means lots of meaningless battles - essentially fighting the same boring battle against the same pathetic AI, in the same location again and again. In short you will be forced to spam and autoresolve your way to victory - which is not so different to the later stages of an MTW campaign. And yes in RTW/M2TW the AI will tend to make the same moves, whether hostile or diplomatic, over and over, even if they don't make much sense. This occurs in M2TW because essentially it's the same game. M2TW has the same AI and diplomacy that was in RTW. And the problem with this was that the diplomatic AI did not "talk" to the strategic AI. (i.e. the egyptians offering a ceasefire the same year as their army lays seige, then offering it again, then laying seige again, etc, etc, etc,)

So I suppose what I am saying is that on a strategic level I am enjoying the newer games more than MTW as there is more to do, more to go wrong and more challenge. The shorter campaign gives you an option to face similar problems to history. Of the 2 I prefer MTW2 over RTW. RTW has far too much city micromanagement for me and I spend more time sorting revolting cities than I do conquering the world. As for MTW vs MTW2 - well the jury is still out. MTW was a game that really gripped me - I wanted to play it whenever I could. I feel a similar passion for MTW2 but not to the same intensity yet, but it is early days.

RTW was badly broken in that squalor could not be controlled except by pulling out of the city, exterminating the populace and invading again! I understand that M2TW does not have this problem, but it still has many of the other problems of RTW and battles are IMHO worse than RTW's. At least RTW's could be easily modded and most problems fixed. Personally I could not stand M2TW after about an hour of playing. It went on the shelf and has been there ever since.

I also found the RTW/M2TW camapaign map interesting for a while - but this was short lived. It does involve a lot of micromanagement and unit/agent movement is still flawed. I also still think navies in RTW/M2TW are even worse than the poorly implimented shipping in MTW.

You'll be back. Good luck with M2TW King Kurt, I hope it works for you.

[oz_wwjd]

Actually when I played MTw I liked to go the other way,let the AI mass huge stacks against me,and see if I can defeat them with my garrison forces. It makes for an epic battle,although such battles have taken me the better part of 2-3 hours to successfully bring to a close,also it makes for an interesting tactical challenge.

[Roark]

In my opinion, the first MTW is leagues ahead of anything else in the series.

SHOGUN
I found this to be nasty and clunky, with units moonwalking and jamming against each other regularly. From memory, archers were absurdly overpowered as well, taxing even heavily armoured units in a nasty way.

ROME
Rome was ridiculously easy as soon as I got myself some heavy cavalry. I just trounced everyone. Sieges were awkward and unwieldy, and I found that charging around the deserted streets of massive cities to be pointless and silly, especially to find that my goal is a little red flag in the middle of town. Strategic map movement was illogical and ambushes and other mechanics I found incomprehensible, as well as the sudden disappearance of entire enemy armies.

M2TW
This was in some ways the easiest of all the Total War games, for me. Just too easy to present a challenge and therefore enjoyment, and the battlefield was not immersive or given to strategic thinking in my experience. Very pretty, but not much fun at all for me. I didn't see any point in devising complex tactics or orchestrating a battle the way I can in the first one.

MTW has the advantage of some awesome mods as well. I haven't played vanilla MTW since 2006.

[caravel]

SHOGUN
I found this to be nasty and clunky, with units moonwalking and jamming against each other regularly. From memory, archers were absurdly overpowered as well, taxing even heavily armoured units in a nasty way.

That's a very different experience to my own and most other's here. STW and MTW are the same engine. The main differences are not in battles but on the campaign map.

TW consists of two engines. The campaign map engine effectively saves and closes when a battle starts and the units in the province where the battle takes place are "handed over" to the battle map engine. When the battle finishes, the battle map hands the data back to the campaign map engine. MTW's campaign map has more features than STW's but the underyling code is the same. The battle map is pretty much identical with a few tweaks and improvements to the AI - though in fact it's not a linear improvement. The STW AI is better in some respects though overall the MTW one is superior.

I did not find archers overpowered either. I'm wondering what version of the game you were playing - though I personaly know of no STW or STW/MI version exhibiting these issues.

[Roark]

Yeah, well I found the AI alone in MTW to be enough of a boon to make it better by far than Shogun. I don't really understand what the die-hards see in it, to be honest. The campaign map was so small and limited that there seemed to be an inerrant playing out of almost exactly the same story/developments between the factions as the years went by, much like the Viking campaign in MTW

I'm interested to know what you consider to be superior about the AI in Shogun...

I only played vanilla but, from memory, I found that I could kill around a third of a charging infantry unit just with archers in Shogun. In any case, they were heavily taxed before they reached my front lines. I just started producing heaps of archers, and got sick of massacring everyone whilst they were toing and froing in bizarre ways on the battlfield map.

[caravel]

Well as I said, I'm not familiar with this problem. As to what is better about the AI, the MTW AI is undoubtedly better in most ways, the main problem though is that the armies are poorly balanced compared to the STW army roster and so don't make the best possible use of it. In my experience STW battles are quite a lot more challenging because of this. I have never had much difficulty in winning MTW battles unless seriously outnumbered or up against "uber units" - I still regularly lose STW battles. Also the STW AI makes better use of terrain and in particular woods. For some reason the MTW does not take as much advantage of the woods. Apart from this the MTW/VI AI is superior though.

[Beirut]

I much prefer the original M:TW.

My new rig runs M:TW2 very nicely, but I can't stand the campaign. Probably because I cannot understand it no matter how hard I try. "First, walk a 50' general from this town to that town so that town has a 50' general, now turn around twice, spit, and dance for two-minutes in order to create a..." Drives me absolutely freaking bonkers. I hate the icons. Hate the map. Hate the... everything. Custom battles are fun, though. But I miss the campaigns.

I just play M:TW on my old rig which I gave to my woman. Runs M:TW perfectly and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Again.

[caravel]

I much prefer the original M:TW.

My new rig runs M:TW2 very nicely, but I can't stand the campaign. Probably because I cannot understand it no matter how hard I try. "First, walk a 50' general from this town to that town so that town has a 50' general, now turn around twice, spit, and dance for two-minutes in order to create a..." Drives me absolutely freaking bonkers. I hate the icons. Hate the map. Hate the... everything. Custom battles are fun, though. But I miss the campaigns.

I just play M:TW on my old rig which I gave to my woman. Runs M:TW perfectly and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Again.

True enough. I don't put much stock in graphics, but M2TW's graphics are truly horrible. Yes they can be "3D" and more advanced than MTW, but the artwork is nasty and tacky looking. RTW was bad enough but this is worse. STW/MTW had a certain "class", but the M2TW artwork is far too "Shrek" for my liking.

[tomrayner]

I've been toying with the idea of buying M2TW but am not sure how it would run on my computer - I've heard it can be quite so slow and choppy if your processor isn't up to speed (like any game).

I've got an AMD Athalon XP2400 (2.0gz) with 128mb RAM and Nvideo Gforce 4 graphics card... am I in for a chop-fest? If it'll even run at all.

[caravel]

I will run very poorly on that machine, if at all. The lack of shader 1 support would likely be the show stopper.

Minimum System Requirements:

* Microsoft® Windows® 2000/XP
* Celeron 1.5GHz Pentium 4® (1500MHz) or equivalent AMD® processor
* 512MB RAM
* 11GB of uncompressed free hard disk space
* 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound cardand latest drivers
* 100% Windows® 2000/XP compatible mouse,keyboard and latest drivers
* DirectX® 9.0c
* 128MB Hardware Accelerated video card with Shader 1 support and the latest drivers. Must be 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible
* 1024 x 768 minimum display resolution
* Internet (TCP / IP) play supported; Internet play requires broadband connection and latest drivers; LAN play requires Network card.

You could get a better entry level graphics card and a decent amount of RAM and give it a try - though you can still expect choppiness. They're called "minimum" system requirements for a reason.

(to be honest even if you don't get M2TW, you still could do with more RAM in that machine)

[caravel]

Scratch that - just remembered that your CPU won't run it due to the lack of SSE2 support. It's a new PC I'm afraid.

I had the same CPU myself and upgraded for the same reason... M2TW was not worth upgrading a PC for, but in hindsight I suppose the thing needed upgrading anyway. The problem is that now I can no longer run MTW1...

[tomrayner]

Thanks for that Caravel, it's as I suspected.

Maybe I'll just download Redux or Tyberius for a new challenge instead... any recommendations. i'm sick of the AI attacking me with vast peasant/arquebusier/crossbow armies (or whatever other combination of crap troops they've tried)

[caravel]

It's difficult to recommend mods as everyone gets something different out of this game.

If you want more challenge and you like the Shogun Total War theme, then I would recommend the Samurai Warlords mod. Bear in mind that I'm highly biased when it comes to this mod however, but I think it's the best MTW mod ever. The SW mod aproaches the game from a more purist standpoint. All factions have the same units (as in STW) and this gives the best play balance and balanced armies (you won't get attacked by the AI fielding only one type of unit etc). Make sure you download the patch and the sound add on.

The Tyberius mod is an add on for Viking Horde's XL mod. If you want more unit, faction and province variety then that's probably the one for you. Tyberius did a very good job revamping the graphics in the XL/Tyberius mod. Many of his improvements are on the battlefield sprites themselves - which are exceptional. I think there is a version of the Tyberius mod that includes the XL mod, but not sure.

You could also try the Medmod. It tries to be more historically accurate and restricts units to homelands and it mostly succeeds at this. This approach has it's pros and cons however as strict homelands restrictions also affect rebelling troops - giving some very unusual rebellions. The Medmod is probably more suited to hardened players and those that don't mind further tweaking it (i.e. a bit of DIY modding).

If it's the Medieval era you want, as I suspect it is, then go with the XL/Tyberius Mod. It's the most popular and widely played also. XL also removes peasants and adds many more units so those peasant armies should be a thing of the past.

-Edit: Straying a bit off topic here, so if Mithrandir or bamff want to split this to a new thread?