Americans, how is Kingdoms?

[alpaca]

Ok, one more: Can we now play hotseat without auto-resolving defensive battles against the AI?

[Doug-Thompson]

Yes. The Teutons attacked me, although it wasn't a situation where I was in siege, and I fought them. I had to click off the "auto-resolve all battles" option on the campaign before it began.

[alpaca]

Yes. The Teutons attacked me, although it wasn't a situation where I was in siege, and I fought them. I had to click off the "auto-resolve all battles" option on the campaign before it began.

Ah that's great news, now we can finally properly use the control command in scripts again

[TinCow]

Does Kingdoms make any changes to the Grand Campaign?

[TeutonicKnight]

I'm a good ways into an Americas campaign, and I have to say so far I'm really enjoying it. Playing as a right nasty bastard, I've eliminated the Mayans while maintaining strong and peaceful relations with the Mexican civilizations including the Aztecs. I've secured all the rebel provinces from Vera Cruz to the Yucatan. I then moved up to Florida, and I've taken the Eastern half of the USA.

In terms of military, I think it's excellent. The overpowering might of Spain is significantly tempered by half-size units, and hard to get recruitment requirements. I rely heavily on mercenary troops, and I have to command every battle to conserve my Spanish strength. Gunpowder seems more effective than in 1.02, but still not as powerful as good old crossbowmen when you ignore the massive morale hit the natives take. Artillery is likewise totally over the top in relation to native fortifications. One salvo pretty much destroys any section of the wall (or tower) you want down.

I'm preparing my big offense against the Aztec Empire now. They have been leading the charts pretty much the whole game and have taken out a couple of their neighboring factions, so I expect they are rolling in money. They also have a huge number of stacks floating around, so this will be a hell of a campaign. I'm just waiting until my North America pacification has settled down.

If the other campaigns are as good as this one, I'll be really impressed. :)

[FactionHeir]

Does Kingdoms make any changes to the Grand Campaign?

I would say no, although that's based on the responses I've read so far.

[TinCow]

I would say no, although that's based on the responses I've read so far.

Hmph.

FH, since you're a modding guru, does it look like the additional features (upgradeable forts, controlling multiple armies in the same battle, etc.) can be modded into the GC? I'm trying to decide whether to buy Kingdoms, but I have relatively little interest in campaigns with a very small number of factions. Maybe if someone modded the Britannia campaign to give it over a dozen factions, I might be interested.

[Antagonist]

Haven't installed it, but one nice thing that struck me leafing through the manual was that within the body of the text itself, discussing "SDK Tools" (the Unpacker, Battle and Cinematic Editors) they talk about the mod community and provide links to the Org and TWC. A nice little nod.

Antagonist

[FactionHeir]

Hmph.

FH, since you're a modding guru, does it look like the additional features (upgradeable forts, controlling multiple armies in the same battle, etc.) can be modded into the GC? I'm trying to decide whether to buy Kingdoms, but I have relatively little interest in campaigns with a very small number of factions. Maybe if someone modded the Britannia campaign to give it over a dozen factions, I might be interested.

This was recently posted at the Citadel and sounds promising, but its hard to tell at this point, whether the exact features as in Kingdoms will thus be enabled in M2TW or just an off-shoot that is somewhat similar but not fully functional. Especially in regards to hotseat and army control for instance. I would probably wait for people to discuss the modding aspect of kingdoms and whether the features can be properly applied back to M2TW first. My guess is, that it wouldn't be entirely possible without modding the exe (which is somewhat illegal according to Lusted)

[seneschal.the]

I love the campaign in the americas, having only played 3 hours of it and briefly checking through the other campaigns. Overall this is a very good and solid expansion, the new campaigns all look very interesting.

However... The AI is still broken, campaign and battle map. Nothing in standard M2:TW is fixed, bugs with traits and ancillaries and unit stats are as usual. I haven't had a single crash though after 3 hours of nonstop play so it is not all bad. Unfortunately CA has confirmed in the E:TW previews that the AI used in M2 is a mishmash of different AIs that interfere with eachother and it needs a complete rewrite to work properly (which won't happen until Empire). :(

But if you enjoy M2 then Kingdoms is a must. The new maps and great and units are awesome. And it looks very pretty if you got the hardware.

[Goofball]

Yes, it installs over the patched game, but I don't know about installing over mods.

Will it install over the unpatched game, or do I have to install 1.2 first?

[Graphic]

It's awesome. Love the new music, the bad-ass looking Teutons, the Apache. Probably one of the better and larger expansion packs ever.

[Kraggenmor]

I'm finding myself concerned that Gamestop, Best Buy and, Circuit City are all still listing the Kingdoms expansion as 'not yet available.'

I'm trying to decide if I should bother stopping by the stores just to check, I would expect their websites to be accurate this many days after release.

(I'm in Phoenix, Az btw)

[Goofball]

Will it install over the unpatched game, or do I have to install 1.2 first?

Answered my own question. It automatically applies 1.2 before installing Kingdoms.

Man is this a long install (starting from scratch). 1 hr 15 minutes so far, and Kingdoms hasn<t even started installing yet...

[Graphic]

I'm finding myself concerned that Gamestop, Best Buy and, Circuit City are all still listing the Kingdoms expansion as 'not yet available.'

I'm trying to decide if I should bother stopping by the stores just to check, I would expect their websites to be accurate this many days after release.

(I'm in Phoenix, Az btw)

My Best Buy didn't have it yesterday, but my GameStop did.

[TeutonicKnight]

Answered my own question. It automatically applies 1.2 before installing Kingdoms.

Man is this a long install (starting from scratch). 1 hr 15 minutes so far, and Kingdoms hasn<t even started installing yet...

Eh, it only took me 20 minutes to install everything. I was sacking Mayan cities 30 minutes in.

And yes, that was both discs, all campaigns.

[Proletariat]

My first impression has been great. My main issue so far is being a little overwhelmed by just what campaign/faction to start with, almost all of them look awesome. Definitely bodes well for tons of replay value. I was very happy with BI when it came out, but this, at least initially, has definitely raised the bar for expansions.

The special objectives for each campaign are a great touch. I think they're already covered in the individual campaign previews that were released, so I won't repeat them in full here, but if anyone has some specific questions or screen shot requests I'll try and get to them in between rounds of my Crusades campaign tonight.

[mkirchner]

Bought mine today (friday) at Wal Mart. The only problem was in installing it. It would install the Americas campaign then it would lock up. I would then start over and install the British one. After it was done it would lock up again same for the other two. After installing each one on their own they all seemed to work. I even defragged and cleaned my hard drive before I attempted to restart. In closing Installing was a pain but the game plays great.

[Goofball]

Eh, it only took me 20 minutes to install everything. I was sacking Mayan cities 30 minutes in.

And yes, that was both discs, all campaigns.

I was installing on my new laptop that I've had for less than a week. So I had to install M2TW, then patch 1.2, then Kingdoms. Yes, once it got to installing just Kingdoms it was fast, but man, 1.2 takes a hell of a long time...

[Zoring]

I assume us Australians will get it in 6 months, like Medieval II, even though that was made in Australia... sigh

[sirnoob]

i can't believe some american shops don't have it when my game and woolworths had it on release (31st)

[Nikos_Rouvelas]

I got it on Thursday. First Impressions:
Pikeman no longer walk like old women with walkers
Varangian guard are insane now
Greek firethrowers o_0

[Doug-Thompson]

Well, I just had an extremely enjoyable evening.

My 10-year-old son is playing a hotseat game with me where he is the Teutonic Knights and I was his ally, the Danes. When why saw him enjoying himself so much and said he could stay up until 10 p.m., he cheered.

He had to autoresolve his fights and I help him with his economy, but it's been a great night.

[Khorak]

Thank god for the retrofit mod. I had no idea this expansion did squat to the grand campaign, I couldn't really care less about the added ones.

I would recommend the Retrofit mod without reservation, for little more than the balance changes. You will be overjoyed to find that peasants are now the entirely useless cannon fodder distraction they should be (the next lowest unit, Town Militia, will mince them), and while cavalry are still relatively powerful, they do not simply chew through anything and everything they can make a charge against.