This is the only place I could ask!!!

**Megas Methuselah** · 03-31-2010, 21:35

Originally Posted by Macilrille

Kingdoms does have the American Discovery and colonisation.

CA's protrayal of the First Peoples in America is always pretty basic/bad (especially in ETW; their portrayal of the First Nations in there is downright insulting), just like their portrayal of history in all their games.

Still fun, I guess. Personally, I never bothered with Kingdoms, and I'll never play it. The only reason I'm ever going to buy it is to play EB2 with it.

**Marcus Darkstar** · 03-31-2010, 23:28

Originally Posted by Megas Methuselah

CA's protrayal of the First Peoples in America is always pretty basic/bad (especially in ETW; their portrayal of the First Nations in there is downright insulting), just like their portrayal of history in all their games.

Still fun, I guess. Personally, I never bothered with Kingdoms, and I'll never play it. The only reason I'm ever going to buy it is to play EB2 with it.

With Kingdoms I mostly played the Crusades part in the middle east. I like their improvements on the Byzantine Empire's unit list specially the inclusion of Greek Flamethrowers for the faction.

**Hooahguy** · 04-01-2010, 21:56

with regard to NTW, i only trust Darth's opinion. his opinino exactly matched mine for every game after RTW, and managed to fix them up quite nicely. still some holes in ETW, though.
so check with his no bull assessment, then make your decision.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=337315

**Drewski** · 04-03-2010, 01:12

Can't really agree in principle with Darth...Played NTW for about 26hrs playing time now as GB.

Yes the graphics are amazing (I have everything at max and Ultra Size units). Sea battles are a little frustraing, but are NOT easy, especially against an roughly even enemy (I've lost a few already, partly because of the ais perfect control of manoeuvering, which has always been there, but is much more evident in a water enviroment with no obstacles). I agree some ships have unrealistically fast turn rate.

As for the ai, I just didn't really see what he reported. The ai in a reasonably balanced battle, 9/10 times advanced sensibly up to musket range, then stood there firing, while trying many times to flank with some units. It also held reserves back in many cases. It did absolutely NOT just charge everyone into melee, ever. It kept cannons where they were set up, as long as targets were in range. It did however, occasionally go on insane cavalry charges, mostly when I left Cannon in the front row, but again not even in the majority of cases.

When I finally got up the nerve to make a foray into the Paris area (with a 20 unit rougly 3000 men strong army), it came out to meet me in the field. I won (just)but lost around 60% of my army (this on Medium battle too). When another 3/4 stack approached from the other side of Paris, I had no option but to flee and flee all the way back to my fortress in Brittany.

The campaign strategy is also a lot tougher than e.g. RTW, or EB. Only 1 global tax rate (split into 2- One for Rich, One for Poor), makes keeping order tougher. There are many nice little touches and additions, far too many to list here, and anyway this isn't a review.;)

I just wanted to post this, because if I'd read Darth's review before deciding whether to buy or not, then I probably wouldn't have got the game. It's by no means anywhere near perefct, and yes the ai is still lacking, but overall a very decent game, in the opinion of someone who's pretty hard to please.

**vartan** · 04-03-2010, 01:48

Drewski the game you and I know as NTW isn't the game Darth knows as NTW. If I'm not mistaken, the game has various numbers after the version number 1.xxxx and so on. I'm sure as the game has released higher versions it has changed drastically. The enemy has gotten stronger. It changes your perception of things, you know?

**Drewski** · 04-03-2010, 02:12

Agreed completely, That actually crossed my mind after reading his whole post again (plus the fact that I've had this new rig for around 60hrs now, and slept about 12 of those 60 hrs...well you know how it goes ;))

Started to read the whole of that thread, and it does seem that the majority of people who'd actually played the commercial release hadn't seen what he saw, and had seen what I and seemingly you have...i.e. a reasonably decent battle ai. There's no way otherwise, that I'd lose 60% of my units, when the odds were in my favor.

He also kept on about there only being versions of single line formations. I'm sure you can confirm that isn't true, there are various 2 and 3 line setups too

**vartan** · 04-04-2010, 02:49

Again, perspective really makes the difference when it comes to different versions. It's all just another variant of Einstein's relativity. I praise Darth for the effort put into the work, that is in and of itself something great. I appreciate reading critiques like that.

**Duguntz** · 04-07-2010, 12:29

And, About M2TW, appart of EB 2, wich will come out, we hope, before the apocalypse comes, is their a worthy mod, historicaly accurate AND fun?

**mountaingoat** · 04-07-2010, 12:33

broken crescent is fairly good .. but there are still some bugs in the game like with some 2H units (2h axe units) that will be fixed later on i guess .. SS is a great mod .. but the "accuracy" is well ... .not like EB or anything .. but not bad to play on short campaign.

BC has a new update coming out soon .. or something