M2TW recommendation

[Peasant Phill]

Well, I've been a MTW player for years now. It has always been on my computer and I play it regularly. At the moment i'm enjoying the Pike and Musket mod.
Although I still enjoy the game immensly, I thought of 'upgrading' to M2TW.

So if this is about M2TW, what does this topic do in the main hall?
Well, I haven't played anything else from the TW series then MTW. So I'll inevitably look at M2TW from that stand point. I also know that many of the main hall patrons both enjoy MTW and M2TW. So my question is what to expect from M2TW and what patches and mods to install to make it more to my liking.

What am I looking for when choosing a good mod:

- I like the medieval and renaissance setting.

- Like most, I really like an AI that can sometimes hand me my ass fair and square. I'm not a great strategist or tactician so the AI should be able to give me at least some problems without having unfair advantages in some area by default.

- I enjoy the battles the most. If the battles arealmost nothing more than an order to charge then I'll probably won't play it.


So what would you recommend for this MTW addict?

[I of the Storm]

Let's put it this way:

Until now you've been watching a documentary. Expect a Walt Disney movie.

[caravel]

I'm afraid I can can only agree with the above. I kept going back to RTW and giving it another chance. I've now pretty much given up on it. M2TW I just cannot bring myself to play. I gave it all of about half a day before giving up. In short it's horrible.

I really think you should go to the M2TW forum for some more unbiased opinions.

If you want to do so, don't make a new thread as I can move this one over there.

[Peasant Phill]

I think I'll hold out for some more comments.

Besides I'm far more interested in the opinions of people with a MTW background then someone who started with Rome or M2TW and just visited MTW.

[seireikhaan]

I tried to play it for a month or so, with SS 4.1 mod and Broken Crescent. There's a couple basic problems. First is that, far more so than MTW, M2TW will just throw factions at you with absolutely no sensibility to it. Whether its a random, one boat fleet blockading a random port just because it can, or a half stack of militias rushing to a province regardless of who owns it, the campaign AI is totally nonsensical. Another issue is that the AI basically is completely incapable of winning siege attacks; it will abandon a battering ram once the first gate is down, regardless of whether there is another gate to get through.

[HopAlongBunny]

The tactical AI has declined with each new issue: MTW=>RTW=>M2TW

Battles are what hooked me on TW; now I don't waste my time with them.

There is more to do at the strategic level. Hunting bandits, pirates, heretics, assassins, spies, inquisitors, ...etc. The AI at this level is no stronger...it just has more time and inclination to deal with all this crap :p

If you thought the Papacy was annoying in MTW, you ain't seen nothing yet!

[gollum]

M2 is terrible in the battlefield especially if you view it from a MTW perspective. The vanilla campaign plays best as a sandbox - set your own goals and pursue them - yet even so it gets very predictable and immensely boring once you are secured - that is after 100 turns at most no matter how slow you take it.

In order to deal with this you get to go to exotic *new worlds* and you are visited by cannon elephant and rocket launching eastern overpowered horrors - the Mongols and Timurids. The challenge does not come *heaven forbids* by the aptitude of these opponents but by the sheer power of them in terms of numbers, stats and command stars.

There are plenty of mods; Stainless Steel and Broken Crescent being amongst the most popular.

I of the storm says the whole story in terms of atmosphere and feel - the game feels indeed like a disney movie and throws all pretense that CA kept in the past to preserve the slightest element of historical plausibility. M2 is a mish-mash of eras, units, names and events held together in the most loose manner possible.

To get the idea how much CA is selling out the TW concept - take a look at the cover; you ll see King Richard having over his shoulders Western Europe as far east as Italy and Germany and the indispensible for the Medieval era... American Continent.

M2TW is simply, in my opinion, not worth the CD its played on. RTW at least had a decent atmosphere and preserved historical plausibility.

!it burnsus!

[drone]

M2TW is simply, in my opinion, not worth the CD its played on. RTW at least had a decent atmosphere and preserved historical plausibility.

Historically, M2TW is on a DVD.

[gollum]

Historically, M2TW is on a DVD.

!it burnsus!

[caravel]

Historically, M2TW is on a DVD.

Actually they wasted two DVDs on Mine is on two DVDs.

[gollum]

Mine is on two DVDs.

Oh tempora, o mores

!it burnsus!

[Tony Furze]

I'm giving it a go...I really am. I've got the Gold Edition-the only one available in Leeds when my brother went there for some work related business. (Leeds-Doncaster-Dublin-Karachi,Pakistan...that's some journey)

In spite of System Requirements giving my new pc a clean bill of health for M2TW + Kingdoms, there are just so many issues with running it.

To play "properly" I've had to undergo the MIB memory blackout of all previous experiences with MTW VI, XL and Shogun Warlords, etc,etc. To approach with a fresh mind. (Caravel gave me a good piece of advice about this on the RTW board when I asked there.)

The Campaign reminds me more and more of Knights of Honor-there's a kind of depth/complexity to it that can be quite fascinating.It's more interesting and colourful than RTW-which I will try again after this experience with M2TW. I have a hunch RTW will come out better...

The battles,well, this I suppose is what sold the game originally. I can see the point about Disney:it's more entertainment than real battle strategy as in MTW VI. Having said that, old habits die hard: I have a tendency to zoom out to see my units as a whole in lines as in Shogun/MTW; rather than zooming into the action.

Since the battles seem to have been designed to watch, it's a wonder a replay utility was not provided for the Campaigns battles.

I'm looking at the possibilities of roleplay, and narrative with M2TW at present.


But,Oh! I miss MTW VI immensely!

[Peasant Phill]

That's quite enough disuasion for the moment. I guess I won't consider getting M2TW for some time now.

Empire Total War probably won't be an improvement either. It's hard to be hopefull when you see the trend in the series.

[Geezer57]

So, from this discussion, I guess there are no mods for M2TW or RTW that successfully fix the combat systems?

[caravel]

Well, the combat system for M2TW cannot be changed back to how it was before as that would be a fundamental change. IIRC fights between men in previous TW games involved the two meeting and then the usual attack defence calculations taking place. I'm not sure how this works, but it may be based on "attack rounds" or some such system. The M2TW system sees the combat based on the animations themselves. So a weapon is literally swung and hits or misses an enemy. In previous titles the swings and thrusts were cosmetic. This new system introduced a lot of bugs where certain units could not hit other units due to the types of swing etc. This has been addressed in patches but not fully resolved AFAIK.

RTW does not have this system so you can work with it and improve it somewhat through modding, but it still falls short due to pathetic battlefield AI and numerous bugs, especially pathfinding bugs in sieges. Unit movement rate, kill rate and other factors such as morale, fatigue, height and weather are also messed up in RTW. It's very much shock and rout tactics and battles are all over in a matter of minutes. Some mods address this but I've yet to see any mod that has fixed all of these issues.

The fact still remains, that if you want to play the tactical battles you don't have much choice. STW and MTW are still the best there is.

[Martok]

The fact still remains, that if you want to play the tactical battles you don't have much choice. STW and MTW are still the best there is.

QFT

I won't say that Medieval 2 was a bad game per se. Taken by itself, it can be pretty entertaining; and for those who never played STW and/or MTW, they'll probably never even know what they're missing.

For those of us who *have* played [either or both of] the two older games, though, most of us would find M2TW lacking. In terms of AI and atmosphere/immersion factor, the later games just cannot compare to Shogun & Medieval IMHO.

[Fagar]

I believe that the atmosphere, the subtle nuances in the game are what truly make MTW great and it is why all of us are still interested, still modding and still talking about it years after it's release.

To me RTW and M2TW went away from the full immersion and concentrated too much on being 'pretty' and this detracted from the feel of the game.

After all feeling you are part of the game, you are invested in the game not just watching it is why we play games instead of just watching DVD's or something.

I too started with STW and never grew sick of it and the same now remains true of MTW which I am still playing 90% of the time now.

I have sampled and had a go at 100's of games and STW and MTW remain firmly my favourites, unfortunately RTW and M2TW are nowhere near this.