Gurgle :)

http://uk.media.pc.gamespy.com/media...27/vids_1.html

This is looking like a blinder!

Oh my god...... Mass Effect now this! When is it coming out? 2007?

I'm afraid I can't tell you, due to the total retards who designed http://www.totalwar.com

Not only do they *require* Flash (insert rant about accessibility here!) but they require version 8 of the damn thing!

As I only have version 7 installed, I can't view it unfortunately!

I'm reliably informed by my friend that it's due for August of this year though :D

*spasms*

Anyone know what the specs on this are? My laptop was state of the art when I got it 9 months ago, it's probably hopelessly outdated now...

From IGN.

The Byzantine Empire profile

I don't think any of them will beat Medieval Total War 1. The new ones they made just created more bugs and problems.

[ 09-16-2006, 07:20 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

One of the things about moving to 3D in a strategy-type game in particular is that it tends to shrink the world. You can see this in Civ 4 vs Civ 3, NWN vs BG, and RTW vs MTW. Once you go 3D you gain much more detail but sacrifice scope.

wait till hardware catches up with the software ;)

none of the hardware can take too much 3d atm.

I've already pre-ordered this game. Can't wait till November when it comes out. Going to play as France and then as Poland, just to start anyways.

Just thought I should let you guys know that the demo is out at Gamespot (www.gamespot.com, do a search for MTW2). It looks good but needs a lot of resources - my year old Pentium M 2Ghz with 1Gb RAM and Nvidia GeForce Go 6200 runs it fine as long as it's on medium. On the highest settings I get lag. But the game itself looks good!

Nobody's played this demo yet?

Better yet, i'm playing the full version. :D

I think i'm not overreacting when i say that this doesn't look like a completely new game at all, more like an RTW mod. The worldmap is an exact duplicate of the one in RTW, and so is AI movement and behaviour. The real difference comes to light on the battlemap, where of course there's completely different surroundings and cities, and of course units. Graphics look really good, but i'm not so sure about the accuracy regarding historically correctness and stuff, but i guess that's where the always happy to oblige modding community steps in.

Playing a campaign with England right now, and things are going pretty smooth, although those blasted Scots destroyed two of my armies before they seized to exist. :D Most factions are locked until you manage to beat the CPU, which kinda sucks because really wanted to start off with the Turks. Ah well...i'll get there soon enough.

Which game are you playing at the moment, J - MTW2 or NWN2?

Want me to make a list ? :D

I've played NWN2 for a somewhat a week, then things got really hard, and i kept running into opponents that were way too much for me to handle. So i started a new campaign, this time playing a Warlock. Maybe things will go better when i can both cast spells and handle a decent weapon. Anyway, since i started this new campaign, i'm not playing NWN constantly anymore, i now give myself time to focus on the other games i was working on, which are NBA Live 2007, Dark Messiah, Titan quest, Just Cause, Call of Duty 2, and now also MTW2. I'm a very busy man. :D

Mate, I barely have time to play a single game myself. :( And I seem to be encountering more than my share of issues with NWN2, though maybe I'm doing things in testing/playing that not many average users would do...

Anyone else playing this? I'm planning to install it as soon as I finish NWN2.

I just got it, it's awesome although I wish more factions were available at first and that like in medieval 1 you could choose diffrent periods, some other features from the first medival I miss too.
I also noticed you only have certain number of turns in the main campaign to finish it, about 220 or so, which I think is very bad...
But other than that the game is just awesome, definatly the game of the year.... [img]smile.gif[/img]

Jorath, you can unlock all the other factions by making a small adjustment in the directory. If you Google for it, you'll find plenty of stuff on how to do that step by step.

o0key I'll try that,although playingas the Holy Roman empire nowand having ablast... [img]smile.gif[/img]

Oh one thing I noticed and do believe is thesignof thearmageddon... this game comes og TWO!!! DVD!!!!'s, thats something I find just incredible [img]smile.gif[/img]
Also it says ontheback thatitneeds 11 GB's of harddisk space but whenI looked it was onlyusing 7... quiet enough thank you but a relief that it's not as bloated as it wants to be [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 12-09-2006, 06:10 AM: Message edited by: Jorath Calar ]

For those who havent checked it out www.totalwar.org is a superb resource on everything Total War-related:)

Jorath: One more amusing detail is that your characters age at a rate of six months per turn, while each turn sees the passing of two years according to the in-game calendar:p The years/turn ratio can be change by modding some file which also gives you more time to finish the game.

Could it temporarily have needed 11GB for swapping during installation? You also need some extra free disk space for windows to run properly.
I think the ever increasing bloatedness of games stems from a combination of more in-game audio, higher resolution graphics taking up more space (compare the nubmers 1600x1200x16000000 and 800x600x256), and devs being lazier due to having more space to play with after the introduction of DVDs. Game mechanics and Artificial Intelligence are given an ever decreasing share of the resources:p

Game is OUTSTANDING. I've not had a single crash in almost 2 weeks of play, graphics are top notch on my a64-3000 with a 7800gtx, and the game plays OK on my Athlon XP with crappy 5700 card.

Combat is intense, AI is decent, other than some issues when you have second and third armies attacking a city or castle. (If those armies don't have siege equipment then they don't seem to ever DO anything... even if you run someone over to open the gate their attacking).

Actually, the AI is not that good at all, matter of fact, they are rather passive. I've had one of my cities attacked the other day, and the besiegers just stood there, they didn't even attempt to advance towards the citywalls, they also didn't bother to bring siege equipment. Even after i sent my archers outside the citywalls, and started taking out their infantry units one by one, they made no attempt to advance. Only after i sent out my cavalry on a full charge, they responded, and by that time they had already so many losses, that their will to fight was broken very quickly.

Well, I started playing it and I have to say it's really enjoyable so far - I have to turn the settings down to minimum to get about 15-20fps but I like the functionality. I was playing as England and was on the verge of taking Paris when I had my first crash. For some reason I can't get through that turn, so I have to start over. Anyone know what the Danes are like? I'm thinking of playing as them.

Well, playing as the Danes, you probably have your work cut out for yourself, seeing as they are surrounded by the Holy Roman Empire, France, en England, three major factions with the will to expand.

Well, I decided to expand in the area where there was no risk - north and northeast. I've now taken that Scandinavian area where Stockholm and Oslo are - there are HEAPS of resources there, one of them I'm getting about 40 florins a turn compared to 8 for the others.

I also did the land grab westwards and took Bruges and Antwerp before the Frogs did, and took Riga and Helsinki before Ivan did. The problem is, I now have a very broad front to defend. I'm guessing I might have to concede Riga and Helsinki if I get attacked as I really want to keep Antwerp and Bruges. I'm confident I can defend the Scandinavian homeland as my longboats rule the North Sea/Baltic Sea area.

So far I've survived with only having one castle - Hamburg (I made sure all the others were cities so I could up the taxes). What's everyone else's castle:city ratio? Mine's about 7:1 I think.

Playing as the English, i have two castles in Britain itself, and two on the European mainland. So far i've only conquered Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the Flemmish cities Bruges and Antwerp, and parts of France. I have one army boarded for Jerusalem, which will, once captured, immediately be converted to a castle as well, because there's plenty of attacks to be expected in that region.

[ 12-18-2006, 08:08 AM: Message edited by: johnny ]

I'm on a crusade as well, bound for Venice (the buggers got excommunicated by the Pope, and as I have a perfect standing with him, he supported my call for a Crusade). I'm thinking I might not hold that particular city and might just sack it and go back home. [img]graemlins/evillaughter2.gif[/img]

Well, it's not exactly a crusade i'm on, Jerusalem just fell to a crusader army, but i wouldn't have a clue which nation took it. I'm sending an army anyway, because it's vital for finishing the campaign, and i don't really care who currently holds it, eventually i'll have to battle pretty much every faction present anyway, and i already am at war with the French, the Danes, and the Germans, so it couldn't get much worse anyway.

Playing as the English I have taken the British Isles, France, Jerusalem, Italy, most of north western africa and I'm now pwning my way through the Holy Roman Empire oh yes and I've also taken all of Scandanavia..... is there any way of attacking countries favoured by the pope and getting away with it???????????? :(

1. Make sure you have lots of money
2. Make sure you give lots of tribute to the Papal States

Re: crusades, I seem to remember back in MTW that when a crusade would go through my lands I would lose some units to it as they would join it. But in M2TW, I've successfully managed to get the Pope to call a crusade, and have built my army, and it's winding its way towards the target (Venice, which has been excommunicated). But nobody's joining my crusade! I do notice that other countries have "joined" the crusade but have put together armies/stacks of their own and are making their way to the target. Is this how the crusade is handled now? Shame - I wouldn't have minded commanding a motley bunch of troops...

Yea... that would have been cool. Sadly the only troop changes in this version crusades is that you lose troops if they don't think you're making enough progress towards the target.

I think the problem with armies standing in one place is definitely a gameplay bug or a couple bugs... not an AI issue.

It seems that if I own a besieged city and I attack the besiegers... the game doesn't force me out of the gates. I'm free to stand on the walls and let my archers, mortars, and city defenses pick at the attackers. Without a time limit on the engagement you can do that until the attackers are forced to withdraw (that's probably why they put the time limit option in there in the first place).

I don't know about the AI support army issues during city attacks... they just aren't reliable, sometimes they just stand there for the entire engagement. I think that happens to me whenever I immediately attack (using cannon) instead of waiting and building siege equipment.

Outside cities they just always seem to work... although sometimes they take forever to decide to engage. I've learned that if I'm counting on an AI support army to help carry the day, as soon as the engagement starts I need to pull my army over to where the support army is located (If I'm under attack), or wait until they decide to move before attacking (If I'm the attacker).

Anyone else find that one of the most effective City/castle attack army is one cannon and a full stack of Cavalry? I just bash down a couple gates, split my army into 2 or 3 groups and rush the city center from multiple routes simultaneously. Even inside the city, cavalry seems to be able to run over most foot (not very realistic, cities should be death traps for cavalry), and if you have multiple routes they can't stop up the road and prevent you getting at their archers.

Most engagements of this type I not only capture the city, but lose fewer troops in the process than the defending army (highly unlikely in real life).

You know what's annoying? Going on a crusade, missing out because some other army took the city, then ending up making your relationship with your "ally" worse because now you're standing on their soil with nowhere to go! :mad:

That's why i call for crusades myself, and i do so when i'm already in the land where the target is going to be. :D I called a crusade on Jerusalem when i was actually standing in front of it's gates. Thee other nations joined in, but came too late naturally. I'm doing the same thing with Tunis as we speak. [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

I'm learning - I'm just waiting to call on a crusade for Paris as the Frogs just got themselves excommunicated. :D

Anyone else playing this?

I don't understand the main benefit of a crusade in MTW2. In MTW1 you called a crusade and you could "add" units from other countries as the crusade went past, but they've removed that here. So I can only see the benefit as being that you can freely go through other countries without diplomatic penalty. You still have to put up all the troops (except they get those little crosses in their unit cards) and you still have to formally declare war and take the diplomatic hit on the target. So what's the benefit to calling one, aside from game flavour?

A crusading army has a higher movement rate, and makes the Pope happy. I'm not sure what the benefit of making the pope happy is other than avoiding excommunication... and keeping the inquisitors from whacking your Nobles all the time.