BTS and Medieval II Total War

If you get some of the mods you mentioned and also tweak settings in game (larger unit sizes), then you can have some truly epic battles.

I had a couple of great gaming moments with Rome:Total War...... the setting? 200 Spartan hoplites taking on a VAST army from Rome :D and crushing them.

There are some really professional mods out now for R:TW, they'll keep you going for months - for the easy tactical battles, just use Auto fight and save your interest for the harder ones.


Unit size does NOT affect gameplay since enemy's units will increase as well. It only lets each unit get higher cap. Siege weapons do the same damage even though there are more ppl supporting them. In the end, increasing unit size is only for looks.
 
Software can't be broken for some (unless you genuinely have a bad disk) - it must be for all. What CAN be broken is people's computers, be it hardware or software conflicts.... of course, they'll ignore their responsibilities and blame something else because whining on fan forums is the internets favourite pasttime! ;)

Are you complete nuts? There are endless bugs in Medieval II: Total war. Getting close to 1 year since they launch and I sometimes think the game is still unplayable. CTD has been problem since it first came out and they are not planning to fix it. Hardware or software conflicts, eh? How come there are thousands of people's posts on TW forum complaining about game crash while they've never had such instance with any other games?
Obvious bugs in battlefield make a battle endless and inefficient as well.

There....if that game is not broken, what is broken?....fanboy....:lol:
 
Unit size does NOT affect gameplay since enemy's units will increase as well. It only lets each unit get higher cap. Siege weapons do the same damage even though there are more ppl supporting them. In the end, increasing unit size is only for looks.

This is completely false. Large and Huge size criples the AI economies, especially the barbarian factions, since every troop you put in your army draws from the population pool of the settlement you are building in. And population is the main source of income, next to sea trade.
 
I own both and have been an enormous fan of both franchises for a while.

What I found as I played the newer total war games (Medieval 2 & Rome) is that they tend to get unsatisfying and repetitive. This is especially true of Medieval which contains a number of what I think are very crippling bugs: your units don't charge right, don't scale walls right, and don't move around in cities right.

The campaign mode is also rather flawed especially if you're used to Civ: rivals will attack you for no reason even with good relations and are usually totally unprepared for war when they do so, offer ridiculous terms for any type of agreement, move small armies through your territory and sometimes park themselves near your cities for no reason. There are some other things I can't think of from the top of my head.
And this fixes almost all of those issues.
 
Is this post directed at me? It seems to be as it has to do with what I wrote, but you didn't quote me, so I'm not sure.......

The Spartan hoplites were really ridiculously strong in the unmodded version of Rome Total War. That while Sparta was already way beyond their prime in the time period of RTW. It's still fun to slaughter a huge army with a small elite one of course. At least, it is fun to do it once, but in the end, I will go for challenge instead of the 'cool' factor.

Yeah sorry, it was immediately after you posted, so I assumed you'd know.

Personally, I played for epic battles and I actually found Greece really quite challenging on V Hard / V Hard with huge size units.

The Romans would be in your face on about turn 2 and it would be an endless war from then on. Spartans would die horribly in the field, but in a settlement or in a nice area of the map, you could really punish an attacking army.


I beat the game with all the civs on V hard / V hard - so I really got my money's worth long before mods were released. I definitely had more than 2 weeks worth of fun out of it!! ;)



If a developer makes a game that doesn't operate properly on video cards it claims to support, it's the developer's fault for claiming to support that video card when they really don't.

When it works on a large number of people's pcs with that exact card but doesnt work on other people's pcs with that card.... yep, I would call that a user problem. Firaxis will still try their best to address it, just as all games companies do.... but customers are such a pain in the ass in the pc software business! :lol:



You're not playing multiplayer. You're relying on an AI that simply isn't up to the task of managing such a complex game making mistakes. Honestly, Civ is way simpler, especially if you compare EU2 to Civ3 (which came out the same year), in which a friend of mine makes a regular practice of simply founding cities almost adjacent to enemies and taking over their entire empire by culture. I mean, what makes Civ3 so complicated? Convoluted rules that are easy to take advantage of? Wars that essentially boil down to spamming your best offensive and your best defensive units with some siege thrown in depending on which patch you're on? Europa Universalis forces you to manage actual diplomatic relations and stability, which is simple enough against the nigh-braindead AI but becomes much more complex when you need to worry about actual human opponents.

Also, the Aztecs are one of the easiest nations to play as since they have no competition at all for a few hundred years. You're a lot more hard-pressed as a small European nation next to a behemoth.

:lol:

Hold on here, your argument is very dodgy!

You are saying that playing MP makes Europa Universalis challenging and that I shouldnt judge the game by its SP play.... and then turning round and judging Civ by its SP game!! :mischief: That's hardly fair is it?

And any game against a human is always going to be more challenging if they are capable... again, that's not really the point we were talking about and is more than a little of a non-sequiter.

Of course I was talking about SP - they are both predominantly SP games and I only play SP due to time differences and problems getting people to play for extended periods of time.

In SP, EUIII is only challenging if you play an underdog and really - I'm still not sure that you have outlined any actual complexities involved in the game.... managing diplomacy? What, you mean sending diplomats every now and then? Hardly complex or deep.... all you do is click a button and select from a very limited list. And actually claiming that Civ is more simple for the AI?? I dont know where to begin but you are most assuredly wrong, there's very tight restraints on what can and cant be done in EUIII, while in civ, the board is very open and the AI has to forge an empire out of it, specialising or acclimatising to what they find.... EU has a fixed map with fixed provinces and fixed relations and fixed fixed fixed EVERYTHING..... if you really wish to insist that it is more complex, then you're going to have to accept an "agree to disagree" because there's no way on heaven or earth that you are going to convince me of this!! :D

Furthermore, Aztecs are one of the easiest nations!!!???? :lol: That's hilarious! There are 2000 people on the official forum complaining that any non european civ is incredibly difficult to play (as it should be given the name of the game) and here you are telling me that everyone's wrong. There are at least 30 nations vastly more powerful than the Aztecs.... the Aztecs probably are top of the 3rd division if you set the types of nations up into leagues.

Any non-European civ is more of a challenge due to the incredibly poor government, the slow tech speed (wait 100 years for stab and govt increases) please dont even compare them to European civs and in the same breath tell me I dont know how to play the game - that's comical!! :lol:

Add to that the fact that the Aztecs have plenty of challenges with the surrounding native civs and immediate invasions from Portugal and Spain and later from France and England.... while having vastly inferior troops, land, manpower, tech and of course, no boats.


As I said, I personally find EUIII to play like a board game and it's about as deep as most board games too (naturally playing against good human players makes it more difficult) - its scope is much larger of course, but the depths of it is mostly due to the inherent RPG qualities - your imagination fills the vast gaping blanks.
 
Unit size does NOT affect gameplay since enemy's units will increase as well. It only lets each unit get higher cap. Siege weapons do the same damage even though there are more ppl supporting them. In the end, increasing unit size is only for looks.

:rolleyes: What the hell is going on in this thread, clueless people telling me the opposite of things I know perfectly well. Of course unit size makes a huge difference to the game! What does the fact that enemy units increase in size too have to do with it? Of course they increase in size too, but the point is that all aspects of the battle change with larger unit sizes - routing takes a lot more time, flanking and breaking your enemy is more controlled, archers do a lot more damage. Unit creation is a lot more important and you need to pay a lot more attention to your economy..... from the sounds of it, you've never tried and don't know but are still commenting! :rolleyes:



Are you complete nuts? There are endless bugs in Medieval II: Total war. Getting close to 1 year since they launch and I sometimes think the game is still unplayable. CTD has been problem since it first came out and they are not planning to fix it. Hardware or software conflicts, eh? How come there are thousands of people's posts on TW forum complaining about game crash while they've never had such instance with any other games?
Obvious bugs in battlefield make a battle endless and inefficient as well.

There....if that game is not broken, what is broken?....fanboy....:lol:

Duh..... :crazyeye:

Reading comprehension for the win!

How about you go back and read again what I said... I said

Spearthrower said:
I've got all the games mentioned above and I have to say that Civ BtS is the most polished of all of them.

I know, I know.... all the whinging "it's broken" crew probably just had to be admitted to hospital, but the fact remains that ALL of the listed games have a lot of problems.

Where exactly do you read in that me saying that M2TW doesnt have bugs? Where in that do you see me defending it? So why, oh foot in mouth one, did you call me a fanboy? Actually, all I said was the Civ is the most polished of them all... i.e. M2TW is MORE buggy than Civ..... you really should try reading a little more carefully before trying to make someone look foolish, otherwise it just comes back on you.
 
You are saying that playing MP makes Europa Universalis challenging and that I shouldnt judge the game by its SP play.... and then turning round and judging Civ by its SP game!! :mischief: That's hardly fair is it?
No, you may wish to reread what I said. I said: "Firstly, EU's AI isn't up to the task of giving a human opponent any real challenge. And what's so hard about Civ 3, anyway? It's just as simple." That's a totally fair statement.
And any game against a human is always going to be more challenging if they are capable... again, that's not really the point we were talking about and is more than a little of a non-sequiter.
No, it's not. If a game seems simple in single-player but isn't in multiplayer, then it's not a simple game; it's just that the AI is bad. I mean, early chess programs had AWFUL AI and were incredibly easy in single-player. Does that make chess a simple game?
Of course I was talking about SP - they are both predominantly SP games and I only play SP due to time differences and problems getting people to play for extended periods of time.
And Civ3's single-player experience was easy as pie as well, and the only way to get any challenge from the AI was to let it cheat like a madman.
In SP, EUIII is only challenging if you play an underdog and really - I'm still not sure that you have outlined any actual complexities involved in the game.... managing diplomacy? What, you mean sending diplomats every now and then? Hardly complex or deep.... all you do is click a button and select from a very limited list.
You obviously haven't really played it that much. When do you spend money on improving relations and when do you spend it on armies or improvements? Should you mint and incur inflation for your current goal or is the inflation not worth the increased speed at which you'd get it?
And actually claiming that Civ is more simple for the AI?? I dont know where to begin but you are most assuredly wrong, there's very tight restraints on what can and cant be done in EUIII, while in civ, the board is very open and the AI has to forge an empire out of it, specialising or acclimatising to what they find.... EU has a fixed map with fixed provinces and fixed relations and fixed fixed fixed EVERYTHING..... if you really wish to insist that it is more complex, then you're going to have to accept an "agree to disagree" because there's no way on heaven or earth that you are going to convince me of this!!
I didn't have much hope of convincing you at all, I was just defending the game so that other posters didn't get the wrong impression of it. The AI in EU3 is incredibly dynamic. In fact, it even automatically detects the changes you make in mods and adapts accordingly! For example, if you modify a national idea or unit to make it overpowered, the AI will almost always pick it.
Furthermore, Aztecs are one of the easiest nations!!!???? :lol: That's hilarious! There are 2000 people on the official forum complaining that any non european civ is incredibly difficult to play (as it should be given the name of the game) and here you are telling me that everyone's wrong. There are at least 30 nations vastly more powerful than the Aztecs.... the Aztecs probably are top of the 3rd division if you set the types of nations up into leagues.
You might wanna go over to the forum again. I've never seen anyone say that the Aztecs were anything but easy until the latest patch for EU3, and even then only a few people are claiming it. The Aztecs were one of the easiest nations in the entire game to play until the 1.02 patch. They're still incredibly easy in EU2.
Any non-European civ is more of a challenge due to the incredibly poor government, the slow tech speed (wait 100 years for stab and govt increases) please dont even compare them to European civs and in the same breath tell me I dont know how to play the game - that's comical!!
You obviously don't. The only civs that are particularly difficult in EU3 are small ones that start next to very large ones that have bad relations with them. Try playing as Athens from the Grand Campaign. That's far harder than the Aztecs, since the Ottomans will probably come and crush you in short order. Sure, it's not that hard, but neither is any Civ3 scenario I've ever played where my first city wasn't on a tiny island isolated from the world.
Add to that the fact that the Aztecs have plenty of challenges with the surrounding native civs and immediate invasions from Portugal and Spain and later from France and England.... while having vastly inferior troops, land, manpower, tech and of course, no boats.
Immediate? You must be playing a different game than I am. Most Aztec players just eat their neighbors in the first 10 years or so, then make friends with Portugal and Spain so they can westernize.
 
Quality, I would have been polite to you if you didn't keep inferring that I am stupid and incapable of playing the game.

But as it stands....

If you like to make complexities out of a simple game, by all means enjoy, but please - I've played it enough times to know for myself whether it is complex or not and I find it very simplistic - the actual human interaction with the game is simplistic, the economic models are simplistic, the battles are simplistic. Does that make it not fun? No - Did I say it's a bad game? No - you are defending the game sure but the problem is that I am not attacking it. Instead, you are instead misleading people into considering it a complex game when in fact it is very superficial and simplistic. That's cool - it's still fun.

Connect 4 is a very simple game, but when you play against someone who knows how to play it, it gets much harder! Your arguments are non-sequiters, if you find it a complex game and then tell me that because I find it easy I dont understand it - who's really having the trouble with the game? You or me?

I'm not crazy about it, but I would guess I've played it for around 200 hours? I've got several AAR's up on the official forums... you may even know me over there..... you can either keep repeating that I dont know how to play, or accept that perhaps people find different things challenging, for as far as I'm concerned, EU is a simplistic, but fun game.
 
Well, I`ve been reading the discussion above and I have to say that the EU# fan is rigth. I personally play all the games quoted above, and them all, despite the fact that civ is more addictive. The EU is more difficult simply because is historically based, although history is chaged(it´s all the fun), so you are compelled to changed historic difficulties in order to win. If you get Netherland, you gotta go aggainst a very strong Spain, not forggeting about France, tough, which is just besides you. While in Civ you get everybody starting at more or less the same status and then developing. About the TW series, it lacks a better AI. I never played the MODs, I´ll try to see what is like, but the normal version is easy after some games. In the RTW I could beat the computer with a army half the size of it`s, but always thought that a well designed AI allied with the Civ`s gameplay would make a hell of a game.
 
Quality, I would have been polite to you if you didn't keep inferring that I am stupid and incapable of playing the game.

But as it stands....

If you like to make complexities out of a simple game, by all means enjoy, but please - I've played it enough times to know for myself whether it is complex or not and I find it very simplistic - the actual human interaction with the game is simplistic, the economic models are simplistic, the battles are simplistic. Does that make it not fun? No - Did I say it's a bad game? No - you are defending the game sure but the problem is that I am not attacking it. Instead, you are instead misleading people into considering it a complex game when in fact it is very superficial and simplistic. That's cool - it's still fun.

Connect 4 is a very simple game, but when you play against someone who knows how to play it, it gets much harder! Your arguments are non-sequiters, if you find it a complex game and then tell me that because I find it easy I dont understand it - who's really having the trouble with the game? You or me?

I'm not crazy about it, but I would guess I've played it for around 200 hours? I've got several AAR's up on the official forums... you may even know me over there..... you can either keep repeating that I dont know how to play, or accept that perhaps people find different things challenging, for as far as I'm concerned, EU is a simplistic, but fun game.


fanboys.....sigh.
 
fanboys.....sigh.


Trolls....sigh


Great come-back for totally failing to read earlier posts, for posting wrong information and being called on it.... real quality!

Nice back track, didnt work though.
 
so what, fanboy?

Keep going, you'll soon have enough of a post count to escape the appellation of obvious trollery! ;)


Vacuous posting is clearly a winner here.... cant express yourself by logic? Call someone some names! :D
 
Keep going, you'll soon have enough of a post count to escape the appellation of obvious trollery! ;)

fanboy...can you go whine in TW forum or something? won't read this post again. whine as much as u can here but I ain't read another worthless post of yours. ur dirty, fanboy. he kept pm'ing me with dirty jokes....jeez.....ok. you win. TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules. Satisfied, FANBOY?
 
Sad sad boy..... you tried to pull my points down and was proven wrong, not just by me but by others too. When that didnt work, you started on personal slurs - trying to get the thread closed to hide your errors?

You first called me a fanboy about M2TW when I was the first one on the page to say that it had bugs.... so it was clear to all that you had some reading difficulty.

Never mind, we didnt hold it against you....

Now you are calling me a fanboy for what exactly? About M2TW? Or about Civ? Sorry, you need to work on your communication skills a little......

And also, why am I dirty? Even if I was a "fanboy" (which incidentally at my age, I'd be quite proud of), what exactly is wrong with that on a fan site?

Trolling aint going to get you far son.



Edit: As you edited your post to claim that I had "pm'ed you with dirty jokes"

fanboy...can you go whine in TW forum or something? won't read this post again. whine as much as u can here but I ain't read another worthless post of yours. ur dirty, fanboy. he kept pm'ing me with dirty jokes....jeez.....ok. you win. TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules. Satisfied, FANBOY?

when I wouldn't even stoop to talking with children with such bad manners as yourself, I should point out that one more accusation like that and I will ask the mods to look into it instead.

It's obvious you are looking for a flame war reaction and I aint about to give it to you sonny boy, so run along now and work it out for yourself.

Especially as you still cant read between the lines that I am not that much of a fan of M2TW - it's just much better for battles than Civ.... if you want to discuss that with me, please feel free.... but calling me names is not really helping your communication nor your standing here.
 
Yeah sorry, it was immediately after you posted, so I assumed you'd know.

Personally, I played for epic battles and I actually found Greece really quite challenging on V Hard / V Hard with huge size units.

The Romans would be in your face on about turn 2 and it would be an endless war from then on. Spartans would die horribly in the field, but in a settlement or in a nice area of the map, you could really punish an attacking army.


I beat the game with all the civs on V hard / V hard - so I really got my money's worth long before mods were released. I definitely had more than 2 weeks worth of fun out of it!! ;)

Sometimes threads move very quickly and what seems to be a reply to your own post happens to be a reply to someone else. So I had to make sure. :)

I also played RTW for more than 2 weeks. In my post, I mentioned that it blew me away for 2 weeks and then started to diminish in appeal, but that doesn't mean that I only played it for 2 weeks. I just mentioned that to compare it with civilization that has a more long lasting appeal for me. I tried to give the OP some insight into the differences between the games and one of them is that RTW is the type of game that is great at the start and Civ is the type of game that is great after 2 weeks of playing.
 
Yeah I have to agree - my first few hours of R:TW left me absolutely gobsmacked!

I couldn't believe the technical jump it had made over so many games. Personally, I hate RTS's but this was something new and interesting.

Also, I love the ancient world - much more than medieval or japanese setting, so they call came together nicely in one package for me.
 
haven't tried medieval but i've played a fair amount of shogun and rome.....and while i love the battles...the actualy strategy portion of the game bores me after a while. Civ definitely has 10000times more replay value for me....but like someone else said, if you're still wrapping your head around civ4 then it's a bit premature to jump into bts
 
I would recommend BtS over MTW2. While the original MTW was a very good game, I've found the later Total War games to be rather weaker. The problem I've always found with them is lack of replay value. The strategy map is very crude compared to Civ, and is little more than a vehicle to serve up the battle sequences, which I think is the main problem. Fun though the battle sequences are, they haven't significantly changed, with the result that once you've seen one, you've seen them all. Rome I got bored with after a few weeks. MTW2 needed a mod to get my interest to last past the first game.

Bug wise, while BtS has many issues, it is nowhere near as bad as I found RTW and MTW2 to be. Never mind game play issues and general polish, they both required serious effort to get them functioning at all.

Unless you're a serious fan of the RTS style battles of the Total War series, you'll be better off with BtS.
 
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