Medieval II: Total War

"Advanced, Medieval Risk"

There are generally 2 kinds of people who will be attracted to this game.

As I've found, a LOT of TW:Rome people have come along expecting MTW2 to be a new and improved Rome. If that were true it would be called TW:Rome 2, NOT MTW2. Rome was a lot more obsessed with an excellently operating battle engine, fierce strategic battles, and featured a less than 300 year timeline. In fact, just browsing the website the screenshots are all battle oriented, it obsesses over battle tactics and units and does not even attempt to sell its economic, political or social aspects of the game and only briefly alludes to them.

If you're looking for MTW to be the end all of war games, especially epic battles versus the AI, you'll be sadly let down. A lot of TW:Rome people expect that. Clearly MTW has a similar engine that can create beautiful looking ranks of armies and castles and siege weapons. But MTW has a simply massive map and its focus is much more on managing a full empire than just winning battles. Economics, politics, trade, religion, international influence, all of these play much bigger roles in the MTW games. This is true to history too. Rome didn't conquer lands with words, they did it at spear and sword points and kept large garrisons to control the newly conquered locals. The politics of their time were all local and mostly the emperor versus the senate and an emperor didn't need politics to help conquer or keep the empire together, he needed them to stay in power. Another big difference is medieval versus Roman warfare. The Romans were strategically advanced and trained soldiers and units and were able to run over barbarians, celts, and untrained guerilla armies of Europe. In MTW nations all raise trained troops, the military minds are easily beaten, the Longbow rips units to shreds, and even well -trained mid to high level troops can take losses from solidly equipped militia as opposed to a horde of idiot Gauls charging into a Roman phalanx of tower shield and long spears pointed at them. This is not a great game battle AI or tactics. Spear walls with longbows can defend almost anything with some added cavalry for mobility and enough offensive troops can bash down almost any defense within reason. Rome and battle obsessed people will get bored. Especially because not only is the strategy part of each turn length, but add on hours of individual battles and the concept of conquering Europe over several hundereds of turns at 3-4+ hours per turn makes ones head explode!

The other person is the one who wants a full scale, strategically designed experience and to put it lightly, think of it like the game Risk but a lot more rules and a LOT more strategy involved. Once your empire gets to 10+ conquered territories, this game is a lot more about running the empire than winning single battles. Anyone who played MTW kn ows what I mean. In this version now there isn't just a castle per territory. Merchants control resources and battle each other econmically. It's meant to allow you to fight the crucial battles but to also feel the weight of running an empire. You've got spies, assassins, emissaries, princesses to spread across the land causing subterfuge and finding allies. You've got shipping lanes to protect and merchandise to move. There are armies to move, garrison, retrain, and a city in each province to support. You've got to keep people happy and fight wars on many levels. From assasins to ruining an economy to converting a region to a new religion, MANY battles must be fought and to actually beat the game, you must be strong on all fronts. The battle AI may not be brilliant, but the rulers are smart. If you build up forces, they do too. Catcfh one of their spies, they may drop an inquisitor in on your best heir. Some regions historically independant such as Scotland will always be hard to control. In MTW one could easily develop early trade to develop superior resources and then build massive armies and simply roll right over most nations. In MTW2 they made trade more advanced, army movement trickier, and one must more seriously consider the purpose of conquering some regions.

For those who love well rounded strategy and not just battle-time strategy, MTW2 is a good, strong improvement in that direction. MTW was a move to create a good strategy shell around what was otherwise a battle game. Then Rome was a move to create a superior battle engine with a toned down overall strategy element. MTW2 does take Rome's engine but clearly the work all went into the managing of the empire and not winning single battles. I'm sure at some point there will be a follow up that gets even more interesting. This game is a solid step above MTW and a good, fun strategy game whose ability to change empires and mod the game itself make it very re-playable.

For opponents of this game I offer some advice. First of all, the game is mod-able. You can reduce the effectiveness of archer units or you can even reduce the effectiveness of peasant and militia units. Better yet, rescale the defensive power more heavily to armored units and offensive to trained units so knights more easily ride down militia. Also, for those who hate the micromanaging, the game comes with the ability to auto-move almost any part of that phase of the game. Lastly, consider this a shameless plug, but Stronghold 2 is an amazing, low requirements game focusing on medieval castle life from the operation and building of castles to warfare without the billions of unit types. It has a great single-player element(a peaceful and a military route), a great map editor, impressive online capabilities, about a dozen AI personalities to take on, and a host of some historically based sieges and defenses to try your hand at. It may not involve a 20 or so medieval units of differing types in ranks with epic looking artistry, but at 2008 prices, Stronghold 2 is a game even a weak 2006 computer can run at a minimal cost for such excellent return on enjoyment.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/21/08

Game Release: Medieval II: Total War (US, 11/13/06)