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I finally took the time and let my computer download the XL Mod for the origional Medieval Total War and I am so impressed with this mod. What a great challenge it made for the already great game of MTW (origional). I always liked to play the Danes and I liked to jump down into upper Europe and used to always easily take those provinces. Woah to my amazement and excited joy these provinces rebel on you early and you have to fight some huge tough battles to keep them. I had to give up one of the provinces to two huge stacks that appeared in one of them of rebels. I manage barely to take and get enough men to the other one to hold it, but, now I am starring at those double stacks next to me and of course all the surrounding territory is occupied by other factions and their units. No more freebies in this version of MTW like there used to be.

If you don't have the XL mod for the origionl MTW I suggest taking the time to download it. I had always heard about it but it's a pretty large download for us dialupers, but, worth every minute of the wait now I see.

I just started playing with this as well...  After spending most of my TW time with Rome and Medieval II, I was amazed when I went into a roughly equal battle with the AI, expecting to annihilate them like you can armies 3x the size of your own in Rome or M2, and actually LOST!  The AI moved it's infantry after my center, kept it's overwhelming archer superiority back and firing into my troops (as opposed to suicide charging like in Rome and M2- their missile superiority and ability to actually use it is what destroyed my army), used it's cavalry to chase after my own archers, and KEPT IT'S GENERAL AWAY FROM THE BATTLE!  It was amazing to see, and reminded me why Rome was uninstalled pretty quickly after I got it, but I kept on playing Medieval 1 for years after Rome came out.

The only reason I play Rome now is for the awesome Europa Barbarorum mod, which combined with a mod to include "Darth Formations" allows the AI to put up something of a fight, but I still don't think I've ever lost a battle in it.  Medieval II was uninstalled a couple of weeks after I got it, reinstalled for a mod that seemed nice but wouldn't work correctly, and uninstalled again, probably until Europa Barbarorum 2 comes out, or another Medieval 2 mod with half decent battle AI.  I want my $50 back, and to hell with PC Gamer for their "Best Game EVAR!!!" review of M2 that made it think it could actually live up to the original Medieval (and didn't mention any of the glaring bugs that weren't fixed for a good 4+ months after the game was released. [:@]

My new game criteria is: If PC Gamer rates it 85 or above, I avoid it like the plague. Gotta love bribery after getting screwed on both Medieval 2 and Oblivion (the Halo Kid version of Morrowind).

Hey now I like Oblivion, but, it doesn't mean I dislike Morrowind. What I like about Oblivion most is it sorta brought back the fun of combat like Daggerfall has. I like the action jackson combat in Oblivion and spend a lot of my time in the gladiator battles of the arena. I haven't even hardly explored the rest of the world from just playing around in the opening city. I downloaded the garden mod and I have my own garden of all kinds of ingredients for potions, that is one kewl mod. I also spend a lot of time sneaking into houses and stealing stuff. It's wild how the guards come if you get caught for the least little infraction. And how can you not like the talking NPC's? Of course it's not Morrowind, but, Morrowind wasn't Daggefall either and I still think Daggerfall overall is the best of the pack because of the 150,000 square mile world it generates.

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Hey now I like Oblivion, but, it doesn't mean I dislike Morrowind. What I like about Oblivion most is it sorta brought back the fun of combat like Daggerfall has. I like the action jackson combat in Oblivion and spend a lot of my time in the gladiator battles of the arena. I haven't even hardly explored the rest of the world from just playing around in the opening city. I downloaded the garden mod and I have my own garden of all kinds of ingredients for potions, that is one kewl mod. I also spend a lot of time sneaking into houses and stealing stuff. It's wild how the guards come if you get caught for the least little infraction. And how can you not like the talking NPC's? Of course it's not Morrowind, but, Morrowind wasn't Daggefall either and I still think Daggerfall overall is the best of the pack because of the 150,000 square mile world it generates.

I'm just not of the mindset that a player should have any real control over an RPG character... A level 30 fighter should be able to massacre everything in his path, even if a brain damaged 90 yr old with alzheimers is playing him/her, whereas a level 1 pilgrim should be losing to anything stronger than an ant, even if played by a 14 yr old ADD stricken Halo Kid. IMO RPGs should be more about playing a character than an "immersive FPS game", which again IMO Oblivion fails miserably at- it was really just a first-person Diablo with extended stats, and once again IMO "action game with stats" does not equal "RPG".



Edit: If you want, I'll PM you my Oblivion Review for the game website I haven't quite launched it- it sums up my feelings on the game (Not all bad!) and would probably be amusing to you to boot [:D]

Oh I forgot to tell you I downloaded the mod that eliminated that leveling combat feature. Things were stronger and weaker than you. I forget his name, but, it's a great mod that allows you to play Oblivion like others where you are stronger and weaker not equal to everything everytime you level. Why pm? Just post the link so everybody can read it.

Oh and the one thing I've always had an issue with the entire Arena line is the leveling system itself. I have to actually be careful not to increase my attribues in one skill before I bring them up in another or I can level past the abilities I want to be high. Like sneaking all the time can really level you up fast, though your other stats like slashing or blocking or armor take a nose dive and you lose points by not leveling those up everytime if you are a warrior type class. I love to sneak though and steal, but, I have to watch my sneak attribute and when it gets close to going up a point since it is one of my majors I have to stop sneakin (like Golum lol). I always want maximum hit points for all my characters so I always have to be careful on how I level to get the most every level.

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Oh I forgot to tell you I downloaded the mod that eliminated that leveling combat feature. Things were stronger and weaker than you. I forget his name, but, it's a great mod that allows you to play Oblivion like others where you are stronger and weaker not equal to everything everytime you level. Why pm? Just post the link so everybody can read it.

I would but I don't have it up and running yet, my review is just a text file saved in my "Project X" folder The level scaling was one of my major peeves with the game, I agree combat was much more fun with a mod that got rid of it (I used "Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, I think there were other ones as well).

That's the name of it Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, great mod.

None of the old total works work with my 8xxx series graphics card. In the battle mousecursor just stops working or somthing. 

Did you try adjustig your anisotropic filtering Zakhal? I had that issue myself with my nvidia card, but, once I manually set the anisotropic setting to 8x it worked perfectly. Also try typing or using -wincursor after the .exe in the startup icon. Make a shortcut icon of the .exe and then right click on that and up at the top where it says like C:\Program files\Activisiion\Total War.exe after that .exe use a space then type -wincursor if the anisotropic setting of 8x doesn't work.

Would you Ravinhood, or anyone else for that matter, know of any mods for MTW2 on the horizon, that would make it playable? Do you know if the RTR team has plans to do anything? MTW2 was on my hard drive for all of a week before I shelfed it. How can MadMinute, with their limited resources produce a similiar game (in respect to the combat element) that is so dynamic and good, but CA cannot? Sad, as I actually enjoyed Shogun and the First MTW (with the XL MOD) and to a lesser degree the Rome Total Realism Mod but have sworn not to make another purchase from CA until I find them in the baragin bin and have knowledge of a mod that makes it worth my time.

Do you fine that the oscuro mod causes crashes?  I've looked it up and some people love it, but they say it seems to cause crashes the longer you play the mod.  What's been your experience with it - regarding crashes and how many hours would you say you've invested in playing the mod?

ORIGINAL: Marcus the leper

Would you Ravinhood, or anyone else for that matter, know of any mods for MTW2 on the horizon, that would make it playable? Do you know if the RTR team has plans to do anything? MTW2 was on my hard drive for all of a week before I shelfed it. How can MadMinute, with their limited resources produce a similiar game (in respect to the combat element) that is so dynamic and good, but CA cannot? Sad, as I actually enjoyed Shogun and the First MTW (with the XL MOD) and to a lesser degree the Rome Total Realism Mod but have sworn not to make another purchase from CA until I find them in the baragin bin and have knowledge of a mod that makes it worth my time.

Both of these look promising, Broken Crescent has been in the "about to be released any day now" state since Sept (and it isn't dead), and DotS is probably a good 6 months away.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=346

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=492

If neither can improve much on the AI (both on the strategy map and in battles) then I still don't see much point in playing them though, I guess time will tell.

Deus lo Vult and The Long Road were both pretty good as well, although both liked to crash my computer too often for me to stick with them- most people didn't seem to have the crashes though.


Also, if you haven't tried Europa Barbarorum for Rome yet, you really should, it makes RTR look like Command and Conquer www.europabarbarorum.com

ORIGINAL: Reiryc

Do you fine that the oscuro mod causes crashes?  I've looked it up and some people love it, but they say it seems to cause crashes the longer you play the mod.  What's been your experience with it - regarding crashes and how many hours would you say you've invested in playing the mod?

Hrmmm I've had the mod in since I purchased Oblivion and I'd say I got 100 hours or more of game time in it now and no crashes here. But, as I said I've pretty much just played in the origional city with a few excursions around other places, not too many dungeons though, so, I can't really say it's that stable as I haven't explored the entire map at all. I think I'm around level 10 or 11 atm. I don't play it everyday though.

As for a mod for M2TW? I have no idea what is a good one for it. I too pretty much gave up on M2TW after I discovered the AI doesn't protect it's cities or castles with any sizeable forces and once I held off the AI long enough to get a full stack out there I could do anything with it became just like RTW, it became just taking cities and castles one after the other with hardly anything to worry about. I then tried one of what I thought would be the hardest as Hungary and did the same thing and it even seemed easier than playing the Danes. The AI is just braindead and it isn't aggressive enough nor protects its rear at all. Even playing the gain 2 for 1 type play I did for awhile always leaves me ahead in the end. The other bad thing is playing on vh strategic the AI has wayyyyy too much money that you can plunder when you sack a city/castle. I was getting anywhere from 50k to 75k per sack and that made it very easy to keep churning out replacement forces to continue on an on doing the same to each nation after the other.

I can tell you the problem with the TW engine these last two games and their expansions. It's not really so much the AI as it is too damn many squares the AI must consider everytime it moves. In Shogun and MTW origional they moved by PROVINCE and the AI could handle that much much better than it can the 10000+ squares in RTW and M2TW. Go back to provinces and RTW and M2TW would have been much more challenging and fun. The AI has a hard enough time winning with 64 squares (chess after all these years) why some idiot from CA thought giving it 10000 squares plus to consider every turn is beyond reasoning. The XL mod for MTW origional makes it so much more challenging I don't think I would consider playing any other TW game now. It's just a waste of time and frustration playing against a braindead strategic AI in them now. I guess it's prefect for a beginner 12 or 13 year old or perhaps any teenager, but, it gives me no challenge or pleasure at all anymore playing them.

Bringing back the 2D strategy map from Medieval 1 and Shogun would almost instantly fix all of the strategic AI issues with Rome and M2. The 3D map was an interesting idea but like you said, the AI simply doesn't know how to use it, and ends up leaving a bunch of army stacks all over its territory, but doesn't bother moving them to intercept you when attacked, so you end up sieging capital cities garrisoned with a couple of militias, while a big scary AI army stack on the other side of the same province just stands there looking at your own turn after turn until you finally assault/starve out the defenders.

Of course, good luck convincing the masses out there that going back to a 2D would make for better game, as it then wouldn't have the same "OMG Xtreme 3D!" prettier graphics [:(]

Welp RTW and M2TW weren't made for strategists or tactitians or grogs. They did that with Shugun and MTW. They hit the jackpot in the mass market, but, ruined a good series of wargames that would have surpassed anything and everything if they had "just stayed the course". Guess I can't blame them for wanting the money and fame, but, it sure gets tiring to see developers go one way and then another. Triumph Studios is the same with their Age of Wonders series. The first game is pretty good and it just needed a random map feature and some more AI tweaking, but, then they went off on some silly idea that "hey let's make it if you kill this wizard in one castle the whole race dies out". lol What a silly stupid rediculous idea that didn't take the mind of the human player into that equation at all. As I've been playing MTW origional again I don't find the graphics harsh at all. Actually if anything they are crisper and sharper than the 3d models. You can't play the game zoomed in to get the advantage of the 3D graphics anyways. What Creative Assembly and Sega need to do is hire Mad Minute dudes to do the battle programing for RTW2 and MTW3 haha. MM made the best combat engine for real time I've ever seen. It's not a click fest in the sense you have to click click click all the time like you do most regular RTS games. That kind of engine would have made for some great and epic battles in all the Total War series.
 
It's rather sad when you see what would make the perfect wargame being separated by publishers and developers different directions of programming. So, we continue to wait for that near perfect wargame of the era we enjoy most. I like the Total War model I just hate the way they screwed it up. I'm still waiting on "Combat Mission Campaigns" for that strategic and tactical combination of a WW2 russian front game. I am fearing that it's vaporware though and will not see the light of day now because probably of Steve over at Battlefront and his bigggggggggg mouth, pissed off one of the lead developers and the game has been in the black hole ever since. lol I'm still waiting on an isometric SPWAW remake as well. Like using HPS graphics model, but, still the SPWAW engine. I'm not a big fan of HPS titles for one reason or another (mainly the AI), but, I have always liked their isomectric view of things as far as graphics go. See, just can't ever get the best of all worlds combined into one game. lol

ORIGINAL: ravinhood



Hrmmm I've had the mod in since I purchased Oblivion and I'd say I got 100 hours or more of game time in it now and no crashes here. But, as I said I've pretty much just played in the origional city with a few excursions around other places, not too many dungeons though, so, I can't really say it's that stable as I haven't explored the entire map at all. I think I'm around level 10 or 11 atm. I don't play it everyday though.

Thanks for the info, it's appreciated.

The Broken Crescent mod for M2 is out as of today...  I'd give this one a shot Marcus, along with Deus lo Vult.    http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=140857

ORIGINAL: ravinhood

Welp RTW and M2TW weren't made for strategists or tactitians or grogs. They did that with Shugun and MTW. They hit the jackpot in the mass market, but, ruined a good series of wargames that would have surpassed anything and everything if they had "just stayed the course". Guess I can't blame them for wanting the money and fame, but, it sure gets tiring to see developers go one way and then another. Triumph Studios is the same with their Age of Wonders series. The first game is pretty good and it just needed a random map feature and some more AI tweaking, but, then they went off on some silly idea that "hey let's make it if you kill this wizard in one castle the whole race dies out". lol What a silly stupid rediculous idea that didn't take the mind of the human player into that equation at all. As I've been playing MTW origional again I don't find the graphics harsh at all. Actually if anything they are crisper and sharper than the 3d models. You can't play the game zoomed in to get the advantage of the 3D graphics anyways. What Creative Assembly and Sega need to do is hire Mad Minute dudes to do the battle programing for RTW2 and MTW3 haha. MM made the best combat engine for real time I've ever seen. It's not a click fest in the sense you have to click click click all the time like you do most regular RTS games. That kind of engine would have made for some great and epic battles in all the Total War series.

It's rather sad when you see what would make the perfect wargame being separated by publishers and developers different directions of programming. So, we continue to wait for that near perfect wargame of the era we enjoy most. I like the Total War model I just hate the way they screwed it up. I'm still waiting on "Combat Mission Campaigns" for that strategic and tactical combination of a WW2 russian front game. I am fearing that it's vaporware though and will not see the light of day now because probably of Steve over at Battlefront and his bigggggggggg mouth, pissed off one of the lead developers and the game has been in the black hole ever since. lol I'm still waiting on an isometric SPWAW remake as well. Like using HPS graphics model, but, still the SPWAW engine. I'm not a big fan of HPS titles for one reason or another (mainly the AI), but, I have always liked their isomectric view of things as far as graphics go. See, just can't ever get the best of all worlds combined into one game. lol

The only thing I really dislike about MTW battles is that cavalry has no penetrating power whatsoever- they're basically just fast heavy infantry with a strong charge bonus. This wrecks the idea of using them to smash through and disrupt a line like you (sort of) can in RTW, or to the other extreme in M2 where they simply annihilate anything in the path of their charge (watching 20-30 cavalry charge into and nearly destroy 150 heavy infantrymen is kind of amusing).

I agree about CM Campaigns though I figured it long dead I do like the HPS games but agree the the AI truly sucks- the Squad Battles games are my favorites, since they come with mainly smaller scenarios that the AI works alright with. The Early American Battles/Civil War games just aren't much fun in single-player, and require the patience of a zen master to PBEM (I really don't like playing them without the "phases" turned on like in the old Battleground games). I have no desire to wait several days for a turn, download it, go into an "offensive fire" phase that I don't need to use, click end turn, email back, and wait yet again.


I would LOVE to see an ancient era game done with the MadMinute command system. Requiring a pre-battle plan similar to the Slitherine games, but on a MUCH larger scale, slower paced, and able to use messengers/trumpets/smoke signals to order units during battle. IMO if a system like this could be modded into RTW or M2 (I'm sure it can't) it would increase the challenge dramatically, and give the AI less chances to look so stupid.

When I play RTW I have two full stacks one is a pure melee stack and the other is all LIGHT CAVALRY, you think it's hilarious in M2TW with the heavy cav. You should see my Light Cav stack just rout the board (before I modified the hit points), they would come in from one side or the other or the rear and I'd just setup my melee to stand and hold position. The AI would stupidly charge and then I'd just control my whole stack of cavalry and rout the line. Every battle was the same even the overrated phalanx couldn't stop my cavalry. If they turned to face my cavalry my melee would crush them. It's sad the AI in RTW is so terrible that one just has to give it advantages out the ying yang just for some challenge. Though there really is nothing more fun than watching your cav just overrrun everything and kill those lil boogers from behind. Light cavalry is just too powerful in RTW, I think the cav in MTW is just right myself. The archers in RTW were pretty powerful as well when they worked.

But, the thing I don't understand is, routing units die anyway in all the Total war series, oh maybe a handful gets away. I don't know why they didn't program the AI to stand until there was like 5 or 6 units left then rout. I've routed and slaughtered full units of archers and javilinmen when they could have stood and at least done SOME damage. They are worthless running away. After I modified the hit points and took out morale, mano mano what a change from routing on the hit. Now units DO stand until there's only a handful left and they DO do some damage like I wanted. Removing morale in the Total War series is the best thing for challenge. Great battles lots of deaths on both sides and you feel like you EARNED your victory after playing the battle.

For those that don't know you can go into your Total War preference file and find the line that says "morale" TRUE and change it to FALSE. Play on Medium battle AI and you'll find it's much more fun and challenging just by changing those two things. If you don't want a ton of money for sacking cities/castles change your stratetic game to normal or medium as well. All that happens on vh/vh is the AI gets loads more cash and a morale bonus, but, if you turn off morale it's better than the morale bonus it gets anyways. vh/vh does not make the AI PLAY any better there is one level of difficulty when it comes to how it plays which is stupid. By giving it more resources it just puts more units out on the map, it doesn't make it smarter in how to use them, but, it does push them over on you quicker than say on easy or lower difficulties. You just encounter more stupid stacks than before that's all.

A quick update for those asking about MTW2 mods- I finally got Deus lo Vult working properly, and I have to say it's incredible- about 100x better than the game was out of the box. The strategic portion has been made slower paced and in a way that forces the player to plan their moves carefully (mainly due to background scripts that add expenses for things like prolonged sieges, armies standing around outside of cities/castles, and etc), and you can also choose which careers you want your family members to go into, as either governors or military commanders. The battle AI has also improved dramatically- it isn't on Medieval 1's level IMO, but is much better than M2 out of the box or Rome, and has actually defeated me in battles where I was slightly disadvantaged (my army being around the same size but mainly a mass of militia spearmen vs a mix of light cavalry, unarmored swordsmen, and spear militia) because it finally will actually try to flank your lines, as opposed to the vanilla game's "charge up the middle" constant tactic. The AI generals still love to commit suicide though, it'd be nice if that were ever fixed.

I really do recommend this mod, and would say it's worth buying M2 for (the newest DLV mod is for "Kingdoms" only, however the older M2 standalone version is the one I've been playing, and am talking about above). Kudos to the creators of this mod!