so basically I've been playing this mod for a week or two now and it's just amazing.

What is Medieval II?



Medieval II is an RTS game set in the middle ages where the objective is to lead one of several European or Islamic factions to bloody conquest over all of the others. There is no story; you just jump in the saddle of one of the predesignated civilizations (England, France, Kievan Rus, Papal States, the Turks, etc.), are placed in the realistic historic context for the beginning of the game, and go go go.

Gameplay in Medieval II has two modes : the turnbased campaign map and the real-time battle map. The campaign map is okay, it can get a little boring, but it suffices for the game and is phenomenally better with some options to speed up the pace of the enemy's turn. The battle map is where the game really shines. Your armies are composed of specialist 'units' ranging in size from 20-180 soldiers apiece, ranging from Dismounted Frankish Knights and Hashashin to Genoese Crossbowmen and Grand Bombards. Units attack each other realistically, it's not like other strategy games where they loop a predetermined animation - these guys actually trade blows, parry, use finishing moves (including hacking repeatedly into the enemy's neck, hitting them with a mace uppercut, and cutting an X into their torso) and stumble around if they suffer a particularly vicious blow. Sometimes cavalry will knock them down and they'll try to get back up, only to be trampled by the horses' charge. Some of the animations are weak (particularly cavalry ones) but point being, battles look fluid, brutal, and real. Individual units also look really good; there can be thousands of troops on the field at a time and each of them has bump maps and HDR mapping applied to them and they are higher-poly and better-textured than almost any other strategy game I've played.

Combine this with sieges using massive ladders and towers, battering rams, cannons, and flaming arrows and boiling oil, and you've got a killer and incredibly fun RTS game which I personally think is one of the best RTSes I've ever played. There's plenty of bugs and little AI issues and some poorly textured units and such, but if you can get around them it's great.

It is also exceptionally easy to get into since it's pretty obvious what goes where (spears attack horsemen??what?? oh god what does a musket do??) and it's never a button clicking frenzy. The only real micromanagement on the battle map comes when you need to maneuver cavalry into charging position and that's easy as hell.

What's Broken Crescent?

From their web site:

Broken Crescent is a M2TW total conversion modification centered on the Middle East starting from 1174 and concluding in 1400. Featuring a gorgeous new campaign map spanning from Anatolia to India, Broken Crescent allows you to take control of over 17 brand new factions all complete with over 300 new artistically crafted warriors ready to do you bidding!

Screenshots





Screenshots don't really do it justice - it all looks a lot better ingame because you usually don't zoom in that closely.

Broken Crescent basically takes a great game and makes it incredible because of the vast array of phenomenally cool stuff that you suddenly have access to. Knights? Knights are fucking boring, try taking on Jihad Ghulams, which are heavily armored Muslim fanatics armed with a scimitar and heavy shield, or command a group of Mongol Heavy Lancers which even look pretty imposing in low poly 3D. There's even African war tribes and Rajput Indians to fight with.

basically Broken Crescent rocks and it's much more fun than the vanilla unmodded game.

so basically the point of this long rambling thread is A) if you don't have Medieval II, you should get it and B) you should then also get Broken Crescent and play that with me online because I don't have anything to do after work in the summer.

first off medieval is hardly an RTS.

it's a turn-based strategy game coupled with a realtime tactical wargame imo.

second of all, I loved medieval 1 but I couldn't get into medieval 2 at all. all the territories were so unstable all the time no matter what I did, and if I focused on fixing them I'd lag behind a bit in armies and then my neighbours would attack me at once.

medieval 2 is so hard compared to medieval 1

Err, I meant to say real-time tactical.

What did you find hard about 'stabilizing' provinces exactly? And as far as I can tell, you can't really play a campaign online, just battles.

i thought this was gonna be that action platformer with the skeleton

Seconded. Ah well, this looks pretty cool anyway.

i used to play medieval II all the time. it was ok but like rome it had a ton of ridiculous, hugely non-realistic stuff in it. (flaming pigs or exploding sheep or whatever.)

i used to play medieval II all the time. it was ok but like rome it had a ton of ridiculous, hugely non-realistic stuff in it. (flaming pigs or exploding sheep or whatever.)

other than a couple of ridiculous things like ELEPHANT ARTILLERY (elephants with cannons) and COW LAUNCHING (which really didn't make a whole lot of sense to me at all) it didn't seem really whacky or anything. the vast majority of the units in the game were designed from actual history and I think they just threw in stuff like battlefield assassins and Sherwood Archers that looked like Robin Hood just to make sure the game didn't get boring for lack of unique units.

regardless broken crescent plays it pretty realistic compared to medieval II (no more hashishim ) and you should get it!

i thought this was gonna be that action platformer with the skeleton

third

it needs a sequel badly

regardless broken crescent plays it pretty realistic compared to medieval II (no more hashishim ) and you should get it!

I just freaking uninstalled Medieval 2 after ages and my friend is borrowing it at the moment so I can't play this (it looks awesome).

But yeah Medieval 2 had a crapload of annoying stuff about it even though I think it's a pretty great game so I'm hoping for a new one.

I have Medieval 2 but my computer used to be too shitty to run it but this gives me a good excuse to install it and play it. I remember liking what little I played, though it was pretty slow even at the lowest settings. so yeah, thanks for this! (looking forward to controlling Jihad warriors)

unrelated: what is your avatar from TREG? I recognize it from somewhere but I can't quite put my finger on it.

The game with the skeleton guy is MEDIEVIL fools.

Also I loved medieval 2 but it was insanely hard. I managed to conquer around 34 regions with Scotland before the time run out, and I don't think I could win 50+ including Jerusalem, is it possible at all? Not to mention the pope who was a bitch and always executed my  kings with 8-9 command skills because they were pagans. Meh.

Spearman that can form a phalanx are INVINCIBLE to everything except ranged units, and the computer tends to rarely ever use them properly.

Well I used this tactic against spain but they came with javelin thrower cavalry and they just stood few meters before my phalanx and killed almost every one of them, so this is not true everywhere. Rome is way easier. I mean come on, you can kill buttloads of units with just one soldier in rome.


and throwing cows and other carcasses behind castle walls was common back then, so please don't act like it's something out of worms armageddon. Though they mainly used human bodies for this. Do I need to mention the black plague?

what is your avatar from TREG? I recognize it from somewhere but I can't quite put my finger on it.

hey arnold I guess?