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Let's Play Medieval II: Kingdoms - Killing infidels and making money doing it
Pancake
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Campaign Intro Chapter 1
Update 1.5: Bialystok (Video)
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 3.5: Status Update
Chapter 4
Chapter 4.5: Yet Another Status Update
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
What is Medieval 2: Total War: Kingdoms and why is the name so long?
Medieval 2: Total War: Kingdoms is the expansion pack to Medieval 2: Total War, which is, if you somehow missed hearing about it and the Total War games that came before it, a hybrid turn-based/real-time strategy game set in, well, medieval times. The main campaign map is played as a turn-based strategy game and the battles are fought in real-time.
The original Medieval 2 featured a grand campaign spanning the whole of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East and several centuries. Kingdoms introduces four new campaigns more focused in scope.
But though the scope of the campaigns are smaller, time passes more slowly, and while these were unimportant undetailed areas in the original campaign, they're now larger and divided up into a large number of provinces.
Both can feature literally thousands of troops on the battlefield at the same time.
A grand campaign that covers centuries and more than a single continent? Why aren't we playing that?
While it has the potential to be interesting and it is indeed big, the Kingdoms campaigns are much more thematically interesting and feature more interesting historical context for their action.
So why should I care about this whole thing?
Because you'll be choosing which campaign we play. To keep it easier, I'll choose the faction unless there's overwhelming demand for one. So feel free to suggest a faction too. I'm pretty easily swayed.
In addition, once we're actually playing, many of the strategic decisions won't be up to me. When prompted, you all will decide our best course of action, both rather specific and vague, whether it leads us to ruin or victory. It won't just be me playing.
We're going to put the "Us" back in Penny Arcade Let Plays.
This will, however, be a screenshot LP. We're not into that video stuff for turn-based games. Though I may record at least some of the battles if people want it.
The Campaign We Are Playing
The Teutonic Campaign (The Northern Crusades)
The Teutonic campaign starts in 1250 and centers around the conflict between Christianity - spearheaded by the Teutonic Order - and Eastern European paganism - represented by Lithuania.
The Teutonic Knights are ruthless and are a threat not only to the pagans but to the other countries as well.
Novgorod lies in the far east of the Baltic area and guard their rich city jealously. They have triumphed over the Teutonic Order in the past, but since then the Order has been rapidly expanding. Novgorod must build up their forces if they want to survive.
The Duchy of Lithuania is desperate to drive off the Teutonic Order. If they want to be victorious, they must make use of their thick forests and quick forces to drive out the Order. However after much pressure from many of the Catholic factions the path of Catholicism may be inevitable for Lithuania.
Lying to the west, the Danes hope to unite Scandinavia and from there launch attacks on the rest of the Baltic area. However, the mighty Holy Roman Empire lies directly to their south and the Danes must make good use of their mass fleets if they hope to defeat their many enemies.
Factions
Teutonic Order
Advantages:
Extremely powerful heavy units
Hits like a train
Disadvantages:
Lacking in lighter units, making them a rather ponderous army that hits like a train.
The best units can only be recruited in heavily Catholic regions.
Special features:
- The Teutonic Order lacks a family tree, which means it's blocked off from some diplomatic paths.
- If the Order's leader dies, he's replaced by the best available general.
- Will be asked for assistance by crusading nobles. Success means more money.
Denmark
Advantages:
Good all around units in most every category
Disadvantages:
"Most every category" doesn't involve heavy cavalry
Lithuania
Advantages:
Great light units
Their light cavalry is exceptional
When they're able to convert to Christianity, they can do so to decrease hostility towards them.
Disadvantages:
Units lack discipline
As a pagan faction, settlements cannot be raised above city or castle level.
Converting to Christianity causes a great deal of unrest.
Special features:
- As a pagan faction, Lithuania can build buildings dedicated to three of their pagan gods.
- If the faction eventually decides to convert to Christianity, they lose their pagan buildings and gain new building options.
Novgorod
Advantages:
Field a strong variety of cavalry and missile cavalry
Disadvantages:
Infantry and archers are rather weak in the early period
Advantages:
Extremely powerful heavy units
Hits like a train
Disadvantages:
Lacking in lighter units, making them a rather ponderous army that hits like a train.
The best units can only be recruited in heavily Catholic regions.
Special features:
- The Teutonic Order lacks a family tree, which means it's blocked off from some diplomatic paths.
- If the Order's leader dies, he's replaced by the best available general.
- Will be asked for assistance by crusading nobles. Success means more money.
Denmark
Advantages:
Good all around units in most every category
Disadvantages:
"Most every category" doesn't involve heavy cavalry
Lithuania
Advantages:
Great light units
Their light cavalry is exceptional
When they're able to convert to Christianity, they can do so to decrease hostility towards them.
Disadvantages:
Units lack discipline
As a pagan faction, settlements cannot be raised above city or castle level.
Converting to Christianity causes a great deal of unrest.
Special features:
- As a pagan faction, Lithuania can build buildings dedicated to three of their pagan gods.
- If the faction eventually decides to convert to Christianity, they lose their pagan buildings and gain new building options.
Novgorod
Advantages:
Field a strong variety of cavalry and missile cavalry
Disadvantages:
Infantry and archers are rather weak in the early period
Pancake on
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If one of the other campaigns wins out, my vote goes to Spainish for the Americas, Lithuania for the Tutonic, and whatever you want for the Crusades.
EDIT: By the way, what difficulties you plan on playing at, if I may ask?
Either medium/medium or hard/medium. For some reason, I'm a bit worse at the whole battle thing than the rest of the game.
Battles would be made so much simpler if you could throw angry bees at people.
Oh, wait! Funny I should mention that... :P
Also I had a terribly bad start. One of my captains decided it'd be fun to steal half my army and rebel, then Venice attacked me. Luckily, Venice is.. well, Venice. So I'm not having too much of a problem.
Still...
PS My LP gimmick is so much better. Now if only I could upload this shit to imageshack faster.
Because it doesn't involve the deaths of forumers?
Failing that, Britannia as the Scots.
I never got around to getting Kingdoms, but the Scots were my favourite faction in vanilla. I like Pikemen more than is healthy.
That would be Commisar Cain. Read his series. Now.
And I throw in a vote for Teutonic Campaign... as the Teutonics.
Will do, I read like all of the Gaunt's Ghosts novels and loved them. Currently working on a Soul Drinker omnibus but I find the guard stories way more entertaining.
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
The Cain books are totally awesome. Well, they may not be great literature, but they are entertaining and competently written. For reference, I tried reading the Gaunt series and failed. I just found it tedious, unimaginative and boring. Abnett can write, some his shorter pieces in White Dwarf were good, but the man can take an epic battle and such any sense of urgency or excitement out of it.
On the Total War front, I'm getting all excited about Empire, despite the fact that there isn't even a release date yet. Cannon! Redcoats! Marching across France firing 4 rounds a minute! Whats not to like.
Yeah I can see where you're coming from on Abnett's writing style. It can come across pretty boring sometimes, I dunno I just sort of got attached to the characters so thats what kept me going.
Back on topic, I really wanna see this LP in action because I was thinking about getting it. I need a new game to play. :P
Whatever's winning by the time I start playing tomorrow is what we'll be stuck with.
Honestly, I was expecting more support for the Americas and at least someone interested in the Crusades. Not that I'm complaining or anything.
I really, really want to be excited about Empire, but even though it looks great, I really can't. The whole time period just doesn't seem all that interesting. Though I suppose it's better than them doing Shogun 2. Not that there's anything wrong with feudal Japan or anything, I guess.
Come on, once you've played CoD4, you've seen everything the middle east has to offer.
>.>
<.<
3ds friend code: 2981-6032-4118
That aside my vote goes for the teutonic campaign-teutonic order
I don't know.
I like its intro movie. That has to count for something. Right? ... Right?
Damnit pancake, this is a game, not metal gear solid :P
But seriously the main problem I had with the americas campaign is that it's the one that makes the most changes to the base gameplay and AI seems..unable to deal with it, even on the hardest difficulties it seemed to put up as much of a fight as easy on the others
edit: and the intro movie was cool
Hearing this makes me so sad. I was almost about to reinstall this to try out the americas campaign, but then I remembered how no faction in it had had any appeal to me and read your posts.
I suppose I could give the Teutonic campain another try as Lithuania... horse archers are a unit I almost never use.
In such case, go for Lithuania in the Teutonic Campaign. For extra fun, try to keep them Pagan. Lord knows it's got to be easier then converting the Western Roman Empire to Paganism in Barbarian Invasion, especially on Very Hard/Very Hard. Really satisfying actually.
This sounds interesting! Also, I saw the bee throwers and thought "Awesome!" but I have to say that the thought of the Teutonic order losing to Lithuania of all places is genuinely hilarious.
Well, I may have been exagerating just a bit. It isn't really horrible..it just pales in comparison to the others imo.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=314
I can see where you're coming from. I wasn't hugely keen on Rome, just because I preferred the medieval period. Personally, I like the Napoleonic era, (mostly due to the lines of men in red coats, and lots of big guns) but they do seem to be correcting some of the mechanics that were most flawed in Rome/medieval II. Rebuilt AI thats not so schizophrenic is going to be great, provided it works, and having buildings out side walls, so that 90% of battles aren't sieges will be a welcome change. I am somewhat dubious about the introduction of Naval combat, after all, Imperial Glory tried and failed horribly at it. In fact Imperial Glory tried to be Napolenics: Total War and fell short. Not a bad game by any means, but let down by a terrible interface and control system.
Then you must find history pretty damn funny, because in 1410, that's exactly what happened :P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grunwald
Anyway, to possibly hold you over until the update, here's the campaign intro:
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM Sharpe.
Thats really all I've got.
That is just how the AI works. The War AI and Diplomacy AI are separate and do not communicate with each other. So if you are allied with a neighbor and have fantastic relations with them, their War AI is constantly looking for new targets. If you leave a border town lightly defended or undefended your ally will attack it. It can be very annoying, though I hear they are working to fix that in Empire.
Also, very good first Update!