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Grumbold
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London, UK
Mar 2000
time: 05:21
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Been "straining my brain" with this all weekend. Definitely great fun although I think in time the appeal will wear off because of the few niggling limitations:
- There is a serious lack of diplomatic options. You can't even ask allies to declare war on one of your enemies. All they do is drop one ally if two go to war with each other. Stopping a juggernaut nation becomes almost impossible as a result. All the other AI nations continue squabbling as they get eaten one by one.
In my present game I'm struggling to turn Poland into an effective nation without ever fighting another Catholic state (well anyone except rebels and Novgorod basically, because they're all bigger and better armed than me.) Meanwhile the Turks have eaten Byzantium (except Caffa and Rhodes), Hungary, Italy and Egypt. Instead of opposing this deadly threat Spain, Aragon, France, England, Germany and Denmark have just fought each other into the ground. The Papal threats of excommunication don't seem to have had any impact.
- The AI emissaries etc seems to be able to make a beeline for your king no matter where he is, but you have to hunt theirs down by moving your pieces around every turn (with no prompt about which have moved and which have not). This gets tiresome, especially in a developed game where you can have dozens of each type of special.
Other micromanagement tedium involves checking the loyalty % of your provinces every turn. Ones you have owned for a long time are normally safe unless you get a famine but once foreign agents start running around its only prudent to check every single one. The quick colour check doesn't tell you which ones can have their taxes safely hiked. A governor AI to do that would be very straightforward and useful.
- Arrows run out very fast - I'd be interested in a configuration option to improve this a bit without making it unlimited.
Enough of the nit-picking. Fantastic fun so far and I'm looking forward to my first attempt to storm a castle. So far I've been content to starve out the fortifications. The number of troop types is surprisingly large and I suspect that will be the meat of any good strategy guide. What beats what and why, which are the best bang for the buck etc. The English longbow and billmen are certainly battle winners in the early game if they can afford to develop the provinces. The Polish retainer cavalry are very strong too - you just need to capture half a dozen provinces before you can afford to field any.
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zulu9812
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of Scotland
Jan 2002
time: 05:21
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Smeg. Smeg Smeg Smeg Smeg Smeg.
The game crashes at various intervals in strategy mode - usually at the end of a turn. It happens with varying factions at various times. I've looked at some Total War forums, and it seems to be quite a common program. Activision Support even have a section dedicated to it. Unfortunately, their 'solutions' are merely bog-standard 'oh it's your video card' answers, i.e. change resolution to 800x600, don't have progs running in background (like, Duh), etc. So they don't actually know what they problem is, because if they did there's be one clear solution. As it stands, the game is literally unplayable. It hasn't happened to all users, so you could argue that it's a problem with my computer. I think it's more likely that it's a problem with the game, albeit one that only shows up on some computers. And I have a nasty feeling that Activision will not be able to solve my problem and that the game will remain unplayable until a patch comes out. Whenever that is 
What I can't understand is how this managed to slip through the net. It's a fairly major problem, and it's happened to a lot of people. When a company releases game unplayable to many, it is clearly an example of unfinished code. And ppl accused Civ3 of being a beta 
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Grumbold
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London, UK
Mar 2000
time: 05:21
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My Poland game is reaching culmination. Greater Poland now extends from Finland to the Black Sea. My attempts to strike at the Turk were delayed by a war with England that nearly bankrupted me because we both had huge sea trading networks so I had to eliminate almost every single one of his fleets to return to my customary level of income. England refused to accept a ceasefire even after I had total sea dominance and its European empire collapsed, allowing France to reappear and Spain to recover.
Then the Mongols invaded. Fortunately they picked Kazir where my main field army was poised to strike Georgia. The Khan was sent home in a box but it took time and troops to clear out his impressive invasion force for good.
Finally in 1260 the inevitable Polish-Turk war began. I've now "liberated" Hungary and the Balkans, driving a substantial wedge between the western and eastern Turkish forces. The Turkish galleys were no match for my caravels. Our first strike into Asia Minor was thrown back, but having inflicted over 2000 casualties for the loss of 700 the General pronounced himself satisfied that the way is now open for a decisive push.
One thing I am finding, much to my irritation, is that there seem to be invisible restrictions on what you can build in a province. Of all my empire only Pommerania seems to be able to build a cathedral. Nowhere will allow me to build a Chapter House despite being a faithful Catholic, although it will allow me to build royal estates etc so its not confused me for an Orthodox. Once I've defeated the Turks I'll declare this game a victory (I don't see the point in taking over the entire world) then try again as a different nation and see if the allowable builds change for the same provinces.
Last edited by Grumbold on 06-09-2002 at 17:14
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child of Thor
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Well i got it last week and have only had time for one 6hr session so far!
Played as Denmark and apart from having weird heirs(one is insane and the other has five toes!no joke!), which doesn't bode well for the future - it seems quite tricky to expand much without angering the Pope and having a crusade declared against you.
Still the atmosphere is excellent and the various additions over shogun that add that little bit more depth(vices+virtues etc) make this a great game. With EU2 as well my medieval education is improving! Things are looking up for the strat gamer.
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child of Thor
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Yeah i agree on the Longevity thing(at least from initial impressions), i'm sort of hoping they will include more faction to play as too!
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29-08-2002 21:19
Haven't played in a while and probably not anytime soon. I'm in the middle of a big campaign in MTW as the people of Novogorod. I edited the text file to activate this minor faction.
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