Alas I have only played Rome Total War due to a poorly operating PC but a fun game regardless and currently playing as the Julii with 30 terratorys with all of France, Briton, and Spain under my control and just declared on SPQR and going to try take Italy now and move on to that 50 terratory mark. I've considered about getting Medieval Total War but not entirely sure my PC can run it and Napoleon Total War would kill my PC. Overall I like the Total War series and is one of my favorite Strategy/RTS games along with Civilzation 3.

I am playing Medieval 2 as the Russians, and only the Iberian Peninsular, The middle east, and one Aztec city remains, and I have already begun the middle eastern offensive through Turkey, but the Mongols and the Timurids are a bit of a hindrance with their huge armies.

In campaignmode I always send assassins all over in both games. I like the time period of Rome so graphics don't bother me but I do like some of thenew stuff in Medieval 2, also there is a mod to give the normal campaign the features of the Kingdoms campaigns. I never noticed a difference but doesn't hurt to have.

My main problem with M2: TW is the battle AI. The battles are good, but sometimes I'll have the enemy in front of a line of archers, and they will just stand there and take it until I either run out of arrows or they rout. Not only that but they also seem to purposely get within range of the arrows.

My fav is Rome Total Realism: Platinum Edition

But I am doing a Brutii grand campaign on vanilla and its turned out very interesting in a few things that were always out of the norm from the dozens of campaigns I'd played in vanilla. The Britons are dominant in Gaul, Germania and even as far as Dacia and have wiped out Germany. The Julii (red Romans) have five territories right now and I'm easily 180 turns in and actually had their capital sacked by the Britons at one point (only for a few turns until I swooped in a claimed the city for myself in a shrewd move ). The Egyptians, who I alwasy found to dominate in the East are wiped out and the Armenians have Parthian, Seleucid, Pontic and Scythian lands under their rule after wiping them out. And after pushing the Greeks out of, well, Greece, they built up their power in Asia Minor and now basically own Egypt, Cilicia, Syria and Cyprus.

I have only 11 territories But only because I'm waging a long, protracted war to the north against the Britons in Illyria whilst keeping an eye on the growing power of my Macedonian allies who were down to 2 cities, fought it out with Thrace for like 50 turns, and eventually annexed them and have been growing ever since with their client allies, Dacia (left with 1 city at Byzantion). My territories are kinda all over the place unfortunately, with places like Rhodes, Cyrene (spelling?) and the Julii capital, Arretium (I believe) and I was planning on an expedition to Bosphorus to gain better trade with Armenia, Macedon and Greece (we worked out a nice little peace with them paying a modest amount of gold per turn ) but unfortunately it fell to my newest Armenian allies before I could send my Legions there.

Now, on to stuff that people might actually read instead of me telling about my riveting campaign

Does anyone think, in RTW, and all TW games for that matter, have been really lacking in the siege aspect? The RTW era was a time of new and exciting siege tactics which included a lot more than starving an enemy out for 5 years and I wish they could somehow incorporate new tactics both for defenders and attackers.

-Make sallies not a single time thing. You can only sally out once, and its a win or go home (loose the city) situation. I think you should be able to sally out, destroy some siege weapons (rams, towers, artillery perhaps), kill some soldiers then run back into your gates. If the enemy doesn't manage to follow you back in, you should have the choice to end the battle with your work done, and not have to loose the city because of it.

-Defending against sallies should be better. The bulk of your troops should start further back, disorganized while a few units would be up maybe defending the siege works and such and you'd have to rush your men up there just to repel the sally. Once the enemy falls back to the gates, and they (the AI should be able to choose to end the attack at this point) don't come out again, if you want, you should have the choice of assaulting at that time but maybe at a hit to your mens endurance, possibly morale if they drove the sally off sloppily or something?

-Finally, I think (and would love) if you could build siege works around a settlement. Think Gaius Julius at Alessia and the fort he built around the city. Maybe it takes a few turns to build, and if the enemy sallies while your building, maybe on the battlefield, it shows half built palisades and stuff and your troops are even more spread out and disorganized. And on that point, on a screen on the campaign map, you can choose where to put units around the city and such.

Thank you for listening to my ideas, if you bothered to read them, and I think this is just one of many reasons that Rome Total War 2 should be done

http://www.amazon.com/Rome-Total-War-Gold-UK-Pc/dp/B000Q7ELMA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1286121618&sr=8-3

Don't think it's possible to get Alexander on it's own. It's not that great. The battles get very tedious because Macedonia is way overpowered, and it has to be or the campaign would be way too hard.



I find all TW games easy on Medium or lower though I always go on Medium. The higher difficulties are stupid because they don't make the AI better, they just give it more morale and make your troops weaker.

Third Age was kind of fun but when I play Medieval 2, that game has lots of problems for me with units not getting into formation properly so I spent a lot of time yelling at the screen. Only play on Large scale.

Third Age: Total War is obviously superior to all other versions.

I have Rome: Total War, which I don't personally like too much, and Medieval II: Total War, which I play with the Stainless Steel and Third Age mods. I have also played Empire: Total War on my brother's computer, and I loved the naval battles. But then, I'm a big naval history buff.

Could you direct me to a download for Third Age? I've found Third Age but only in 20 separate patch files. I'd prefer downloading one.

And Stainless Steel, what does that do?

A Peloponnesian War game would be the only one of the TW series to draw me in. Or have they already done this, with me completely missing it?

Yes, the sieges are lacking, especially in Medieval 2 once you start getting cannons, it's literally 'wait while your cannons pound as many holes in the walls as possible and swarm in your troops'. Empire improved on this with rope ladders which I loved. At least in Rome you did not have gunpowder, and you had to have some tactical sense (where to place the towers etc.)

I would like to see a WW2 Total War also. It would be pretty easy to do also.

Campaign map: Yes
Battles and planes: No

I've been in love with Total War ever since Rome. I've only played Rome and Medieval 2, and I much prefer Rome. The units in Medieval all seemed the same, with only a point or 2 difference in stats, compared to Rome where you had 5 different cultures of warfare. I play with the http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1101 on Rome. I'm not a fan of the tedious ultra realistic mods like EB or RTR, I like the feeling of vanilla Rome, but with a little more depth. I really hope they do make a Rome 2 and I'm not worried about them messing it up any. Anything that's wrong with the vanilla game can usually be modded out, so it's a moot issue for me.

Thanks for the link Aevar.

You're probably right about that so that's main reason why I'm still looking for the Total War - Eras collection pack.

I love the Total War series, and have most games except for Shogun, Medieval and some DLC. The last time I played a TW was today actually, which was Empire TW but I got a bit bored when I played as Sweden and got attacked by Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Prussia and Hannover at the same time (most of my troops were deep into Russian territory, and I couldnt train enough troops in time to resist the attacks). Although I mostly play R:TW and M2:TW, usually as Germanic barbarians or Danish/Norwegian vikings. Speaking of the Germanic barbarians, am I the only one who misses the screeching women when playing Barbarian Invasion? Those coupled with warriors using the war cries were pretty awesome to hear just before the butchers work started.

Can someone link me to the driver software necessary to play Medieval 2?

What are mean by playing as Danish/Norwegian vikings? Are you talking about the mod Viking Invasion 2?

I think you have been missed the point with the german screeching woman, because you have the Lombardi Berserkers in RTW - BI instead of those female warriors.

By Danish/Norwegian vikings I mean that I either play as Denmark or as Norway depending on the game (Denmark in most Medieval 2 expansions, except for Britannia), and I paired them together because they're so similar. And I when I was talking about the screeching women, I was thinking about the atmosphere they bring when you mix their screeching with the war chants of the normal warriors. Which gets me "pumped up" mentally before a battle.

I love total war been playing since the original medieval total war was released. My favorite would have to be medieval II total war and it's expansions as the medieval setting has always been my favorite. Rome total war comes in a close second. I really want to like Empire but until I get a better graphics card I won't try to play it.

I started with the demo of Shogun: Total War when it was released in the PC Gamer Magazine. Since then, I've been buying every Total War game I can find, except for Empire: Total War. Simply because I'm more interested in melee battles (With some guns) than full gun battles.

I still remember, in Shogun, when there was only but one province left in Japan and it belonged to the rebels. Their army was composed of remnants of a previous faction, so it was at full strength. My army was composed of No-Dachi samurais and Arquebusiers. I had so many men, and the enemy as well, that we had a lot of troops as reinforcements.

Because of the time limit, the battle to take over the province lasted two seasons. Two seasons of hard fighting. And the part I liked the most, was checking my reinforcements arriving in the midst of the battlefield. In front of them, in the distance, you could hear the echo of gunfire mixed with the gun smoke fading in the air as cold snow slowly dropped on the ground. My favourite moment of a Total War game yet.

Also, since Shogun's musics are in a common format (MP3 or WAV, I don't remember), it's easy to replace them. I had replaced most songs by the Last Samurai soundtracks. It added a lot to the battlefield.

My favourite is Medieval 2.
Now I can't wait to play Shogun 2.

Shogun 2 looks like it has way too high requirements for my PC to run

Hopefully I'll be able to run it on low.

I see. If I've understand you correctly, so when you play a normal m2tw-exp campaign you choose to play Denmark and Norway in Britannia. Correct?

I agree. The same thing is the druids for both the Gauls and the Britons, but they didn't have that grunts you're talking about.

Huh, I just found out about a feature I did not know about in Medieval 2.
I fought 3 full armies of Mongols as the Portuguese on the eastern border to Jerusalem.

I was very outnumbered but had some of the best troops available. I won the battle (after 3 reloads ) and a battle marker was placed, declaring that spot a historical event. I had no idea about that, pretty cool.

I like that feature as well.
It would be even better if, when you'd click on it, you'd view a replay of how the historical battle was fought.

Just installed Third Age for M2. This should be fun!