Medieval II: Total War

Medieval II: Total War
Medieval II: Total War
	Medieval Total War2
Developer(s)	Creative Assembly
Publisher(s)	Sega
Platform(s)	Windows
Release	November 10, 2006 November 14, 2006 November 15, 2006 November 16, 2006
Genre(s)	Real-time tactics, Turn-based strategy
Mode(s)	Single-player, Multiplayer

Medieval II: Total War is the indirect sequel to 2002's Medieval: Total War, and the fourth game in the critically acclaimed Total War series from The Creative Assembly. The game is set between the years 1080 and 1530. Like the original Medieval, it focuses on medieval warfare, religion, and politics in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. However, unlike its predecessor, the timeframe stretches into the era of the historical discovery of the New World, and simulates the discovery and conquest of the Americas.

Release Dates

Medieval II: Total War was announced on January 20, 2006. The game was released on November 10, 2006 in Europe, November 14, 2006 in North America, November 15, 2006 in South Africa, and on November 16, 2006 in Australia and New Zealand. A demo of the game was released on October 10, 2006 featuring a tutorial of the Battle of Hastings, the Battle of Pavia and the Battle of Agincourt. Another gold demo was released on October 29, 2006 featuring an enhanced version of the original demo and the newly added Battle of Otumba. A strategy guide was released on November 7, 2006. In Australia buyers who pre-ordered the game received a 'Collector's Edition', featuring a Making-of DVD, a Construction Tree, a Soundtrack and a map; a British retailer, GAME, has also begun selling the collector's edition. Medieval II is also available on the Steam system.

The first patch was released on December 15, 2006.

Gameplay

Similar to previous titles of the Total War series, the game consists of two modes of play: battles and single-player campaign. Battles can be played in multiplayer, in user-defined scenarios, or in historical scenarios which simulate real battles such as the Battle of Arsuf or the Battle of Agincourt. Battles are also featured in the campaign.

The campaign allows the player to assume control of a faction of the time period, and build a civilization, economy and military in order to conquer other factions. Gameplay consists of controlling the faction via a large campaign map, and moving armies on the map; when two or more armies fight a battle, the game shifts to a battle map which is based upon the terrain of the campaign map.

The goal of the campaign depends on which type of campaign is played. The short campaign requires the player to defeat one or two enemy factions (for example, England must defeat its historical enemies Scotland and France) and control at least 15-20 settlements. The long campaign requires the player to control at least 45 territories and one or two significant cities, such as Jerusalem, Rome or Constantinople.

Settlements

Each faction controls a number of settlements, and must conquer others in order to continue growing. Unlike previous Total War titles, there are two kinds of settlements, each with different advantages and disadvantages: cities and castles. Castles have better defensive capabilities and have access to a larger selection of soldiers, but generate less income and have no access to higher technologies. Cities generate much larger income and are technological centers of a faction, but are more difficult to defend and only have access to militia troops, which are generally inferior to those trained at castles. Players may convert a settlement to a different type, although larger cities may not be converted into castles.

As in other Total War games, in each settlement the faction may construct a number of buildings, each with different functions, such as training troops, upgrading weapons and armour, expanding the economy, increasing the settlement's defenses or strengthening religion. A new feature of Medieval II is the ability to build guild halls. A given settlement may only have a single guild hall, although there are several different types. The guild hall provides certain bonuses such as increased movement for troops, better weapons, or better agents; some even grant access to new units. Guild halls may also be later upgraded to a "Master Guild Hall", which may provide a larger bonus or even grant the bonus to all of the faction's settlements.

Religion

Religion plays a large role in the game. The major religions in the game are Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Islam and paganism. Other religions, notably Judaism, are not featured due to the fact that they were not the established or official religions of any of the factions featured in the game. The player must monitor the religion of his faction, maintaining it by building temples and training priest or imam units, and killing enemy priests and imams. A difference from previous games is that religious units can't be used for diplomacy. Failing to maintain a faction's religion can cause unrest and rebellion as the populace converts to other religions, including heresy (which functions as a religion for gameplay purposes).

Catholic factions must also contend with the Pope, who can issue missions, call for crusades, or even excommunicate unruly subjects. A player who strongly enforces the faith, builds cathedrals and completes the Pope's missions will become popular with the Pope; a player who ignores his commands and allows the faith to flounder will become unpopular and may be excommunicated – which also leads to unrest. The Pope also appoints priests from the various factions to be cardinals; when the Pope dies, the cardinals vote one candidate from their number to be the new Pope. A player with many cardinals can thus use them to influence who becomes the new Pope, and how the player votes in the election has an effect on the new Pope's relations with the player.

Similar to crusades are jihads. Crusades and jihads both involve a religion's authority singling out a region for conquest by factions of his faith; a faction may then nominate one general to create a crusade or jihad. That army may then recruit special religious units, and must keep moving towards its target to prevent desertion. Successfully capturing the target region gives rewards to the faction; failure results in negative traits for the faction's leaders and the loss of the army. Another cause for loss of the crusade or jihad is the death of the general. Naval units who carry a crusade or jihad across water are considered part of the crusade or jihad for as long as they are transporting them.

Agents and Characters

Each faction has a number of agents it may use to maintain order and influence other factions. These include the priests/imams, as well as princesses, merchants, assassins and spies. Each agent has attributes that develop the more he is able to successfully be used. Princesses, for example, have a "Charm" attribute that governs their success in diplomacy and the likelihood that a proposal in marriage will be accepted. Spies have a "Subterfuge" attribute which governs how likely they are able to infiltrate enemy cities or find information about enemy armies. Except for princesses, all agents are trained at settlements which contain the appropriate buildings- for example, Christian priests can be trained in any settlement with a church or chapel.

In addition to their agents, each faction is ruled by a family, the male members of which act as generals in battle. Each general has a number of attributes which determine how well he governs a settlement and how well he leads an army in battle. A general's actions can affect his attributes- for example, a general who routinely kills prisoners of war may see his "dread" increase, making him frightening to foes; a general who prefers to release prisoners may instead increase his "chivalry", which makes his own troops braver.

Diplomacy is performed by diplomats and princesses and functions much as in previous Total War games, mainly involving negotiating treaties such as cease fires, alliances and marriages. The interface for negotiation has changed from previous games, however; a new system has been integrated to show the other faction's attitude toward the player's faction, intelligence estimates (such as how wealthy the faction is and what other factions they are at war with), as well as how fair the other faction feels the player's proposals are.

Turn system

Unlike its predecessors, Medieval II no longer uses seasons or years as its means of keeping track of time. Instead, a system of "turns" is used, with each turn representing two years, although the season still changes each turn, as in Rome. The game begins on turn 1 (1080 AD) and ends on turn 225 (1530), although players may choose to keep playing past that point. The game does keep track of years; the current year can be seen in one of the information screens within the game. A side effect of this new system is that there are inconsistencies. For example, while each turn represents two years, characters only age six months per turn. Also, due to the movement system, when discovering America, it takes about 8-10 turns to get to America from western Europe, and 8-10 turns equals 16-20 years; Christopher Columbus took about a month to make each of his first two voyages.

Battle System

One of the main focuses on the Total War franchise is its incorporation of battle within the greater sphere of gameplay. A battle consists of two or more factions' armies fighting each other. Battles play similar to those in Rome: Total War, with formations of various kinds of troops fighting. The objective of the battle is defeat the enemy army by completely destroying it or causing the whole army to flee; in a siege battle, the objective is to completely destroy the army or to take control of a plaza in the center of the settlement. There is also an option which allows the player to allow for time limits on battles, meaning that the attacker must defeat the defender within a certain time limit (determined by the computer) or the battle results in a victory for the defender.

Unlike in previous Total War titles, a new system of modeling troops on the battlefield has been introduced. Each soldier has a varying number of elements to it, such as arms, legs, body armor, shield heraldry, and so forth; each element has a varying number of styles. When a battle is entered, the computer randomly selects elements for each soldier in the unit, thereby making each soldier look different from the soldiers around him. Upgrades to a unit's armor are also depicted- a unit of unarmored spearman upgraded to have leather armor will be depicted wearing it. Another departure from earlier Total War games is that combat is depicted more realistically, with soldiers performing motion-captured attacks, rather than one or two standard attacks- soldiers are even depicted impaling enemy soldiers on their swords or spears.

Factions

An in-game image showing a group of knights attacking foot troops.

There are twenty-one factions, of which seventeen are playable in the Campaign game, although only five are playable in the beginning:

England - yellow and red (red dominant)
France - light blue and white (light blue dominant)
Holy Roman Empire - yellow and black (black dominant)
Republic of Venice - maroon and yellow (dark red dominant)
Spain - yellow and red (yellow dominant)

The other factions factions may be unlocked one at a time, as soon as the player has defeated that faction in the short version of the campaign (regardless of whether the player wins the entire campaign). The rest may be unlocked all at once by successfully winning the short campaign as one of the five initially available factions.

Byzantine Empire - purple and white (purple dominant)
Denmark - red and white (red dominant)
Egypt - representing the Fatimid and successive dynasties - yellow and black (yellow dominant)
Hungary - salmon pink and green (salmon pink dominant)
Milan (linked with Genoa) - green and white (green dominant)
Moors - representing the Almoravid dynasty - orange and white (orange dominant)

Poland - red and white (white dominant)
Portugal - light blue and white (white dominant)
Russia - dark blue and red (dark blue dominant)
Scotland - dark blue and white (dark blue dominant)
Sicily - grey and black (grey dominant)
Turks - representing the Seljuk dynasty (Early Period) and Ottoman Empire (Late Period) - green and yellow (green dominant)

Also, certain computer-controlled factions appear during the campaign game, but are only playable in custom, historical and multiplayer battles or by editing the game files:

Aztec Empire - light blue and yellow (light blue dominant)
Mongols- representing the Golden Horde - dark green and cream
Papal States - yellow and white (white dominant)
Timurids - black and red

"Rebels" are also a faction, representing territories not governed by one of the other major factions. Their color is grey, and they wander the map, disrupting trade and ambushing the armies of the other factions. Rebels can appear if the people are disgruntled with their rulers or if the entire family line of a faction dies (the faction is eliminated from the game), but the cities/castles remain, ruled independently by whoever was the governor at the time of the death of the faction's last ruler.

In addition to the above, the Saxons (yellow and black), representing the Anglo-Saxon rulers of England prior to 1066, appear in the historical scenario depicting the Battle of Hastings.

Note - see the Komnenian army for more information on the Byzantine army of the crusading period.

Critical Response

In its December 2006 issue, PC Gamer UK reviewed the game, hailing it as the "new king of war games". The graphics and depth of gameplay were highly praised and the game received a score of 94%. IGN gave the game 8.8/10, saying that the game was not as revolutionary as its predecessor, but still introduces some new ideas and builds on others from Rome: Total War, which would still be enough for anybody to buy it [1]. GameSpot also rated the game 8.8/10, noting its "epic, engrossing gameplay" whilst criticizing its "beefy system requirements"; fan reviews at GameSpot have it rated at 9.4/10 [2]. The Australian magazine PC Powerplay gave the game a rarely awarded perfect score of 10/10 due to the sheer amount of content the game contained.

Although most reviews are positive [3], some reviews have noted negative aspects of the game such as pathfinding bugs [4], weak AI and some uninteresting new features (such as the merchant characters) [5]. Creative Assembly developers stated on December 1, 2006 that they are working on a patch to solve reported bugs, specifically mentioning a major bug in how the game handles cavalry charges(the cavalry don't always use their lances when charging); the patch was released on December 15, 2006. They also stated that they were working on a second patch that is scheduled for the latter half of February 2007 [6].

Other perspectives

In addition to game reviews, historians and other critics have commented on the game. Swedish historian Peter Englund wrote that the depiction of battles as an art genre of its own has long existed in older media, such as films, or even older media such as tin soldiers or paintings. Englund states that these older forms have failed in the depiction of battle in some way, and Medieval II now represents the genre's most favourable medium.[7].

Historical inaccuracies

As in its predecessors, there are some issues with historical accuracy in the game. While the game is free form and allows for deviations from history, at the start of the campaign (which takes place in the year 1080), some of the featured cities and factions are incorrectly portrayed. For example, the city of Budapest was three separate cities (Buda, Óbuda and Pest) until they were amalgamated in 1873. Stockholm is on the map although it was founded in the 13th century, as is Helsinki which was founded in 1550. In addition, Caernarvon Castle in Wales was not built until 1283, Edinburgh only became Scotland's capital in the 1400s and Oslo did not become Norway's capital and most important city until the 1300s. Bucharest was not even referred to until the 1400s as well. The borders of Poland looked different than it is shown in the game as well.

Some of the factions are inaccurately portrayed. For example, Portugal only became formally independent of Castile in 1143, when the King of Castile recognized its independence; likewise, Aragon (which was a faction in Medieval: Total War) is a minor rebel faction, despite playing a major role in the history of the period. Another example is that historically, Milan was part of the Holy Roman Empire until attaining semi-independence in the 12th century, while in the game it is a separate faction ruling Genoa. Venice owns Crete when it did not acquire it until after the Fourth Crusade. Portugal owns the Algarve (which was in Moorish hands at the time) and Pamplona, which was part of Navarre. Some of the rebel cities are mislabeled- an example being that the Bretons are referred to as "French rebels".

Some character details are inaccurate as well. El Cid, who has the sobriquet "the Chivalrous" instead of "El Campeador", is the rebel ruler of Valencia at the game's beginning, although he did not install himself as its ruler until 1094. Alexios I Komnenos is the Byzantine Emperor at the campaign's start, yet he did not ascend to the throne until 1081; likewise, Spanish princess Teresa was born in 1080, but appears as a young woman at the campaign's start. Most of the European generals are portrayed wearing full plate armor even at the start of the game, though armor of that type did not reappear in Europe until the 14th century. Eastern Orthodox generals from Russia and the Byzantine Empire are also depicted with the same armour as western generals even though splint mail was the common armour for generals from Orthodox nations.

There are some geographic inaccuracies as well, such as the placement of the city of Naples south of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples rather than to the north of the volcano. The map also depicts the ___location of the Aztec Empire inaccurately, placing it south of the Yucatán Peninsula.