>finally get around to trying out Medieval 2: Total War
>play as the britoids because I've been told they're the best faction if you're a beginner
>ally with Scotland so that they can help me out later
>France eventually declares war on me because they do so every campaign
>try to call in Scotland
>basically no option to call in an ally to a war, had to settle for asking them to attack France which they refused despite our high relations
>bunch of other little shit throughout my (short) campaign adding up to a crap experience
Bros, I think this game might not be all that good...
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Holy frick diplomacy in a 20 year old GSG isn't perfect? Game fricking ruined.
Diplomacy was better in Master of Orion 2. What's Medieval 2's excuse?
>gsg
>GSG
have a nice day
aged like a milk, no surprise there
Nobody plays the game for diplomacy, it's called TOTAL WAR, we play it because we want to watch thousands of medieval soldiers on screen slaughter each other and larp as a general, everything else in the game exists to add stakes to the battles, if you expect some deep geopolitical simulator total war was never and will never be a game for you
Also
>Needing AI's help
>Keeping AIs alive
Skill issue
I had problems there too, the pathing for the enemy units was all over the place. Enemy units would leave their fortress and then run in a random direction and stop, not coming back inside the fortress after I made it in. Units would also run in random directions even though they're not routing. I've played Empire before which is considered one of the "bad" Total Wars (or at least it was in the pre-Warhammer days when I last properly messed with this series), and I don't remember enemy units in that game being this stupid.
This was my first time properly messing with Medieval 2, I'm guessing there's some equivalent to Liquoria's HPM I was supposed to use that acts as vanilla+ and fixes some of the problems I've been having.
you might just have a bad case of being a giant moron
>drooling ESL morons still don't know what total war actually means
>Bros, I think this game might not be all that good...
It isnt and Ive been saying to everybody who asks to disregard nostalgiagays and that this game aged like milk
However...
What seems to be happening here is the classic diplomacy bug that never got patched and basicaly makes the entire diplomacy system become non-functional as the game progress( and makes it shameful how so many people overrate this game >inb4 "its total war, not total diplomacy" nostalgia cope)
In TW games you usually have 2 type of diplomatic ratings: a global one, AKA reputation or trustworthiness, and one between factions. The bug is basicaly 2-3 lines of uncommented code from R:TW that causes every time that you capture a town peacefully to counts as if it was worse than if you had put everyone to the sword, and this will absolutely tank you global reputation, meaning that every faction will start to perceive you as literaly satan walking on earth, all your relationships with them will start to fall, factions that you never met before will already start hating your guts, they will attack you for any reason including no reason at all, they refuse to make peace with you even if the only have one ungarissoned town left, and they will refuse to honor and breake agreements you had with them.
To fix that, all you need to do is open the right .txt file and add the comment tags on those line, pretty easy stuff, you can look it on youtube. However by fixing this you might risk making an already easy and braindead game even more easy and braindead since it will lower the agressiviness of the AI, which is the only thing preventing you from steamrolling everything after 15-30 turns.
you forgot the spoon
https://t-a-w.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-everyone-hates-you-in-medieval-2.html
>However by fixing this you might risk making an already easy and braindead game even more easy and braindead since it will lower the agressiviness of the AI, which is the only thing preventing you from steamrolling everything after 15-30 turns.
THIS. I'm the human player. All of the AI factions should be at war with me, all of the time, in every game. In some games this doesn't help though because some AI factions need to conquer others in order to get big, so making an all AI team against the human is not the best way to go
>brit relying on scots
are you fricking moronic perchance?
>play total WAR game
>cry and shit your pants that it isn't a diplomacy game
>playing vanilla
If you're so moronic that you don't realize the Scots are just your first target as the English, you can't be helped.
You know nothing.
This is just a non-aggression pact. Makes perfect sense
It isn't, it's the diplo AI having a neurotic fit. One script is telling it that the player is being overly aggressive and that it should make a deal with the player, while another is telling it that the AI is strong militarily and it should threaten the player in exchange for profit.
And this is the case because "accept or we will attack" is a threat. Refusal triggers the AI to, well, attack. That's not exactly a non aggression pact.
It still makes perfect sense, anon.
The player is being aggressive, so the AI checks to see if they're willing to be peaceful with you or if you need to alpha strike them.
>Refusal triggers the AI to, well, attack. That's not exactly a non aggression pact.
If the AI attacks after the diplomacy fails, then a non-aggression pact wasn't signed.
No it's not, it's literally just saying 'if you attack us, we'll attack you back!' as if that needed to be said.
>it's literally just saying 'if you attack us, we'll attack you back!'
No, it's "pledge not to attack us, or else we attack you"
>AI encounters prisoner dilemma
>Takes action regarded as correct within game theory
>Players are meming it
This is a stroke of brilliance emerged from jumbled Rome total war code.
>see human homie being an overexpansionist gay
>tell him that we either have an non-aggression pact or i will attack him
Completely rational behaviour, though probably not indented by the Nigel who wrote the diplomacy spaghettios
intended*, god-damnit
>Oh nyyooo I have to fight wars instead of watching my allies curbstomp the world for me 🙁
Total WAR not total diplomacy. If you want to jack off to le diplomacy I think Pharaoh is more your spped buddy.
The AI gets a huge relations penalty if their ally is at war with someone, so they will be naturally inclined to attack France if they see something French they can fight.
Scotland isn't that useful as an ally anyway. Their economy is shit and their position on the map means it's really hard for them to attack anyone but you since the ai is bad at ships. It's best to ally a nation that shares a land border with your main rival, so Spain would be a good ally. Though you may also want to take Iberia so a Northern Italian nation might be better even if they're less useful. They share a border with the HRE which might be your future rival too.
Yeah it's a shame allies are fricking useless. Attila is the only TW I've played where the allies weren't all backstabbing c**ts, but even then they didn't do that much.
It would be nice if there were allied victory conditions. Maybe not super useful in single player, but for co-op.
youre not supposed to ally with scotland. youre supposed to bum rush them and take all their territory before the pope has a problem with it
I've never played Total War, is Medieval 2 a good starting point? I want to conquer the world as Spain and convert them to catholicism.
Yep, was my first one and I love it still after play a bunch of the ones that came after.
Even though I made a thread here crying about how jank it is, I think it's alright if you can get past its problems. If you get it with the Kingdoms expansion, it comes with a scenario where you can play as the Spanish colonizing America.
>you don't need any allies pussy
I'll try again, but this time I'll play really wide like the people in this thread said. I guess I just expected it to be more like Empire as far as diplomacy goes, though I bet I remembered that game's diplomacy wrong since it's been years since I last touched it. I don't mind playing really wide and ignoring diplomacy, it's just that it was a feature that I expected to work.
I love Medieval II. I didn't enjoy playing TW games, but really wanted to get into them. I played and bought Shogun 2, Rome 2, Rome 1, Atilla, and a few of the DLCs (save for Rome 2's). None of them ever really clicked with me the way medieval 2 did. Sure the camera is a bit clunky, units can be a pain because they don't listen but it pretty heavily BTFOs later TW games.
>Massive amounts of unit diversity
>Every building can be built with no building slots provided you have the cash.
>Visible changes to your troops when upgrading your units via the black smith
>Cities and provinces visibly get more advanced as you play, with roads get filled to the brim with traders going to and fro
>As time passes different types of units become available, including gunpowder units, shaking up the gameplay quite heavily
>You can have armies without generals, allowing you to recruit a "man of the hour" with their own likes, dislikes, traits and so on
>Family tree with neat traits, and a semi-present morality system via chivalry/dread
>Battles are more in depth and troops actually have mass
>Castles and towns being separated into military/economic zones is pretty cool
Overall Med II feels more like a medieval simulation as compared to later TW games which feel more along the lines of a very stream lined card/board game. It has its rough edges, but I love it more than any of the other later entries in the series.
Honestly, if M2 had reemerging factions and more or unlimited factions it would be my undisputed favourite TW
>which feel more along the lines of a very stream lined card/board game
I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice the board game-ification of vidya. Like Civilization 6 is straight up a virtual board game. Almost all of the autistic RPG aspects have vanished, and what's left behind is pretty soulless.
>Castles and towns being separated into military/economic zones is pretty cool
This and merchants / diplomats were imo the weakest parts, but everything else about your post is spot on.
It's imperfect and it was clearly rushed to release but it's still the best game in total war niche.
Merchants just need to be their own minigame. I think a combination of sitting on resource nodes AND the emerging caravan system in Warhammer 3 and Pharaoh might be interesting in future.
Something like:
>Merchant is a piece that travels to resource nodes, establishes an outpost
>this outpost is similar to allied outposts in Warhammer 3, a building chain in neutral or allied settlements. In some settings, it could even be its own little settlement, something like a foreigner quarter that you use to help boost allied economies or act like a parasite - a la Changeling, only everybody is doing it.
>Merchant piece teleports home after establishing outpost, maybe with a cooldown as well
>more merchant related buildings and traits, so it isn't just "sorry your merchant is moronic :("
Diplomats as pieces are dumb and I'm glad to be rid of it, but it was useful for scouting.
>units can be a pain because they don't listen
It might be a bug but many people consider it a feature, because even unit movement is 'realistic' in Med2 / Rome1, in how units don't all robotically turn the exact moment you give the order, each individual soldier has a random 1-2 second delay on when they turn and start marching, resulting in the game feeling like you're ordering real people rather than AI robots.
It's annoying, sure, but it gives the game that sense of being a medieval commander on a battlefield rather than a zerg hive mind controlling everything through telepathy.
I get it, but at the same time it is rather irritating for units to refuse to follow orders and get absolutely smashed by the enemy cavalry or incoming artillery. I have also seen issues with units not being able to attack long strings of enemies for some reason, and instead they pick them off one by one in a congo line, making it take forever. There are just a few weird quirks that kind of stink. Its not a massive deal breaker.
I was personally fine with that. It was never really improved in other TW games and I don't think they will ever make a satisfying system that is both satisfying to the player but doesn't make the game baby mode.
Its not present in vanilla Med II, but "SSHIP" or "Stainless Steel" have factions that can reemerge if a captured city rebels against you, which is cool.
>but "SSHIP" or "Stainless Steel" have factions that can reemerge
I like SSHIP, but it's too slow for me (sorry, but 6 turns to build a tier 1 market? lol). Also the faction limit really makes the game too empty for such a big map
and towns being separated into military/economic zones is pretty cool
It would be if it was actually military or economic zones instead of traditional/progressive zones.
Cities are for crossbows, firearms, and siege weapons with servicable spearmen, castles are for knights and heavy armor infantry.
The end result is you have 1-2 castles because the city troops are more useful while also being better for your economy. city infantry are easily replenished while the knights or heavy armor infantry require some decent upgrades so it's better to keep your meat grinder soldiers as city troops and only have a few heavies as stormtroopers for sieges while your ranged and cavalry that take minimal casualties do most of the work.
>not being a chad with full heavy infantry armies slowly walking most enemies to death and then being mad because mongols run away from you
You're kind of right. I never noticed that, but cities do fall off in late game. I think that's by design and you're 'supposed' to convert them into towns, but that feels wrong in a game called 'medieval' so people don't do it.
Maybe instead what should have happened is that bastion forts are your late game caste equivalent and you are meant to convert your castle towns to that. The need for a defensive type city never goes away, but as you said castles cannot keep up with late game units that cities provide.
>I think that's by design and you're 'supposed' to convert them into towns, but that feels wrong in a game called 'medieval' so people don't do it.
That's stupid. It's only natural that a castle built for war be converted into a town when the war is over. Plus towns are the backbone of your economy so why wouldn't you convert them the second you don't need the castle anymore?
>you are meant to convert your castle towns to that.
Eh, it makes sense in the early game. For example when you're playing as the English, having 50% of your uninvadable home island be castles is moronic (after you crush the scots)
it also makes sense to convert sicily into a castle because that way you can rush heavy infantry and dab on other factions around you early on.
In the mid-to-late game you're usually so far ahead you don't really lack the income to have to convert castle to cities, castles are also easier to manage because they never rebel
It also varies by faction, eg. Italian Militia are equal to midgame castle troops, so you don't really need castle as someone like pope / milan. And then there's eastern europe / scotland where city troops are literal useless garbage so it's advantageous to have more castles for actual viable armies.
Frick off to Ganker with your pointless whining shitpost threads that generate absolutely no discussion besides petty fricking bickering you worthless excuse for a person. If I ever catch you breathing my air I will butcher your first-born child.
KWAB, the game is piss easy, you don't need any allies pussy
I don't think I have ever actually bothered with allies in Medieval 2. Just attack everyone. You should be at war with both France and Scotland by turn 3
>Scotfricks working with the French behind your back
this is just historically accurate OP
moron. You allys are just future enemies. You even shared a border with them. Why would they help you? Its TOTAL War. There is no diplomacy, its always going to come down to violence.
I thought those lions were basedjaks from the thumbnail. I really need to touch grass.
the game is shit but as expected the nostalgia fueled defense force has already arrived and their only argument is
>y-you are playing it wrong
face it op, the game is dog shit and you fell for it
uninstall and move on
>ally SCOTLAND as ENGLAND
>be surprised when they dont give a shit to help you
the alliance was for their benefit, not yours
Allies are called to war when the war starts, if they didn't join they declined it you don't need to seperately call them in.
Also you're moronic.