Medieval 2

Have you an opinion to share?

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I can't stand the "wait X days to replenish X units so you can recruit/retrain that specific unit", It gets even worse when Europa Barbarorum 2 does it, Fucking minimal of 10 turns for everything to replenish. Atleast most units are immediately recruitable without having to go through lengths of building barracks everywhere.

Attila isn't extremely bad, it was how TWR 2 should've been, kinda. It still sucked though

How did you go about optimizing this game?

I'm trying to play it but despite having a pc that goes beyond the recommended specs, I experience awful framedrops. I know this is because of the game's engine being old but I can't find a solution to this.

Also laughing at the bugged tutorial.

I wanna get into total war. Mostly interested in stuff like formations and shit. What game is best suited for this? Like, most "realistic" mechanics?

Don't ask me, I'm in the same predicament, but I'm playing on high so it looks fine enough for now

Attila and Shogun 2 in my opinion, Rome 2 if you have Divide Et Impera installed. Honestly any of these games can be pretty damn great with a few overhaul mods installed

Despite the unit variety I actually really liked Attila, it's pathing/combat was amazing, plus the battles ran like silk for me, it's more optimized than Rome 2 was

This. It's the best mod for Medieval 2.

I cant even play TW2 or hell… any TW game anymore after SS. It's just too damn perfect. though helps that all TW games after Med2 have been absolute shit

My first TW game was Shogun back in 2000, and I have picked up every game in the series, and quitting when the pile of garbage known as Rome II was released. Medieval II is by far the pinnacle, in my opinion. The games declined into console-port mediocrity after 2006. Empire was passable, and Shogun II was acceptable, but beyond that you will never find the captivating depth and rich storyline of Rome or MW2.

I have also tried multiple mods for both Rome and MW2, but I found they lacked the fit and finish of the vanilla game. As much as I liked Barbarian Invasion, I found the departure from the base game, specifically the option of carrying out missions from the Senate, stripped out too much of the games soul. Mods pretty much suffer the same problem of hollowing out core elements of the game in exchange for some updated maps or model textures. In the final equation, mods are just not worth the tradeoff.

tl;dr You can not improve upon perfection.

Warhammer looks pretty good to be honest…

Aside from the balance and broken diplomatic/combat AI.

Is there a mod that makes AI more better for Total War, I'm sick of this shitty AI.

Divide and Conquer has a million different factions with new units, must which look bad. If you want 5 different levels of Dol Amroth cav to smash the Southron with the mod provides.

The bigger factions such as Rohan and Gondor do not get much new stuff compared to the base mod. The Eriador faction was split into the Dunadain and the hobbits.

Is done with the purpose of realism of training, and to let you feel the hit when losing a unit in a battle, let you git gud in combat

The exact opposite of what said.

After 120 turns I finally feel like I've become a significant power in Fall of the Samurai, I'm making 5k per turn with my taxes set to the lowest and a bunch of my towns are nearing max level and I can just about keep up with the AI cranking out their full stacks of line infantry every turn from their 14 provinces that I guess the other AI just let them take. Unfortunately my 8 provinces are like the three in the south east, two in the north, one in the dead center and two in the far west so I have to spend like three seasons shuttling my armies across the country in boats.

AI makes some stupid fucking army comps too despite their cheating for funds, ain't no reason for them to be using levy infantry and wooden cannons this late in the game.

What? Fucking Attila performs worse than Rome 2 did, On my laptop atleast

I'm good at combat alright, But your units will never get away 100% scratch free in combat which will require retraining, And i just can't stand looking at an unit with casualties that hasn't been replaced, Just my autism.

ew.
Are you spamming artillery?

I don't see any warhammer thread for total war up OP.

I got some artillery, I think at most I've had four parrott guns in an army but I hate how slow they make you move and because the AI never advances so for everything but sieges I have to slowly walk the artillery into range. I also just lost all my cannons from one army when a general who'd just taken two cities for me defected for some reason. Now I'm spamming carbine and revolver cavalry while I wait for cannons from my other provinces to slowly sail over.

(Dubs)
wew lad, Pretty sure guy's low on loyalty.

He must have been, but he picked a really obnoxious time to defect and shitty units to take with him. Either way he's dead now.

Why is the AI in these games trash

Not helping matters is the fact that none of the people that worked on the good, pre-warscape TW games are involved with the new ones.

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Should've kept him loyal or disposed him

It's a call for you to rebuild the third "Roman" empire, m'lord

I thought Shogun 2 or M2 was considered as the best of all TW games, and that Shogun 2, despite the variety in units was more balanced?

If you haven't heard of Thera you should probably check it out, I'm not sure if it has pathing improvements but it changes so much I wouldn't be surprised. It's basically a massive deathmatch between a bunch of tropey factions.
It makes some fights feel a lot different though I warn you, it's almost too fantasy for some people.
You'll have some shit like a descendant of dracula has both an ancient sword which slew the last dragon or some shit and a holy lance made from the cross Christ was crucified on, this means his unit alone can take on an army entire of muslim or pagan shits and win.

Does Stainless Steel improve the Kingdoms campaigns as well?

Despite having heard about it a long time ago and being a huge fan of M2, I've yet to actually play a mod for it. I got on my list of must play mods for M2:

I really like that these mods all provide a different "setting".

What sub-mods for SS do you guys recommend?

Okay so I can't play medieval 2 because no kingdoms.exe from the download from steam, I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do to fix this

That's what you get for giving them shekels.

Make a copy of "medieval2.exe" and rename the copy to "kingdomes.exe"

Rome 1 with Europa Barbarorum or Medieval 2 with Europa Barbororum 2 are good for "realism." Stainless Steel for Med2 also has realism options.

Medieval 2 is an old game that's not optimized to use all your computer's resources. It runs on one core and it was written for 32-Bit OS, and therefore will not utilize all of your RAM. Use this program:
ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php

*kingdoms

do I need to place it in a specific folder

Man, the AI make the dumbest army compositions. Is there any point in putting 4 generals in an army? It's just four units of revolver cavalry you can't really use because their deaths might rout the army.

I don't think it's necessary for a single stack, I think two would work fine for a stack of infantry like in your pic. The number you need really depends upon how thin you stretch your formations and whether you are trying to flank or not, as you will want the general's morale boost to cover as many troops as possible.

I remember being able to play Shimazu and play an economic powerhouse. I took over the entire island you start on and then just bribed my neighbours so they wouldn't attack me, letting me just sit back and make money while I focused on improving my tech level. I might have to try it again, but this time limit myself to the starting province.