Some questions about MTW2

[Xerrop]

As a huge fan of the first Medieval I“m thinking about buying M2:TW after getting bored with Rome and it“s mods. Here are some questions I“m curious about:

1. Can someone post a campaign map-pic with starting provinces of all factions?
   
   
2. What is the timeframe and are there different starting dates į la MTW?
   
   
3. How about turns? MTW had 1 turn per year, Rome 2 turns per year (with summer and winter season)
   
   
4. What are there for winning conditions? Is there something like the "Glorious Achievements" back?
   
   
5. In MTW there were three emergent factions (Mongols, Swiss and Burgundy) - how is it here?
   
   
6. Is the loyalty feature for your captains/generals back? And are Civil Wars reintroduced?
   
   
7. What about the family tree and successions? In MTW the oldest son of the current king became the new ruler and you saw only the king and his sons in the tree - In Rome you had dozens of distant relatives and you could select anyone as heir.
   
   
8. In MTW there was an feature planned but never included in the final version: if your princess marries a foreign king and he dies without heir you can claim some of his provinces. They had enough time creating M2:TW - so is there any feature like that?
   
   
9. In Rome rebells pop up randomly in your provinces, in MTW only when the public order is under 100 % - How about M2:TW?
   
   
10. Sieges: I hated them in Rome with the narrow streets in the towns. I prefer the wider baileys in MTW. So any changes or improvements to Roman sieges?
    
    
11. How work the difficulty levels: In MTW the AI was smarter on higher levels - in Rome it only got +4 or +7 attack/morale but remained dull.

[modog]

1 - sorry not right now. mebbe later tho!
2 - the game starts 1080AD, and I think goes on until the 16th century. Or 15th. I forget.
3 - To start its 2 years per turn, but its fairly easy to change that (descr_strat i think: check with someone a little more knowledgable) - i tend to move it down to 0.5 years per turn to make the seasons work better and allow a more rpg style experience
4 - Two sets of winning conditions - short and long. Short you usually have to hold 15-20 provinces, and exterminate one or two rival factions. Long Campaign you need to hold (usually) about 45 provinces, including some specific regions. I.e. Spain has to hold Granada and Jerusalem as part of the 45
5 - Emergent factions are... well they're interesting. There are only two, barring what you might describe as a 'discoverable' faction later on. I'll not say precisely if you're planning on buying the game. It would ruin the surprise!
6 - There is a loyalty feature for generals and family members. However this mostly comes into play with things like bribery by foreign powers and marriage to foreign princesses - they might go serve another royal court to be with their new woman; that kind of thing. It also means, if they get really disloyal, they might turn rebel. But no, no actual civil wars.
7 - you cannot select your heir as in RTW, but the system isn't entirely reliable. You could easily end up with a general who married into the family becoming crown prince, despite the fact there are four mature bloodline princes available - there are good mods that deal with this though!
8 - Never experienced it. Someone else might be able to tell you. Although I imagine that the lands simply go rebel if the faction dies out sadly. I agree it would be a nice feature!
9 - Still quite random (although i beleive there is some connection between religious unrest, faction leader's authority rating and garrison strengths. Also, if you're quite good at rapidly putting down rebel armies as soon as they appear I've found they tend to appear less often, which is a nice touch!)
10 - Haven't played enough RTW sieges, but I think siege battles in M2 are ok. A little bit unbalanced in favour of the attacker (perhaps necessarily) if you autoresolve, and too easy to win in defence. Streets can be narrow or wide - usually narrow. It depends to a degree on the settlement type and size i think. Again, check with someone else on this. Have never really thought about it.
11 - There is a noticeable change to difficulty levels, but again you'll probably want, after playing the vanilla for a while, to download a mod with a better AI. There are plenty of cracking AI's out there, and they make the vanilla AI look like a chocolate saucepan. I think the effects are more money for the ai, higher experience and moral for their troops, able to spam armies like crazy, more aggressive, less reliable in alliances (although this is the case anyway even on easy/medium - like i said: poor AI)

I hope that answered at least some of your questions reliably/usefully!

[Nazgūl Killer]

As a huge fan of the first Medieval I“m thinking about buying M2:TW after getting bored with Rome and it“s mods. Here are some questions I“m curious about:

1. Can someone post a campaign map-pic with starting provinces of all factions?
2. What is the timeframe and are there different starting dates į la MTW?
3. How about turns? MTW had 1 turn per year, Rome 2 turns per year (with summer and winter season)
4. What are there for winning conditions? Is there something like the "Glorious Achievements" back?
5. In MTW there were three emergent factions (Mongols, Swiss and Burgundy) - how is it here?
6. Is the loyalty feature for your captains/generals back? And are Civil Wars reintroduced?
7. What about the family tree and successions? In MTW the oldest son of the current king became the new ruler and you saw only the king and his sons in the tree - In Rome you had dozens of distant relatives and you could select anyone as heir.
8. In MTW there was an feature planned but never included in the final version: if your princess marries a foreign king and he dies without heir you can claim some of his provinces. They had enough time creating M2:TW - so is there any feature like that?
9. In Rome rebells pop up randomly in your provinces, in MTW only when the public order is under 100 % - How about M2:TW?
10. Sieges: I hated them in Rome with the narrow streets in the towns. I prefer the wider baileys in MTW. So any changes or improvements to Roman sieges?
11. How work the difficulty levels: In MTW the AI was smarter on higher levels - in Rome it only got +4 or +7 attack/morale but remained dull.

1) Here you go;


2) Nope, there are no different start dates. The game starts at 1080 A.D and continues... Well, indefinitely. You have a certain turn number in which to reach your objectives, but you can choose to continue the campaign even after defeat/victory.
Bear in mind that certain mods have certain campaigns with different start dates.

3) M2TW has 2 years per turn, yet characters only age 6 months per turn. Stupid, I know. But it is very easily modded, you can change it to even 1 day per turn if you like.

4) There are 2 campaigns: Long and Short. Choosing either changes the formula of victory conditions.

Victory conditions have a specific pattern:

For Short Campaigns
Defeat faction X, defeat faction Y.
Control 15/20/25 regions.
For Long Campaigns
Take and hold settlements A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L.
Control 45/50 regions.

5) There are two emergent factions; Mongols and Timruids. They emerge as 'hordes', meaning you have to kill their family tree to destroy them, and they simply run across the land, destroying all in their path.
Another faction that is always there but awaits your discovery is the Aztecs.

6) Loyalty is there, but there are no civil wars. The worst that happens with a disloyal general is that he turns "Rebel" (Neutral-enemy faction) and, if in a city, takes the city with him. Basically causing a small revolt.
This rarely happens with generals though as they tend to be very loyal, Captains however, tend to rebel. A lot.

7) In M2TW there is only one way to choose a prince: None.
The game picks the highest ranking successor in authority, and it is completely outside your control how much authority he has. He might be the most horrible general ever, and he might just be the best of the best. The only way to really try and choose is kill all successors until you get one you want.

NOTE: Keep in mind that if your family tree is wiped out, so are you.

8) Nope. None whatsoever.

9) They pop up randomly, however, higher civil unrest and religious unrest will make the rate of rebel army, and size of rebel army, spawning much higher. Religious unrest being the worst of the two evils.

10) I haven't played either of the two, so I'm not really sure. Battles rarely take place in the streets in M2TW though, the main battles are generally at the walls and courtyard (Gates) and then at the plaza which is the center of town and your objective of occupation.

11) Well, the higher the difficulty, the more aggressive the AI will be, the more financial bonuses they will get and the harder they will be to kill. I'm not altogether sure about smart, but they will be extremely aggressive.


NOTE: I highly suggest getting the Kingdoms expansions for modifications and the likes, it adds a lot to the game. Take Stainless Steel for example, it's a fantastic mod that redoes the entire Vanilla game (M2TW), improves it, gives it better AI, much better eye candy and a more realistic feel to... Well, everything.

If you need any additional help, you can always refer to my guide (Look at my signature) and choose a possible faction from there. At the bottom of each post there, there are also important links that I've set up, you should check them out as well.

Best of luck be to you!

[Goofy]

1.

2. 1080-1530, though it's very easy to modify this yourself. And you can continue over 1530, it doesn't really matter.
M2TW has only one campaign, so 1080 is the only start date.

3. One turn = 2 years, every second turn is summer and then winter. And as Naz said, the ageing of characters is a bit weird.

4. In short campaign the requirements are usually "Hold X provinces; eliminate faction A and faction B", in long campaign they're something like "Hold X pronvices, including provinces A, B and C (and so on)".

5. There are 2 emergent factions, Mongols and Timurids, both very powerful and having many armies to spawn. See Mongols' unit roster here and Timurids' here.
And one thing... do not trust them! If you ally with them, they - despite your alliance - attack you at the first moment possible.

6. Loyalty exists, but there are no civil wars.

7. In M2TW the oldest son gets the crown after the death of the king, if no son exists, then the game picks up the poorest one I believe.

In family tree there are shown the king, queen and their relatives, so when you play long enough the family tree can become very huge.

8. No.

9. Rebels spawn "randomly", it practically has nothing to do with public order. Though if you have very high public order, they're less likely to spawn.

10. Here is a typical M2TW Vanilla siege battle. It's a lot easier to send a link to a video than explain it by words.

11. The AI has different kind of bonuses and its aggressiveness differs.

EDIT: I was sure I'm the first one.

[Xerrop]

Thank you all for answering my questions.

The campaign map looks very different from MTW. So many rebell provinces and the HRE is only a tiny state in central Germany. In MTW they had six more provinces. Also my favourite faction Byzanz is reduced significant. It looks like they tried to make the factions more equal to each other.

8 - Never experienced it. Someone else might be able to tell you. Although I imagine that the lands simply go rebel if the faction dies out sadly. I agree it would be a nice feature!

For sure. It was even printed in the manual. But in the Readme-file they mentioned they were not able to introduce it.

3. One turn = 2 years, every second turn is summer and then winter. And as Naz said, the ageing of characters is a bit weird.

Oh yeah, the problem of newer games. No one has time anymore to correct such easy to find mistakes before the release.

7) In M2TW there is only one way to choose a prince: None.

Oh that“s no problem. I prefer it that way. Sometimes there are bad leaders sometimes good ones like in real life. Don“t know why many people prefer the Rome-style where you can select any random (and best) person out of 50. And when you are unhappy with the heir you can kill him with your assassins. Atleast in MTW it was possible that way.

5 - Emergent factions are... well they're interesting. There are only two, barring what you might describe as a 'discoverable' faction later on. I'll not say precisely if you're planning on buying the game. It would ruin the surprise!

Thanks, that was well meant - but as you can see:

5. There are 2 emergent factions, Mongols and Timurids

5) There are two emergent factions; Mongols and Timruids.

But no problem I knew of them.

Good to have the Timurids as second emergent faction. Atleast in MTW the Mongols rapidly advanced but after controlling eastern europe they have (probably) problems with their huge upkeepcosts and are easy to drive back (when not busy on other parts of the map). So a second faction appearing on the eastern borders ensures some challenge.

But no Swiss and Burgundians anymore? They enriched the western half of the map - even when remaining mostly in their borders and raiding bordering provinces instead of running amok like the Mongols.

[Wavemanmav]

As far as your concern about all the rebel factions in the start map of the released game: they will quickly be "nationalized" by the neighboring factions. In some ways, M2TW starts as a race to grab rebel territory.

I also agree that if you get the game, you should get the gold edition which includes the Kingdoms expansion.