Anyone playing the original MTW?

[Scalylizard]

I still miss the dark atmosphere of the original MTW... even though the soldiers were 2d graphics, the battles were stomach churning and graphics aside, the gameplay was more interesting. I would add that the music was more atmospheric as well.


P.S. I installed it recently but I saw that my GT8800 graphics card is not compatible with it. Strategy map plays fine but the battle map is all messed up. If there is anyone who installed it recently and knows how to run the battles with the 8800 nvidia card series, I'd appreciate some words of advice.

[Logik]

Man it has been a looong time since i last played it. It is amazing to see just by thinking back to that game how far the MTW series has come and the mods that have been made for it.

[Trajan]

Moved to the Medieval/Shogun TW GD.

[Misfratz]

I've had lots of problems running the game on various computers [the Total War games are notorious for being fussy about graphics cards], but I hit upon a fantastic solution.

I bought a computer specifically for the game.

That might sound insane, but the game is now old enough that I was able to do this for just £20 (which was donated to charity anyway, you might even be able to get a computer for less than that!)

It's easy to get such old computers, and I recommend looking for one running Windows 98SE with the sufficient specs. I've always had more luck running Shogun and Medieval on Windows 98 than XP.

You may have to buy a suitable graphics card separately, but even this shouldn't be hard. I'm using a Radeon 7200 that I picked up for next-to-nothing on the off-chance that I would find a use for it, and you should be able to find slightly higher spec cards that will still be compatible.

Of course, this might not be easy if you don't have the space for one or two older computers...

Just to specify, a second-hand computer..

[Prince_of_Macedon]

P.S. I installed it recently but I saw that my GT8800 graphics card is not compatible with it. Strategy map plays fine but the battle map is all messed up. If there is anyone who installed it recently and knows how to run the battles with the 8800 nvidia card series, I'd appreciate some words of advice.

Unfortunately, there doesn't really seem to be a viable fix to this problem. There's a thread here to see what kind of issues people are having with it.

[misplacedgeneral]

I still play it a lot, probably more than RTW and its various mods. Right now I'm playing the MTWI mod Pike and Musket Total War.

IT is simply a better game than any of the sequels to it, regardless of graphics.

[Oglethorpe1983]

I havent played the original MTW in like 4 years... but Ive been getting a desire to play it again. Ive got a somewhat decent laptop...not sure if Ill be able to play it from what Ive seen here... Im not willing to buy a new computer just for this game. How Misfratz was able to get one for $38 (roughly the 20 pounds he/she said)seems an incredibly good deal....almost suspect. But if I can get it up and running again I wanna play as the English (one of the factions I never got around to playing)

[Hound of Ulster]

I play MTWVI, but only modded. Although not as 'pretty' as Rome, its still fun.
The Byzantines are always challenging.

[Aru]

I played it few months ago quite a lot. Then I started getting CTD's all the time, and the pace of the game was to quick for me after playing Europa Barbarorum, so I stopped. It was a hard time finding someone who still has CD, I lost mine years ago. But it kept me entertained for a couple of weeks.

[Martok]

I admittedly don't play MTW/VI quite as often as I used to, but I still put the disk in for at least a couple hours every week. It's just too good a game to ever remove from my hard drive.

[Misfratz]

Not suspect Mr Ogle sir, just lucky to work at a large workplace with generous people. My TV was "bought" for the princely sum of a box of cupcakes, for example. They were *very* good cupcakes though.

I've been dipping into the Viking Invasion Campaign more recently, in a way I hadn't done before. It's different in interesting ways, particularly because of the long build times for the farming/abbey buildings.

[Kaidonni]

I still play MTW: Gold. Just uninstalled M2 again, because MTW Gold calls to me like a siren. Installed XL 3.0 and Tyberius' Final 2.0 patch, and it has made a timeless game even better. I just can't get the same feeling with the later Total War games. Of course, it does help that I started out with MTW back in 2002, so the graphics won't bother me at all. I'll take substance over graphics any day.

[C-Rob]

I got Rome Total war months ago adn now am a tiny bit bored of it so I will be playing it soon. I'm downloading a demo of it as I type and in 3-4 hours I'll be playing it(I have dial up so it's taken three days of off and on downloading)

[Ciaran S]

I still occasionally play MTW, provided I have enough time to do those sometimes really long campaign battles ( my record so far was a three-hour battle, one battle, and it didn´t even end with a timeout). I happen to like the strategic map more than the RTW/M2TW version. The abstraction, in my mind, actually helps immersion, as it feels much more like a king in his council chambers pushing his armies across the map, planning out the global srategy for his empire than the pseudo-realtime map of RTW and M2TW does. Oh, sure, the RTW/M2TW battlefield handling (left click select, right click move) is much more error-proof than the MTW way, plus the sieges are better in M2TW (though not in RTW, too many cities have quite a labyrithine layout) and diplomacy offers more options, but still, I consider MTW more challenging than its successors.

[Garnier]

I happen to like the strategic map more than the RTW/M2TW version. The abstraction, in my mind, actually helps immersion, as it feels much more like a king in his council chambers pushing his armies across the map, planning out the global srategy for his empire than the pseudo-realtime map of RTW and M2TW does. Oh, sure, the RTW/M2TW battlefield handling (left click select, right click move) is much more error-proof than the MTW way, plus the sieges are better in M2TW (though not in RTW, too many cities have quite a labyrithine layout) and diplomacy offers more options, but still, I consider MTW more challenging than its successors.

My sentiments exactly.

I still occasionally play MTW, but I have an odd problem where loading screens take 50 seconds before the bar starts to turn red (doesnt do this on my old computer) which really disrupts gameplay, especially as I don't like the thought of spending two minutes waiting total just to fight a small relatively unimportant battle... so I end up autoresolving more which makes the game boring, for me anyway.

I use my own modifications which help the AI out with economy, and keep the player from getting ridiculous amounts of trade income.