How would you improve Medieval 2?

[Ali_the_English]

If you could make any changes you wanted to Medieval 2 what would they be?

Personally mine would be to make factions more unique and giving each faction a unique building that reflects it's strengths.

[skullman86]

1.The ability to completely convert factions to another religion

2.Better diplomacy

3.Basically anything that improves the campaign portion because I love micromanagement.

4.fix the battle animations so they are more fluid and realistic (so they always hit their mark)

[Another_Canadian]

i would have the units actually run at eachother. its fine with darth's mod, but im stuck with stainless steel thanks to 1.2 and the people in the back 4 rows often stop shor 10 meters and just walk to their targets

[TW_ruler]

There are so many ideas in my head well here are three,

1. Villages are what I would add on the campaign map. Village(s) would be separate from the actual city/castle and you wouldn’t need to take the villages to occupy or own the territory. However any village not owned by you would not provide any additional income for that province. Controlling villages in your province would add to the income however. Additionally, an enemy could come into your provinces and take a village as a prelude to the main attack or they can stage attacks from there. Taking a village by an enemy force would not cause you to lose the province. Also villages could be upgradeable to an extent to train peasants and lesser militia in, and villages wouldn’t generate tones of income. Basically peasant farmers, additional population (smaller than the city) would live there. (No cavalry units could be built here) I think it would add much flavor to the game especially in regions that are spread out having a few villages in between the major city/castle would be great.
2. Better Diplomacy but everyone is going to jump on that.
3. A better array of agents for everyone. Spies, assassins, and diplomats could upgrade to “master” i.e. Master Spy, Master Diplomat, etc. Once they reach master they can affect the target more efficiently like a master diplomat could convert other diplomats and persuade inquisitors to leave the lands, Master Spy and Assassins could convert other spies and assassins to work for your king.

So many things so little time. But I’m afraid all of my ideas would almost double the install size of this game then everyone would be complaining the games too big it will not fit on my hard drive.

Alas …
Rock on my brothers …

[romanfool]

Diplomacy obviously, more fluid/more variety of animation, more uniqueness for each faction, villages would be cool, great idea TW ruler. More balence,


Ultimate change that I would love to see happen, set up your own campaign, like you choose how big of an area it is and who is going to start where, what time period, that sort of thing. Would add a lot to the game. Custom Campaigns.

[Ali_the_English]

I like your idea TW_ruler but I think it's a little over ambitious. I had the idea of making forts have free upkeep for castle units as forts really aren't that useful at the moment and also castle units are pretty expensive. Other ideas I've had are different versions of religious buildings like in RTW, wonder like in RTW and trading leagues.

[Beiss]

This list could be made endless without even exaggerating. It could have a full wiki of its own. Anyway, in addition to what's already been said:

THIS

And the ability to dismount cavalry, either before a battle or during deployment. Also, allowing for steeds to survive the death of their rider, and the rider to survive the death of his steed. This includes making a horse of a heavily armored knight no more difficult to kill than that of an unarmored cavalry archer.

[pat the magnificent]

here's the big one i regret. Improved Sieges. i want stuff like:

1- murder holes. missiles troops should be able to fire at enemies even when they're directly beneath the walls. it should be hellish trying to capture a wall.

2- deployable hot oil/lead, baskets of rocks (for infantry to throw at people beneath the wall), log traps, etc.

3- garrisonable towers. you should be able to put archers/crossbowmen/gunners inside of and ont op of any tower or bastion along your walls.

4- keeps. if you're defending/attacking a castle of any type, the goal shouldn't be a little field in front of the keep, it should be the keep itself. you should be able to line troops up along the walls of the keep, as well as place infantry inside it that the enemy will have to kill in order to claim the keep and thusly win the battle.

5- drawbridges/moats. i know the expansion is gonna give these to us.

6- towns people. when i'm raiding a city, i wanna see frightened town folk fleeing before me. i also want the option of killing those townfolk for fun.

7 garrsionable buildings. you should be able to load troops into any building on the map. if they're missile troops, some of the them should be able to fire at any advancing enemy soldiers. melee soldiers could use hiding in buildings to set ambushes or to simply protect themselves from enemy fire.

[Armoured Hoplite]

-Make crossbow units skirmish properly like archers instead of standing there and eating lances
-Rebalance 2-handed units, especially swordsmen
-fix all spearwall and pike units, their animation/behavior is a mess
-Make late general's bodyguard units available in campaign, if they still aren't. Or change them to a more reasonable/obvious trigger
-Increase casualties to cavalry when charging halberd units
-Add an auto-retrain button for settlements, I get cramps in my mouse hand when the plague hits
-Make the factions more unique
-Add the missing/deleted "war forts" unit to Hungary (had to get that in there)

[Chevalier IX]

Dismounted cavalry,an excellent idea indeed,I second and third that..and yeah,making the horse and rider seperate entities would be nice as well instead of them being one connected model...hmm...perhaps some improved ragdoll style physics would be nice as well so the characters did not seem to static at times...but these are all minor..I still adore the battle visage

[Ralendil]

1. Fixing the age bug (I hate seeing one character remaining alive 150 years)
2. Reducing impact of inquisition (I have removed them :p)
3. Removing castles. Making all settlements "'cities"
4. Permitting to build forts, that will become feodal mottes, that will become castles, that will become fortress, that will become citadels and that COULD become a capital.
5. Permit to destroy purely and simply a city (settlement removed of the map).
6. Permit cities to be on a river (bridges in cities were important at this time, several revolts had urban combats around the bridges)
7. Borders that will move. I mean, in the medieval times, there was NEVER fixed borders. It was in the very late medieval era that this concept appeared. The borders should move according to your influence.
8. Lot of minor factions... cause the minor factions were often, at beginning, concurrent of what would become the nations. Take the exemple of the Catalans... they had for a long time the same influence, and even a lot more, than the Castillans (aka Spain for the ones that don't know who are the castillans)
9. Increasing the mercenaries influence. Mercenaries had a great role at this time.
10. Add the possibility to choose if your knights will fight on a horse, or dismounted (MTW1)

[Templar Knight]

1-make Crusades\Jihads better

2-make diplomacy better and more realistic
3-add more blood and violence in the battles to add realism
4-make peasants suck, Because Fought a battle the other day and peasants were killing my foot knights. It made me want to brake my game.
5-be able to choose your country's religion
6-better Islamic units
7-add men-at-arms back. (the men-at-arms from MTW1)
8-put boiling oil back in
9-make it to wear the Aztec glass clubs cant cut threw plate armor
10-add food as a resource

The list goes on and on, but thats all I want to put right now

[Axe-Battler]

To me, the only bad part of medieval 2 is that there's no crusades and jihads...it's really pathetic. You'd see what I mean if you've played mtw1...that was just thousands and thousands of crusades..way too cool.

That's my only disappointment in mtw2.

A minor change I would make that doesn't bother me much, to have cavalry dismount before battle.

And I would've liked it alot better if it used a 2D campaign map.

[Ralendil]

A minor change I would make that doesn't bother me much, to have cavalry dismount before battle.

yes

I miss that... it was awesome in MTW1 to be able to choose how your knights would fight (btw I had put that in my 10 points :p)

[Axe-Battler]

This might be a stupid one...

but I miss ghulam cavalry and nizaris.

And futawas.

But that stuff can be modded in.

[Ralendil]

This might be a stupid one...

but I miss ghulam cavalry and nizaris.

And futawas.

But that stuff can be modded in.

FUTAWAS !!!

yea, I miss them a lot...

Something I loved in MTW1 was the fact that factions had units with colors differents... I remember the Futawas with their orange suits....
And yes the ghulams were one of the best cavalry...

you're right on these things.

[Axe-Battler]

Another major one, I wish they would've allowed captains to be generals, and "family members" to just be named princes.

I remember seeing for the first time playing rtw a few years back, after being used to mtw1, my king was named "faction leader", I'm like, what the hell does that mean?

Why in both rtw and mtw2 did they name kings faction leaders, and family members well..family members, why couldn't they be given their actual names it's not hard to make the text for it, such as Grand Duke for russians, sultan for arabs, king for most catholics, emperor for byz and hre, etc...

[Ralendil]

Another major one, I wish they would've allowed captains to be generals, and "family members" to just be named princes.

I know we talk about vanilla... however, you know you can add recruitable generals like in BI?
off course, it requires to mod a little the descr_building file... but it takes 2 min (litterally) to add that.

I remember seeing for the first time playing rtw a few years back, after being used to mtw1, my king was named "faction leader", I'm like, what the hell does that mean?

Why in both rtw and mtw2 did they name kings faction leaders, and family members well..family members, why couldn't they be given their actual names it's not hard to make the text for it, such as Grand Duke for russians, sultan for arabs, king for most catholics, emperor for byz and hre, etc...

Well, there's different titles
you can see them before the name of a "king" (i use this term that is generic)

[Axe-Battler]

I know we talk about vanilla... however, you know you can add recruitable generals like in BI?
off course, it requires to mod a little the descr_building file... but it takes 2 min (litterally) to add that.

No I'm refering to captains having their own traits and virtues like in mtw1, I used to love a captain that won so many battles, and could lead any small amount of men to victory against thousands.

Adding generals as recruitable gets too sloppy for me, there becomes too many of them.

Well, there's different titles
you can see them before the name of a "king" (i use this term that is generic)

I'm refering to say when you take your family member outside of the castle or city, then put the mouse over him and it sais "family member"

I never liked seeing that, I wish they would make it "prince" or for whoever else, what the title really was...faction heir called "crowned prince" to distinguish.

or the faction leader if you put the mouse over him it sais "faction leader", it just bothers me, I like seeing "King".

I modded it already, it is alot cooler to see it that way.

[sgtgoody]

1- Get rid of the inquisitors. The Church NEVER had the power to go into another country without the cooperation of that king and start killing people, especially not the king.

2- After a battle prisoners, especially mercenaries, should be given the option to join the winning army.

3- You should be able to assign leaders to provinces. This means that the character will remain the governor even if someone with better stats enters the city. It also means that the leader's bonuses or penalties would apply even if the leader is not in his city. These governors could only be replaced if they die or turn traitor.

4- (Goes with 3) Generals should have to check loyalty before entering battle in any territory other than their own. The only one immune to this would be the king, which would stress the importance of the royal retinue.

5- Stop taking peasants prisoner. They were either ignored or slaughtered not held for ransom. Actually any non-aristocratic troops should generate no ransom.

6- All battles should generate money for the victor or should reduce the participating unit's upkeep cost. This is to simulate the capture of enemy equipment and supplies. The near or total destruction of an enemy army should result in a big bonus to simulate actually capturing the enemy camp.

A side note: Those who think battles need to be bloodier or deadlier to be more realistic are mistaken. Morale was much more important than actual casualties and armies would break long before they were physically beaten. Accounts of extraordinary casualty figures are often exagerated for effect or are the result of unique circumstances. In general casualties averaged around 10 percent (less for the victor more for the loser) and 30 percent was a slaughter. In addition most medieval battles were over in less than an hour and were ended by the first charge. If battles in games were like they were in real life then people would be complaining about how their units keep routing after only taking a few losses, realistic but not entertaining.