Medieval:Total War

**kelvintyk** · May 29, 2007, 07:12 AM

I've been playing mtw2 for a long time and recently i just borrowed mtw from a friend of mine.

To my surprise, the mtw graphics are like.....disastrious. Poles apart compared to that of rtw and mtw2. So, if thats the case, is graphics for viking's invasion equally bad?

I'm asking this as i've heard a lot of praises and positive comments for mtw. But after experiencing the graphics myself.....i really could not carry on playing the game. Graphics on battle map is the worst, the units, when moving.....look distorted and they move from side to side....very weird.

**Axe-Battler** · May 29, 2007, 07:32 AM

viking invasion doesn't have any more improved graphics than mtw1.

To many people, they can't see the beauty in a game like mtw1 and shogun, because they care too much about graphics...outside of graphics it's very easy to say mtw1 was better than both rome and mtw2 combined.

Mostly you would need to have played mtw1 before mtw2 to enjoy it more.

**kelvintyk** · May 29, 2007, 07:34 AM

I suppose so....but whoa, the system is so different from rtw and mtw2.
Even now, i haven't figured out how to move armies over seas.

**Firebat11** · May 29, 2007, 07:44 AM

I'm in the same boat. A lot people keep telling me that MTW1 was awesome. So I tried it, but this was after I had already played Rome (M2TW wasn't out yet). I couldn't play it, I'm sorry - but when you have a AMD X2 4200+ and a GEFORCE 7950 GT 512MB, I expect/want to play games with good graphics.

Not to belittle MTW1, because I'm sure that it was/is a good game, however I agree that you probably have to have played MTW1 FIRST so that you aren't captured by the graphics.

**kelvintyk** · May 29, 2007, 08:18 AM

Yet again, the weird thing is, i can play mtw2 without lag in battlemap. But in mtw, the game is choppy during battles.....no idea why.

**rdudejr** · May 29, 2007, 08:21 AM

History lesson:

The beauty of MTW can only be appreciated if you experienced the glory of Shogun Total War. Shogun Total War was one of those games greatly overshadowed by the Age of Empires mania of the day, and was kind of a tough concept to sell (RTS + Turn based...wtf???). But many people (like myself) really enjoyed Shogun Total War even despite its quirks, odd graphics, and bugs and were estatic when a Medieval setting of this game (MTW) was released almost 3 years later (an eternity in the gaming world). So there you have it. If you want to appreciate MTW, go play STW first and see where it all began.

**Sommo James** · May 29, 2007, 08:24 AM

Originally Posted by kelvintyk

Yet again, the weird thing is, i can play mtw2 without lag in battlemap. But in mtw, the game is choppy during battles.....no idea why.

Becasuse its code it is not optimezed for the current hardware (for example I can run M2 completly smoothly but I get some lags in RTW).
Howver the graphic of medieval 1 looks bad just because it is an old game, at the time of its release it looks pretty good, but not as good as M2 now.

**kelvintyk** · May 29, 2007, 08:28 AM

And i thought i could enjoy some nice big battles in mtw. But i guess not...

**JoeCole3200** · May 29, 2007, 08:41 AM

i was playing mtw before this....i enjoyed the game but the amount of bugs the game had made it un-playable, everytime i went to save or at the end of a battle it would ctd, and then id lose all my hard work!!

drove me insane.............so i bought mtw2!!

jc

**mightyfenrir** · May 29, 2007, 09:05 AM

Originally Posted by kelvintyk

I suppose so....but whoa, the system is so different from rtw and mtw2.
Even now, i haven't figured out how to move armies over seas.

You have to make a chain of boats to people over sea zones. You can't load the boats, you have to have a boat in every zone between you and target and control the zone... there's no sharing of the zones like in M2 where many navies can be in one area.

Originally Posted by rdudejr

History lesson:

The beauty of MTW can only be appreciated if you experienced the glory of Shogun Total War. Shogun Total War was one of those games greatly overshadowed by the Age of Empires mania of the day, and was kind of a tough concept to sell (RTS + Turn based...wtf???). But many people (like myself) really enjoyed Shogun Total War even despite its quirks, odd graphics, and bugs and were estatic when a Medieval setting of this game (MTW) was released almost 3 years later (an eternity in the gaming world). So there you have it. If you want to appreciate MTW, go play STW first and see where it all began.

Shogun and Mongol Invasion are beautiful. I actually got Shogun after MTW and I got MTW because of the history channel. They were using the game engine or a very similar one at the same time in their ancient battle series and I thought it was great.

Originally Posted by Sommo James

Becasuse its code it is not optimezed for the current hardware (for example I can run M2 completly smoothly but I get some lags in RTW).
Howver the graphic of medieval 1 looks bad just because it is an old game, at the time of its release it looks pretty good, but not as good as M2 now.

It's like going back and playing Starcraft after Warcraft III. I love the game still though.

**Sommo James** · May 29, 2007, 09:11 AM

Originally Posted by mightyfenrir

It's like going back and playing Starcraft after Warcraft III. I love the game still though.

Indeed I've really re-played Starcraft after W3 and I liked it.

**Icefrisco** · May 29, 2007, 03:59 PM

The same thing happened to one of my friends. He played RTW before MTW and hated MTW. However, my neighbor played MTW first and thinks that it is better then any TW game or expansion since.

I think that MTW was in general much better then MTWII. MTWII really is quite a disappointment and that can be seen in the sales.....

**Poisoner** · May 29, 2007, 04:08 PM

The first medieval is the ultimate total war game. Anyone who won't play something because of graphics is a complete tool.

**Trajan** · May 29, 2007, 05:46 PM

Moved to the Medieval/Shogun: TW General Discussion.

**therussian** · May 29, 2007, 07:40 PM

Originally Posted by Poisoner

The first medieval is the ultimate total war game. Anyone who won't play something because of graphics is a complete tool.

QFT.

MTW was my first TW game, and it's been my favourite so far. It's held my want for a new computer to play MTWII at bay for half a year, and will probably hold it off for another half a year

Don't let something as superficial as graphics turn you off to such an amazing game.

**fieldmarshal** · May 30, 2007, 06:40 AM

i just reinstalled MTW after years. it took me a hour to get used to it, but once i got used to it, i remembered why i played MTW all night.

The battles in MTW 2 are a lot better but the campaign gets me bored too easily. MTW campaigs were classic, i remember in MTW i was playing as england, and i had all of europe, i was at war with the egyptians, being too used to the RTW and MTW 2 campaign ai, i left my european cities undefended for the most part, and in the next turn, from nowere a egyptian army was besieging London, iam like WHAT THE...i had all of europe...for once i missed the stupid rtw ai.

**Gram -ve** · May 30, 2007, 05:19 PM

Originally Posted by kelvintyk

....
To my surprise, the mtw graphics are like.....disastrious. Poles apart compared to that of rtw and mtw2. So, if thats the case, is graphics for viking's invasion equally bad? ....

Well, the orginal MTW was released in 2002 and used the same, but enhanced, engine of Shogun which was released in 2000. So that means that the engine itself was developed in the late 90s. The maximum computing power at that time was a pentium III. Why would you think that an engine developed nearly 10 years ago would compare at all to what is available today? It really is an unfair comparison!

I still feel that MTW is a much better battle simulation than RTW (I haven't even played M2TW yet so I don't know how it plays). The only drawback/complaint I had about MTW in multiplayer was the lack of "no mans land" on the battlefield deployment..

**mightyfenrir** · May 30, 2007, 11:41 PM

Originally Posted by Poisoner

The first medieval is the ultimate total war game. Anyone who won't play something because of graphics is a complete tool.

For me going back and playing that or shogun I just get bored 'cause I'm used to the moving parts and all that kind of stuff. It's not the graphics for me that turn me off, it's the change backwards in style.