Did anyone else...

[Martin N]

..Get bored of med 2 after about an hour ? i didnt even get far enough to get into another period, if you can that is, i just got sick of fighting with peasants and spearmen, and wanted knights straight away, i guess i wanted too much, so what i wanted to know was when do you actually get better troops etc ?
Thanks, also i noticed med 2 loads up alot quicker than rome, and seemingly plays better, was odd for me :hmmm:

[dr_guerra]

Try out Spain. You can build Mailed Knights from the beginning and Jinetes, which are light cavalry with a devastating javelin attack.

They have some pretty good units, just upgrade your barracks in your castle, Toledo.

They are one of the most fun factions to play.

[Old Geezer]

Bored after 2 hours? You're kidding, right? And I thought that I had a low boredom threshold!

[Fishrudder]

So do I, I get bored after 4 hours of solid playing, then I switch factions, I've actually never finished a game...

course, I still love it

[KoS]

So do I, I get bored after 4 hours of solid playing, then I switch factions, I've actually never finished a game...

course, I still love it

I've never got past turn 110 or so in a campaign, either. I've never seen a single Timurid army, actually... maybe that's for the best, lol.

Seriously, sometimes I wake up and say, 'I feel like starting a campaign as the HRE today'. Or I catch something on the History Channel on Byzantine architecture. But for some reason, I can never settle down and focus on just one faction for an extended period of time.

Maybe it's just the sheer degree of historical playability, and the fact that you can completely alter history. Or the music, or the accents. But I always come back, no matter what.

[Caecilius]

That's generally the feeling I get as well, not so bored that I just stop playing but it seems like I'm fighting with spearmen FOREVER! EG in my current game of SS I'm playing as the HRE and its turn 80! I haven't even gotten dismounted knights yet and am only just recruiting pavise crossbowmen.

Mercenaries are the only way to add some flair to my armies but they cost a lot to recruit and keep maintained.

[Leutrim]

Try to replay history, it works for me.

[Ex Tenebris Lux]

you can edit the files and play nonplayable factions or unlock the unlockables without actually finishing the game and play as them. though depending on who you are it could make it even more boring.

case in point, im currently playing the papacy and it isnt all that fun. no one attacks you. everyone loves you, no matter what you do.

try some mods, there are some good ones on here.

[Aristarchus]

I have persisted through my first M2TW game as France, so I have some nice units and am just building cannons to take east with me to face the Mongols, but overall I have a sense of boredom, too, particularly with the battles. I find RTW much more exciting. The battle units in RTW seem to respond better, especially the cavalry, and the units are easier to identify and track. Also, the map play in M2TW is harder to keep track of and there's a lot more of it between battles. So, yeah, I can see getting bored quickly.

[Cmdr_Sdxo]

Weird.. I actually liked the beginning of the game the best when it felt like the dark ages period, with filthy peasants and unwashed,undisciplined borderline barbaric spearmen and the most advanced knights had only mail armour.

[Kolaris8472]

If you could actually train barbaric dark age units, perhaps...but you're fighting with the low-tier of an army thats still hundreds of years away.

Like in my Byzantium campaign...I find it highly unlikely that the Eastern Roman Empire was kept in tact for 600 years before the game starts by units of Spear Militia...

Kataphractoi are supposed to be outdated when the game STARTS...yet how is it I can't recruit them until they're outdated + 200 years?

[Leutrim]

If you could actually train barbaric dark age units, perhaps...but you're fighting with the low-tier of an army thats still hundreds of years away.

Like in my Byzantium campaign...I find it highly unlikely that the Eastern Roman Empire was kept in tact for 600 years before the game starts by units of Spear Militia...

Kataphractoi are supposed to be outdated when the game STARTS...yet how is it I can't recruit them until they're outdated + 200 years?

One of the biggest flaws in this game. Also, I can imagine that the cities would be more advanced an that there would be atleast dirt roads.

[LlamaD]

Well, you should play some custom battles instead of campaigning. At least until you find some favorite factions you might play long enough to get the good units.

[Anglo-Pole]

I find it hard to settle down as one faction for too long but I'm rather easy to please and usually I don't get bored.

[Rommel]

The only way I can keep entertained is by doing stuff that would seem impossible. Case in point, I'm playing SS and I gained control over the scots and Irish, Now I attacked russia and I'm fighting a war clear acorss the map against them. At the same time I've just invaded Alexandria, and I'm now at war with Eygpt..


GOOD TIMEZ

ROmmel

[Clodius]

A big difference with RTW is the saminess of opponents - for the first 100 turns its not just you that has to make do with mailed knights and peasant archers and spear militia but pretty much everyone you fight.

And after that for a long while its unit after unit of dismounted feudal knights.

While there are factions with interesting starting rosters (Sicily and Byzantium) these get penalised later on by not getting full access to gunpowder or two-handed weapons.

In comparison with RTW I could be fighting barbarian warbands, pikemen, hoplites, horse archers, elephants and chariots pretty much from the very beginning - not to mention flaming pigs, wardogs and headhurlers.

To get any degree of variation in M2TW you have to crusade - and even then you'll find that the Egyptians and Turks are not that much different in early and middle eras (i.e. they still field mostly low-medium grade spears, bows and cavalry that only look different to their western counterparts).

And as you seem to tech-up far faster than opponents (even at VH/VH) you will generally eliminate most enemy factions long before they get any high level units.

Also true about both battle and campaign maps which just seem duller, uglier and harder to follow in M2TW.

[Prince_of_Macedon]

..Get bored of med 2 after about an hour ? i didnt even get far enough to get into another period, if you can that is, i just got sick of fighting with peasants and spearmen, and wanted knights straight away, i guess i wanted too much, so what i wanted to know was when do you actually get better troops etc ?
Thanks, also i noticed med 2 loads up alot quicker than rome, and seemingly plays better, was odd for me :hmmm:

Have you ever tried playing online? You get instant access to Knights (if you want them).

Just a note: GS is on the fritz at the moment so you'll have multiple issues getting connected. But yes, try playing online.

[Clodius]

..Get bored of med 2 after about an hour ? i didnt even get far enough to get into another period, if you can that is, i just got sick of fighting with peasants and spearmen, and wanted knights straight away, i guess i wanted too much, so what i wanted to know was when do you actually get better troops etc ?
Thanks, also i noticed med 2 loads up alot quicker than rome, and seemingly plays better, was odd for me :hmmm:

To answer directly: you want knights use your starting money to upgrade a settlement to a full castle - this will give you access to mailed knights almost immediately as these are recruited from the castle walls and not from stables (which are pretty redundant).

This is feasible for almost every western faction as they all have at least one settlement easily upgradable to castle to start with or a nearby rebel castle that can be taken.

The real problem is getting decent infantry early on as for these you have to generally wait for a castle to become upgradable to a fortress and then build the relevant barracks and ranges.

Here England has a big advantage as they can recruit longbowmen from a castle and a practise range - and used defensively these can beat pretty much any early or middle era army (including knights who will just impale themselves on the stakes the longbowmen can deploy) the AI is likely to throw at you.

To get an equivalent quality missile unit almost every other faction has to have a fortress and an archery range.

If you are lucky you may also be offered the chance to build a Teutonic/Templar/Hospitaller/Knights of Santiago chapter house quite early on - take it as the knights these produce are far superior to any other heavy cavalry you'll see until very late in the game.

Its often better to convert most castles to towns and spend all your money on economic rather than military buildings - then use the oodles of cash these will soon generate to buy mercenary crossbows and spearmen instead.

Playing that way as HRE I was soon able to not just field several mostly mercenary field armies but also put units of merc crossbows in all my city garrisons.

And crusade at every opportunity (one trick is to leave joining the crusade until the last possible turn and then move slowly towards the objective - if you are lucky someone else will take it long before you get there and you can then go home and use all those crusader units and exotic mercenaries against the real enemy).

[Double A]

So then why is Rhodes a Motte and Bailey when at the start of Rome it was like a Minor City or something?

And why would you move slowly to the Crusade area? Your guys fight harder and you get a city far away so you can conquer surrounding areas and then have 2 empires that would join up later and form a huge one! (I did this with Venice not 50 turns into the game!)