Hi! I've played Shogun 2: Total War, and Empire: Total War, and the Third Age looks VERY interesting. Just, I've never played Medieval II - is it too different from the newer total wars?
How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
Hi! I've played Shogun 2: Total War, and Empire: Total War, and the Third Age looks VERY interesting. Just, I've never played Medieval II - is it too different from the newer total wars?
Foederatus
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
Well firstly if you're a huge fan of LOTR this game will consume your life, I mean you'll want to play it all the time, it's just that great.
There are many differences between the pre and post E:TW games in my opinion. Medieval II doesn't have as many features (Third Age actually seems to have more than the vanilla game now though) as games like Empire and Shogun 2 but I think it runs much smoother. I always found myself coming back to Medieval II even after Shogun 2. The controls always felt a bit flimsy in the newer releases, where I had to click something 3 times to select it, I had huge campaign map lag, battle lag etc.
Maybe try normal Medieval II + Kingdoms to see if you like the play style then try Third Age.
In my opinion Third Age is so well made and with so much passion that it doesn't even feel like a mod anymore and I actually prefer it to the original game haha
...you can also use cheats in Medieval II so if you don't have the time you can just do a cheat campaign where you just thump everyone from the start
Biarchus
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
MTW2 is great for the mods, ALL the mods. newer games cant get them, and dont have the same feel to them that MTW2 has always had for me... i now play RTW more than Shogun 2 due to mods
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
I'm in the same situation as Bob. What exactly do I need to know about medieval 2 compared to ETW, S2TW? Ive played only a couple of turns in Third Age and I dont know how tax rates affect cities. How do I know if a city will rebel? How important are the generals in Third Age? What are the differences in buildings? So many questions.
Vicarius
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
Tax rates increase or decrease happiness. If happiness get really low ca. 50% the settlement will riot and rebel.
Generals are of great importance bcuz of their commanding skill. It will increase the chance to win a fight better then common captains
Artifex
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
Tax rates also inversely affect population growth. Sometimes lower taxes give you more money in the end because you have a larger population paying them (generally leaving them on normal is good enough). Taxes can also give your generals traits, generally higher taxes give better money management traits.
Generals are super important as army leaders and city governors. A good general can win battles against impossible odds and a good city governor can keep people happy under worse conditions, hugely increase the city income and help increase the population growth. Training good generals is one of the finer points of the game and can be quite difficult to do when starting out.
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
Chivalry increases the morale of troops in the battlefield. You gain Chivalry by not killing routed enemies, releasing prisoners, peaceful occupation of a settlement.
Dread reduces the morale of enemy troops in the battlefield. You gain Dread by killing routed enemies, executing prisoners and exterminating the population of a settlement.
Corruption reduces the income of a settlement but Law reduces corruption
Last edited by Tachi; January 01, 2012 at 05:14 AM.
Senator
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
medieval 2:TATW copared to EMPS or Shitgun 2
DOES NOT HAVE
-tech tree
-tax system thats theatre wide, ie you have to manually adjust each settlement
-Guns of any kind (thank god)
-less resources
-ship battles
DOES HAVE
-better campaign map, less lag and large and varied
-better diversity of units
-Custom settlements, ever felt like defending minas tirith?
-custom units, ever wanted to control sauron, gandalf, mumakil/balrog, faramir, boromir, denethor, theoden. its all done in TATW (of course i recommend baron samedis submod before you even run the game)
-more roleplay, you actually care about units, and if you play evil you care little about units and more about your nazguls
-new abilitys, see your enemy with the palantir, custom generals rrallys on battlefield, ie you can with elrond increase combat effectivenessand troop morale by a huge amount for one time only on the field, each hero has his own version
-ELVES
-better tactical battles, your not lining up men here and watching them shoot
whew, probably forgot more for the DOES HAVE section but im sure you get the point.
Primicerius
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
*fix'dmedieval 2:TATW copared to EMPS or Shitgun 2
DOES NOT HAVE
-tech tree
-tax system thats theatre wide, ie you have to manually adjust each settlement
-Guns of any kind (thank god)
-less resources
-ship battles
DOES HAVE
-better campaign map, less lag and large and varied
-better diversity of units
-Custom settlements, ever felt like defending minas tirith?
-custom units, ever wanted to control sauron, gandalf, mumakil/balrog, faramir, boromir, denethor, theoden. its all done in TATW (of course i recommend baron samedis submod before you even run the game)
-more roleplay, you actually care about units, and if you play evil you care little about units and more about your nazguls
-new abilitys, see your enemy with the palantir, custom generals rrallys on battlefield, ie you can with elrond increase combat effectivenessand troop morale by a huge amount for one time only on the field, each hero has his own version
-DWARVES
-better tactical battles, your not lining up men here and watching them shoot
whew, probably forgot more for the DOES HAVE section but im sure you get the point.
It's only after you have lost everything, that you are free to do anything.
Semisalis
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
You really just have to ask yourself how much you want to play a Lord of the Rings game. Because that's pretty much what this is. The only thing that transfers over from MTW2 are the mechanics. Everything else has been redone and this mod stands so much on it's own, it's very close to being it's own game entirely.
But, liking MTW2 doesn't hurt either.
Libertus
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
I absolutely love it. The first time you play is kind of difficult however, as the garrision script and bot assists make things very difficult for newer players.
If you like a challenge, and you like LotR, then you should love this.
My only gripe (a fairly minor one at that) is that the orc factions tend to be a little bland to play as and against.
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
Alright... I got Medieval II: Gold edition via steam trading. Now - what difficulty should I play at, and which faction should I play as?
Consensus Achieved
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
Starting out since you've never played M2TW you might try medium difficulty. If you want an easier faction try Rhun or the High Elves. Gondor is also a great faction to try but it will be a bit harder. To answer your question though, Eriador starts off with both Aragorn and Gandalf.
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
Quick question: What exactly is culture and why is it important?
Senator
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
it represents the religion of your people, and how much of their blood is akin to your home region
ie in the real world its protestant/catholic/muslim etc etc
or english blood, irish, american etc etc
important in game coz your people are more rebelious to you which could make the settlement revolt, and more importantly you cannot produce high teir units if you do not meet the culture required for them.
Hva i helvete?
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
You have the unfortunate case of only having played the third generation engine. The one containing Empire, Napoleon and Shogun 2. Me I have been around since the first generation Shogun 1 and Medieval 1, then when the 2nd generation engine with Rome came out I was completely blown away. My first hours with Rome was some of the best gaming experiences of my life. Then Medieval 2 came out and it was as good as Rome but improved in many essensial areas like unit diversity and animation, and now it have been perfected with mods like Stainless Steel and third age.
Needless to say when third generation Empire came out, expectations where through the roof, but many of us eventually felt let down by the new engine, it was nothing like the jump from Medieval 1 to Rome, So for me and many others Empire was the last TW game i bought after following the series since Shogun 1.
Medieval have more troop diversity, better close combat and you get a better impression that the units is actually there fighting in the mud, not gliding mysteriously about doing fancy acrobatics while looking like a bunch of pristine plastic clones.
Also, Unit Diversity I cannot stress how much it matters to have a large selection of stuff that does different things. Not just dumbed down Empire which was basicly Infantry: Shoot and Charge, Cavalry: Charge. Or Shogun with its static A beats B formula.
Medieval have defensive spearmen, high damage swordsmen, armour piercing axemen, archers and then you have all these in two handed, light, heavy and mounted versions. Add Knights, pikemen, archers, multiple different siege weapons and Elephants. And even within these classes there are huge differences in troop quality, number and morale.
Medieval 2 is the best of the series so far, and while the Graphics is now outdated, the sheer amount of content you get with mods like Third Age more than makes up for it in my opinion.
Last edited by Påsan; January 01, 2012 at 06:14 PM.
Senator
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
Påsan although you have reinforced a number of points i made in a previous post, you sir MUST have rep for those comments.. i couldnt agree more with every sentence.
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
2nd quick question: what is the difference between normal and fire arrows? I noticed that there is no timelimit/cooldown for the fire arrows and you get them at the start of the game. Since fire arrows do more damage why would you ever want to fire regular arrows?
Senator
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
I'm under the impression that normal arrows shoot more volleys in a shorter time, therefore actually outputting more damage then fire arrows. Fire arrows I think are only supposed to be used for A.) Burning siege equipment, and B.) Decreasing enemy morale more.Originally Posted by Clamchop
Groovy
Hva i helvete?
Re: How easy would it be to get into The Third Age?
2 things:
1. Fire arrows do not do more "Damage" as in kill chance, they do more "Moral Damage" that makes the units that takes casualties break faster.
2: Fire Arrows do take longer for archers to load, and thus they actually does less damage because you will get less arrows in the air making less kills.
The use of fire arrows is entirely situational, personally I toggle my worst archer unit with them making them inflict moral damage even if they make less kills. And they are also good if you need to rout something fast, like in a City or right before a cavalry charge, but also take into consideration the general you are up against, if his command and fear are high, you need to kill him before archiving a real mass rout.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
