Hello everyone!
Indeed the old Total Wars are not dead! Vice versa, they are still getting new players. Perhaps the raging river has dried to driplets, but at least I am a standing and breathing proof that somebody is still bying these games.
I have now played all of the Total Wars from Shogun 1 to Shogun 2, starting with a retail Shogun 1, continuing in a less systematic pattern and a month ago the Medieval 1 became the newest addition to my collection. My most favourites in the series are: shared 1st place with Medieval 2 and Shogun 2, shared 2nd place between Rome 1 and Shogun 1, 3rd place belongs to the Napoleon and 4th is Empire. Notice that my placing is based on how much I enjoy each game, not how challenging or high-quality I feel they are, though they have their part in the rating.
Medieval 1 needs my verdict. I'm absolutely loving it... sort of. As I'm still trying to learn to play it, I can see it is very different from the other games of the series. And to my disappointment, I have witnessed some things I find annoying and now need your help with, as the manual doesn't answer everything (and learning from HoI 3, even manuals can sometimes be questioned) and I don't think I can find any earlier answers to my questions.
I have developed an arrogance in Total war games, I don't anymore play Total Wars in anything else but the highest difficulty (the faction difficulty I find free game). So 'Expert' it is! Early Campaign! But having learned from the disastrous attempt to learn leading Sicilians to glory, I swallowed my pride and try again with someone easier, namely the Almohads (or Moors in Medieval 2). Still in Expert, that is. This time I am more successful, the Spain is crushed in under 10 turns, the whole of Iberia is conquered in a timely fashion, one thing leads to another and now I control all of France, British Isles sans Scotland, Northern Italy , Middle Eastern sans some areas I've lost to the Mongols or re-emerging Turks, Northern Africa, the majority of the formerly German territory, and Iberia. Yet another of my Caliphs is a coward. The year is 1252 as I spea.... write.
However, some things are not clear to me after all this:
- At the early game I had situations where the peasant rebellions occured despite the region loyalty showing more than 100%. Since the loyalty became less than 100% after endturn, I deduced the rebellion occured because of the rebellion is calculated after the endturn. Since I can not see into the future, I find the annoyance level is over 9000. However, this hasn't occured after, I don't know, 20 turns? Is the situation I described normal?
- So far the only place where I can get spies is in Tyrolia. That's also the only place where I could build a brothel, and I did. Even though I have some other provinces with same buildings (or more advanced). Not a single one building I have even mentions they being a requirement before getting a brothel. Why the hell I can build brothels only in one place, even though not one of the already existing buildings act as pre-requisites, and why the hell I can't do the same in other provinces that have the same buildings . Is the Steam version of the game bugged or something?
- It has been more than 150 years, but Portugal is still not calmed down. Right now I have more than 700 bodies of garbage in the province, very low tax rate, tier II town watch, border fort and a mosque (according to some easier internet finds these buildings increases population loyalty), a spy and a alim (or the lower-tier Imam). Yet the population loyalty is 107%. Le fuq ? The current governor doesn't have a trait that would reduce population happiness , but he has 0 dread. I doubt even that can be the reason, as some other governors have 0 dread without problems of whole another level. How come some regions retain their disloyalty to such ridiculous levels and more importantly, is there something that can be done? Can this be predicted for future use?
- Remember how I previously wrote of the re-emerging Turks? So, they begun their re-emerging in three provinces simultaneously: Rum, Edessa and Tripoli. Rum and Edessa I had abandoned to be as buffers against the Mongol Zerg rush, no problem. That was a mistake, as the re-emerging Egyptians have been even more of a problem than the Mongols, made worse by them being allied and thus the Egyptians being able to focus me. Made even worse that they were unable to control their own territory and the Turks re-emerged with another huge armies of elite heavy cavalry I can't deal in any other way but throwing armies made of garbage to their deaths and hope they get some kills in the process. But that's not the real question here. Why the hell the Turks are re-emerging in the Tripoli as well!? A) They don't start with that region B) They might conquer it in some point but as I arrived there the Egyptians had already pushed the Turks away, reducing the Turkish territory to mere Lesser Armenia and Anatolia C) It's been over 100 years I conquered that province. From the Egyptians. Why the Hell can the Turkish re-emerge somewhere they might not have ever hold!? Even the Egyptians didn't emerge there! It's so annoying when huge armies made of elite appear in ones rear, but at least it's justifiable if it is a core area to the emergant. When those armies appear where they might have never been in the first place, it's getting close to the BS-levels. The population loyalty was exactly 100% in Tripoli at the moment, which is lesser than the re-emergent limit, I get it, but I can't get my head over this.
- What generates profit on the ports? I seeked information on trade, I now get it. The profit the merchants make are shown in the building info. i wondered what was the point in having the profit -section in port info then. Until I saw my port in Venice generate some profit as well. It was like 14 per turn, so nothing major. But it's still more than the 0/turn every other port is making. The main thing it did was filling my head with questions. So if the ports do really generate money, what causes it then? Why so little and only in Venice? Has it something to do with the huge profits the Merchant building in Venice was doing (+1000/turn)?
Despite mainly talking bad of this game, don't get me wrong. I am enjoying this game. This just has some so ridiculously annoying moments that I haven't witnessed in other games of the series. And I think it is faster to ask the veterans of the game than trying to dig through years worth of forum content or trying to find out myself.