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And you thought you liked Civilization! Wow!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: November 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Where Civilization (plus all it's sequels and rivals) have failed (and they have) - Medievil: Total War suceeds with an addictive game. Example #1: In Civ, I always dreaded when my populations became unhappy, because it was ridiculouosly difficult to sooth them (do I hire an entertainer??). In MTW, most happiness is based on the tax rate (very low, low, normal, high, very high) and later on the leader's (that's you) religion versus the population you lead. Example #2: In Civ, micro-managing each city through the SAME purchases became a nightmare. In MTW, the creators have made city management both - interesting and simple. If you want an enjoyable super-intuitive strategy game - buy this game! Strategy game of the year!

Sheer Brilliance

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 17
Date: September 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Short story - brilliant, playable for years, fantastic strategy game

Long story - this is greatest game that ever lived, I liked the first Total war, shogun, and was looking forward to this release for months before it came out. I've played through 2 campaigns now, and it just keeps getting better.

As your numbers of troops and provinces increase as you extend an iron fist (or love and happiness) across europe, you soon start to appreciate the finer points of planning and command.

Do not think to yourself "I'm not a role-playing, turn based type" because I'm not either, you get used to the map planning and army moving very quickly, it's the heroic battles where the game is absolutely brilliant, different terrains and maps keep it interesting when you have to attack the same place repeatedly and always a challenge. As you develop as a commander use the features of the land to your advantage and know your enemy!

This is the greatest game I ever played, it's not a game, it's more important than that.

BUY IT NOW, you will never regret it.

Great tactical game, poor strategic game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: January 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I like this game, as I liked Shogun before it. The Total War games have the best tactical (battle control) interface I have seen. Each battle can take hours with shifting fortunes. The types of troops you field and match against the enemy really matter. For the battles, the game is worth the time and money.

The game is weak at the strategic level. The territories of the Europe map are too large for medieval Europe. There are too few active governments for an age in which innumerable feudal barons and kings contended with each other. The idea that any medieval prince could have conquered, and held, Europe in the medieval era is absurd. Diplomacy is stilted and irritating. Army movements pay no attention to the relationships between travel time, distance, army size and supplies. All in all, the strategic level is not a serious part of the game. It serves as a transition point to the next battle. Buy the game for the battles if you can ignore that your need for strategic challenges won't be met.

Finally, a game reminiscent of Lords of the Realm II

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 15
Date: August 31, 2002
Author: Amazon User

For those of you waiting for Lords of the Realm III, your wait is over! Medieval: Total War has the same turn-based strategy game intermixed with a real-time warfare simulator that made the LotR series so popular, only with improvements.

The strategy portion of the game involves managing your regions to produce income, train troops, improve trade, etc. There is also ample room for negotiations and alliances with other rulers throughout the game. Each turn you are allowed to build troops and buildings on each region you control. If you happen to move troops into a conflict situation, the conflict can be resolved by the computer, or you can take the field and personally see to the attack or defense. If this is the case the game moves into the real-time combat simulator mode.

The best feature of the battle simulator is troop command. No longer are you required to drag the cursor over the field to select each individual man. My experience with this method is either not selecting all of the troops you want, thus leaving some behind the rest of the group, or inadvertently selecting troops you don't want, thus having some archers charging in with your cavalry. In Medieval: Total War your troops are grouped into units with anywhere from 50 to 200 soldiers per unit. You can select and command each unit, thus making orchestrating battle maneuvers much simpler than ever before. The formation, spacing, and even the attitude of each unit can be set simply and quickly. Units can also be grouped to allow for easier movement of exceptionally large number of troops. Terrain position, high ground, visibility, weather, cover, lighting, and more all play a part in aiding or hindering your movements and combat effectiveness. This seems to have a "Sid Meier's: Gettysburg" feel to it.

After the battle surviving units are awarded valor points for their involvement in the fight; therefore, seasoned veterans are better soldiers than the green troops with little or no combat experience.

The graphics of Medieval: Total War are very good. When watching rocks hurled through the air by your catapults at the enemy stronghold you can see chips and dust fly into the air. You can actually see individual arrows fired from archers sailing through the air, and birds circling the sky over the fallen. And with the graphics is superb 3D sound to immerse you in the heat of battle. It almost feels like you're surrounded by the fighting soldiers!

All in all, this is a must for any fan of medieval strategy games or medieval war games. If you happen to like both genres, you cannot hope to improve upon this game. I highly recommend it.

Europa Universalis Its not

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: December 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I was expecting something like Europa Universalis meets Age of Empires. What I got was something 10 times better than aoe and thousands of times better than Europa Universalis. But its really not comparable to other games (I never played its predecessor). Other games should be compared to this one.

But why I'm writing this review is more a response to some previous reviews. Not the 5 reviews. This game is definately a 5.
But the 0 reviews. Come on people. Heres my response to those zeroes you see...

Realism: I've never seen better in 16 years of gaming.

Gameplay: The AI in this game is the best I have seen yet. Is it perfect? No. Can it be improved? yes. But where is there better?

Crashs: I'm with you here. I can see where somebody who can't get the game to run acceptably and can't get decent support can give the game a zero. BUT I'm here to tell you that if your computer can run this game, its 5 star heaven. If your computer doesn't run this game, it is worth every cent for you to buy a new computer that will run it. Simple as that.

Graphics: I have a laptop that was top of the line last year as far as memory, cpu and graphics card. And its a Dell. The game runs and LOOKS GREAT on this laptop! Like I said previously, if your computer doesn't display great graphics when playing this game, go out and buy one that does.

Bugs: Yes it has some bugs. But nothing that would drop the game a single point. I'm gonna hope we get a patch.

Most annoying game trait: Unit facing is too hard. I have yet to master it after 30 hours of game play. I hate it when my archers I thought were facing the enemy are really facing to the rear. (but this problem may be a user problem in my case)

Favorite game activities:
1. Sending lots of spies into a "friendly country" to cause a revolt.
2. Fighting huge peasant armies with Knights, pikemen and longbows.
3. And the best: Using "follow projectiles" with catapults.

Wish List:
1. Factor in age of leader to start deteriorating his skills.
2. Get rid of the dialog boxes that tell of events and put the events in a scrollable list that will show more info when you click on a line.
3. Give more info on Kingdoms and provinces and battle summaries. Sometimes its hard to figure out who owns what you are about to destroy (or marry).
4. Improve unit facing commands for us those of us who can't seem to get it right.
5. Fix the bugs so everybody will stop with the zero ratings!

The best looking RTS game this year...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: August 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Boy, what can I say? From what I have experienced in the demo, I can hardly wait for the actual game's release. The graphics are tremendous, considering the massive amounts of units that flood the game. And unlike most other RTS games, where the people soon just disappear like they sunk into the ground or something, this game has every fallen man stay were he was killed. Every battlefield is 3D, with realistic buildings, trees, shrubs, you name it.

And this game takes castle sieging to a whole new level. With the walls crumbling under the heavy barrage of your mutiple types of siege weaponry, it is truly a wonderful sight. The shots of your siege weapons bounce off the ground, gouging holes in the earth and decimating any troops that get in the way. Blow holes through the lines of enemy troops before you assault with your own. There are so many options in this game, with so many tactical elements, it is mind-boggling.

And keep in mind that I am only referring to what I have experienced in the demo. And if I am this astounded by the demo, then when the game comes out, call 911 because I've had a heart attack. The game goes beyond just battlefield carnage and in the single player campaign you must build your empire not only through might, but through diplomacy, trade, and your economy. There are also multiple objectives for each campaign, and many different kingdoms and cultures that you can play.

I have a 900Mhz AMD Athlon, 256MB RAM, and a GeForce2 Ti, and this game runs like a dream. While some smaller computers might have to turn the graphics down a tad, it is amazing how they kept the framerates stable even with all of that action.

This game is a must buy. Way to go, Creative Assembly!

Oh what a lovely war =)

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: March 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The Total War series so far contains two games,
Shogun Total War and Medieval Total War. Shogun was set in Japan with
all the Shoguns battling for control. Medieval, as the name presents,
is set in Medieval times. I had played Shogun a bit (about a month
and a half) and it had satisfied me, but I didn't really like it's
lack of unit types and small maps, plus it was almost impossible to
take provinces with rivers since your troops would all be slaughtered
going over a bridge. But hey, this isn't a review about Shogun is it?
No.

Activision and Creative Assembly really outdid themselves this time
and I mean REALLY. MTW is an rts game with a twist of well, I can't
find the right word, but it's and rts with a twist of something. And
perhaps that's what makes it so addicting to play. I bought Medieval
and read the back of the box. Whoa was I surprised! Around 100 unit
types, all different. Twelve different factions are available such as
the English, French, Egyptians, Byzantines, and the Turks. You can
mod the game pretty easily as well, it's actually really easy to mod
it to play the minor factions such as the Swiss, Golden Horde, and
Aragonese among others. When I started up my first campaign game I
was very happy to view the huge map. I don't know the exact number,
but there are many, many, many provinces. Including memorable ones
such as Constantinople, Egypt, Scotland, and the Papal States.

You have a treasury and you can expand that treasury through
controlling taxes of each of your provinces, establishing trade
routes over land and by sea, as well as other economic ventures like
improved farming. That treasury is used to create soldiers, buildings,
agents, and to bribe enemy generals over to your own side. You have
one king who can have heirs born if he's married and lucky. If your
king dies, one of those heirs takes control of the kingdom and becomes
the new king.

It is possible if you have a particularly weak king and eldest heir,
to assasinate them both so that the stronger of his heirs takes the
throne. Kings and heirs are generals in command of their own units
and they develop through combat just like the other generals of your
army. Earning ranks as they win more battles. A big
difference in generals in Medieval is the unique vices and virtues
system. This allows your generals to earn vices and virtues as they
go along. Good and bad, these include things like Magnificent
Builder, Weak Principles, Skilled Warrior, and Incestuous Affairs
(icky).

The battles you cause by moving your armies into enemy provinces have
several options for you to choose from before the battle actually
occurs. To call of the attack, auto-calculate the casualties and see
if you one, or command it yourself. In terms of defence they are auto-
calc., abandon the province, command it yourself, or if the province
has a fort or castle to retreat into it in which case the enemy army
puts you under seige. The battle system seemed to be very much
improved. The graphics were better and the landscape was crisper. The
battles were also more realistic then in Shogun. Your troops tire
easier and morale can also be affected a lot easier. Marching across
the desert battlefield to the enemy position? Expect your troops to
be very tired once you get there from baking in the sun all that
time. Seiges were a dissapointment however. A lot less use of seige

engines than I had hoped and you can eventually bring down a castle
wall using a unit of weak peasants. Don't believe what the
game's box says about spectacular sieges.

You can use spies on enemy generals, assasins to kill whom you wish,
emissaries to bribe generals and propose alliances/ceasfires as well
as marriages, inquisitors to try enemy generals for heresy and
hopefully have them executed, bishops to convert
populations into your religion in hopes that rebels for your religion
will rise up against the province owners if they're not of your
religion, and princesses to marry to opposing kings, heirs, and
generals in hopes of forming an alliance with that faction. There are
also many different building types in the game and many
upgrades you can add to the defense of your castles and such. There
are faction, religion, and era exclusive units as
well as those that are available to everyone. That's another thing
there are three available eras to start in. Early(1087), High(around
1220), and Late (1334).

The AI is still pretty shaky on the strategic map and will frequently
do dumb things such as suicide invasions. The Pope is also a problem for Catholic factions in Medieval. If you attack another faction too much that's catholic and not
excommunicated, you'll get a warning from the pope. If you don't heed
that warning you'll get excommunicated. That makes you fair game for
invasion by other Catholic factions as well as crusades by other
Catholic factions. Crusades and Jihads are another new thing brought
in with MTW. Crusades for Catholic factions get armies added to them
by you and then can be aimed at any target province of an Orthodox
Christian, Muslum, Islamic, or excommed Catholic empire. For Muslum
and Islamic empires there are Jihads which work mainly the same as
crusades, but can only be aimed at a province taken by a non-
Muslum/Islamic empire.

If you get bored of the campaign there are other Historical campaigns
comprised of battlefield battles as well as other historical single
battles that you can play. There are only 3 single battles though
which is kind of annoying.The multiplayer can be fun, but personally it got boring quick since it's battles and no strategic campaign multiplayer option. But Medieval is a good game
despite any of it's flaws. By the way, MTW doesn't seem to work on most laptops.

Lack of Information and Control

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: March 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

MTW's battle simulator is great.

The strategic side is deeply flawed, flawed enough to give MTW a thumbs down.

There is no centralized command and control screen (as there is in Civ3) so every turn you must check each and every province and all your units. In the late game you can easily have a hundred units and 30 provinces, so you can imagine the tedium. Keeping track of units is very tedious and occupies most of your time.

Many of of the strategic elements of the game are useless (Princesses, diplomacy, virtues & vices). Also, alot of things in the game have little information about them (so my general has a vice, how will this effect combat?). Its nearly impossible to find rival leaders when you need them - you have to put emissarys all over the map. Emissaries that are constantly being assassinated.

Province and technological improvement is poorly designed. You must build one improvement at a time, and the time it takes to create a building is fixed. There is no quick reference to find out what you must build to create a particular unit.

Even the vaunted battle simulator is flawed. Reinforcements arrive randomly. Which is very annoying. The enemy general hurls himself into combat, ensuring his quick death and the routing of his army. All it takes to win is to attack the general with your best cav units. General dies, you win.

Also, projectile units are useless. Their attack is extremely weak and their defense is minimal, and the AI usually leaves them unprotected. Even the historically unbeatable English Longbowmen (which should be the most deadly unit in the game) is easily crushed. Just rush them with some melee units and they are toast. Historically, any unit that charged longbowmen on the open field were decimated. Here, 100 sergeants might suffer 5 to 10 casualties by the time they reach the longbowmen. And once the projectile unit is engaged in hand-to-hand, its a slaughter.

absolutely amazing

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 23
Date: July 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

ok wheh i first played shogun toatal war i didnt think there would ever be a game that could out-do it but i was very wrong and apart from deus ex 2 this is was my most eagerly awaited game, i have only had it for a few days but im already finding out the depth of the game, it has great dimplomatic effects, like if u r england sooner or later the French demand to be allowed to pass through your land to defeat the scots who have insulted them, also seiging a castle doesn't involve a small building with a few men, it mean a full castle with many walls and eveything you would expect a castle to have, it also makes the combat alot more realistic, in shogun heavy cavalry sometimes beat pikemen(yari samurai) but in this it shows realistically as you can see when ur regiments of nights are demolished by pikemen, also when u hold your cursor over the units it tells you what they would like, such as '100 archers morale :steady, happy that flanks are protected. a great gamne a must buy for all rts buyers,

Look at All of the Wonderful Things to Eat!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: April 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The download and install were uneventful, if rather long. The mod is available in two sizes: small (28MB) and large (140MB). I chose the large version and downloaded from the mirrors available in this forum post. The mod itself will automatically install itself into the Medieval: Total War directory on the player's hard drive, so the process is as hassle-free as they come. Once done, simply fire up the game as always.

Immediately noticeable upon starting a campaign is that the game is now running in version 2.0 (without any other patches applied), some basic screen art additions, alterations, and a big, sloppy smorgasbord of new features. If the player truly loves medieval European history, Medieval: Total War XL may be the only game played for months, if not years to come.

Choosing a faction and era to play in almost made my head explode, in the best way. Besides the additional factions added by the Viking Invasion pack (Hungarians, Sicilians, and the Aragonese), the XL pack doubles the amount of playable factions to include Armenians, Bulgarians, the Crusader States, the Knights Hospitaller, Lithuanians, Norwegians, Portuguese, Scots, Serbs, and the Teutonic Knights. Older factions like Italy are broken up between two new factions: the Genoese and the Venetians, and formerly unplayable factions like the Golden Horde and the Papacy are now playable. All of the old factions (English, French, Spanish, Holy Roman Empire, etc.) are still all playable as well, of course. In addition to doubling the amount of playable factions, the Medieval: Total War XL mod also adds a number of faction specific units: every faction now has at least two or three unique units. Some are modeled on older unit models, but some are all new creations added by VikingHorde himself.

Many of the newer units are ethnically and geographically based, such as Slav Javelin men, found in Balkan provinces, and some very exotic Eastern European and Islamic units. As I applied both the Viking Invasion pack and the Medieval: Total War XL mod back to back, it was difficult for me to be able discern which were added by the modder and which were "officially added" by Creative Assembly. It can only be to the modder's credit that determining the difference was no easy task.

Besides new units and factions, the map has been further broken into additional, historically accurate provinces. They are scattered across the entire original map, throughout every region, and are subtle and not noticeable until the player really gets a chance to study the map by investing some game time. Other more subtle changes to the programming of Medieval: Total War are tweaks to the economics of the game, specifically trade balances and farming income.

The Medieval: Total War XL patch is a little slice of gaming heaven, but alas, it's not absolutely perfect. There are scattered little typos in some of the added in-game text. Nobody is perfect, and I know this may not bother some, but as an editor and writer I couldn't help but notice them. More importantly, the load time between turns on the strategic map has become absolutely spirit-crushing. On some occasions it took the AI up to three or four minutes to complete its moves, much greater than the time it took for the same turns in the old Medieval: Total War. The game never actually crashed, but it appeared to be hung up. It only occurred on the strategic map, and there was no slow-down in any other parts of the game. The turn was always [eventually] completed, but I was able to leave the room, do the laundry, and let out the dog on some occasions between moves. Hopefully this is addressable in an available patch somewhere, because the Medieval: Total War XL mod is terrific and absolutely immersive. The replay value evident with Medieval: Total War XL goes beyond any other game I can recall, with such a variety of factions, units, and provinces to explore that any Medieval: Total War fan will be entertained for a very long time. Despite the problems, Medieval: Total War XL is a great demonstration of what PC wargaming can be: engaging, expandable, entertaining, and even [gasp!] educational. Wargamers with a taste for a more distant, darker history owe it to themselves to check out the Medieval: Total War XL mod.

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