Creative Assembly is currently in the process of finalising their latest title, Medieval II: Total War (which is a sequel to the original Medieval title) that should be ready for Australian stores on November 16th. To prepare for their forthcoming title, we recently had a chance to take an extensive look at what will clearly be one of the standing lights in terms of strategy games this year on the PC. Medieval II makes a fairly significant leap forward compared to the previous version, with the inclusion of a new graphics engine and several gameplay changes ensuring its success. In this preview we will try to cover as much as we possibly can, guaranteeing that you’ll be swimming in a pool of your own drool at the end.
First off the bat is the game’s single player options, all of which offer a great amount of variety and depth for players to sink their teeth into. The Grand Campaign once again sees the inclusion of the Rome: Total War’s strategic map, where you’ll be able to command your forces from your nation’s cities and conquer all of your foes. The appeal of the strategic map is revamped with Medieval II’s lovely graphics engine and new features. Five nations are available to choose from in this mode, including England, France, Spain, Venice and the Holy Roman Empire. There are two separate sets of rules that’ll determine the length and your objectives in the campaign mode. In the short mode you’ll be required to hold on to 15 regions and eliminate your rivalling nations. Meanwhile, the long campaign requires you to hold on to 45 regions, including Jerusalem. During the campaign you’ll be faced with the task to govern your towns by building new units and structures, as well as fending off enemy forces and gaining territory for your Empire. In addition, you’ll also be given missions to fulfil throughout the course of the campaign such as converting other cities to a certain religion or destroying cities. It really opens up the appeal of the game greatly, since rather than mindlessly building your army just to fight, you’ll also need to take in consideration a number of missions that’ll pop up along the way. And you can expect to explore more than just Europe once you dig deeper into the campaign, with areas from the New World eventually opening up.
The campaign map in action.
The campaign mode runs in a similar fashion to Civilization, whereby you’ll build, move and fight in a turn-by-turn basis. In these turns you’ll be able to build structures such as market places, farms, roads, castles and unit specific structures - all of which will increase certain things such as revenue, happiness, defences for that town and availability to certain troops. To prevent from being sieged and left to pick up the pieces of your dead men, you’ll need to fortify your towns with structures that’ll increase your survivability during sieges. You see, when trying to take over towns you’ll partake in a siege battle. However, before jumping down into the battle itself, you’ll have the choice to build siege equipment such as battle rams that’ll increase your possibility of successfully capturing a city. Before a siege you’ll also see how much food the town has and how many days are left before they suffer a shortage. So, if you like, you can camp outside of a town for several days just to cut off their incoming supplies, which will ultimately starve the town out and weaken their forces.
During the course of the campaign important figures will be born into the royal family and will extend your nation’s family tree, branching out for new princesses and generals for you to command. In each city you’ll need a general to govern it in order to purchase new units and buildings. In addition, the more your generals fight their ability to lead increases. Meanwhile, princesses and diplomats will be able to travel across the land trying to strike new relationships with neighbouring nations by offering alliances, trades, declaring war on others or even putting bribes on the table. In addition, you can also try to have your princess marry opponent generals to sway them to fight for your nation or form marriage alliances. In your towns you’ll be able to train priests that spread influence of your religion to other nations and spies that can be used to learn vital information on a town and nation, as well as attempting to open the gates for you during a siege. In all respects to these special units, there’s a great deal of depth and strategy in trying to sway things in your favour as much as possible.
Besides from the nations that occupy the map, rebel tribes are also likely to be filling up the map. These usually act as the ideal targets to knock out early to extend your nation, since there are never any hard feelings when taking these rebel-controlled regions out, which isn’t the case when trying to take out other nations.
Expect to be fighting in some epic battles, where everything except the kitchen sink will be thrown in.
Battles are taken down into the typical Total War fashion where you’ll be able to strategically place your units on the battlefield and then send them to victory through tactics that optimise your unit’s abilities. Important factors such as power of weapons comes into consideration before sending units to their death. Arrows can pierce most units, however you’ll find that the heavy armoured units won’t suffer a scratch. Your units will have several strengths and weaknesses; spearmen are great at holding off cavalry units, light cavalry units are great for flanking and hitting enemies from the rear and your cheap and weak units usually act as a great meat shield for your stronger units. During one battle we played, we were left with about twenty cavalry archers against a full regiment of spearmen, a few heavy armoured horsemen, as well as a devastating ballista. However, thanks to some quick initiative, and our ability to utilise our units correctly, we were able to constantly position our units to the rear and flanks of our opponents and picked them off one-by-one due to their inability to defend against our arrows. As soon as their spearmen and ballista were down, we quickly ran in and took out the heavy armoured horsemen and ended up with a rewarding win. So, it’s important that you constantly take into consideration your unit’s abilities and their weaknesses before approaching tough battles, or be prepared to face some devastating causalities.
There’s a great deal of depth in trying to understand each of your units, as well as trying to wrap your mind around the strengths and weaknesses of each of the available nations. For instance, England boasts some magnificent archers and infantry units, however lacks in the cavalry department. So you’ll have a variety of long-range units such as longbowmen that can cut down most units before reaching your core army. The variety between each of the available nations also opens up all sorts of strategy when playing the game. With England you’ll obviously try to draw your enemy towards you so you can unleash your range units, but meanwhile the Mongols (who have superb cavalry units) are going to be more mobile and will require you to flank units rather than sitting tight. There’ll be all sorts of units available in the final version including elephants, rocket launchers, heavy lance knights and hand gunners, to name a few. In addition, several units will come with special abilities that’ll assist them during certain situations. The aforementioned longbowmen can place stakes in front of them to keep cavalry at bay, meanwhile there will be other special abilities such as being able to shoot fire arrows and formation abilities that can exploit enemy targets. For instance, mounted archers will be able to execute a circle formation where they’ll make a circle around their enemy, slowly picking them off. Units will also flee depending on their surroundings. If their general dies then you’ll notice a huge morale drop in your units, and chances are they’ll be discouraged to continue fighting and flee. If your units are outnumbered or they feel that their chances are relatively weak, then they’ll also flee. The battlefield is also held within zones, which means if units flee outside of these zones they’ll flee from the entire battle.
Siege battles offer a nice little spin.
If that wasn’t enough, the single player portion also includes custom battle, historical battle and quick battle modes. In the custom battle mode there are 33 playable maps available, all of which that are set in different locations. You can expect to play on marvellous snowy mountains, long grassy plains, beautiful lakeside views, canyons and even battles situated next to towns. In these battles you’re able to customise several features such as weather, season, time of day, and time limit. So, if you like, you could be fighting during the night on a long desert strip in the midst of a ferocious sandstorm. There are also several winning conditions to choose form, which include Last Man Standing, Score Resolution and Siege Assault. And finally, you can also set a cap on the amount of units you can purchase by adjusting the amount of money you receive. With this money you can purchase your units, as well as upgrading their experience, weapon and armour levels. Historical battles are pretty self-explanatory, with you playing as a nation during a significant battle in our history, such as the Battle of Hastings. And the last mode available is the quick battle, where you are thrown straight into a battle without choosing the map or units.
Meanwhile, if the single player portions weren’t enough, you can expect to dive into a fairly expansive multiplayer mode. You’ll be able to play on all of the custom maps that are available in the single player mode, as well as there being several scenarios and quick start maps available too - allowing for quick and easy multiplayer games.
Medieval II: Total War is expected to expand on all areas over previous versions in the series. With a new and exciting graphics engine that showcases some lovely detail and animation, as well as an incredible amount of depth and variety to be found in the final version, Medieval II: Total War plays like a dream and will be the perfect package for Total War fans come this November.
Yeah, I kinda got confused by it when I first saw it; although that's what they are called. But it's just a better cannon that shoots out multiple rockets at once - very cool!
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