Medieval II: Total War
| Medieval 2: Total War | |
|---|---|
| File:Mtw1.jpg | |
| Developer(s) | Creative Assembly |
| Publisher(s) | Sega |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Release | November, 2006 |
| Genre(s) | Real-time tactics, Turn-based strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, Multi-player |
Medieval 2: Total War is the indirect sequel to 2002's Medieval: Total War, and the fourth game in the critically acclaimed Total War series from The Creative Assembly. It was announced on January 20, 2006. The game will be released on August 25, 2006.
The game will be set between the years 1080 and 1530. Like the previous game, it will focus on Medieval warfare, religion and politics in Europe, North Africa and Southwest Asia. However, unlike its predecessor, the timeframe stretches into the era of the historical Renaissance and discovery of the New World; accordingly, this becomes part of the campaign map, and there are factions to represent the native peoples of North America, most notably the Aztecs and the Mayans.
Features
Religion
In Medieval 2: Total War, the Pope can excommunicate factions that do not bend to his will sufficiently, the same as in Medieval: Total War. The option to become the pope is now available, as the game progresses players will be able to have develop their religious characters to the point where they can even get their own Cardinal elected as Pope. He can also grant Crusades to various factions/settlemnts, as the Senate did in the previous entry of the series, Rome: Total War. Spreading your religion is also a major part, putting priests in enemy settlements will convert the populatiomn, or atleast cause riots and unrest in the settlement and can gain popularity with the church for "spreading the word of god". How you interact with the pope will determine your standing with him, if you listen to his demands he will like you and give you benifits. Ignore him and you may be excommunicated.
When the existing Pope dies (for whatever reason) a new Pope is elected by the college of cardinals. If you have a cardinal of sufficiently high rank, he’ll be a candidate in the election. You can then negotiate with the other factions to get them to vote for your guy, or you can agree to vote for theirs. You can bribe or bully other factions to vote for your candidate, or sell your own vote. The new Pope will remember who voted for him, and who against, so how to cast your vote requires some consideration if you’re not sure of winning yourself.
Once a settlement develops heresy, then the pope will send a Inquisitorto stamp out the problem, but unfortunatly they may also trial and execute your generals in the process.
Thus, probable major religions pertaining to the varied cultures during the Middle Ages may include:
Also, there may be features such as sectarian breakoffs from major religions, resulting in heretical sects, especially as the game's later stages are during the Protestant Reformation.
Crusades will be far more of an “event” in Medieval 2 than they were in the original Medieval. The Pope will commission a crusade that all the catholic factions then have the option to join. The faction that captures the target first will gain considerable prestige and wealth as well as significantly boosting their standing with the Pope. As you gain more influence with the Pope you can begin to request Crusades to be called on specific targets.
Jihads can be called my Muslim priests with a sufficient religion rating. They can be called against settlements owned by non-Muslim factions that have significant Muslim populations. Once a character decides to go on Jihad, he’ll have a range of low cost religious troops that he can recruit to the cause.
Diplomacy
As in the original Medieval Total War, diplomacy will be dramatically different from diplomacy from Rome: Total War. The original game featured diplomacy using emissaries and princesses to achieve political gain. The diplomacy system in Medieval 2 has been improved to give the player a lot more information about how the AI player feels both about them, and about the offer on the table. The diplomacy screen includes an array of new information, including how the other faction feels towards you. When you make an offer, there is an onscreen display how fair the AI considers the offer to be. The AI will be better inclined towards you if you make fair or generous offers, but sometimes you’ll be able to force them to accept unfavourable deals. Finally, after the deal is made, there’s audio and visual feedback about how your diplomatic rival felt about the transaction.
Also, the player may be able to send an unmarried princess of marriageable age to appeal to form an alliance between two nations through a dynastic marriage. Assassination is also an option for eliminating troublesome opponents (or disloyal generals). As in Rome: Total War's expansion, Barbarian Invasion, the player may also be able to send priests of their nation's religion to create a foundation for later conquest through first converting its people in any given province or to stir up religious unrest among another nation's people. The original Medieval had priests, bishops, cardinals, inquisitors, imams and alims that the different religions could use to spread the faith, improve loyalty, or root out heretics. Medieval II: Total War will most likely incorporate many of these aspects to allow the creation of an empire not only through military conquest, but through skillful diplomacy involving religion, marriage, or assassination.
Campaign
The developers for Medieval 2 introduced a new system for developing settlements, a new recruitment system, a new enhanced system for the treatment of religion, enhanced diplomacy, new trade options, improved missions, improved sabotage and espionage, improved AI, new tech tree buildings and more. The campaign map will be markedly different from that seen in Rome. Aside from a new graphical look, it will be busier as we’re adding several new types of agent characters including merchants, princesses and priests. While the map won’t become as cluttered as the original Medieval map became, we wanted to up the number of characters on the map in order to increase the options players have to interact with rival factions off the battlefield. Although initially the map appears to cover the same area as the map found in Rome, it will actually offer more land to conquer. Later in the game the map opens up and offers the opportunity to discover and conquer the Americas.
The New World will be hidden from the players and the squares of the Atlantic Ocean will be impassible. Late in the game players will be able to develop the technology to cross the ocean, discover America, and battle with the Aztecs. The faction that is successfully conquering the New World will be able to reap rich rewards. The new world has many unique and lucrative resources, such as tobacco and chocolate, not to mention gold. Dominating America will do wonders for your treasury, and converting all those pagans will impress the Pope. Being so far away, the faction that can defeat the Aztecs and establish a base there, will have a huge advantage defending it against other factions. The economic advantages that come from having a monopoly here will give that faction a huge boost dealing with the other old world factions.
Medieval 2 introduces the option for players to develop their settlements either as a city or as castle. They both offer advantages and it’s a question of balancing the use of your settlements to suit such factors as map location, proximity to possible enemy factions and whether the player adopts a militaristic or economic approach to expansion. To put it simply castles emphasize the military, and cities the economic. Build lots of castles, and your armies will be extremely potent. Build lots of cities and you’ll have to rely on dubious militias or mercenaries to protect your lands. On the other hand, you’ll have the money to buy off your opponents. Castles will require less management than cities but as the game develops cities will become more important, but redeveloping castles will be costly so the transition will need to be carefully managed. As a result there is a great deal more strategy involved as you expand your empire across the campaign map.
One of the most significant additions we’ve made to the tech tree for Medieval 2 is the addition of Guild halls. There are various different types of guild that give different bonuses to your settlements. Each city can have only one guild that will give local bonuses to that city. As examples the assassin’s guild will increase the skill of assassins and some guilds will give access to extra units too. In addition each faction can have one master guild for each guild type that gives bigger bonuses, some of which may apply across all the faction’s cities. Further to this, it is possible to build a grandmaster guild that is a sort of global HQ for that guild type. There can only be one grandmaster building for each guild in the world, so whoever gets it first will have an edge in that particular area.
Agents and Characters
There are a number of new agent types in Medieval 2, some will be player controlled whilst others will be under AI control. These include Merchants and Princesses which are added to the array of characters from Rome that include Diplomats, Spies, Assassins and Priests. All agent characters have attributes that develop the more you put them to use in the campaign game. So Princesses for example have a Charm attribute that governs their success in diplomacy and the likelihood that a proposal in marriage will be accepted. There will also be a whole new set of Medieval traits for characters, along with a number of primary attributes. One big addition is the idea of Chivalry and Dread that effectively decide whether a character is good or evil thus giving characters far more distinct personalities. Like all traits and attributes, characters develop these through their actions in the game. For example when a General captures a city, you have the option to peacefully occupy the city or wade in and exterminate the population. That kind of choice will govern how your General develops. Chivalrous types will inspire loyalty in those around them, dread lords meanwhile can terrify their followers and the enemy alike.
Merchants can be used aggressively to capture resources monopolised by rival factions in order to disrupt their economy. They can attack rival merchants on the campaign map. Merchant clashes are auto-resolved to decide the victor.
The campaign map is sprinkled with resources that can be harvested by using your merchants. These agents can travel to foreign lands to gain a monopoly on these resources for your faction. The value of the resource and the skill of the merchant will govern the amount of money they can make.
Turn System
Although details on the new turn system are sketchy at best, developers have confirmed that Medieval 2 will no longer use seasons or years as its means of keeping track of time. Rather a system of "turns" will be devised, with each turn representing a certain, perhaps undefined, amount of time. For example, the game will not begin in the year 1080 and end in 1520, but instead will begin on turn 1 and end on turn 225, although players can keep playing past that point if they so wish. Reasons for this are unclear. It has been postulated that because the European encounter with the Aztecs fell so close to the ending date of the game, the developers felt that the turn system needed to be changed to allow players to visit the New World much earlier. Others say that the new system will allow the player to have a greater influence over certain events (the appearance of certain factions, the development of gunpowder or the outbreak of the Black Death). Whatever the motive may have been, the decison to abandon the old system was met with protest from many hardcore fans who saw it as a rejection of the historical tradition of the Total War games and part of a shift towards more "clickfest" type strategy games.
Factions
Confirmed factions found on the Total War official website include
- The English
- The Papacy
- The Holy Roman Empire
- The Egyptians (early Arab/Ottoman), presumably the Ayyubid dynasty and mameluks
- The Byzantine Empire
- The French
- The Moors
The list has not been finalized yet, but the following factions are also expected at this stage to be included:
- The Scots
- The Danes
- The Spanish
- The Portuguese
- The Milanese
- The Venetians
- The Sicilians
- The Poles
- The Russians
- The Hungarians
- The Seljuk Turks, Ottoman Turks
- The Mongols
- The Timurids
Also with New World factions such as:
Note - see Comnenian Army for more information on the Byzantine army of the crusading period.
Technical
Following complaints that the soldiers were simply clones in the previous entry in the series, Rome: Total War, the developer, The Creative Assembly, now has devised a system that will allow soldiers to look different from one another. Picking randomly from many heads, bodies, and legs, no soldier will look the same. For instance, knights will have different coats-of-arms, some soldiers will have beards and others will not, and so on. Details will also be improved, over time armies' weapons will show wear and soon they will be covered with muck and dirt, adding to the graphical realism. It has also been said that the game's physics and animation system will be revised. For instance, a soldier who gets speared in the leg will fall realistically, and not simply roll over. The battlefield and city rendering system has also been overhauled. Per pixel lighting has also been mentioned as a feature in the new game engine by the developers. Also, to increase the fighting realism, units will choose from a variety of attacks and use parries and blocks. These actions will be strung together using motion-captured actions, making unique and realistic attack combos. Therefore, the fighting will be much more fluid and believable. "Troops block and parry attack moves and string together deadly combo attacks and finishing moves before scanning the battlefield for their next kill."