Topic: Rome: Total War vs. Medieval II Total War

[XCrusaderguy01]

Secondly, Medieval 2 is a bit more buggy when it comes to unit controls. Pathfinding issues in sieges are bloody annoying, but most of all, cavalry are a pain to use - you order them to charge, they lower their lances and gallop, then a few metres before their target they slow down to a trot, lift their lances and walk into battle with their cavalry swords. Le sigh. Not even the patches solve this.

Bugs like this kept me from getting anywhere in Medieval. In Rome charging your units into battle was glorious, in Medieval 2 it was just plain annoying. Also, it seems odd to me how long it sometimes takes units to... kill each other in M2TW. While in Rome 2 units attacking each other would have soldiers pressing to get to the front, while in M2 they would spread our awkwardly, and fight in what always seemed to me to be a lazy fashion. Even your knights just kinda wander around aimlessly in a field full of peasants, occasionally deciding it might be a good idea to halfheartedly swing a sword at them.

I didn't play much of M2 at all, as I was so disappointed with the atmosphere of battles due to bugs like these. Don't get me wrong, I love the tactics and maneuvering of the TW series (played tons of Rome), and maybe I'll give it another try and find it isn't as bad as I remembered.

[PuNChIE]

Gotta say medieval 2 total war, i always return to that game when newer games start getting dull. I also like Rome, but medieval is simply better in a lot of ways.

[Cripple, Whose Corporeal Form is Now a Shade of Blue]

I'll admit, I have had the cavalry problem mentioned by XCrusaderguy01 happen quite a few times (my computer seems to carry some hidden hatred of me, it always happens at the worst times). However, on most occasions it seems to work perfectly fine (i.e. mass slaughter of anything that dares to stand in the way of the iron-shod hooves of my glorious horsemen.)

Anyway, Medieval II is fun. The expansion adds 4 campaigns, each almost acting as a completely different game, I might add.

[Spirit of Kurnous]

forget them both, empire total war is the way forward (or will be once the bugs are patched out) with naval combat and the ability to put those damn colonials in their place

[Lonewolf]

True enough but who buys me the monster machine to run the game on? My PC struggles with Rome on max unit size and graphics 

[Daedalus_Mk_V]

True enough but who buys me the monster machine to run the game on? My PC struggles with Rome on max unit size and graphics 

My PC was middle-of-the-line three years ago, and I can play all three games well enough, though Empire only runs well on minimum settings (and isn't that pretty compared with Med 2. I don't know why it's slower...). I can't imagine that yours is far enough below me that you would have issues with it. Oh, and base nothing on the demo- loading times are less than half of that in the real game.

I'm loving Empire ATM. Though I am a little miffed at the ludicrous number of Galleons the Spanish toss around, given how trade-oriented England is, the actually functional diplomacy system (!) and much less annoying trade mechanics are quite nice. The one thing I'm not entirely thrilled at is the fact that gun-armed troops are worthless against melee-centric units without bayonettes (guns only kill at most 10-12 men per volley), which made early battles between my line of musketeers and the enemy's horde of unarmoured axemen one-sided on entirely the wrong side...

[Spirit of Kurnous]

well muskets were crap weapons tbh, the only reason they took over from bows is because it was easier to train someone to be semi-effective with a musket than it was to train them with a bow.  so yeah loads of guys rushing in with axes would kill them horribly