MEDIEVAL 2: TOTAL WAR.
Today I’ll be trying to answer the question that everybody’s been asking:
Which Medieval Total War game is the most fun for invading France in?
I’ve already done it with the first game.
Link is in this video’s description.
Now I’ll be trying to recreate the same invasion in this game.
As with the original game, my first objective was to unite the whole of England under one
banner.
But this left me exposed from the mainland.
But I had a plan.
Wait- Wh-
-HUHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Trying to stay in the Pope’s good books by being nice to France was a way of buying
me time to unite England before dealing with the real threat.
I wasn’t proud of this.
But I did get map information out of it, so I knew exactly where it was that I had to
attack to defeat them in the future.
And then I set my sights on England, starting with Wales.
In the original, I bribed them for a mere 2025 florins.
But alas, severe inflation had taken its toll in the 4 years between these 2 games and they
rejected my generous 4,000 florin proposal.
I upped it to 6,000.
They still rejected it in an irritatingly friendly sounding way.
‘NEHHHOOO, we cannot agree to this now!
FAIRWELL THEN!!!’
8,000!
‘NEHHHOOO, we cannot agree to this now!
FAIRWELL THEN!!!’
Finally, I offered 10,000.
10,000!
For a bankrupt region.
And Wales, at that.
It appeared I would have to rethink my negotiation strategy.
Already my plan to recreate the first game had fallen apart.
In that one it had taken just 2 turns to unite the whole of England and to start on an exotic
family tree, and yet now here I was, 11 turns into Medieval 2 and I hadn’t even managed
to woo Wales.
Embarrassing.
Elsewhere, I had had greater success.
While the Welsh fiasco was going on I also besieged and took York without a single casualty.
And over in France, things looked very different compared with the first game.
Back then, England ruled a strip of provinces stretching down to Southern France, whereas
in Medieval 2 this had been cut back to just one in Northern France.
And it wasn’t as though France was doing a lot better, either- half the provinces here
were ruled by rebels.
With England still divided, I didn’t want to pick fights with France just yet, which
would inevitably get me EXCOMMUNICATED before I was ready.
So instead, I saw these rebel provinces as easy pickings and decided to send some armies
in to claim them for England, before France thought to do the same.
I started with Brittany- oh sorry- RENNES.
And although it was only ruled by a rabble of unruly rebels, they rowdily refused to
retreat for some reason.
Before the siege was over, they rallied forth and attacked my army of spearmen, peasants
and archers.
Their horsemen charged straight into my units, as my side forces ended up getting engaged
in their own little fights.
Idiot.
Their general died, causing some of their forces to retreat.
This allowed for my soldiers that were fighting them to push through, slipping past the front
line and flanking their remaining forces.
Once behind them I had blocked their only retreat back to the safety of the city.
Some of their more cowardly units managed to slip through in time, but those who didn’t
suffered a sure and painful defeat at the hands of England’s finest.
Within seconds I had won, and somehow taken the town itself without even setting foot
inside.
This was proving to be too easy.
AGAIN.
Drunk on power, I sent 2 separate armies to capture the other rebel province in Northern
France, but stupidly didn’t time their arrivals.
This meant the smaller of the two armies got there first and, of course, they rallied forth
to beat me while I was at my weakest.
So began a second epic fight, led by Prince Rufus himself- this fine chap was next in
line to the throne, full of youth and enthusiasm, and desperate to make his family proud.
But he was up against a formidable challenge.
Their forces were experienced soldiers, armed with lots of spiky things that they could
poke Rufuses’ troops with.
ONLY INTERVENTION WITH THE ALMIGHTY- OR A MILITARY GENIUS- could bring us victory from
this!
But Rufus didn’t know this.
Still fresh from browsing the GETMOTIVATED subreddit that morning, he held it together,
getting his horses to head around the side and to charge the enemy army- and with devastating
effect!
Soon the bulk of their army was encircled.
Amidst some intense horse-on-horse action, the enemy general was slain!
But the rest weren’t just going to run away.
These enemies knew what England was like and opted to fight to the death, bringing many
English troops with them.
Regardless, this had been a decisive victory for Prince Rufus, securing the rest of Northern
France for England.
His Dad WOULD be proud.
This would be a battle to be remembered for generations to come!
-Oh.
OH.
At least Rome had the courtesy to crash BEFORE a battle.
Medieval 2 cruelly waits until you’ve won to crash to your desktop and to reveal your
private browsing habits to hundreds of thousands.
Just like with Rome, there are plenty of people online who confidently state they’ve found
fixes to Medieval 2’s crashes.
And just like with Rome, they’re all wrong and stupid.
The game doesn’t care what you set your core affinity to, which game version you have
or however many animals you sacrifice to the game’s guide.
Well, it’s been a fun game.
Hope you enjoyed it!
Remember to like, subscribe, comment and to share with-
Oh, who am I kidding.
I don’t give up so easily.
In one last, desperate moment, I decided to read the error message, which stated that
my graphics settings could be too high.
Hmm.
Welcome to Medieval 2: Medieval 1 Total War Total Overhaul.
A shame, it is, if you ask me- to turn options down when on PC.
As a bit of a graphics connoisseur, it pains me to nerf games down to a blur.
For the troops should be seen from far and wide- you don’t want to see the pixels,
inside.
Believe me I’m sad, when I say, that I think low settings look a bit…
bad.
But it has to be done.
I’m sorry.
Now on low settings, I reloaded the campaign.
But I’ll be damned if I’m replaying the battle I just had!
I autoresolved instead, which led to a crushing defeat for Prince Rufus!
He and a few stragglers survived, and judging from the way he walked, had fouled his faulds
from the horrors that he had seen.
Beating a brown retreat, he made his way back to safety.
He’ll never live that one down.
Now on low graphics settings, I turned my focus back to Wales- or at least, I think
it’s Wales, hard to tell with THIS MUCH PIXELLATION!
And I attempted to end them once and for all.
William the Conquerer made short work of their square defences, his pixelated FACE instilling
terror as he ploughed through them like butter through a hot knife!!
The bloody Welsh didn’t stand a chance as they were decimated, at least…
10 times over.
And soon I had claimed Wales as my own!
…Oh.
Screw it.
High settings it is.
What followed was the Great Depression of my Medieval 2 playthrough… because there
were so many crashes.
I’d film an epic battle that I’d be excited to show you… only for it to all be lost
when the game booted me out to my desktop again.
I got Wales.
A few crashes later I even secured the other Northern province in France.
Poor Rufus did this super awesome castle attack where he scaled walls, charged down streets
and killed EVERY LAST ENEMY.
But then it crashed again.
Poor, POOR Rufus was shamed again.
This is all your fault, Medieval 2!
I tried novel ways of taking Scotland without being excommunicated.
I sent diplomats in, demanding OUTRAGEOUS stuff, like lots of money, or for them to
give me all of their provinces for free and so on.
All in a bid to get them to attack us first.
Relations worsened.
Their polite refusals were soon replaced with not-so-polite refusals.
But they knew my game, and refused to attack first.
Eventually these were all the provinces that I had claimed…
…And then my progress ground to a halt.
Nowhere to attack, other than the Scots to the North and the French to the South.
With William the Conquerer in his 60’s, he knew his fighting days were numbered.
He didn’t want to drop dead of old age, his last moments being spent merely taunting
the Scots!
And Rufus wanted to be known for more than just the Brown Mile.
He wanted a victory.
He wanted to do his family proud.
…So England attacked Scotland AND France at the same time.
Outside Edinburgh castle, an epic battle took place, led by William the Conquerer.
The British Longbowmen showed why they are the best in the world, as they sniped the
enemies from several lightyears away.
This caused them to rush King William, but he was able to hold the line and with few
losses on England’s side, they retreated.
But then the second, larger wave arrived, headed by the King of Scotland!
England’s troops spread out a little too thinly, though.
And having their back up to the castle, the longbowmen had to run away around the sides,
rendering them useless.
William the Conquerer himself had to make up for his army’s shortcomings, engaging
the Scottish King in an epic hand-to-hand fight.
At one point I got super worried when it told me my general had died, but it was only somebody
called Learner and I don’t care about him.
It was a close fight, but eventually the Scots fled and William earned himself a costly,
but decisive victory- one of the greatest he ever had!
And then of course the game crashed and I lost it all.
So I reloaded the save again to autoresolve the battle, but William died of old age before
the battle could even begin.
Without a strong leader, my forces in Scotland had to retreat.
In Northern France, a small attacking force of mine attracted the attention of several
French armies.
Although only comprised of standard infantry, the small English army managed to kill some
pretty important generals from the French side, but ultimately, were overpowered and
it resulted in a loss for England.
However, it hadn’t been in vain: they had distracted and weakened a number of French
armies, which would help the next wave of attacks.
While now-KING Rufus focused on Southern France, Robert- a previously unproven family member-
led England’s largest force into Northern France, taking Rheims in a flawless auto-resolve
and marching onto Paris, where he was surrounded by every French army within baguette distance.
But he had good troops at his disposal.
The first army attacked his, but his throng of horses quickly turned it in England’s
favour.
He massacred all who dared oppose him, and although the second wave contained heavy cavalry,
they were outnumbered and outmatched by Robert’s horse possie, which surrounded and soon cleansed
the land of French like a deadly cloth.
A spectacular victory for England, securing Paris for-
And then the game crashed.
Medium settings are apparently ‘too high’, now.
To my surprise, autoresolve also resulted in victory- probably an even better one, actually.
How embarrassing.
And when given the chance to ransom back all of the captured French forces…
Robert instead killed them all in cold blood.
Like a cold blooded killer.
But- wait- where did France go?!
Suddenly all of the French provinces became rebel ones instead.
What nobody had realised was that Robert had captured, rounded up and executed the entire
French family tree, unintentionally ending the nation of France in one fell swoop.
Wow Robert, you monster.
And poor Rufus- now King- never got the chance to prove himself in battle.
Every time he did, he was robbed of his victory in some rubbishy time-travel paradox.
Poor, POOR RUFUS.
The Brown.
In a word: mediocre.
I understand that they want to make the game hard, but making it crash after half the battles
just isn’t fair in my opinion.
The pope did nothing to stop my aggressive tendancies, either: maybe he didn’t like
France either.
And get this: although I spent decades dicking about trying to unite England, it took just
a few years to defeat France, meaning that in total, it took half the turns and 10 years
fewer than the original Medieval Total War did to achieve the same thing!
Although…
in that one I did at least manage to unite England.
Something I didn’t do in this one.
But Rufus deserves redemption.
He doesn’t want to be remembered as the Soldier with the Soiled Slacks!
So he headed to Scotland to find fame and glory.
And just in time, as well: inquisitors flooded the mainland, burning my priests and units-
even our hero, Robert, was burned at the stake!
Rufus reached Scotland, levelling up to 5 command by having his Dad die and by drinking
lots of alcohol.
Ready to make his mark on history, he attacked Scotland.
This was personal.
His Dad deserved better.
With the gate down, horsemen pushed through in an EPIC CHARGE.
They soon retreated to the city centre.
Rufuses army wanted to persue, but Rufus was all like ‘no’.
This was his fight to win, and his unit alone charged in to confront the Scottish King,
and whatever remained of the horsemen who had retreated.
In the city centre, a battle between two kings broke out.
It was tense.
Both sides showed such skill.
Such talent!
Such passion.
The Kings both did their countries proud.
It raged on, as skilled soldier attacked skilled soldier in the ultimate battle royale.
They fell, one by one… until there were just a handful of troops left.
But Rufus survived,
and Scotland’s King eventually fell.
There was much to celebrate.
Rufus had finally scored a victory!
He had done something to earn his title, and to do England proud.
It was a great moment, surely to be remembered for generations to come!