medieval total war 2 vs medieval total war 1 : comparison ?

[qmuddy]

which one is better ? thanks

[CHE]

Originally posted by qmuddy:

which one is better ? thanks

"Better" is a matter of subjective opinion. What one person says is better may not be the same as what you think after you have played both games.

As for a comparison of facts about the 2 games, I don't know much about Medieval 1 yet, and so I don't have much to say. Maybe someone who knows plenty about both Medieval 1 & 2 will comment....

[DukeOfLight]

Medieval 1 is a gem, i played them both, but 1 has a special feeling.

[LCcmdr]

1 is much more brutal than 2. All graphics are better in 2; as is auto-resolve option. 2 has a better economy and buildings. In MW 1, waiting 8, 12, or 20 years for a keep...castle to build was nuts (IMO), so I'm a much bigger fan of 2 than 1. OTOH, the brutal AI is more fun to play against in 1 (I perceive the AI to be more consistent in 1), and the whole approach in 1 is more unique. Both are good, if not excellent games (if you like the Total War series--which I do)!

[yo cowards dont even smoke crack]

mw1 has less annoying features. iv always considered mtw2 to be the worst of the 3d rendered tw games. exclusive recruitment at castles and towns makes retraining annoying. archer firing trajectory is downright broken. also like rtw the spawning brigands that cant be stopped without modding become super tiring late game, not because they are difficult (they aint) but because they spawn about once every 5 turns in every province you own which means if you own 50 settlements you can expect 10 bands of brigands to spawn every turn.

[yo cowards dont even smoke crack]

i forgot to mention that mtw 1 is broken on new windows so i would steer clear of both games. hopefully tw will stop making warhammer and get back to historical. my guess is we are due a new empire or medieval next. hopefully empire first imo

[D67]

This is very subjective but I hate the map on 2. Using the area movment map in 1 felt like a king and his advisors looking at a map and plotting strategy. The map on 2 tied to inject more strategic options but took me "out of the game" with the more stylized look of 60-foot generals and agents striding around the countryside.

Again, it's largely a matter of taste but I much prefer 1.

[danconnors]

One: more accurate movement rate. A crusader army doesn't die of old age before it gets to Jeruselem, can, in fact get there in one year if it controls the seas. Two: Ballista's are not totally worthless weapons when used against enemy infantry. They CAN be aimed. English bowmen can be fought with their foot knights, as they actually were, AND with their antiknight stakes. Two: an army of 500 with a 2 star general can often beat a 5 star general with only 100 men.

[nellybeeatch]

MTW 2 is based on the Rome engine, so it's essentially a reasonably complex but straightforward Civ-type game with less depth with an arcade combat bit bolted on as an afterthought—it looks nice but you almost cannot lose, even if you get up to make a cuppa after pressing battle.

MTW1 is basically the other way around: a browser-level strategy game which has been shoe-horned in to provide an excuse to string together the fights using the top-notch battle simulator that still has the best combat AI (especially with a few barebones mods that remove the extraneous hybrid units that confuse the computer, as it works on a "this unit should do this role" sort of process for managing its army") I've seen in a Total War game, bar none (played up to Shogun II). The Caravel mod (somewhere over at totalwar.org, still?) produces the cleanest iteration of its tactical ability IMO.

The combat AI in MTW1 will (as I said, army composition notwithstanding) feint, feign retreat, encircle you with cavalry, ambush you using terrain, hide up a hill if it's feeling defensive & even retreat after a bit of skirmishing if it thinks you've out-maneouvred it or it thinks it might not win.

BUT the "strategy mode" in MTW1 is 1990s-level basic.

The battles in MTW2 are like the ones in RTW1, i.e. arcade-y bollocks in which even footsoldiers move at about 350 mph, & the computer doesn't really seem to know what to do with its units (they don't support each other or seem to even know if any other friendly units are on the battlefield; it's like each unit is handled in a completely discrete manner so the AI never (barring outclassing you with unit type or numbers) comes close to beating you if you're awake.

Also, as people said, MTW1 seems to crash on new systems. Can you still get a refund after like two hours on Steam (is that right?)? If you can still do this, try it the moment you buy it, make a huge battle, see if it crashes & apply for the refund ASAP if it doesn't work—some configurations it works fine on, some it just won't work, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what causes it to crash.

[Sunday Driver]

The grand strategy map in Shogun 1 and later Medieval 1 was at the time a breath of fresh air. It cut away a lot of the fat and tedium of other games in the past and let you get a fast paced but still meaningful grand strategy that let you generate many fun real time battles. It was greatly praised at the time for this by fans and media. It abstracted as much as possible that didn't centre around the main focus of the battles themselves. Later games in the series forgot about this aspect and instead got very flabby adding more and more to the grand map meaning you spend more time on it instead of playing the real time battles. In Shogun or Medieval many turns can go by in a handful of minutes. In the newer games you can spend hours watching the slow progress of units walking across the map and the turn tick by for each team. The pace is entirely different. The battle AI ends up being left as a secondary element too in turn, never really progressing much, as they've got to keep adding new frills to the grand map and in the end the player ends up spending more time on the grand map than they do actually fighting battles, which was sadly what the original game and the Medieval follow up was meant to avoid.

As for MTW1 crashing, there is a fix file floating around the internet, IIRC. It turned out there's this tiny couple of kb file that was causing most people's problems. Something to do with the interface, I believe.

[yo cowards dont even smoke crack]

Originally posted by Hoxilicious:

The grand strategy map in Shogun 1 and later Medieval 1 was at the time a breath of fresh air. It cut away a lot of the fat and tedium of other games in the past and let you get a fast paced but still meaningful grand strategy that let you generate many fun real time battles. It was greatly praised at the time for this by fans and media. It abstracted as much as possible that didn't centre around the main focus of the battles themselves. Later games in the series forgot about this aspect and instead got very flabby adding more and more to the grand map meaning you spend more time on it instead of playing the real time battles. In Shogun or Medieval many turns can go by in a handful of minutes. In the newer games you can spend hours watching the slow progress of units walking across the map and the turn tick by for each team. The pace is entirely different. The battle AI ends up being left as a secondary element too in turn, never really progressing much, as they've got to keep adding new frills to the grand map and in the end the player ends up spending more time on the grand map than they do actually fighting battles, which was sadly what the original game and the Medieval follow up was meant to avoid.

As for MTW1 crashing, there is a fix file floating around the internet, IIRC. It turned out there's this tiny couple of kb file that was causing most people's problems. Something to do with the interface, I believe.

do you know what website?

[Sunday Driver]

It's been a long time since I've had to look for it but try these links:

http://www.theassimilationlab.com/forums/topic/15130-medieval-total-war-gold-edition-v201-ctd-fix/

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/479-medieval-total-war-gold-edition-crash-to-desktop-fix/

I think the first one rings a bell for me as it was some files that you'd assume would be insignificant and wouldn't cause regular CTDs but when fixing those small files all crashes simply went away. Hopefully that helps you track down the problem.

[yo cowards dont even smoke crack]

Originally posted by Hoxilicious:

It's been a long time since I've had to look for it but try these links:

http://www.theassimilationlab.com/forums/topic/15130-medieval-total-war-gold-edition-v201-ctd-fix/

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/479-medieval-total-war-gold-edition-crash-to-desktop-fix/

I think the first one rings a bell for me as it was some files that you'd assume would be insignificant and wouldn't cause regular CTDs but when fixing those small files all crashes simply went away. Hopefully that helps you track down the problem.

yeah i tried these. these seem to be for crash on startup. i get crash on large battles even with this patch. some people say setting your desktop resolution can fix it but my experience is its un fixable on multiple different computers. you need xp for sure, i think the people who say its fixed have not played the game long enough to realise its still broken. if you play as turks it crashes on the mongol invasion every time because of the multiple full stack spawns. if anyone has a copy working on windows 7 please post a lets play video on youtube because i am super skeptical that its even possible

[Sunday Driver]

I do remember playing it on Windows 7 years ago through full campaigns on VI and standard Medieval map. It crashed frequently at random until I had the fix for it but then was fine afterwards. IIRC there was also a ddraw.dll that was dropped into the folder and probably a no-CD patched exe as I've always played it from CD. Could it be a problem that has got worse with the Steam version?

It's a pity they've not patched and fixed the game up better for modern machines, especially as they aren't giving it away for free.

[yo cowards dont even smoke crack]

Originally posted by Hoxilicious:

I do remember playing it on Windows 7 years ago through full campaigns on VI and standard Medieval map. It crashed frequently at random until I had the fix for it but then was fine afterwards. IIRC there was also a ddraw.dll that was dropped into the folder and probably a no-CD patched exe as I've always played it from CD. Could it be a problem that has got worse with the Steam version?

It's a pity they've not patched and fixed the game up better for modern machines, especially as they aren't giving it away for free.

thats the thing, iv seen it update about twice in the last year. the last one was about a month ago and was 25mb. but there was no patch notes or any thing. didnt change anything as far as crashing. i think your steam hypothesis maybe correct. il have to try torrenting an iso if that doesnt work i would assume its a hardware issue that somehow only affects win7 and newer

[Sunday Driver]

It's certainly worth a try getting the ISO for it and the expansion or the Gold version. There might be some already tweaked with the fixes too. If it does work it'd be an interesting discovery and at least give some answers to other steam users in this bind.