Should I bother with Kingdoms?

[Detective Raiho]

Hello everyone.

I had been playing Medieval 2 for a while and thought "Why not try out the Stainless Steel mod? It's basically the 'enhanced' version of the game with more stuff.". But I noticed that SS had lots of things carried over from the Kingdoms expansion, like music, units, factions, etc.. After seeing the awesome trailer for Kingdoms, I thought that SS would ruin whatever fun the hand-crafted Kingdoms campaigns had to offer.

I started by playing the Byzantines in Crusades and holy hell it was boring. Aside from the Venetian Crusaders event, there was no real sense of urgency or difficulty. The enemy AI was passive even on Very Hard and I rarely had to worry about the other AI nations (allies). It was mostly taking rebel settlements, having them revolt later, exterminating them, and repeat. I thought the Mongols would spice things up but they arrived on the Eastern side of the map and died out after 10 something turns. The win conditions felt arbitrary since I had to hunt for settlements scattered all over the map and betray allies along the way, making it a drag. I couldn't actually have fun and start a war of complete domination due to the turn limit.

My question is, are any of the Kingdoms campaigns fun throughout or should I just skip ahead and play Stainless Steel? If there are fun campaigns, which is the faction with the most action?

[One Sun Mirror]

Each Kingdoms campaign offers a little something new I suppose. The Americas and Britannia campaigns I would say are the most varied from the base game.
The Americas campaign starts with most of the map in darkness, so you are actually exploring the New World. You can take on a native American faction which provides a very different challenge, especially when faced with the invading Europeans!
I think the Britannia campaign is fun because I played Wales which is right in the middle and fairly small. But each faction has its pros and cons here (Ireland probably being the easiest).
The Crusades and Teutonic campaigns are more like the base game. I have fond memories of both though and I'm sorry you had such a poor time with them!

Stainless Steel is pretty wonderful though and I don't feel it spoils the Kingdoms campaigns. It's just a bit more of everything than the Grand Campaign with a few nice fixes. I also appreciate the vanilla game though for its simpler take which I think is better for multiplayer.
Of course, that's personal preference. Hope you have fun! :)

[CMDR Herne]

Not only do you get the four campaigns with Kingdoms but it opens up more mods to use with med2.

I also recomend the retrofit mod which is a tiny sized mod that adds the extra Kingdoms campaign units to the grand campaign.

[the cup]

The Kingdoms campaign looks good but from your post I think you'll love Stainless Steel. Been playing the Teutonic Order and I've been fighting a war on two fronts often, with shrewd diplomacy and serious economic management being a neccesity for survival. I'm only playing on hard and I really feel like I'm fighting tooth and nail just to continue the existance of my nation. Its great.

The new events and guilds add interesting changes as well and the gameplay refinements are nice.

[Magic Rince (SIMS4=WIFE)]

the kingdom expansions are cool, but the huge variety of mods for the game makes it even grander. try Stainless steel and other mods, like Third age if you like LotR or de bello mundi if you are as dissepointed in rome2 as myself.

[NEEPO]

I really like Kingdoms, especially Teutonic campaign is fan-fu**in-tastic, if you love basic game you sure would adore this expansion

[Leo3ABP]

I did the same mistake when I purchased kingdoms - started playing Crusades campaign. Despite apparently being the first most players would choose due to crusades hype created by hollywood, I think it is worst campaign out of 4. Try playing Britania or Teutonics.
Britania offers interesting and detailed map, with nice events and rather unique unit rooster for each faction, as well as loyalty mechanic.
Teutonic on other hand offers what I would characterise an assymetrical balance - on one hand we have western factions, which are focused on heavy units with auxilia supporting them, on the other hand there are eastern factions which rely more on mobility, and light units that rely either on hitting fast and hard, or hit and run. Also there is interesting religion mechanic twich.
Americas has interesting ideas, like unexplored map and also assymetrical balance of native hordes vs european firearms and cavalry, and different economic and build mechanic than typical M2 campaign, but I found it was a bit too repetetive and somewhat tedious to fight huge blobs of natives again and again, when playing as spain, or spamming hordes of cheap units (or archers) when playing native factions.
While Stainless Steel is a good mod, as well as many others out there, I think that vanilla kingdoms experience has a lot of fun to offer on its own, as vanilla game as well, thogh if you interested in mods, then getting kingdoms is a good idea, since many good mods require it.

[Henry Young]

It's broken, don't bother.