I have only played the Apache campaign, but so far I have to say - I am very impressed. It seems well thought-out, well done, and complete.

If you love Total War, you will not be disappointed.

Matt

I must say I'm quite happy with it. I'm only going to play short campaigns for now as there are so much factions to play. The one thing I am a tad disappointed about is the lack of new voices (except for Apache).

Edited/expanded from another post:

I've only played about 30 turns as England in the Britannia campaign, but here's my initial thoughts:

Billmen put up a fight! I've only seen the Militia variants and not the semi-professional castle-built versions, but they fare better.

Boiling oil is pretty cool, but it's not great against rams. The ram model has been altered a bit and foot units march underneath a covering. I've seen 1 of 3 rams lit ablaze by the oil. Don't expect oil to make rams useless against large settlements like in RTW. However, I wouldn't want a group of my infantry huddled under a gate when the oil comes.

I like the cavalry adjustments. The smaller units take a little getting used to, but they are just as powerful as ever if you hit engaged foot infantry from the flank or rear. Frontal charges against non-spearmen are still strong. I charged a unit of...I forget what now (it was a cheap Welsh foot unit without any cavalry bonuses) and it disappeared underneath my Feudal Knights just like pre-1.03. Cavalry is not nerfed.
Word of warning: spearmen will stop cavalry, even levy spearmen or other low-quality spear units. Combined with small unit sizes, you really have to be mindful of spears when commanding cavalry. Just like it's supposed to be.

Pikes aren't quite the phalanx formation it was in RTW, but I had a unit of mercenary pikemen hold a gate during a city defense and they held formation fairly well (I had pike formation on and defensive stance). They were crushed because William Wallace personally attacked the settlement and 100 guys with pikes can't stand against 1000 guys with swords, but they did way better than I expected. I still haven't seen cavarly charge into a pike wall, but I expect the pikes to win that battle.

Archers seem to work about the same as before, although weaker units (archer militia for example) seem to be a little less effective. Their best use is the moral damage of flaming arrows, because they won't do a lot of extra damage if the enemy has shields or armor. Then again, regular unupgraded Longbows vs. guys without armor or shields are very effective.

Campaign events are cool. I can't speak for the others, but in this campaign gunpowder happens early (around turn 30?). Also, my faction leader Edward was invited to go on a Crusade and I accepted, so now he's off the map somewhere hopefully not getting killed. If he comes back, supposedly he'll be very powerful. There are other things but I won't spoil them...

The music is very good. It sets the mood well and I'm very pleased with the work they've done in the music department. The expansion doesn't come with a music CD but you can unpack the music file and get all of it anyway.

[This message has been edited by Smileyman007 (edited 08-31-2007 @ 03:17 PM).]

Stickied.

I've got the box out and read the manual (very impressive and has really wet my appetite, but I haven't had time to play it yet. Damn Real Life...

First I think it was something along the lines of thinking up a new theory, that the Gods above had put a ying to humanity's yang of war.
Then I calmed down.

The crusades campaign is excellent. Islamic factions can quite easily get a blistering assult going within the first turn, with large movement allowences and the crusader kingdoms slightly spread out with no heroes. However, CA have caught the balance just right with introducing the heros at the right time.
Even if you're winning battle after battle, to stroll into Eygpt as I did with the KoJ is murder (and the same, I guess, goes for any other homeland of the factions). One battle can tip the scales, and I was on the back foot until Richard arrived.

Diplomacy seems to work better as well. I've convinced the KoA that they really need to attack Eygpt, and in return I'll attack a few turks. And it's working, too.

I've been playing an Apache campaign, and it's way too easy. You basically have all of North America to capture (15 provinces) with no enemies other than rebels.

Wait till the French arrive, then it'll be fun.

Thanks for ruining it..

Im playing the teutonic knights and its almost laughable how easy they are. The pagan lithuains get destroyed so easily. I killed one unit of their fancy Samogitian Axemen, with one unit of regular pikemen. Also i destroyed a half stack with a one star general( went from no chevrons to 1 gold chevron) The only real problem is money. Once u choose the units ur making on the first turn, thats about all u get since u run out of money until a crusading noble comes. Im a little stuck since im getting attacked by novgrood and have about no units in my settlements.

Turn the settings off easy.

Novgorod by the way, not Novgrood.

Got to say that the teutonic campaign is very good so far, the units that they have are superb !! one unit of their elite swordsmen (sorry can remember their name, the ones with horns and things on thier helmets) can completle destroy nearly any other unit in the campaign!!! even against cav they can hold their own, and 9/10 completely kill the whole unit without losing less than 20-40 men!!

All i can say at this time is tha CA have created another SUPERB game that will last the test of time !!!!

Well Done !!!

- Lionheart

I agree with alman it hilariously easy to kill the lithuanians they suck!
But i also in the same sitchuation i have almost know unists in my settlements and novgorod is raining hell down on me from the north!!!! and west

For some reason I thought the Teutonic campaign was supposed to be played AS the Lithuanians..

well yes and no, the teutonic order and Lithuanians are the 2 factions in which the campaign revolves around, meaning that CA have created the chance for u to either destroy or protect, as both factions are completely different from each other.

My first thought: Never put anything infront on a manogel. It hurts when it explodes hakf a second after it's fired.

Well, I was disappointed at first, but I realised I was too impatient, chose the wrong factions to play with, made bad decisions... Right now, I'm very happy with Kingdoms because it's also the first game where I've got 100.000 florins and I already finished the Americas campaign as Spain(I'll post some screenshots in the thread). I'm busy with the KoJ and that is going quite well too. I find the Britannia campaign too hard, but Denmark is doing very well in the Teutonic campaign. Way to go CA!

[This message has been edited by DutchAver (edited 09-05-2007 @ 06:10 AM).]

EA

Crediting the wrong games company for a game is punishable by death.

He's from the weirdest city in all of holland, what did you expect?

Sorry, fool, fool, fool me. *Hits himself* *Edits* *Suicides*

[This message has been edited by DutchAver (edited 09-05-2007 @ 06:11 AM).]

I have played with most of the factions on all campaigns(of course haven't finished any yet) and I can say my impression:

Crusades: Best campaign.Includes historic facts which makes it very cool.Also the fights and strategies are very nice as well.

Teutonic: Worst campaign imo. Bad territory borders,the fights suck pretty much and it offers no real pleasure.

Brittania: Very nice campaign with good difficulty level and variety of opponents.Bad point is that it ends too fast as britain isn't that big.

Americas: The pleasant surprise for me.I expected it to be one of the worse campaigns but it was pretty cool and it has nice scenario.

Also I noticed that the AI level got REALLY improved which made me really happy.At least some serious opponent in the campaign map

[This message has been edited by julii_general (edited 09-06-2007 @ 03:31 PM).]

Ok I just got the game this afternoon but here are some of my thoughts from my sampling of each campaign:

Crusades (KoJ) I had a lot of fun with this one, it's very satisfying to destroy Egyptian hordes with my knights. I'm only about 25 turns in, the only problem so far was that Baldwin was assassinated!!! luckily Richard came about two turns later, but for a while there it was just Balian and a captain holding the Egyptians off! Great fun.

Teutonic (the Order) I got annoyed playing this one very quickly, because the first village I took was on some hill with only two pathways up, it took FOREVER to march up, lost more Ritterbruhers (or whatever it is) than I would've liked. Lithuania is pretty agressive, I held of their prince's full stack with my half stack on an assault mostly due to boiling oil (which I think is pretty balanced) but I've run out of money for the time being so it's pretty annoying so far. Oh well, I'm sure it'll get better.

Americas (New Spain) I was surprised at how awesome this campaign is. As the Spanish, your units are better than the natives, but you're nearly always outnumbered. I've run out of mustketeers and crossbowmen, basically, but that guy showed up on the Yucatan in about 1540, right when I was about to start attacking the Mayans anyway. The highlight: on their way to Chichen Itza they ambushed a Mayan captain, killed 400, captured 200, with an astonishing 20 casualties! Great stuff.

Brittania (England) I'm only 5 turns into this one, but I can tell it's going to be good. Your economy is in good shape, but the Irish and Welsh are in a position to rob you of your frontier provinces if they get the chance. I think this will be another one for the "great stuff" list in time.

I have only played the one campaign so far buty my first impressions are tha the games is as expected awesome. I am currently midway through a Mayan campaign and I enjoy how brutal the battles can be. The natives are no pushovers if you are the natives yourself Your elite units are only slightly better than the meso-american standard units so battles can be quite interesting. An example of this is Mayan peasants have 5 and 5 for defence and attack and the elite jaguar, temple guard and priests of Kukulcan have something like 13 for attack and 12 for defence. Ofcourse there are morale differences and the like but the differences are much less than other medieval games. Then there are the European armies that are fun to fight against because I am never confident of victory like I usually am in TW games especially if I am facing a full stack with 8 units of cavalry (with 2 hit points).

My only problem with the game is the lack of a few units I had hoped would be in the America's campaign. Most notably Tlaxcalan elites and Spanish war dogs.

I just lost my first (crusades)campaign. Playing as the byzantines, i was doing well but because KoJ was spamming alot of assasins i decided to only use captain armies to take them out. Well, it worked. Almost. Venice popped out of nowhere and took constantinople, killing all19 generals.

After playing Kingdom of Jerusalem a bit, then getting stalemated between some Jihad armies, I began working on making assassins and spies to level the field. If you use assassins right, they easily counter other assassins. Spies should help you find them. A downside is that the chavalry of your leader goes down (Baldwin went to 6 chivalry to 5 dread). Makes you think of Assassin's creed, though...

Love Kingdoms,

I've briefly tried each campaign and had a blast with each one.
I can safely say that this game will remain installed on my machine for a very long time.
I played RTW since it was released and loved it so much that I built a super machine ($2,500) from Tiger Direct to run Medieval Total War II and the expansion.

This game and definately the expansion are classics.
Bravo CA!