Is anyone else bummed at the lack of a Total War game set in between 1500 and 1700?
Especially considering that said time was A time of many wars...
INT is knowing a tomato is a fruit. WIS is knowing it doesn't belong in a fruit salad. CHA is convincing people that it does.I'm not really a gunpowder person, to be honest. Battles which involve essentially lining up two bunches of blokes alongside each other before opening fire until one runs away doesn't appeal to me. Of course thats a simplification, but I always find Medieval and Ancient era fighting to be a lot more fluid and flexible.
Ok, what the heck? I've torrented the Stainless Steel mod because I couldn't figure out how to fit the Filefront split files together again, and the other method takes for flipping ever. But while it now says 100% complete, it then goes to say "seeding". Now I've never used a torrent in my life, so I don't know what "seeding" is, let alone why it is taking longer to manage than the original download. I tried pausing it and then starting again, which moves it from saying "seeding" to downloading again, and apparently gives me a few "seeders" and "leechers", which I find utterly confusing? Anyone know what the heck this torrenting thing is about? I'm using Bitlet.
EDIT: Uh... I found it in my documents. Apparently it was indeed downloaded and present. No idea what the hell that was about. Well 'tis installing now.
edited 15th Feb '11 8:05:28 AM by GameChainsaw
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.^^ "Seeding" a torrent means that now that you have finished downloading, you are uploading parts of the downloaded files to other people who are downloading the via the torrent themselves. This will keep going until you reach the "Seed Goal," which is generally having uploaded the same amount of data as the size of the files you downloaded.
Fear the Gothilolions! | Anime listMuch obliged... had a feeling it might be to do with that. Something clicked in my brain.
EDIT: Whew... I'm kind of struggling to get to grips with Byg's Grim Reality Mod IV. So basically that means I have to spend a fortune on supplies every time I leave? And my nobles seem to leech off 2000-2900 every turn from my treasury.
I don't really understand it.
Further EDIT: Well now I do... blimey. And I thought the vanilla version was Perpetual Poverty. I'm gonna have to really work for my finances this time.
edited 15th Feb '11 12:40:04 PM by GameChainsaw
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.The hardcore gamer in me wants to keep going with this. (I've finally got a handle on it as the Venetians, just took Milan and moving on to Switzerland, while making up my usual maze of alliances with the HRE, Genoa, the Byzantine empire and the Sicilians, though I'm going to need more than just my neighbours as allies for this to work. Y'see, being allies with everyone means that if anyone initiates war, either on you or on another faction, you've got a window in to take them over legitimately without damaging your reputation.)
On the other hand, the more sensible, fun-loving side of me says that this is going to be a Europa Barbarorum style grind-fest which will take forever to get anywhere if I leave this on.
Also, cavalry seem to have gone from merely overpowered to mechanical killing machines of mass formation destruction.
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.Right then, PROGRESS REPORT!
Well, I decided to do a playthrough as England! God Save The King and all that!
First up on the map, york and Carnarvon... Caernarnvon? Whatever. With those two down, its on to Bruges, Rennes and Dublin!
This turned out to be a rather quick little string of conquests. I was able to keep my momentum and take Antwerp to. Huzzah! The whole of the English Channel is mine!
Whats this? No one went after Bourdeaux? Well its mine now! Hahaha!
Now its time for some infrastructure
(several turns later)
I'd like to make a note that, by now, I've been relatively "loyal" to France and its king, who was still "technically" MY king since all my lands were ruled in the name of normandy... And then France attacks me. Well in that case, its bloody death for all of them!
I quickly slam three armies out, and conquer Angers, Paris and Rheins. The core of the French Kingdom is mine! AHAHAHAAHA! Unforutunatley, the Pope is grandly pissed at me by now... But then he dies, and I use my four bishops to elect a sicilian pope. Then I'm given another two bishops as a reward for assistance. Looks like the the next pope will be mine!
All right, time to conquer the last of the french terretories, down in Marsielle and Zaragoza.
FACTION DESTROYED: FRANCE
By now I have all of Great Britian, the majority of France, and a territory in Spain. Look out Portugal, you're next to go into the jaws of England
edited 15th Feb '11 6:46:47 PM by badgertaco
TALOSTALOSTALOSTALOSTALOSTALOSJust took Cordoba off the Portuguese. Next up, capital city and game over Portugal!
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.So I finally finished my Evil British Empire game.
The last city I had to take was the faction goal, Jerusalem. While the entire Mongolian faction was stationed around it....
It already took me several turns to get a huge invasion force (remember how the "most powerful" achievement says that if you gather your entire army at one point, no one could defeat you? Yeah... I kind of had to do that. Then I waited another several turns just for the Monoglians to leave, which they didn't. Spent a few turns destroying the outlying generals, which i had to do manually because the computer is a cheating bastard. I had the army of my faction leader charge into Jerusalem backed by a few of my better generals.
Offff. Not cool. The auto resolve odds were something like 10 to 1, and it was a siege so I was at a disadvantage. the only way I could win is to batter down the walls and hope to storm the square and hold it for three minutes. Which is very unlikely with the huge garrison force and all the calvary reinforcements coming after me.
The battle required a lot of micromanaging, which meant i spent a lot more time in pause than actually playing. I sent light calvary to harass the like 5 reinforcement groups. I broke through the wall with artillery and surged my heavy infantry through. My AI allies of course did nothing smart and got most of their men killed.
I spent a hectic halfhour fighting through the city to reach the square, then killing the survivors, and then a nerve wrecking 3 minutes hoping some Mongol calvary dont charge in, which they do and I had to waste more time killing them. I think I was down to 3 formations of infantrymen, 2 calvary, and my faction leader (his son was killed in the battle) when I won.
BUT I WON. The Sun Never Sets On The Evil British Empire, Mwahahahah
edited 17th Feb '11 6:03:56 PM by Carbonpillow
The Blood God's design consultant.Can't do anything because the computer I installed M2 on is messed up, but I plan on continuing my war against the Holy Roman Empire as soon as it's back up and running and the Pope's "stop wailing on them" mission is over. After that, I will move my armies to Poland and destroy them, then to Milan. And I think that the English are my enemies, so a sea-invasion of the Isles is going to be necessary unless I can settle with them.
ARRGH!!!
Will the bloody smaller factions leave me alone!
An evening of bloody frustrations, constant expenses, difficult moral choices even within the frame of the game and constant bloody struggle. And all because of three people; the king of France, the Pope, and the Tzar of Russia.
The Russians have now invaded the Baltic sea, blockading Thorn, which I finally seized off the Polish, and while I drove them off the Swedish coast thanks to my militia (who are my pride and joy by this point, I can genuinely boast a militia capable of fighting off armies in many settlements now) and have since reinforced Stockholm with a proper army, the Russians and Polish are between them in total control of the Baltic sea, smashing my small baltic fleet in a battle off the coast of Norway. My main army is, meanwhile, stuck in a bloody stalemate in Poland thanks to Papal intervention that prevents me from going any further, while the Poles get off Scot free! (which is more than you can say for the actual Scots.)
Which brings me onto my Papal problem. Remember when I said I would not allow Sicily to come under fire? The Sicilians pressed the Pope a bit too hard. He's called a crusade upon Tunis, their castle in North Africa, forcing me to scramble an army over there to protect them. Thats what started this entire spiral into chaos. Meanwhile, the Venetians have launched a full stack from Ragusa into Southern Italy, a mere stonesthrow away from Rome, and Robert is an old man with an exhausted army that has just finished smashing the Germans into the dust once and for all in a truly epic struggle around Vienna. I've had to increase the size of the Roman militia to practically a full army, and Italy in general remains heavily garrisoned. On top of this, Venetian spies have been spreading so much unrest in Venice that I need practically a full stack there as well to keep order.
Thats fine. I can handle rampaging Russians, Poles Venetians and stacks of relatively cheap, well-drilled militia, as long as my precious, heavily developed trade-lanes remain undamaged. But this is where the French come in.
They went on crusade, and when I promptly, finally declared independence from them by breaking my alliance, they had the cheek to promptly threaten me in exchange for money. I refused, and was forced to raise no less than four different armies in three castles in order to man the French border adequately in addition to my Portuguese problem! Add to that a hasty conclusion to my war in Portugal (complete with the concession of Cordoba back to the Portuguese and compensation) due to the fact that I'd effectively attacked an innocent faction!
...and the bastard frog-eaters went and attacked me anyway, by attacking my Italian ports with their mediterranean fleet and cutting off the trade in one of the most vulnerable areas of my empire!
Now I face war with the French, renewed battle with the Portuguese thanks to them also joining the crusade, a pope who is frankly looking for an excuse to excommunicate me (or maybe he's praying I'll relent and reel the Sicilians in- fat chance) and at least two crusading armies to repel from the walls of Tunis once they finally get there. And its bankrupting me. I fell below 5000 florins last turn, and I was reporting peaks of 70,000 florins just a few turns before I had to raise half the men in Europe!
I'll be the undisputed, legitimate leader of Europe at the end of all this, and I swear, I'm going to take my "liege lord" the French kings head and stick it on a pike in the middle of Paris in the process!
But I'd better get on with that, because the Mongols have arrived, and while I'm going the rounds with Europes remaining powers, people are getting slaughtered... and the Pope is focussed on a rock in the middle of the Mediterranean! Its time for the true leader of Europe to step forward!
(In less flamboyant terms, yes, they're giving me a bloody nose here.)
EDIT: In other words, the French pulled off an incredibly poorly thought out Xanatos Gambit against their own vassal, the Russians are opportunistic pricks, the Portuguese should have quit while they had the moral lead, and will the Sicilians learn to fight already? Oh, and the Venetians should learn to die!
Further EDIT: Feck. Now I'm out of money too! And I ended up excommunicated anyway. The papacy broke the last straw when it asked me to back off from France. No. way. I've had enough. I gave the factions around me a chance; they want to drag this continent into a bloody war in which only one can survive, I'm going to damn well end it quickly. This'll be over by turn 80.
Afterthought: Also, Hungary just dog-piled me as well, the turn after I took Vienna. So thats me at war with every single European faction bar Sicily and plus Russia.
edited 18th Feb '11 4:06:08 PM by GameChainsaw
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.What is it, pick on the large, slow to anger nice faction day?
Well they paid for it. The gloves came off. I took Budapest, Krakow, the whole of France, Cordoba, (again) Pamplona, and I got Cagliari back for the Sicilians by finally moving against a pope I originally installed from my own faction. He's got days left to live. The Sicilians are besieging him and if they don't take Corsica, I'm going to finish them off for the Sicilians. When I'm through with the Papacy and Portuguese, the Venetians are next.
There've been some setbacks. The Portuguese took Bordeaux, my primary troop production centre in France! I'm about to retake it (Bloody battle where one of my auxilliary armies took down a much larger Portuguese force) but thanks to my own defences I can't take it with siege towers. I have to wait another turn, and the remnant of that Portuguese force might attack me. Nonetheless with Pamplona gone the Portuguese are living on borrowed time in the north, and I'm just looking for a chance to break through to the capital.
Oh, and the Russians smashed my fleet. Looks like I'm taking the long way to Riga and Novgorod. Taken Halych off the Poles too, not sure if I want to move beyond Europes borders though. The Mongols are out there somewhere and my now almost united Europe isn't ready to take the fight to them just yet.
EDIT: I sort of had a massive advantage over you. You had everyone surrounding you when they all went to war with you at once. I practically surrounded everyone else.
edited 18th Feb '11 7:12:05 PM by GameChainsaw
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.
Playing nice is frustrating. You have to learn how to set up long term Batman Gambit s. For example, I'm playing the Byzantines and i've set up a ton of orthodox priests near my (future) enemies' cities. Then I'll subterfuge their public order buildings away, leading to riots and rebellion in something like 40 turns.
And I have the economic juggernaut to back it all up.
All on turn 18 :P
The Blood God's design consultant.Something odd happened. I now control about 50 settlements, and I haven't changed my actions dramatically or anything, besides my declaring war on the Papacy, yet my relations with Sicily suddenly dropped to Very Poor (from Outstanding) and my reputation has changed from "Very Trustworthy" to "Despicable". Does this just happen automatically when you reach a certain size?
EDIT: This was interesting
for getting inside the AI's head.
edited 19th Feb '11 10:50:47 AM by GameChainsaw
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

Meh, you can always autoresolve it if you don't like naval battles. Just like Medieval II.
The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.