When The Creative Assembly (TCA) came out with Shogun:Total War, it was to thunderous applause. In fact, the only thing that drowned out the critical accolades (we gave it SGO's EDITOR'S CHOICE award, as well as Best of 2000 Award) was the nearly immediate cry for MORE! Responsive to their fans, TW quickly came out with an expansion pack called Mongol Invasion. This slaked the market's thirst for a while. But TCA had more up their sleeve - a LOT more, as it turns out.
Medieval:Total War is the much-anticipated sequel to the groundbreaking success of Shogun:Total War, taking that outstanding battle game to Europe in the Middle Ages. This is no mere port, mind you, with a half-dozen new units and some different music. Not even close. M:TW takes the core of Shogun (the gorgeous tactical combat) and not only improves it but also revamps Shogun's underwhelming strategic layer, making what had been little more than a battle generator now a respectable strategic game in its own right.
From the start, Medieval looks a lot like Shogun. The strategic screen looks deceptively similar, but this first glance hides a huge improvement in the strategic game layer. Both Shogun and Medieval divide the map into provinces. Facility construction and force composition are handled at this level, as well as the movement of armies and diplomats. But the similarity ends there. In Shogun, that was about it - the strategic part of the game really served as little more than a glorified battle generator with some minor economic management functions.
Medieval is a far deeper game, but not so much so that it's hard to manage. Firstly, there are the victory conditions. At the start of a game, you can select the classic 4X game domination condition, where you simply have to conquer 2/3 of the provinces on the map to win. Better, you may choose to win through Glorious Achievements, where you are given a list of Europa Universalis-style missions such as the subjugation of a specific province or the construction of a particular thing in a particular place by a given date. Complete this list, and you win.
Secondly, there is the whole concept of personalities. Adding a faintly RPG-like function, each commanding general has a rating in various traits such as dread, command, acumen, and (importantly to you) loyalty. Further, each has personality quirks that modify how provinces and troops behave. These range from the pedestrian (Pious, Cowardly, Lustful) to the creative and amusing (Crack-Brained, Secret Adultery, or Impressive Scars). A great feature is that these traits are completely dynamic. As you expand your territories (or notice that a General's loyalties are fading) you can grant them temporal or secular titles such as Duke of Castile or Metropolitan of Moscow, bumping up their loyalty as well as one or two other ratings. These titles are actually indicated on the strategic screen, which is clumsy since they add clutter to an already-busy map. It also appears that these titles' bonuses are fixed themselves, so awarding a good general the provincial patent of the captured enemy capital may not be the highest-value thing you can give him.
A General's actions also affect his quirks, so a General who releases rebels may get "Magnanimous"(and a higher popularity which can make him a useful provincial governor). A bloody-minded General who routinely slaughters prisoners will usually be feared (have a very high dread rating), which ironically also can be useful in a provincial governor. Hesitant to throw your precious king into combat? Don't be surprised if the public regards him as cowardly after a few years.
You royal nobles are a special commodity: lose all of them and you're done. Expanding your dynasty is an important task, so every king breathes a sigh of relief when his first heir is born. NOTE: this is a medieval simulation, set in the era of Salic Law long before the Pragmatic Sanction, so your sons (only) serve as Generals and potential heirs. This doesn't mean there's nothing for the daughters to do! Daughters are a priceless diplomatic resource, able to move around the map as a diplomat (i.e. into enemy provinces) serving as a spy and go-between. In the appropriate circumstance, she can be offered in wedlock to seal an alliance or bring a conflict to a close. Further, if she marries into a family and that line dies without an heir, her original family then usually gains a hereditary claim on those lands! Don't wait too long however, a princess too old to wed late 20's, usually will be deactivated as she retires to a life of quiet contemplation. A long-lived monarch can expect to have an extensive list of children /
in one of my campaigns King William of England had more than 20 children in his 60 years (his oldest son Alfred was 58, so Billy was a rather precocious kid)!
The economic game is also greatly expanded, with a much longer list of provincial improvements than in Shogun, including a number of culturally-specific buildings for the different nationalities. This increases the variety of development outcomes for a given province, and improves gameplay a lot. Medieval also offers three different starting eras with the usual slight variation in starting locations, as well as later eras starting the player's provinces with a swath of the improvements already developed. This is great, and allows even a non-economic player a chance to explore the later stages of the tech tree, if they simply choose a more developed era for play.
Religion was a serious issue in the Middle Ages, and M:TW makes sure to include it. Catholic, Orthodox, or Islam, all the major players are present along with their particular units and specialties. Provinces have religious affiliations making them more prone to revolt against a heretical overlord, and wars between Christians are constantly interrupted by appeals from the Pope for peace. Personally, I think he's a little too intrusive; I don't recall the pope weighing in that much in the 100-Years' War. Ignoring him can prove fatal, however, as he can excommunicate and eventually call a crusade against you. Both Catholic and Muslim player states can also call Crusades or Jihads respectively, if they've built the requisite structures.
Of course, the core of the game is the battle simulator. When two or more opposing armies end up in the same province, you are given an option of retreating (for wussies), letting the AI instantly resolve the battle, or fighting it yourself. The AI does a competent job and can be trusted to win walkovers with minimum casualties. However, the human brain is usually a better bet on the close ones. I found that with a favorable mix of troop types, I could routinely beat the computer army even with 1:3 odds.
The tactical portion of the game is much like Shogun. Your troops are rendered in 3d glory, up to several thousand individuals in each army standing in serried ranks like a giant miniatures game. The game literature says you may have up to 10,000 individuals in a battle, but as far as I can tell you can have up to 16 units x 200 guys = 3200 individuals on the field for each army actually in play which is still darn impressive. If more than 16 units are in the battle on a side, they are held off as reinforcements, entering when a unit has routed or been annihilated. This is an appropriate place to point out that there is a good reason to keep the unit-rout command in mind. Rout that useless 5-man remainder out of combat, and you get the slot open to enter your fresh 120-man knights as reinforcements!
Medieval has a very much broader mix of terrain types (373 different maps!), as well as the possibility of semi-realistic sieges. It isn't Stronghold, mind you; attacking castles is little more than doing some damage points to knock down a wall (even a light cavalry unit can manage, eventually), while the units inside get some cover and opportunity fire until the wall/gate is down. Larger and more advanced fortifications mean more units can shelter inside, and the towers' fire becomes progressively more lethal. Weather is a dynamic effect that can change during a battle, and climate is the basic condition of the province. Both weather and climate affect missile fire, fatigue, and visibility.
The tactical screen has a better interface than Shogun, and the camera control is still superb. There are more army and unit formation options, but I didn't find myself using them too much. Units give you more information back as tooltips, such as worried by so many casualties or happy flanks are protected. The managing of reinforcements is better than the total lack of control in Shogun, but remains pretty clumsy.
While it was clear that TCA spent a great deal of time improving the strategic layer, their improvements in the tactical game are less evident. Certainly, the AI is much better than Shogun. AI units now use cover and concealment for sneak approaches and maximized defensive strength, and don't fall for obvious feints quite so completely. The graphics are even prettier than before, the battlefields ranging from the lush, thickly wooded Scandinavian uplands to bleak Algerian deserts. I loved the dust kicked up in a desert battle, it "felt" absolutely right. Sometimes the battlefields are a little too expansive. When battling a small defender in a cluttered terrain, I found myself sometimes racing scouts all over the map just to try to find the defender. Maybe I'm just particularly stupid, but given the generally mutually consensual nature of Medieval combat I don't think a better indication of general enemy location on the large-scale map would be too amiss.
The music, as with Shogun, is really good. Contextual scoring changes the background music based on what's happening, so sometimes your first subtle warning that enemy troops are debauching from their start line is the intensification of the music. I found neither the tactical music nor the strategic map background to be repetitive in the slightest usually a danger in a game like this which holds a player for hours on end!
Maybe I'm jaded, but I found the battles still slightly arcadelike. The wargamer in me cries out for at least the optional implementation of multiple battlefield entry directions, order-issuance delay, and above all, limited command radii. Units in Medieval are still far too flexible and easy to control, especially at ridiculous distances across the map. Making the unit behavior much more linear, ballistic, and irretrievable a compromise between Medieval and Legion would be perfect would make Medieval more useful as a simulation, but might not be as interesting to the casual gamer. Dependent commands like "protect this unit" are not available, either.
Tip to new players: if available, a large unit of horse archers is priceless in any Medieval battle. They are quick, so they can race to the flank to harry advancing units (sometimes convincing them to turn and give futile chase). They can then range freely in the enemy's backfield annihilating any siege weapons or cannon. Playing against a human, hell probably be doing the same thing and cancel you out (an utterly realistic outcome in historical accounts) but the AI simply can't cope with it.
So far we've talked only about the greater campaigns, but there are lesser campaigns and single-player battles in the box, too. More than 20 historical battles from Agincourt to the Horns of Hattin are present in the form of linked campaigns. These have no strategic component, but are a challenging series of sequential battles. Unfortunately, they are not dynamically linked, so your atrocious losses in one seem to have no effect on subsequent battles, as long as you win. Some of the campaigns (namely that of Richard the Lionheart) are linked also, so that you have to succeed as Saladin first, which I frankly don't quite get. There are a few single battles to play, but by far the most interesting historical battles are buried in the campaigns.
If you're missing a battle such as Ain Jalut, add it yourself with the basic map and battle editors included. They are certainly not idiot-proof (in fact the map editor is totally not supported), but they are very powerful and should allow the community to contribute all the great battles of the eras presented in short order.
Multiplayer needs some work, but is fun nonetheless. Firstly, there is no multiplayer strategic game, which is a crying shame. It's finally a good strategic engine, but TCA missed a beat by not allowing you to wield it against a human. The battles are fun, once you get them going. My version refused to save the cd-key and login information, so every single time I played multiplayer I had to retype itgrrr. (If I'd just RTFReadme.txt, I'd have seen how to fix that.) I couldn't get a game hosted, but I joined several just fine. You can have up to eight players (4 v 4) online, although this is tough because at least one is invariably on 56k, which makes lag rough.
The documentation is pretty skimpy, but I'm not sure if it's TCA or the new box form factor that is mainly to blame. Despite the small manual size, they've managed to cram every subject in the game in an 80-page manual. I definitely missed a longer overview, especially recalling the terrific pdfs included in Shogun. Granted, this is partly inherent to the widened scope of M:TW itself: a survey of the 400-odd years covered by M:TW would be a major reference work. Mostly absent are any real statistics of units except actually in the strategic game. This hurts the worst while playing the linked campaigns. If I haven't played the appropriate state in the strategic game, how do I know what the difference is between Alan Mercenary Cavalry and Saharan Cavalry? Is a 40-man force of Teutonic Knights better than 20 Royal Knights?
Despite this, M:TW is as easy or easier to play as Shogun. The strategic game is sometimes an exercise in micromanagement (as were latter-turn games of Shogun). Fortunately, the difficulty settings in M:TW are really useful. "Easy" games are perfect for the novice, and for the casual player that wants to build an empire. "Hard" games are probably going to be most popular with your average seasoned wargamer, combining decent challenges on the battlefield with an opportunistic strategic AI. If you feel up the challenge, try Expert. But be warned: the economic model will become extremely tough as the standing forces required to quell the constant rebellions quickly become too much for even the most robust budget. (As the Late Medieval Russians, I decided to try securing my flank by first knocking off the recalcitrant Finns. My mistake. I took the cream of my army northward, hoping a quick easy fight would mean a good batch of experience for my core troops. Certainly, I routed the provincial defenses and snapped up the fort within a year. But in the subsequent turns, rebellion flared. My 381 men were suddenly besieged by 1800 rebels and massacred.)
Looking at M:TW broadly, you immediately see its Shogun parentage (and I'm not just talking about the intriguing Geisha.bif file or the 500+ kb Shogmaps.bif in the game directories, either). The good strategic/tactical integration, the outstanding tactical battles, the drop-dead gorgeous settings, and dynamic music all hearken strongly to Medieval's illustrious ancestry. But this is no case of laurel-resting. The Creative Assembly took their tremendous experience from Shogun, leveraged it with a great deal of very hard work improving weak points, and have produced another outstanding game which sets a yet higher hurdle for its competition. The strategic layer is practically an entire game by itself, made better by the ability to get down 'n dirty on the battlefields. Medieval: Total War is wonderful to play, takes a long time to master, and is even a pleasure just to watch. What more could anybody want?
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Reviewed by Steve Lieb.
