Download game medieval war

Castles are, as youd expect the exact opposite. While these fortresses may be militarily mighty and provide a cornucopia of options when it comes to constructing armies and defensive structures including multiple layers of defence later on in the game , theyre about as economically viable as a pissed-up tramp asking for a loan while knocking back his fourteenth can of Special Brew of the morning.

Another new feature is the emergence of guilds. Every so often, one of these guilds will want to set up shop within your city walls and for a small price, you can reap the benefits that they bring to your provinces. Merchant guilds, for example, help cities to prosper economically, while Thieves guilds will bolster your nation's subterfuge abilities and cause the sudden mysterious disappearances of thousands of hub-cabs.

This subtle shift in settlement emphasis forces you to think about your every move even more strategically than ever before, ramping up the realism level and utterly immersing you in a Medieval world, where only the most ruthless and two-faced prosper. The Pope also plays a prominent role in deciding your nation's prosperity.

Having made a cameo-like appearance in the original Medieval, the Pope's role has been significantly bolstered this time around and now reflects his true influence throughout the medieval period. Making sure you keep His Holiness on side isn't just a necessity, but a serious challenge. Constructing churches and spreading the good news will help keep him on side, but making sure you don't attack too many Catholic factions is also paramount if you're to avoid being excommunicated.

Get on his good side, and hell show you favour. Displease him and hell order you to stop attacking your fellow Christians. This latter scenario also works as a subtle way of balancing the campaign, as it prevents you from becoming too powerful too quickly, and means you actually take the time to slow down your conquering exploits and enjoy the multitude of social and political options on the medieval menu.

Of course, the best way of keeping the Pope onside is by getting one of your own or an ally's cardinals elected. Once he departs from this medieval world and meets his maker, elections are held to find a new resident for the Vatican, and if your man amasses enough votes, then you'll be in for an easy ride for the next 20 turns or so. The Pope can also call Crusades, ordering you and your Catholic brethren to muster armies and march to the Middle East in order to 'reclaim' the Holy Land.

Should you decide to jump onto the Crusading bandwagon, your men will be sped along by religious fervour, allowing them to cover ground quicker than normal. Staying clear of the Pope's legion of roaming inquisitors is also highly prudent, as they're more than happy to unceremoniously bum any of your family members or generals who whiff even slightly of heresy. Of course, there's always the option of simply attacking the Vatican, but with the risk of incurring the wrath of every Catholic faction on the map, it's a hugely risky strategy.

Medieval H's strategic map is a hulking world of murder, intrigue and goodness. No major historical event is ignored, be it the first sightings of the Mongol hordes approaching Europe or the discovery of windmills. And with the map expanding to even more impressive dimensions when the Americas are discovered, this is unarguably the most enthralling Total War turn-based experience yet.

As evolutions go, Medieval II has certainly delivered, upping the stakes both visually and in terms of gameplay. While the slightly glitched real-time battles may not be ah that much different from Rome's, and naval battles and new multiplayer options are still conspicuous by their absence, there's simply no way that any self-respecting strategy fan can spend this Christmas doing anything other than rampaging across the world on a whirlwind of medieval conquest.

This latest evolutionary step for the franchise feels like the final piece of the jigsaw for the series in its current guise, filling in the omissions of the previous games with aplomb, while bolsterjng the strategic map to even greatfirFieights. However, its starting to feel as though the franchise now needs to take that next major step - be it naval battles or more detailed siege warfare or preferably both - in order to maintain the superiority that it's enjoyed over its competitors for so many years.

For the time being though, sit back and enjoy the evolution and all of the delightful tweaks and innovations it brings to this majestic series - because if The Creative Assembly sticks to its strategic template, then another Total War revolution could be just around the comer.

About three-quarters of the way through the game, you're in for a treat as an all-new Total War feature makes its debut and turns the entire campaign on its head. Suddenly, the Americas are discovered and a massive rush ensues as you and your rivals conduct a mad genocidal assault on the unsuspecting and incredibly rich Aztecs tribes. The nation that proves most successful in this conquest suddenly finds itself in a very advantageous financial position and the wealth to be gained can turn even the most redundant enemy into a superpower.

However, standing between you and bags of gold are tens of thousands of fanatical Aztec warriors, who make up for their lack of armour and technology with sheer numbers.

The first time you saunter up to an Aztec army, you'll be struck by the sheer magnitude of your task. Having these 3D models meant we could have far more visual detail over Medieval. With regards to building on Rome, the aim was to create a far more 'Hollywood' feel, so we added the variation in unit models, better combat choreography and better light controls.

From a production perspective, we really focused on quality and I think the look of the game is a testament to that, as well as to the quality of our artists. STATE AGENTS : Toose: "We wanted to give the player more ways to influence their finances, diplomacy and religion, but at the same time without creating any sort of heinous micro-management The new agents like merchants and princesses are really simple to use, and that was a key part of the philosophy in adding things to the game.

The new agents were a means of adding more depth without getting bogged down. Glastonbury: "Princesses were a part of the medieval experience that we felt couldn't be left out.

By adding the other agent types, we tried to capture the feel for the era. At the time, the three merchant city-states of Milan, Venice and Genoa were very powerful; by adding merchants, we wanted to capture that. This was the same for heretics and inquisitors. We're making castle walls even stronger in the expansion Kingdoms, so you may need several cracks at the bigger castles to succeed. We wanted to have multi-turn campaign sieges, where it would take several turns to complete the battle one layer of defences at a time.

In-between the battles, each side would be able to restock and regroup. We got the multiple defence layers into the battle engine, but the multi-turn sieges didn't make it. Adding castles reinforces this and you really want to have a powerful castle near the battlefront to keep your armies supplied with good troops. Toose: "By having two types of settlements we gave the player a lot more choice about how they gear any given region.

Castles produce a better spread of units, but cities make far more money. You need a combination of both to have the most effective empire. But Total War games are by their very nature, huge undertakings.

With a code-base the size of Medieval II there are always going to be bugs that we don't discover until the code is out in the wild.

Toose: "Bugs tend to cause both the biggest headaches in development, but also help to provide the most laughs. We had one where men climbed ladders with so much gusto that they managed to insert themselves into the chap further up the ladder. Glastonbury: "The funniest graphical glitch I saw was caused by a change to the collision system for soldiers that resulted in them getting massive repelling forces from the ground.

Men would randomly be thrown into the air, screaming and flailing. They were like popcorn in a frying pan. You get so close to the product that it becomes like a child and it's disappointing when a feature has to get cut for whatever reason.

Multi-turn sieges was one feature we couldn't include, and we also had plans to make further improvements to diplomacy and a completely re-imagined auto-resolve system. Toose: "There were a few features that we weren't able to put in like moats and being able to control reinforcement armies so you can assemble large forces effectively.

These are features we're including in the Kingdoms expansion. We just had self-belief and enthusiasm to do good work. So it came down to us being masters of our own future and the pressure that comes with that.

That's simply because creating good Al is really hard and the more complicated your game, the more complicated your Al has to be. Medieval II is really complicated and thus, we could always keep improving the Al. That's a ludicrous amount of stats to tune, and so more time would translate to better results. It's something we've examined again with Kingdoms. History isn't balanced, and so certain factions are harder to play than others.

We balance the game so that when you play in battle mode, each faction has strengths and weaknesses in its unit line-up. Beyond that, we let player skill and geographic opportunity dictate balance.

If you've played any of the Total War games before - most notably the latest instalment of the series, Rome - you'll understand my spontaneous impersonation of an incontinent Michael Flatley. Maybe you're even doing one yourself right now. After all, these pages are dripping with visuals so luscious they'd prompt even a year-old arthritic drunk to rise from his seat and dance around his colostomy bag from sheer delight But as you're about to find out in this, the world's first-ever look at the latest instalment of the all-conquering Total War series, Medieval 2 isn't just a visual feast - it's also packed with meaty goodness in the ganieplay stakes, too.

Having appeased Sefton with flowers, chocolates and enough cash to put down a deposit on a new house in his native Yorkshire 0. And so, with medieval torturing tools at the ready - just in case he wouldn't talk - I met up with said Smith for an afternoon of interrogation and song. Actually, was pretty much just interrogation, though I did have a rendition of Killing Me Softly ready, just in case the thumbscrew didn't work.

We're raising the bar right across the board from the campaign map to the historical and multiplayer battles. The overall structure and gameplay will be similar to Rome's, but it'll also incorporate some elements from the original Medieval such as the Pope and the Crusades. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess you've probably already taken a sneaky peek at the rest of the pages of this preview, drooled lustfully on the pages and maybe even contacted your bank manager to discuss the possibility of a loan to cover the cost of a new graphics card.

Well, for starters, you needn't panic if your machine's still packing a 'more mature' 3D card, because just like its predecessors, Medieval 2's titanic battles will be massively scalable to cater to the power of your PC.

And even though it's still too early to talk spec specifics, Smith seemed confident that Medieval 2 is set to be every bit as friendly to OAP cards and processors as Rome was.

However, numbers are king, and though undermanned and out-gunned armies can triumph, it takes superb generalship and some luck generally in the form of blunders by enemy generals. Fortunately, most battles are evenly matched and a real joy to fight. The camera system during battles requires some acclimation, but, once the system is mastered, you can quickly zoom in on hot spots and out for a broad view.

The latter, with thousands of soldiers marching towards each other, never fails to impress, but it's also tactically vital since smart enemy generals will frequently try to outflank you and using this view helps to sniff out the attempts.

The designers went to great efforts to ensure that tactical battles are both fun and realistic, and they succeeded. Flanking maneuvers are devastating, as they were historically, and your troops will not usually stand and fight to the death. They will run, and quickly, if you send them into a suicidal situation. The battlefield terrain must be a large part of every battle plan too, since all troops prefer the high ground.

This is where Medieval's true genius lies, and with more than units to send to their deaths, the replay value is near endless.

And that's even before we get to the Al. The 3D battles then, are unrivalled. But before you drown in a flood of euphoria from all these superlatives I've been liberally throwing around, there is a big but for you to consider.

Now don't get me wrong. Medieval has indeed displaced Shogun from the summit of strategy gaming, a war sim with no equal. But it could have been so much more. Medieval is a beefed-up version of Shogun, extending many of its ideas and regurgitating countless more. And you just can't help feeling a little cheated by this. We've waited more than two years for a sequel and what's here simply isn't enough of a leap forward. More of a determined shuffle actually. There are so many ideas that could have been implemented but simply aren't here see the Missed Opportunity panel.

And it's disappointing. The next chapter of the RTS revolution? Definitely not. Regardless of this though, it's still the ultimate strategy gaming experience, which will capture your heart like a rapacious Spanish Inquisitor.

Long live the King. It's been two years in the making, and while Medieval: Total War is a much more intense and strategically involved game then was Shogun: Total War , there are still enough problems to keep this latest game from earning a permanent spot on my hard drive. Like its predecessor, Medieval manages to blend real-time and turn-based strategy into a gaming system that works. But this latest game, set in a period of time from to rife with war, adds much more variety in the unit types and factions a player can pick from.

What makes this game so unique is the grand scale in which the battles take place, allowing players to control more than 10, men in a single army. The game is broken down into two parts: The heart of the game plays like an involved game of Risk , with gamers moving units and taking over provinces on a screen that depicts countries and continents.

This turn-based part of the game has been greatly improved from Shogun, making players manage a plethora of new details, helping to upgrade the Total War franchise from a simple game of Risk to the type of full-on strategy game you could spend weeks playing.

The second element of the game is the battles. Unfortunately Medieval relies on the original engine for this phase of the game, so while it's still fun to maneuver your 2D troops around the 3D landscape the graphics leave a lot to be desired. Multiplayer, for some reason only allows players to go head to head in battle.

In other words there is no turn-based strategy in multiplayer, instead you pick your armies and duke it out.

I thought for sure they would finally fix what I considered to be the biggest downfall in the original game: multiplay. To my chagrin, they didn't. Total War is a fun game to play alone and has great potential for replay, but don't count on it fulfilling your online gaming needs. Browse games Game Portals. Medieval: Total War. Install Game. Click the "Install Game" button to initiate the file download and get compact download launcher. Locate the executable file in your local folder and begin the launcher to install your desired game.

View all 16 Medieval: Total War Screenshots. Game review Downloads Screenshots New additions to the game do more to slow it down than to address this problem. For example, you can build Merchants, who can travel the map acquiring and making money from map resources. Merchants trading close to your capital bring in only a trifle, so the only real way to earn money with them is to send them all the way across the map.

There, they're vulnerable to being assassinated or taken over by rival merchants. For the minimal rewards, it's almost not worth the time. The religious aspects of the game also contribute to dragging out the campaign.

As mentioned, wrestling for political control of the Catholic Church is an interesting element. But moving priest units around the map and playing whack-a-mole with Heretic units that randomly appear and need to be denounced serves to slow down the game without really adding to the gameplay. The game's AI on the big map is sometimes flawed. Large, lavish, wealthy coastal cities are often left undefended -- easy targets for anyone with a stack of units and a fleet.

Within the real-time battles, the AI is a competent if not brilliant opponent, but will sometimes stand still and allow you to pelt it with arrows unopposed. Undefended coastal cities are just one flaw that can be exploited. For example, during castle sieges, once the enemy has retreated to the inner keep of a castle, you can run your troops into the town walls and then cross over to the inner castle walls, usually unopposed, even going so far as to open the gate for yourself.

None of these are major issues, but they pull down the campaign experience somewhat -- sometimes you feel like you're exploiting your way across the continent instead of winning it through grit and guile. It may have more detail, but you're fighting over essentially the same Eurasian and North African terrain as the previous title, which takes away from the game's novelty.

While the single-player game is clearly the focus of the title, the multiplayer mode is very polished. As with the other games in the Total War franchise, only the real-time battles are playable in multiplayer. A built-in server browser allows you to chat with your fellow Kings and quickly jump into a game. At the time of this writing, there were usually dozens of games being set up at any given time, with no problems connecting to any.

One-on-one matches with big armies were common, but it's possible to set up brutal eight-player throwdowns across a multitude of terrains. The only problem with the multiplayer is that some players couldn't handle large battles with their systems -- and if one player lags, the whole battle may lag. Players seem to be learning this. The best thing to do is stick to more manageable battle sizes.

Even "manageable" battles have over a thousand units on the screen, so multiplayer games definitely capture the feel of all-out warfare.