take a look at this
http://www.totalwar.com/community/medieval2.htm
this game looks freaking sweet. Much better than rome total war. I can't wait so I decided to share my excitement. I now know whats going to be on my christmas list this year :D

I still play Medieval: Total War now and again. I never bothered with Rome: Total War, it took far too many liberties with historical accuracy.

Medieval 2 looks very impressive so far, but there's still 9 months to go.

I have owned the original M:TW game since the first year of its production (or as I like to call it, 'way back when' ). It was, and still is, my favourite computer game. It was one of the few that made a good attempt to be historically accurate (especially with a mod or two).

Now, what I'm afraid of with this puppy is that it will go the way of Rome: Total War and lose much of the realism in favor of pomp and graphics. R:TW had Hastati leaping into the air when charging, six-minute battles that should take an hour, chariots killing horses merely by touching them, tiny maps, and an idiot AI. Not to mention it took five years to move from Sicily to Judaea, in the game, when Philip of France accomplished it in 21 days. While the ships were different, the difference in time shouldn't be that large.

This is excluding all of the obvious historical inaccuracies. *cough* Egypt *cough*

R:TW in my eyes was really just a play to the masses, and I hope M:TW 2 doesn't suffer the same folly.

Well, there's my rant.

Hey.... that preview looks nice. :)

I've spend a quite a lot of time on Medieval: Total war, though i never managed to finish on campaign ( too many battles per turn when you realm gets big, not enough spare time... ;) ).

I like the Total war-series for its rather realistic approach to medieval/ ancient battles. Maybe I'll take a look at Rome-TW, when it's a little cheaper...

What do you like/ dislike about "Rome"?

Well what i dislike about Rome is it got a little repetitive after a short while, I still play it but not as much. I also didn't like that you couldn't customize your cities like you can do in games like comand and conquer, it also had quite a few historical inaccuracies( thats why I downloaded an ungodly ammount of mods for it) I didn't like it that you couldn't pillage (they had a pillage button but I would have love it if you could commanded your troops to pillage and showed it happening, I also didn't like how small the battlefields were compared to medieval tw and there were no huts or farms outside of the city. But I still enjoyed the game.

Ah, if only my graphics card hadn't (literally) melted. Then I could get R:TR before going off to university.

In any case, I just hope they do the Russians justice. I was slightly bothered by the lack of lancer-type units in their repetoir in M:TW. The XL Mod put in Chernye Kobluki, which was a nice change, but I'd still prefer lancers that had heavier armour. You know, like real Boyars. (Though not quite 'Teutonic Knight' heavy)

One of the things I liked best, though, about R:TW that, so I've heard, they've gotten rid of in R:TR is War Dogs. They're historically accurate, from what I've read, and one of the coolest units, I think. Routing enemies? Chase 'em down.

Wish I still had a copy of MTW, got rid of it when I got RTW.

What a mistake.

I'm going to be cautiously optomistic about this next one.

I never thought I'd say this, but the compromises don't bother me that much. It's a game. I am interested in total realism, but I worry about what it would do to my compatibility. If you think the AI is dumb, then play against people.

My old fav was stopping the mongolian hordes by digging myself into a forest on a hillside with a couple of units of Varangians, all the Mercs i could get, and about 6 or 7 catapults...
The wait for the time to run out...
If you are lucky, the horde has nowhere to retreat, and you capture half the mongol royal family, wich will net you about 20 000 florins of ransom...
Ah, sweet gamieness...

The mongols start with a LOT of money, to keep them going even if the provinces they capture dont generate much revenue, and they have a huge army. If you capture a large portion of their nobles right away, they will spend whatever it takes to buy them back.
It's kind of a bug, but it works. If they dont controll any adjecent provinces, EVERYONE in a lost battle is take prisoner...

Edit: Ah, yes, it only works on the turn they appear

So in other words, you want to play either as the People of Novgorod or the Byzantines and you want to have conquored every single of the north eastern European/Asian provinces well in advance in order to ensure that you can capture the nobles.

If you are the byzantines or turks, and they attack both lesser armeina and Armenia (Dont remember the names... the one on the black sea coast and the one below it) and you win both battles, the ones in the southmost province will have nowhere to go.

They appear in 2-3 random provinces, from the one south of the one by the black sea, and upwards. Sometimes they will not start out in adjecent provinces.

It's been a long time since I played the game.

Not to sure one the number of florins, but it IS a ridicolous amount of money...

They will ALWAYS appear in lesser Khazar (in XL) or Khazar (in regular M:TW or VI). At least, that's my experience. They also appeared in Armenia in an XL game of mine as Kiev, and they appeared (occasionally) in Volga-Bulgaria on regular or VI. On VI what I prefer to do is amass Halberdiers in the region, and hide in the woods. It works for me! On XL I amass mixed Halberdiers and Rus Spearmen. Along with my best general, of course. What happens is they waste all of their time firing arrow volleys into the trees, and so 3 hours passes with insignificant losses (accelerated time, of course). 822 Kievan vs 5151 Mongol

What I find really funny, though, is that, apparently, in the first confrontation between the Russians and the Mongols, the Russians had more men.

On a note more appropriate to this site, I was surprised by the effectiveness of the Skutatoi or Byzantine Infantry. They don't look like much but they can be quite significant.