OOC Into The Dark Out Of Character Chat

[Simus]

Sure, that's fine. He'd probably know of the Psyrakons too. They were a well-off family before the Thalmor hit and after they hit it was all over the news. So he'd know them at least by reputation.

 

[Drahkma]

Yeah. And it's been a little while, so I figure that's why neither of them recognized each other right off the bat. It's not like they've interacted in the past.

Also, I should probably clear up something. By the time of this RP, Ardus has already been in Skyrim for a little while. Working for the empire. Since it makes no sense for him to come to Skyrim while there's a ceasefire on.

 

[Madrar]

I just started a Grand Campaign last night but It pretty much looks like Rome: Total War 2.0. Interesting features and much, much better graphics. I infiltrated an imperial spy into a rebel town and got an epic movie for it! Such archeotech was unleaded of in Ceaser's time! We'll have to play Dabs when I get some experience with the new units.

In ze meantime I vill conquer for ze Kaiser under ze Reich! Go vis God!

So, how's your campaign going? Fav. units?

I prefer Teutonic Knights. Supported by Pavise crossbowmen to tear apart infantry before they can charge,, unmounted knights to take down enemy spearmen, and armoured sergeants to protect the crossbowmen from cavalry charges.

 

[Simus]

Right now it's around turn 25 and 1108. I'm focusing on uniting Germany and northern Italy. Mostly I'm fighting rebels and I had a brief but intense war with Venice last night. They sieged Vienna but didn't actually use their battering ram the first time around and I didn't have nearly enough men to fight them in open field, so I had to crank up the game speed to 6x and just...wait for the timer to run out. This happened twice and I amused myself by bitching about it to Dabs on Steam and asking her how merchants work. Took a little time to figure out lol. There's also one heretic literally stuck in the mountains in southern Germany that I can't get to but is converting my good Catholic citizens. This was the first heretic I found so I didn't know how priests worked. I've since found others which I have...absolved in true Imperial fashion.

Those bugs aside, things are progressing nicely. There are so many nice changes over Rome: Total War and Medieval still plays exactly like that great old game. I'm taking the rebels city by city and have really had some fun battles. One battle today involved siegeing a stone castle garrisoned with armoured sergeants and heavy cavalry and I had a force of largely militia spearman and three generals with a retinue of fewer than 20 each. It was my first time using ballistas, my first siege weapon however, and they brought back some great memories. Being able to move your siege engines into a city is the best upgrade ever and the ballistas that made it past the enemy's gatehouse and fire arrows were crucial in whittling down their superior spearmen. I captured Venice itself from the Venitians and their siege of Vienna was so costly thanks to my tactics taking it back was piss easy. They're not a threat anymore and I can focus on the rebels.

The Pope is another matter. I've gone out of my way to please him, dutifully accomplishing all his missions. Then I have heretics pop up in my empire. The one heretic I mentioned above that's stuck? He's still there and draining my relations. Things have gotten bad enough to where an Inquisitor has been deployed outside Rome, presumably to check up on me at some point. On top of that, the Pope commanded me to launch a Crusade in Cairo, which I can't possibly do right now. I'm surrounded by potential enemies and can't spare the men to go to the Holy Land. Even if I could, do you know how long it would take to get there from Germany without controlling southern Italy? A long time, that's how long. Much longer than the time limit the Pope gave me. So I expect to see some trouble from him in the future.

As for my favorite units things are still pretty basic but I've seen what works and what's coming ahead from reading FAQ's online. Spear militia are my bread and butter right now. Whatever bodyguard I have with my generals is an excellent shock force and mailed knights are an awesome luxury. Peasent archers are nice ranged support but now that I have ballistas I'll probably start phasing them out. I'm looking forward to getting catapults so I can rain long range death upon armies and cities. Massed onager fire won battles in R:TW without my other units having to do much work. I'm just now able to build armoured sergeants and I'm looking forward to phasing out my spearmen, who will in turn phase out peasents and town malitia I'm currently using to keep order in my cities. I'd like to have units that can actually fight in a emergancy you know? And free upkeep for certain units is another awesome upgrade for this game.

I'm looking forward to gothic knights because they sound awesome, as well as crossbowmen, dismounted knights and better archers. Obviously I'm looking forwards to gunpowder as well, preferably cannon.

Going is slow as far as conquering as many of the towns and castles I'm conquering are so basic that I can't retrain the units that conquer them. This is a problem for constant expansion as I usually take at least 20% casualties in any battle and must replace my losses before I move on. A unit of 12 spearmen is a waste of good men if you try and use them on the battlefield. I'm also having trouble with spies and assassins, though diplomats are easier to use than in the "last game". I'm making a much bigger attempt at using agents this time around and I like the idea of conquering cities without needing to declare war by killing agents and stirring up riots. It feels like something Salthar would do to build an empire and it...pleases me.

Overall though, it's a great game. Rome: Total War but better in every way.

 

[Madrar]

Word of warning: Enemies will bribe your troops if your not careful. And the further you fall out of favour with the pope, the more Catholic kingdoms will attack you. Right now, I'm allied with England, and at war with Milan,Sicily, Poland, France and Denmark. But after the Danes killed my heir, I sent three full armies to teach them a lesson. They now have one army, one city, and they're bankrupt.

 

[Simus]

I don't believe this. I have one rookie spy that fails every mission I send him on. Not even save scumming can save him!

 

[Simus]

How the hell do you level spies and Assassins when the game just decides if they suck forever or not?

 

[Dabiene Caristiana]

There is some advantage regarding spies and assassins. There are assassins guilds, and thieves guild buildings. If you recruit Assassins and/or Spies from city with said building respectively, they get a Journeyman bonus (depending on if those two buildings are Master or not). Kill diplomats and lowly captains. Spies I find do better in cities or doing espionage on the captains. That's a great start. France started bribing my diplomats so I couldn't have them travel anywhere far (I killed them for turning traitor, Karma be a bitch man) and I have killed the Pope several times to earn my favor. After having a ton of churches and cathedrals built I had about 6 or 7 cardinal seats taken. The catholic church is now pretty much at my disposal.

Here is a link for all the pictures I've taken (you can see the mini map as to where the picture is located.)

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198050491059/screenshots

I set it to friends only unfortunately. If I knew Madrar's name I would invite him to look. I changed the turns to this:

Default: 1 turn = 2 years
Mod (by self): 1 turn = .5 years

Characters age half a year. So by vanilla or default you would end up with a 140 year old family member before they die. Which is... disturbing. As a result you have 800 turns for the long version of the main campaign, 400 for the short I think. Plenty of time to enjoy the game and take a slow leisurely pace.

17 settlements captured, none have ever rioted.
at least 1 priest/bishop/cardinal in settlement
at least 3 huge cathedrals
207 turns at least have passed (equivalent of 103 years or more)
Spain and Scotland have been destroyed.
Venice only has one settlement
Poland has only 2.
Cairo has been a crusade target 3 times
Jerusalem has been targeted for crusade once.
Never been in debt
Highest money to ever hold: 44k
Currently ranking in all categories.

I hope I don't sound like I'm bragging. Honestly this was at medium difficulty and I almost always play on easy so I thought I wasn't going to do well at all! France and the Holy Roman Empire have been battering at me constantly. Denmark has been waring and having peace talks with me off and on. I was at war with the Papal States once due to failed assassination.

Turkey has also been battering down Byzantium with constant Jihads. Egypt is holding up strong despite having 3 and now 4 crusades against their towns. Russia also had Poland as a client state, and is now at war with them.

... I think that's it. Milan is also having difficulties. Spain and Portugal were excommunicated many times. I was myself about 3 times with little effect (lucky all those times a crusade was already happening, so no crusade on my cities).

All in all, I'm going good so far. I have 690 turns left so I think I'm good on turns. No rush. Maybe I'll try hard next time. Though I doubt that will be a good idea

I'm just wondering what all the unrest is. I had a really good Governor and for some reason I had low ratings in the town. Odd. I got your bug too Simus, I sent in spies and they all got slaughtered by french guards

 

[Simus]

If there's a time lint that concerns me. I have the default time passing so I have a mere 200 turns to get my plops done? That's not a lot of time.

 

[Dabiene Caristiana]

I had to use cheats when I first played because of the time limits. 400 is good, but 200? So I looked it up was to why it was so.

Turns out the game can be self modded (as I stated) and some suggested that 1 turn = 2 years is a fluke or a bug made by game devs. Although others said that the devs were very encouraging for modding so they just left the game as it is, and let gamers and modders take over. (talk about lazy)

Here is the process of editing turns. This file also contains the factions that are unlockable or unplayable/playable.

Steam > SteamApps > common > Medieval II Total War > data > world > maps > campaign > imperial_campaign > desc_strat (5th or 6th one down)

A careful thing to remember is to allow administrator privilege to edit the file (as well as any users you do use) so you can edit it. Or just uncheck 'read only' in the properties box.). After the file is opened looked to the spot that says something like this:

start_date 1080 summer
end_date 1530 winter
timescale 2.00

Edit this line: timescale 2.00

Anything lower than 0.50 (half a year) will be treated as 0.50. Short campaign is 200 or 400 turns long (can't remember), and long version is 800 on the 0.50 setting. Very immersive since characters age appropriately now.

If you do decide to unlock factions as well (maybe you do, maybe you don't, I like the satisfaction of unlocking it through hardcore gameplay) copy and paste the unlockable factions onto the playable factions, then delete the factions from the unlockable list that are now playable (common sense). Papal States are NOT playable. Neither are the rebel/slave faction. The game WILL crash. Same thing with the Mongols and Timurid peoples since they have an event date and don't exist at the beginning of the game.

Anyway, it's there is people need it. Now if you excuse me... I'm going to take a nap, and later post for Blood In The Arena.

 

[Drahkma]

Okay, little announcement. Shaded and I have been working on a RP taking place in Cyrodiil. Don't mean to advertise, just a heads up. It'll also tie in with this for some of the posts I have planned.

 

[Madrar]

Oh my....I just found a warhammer mod for medieval 2 kingdoms. And you can play as vampire counts....now I just need to figure how to install mods on steam games. And pray it's not a zip file. I hate zip files.

 

[Drahkma]

Hmm...sounds interesting. I might just have to go out and get the game(s)? Does the mod have the Brettonians? They're my favourite. Followed closely by Wood elves.

 

[Madrar]

I beleive so.

 

[Dabiene Caristiana]

I hate steam and skype... My poor baby... My poor laptop. Fried before it's prime

 

[Madrar]

Well, turns out, it's a lot more complicated than I thought...but, if I do it properly, I should manage to avoid fluffing everything up...

 

[TheCaptain]

so many games I could play but which to choose, Black Flag, ME 2 & 3 or Fable 2? hmm decisions decisions

 

[Simus]

Hey Skies, did you miss the fact that Simus and Alice just admitted that the Thalmor chased them out of Cyrodiil and forced them to join the Stormcloaks for protection? As in they're still wanted by the Thalmor? Because in your post Vivi completely ignored that issue. Which would be really important for him.

 

[Wolfbane]

Hey Skies, did you miss the fact that Simus and Alice just admitted that the Thalmor chased them out of Cyrodiil and forced them to join the Stormcloaks for protection? As in they're still wanted by the Thalmor? Because in your post Vivi completely ignored that issue. Which would be really important for him.

I think I just outted them in public hahahaha. Whoops

 

[Dabiene Caristiana]

Oooooh someone's in trouuuuble