Medieval: Total War

After spending probably ~20 hours over the last weekend playing Total War, I think I should at least blog about it so it wouldn't seem like I completely wasted my weekend.

With my joystick broken, I decided that I should install another game to replace Freespace 2; I picked Medieval: Total War. So I installed it and decided to conquer Europe as the English. It went pretty well at first, took the British Isle and Ireland, wiped out the French, and then expanded across the North Sea to take Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The Holy Roman Empire was my ally so I was able to keep my eastern front lightly defended. As I was trying to be a goody two-shoe Catholic, I decided to charge down into Spain instead of taking out the Roman Empire. This is where I wasted ~10 hours, trying over and over to beat the fucking Almohad, or the much cooler sounding Arabic equivalent: Al-Muwahhidun. Actually, Spain was basically gone by then, wiped out by the Almohads. I was completely surprised to see ~4-5 stacks of troops along with the Almohad king and princes, which are all 4/5 star generals. My crappy English king was only a 2 star! On my first try, we fought to a stand off, with me desperately trying to hold on to Aquitane and Toulouse. The Almohad just ended up crossing the Mediterranean and took Provence and at that point I decided to give up. My German ally was building crusades into Spain at that time as well; needless to say they failed miserably and he just ended up pissing me off by stealing my troops as his crusade passed through my provinces.

On my second try I decided to tech before going into Spain; the Almohads didn't let me. With too much focus into teching and not enough into troop building, the Almohads charged in and I quickly lost continental Europe. I said fuck it and loaded.

During my second try I noticed how the Muslim infantry was able to plow right through my spearmen so I decided to go full infantry; I teched to Swordsmith and then pumped out feudal men-at-arms like crazy. I charged into Arragon with ~1400 men and faced the Almohad king's army of ~1300. And I RAPED him! It was a classic pincer attack, not to mention I had a nice map. I lured them uphill to face my infantry head on and then bought in my knights to flank them. The result: 1200 men killed compared to my 350 and I even captured and killed their king! The rest was basically mop up at that point and I just let auto-calc play for me. At around 6:00pm Sunday night, I killed the last Almohad heir in battle and destroyed their empire.

Oh yeah can't you tell I'm addicted by now?