So I did what I have a bad habit of doing this time of year. I bought a computer game. In this case, I bought the gold edition of Medieval Total War II for about $11.
It’s a little different than what I expected. I have not played it enough to be sure if this is a good thing or bad thing. To be honest, I have not played it enough to figure out what is going on.
I started the game on a day when I didn’t feel like thinking much. My plan was to play as England and unlock the game and play the cooler (harder) factions at a later date. Since I wanted to learn the game, I did not set the difficulty levels all the way up. I think I have it at next to highest level for tactical level combat and one level below that for the strategic game. I figured that with this easy set-up, I would be well on my way to winning the game in the time available.
It didn’t work out that way. It took me a lot longer than expected just to take England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. As far as mainland Europe is concerned, I only have one more province than I started out the game with. And it remains to be seen how long that will last.
Normally, this would be an unreservedly good thing. But in this case, I am not sure how much of my difficulties stem from improvements in the AI and how much it stems from the fact that I just don’t understand the game yet.
One undoubted highlight….
The A.I takes cities.
Example: France sent multiple armies against my provinces in France when they back-stabbed me. These armies were not that strong. But they were strong enough to overwhelm the weak garrisons I had guarding the areas. I was relying on my uber-stack to beat back the hordes. But this did not work so well against a multi-pronged attack because the French did not wait around to starve me out. Instead, they kicked down the doors as soon as they built the necessary equipment. So by the time my uber-stack got there, it was going to have to be a siege operation.
And of course, there was that spy that opened the gates for the Germans when I was counting on them having to take at least one turn building siege equipment.
And then Spain invaded Wales.