for those who want to buy this game, heres another one of my long detailed reviews for your reading pleasure....
The Bad: naval battles are still not in real time, mulitplayer lacks campiagn mode, you need to play the game on hard and up to recieve an aceptable chalenge.
ive been playing the total war series since the first medieval total war, and this game in comparision is totally the best in the series, better than rome, although romes setting is still cool. the game starts you out with a handful of playable factions, all of which are christian/catholic or whatever.... and these include england, france, germany, spain, etc. and once you complete the campaign once you unlock all the other factions, alot of which are the opposite religion of christians. Roster of the unlocked factions are the egyptians, moors(which in the original medieval had a different name but these guy are still the same), bryzilanties, russians, poland, holand, danish, turks, islam, milan(which is italians, with new name?), venice, sicilians, portugal, and scotland(which was not aviable in the original game-they were rebels. factions that are not aviable are the papal states, monguls, and the aztecs, and the monguls and aztecs are only avaible later on in the campaign game, monguls come first and then the aztecs.
religion really is important now, it can help the moral of a city or castle by having a priest present(catholic), and the pope really watches what you do, and wont be passive. if you continue to attack you catholic neighbors then you will recieve notices of your level of favor with the pope, which can rise as drop all it takes is time. crusades are called and you are "asked" to join but you dont have to, resulting in losing favor with the pope, and or being excomunicated(but only if he really hates you already). no longer will a crusade army run through your lands and steal 20 or so men from each unit you have, like it did in the first medieval TW. if your not a catholic faction then no worrys about the pope except as an enemy.
diplomacy is totally better now. per turn you can have one of your diplomats talk to a charaters and set up deals, and each of your diplomats can only talk to a single character per turn, unlike in previous games where you could demand the same thing over and over from the same guy and then he finally settled for something. and you can only ask someone something twice and if they sya no twice they will end negotiations for that turn until next time. for example you cant demand for map info/money over and over, it wont work anymore. and depending on what you ask for or demand will afect the countries feeling toward you, if you ask to be allies and trade rights, they will be very happy and see you as a good friend, and maybe you can ask for their map info, but usually you should offer your map info to to have them accept, and they may accept, but it will tell you how happy they are for each thing asked or discussed. so different kinds a happy and diff kinds of refusal. really smart diplomatic system, and it provide you with alot of info on your relations with the other country, as well as wealth, power, and reputation. your reputation is the longest changing thing, for example i usually play nice with my neighbors for a little bit and it shows me my reputation is reliable, with the ally that just attacked and betrayed me had their reputation change from what ever it was to dubious or something. and this affects negotiations, etc.... Your "standings" with the other factions will pop up every so often showing you how things are going between you and some nation, things like war, and bad diplomatic talks affect this. even a third party nation can start to dislike by lets say if you attack their ally.
ai: the ai is much improved on the HARDER difficulty settings, no longer will the enemy send small armies at you(although they still do, just rarely), they usually send a force equal to that of the target, such as you army size or garrison size. although that doesnt mean they wont send a huge army once they have it. but the enemy now has huge armies throughout their territories so their not push overs anymore. enemies armies are more balanced now, and dont specialize in any one type of unit. The enemy now longer plays chicken (im talking about when they used to run at your troops and then just before clashing they'd run away), they 'll flank you if your not carefull, etc. although they still do just stand there and take arrow fire up the ***, but since most enemy armies you encounter will include archer units, your own units will at least recieve some return fire. the enemy attacks you where your weakest.
the graphics are better, especially the weather during battles, and the sound really makes the expierence really better, its really intense to turn up the speakers and listen to the rain fall and the thunder as you army marches toward the enemy, you can even hear the rain hitting the metal armor! and the rain and snow effects look really good, best so far in this series.
cities and castles really make you think about your placment of each, cities produce militia units, which includes foot soldiers, archers, horsemen, etc. but castles are your real army producers, and the best new feature present in this game is the production pool, depending on how big your castle or city is will determine how big your pool is, and the the pool is the number of units you can build per turn, so a medium size castle can produce two to three units per turn, but the number of units you can produce is limited to the number of max reinforcments, for example a barracks(level 3 footsoldier structure) can sustain up to four swordsmen, and four spearmen, once you use up these numbers you have to wait a few turns before these numbers replenish themselves. castles make less money than cities but maintain a higher level of happyness ofr the population, so the trade off is deep either way you go.
reurning features like a Generals loyalty are nice to see again, and a rulers authority over his rule affects loaylty, etc. everything else remains mostly the same from rome but a more enhanced version of it.
guilds are a new addition that seek you out not the other way around, and if you want your troops to have better weapons as well as amor then you better biuld lots of foot soldiers in a castle and hop down the line that a swordsmith guild want to set up shop with you. amor is avaible still as a building, swordsmith guilds are a hot item, and they wont pop up just anywhere, you have to do things that favor the type of guild. once you have a guild in one of you cities/castles they may be pleased with your dedication to their tastes and offer to level up your guild, for a price of course. and guild come in only 3 levels, and there can only be one level 3 of each guild throughout the entire world, so someones got to have the level 3 sworsmith and only at that city/castle can have the best equiped soldiers come out.
missions: come in all shapes and sizes, such as blocade this port to seize this town, to start diplomacy with these people, build this, train that. and missions come from your own cousel of nobles, guilds, the pope, other nations(such as a heir requesting you to kill his king so he can rise to power). and every mission has either a reward and or a penalty for completing or failing it. this game runs great with my system at these specs: (medium high settings)
nvidia 6800 pci express 256mb video card
1 gig of ram
3 ghz proces pent 4
overall this game is the best in the series, and if you like the previous games you'll love this one, and if your new to it all then your in for a real treat, its well worth the money. thanks for reading...-hampont2003