10,000 Warriors At War

Bruce Von Stiers

There is a new game from Activision that is sure to make strategy gamers flipping over. This game features real characters from history like William Wallace, Richard the Lionheart and Joan of Arc. The title of the game is Medieval: Total War. It was developed by the British company The Creative Assembly and released by Activision. This game is the sequel to the acclaimed Shogun: Total War.

Activision first announced this game back in November of last year. It began a fervor about what this sequel would be like. Would it be better than Shogun? Would it even be as good? The people who got advance peeks at the game kept coming back with glowing reports.

The game has intense 3D battles with more than 100 different unit types to choose from. There are over 10,000 troops to move around the globe. The battle setups are historically correct in that the English swordsmen will go up against Clansmen from the Highlands and the Turks fight it out against their Teutonic neighbors to the north. The developers seem to have tried to be as accurate as possible about the conflict lineups. The credits in the manual even list Kaushar Tai of the Inter-Faith Council as the Consultant on Muslim Culture.

The game is set between the years 1087 and 1453. There was a lot that happened in world history during those four hundred years. You will be working from a map of Medieval Europe. There will be three different time frames to play in; early, mid and late. 12 different factions are thrown into the mix, each with strengths and weaknesses. Each has certain provinces they preside over and limited technologies.

My son Josh is one of those gamers who go through a game in a matter of hours. He saw me walking through the tutorial. I asked him what he thought of the game. Josh thought that it would be long and kind of boring. When asked why, he said it was too busy and didn’t have enough battle scenes. I disagree with him. Yes, the game is long. It is supposed to play out in a little over 70 hours. Yes, setting up the men and moving troops around can be tedious. And yes, some of the game is repetitive. But some of the appeal of the game is that it isn’t over in two seconds and you really have to think about how to place troops for battle. And there are a lot more battle scenes in the game than one might imagine. Moving from the map to the battlefield is exhilarating and one mistake in troop placement could lose you a strategic stronghold where one was desperately needed.

Your troops will get needed supplies paid for in taxes. The taxes come from farmers, traders and merchants. The better the taxes, the more they will need to be protected. Make sure you have enough castles and support troops on hand in these tax rich areas. But there are revolts and unrest that come up occasionally. Your generals will have to be on their toes as to not get caught with their pants down.

The AI in the game was really good. If you didn’t put things together in a skillful manner, it could get out hand quickly. Killing all of your prisoners might raise a General’s “dread” rating, but it might make the enemy forces tougher to capture. You will also have to be careful to not back opposing troops into a corner with no way to retreat. Then it might be “Never surrender!” and you will have a fight to the death.

There is also a multiplayer option. As this game is so massive, it will be hard not to stay up all night playing against other online players. The game is setup with Gamespy and up to four players can be connected to the same game. If you want to play it on a LAN, then up to 8 players can get together for a game.

Medieval: Total War should be one of the top games of 2002. It has good AI, great scrolling landscapes and a chance for players to rewrite history.

Medieval: Total War should be in stores now.

Check out more information on the game at www.totalwar.com. You also might want to visit the Activision web site and see what they are up to. Their web site is www.activision.com.