Gameplay

How to be king

The major draw of Medieval is the campaign mode, but there are other ways to play. There are random ‘quick battles’, historical battles and custom battles. Custom battles let the player choose the field of war, who gets to be the attacker and defender, the nationalities and the troops per side. The campaign game itself allows gamers to start in one of the three ages we already discussed, and fight either a conquest or achievements game. Conquest is self-explanatory (though fortunately you need to own only 2/3 of the world), but Glorious Achievements is something else. Factions will have goals to achieve, like launching crusades, owning specific provinces, commanding trade in an area, etc. Glorious Achievements tends to lead to more realistic games, where you won’t see the Danes rebuilding the Roman Empire. In fact, it is rather interesting to see how the various nations do expand historically – the map layout really is excellent in this respect.

Run cowards, run!

Death reaps his harvest

Bring the battle to the enemy

The campaign is far more sophisticated than it was with Shogun. Having to arrange marriages for your daughters and heirs, send spies to prevent assassinations, or to assassinate foreign agents – that’s a lot of work even early on. By the time you have half the map under your sway, it is an overwhelming task and shows the glaring shortcomings of the interface. The game would be far better served with lists of provinces, production, generals, and all the other non-combat units. In fact, spying, assassinations and the religious units could be handled abstractly. Players could invest a certain amount of income into spies, assassins and religious units, then give them priorities on what to work on. The provinces could stand to use a list as well, to facilitate easier unit and building production. Giving an AI governor the task of building a province to the point where it can create X unit or produce Y income would be a godsend. Creative Assembly should seriously consider this kind of system for future titles if they plan to have this many provinces and micro-managed units.

The need for micromanagement comes from the importance of these units, of course. Otherwise no one would bother to go to the effort. These units do add a lot of depth to the game, and make the strategic map considerably more relevant. The AI does cheat considerably and abuse them. Somehow they all know which provinces to stir up religious discontent in. When you send an assassin after one, he knows as well – running to a province protected by a spy or border fortifications, where your assassin is likely to get killed. This is really rather irritating, and hopefully may get patched out.

Is it fun?

Despite the tedium that Medieval has been known to inflict, and minor disbelief problems, it is an intensely fun game. Who cares that it doesn’t make sense to have a single outdated galley preventing a fleet of 16 carracks from transporting an army from Genoa to Sardinia? It’s just a part of the game system that players quickly get used to – though it can be abused if the opponent keeps sending one ship at a time into the sector in question.

In fact, Medieval is one of the first games to properly emphasize the importance of seaborne trade and control of the seas. Few titles thus far have conveyed the importance of controlling sea lanes. The implementation isn’t perfect, that’s true, but it works and it’s a step in the right direction.