Archive for September, 2008
Mount&Blade Hegemony 268 B.C. Roman Chronicles Ep. 1-2
Hegemony 268 B.C. is a mod for Mount&Blade 0.960 that will bring back the times of the Romans, Greeks and Macedonians, but many other factions too. You can find info about this mod here: http://forums.taleworlds.net/index.php/topic,34293.0.html
I will do chrinicles with Rome. I don’t know how many episodes i will make. Probably until the mod will apear for Mount&Blade 1.003. Until then, enjoy these videos.
Mount&Blade – The Battle of Tyr River
I recently just started playing Mount and Blade again, (as you can tell by my “skills” -_-) and I decided to film one of the first couple of battles that I’ve done. The outcome wasn’t very pretty, but at least I won in the end.
Music is Ragnarok by Ultima Thule (a swedish band)
Medieval II Total War: Strategy Review, Recommendations for Crusades and Jihads
Understanding the Crusades and Jihad in Medieval II Total War.
In Medieval II Total War you can participate in the Crusades as a Christian and Jihads as a Muslim. Those two options are not available for the orthodox factions though.
There are differences between crusade and jihad. The Crusade aims at expanding Christianity on new ground while Jihad aims at conquering back lost lands. You can participate to Crusade or Jihad in two ways. For Crusade, you have to ask the Pope to start one or you can join a Crusade already in progress when started by another faction.
To start a Crusade you will need the right diplomatic context, because you have to get the blessing of the Pope. So maintaining good relation with him in the previous turns is crutial. One advantage of starting a Crusade or Jihad, over participating in one, is the ability to choose the targeted city.
The Jihad works similarly, but in the case of Muslim, it must be started by an imam following the loss of Muslim territories. Since Imam are under your command, it quite easy to start one compared to the
Christian factions and the diplomatic requirement they face. It’s important to note that to join a Crusade or a Jihad, you will need a general with an army of 8 units.
Crusades and Jihads have few advantages.
The armies participating move twice as fast then normally. The units participating cost nothing to maintain and many units are only available as mercenaries in the crusade and jihad. When a crusade or jihad achieves its objective, the generals participating will win a lot of traits and gain commanding experience.
For a Christian faction, the relations with the Pope will improve in the case of a victory. The fact that your army moves around fast may allow you to loot many cities on the way making your empire richer. While the crusades and jihad can look attractive, using them at the right moment is very important. You need to know how to gain from them, since they offer interesting opportunities.
Before joining a crusade or jihad, you need to consider the following aspects:
Make sure that the objective isn’t too far from the territories of your faction. Conquering a city far away brings with it many problems. A newly conquered city in the middle of hostile territory increases your military cost and divides your forces.
If your crusade doesn’t advance fast enough the desertion rate will increase and weaken your crusading army.
If many factions are participating to the conquest of the objective, you need to remember that only one faction will control the city by the end of the crusade. This means that at some point you can have a general and his army in the middle of an hostile territory without any place to retreat. The process of bringing him back can be dangerous making his army ineffective and costly. It can then be considered a waste of resources.
The Recommendations about Crusades and Jihads
From a general point of view I don’t recommend to participate in Crusades or Jihads. But there are three situations that can be favorable from a strategic stand point.
For example:
They can be useful to reach distant territories in a shorter time. Since you move twice as fast, starting a crusade can be an advantage when you need to conquer a city far away. It’s then possible to conquer territories on the path of the crusade.
Conquering a territory nearby can also be a good reason to start a Crusade. Adding the fact that your crusading forces cost you nothing during their partcipation, a crusade can be an effective way to reduce your military cost for few turns. This reduction in expense is allowing you to invest in your economy.
Crusades and Jihads can also be used to temporarily weaken your friends or foes. By participating in the crusade, friendly factions and enemies dedicate troops to the cause making them weaker and easier to target and defeat. Time of crusades are then the perfect opportunity to attack Christians factions. You can also gain from following the crusader destruction path to conquer a weakened enemy.
To conclude, even if starting or participating in a crusade or jihad appears to be an exciting opportunity. They need to be used with wisdom. Unless the previously explained situations happen, you should stay away from taking part in crusades. Don’t forget that every action needs to be considered in relation with the interest of your faction and not the interest of the Pope or any other faction.
Mount & Blade 1.003
Well Mount & Blade is finally out and you can buy your boxed copy here if it’s not already done
here in the US
Here in the UK
So here are two video I created to celebrate the release of the game!
Enjoy
Easiest way to find the Solar System in Spore
Well i thought since i spent soooo much time trying to figure out where it was when i later on found out it was directly behind me i just slapped myself so i thought why not and try make it easier to find for others.
ROTPS: LC: TMI: Episode 3: Fall of Zamek Bedzin.
Here’s episode 3 of my cine-editor series.
This time it’s the Mongols who besiege a Polish castle.
I had some trouble creating this episode with several game crashes… But eventually I was able to create the episode with some guys in the gamespy lobby.
So thanks to Attila and Schnitzelz for attempting to help me :)
As you will see there is narration added by a guy named Secretus, he also did the map animations.
I forgot to put him in the credits, many thanks to him too.
It’s again two parts first part is the intro, second part is the battle:
Now the real story is going to start, with the involvement of the Papal states.
Due to the problems and my limited amount of time on the internet because of school, I decided to do most of the battles with the AI and only some scenes online.
Episode 4 will be released in one or two months if nothing goes wrong.
Hope you enjoyed
Strategy Review of the Crusades and Jihad in Medieval II Total War
To start a Crusade you will need the right diplomatic context, because you have to get the blessing of the Pope. So maintaining good relation with him in the previous turns is crutial. One advantage of starting a Crusade or Jihad, over participating in one, is the ability to choose the targeted city.
The Jihad works similarly, but in the case of Muslim, it must be started by an imam following the loss of Muslim territories. Since Imam are under your command, it quite easy to start one compared to the
Christian factions and the diplomatic requirement they face. It’s important to note that to join a Crusade or a Jihad, you will need a general with an army of 8 units.
Crusades and Jihads have few advantages.
The armies participating move twice as fast then normally.
The units participating cost nothing to maintain and many units are only available as mercenaries in the crusade and jihad.
When a crusade or jihad achieves its objective, the generals participating will win a lot of traits and gain commanding experience.
For a Christian faction, the relations with the Pope will improve in the case of a victory.
The fact that your army moves around fast may allow you to loot many cities on the way making your empire richer.
While the crusades and jihad can look attractive, using them at the right moment is very important. You need to know how to gain from them, since they offer interesting opportunities.
Before joining a crusade or jihad, you need to consider the following aspects:
Make sure that the objective isn’t too far from the territories of your faction.
Conquering a city far away brings with it many problems.
A newly conquered city in the middle of hostile territory increases your military cost and divides your forces.
If your crusade doesn’t advance fast enough the desertion rate will increase and weaken your crusading army. If many factions are participating to the conquest of the objective, you need to remember that only one faction will control the city by the end of the crusade.
This means that at some point you can have a general and his army in the middle of an hostile territory without any place to retreat. The process of bringing him back can be dangerous making his army ineffective and costly. It can then be considered a waste of resources.
Spore Gameplay 1
this is some unedited gameplay that i made you man hear some voices but that is because I was in a vent. But if you are wondering how I was able to play i got the AUS game which came out on the 2nd of sept. the game is really in depth and fun.