I didn't even hear about Medieval II Total War. What's that about? If it has a Zelda mod it must be awesome :)
It's basically a Real Time Tactics game that is similar to a cross between Age of Empires II and Civilization. While managing your empire on the grand scale, i.e. governing cities and the like, the game is turn based. You train armies, hire mercenaries, build navies, and improve towns and cities. Every city on the map is already there, so your job is to rule your kingdom and eventually conquer the various cities of Europe, western Russia, Scandinavia, North Africa, and the Middle East. You receive missions from your council of nobles to be completed for extra gold or even extra units, and you can sometimes get missions from the Pope. Also related to the Pope is the ability to call Crusades (Muslim empires can call Jihads via their religious patriarch). Depending on whether or not you are in good favor with the Pope, you can ask for a Crusade to be called against any kingdom and specific city on the map. Depending on how much the Pope dislikes that kingdom, he will accept or decline your request. Of course, you may have Crusades called upon one of your cities if you aren't careful. In battle, the game is very different. Like Age of Empires, it is in real time, but there is no micro-managing or building towns to train soldiers etc. You march pre-existing armies into battle, with various forms of generals or nobles at the head of the column, and will go into battle, at which point you array your units on the field of battle and then begin commanding your battalions to maneuver and strike where you wish. The battles are incredible, because, unlike Age of Empires, each unit is made up of up to 120 or so individual soldiers, depending on your game settings, so each army can have upward of around 2,000 men in one battle. These little soldiers actually march in formation as you command, fight against enemy soldiers with an environmental awareness (i.e., they actually move around centered on their intended target in battle and attack that one soldier until he is dead). The game takes into account exhaustion, morale, and even leadership, in the case of noble generals, requiring you to assign your commanders carefully, with other nobles in charge of governing your cities effectively. Also, units gain experience from battle, so you learn to keep track of your more experienced veterans when putting armies together for a big, decisive battle. Units also do not heal by themselves, so you need to retrain them at castles or towns that can train those kinds of units in the first place, so there is an added logistical element to the game.
one of my favorite PC series is getting a mod for one of my favorite game series period?! Mind if I have a link? EDIT: Never mind, found it myself. Looks great!
I know this thread's been dead for many months now, but I just wanted to make an update to say that a beta version of this mod was recently released. Here's a link to the page if anyone's interested. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=1894
