Editing Total War (section)

===Total War: Medieval II===

Continuing on the success of it's predecessor, Rome, Medieval 2 is probably just as good as the previous title. The setting is that of the Old World in the aftermath of William's conquest of England, with the Americas showing up near the campaign's end as the Age of Discovery begins in earnest. Features England, Scotland, France, Holy Roman Empire, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Milan, Venice, Hungary, Sicily, Poland, Russia, Byzantine Empire, Turks, Moors and Ayyubid Egyptians as the playable factions, with Papal States, Mongols, Timurids and Aztecs also featured as unplayable factions.

Each turn took 2 years sucking hard, but the plague was an interesting new event.

Heavy cavalry is also pure unadulterated broken [[lulz]], with a general's bodyguard being able to handle half of an early, poor-quality army by itself (and if the general's Dread is high, they might be able to handle it ''all'' by itself), with only good quality spears, pikes and kiting horse archers being able to hope to deal with them. Oh, and expect Milan to backstab you, which is a bit of a [[meme]] to this day.

Out of all the Total War titles, this one spawned the most mods, including several highly valued ones such as Third Age: Total War (a mod that transforms the setting into that of Middle-Earth on the outbreak of the War of the Ring), Broken Cresent which moves from Europe to the Middle East, and Central Asia from the Third Crusade to the Fall of Canstantinople. and Call of Warhammer: Beginning of the End Times (a mod that turns the game into as close a recreation of [[Warhammer Fantasy]] as possible given the game engine's capabilities), the latter serving as a pretty viable alternative if your PC is too old or weak to run CA's official, well-made adaptation (see below). While a few individuals see this as superior to the official Warhammer Total War, they are usually laughed at by crowds posting images of barely animated (and awfully modelled) griffons, and an extremely archaic spellcaster system. And then there's the Planet War mod which is on more than a few drugs, featuring units such as [[derp|godzillas]], [[lolwut|armies of ogres led by Captain Shrek]] and [[what|teletubbies riding T-rexes throwing watermelons that explode]]. Everything after MTWII bar Shogun 2 and Warhammer tends to be seen as having serious flaws to many [[grognard]]s.
 
It also includes the kingdoms expansion which adds a bunch of new campaigns to the the game as well as new factions and units. These's the Americas campaign, focusing on the Spanish conquest of the New World in the early 16th century, featuring factions such as the Aztecs, Mayans, Apaches and of course the Spanish led by Hernán Cortés, the Britannia campaign, which focuses on many different crises faced by England in the mid 13th century, featuring the expected England, Scotland, Wales and Irish as the factions but also Norway, the Crusades campaign which focuses on the Third and Fourth Crusade, featuring crusader states, saracen states and the Byzantine Empire as the factions with some surprise visits by the Mongols and Venetians and is also notable for introducing hero units to the series with heroes such as King Richard and Saladin, and the Teutonic campaign, focusing on the Northern Crusades featuring the eternally badass Teutonic knights while also featuring Lithuania, Holy Roman Empire, Poland, Novgorod and most interestingly Denmark, which by conquering certain cities and killing the king of unplayable Norway is capable of creating the Kalmar Union. There's also the Mongols of the Golden Horde the player has to contend with.

The Mongols are featured in the campaign map, they are: A) absolute monsters to fight (as they should be),and B) Not available as a playable campaign faction, only as a custom battle faction. C) motherfucking TIMURIDS. Yes, a second wave of Mongols arrived with <s>cannon-mounted elephants</s> elephant-mounted cannons. ELEPHANT TANKS MAN. SERIOUSLY.

A big downside to the game is that when playing as a catholic faction (which is most factions), you have to deal with the pope, who can be real annoying to deal with. When fighting against another catholic faction, eventually the Pope will come to tell you that you must stop fighting against your fellow catholics or you will be excommunicated, which is undesirable as not only will it make it more difficult to manage your cities, as your population are not exactly happy about being ruled by an excommunicated king but excommunication also makes it possible for a crusade to be called against you, forcing you to fight the whole catholic christendom. The bad part is that the pope can demand you to stop fighting quite soon after a war has begun, in fact it is sometimes even possible for it to happen the [[RAGE|very next turn after war was declared]], when you were sieging a city but couldn't yet start the attack as it takes a turn to build siege equipment unless you brought artillery with you.

But probably the biggest downside to the game is the inability to choose the timepoint at which to start the game, made even more baffling due to the fact that Medieval 1 allowed the player to choose from early period (1087), high period (1205) and the late period (1321). It is simply too easy to win the game long before the late game and many people probably did not even know that Timurids, the New World and early gunpowder weapons even are in the game because of this for the longest time. In fact, it is easily possible to win even before getting full access to some of the best pre-gunpowder units like feudal knights and trebuchets.