It is an honor to be thought a well educated man, for are we not a nation of erudite warriors? But i tell you...

Generally yes.

HRE masterrace reporting in

Your version was fucked up then, my two handed weapons did just fine. Fir charges I hope you aren't talking about them doing stuff you don't tell them. That's literally a part of the game.

kys m8 you don't even get muskets

It's fun and memorable, i still play it

Stainless Steel best mod

wtf am I looking at?
>blue swears fealty to red-yellow
>blue skewers red-yellow
>red-yellow somehow dismembers blue, some other random yellow, buries two others, and hangs green froma noose, and gains a pile of gold.
>someone got excommunicated.

Rome and Med2 are similar, but have different focuses
Combat is a lot slower (besides cavalry charges recking havoc), and you've got a bit more variety in certain unit options, whether it's just specific units for each faction or mercenaries you can pick up along the way.
I, personally, like it more, but it's all about what tickles your fancy for favorite period. But, also, the modding content for Med2 is fantastic, and worth a shot just for the variety.

I liked it a lot better, it's the same game just with better graphics and a new setting.
France is my favorite main faction. Jerusalem, Novgorod, and Scotland were my favorites for the three expansion campaigns I played.

fuck muskets. crossbow masterrace.

The battles aren't as fun but the campaign is waaay better. Medieval 2 is my favourite tw game

Milan gets best crossbows AND muskets late game.

Milan is literally the worst faction. You and Portugal can burn in hell.

>worst faction

Someone get put in the dumpster by linguini

In the main campaign I loved playing England, Scotland and Denmark. The positions of each those on the map are just best for expansion.

and yeah jerusalem all the way I love the Templar units. On Britannia I liked Norway the best and in Teutonic actually Denmark due to its supremacy in scandinavia

Talking about pikes actually

Inf charges were broke in that men would charge, then stop 10 feet from the enemy and only the front line would charge up. Then theyd all just... Dance around each other. It was weak.

yeah fuck portugal and spain. shit tier infantry and shitty spear chucker chavalry. fuck all spear chucker units

Milan is the Jews of the game, i always go around assassinating everyone with them

yeah fuck them. milan, venice and sometimes the papal states are the worst backstabbers.

England is Red-Yellow, signifying the player at the beginning of Med2: they want to be a good person, and a chivalrous knight because they see justice and noble virtues as the righteous pursuit. Generals have a scale of Chivalry and Dread, which changes depending on your actions after battle and specific events for each general.
They fight against Scotland (see tartan kilt), and sign an alliance with a French, hoping to mend any potential problems there.
Then, the AI goes mad and the French stab the player in the back. So, you ain't going to let the fuckers get away with that, so you're going to take their land and kill their men (in Med2, when you defeat an army you can either release survivors, sell the survivors back to their owner, or kill them all).
This, of course, gets the rest of the world pissed off at the player for being efficient and not chivalrous. The pope asks England to stop killing French people for being Catholics, and England says fuck that, so he's excommunicated.
For such, the Pope calls a Crusade against England, and this involves fighting the Spanish (boat with castle atop gold and orange), and Milan (green and pale green). Being excommunicated, there are far less reserves for murdering all captive Catholics, so more butchery and conquest follows.
This behavior leads to England gaining a lot of land, killing a lot of people, and earning money along the way. England's generals all have points into Dread instead of Chivalry, and, based on the crown he's wearing, England has conquered Portugal, France, Scotland, Milan, the HRE, and Spain, at least. Underneath that is the quote "I have tried whipping the men, sire, but they are spent," which is one of the phrases Dread English generals say after moving their full action points in a turn.

England were my favourites to play as, which is hard to say as an Irishman, love me some some longbows. Always found it stupid how weak France and hre where in the campaign while the likes of milan and Denmark where strong as fuck

>Not playing as the Crown of Aragón
>An hero your shelves

It's a good time being Holy, Roman, and an Empire

Italian factions are legitimately the best, stop hating.

I played as Spain and it was my least favorite campaign. The papacy cockblocked me and took over the moors right at the beginning and then threatened to excommunicate me when I attacked France too much. Then when I tried to crusade the general I sent ended up dying en route.

>play the Byzantines
>conquer Albania early in the campaign
>getting armies ready to turn east and retake Anatolia along with the rest of the former Eastern Empire
>Eternal Venetian backstabs me
>60 turns later I'm allied with the Turks and in the middle of dominating all of Italy while I invade the HRE
>I have no idea how I got here

My Byzantine campaign went much the same way.

Venice is truly the fucking worst but killing them off brings the rest of the Catholics on your head.

>playing as England
>get called to Crusade
>have to create a decent sized Crusader army of my best available units and armorsmiths
>make second fleet for purpose of transporting men
>start sailing south towards Gibraltar, still going to take a number of turns
>your men are deserting because you're not going towards the crusade
>fuck
>I land at Cyrene with my general, three units of 30 men groups of sergeants, one crossbow, and a feudal knights
>just hire sudanese tribesman and take Cyrene, while France and the HRE got back Jerusalem
>Egypt calls crusade on Cyrene
PERFIDIOUS

Egypt calls jihad*

Hahah made me chuckle, when I went on a crusade with England I just marched through France and bought ships near marseille

>not having severely overleveled assassin on standby to assassinate the pope whenever you get excommunicated

thank you for the explanation.

That's the damnedest thing. I'm actually allied with France and Denmark. Neither of them are excommunicated, and they're happily going along with my war against the Germans.

I just don't know at this point.

>be HRE
>get excommunicated for taking Milan
>that goes on for 150 turns
>finally taken back into church
>get HRE pope who is secretly female
>she excommunicates me for fighting Hungary, when they are the only other Catholic faction alive
ISHYGDDT

I almost forgot, I've a story to go along with this cluster fuck of a campaign
>Spain
>King dies early on Crusade voyage
>son becomes king
>Literally King Pedro the Cuckhold
>negative command and Authority, medium piety, decent loyalty
>his successor isn't so bad so I send him into battles that will get him killed
>Pedro doesn't die
>he wins again and again
>starts getting more command
>ends up destroying Portugal
>give him brand new army to attack new enemy Milan along
>Takes Corsica, Genoa, and finally Milan
>Milan is destroyed
>he is now my best general
>bitch wife trips down the stairs and breaks her neck
>take some French territory
>Pedro dies at age 60 as my greatest king ever, King Pedro the Great

>Play Empire for Austrian stronk and my line infantry fetish
>Have to conquer Venice for victory
>Allied them first turn for trade incomes
>They help me in my wars against the Turks and form a barrier against the French in Italy
>Still have to kill them for Victory condition
>I am forced to be perfidious on my ally after ~80 years
I never expected to feel bad killing Venetians

I've never played the HRE is it fun? I hate them because no matter what campaign I play they always declare war.

Do you enjoy being harassed by Italians whom are protected by Excommunications from the Pope, annoyed with Poles and Hungarians who plow your open borders, and hate it when Danes and Frenchmen strike when your other two fronts are being assaulted?
Do you like it when trying to defend yourself from all these assholes gets you hated by everyone else and the Egyptians come and bribe your generals away?
Do you like GrossGermaniumBlobs?

If you said no to any of the first two and yes to the final, you'll enjoy playing as the HRE

Nope still hate the HRE, just going to play as Milan and fuck them over now.

>milanfags
Go play as a real faction you homos. Play Poland or something.

With the hip submod certainly.

THESE MEN THINK THEMSELVES OUR EQUAL OR BETTER...I THINK THEY HAVE THE STENCH OF DEATH ABOUT THEM

>implying defending vs the ai wasn't severely imbalanced

>my two handed weapons did just fine
Two-handed units are broken in the game and can get stunlocked by any other infantry, in melee they only do damage because of others behind the first line.

The politics is definitely the worst part of the game.

>Get own cardinal elected pope, max esteem with Papal States.
>Neighbor that is nearly an excommunicate invades and attacks your city, breaking an alliance that has been in place for decades.
>Send army, they flee after one turn of sieging without battle.
>Chase enemy army into their territory and defeat it.
>Pope demands I stop killing Catholics or face excommunication.

>Hey buddy, you've been losing this war for years now and thousands of your troops have died for nothing. How about I give you back all your cities and some indemnities in exchange for peace?
>Ha! Go fuck yourself! We are glad to hear you are near the breaking point! Here comes another army of peasant archers to battle your elite knights!

>Hey foreign nation, can I see your map of the world? I'll give you a ridiculous sum of money, your capital that I liberated from your enemy, and you can see my maps too.
>Not in a million years. This is not fair to us.

kek. everytime. especially HRE never gives up. even if they have only one or two regions left, they will never make peace.

>In war there's nothing so becomes a man as bravery before your enemies. A man can be afraid and still be brave - and any man who faces battle without concern is a moonstruck fool. To be brave is to go forward anyway, no matter how a-feared. That is why I go forward, in the company of so many other brave men.

This.

>Peasant stacks even a hundred years in
>Send armies of level 10 merchants and assassins

The AI is a clusterfuck, even on very hard.

Damn pigface bascinets are so sexy.

>Here comes another army of peasant archers to battle your elite knights!

Gave me a boner

EVERY. FUCKING. TIME.

Luckily I blitz the Turks in five turns using my super elite strategy and then turn on the eternal Venetian while paying Hungry to fuck off. That or I just play Stainless Steel.