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Medieval Total War is the incredibly faithful and successful sequel to Creative Assembly’s hit release Shogun Total War. Of the early 2D-map style Total War’s Medieval is clearly the superior entry. For many, it was also their introduction to the series, and still consider it the best Total War game to date. Medieval Total War improved and expanded on the strong foundation Shogun Total War built in almost every way.

It is a game that understood what its predecessor did right and what audiences would want next. In truth, when playing Shogun Total War it often felt like a proof-of-concept for what Medieval Total War was trying to do.

Medieval Total War was released in August 2002 and expanded the scope of every feature of Total War significantly. Now all of Europe and the Middle-east are open to your conquering armies. Consequently, due to this huge expansion in map size, there is also much greater faction diversity.

But what’s perhaps most impressive about Medieval Total War is that it managed to balance its improvements to both the Battle and Campaign systems. Where most Total War games focus on improving one or the other, Medieval enhances both while staying true to the historical and tactical thesis of the original Shogun.

Development

Medieval: Total War was first revealed as Crusader: Total War in 2001, shortly after the release of Shogun Total War, but the name was soon changed to Medieval: Total War to better reflect gameplay and represent those factions who couldn’t go crusading. Through development, the publishers also changed from EA to Activision.

The game engine was updated during development which is what allowed for the update to sieges and for a vastly increased troop limit on the battle map. While it’s still definitely the same game engine as Shogun but the updates make a huge difference especially in the scale of the battles at play.

The biggest improvement made by the engine is on the battle maps themselves. The terrain is now more varied which is a nice reprieve from the forests and plains which made up almost every Shogun map. With the inclusion of more varied climates on the map, like the Middle-east, this allows for their terrain to be more accurately represented on the battlefield.

Campaign

The campaign is far more expansive than in Shogun. There are now 20 different factions in the game with 14 being playable. Each is assigned roughly their historical territory for the given time period, which shifts depending on which era you choose: Early, High, or Late.

The Era system is something that is clearly missing in modern Total War games, and while I’m not sure it would work in the more balance-focused Total War campaigns it was a nice touch that added needed variety to the campaign. This also allowed you to choose how quickly you wanted to ramp up to massive battles, as the more developed territories of the later era would be able to pump out much larger armies.

Scenarios

Beyond the grand campaign, Medieval features several scenario campaigns that focus on a specific conflict of the era, such as the crusades or the Hundred Years War. These are an excellent addition to the game that would be DLC in most modern Total War games. Beyond these historical campaigns Medieval also has a series of historical battles that allow you to play out the greatest battles of the era.

There is also an alternate campaign mode named “Glorious Achievements” which tasks you with completing certain historical goals for your factions which will in turn earn you points. At the end of the game whoever has achieved more of their historical goals will win the game.

While this mode could be finicky and felt more restrictive than the grand campaign it added a nice historical focus to what you’ll be doing.

Factions

The factions in Medieval are also more diverse than in the predecessor. You can lead any nation from England to Byzantium, or the Turks. It is a huge breath of fresh air coming from Shogun Total War’s single faction roster and feeds into that game feeling like a bit of a prelude to what Medieval is doing.

Medieval also introduces emergent factions like the Golden Horde and Burgundy, who appear during the campaign only when certain conditions are met and as such are unplayable. These serve as an added challenge for those regions but can ruin your game if you’re not prepared for them, and they come stomping through your corner of the map.

The addition of faction diversity is a huge stepping stone for the series and would pave the way for the wildly different factions of Rome Total War. It also added much-needed variety to the battles, which can now vary wildly based on the terrain and faction you’re fighting. 

Building

Medieval Total War features hundreds of available buildings that can be constructed in each province. The building system serves as the game’s technology tree, as you build more advanced buildings you have access to more advanced units, agents, and best of all, even more buildings.

I like this system a lot better than the Civilization-style traditional technology trees that modern games have implemented, it feels less arbitrary and more grounded in the reality on the map.

Through new buildings, you can gain access to radically new technologies like gunpowder weaponry. In order to build new buildings and gain access to higher tiers of buildings, you will need to upgrade the castle itself.

Most buildings though will not grant new units or technology but will augment the economic or defensive nature of the settlement. You can build trade posts or stronger walls among tons of other buildings to do this.

Coming from the limited build slots of modern Total War games the sheer amount of options you have is overwhelming. This does allow you more freedom in how you go about building your settlement but can also lead to every province feeling interchangeable. We will talk more about this change when we get there in this series.

Characters

Your faction will be led by its Royal family and nobility who function as the generals and officials of your realm. The character system is greatly expanded and they now have several attributes they are scored in, instead of just Honor in Shogun. These attributes are Command, Piety, Dread, Loyalty, and Acumen.

Beyond this Medieval introduces traits to the game, which are called “Vices and Virtues” and greatly improve on fleshing out the characters. These are given due to whatever actions you take with them. Meaning that if you leave a governor in a province with a high tax rate, they’ll be at a much greater likelihood of getting a negative trait.

Perhaps most intriguing about Medieval’s Character system is the loyalty mechanic. If multiple generals have low loyalty they can trigger a civil war, plunging the country into chaos. This is by far the best civil war mechanic in the entire Total War series, not only because it happens organically but also because you can choose which side to back when the civil war occurs. You can also do this in Empire Total War but that game’s civil war mechanics has other problems.

This mechanic is excellent in that it forces you to make interesting strategic trade-offs between using a great general who has low loyalty and not using him but significantly weakening your military.

Since the game is played in the Middle Ages, where lords often gave titles to their loyal generals, you can likewise give land and titles to your loyal servants, who will then in turn govern the province in your name. You can actually use this system to your advantage, for example by making a pious Muslim general the leader of a Muslim province to increase its loyalty or by turning over control of a mineral-rich province to a shrewd general to increase revenues.

To prevent a civil war, you will need to keep your generals happy. The best way to do this is by giving them titles. Titles act almost as units on the map but can be “equipped” to generals giving them a loyalty boost. Titles are gained every time you conquer a new region and gaining more will be part of what fuels your conquest as you’ll need them to continuously keep your generals happy.

Beyond generals, you’ll also have to manage your Royal family. Over the course of the game, your king will die, if you don’t have an heir the kingdom is far more likely to devolve into civil war. You’ll now be able to use princesses as emissaries and to marry them off to

A cut feature that was planned was to allow kingdoms to claim another’s thone if they have a marriage through a princess and the country was in a civil war. Which is just the sort of Medieval backstabbing that makes me love Crusader Kings so much.

Agents

Agents also make a return with the princess, who we just mentioned. being one of the newest editions. The other agents are mostly the same as in Shogun with Assassins and diplomats. What’s interesting about assassins is that they can kill your own characters, so they can potentially take out a disloyal general you need to be removed.

Kingdoms will now also have unique religious agents which act to spread your state religion to new provinces.

Religion

Religion is now in the game, which mostly affects diplomacy and province unrest. There are three religions represented in the game Catholic, Muslim, and Orthodox. Using your religious agents you can shift the religious affinity of your provinces and pacify them.

Catholic nations have unique mechanics regarding the Papacy who can call them to a crusade or excommunicate them if they step out of line. Muslims can also call a Jihad as their specific option for holy war.

Diplomacy

Diplomacy suffers from many of the same problems it has generally had in Total War games. While there are several diplomacy options, the campaign AI will often make nonsensical offers and is completely out for the player’s blood on higher difficulties.

The game’s setting lends itself to a lot more political intrigue than Shogun, and in addition to forging alliances through diplomacy, you can also marry off your daughters to create lasting ties with rival rulers.

Battles

The battle system in Medieval saw probably the largest improvement due to the advancements made in the Total War Engine. The AI, while still not great, is improved over Shogun. The AI can now use formations and put up an effective struggle against the player, even if it misses many of the finer tactics you can take advantage of.

There is far more unit variety in Medieval with troops ranging from heavily armored knights to longbowmen and Vikings. Much like on the historical medieval battlefield heavy cavalry rules the day. Knights are expensive to buy and maintain but you’re paying for quality, and a group of knights can demolish infantry out of formation.

Units can now also gain Valour which acts as unit veterancy and increases their potency in combat.

All of this combines to make a more dynamic battle system than you had in Shogun, where the rock-paper-scissors relationship between units was starker. The morale of each unit also seems higher than it was in Shogun which allows for more draw out engagements.

But the biggest improvement is in the battle maps themselves, which now allow for more tactical options and more varied climates than they did in Shogun. Now you’ll fight across deserts, mountain passes, and snowy hillocks.

The battle system is still marred by the finicky camera and the stiff controls, which make controlling the units themselves difficult. This wouldn’t be something that was fixed until the next entry into the series: Rome Total War.

Sieges

Sieges received a massive improvement, in that there are now actually sieges with a full curtain wall around the castle. They only occur when a defending army retreats into its castle instead of taking the fight on the field.

Throughout the siege, the attacker will have to break through the walls of the castle and pry the defenders out. While the system is an improvement it also suffers from pathfinding and collision issues, meaning sieges are still generally the buggiest part of the game. The added complexity also doesn’t help the AI who will struggle to coordinate a well-meaning attack on your fortifications.

Viking Invasion

Medieval Total War received its first and only expansion pack in January of 2003, titled: Viking Invasion. The expansion added a new campaign which features, you guessed it, everyone’s favorite Scandinavian adventures.

Viking Invasion rolls the timeline back to 793 as the Vikings begin expanding outside Scandinavia. The campaign itself takes place solely on the British isle, splitting them up between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the Celtic kingdoms, and Vikings.

Mechanically the expansion adds flaming arrows which can burn down wooden castles and lower the morale of units. Also apparently included was the option to pre-deploy your troops before a battle, which I didn’t know was only added in this campaign but seems slightly critical to the overall balance of the game.

The expansion also added three new factions to the game’s main campaign and new units.

The campaign itself is reminiscent of Shogun’s Mongol Invasion expansion, with the possibility of attack from anywhere. Otherwise, this feels like a more detailed scenario campaign from the main game. It certainly works and is well done but in the end, is just more Medieval Total War.

Conclusion

I’ve spent parts of this piece comparing Medieval to Shogun, which some may think is unfair. To be clear I’m not saying Shogun is lesser to Medieval or a bad game. But It’s clear to me that Creative Assembly took the core formula from Shogun and expanded every part of it for Medieval Total War.

While Shogun is historically important for Total War as a series, I wouldn’t recommend you go play it today. Medieval though still holds up as a game today and is pretty damn competent.

Some things it does like the Civil War mechanic have yet to be surpassed in a Total War title, and though the controls and UI inherit many of Shogun’s problems its expansive features and simple campaign structure allow the AI to at least participate in putting up a fight against the player.

If you missed it check out the other articles in this Series:

Shogun Total War