SEGA: Total War

[ArchangelShrike]

So, on Steam you can preorder Empire:Total War starting today. Anyone planning on getting it? Anyone with crazy stories to share from the previous games, like:

-Rome:Total War - I had two light cavalry roaming the countryside in order to make relations with other nations. Unfortunately, a Greek enemy decided it would be nice to send a couple of phalanx to tangle. I ended up zigzagging around one phalanx in order to disorient their spears then charged one phalanx from the back, effectively pulling off a upset.
-Medieval 2:Total War - Catapults hurling flaming boulders and actually managing to hit a crowd of knights, cutting the enemy's power in half. A beautiful sight, burning horses.

Anyone else play the Total War series?

[Axman]

A friend of mine is a fiend for the series and I recall him talking about Medieval, where his campaign was trudging along just fine, doin' the Dark Ages thing, and he rounded off the 12th century, and he was thinking, "1241, 1241... I know something cool happened in this year... 1241." Then the Mongols sacked him and he lost.

So that's cool.

[Coin]

Wow, to think that noone has created a thread for this untill now! Good work ArchangelShrike!

I'm a big fan of the TW-series and will definitley be getting Empire, it looks absolutley Ace.

One thing that has been bothering me though is that all screenshots I've seen involving infantry has infallably shown them in deep formation, and I'm not talking about the cavalry-repelling square. This looks woefully inefficient to me as only a fraction of the soldiers are able to fire.
What do you think?

[SoapyHobo]

I was contemplating making a thread myself but I'm not very good at that kinda thing.

The offer on steam is sorely tempting me what with the cheaposity, more Rome and having it asap. I do like my boxes though. I've played all the others and I like Rome and the original Medieval the best, though unfortunately the latter no longer works. Empire looks awesome though, and I cannot wait.

[ArchangelShrike]

Wow, to think that noone has created a thread for this untill now! Good work ArchangelShrike!

I'm a big fan of the TW-series and will definitley be getting Empire, it looks absolutley Ace.

One thing that has been bothering me though is that all screenshots I've seen involving infantry has infallably shown them in deep formation, and I'm not talking about the cavalry-repelling square. This looks woefully inefficient to me as only a fraction of the soldiers are able to fire.
What do you think?

I'm not sure, I think we could probably strech and squash the lines like the previous games, but since it'll probably take a fixed amount of time to reload and shoot we'd probably trade volley count with number of guns we can bear at one time. Combine that with accuracy and the basic three line formation, I'm not sure if we'd want to turn formations into one line deep, but definitely less than the seven line deep in this picture. I've never seen how musketeers fire in Medieval, I never give anyone else a chance to get that far.

I was contemplating making a thread myself but I'm not very good at that kinda thing.

The offer on steam is sorely tempting me what with the cheaposity, more Rome and having it asap. I do like my boxes though. I've played all the others and I like Rome and the original Medieval the best, though unfortunately the latter no longer works. Empire looks awesome though, and I cannot wait.

I've got a boxed copy of Rome as well, but am considering preordering as well. At the very least, might be able to gift Rome itself, right?

Also, tech trees anyone? What do you think of that?

[SoapyHobo]

Bumping because Empire is out and I've just spent almost an hour looking through all the info screens figuring out what the hell everything does because it seems a helluva lot more complicated than Rome (but it's probably not that bad). Bought the retail special forces edition because it came in a chunky cardboard box with a map and I'm a sucker for things like that.

Looks friggin' awesome, and if anyone cares I'm (hopefully, if I have the time and effort) blogging about my campaign (as the Ottomans) here.

[ArchangelShrike]

I will get this as soon as I have spare cash to spend, and look forward to meeting infidels on the battlefield.

[Ixtellor]

I pseudo-enjoyed the series.

In every series I quickly found that I cared less and less about the actual battles and more about the global conquest.

It always gets to the point, where I skip every battle unless it is a MUST win.

I like to pick really weak countries and see if I can conquor the globe with them.

Conquoring the world with Sweden on the hardest level on Medivial War I, was something I never accomplished.

Ixtellor

[el_loco_avs]

Man. My compy could b arely run Medieval 2

I'll be checking that blog though!

[telcontar42]

In every series I quickly found that I cared less and less about the actual battles and more about the global conquest.

It always gets to the point, where I skip every battle unless it is a MUST win.

I only played Medieval II, but the same thing happened to me. I loved the game but after a while, the battles seemed too long, tedious, and repetitive. I end up just making armies packed full of powerful units so I can auto every battle and still win, only actually playing the battles where the odds are against me.

One of my favorite moments from Medieval II was in a game where I was playing Russia. I had almost all of my troops down in western Europe, fighting various other countries there, leaving all of my eastern provinces empty and undeveloped. Then the Mongols invaded. I quickly shut down my western front and tried to build up defenses near the Mongol armies, but since those cities were entirely undeveloped I couldn't build much more than peasants. A huge army of Mongols attacked one of my cities. Lots and lots of cavalry against a few peasants, didn't look good. After taking my gate they charged into my city and I swarmed the gate with all of my peasants. Luckily, they charged in with their general first and I killed him. With the drop in moral from the dead general there armies started routing. They came back a few times, but I clogged the gate with peasants and their cavalry routed again. I lost a lot of my army but actually won the battle. Of course, the next turn they attacked with another massive army of cavalry and destroyed me, but at least I withstood the initial assault.

[Jack21222]

My least favorite part about these games is the fact that there is no auto-patch feature. It's tedious to manually hunt down the patch file, download it and extract it. And God help you if you download them in the wrong order...

[LuNatic]

I picked up my copy of Empire:TW collectors edition today. It will be a couple of months before I get a PC good enough to run it though.

[Toeofdoom]

Thoughts about empire:

I stopped playing an hour after I installed it as the camera started to piss me off. There are a few AI bugs and obviously the camera isn't great, plus my old strategies are suddenly terrible, but it's an awesome game and there'll probably be a patch to fix those issues.

[Mother Superior]

My least favorite part about these games is the fact that there is no auto-patch feature. It's tedious to manually hunt down the patch file, download it and extract it. And God help you if you download them in the wrong order...

Well surely Steam has taken care of that?

[Jack21222]

My least favorite part about these games is the fact that there is no auto-patch feature. It's tedious to manually hunt down the patch file, download it and extract it. And God help you if you download them in the wrong order...

Well surely Steam has taken care of that?

What's Steam?

[LuNatic]

Anyone with crazy stories to share from the previous games

I was play M2:TW, and getting slaughtered on the battlefield. In the end, the only troop that hadn't died/fled was my general, and there were still ~250 enemy soldiers in play. I'd given up hope and was watching my general, waiting for him to die so I could lose and get back to the campaign screen. But he didn't die :O

He single handedly killed ~50 enemies, and the the entire enemy army routed, being chased down by this one knight. I could hardly believe it...

[Mother Superior]

My least favorite part about these games is the fact that there is no auto-patch feature. It's tedious to manually hunt down the patch file, download it and extract it. And God help you if you download them in the wrong order...

Well surely Steam has taken care of that?

What's Steam?

Steam is an online distribution system now needed to run the Total War games. With it, you can buy games online and it always keeps all your games up to date automatically.

[halbarad]

I picked up the game last week and eventually got used to Steam (still haven't tested if it will let me play the game if I'm not connected to the internet) and it's lots of fun. I started as Great Britain and have started dominating the seas and America as it should be. Going to send a few thousand troops to India and see what I can do over there.

[Jack21222]

My least favorite part about these games is the fact that there is no auto-patch feature. It's tedious to manually hunt down the patch file, download it and extract it. And God help you if you download them in the wrong order...

Well surely Steam has taken care of that?

What's Steam?

Steam is an online distribution system now needed to run the Total War games. With it, you can buy games online and it always keeps all your games up to date automatically.

Interesting, maybe I can play M2:TW again. I've been to lazy to hunt down and download the patch files to fix all of the annoying bugs.

[Mother Superior]

I am rather disappointed that there aren't more custom troops. M2:TW had such diversity, in Empires all the nation's armies look the same, except for Britain which I understand gets redcoats and several other unique units.

[ArchangelShrike]

Still don't have it yet, either waiting for a discount on Steam or a chance to get Special Forces boxed edition. Yes it's ridiculous the goods you get for that price, which is why I've been waiting for a boxed edition to peek it's head locally so I can nab all the physical goods as well. Also, I've heard it's still as buggy as hell, but is it as bad as M2:TW before the first patch?

Also, anyone get into ship combat?

[Mother Superior]

Well I've had no major bugs, there's a thing on some parts of the story-lined campaign where on a particular battle all the soldiers start running in slow motion, oh- and my game crashed when I tried to board a ship, but since I've only tried that once I don't know if it's recurring or not. To be honest, the thing that needed patching the most in M2:TW was the AI, but it's pretty good in this one, at least you won't get attacked at random after signing an alliance.

[Vaniver]

A bit of thread necromancy:

With the end of the semester, I've finally had time to really get into Empire. And wow do I prefer it over Rome and Medieval. The campaign map (what I play the game for) is significantly more sophisticated- I like the move to capitals and towns (although it bothers me that some regions are really limited in how much you can develop them- I'd like more than two towns in the Netherlands, thanks!), I very much like the ministers, and I love researching.

I've got a long list of complaints- but that's to be expected for any game. The most noteworthy ones:

• You can fight naval battles now! But they're... bizarre, and you'll end up autocalcing anyway, unless you've got a thing for naval combat. In which case you'll really like this addition.
• Land battles seem a lot less tactical, since a lot of the time your tactics are "stand in a line and shoot them." Cavalry charges in the rear are still effective- but cavalry are no longer the dominant force that they were in Rome and Medieval, which means that someone used to cavalry strategies in those games will have to relearn how to fight.
• The "new town" system can cause a few problems- like, for example, trying to get a port in the Carolinas (I think that's the region). There's no farm you can develop, and so your only way to encourage the growth of the port is to exempt the region from taxes, and wait... a long, long time.
• The short campaign always lasts 100 turns. What the hell. The short campaign was such a big improvement because it let you play a game for only 20 turns or so, and still get a pop up telling you that you won- I've been playing a game as the Maratha Confederacy, a Hindu nation that starts out in Southern India, and conquered all of India (my victory condition was 10 particular provinces, then five others) within 15ish turns. I then got a pop-up that said "good job! Now hold those provinces until 1750." The year was... 1708 (it's two turns per year). I'm currently on track to satisfy the requirements for World Domination (50 provinces) by the time the short campaign is over!
• Unit diversity, as pointed out, is lacking. It's pretty much line infantry, light infantry, artillery, and then a couple of cavalry units that are of questionable usefulness. And the units are pretty much the same for every nation- they sort of have to be, so one nation doesn't dominate or another one sucks. Somewhat odd is that the best line infantry (or so I believe) are the Sikhs- yeah, they were fantastic fighters, but are they really better than Prussians? You pretty much get to pick between slightly better line infantry, available early, or excellent riflemen, available late (the Maratha Confederacy, at least, doesn't have a unit of 60 riflemen like the British or Prussian ones).
• The different campaigns play really differently, which is nice- but a couple of them are annoying because I can't get them to be what I want them to be. If I have the British campaign on very hard, I constantly have to deal with stuff I don't want to- but if I have it on medium, I won't have anything approaching a decent rival by the mid-late game. It would be nice if you could set different factions at different difficulties- I want Prussia to be very hard, and then France and Spain to be hard, and then the rest of the European factions to be Medium, or something.
• I don't really know what to think of some factions being so much better at particular things than other factions. For example, the British make probably the best trade theater faction (haven't tried the Spanish yet to compare) because they have four commercial ports all next to each other in England, only two turns from a teleport point (and then three in the Americas), which means that for every two turns at the start of the game, you can take over four of the five spots of a trade theater. And, at the start of the game, each Indiamen will be returning roughly its cost per turn- which means that a British player who doesn't do that is missing out on a significant source of income.

But anyway, this game is fantastic. I'm playing a game as the Maratha right now (on very hard), which is going really well- I've conquered all of India except Ceylon, which is still held by my only trading partner, the United Provinces. I haven't built a navy worth mentioning besides around ten dhows, and those plus the plantations in India give me a trade income of around 10k a turn- plus tax income of around 7k and the base 3k. My expenses are only around 12k in army maintenance- it was around 6k when I was conquering India, but then I raised two full armies of Sikhs to conquer Persia (which I just finished) and then the Ottoman Empire (which is next). That gives me around 8k a turn that I'm pumping into developing India- none of my plantations are at the second level yet, a lot of farms can be developed, etc., but I'm sitting on a gold mine (both literally and figuratively) and so I'm not worried about having more things to do than money to do it with, at the moment.

The primary drawback of Maratha is that your income is heavily dependent on trade- but you're not in a position to get a nice navy unless you work at it, and even then you need to police all the way from the coast of India to whichever nation you have a trade agreement with. So far I've just been taking the 3-4k a turn hits of being raided rather than making a navy, but clearly that needs to change soon.

The interesting thing about the Maratha is, once you take out Goa and Mysore, you're pretty much only dealing with the Mughals, and they're a pushover. Portugal won't really care enough to invade (especially if Spain goes to war with them), but they may raid/blockade you (I got lucky with Spain actually taking Portugal out, getting rid of a raiding Portuguese fleet). You'll be able to take over all of India before any European powers even consider moving in- and then you're sitting on the entirety of an immensely wealthy continent, that's (almost) all your religion and not very resistant to you moving in. I'm not sure about whether Ceylon is worth a war with the Dutch- I was planning on just buying it from them, but it doesn't look like I can pay them enough, and so I don't know if I should just wait until someone kills them and then move in, or declare war and take it, or just say "eh, they're my ally and trading partner, they can keep it."

[Jahoclave]

A bit of thread necromancy:

With the end of the semester, I've finally had time to really get into Empire. And wow do I prefer it over Rome and Medieval. The campaign map (what I play the game for) is significantly more sophisticated- I like the move to capitals and towns (although it bothers me that some regions are really limited in how much you can develop them- I'd like more than two towns in the Netherlands, thanks!), I very much like the ministers, and I love researching.

HOW DARE THEY SHORT CHANGE THE DUTCH! I shall now refuse to buy this game for quite some time until I feel like buying this game at a discounted lovely steam package.

You'll be able to take over all of India before any European powers even consider moving in- and then you're sitting on the entirety of an immensely wealthy continent, that's (almost) all your religion and not very resistant to you moving in.

Religious conversion. Wow, I just wrote a paper on colonialism and the necessity of religious conversion for cultural domination by European powers. So this makes me rather interested in that they actually thought about these sorts of things. Now if they added language conversion I'd shit my pants.

I'm not sure about whether Ceylon is worth a war with the Dutch- I was planning on just buying it from them, but it doesn't look like I can pay them enough, and so I don't know if I should just wait until someone kills them and then move in, or declare war and take it, or just say "eh, they're my ally and trading partner, they can keep it."

Nothing is every worth war with the Dutch. EVER! Yeah, don't do it. They'll put up a pot screen and your soldiers will be demoralized with the munchies.

[LuNatic]

Yeah, I'm enjoying this a lot. I'm kind of annoyed that they broke the RTI campaign with the last patch though.

[Vaniver]

HOW DARE THEY SHORT CHANGE THE DUTCH!

The Dutch have a nice position for trading, though I wouldn't say it's as nice as the British one- they start out with a trade fleet actually in place, better colonies (Ceylon is one of the best regions in India, possibly even the best, and they have a two nice American colonies). Your ability to develop a military is somewhat hampered by being spread out, but I seem to remember being able to raise a European army rather quickly.

You just can't develop the Netherlands like you can develop England or France. But, you can take Brussels from the Spanish, or knock down a couple of German powers to take their provinces, and then you've got a nice European nation going.

Religious conversion. Wow, I just wrote a paper on colonialism and the necessity of religious conversion for cultural domination by European powers. So this makes me rather interested in that they actually thought about these sorts of things. Now if they added language conversion I'd shit my pants.

Religious conversion has been in every game since Shogun. But I definitely agree that languages and other things would make a nice addition.

[LuNatic]

HOW DARE THEY SHORT CHANGE THE DUTCH!

The Dutch have a nice position for trading, though I wouldn't say it's as nice as the British one- they start out with a trade fleet actually in place, better colonies (Ceylon is one of the best regions in India, possibly even the best, and they have a two nice American colonies). Your ability to develop a military is somewhat hampered by being spread out, but I seem to remember being able to raise a European army rather quickly.

Except they get crap all in the number of trade routes from their capital region.

[Jahoclave]

Religious conversion. Wow, I just wrote a paper on colonialism and the necessity of religious conversion for cultural domination by European powers. So this makes me rather interested in that they actually thought about these sorts of things. Now if they added language conversion I'd shit my pants.

Religious conversion has been in every game since Shogun. But I definitely agree that languages and other things would make a nice addition.

Yeah, I want to get some proper colonial oppression going here. It makes the tea crop that much better to the discerning palate.

[Vaniver]

Except they get crap all in the number of trade routes from their capital region.

The thing is, I don't think there's that much benefit to trading with a large number of people. Your exports are split up among your trading partners, so having two partners gives you the same number of exports as one partner. I don't think you even get more in the way of a stability benefit- that seems to be proportional to the amount of trade you're doing. The only way there could be an influence is the prices of goods- I don't know how those are calculated (besides not collecting any drives up the price, and collecting a lot drives down the price). It could be that if you're trading with someone with their own production, you don't fetch the same price as you would trading with someone without their own production- but I haven't seen any effects like that so far.

The only real benefit then seems to be the diplomacy boost from trading with someone- and while that might actually be important for the Netherlands (please don't go to war with me, k Prussia?) I don't see it as being worth the risks involved. Better to trade with one ally close to you (like, say, Great Britain) where you can keep both their and your ports safe, and not have to worry about any of your other far-flung trading partners getting raided.

[Durinthal]

The campaign map (what I play the game for) is significantly more sophisticated- I like the move to capitals and towns (although it bothers me that some regions are really limited in how much you can develop them- I'd like more than two towns in the Netherlands, thanks!), I very much like the ministers, and I love researching.

In that case, I may have to look more into this game. I played the first Medieval TW game and was saddened by the lack of nearly anything happening in the campaign map (Lords of the Realm 2, released six years earlier, had more strategy to it in that regard). The bugs were annoying too, but that doesn't seem to have changed much.

[LuNatic]

The campaign map in Empire is much deeper than the campaign map in medieval, but doesn't seem to be quite as deep as the campaign map in Medieval 2 IMO.

[CogDissident]

I've heard a lot about this game, and personally the review I trust most is the one by "the spoony experiment", in which he gives his oppinion of the game after playing it for 8 hours straight. And still doesn't recommend the game because all the "depth" is superficial, and the AI is awful.

[LuNatic]

The AI has improve a lot since release.

[Idhan]

I'm playing Medieval II for the first time, and my Venetians were doing okay. I went on a crusade and took Jerusalem and Alexandria from the Egyptians. I'm putting off my inevitable war with the Eastern Roman Empire. I wish I had a few more royal family members so that I could actually have a governor for, say, Crete (Iraklion). (Hey, since Venice is an oligarchic republic, shouldn't I be able to pick my doge and governors from several noble families, rather than following the whole "everyone must be in the same family to do general/governor stuff" and "the doge's first son becomes the next doge, even if his cousin is an awesome crusader he's an alcoholic cuckold" rules? Oh well. At least playing the Holy Roman Empire doesn't have rules of "your electors pick the next emperor, and they pick the person with the worst statistics and lowest authority, because they want to manage their fiefs without your interference")

However, the Milanese have recently given me some trouble (the Holy Roman Empire too, but they're less scary to me). This is still pretty early in the game, and I'm wondering what to do about stacks of Italian spear militia. I don't really have any good heavy infantry (my sole castle, Ragusa, can't produce dismounted feudal knights or Venetian heavy infantry. Why can't my mailed knights get off of their high horses and fight dismounted?). I can produce Italian spear militia myself, of course, but that's a "rock ties rock" battle, not a "paper beats rock" one. I suppose archers/crossbowmen are good against spears, but I'm having trouble mastering them.

I managed to take Milan, but that doesn't stop the Milanese from having a 20-unit army in Genoa. I asked the Pope for a crusade against the Milanese, since they are excommunicated/under interdict, but he says no.

(Why is it that everyone's diplomatic reputation is "mixed," even though the only times I've attacked a neutral faction was a crusade (and I didn't have any prior treaty obligations to the Egyptians), whereas the Byzantines keep intermittently blockading my ports/besieging my cities before calling it off and asking for a ceasefire, then pointlessly breaking their ceasefires? I've avoided alliances that I can't live up to.)

[IcedT]

Woo, necro!

The short answer to most of your questions is that, up to and including Medieval 2, there wasn't much of an effort on CA's part to make the diplomacy realistic. Diplomacy is basically just a mechanic for limiting the number of fronts you have to fight on. Every faction has a straight hierarchy with primogeniture because, similarly, the dynastic elements aren't really supposed to be realistic either. Just think of the campaign as a battle generator and everything stands explained.

That said, Venetians definitely have one of the better and more diverse armies in the game, and one of the most interesting strategic situations. You're in for a fun game. Just watch out for Vardariotai when you finally slug it out with the Byzantines.

[Coin]

Now that is quite a necro =)
I'm currently playing a fair bit of Empire Total War using the recently updated Darth Mod. It really makes things soooo much better.

Now to answer some of your questions:

Like you, I played my first campaign as the Venetians and quickly found that the one castle that I have just doesn't cut it. However, fortunately you have some of the best militia units in the game. Italian Spear Militia are the equivalent of Armoured Sergeants, but benefit from lower maintenance in cities.
Now, I gather than you know everything about Hammer and Anvil etc. and assume that what you need shock troops for is to capture Milanese cities, right?
Well, number one is to get a better castle. Ragusa isn't much to cheer about and I normally convert it into a town. It doesn't have much prospect of growing. A much nicer castle can be found in the alps, just north of Milan. It should be held by rebels, but if the pesky germans have it then you can always try your hand at raiding for it. They won't have any of their good units yet and with your Italian Spear Militia you can take on anything they can throw at you. Once you have the castle there isn't much they can do to dislodge you.

Any more questions will have to be sent to Russia. My army is waiting for me and Kiev won't conquer itself!

[IcedT]

Oh, also, there's gold mines in Zagreb (you'll have to beat the Hungarians to it quick), and in the first couple of turns you can usually buy Bologna off the HRE for a reasonable price, get some nifty pavise crossbowmen out of the deal, and then use those troops to siege Pisa in the same turn. Good way to expand your wealth without making any enemies, and contain the Milanese in Italy.

[Idhan]

Thanks for the thoughts. I overestimated the Milanese threat: they're down to Dijon, and they only held onto that because the Pope died and the new Pope (a Hungarian) reconciled with Milan and told me to refrain from hostilities. I do have Zagreb. My only problem is that I seem to be at war with everyone. I think that I need to do better with marriage politics. I've been just marrying off my family to local nobles who come up as offers rather than trying to marry them to foreigners, but maybe that's why everyone hates me. I've saved my latest princess, and want to marry her to some foreign general... but she's picked up a secret lover in her retinue. D:

Does anyone else think that the battlefield effects of chivalry and dread would make more sense reversed? The practical effect of routing is that either 1) You flee the battlefield to fight another day, 2) you get captured, or 3) You reform later and fight on. Let's ignore 3) for now.

Fighting for a chivalrous general, if you flee the battlefield against his orders, yeah, okay, he'll be pissed. He probably won't have your family tortured to death for being a coward or anything, though. A clean execution is probably the worst fate (Although actually, routers are never executed by after fleeing the battlefield by either sort of general). If you get captured by the enemy, and they ransom you, a chivalrous general is most likely to pay the ransom off.

Fighting for a dreadful general, if you flee the battlefield against his orders, you could be in for a whole world of hurt. If you get captured by the enemy, and they ransom you, a dreadful general is most likely to refuse to pay ransom.

Fight against a chivalrous general, if you get captured, he might release you for free, or ransom you. He'll probably not have you all executed. He also seems to be more likely to just let routers flee on occasion.

Fight against a dreadful general, if you get captured, at best he'll ransom you if his faction is short on cash, but he'd probably rather execute you. He also seems to be more likely to be thorough in chasing down routers.

The bottom line here, it seems to me, is that chivalrous generals should be better at getting the enemy to rout, while dreadful generals should be better at making sure their own forces don't rout. From a soldier's perspective, it seems to me to make more sense that way. (I suppose there can be rationales about how chivalrous types inspire their own men to heroism, while dreadful types are so scary that they make opposing soldiers crap their pants in terror, but I still think that soldiers facing some general known to brutally torture captives would be more inclined to fight to the death than soldiers facing someone known to treat prisoners well -- assuming they're facing otherwise similar battlefield conditions. Also, it sems odd that a fight between two chivalrous generals is a grim fight to the death for all parties, while a fight between two dreadful generals could end with 3/4ths of the losing side still alive.)

[Coin]

. My only problem is that I seem to be at war with everyone. I think that I need to do better with marriage politics. I've been just marrying off my family to local nobles who come up as offers rather than trying to marry them to foreigners, but maybe that's why everyone hates me. I've saved my latest princess, and want to marry her to some foreign general... but she's picked up a secret lover in her retinue. D:

Are you playing just regular vanilla MTW2? In that case everyone hates you because of a bug which has yet to be fixed. Every time you conquer a new region and pick the "nice" option, ie. refrain from killing/looting/raising, you are supposed to get a little boost to your reputation. This isn't actually working. Regardless of what you pick you get minus points from everyone. Furthermore, if you are playing on anything higher than normal relationship decay moves towards a negative number, if I remember correctly.
I looked this up a year or two ago when I got frustrated. Since then I only play mods like Lands to Conquer (rebalancing, bug fixes and better AI).

[IcedT]

Am I the only one who ever gets the urge to go back and play the original Shogun: Total War? I still really enjoy it a lot. I've gotten to the level where I can win a campaign pretty quickly as any faction, so to make things interesting I like to convert to Christianity early and do most of my conquering with Teppo-Yari Ashigaru doomstacks. They either win big or lose disastrously, so it adds some drama to situations that would be pretty straightforward otherwise.