Medieval Total War - Take Two

A couple of months ago I wrote up a post on the Total War game series. In it, I commented on my desire to see if the original Medieval Total War game from ca. 2002 would play on my current Windows 7 machine. I've since gone through with that desire and had several hours of fun.

The process of getting the game and the computer to work together was less straightforward than I'd hoped though. First of all, the Medieval Total War game and the Viking Invasion expansion were separate. In fact, at some point over a couple of moves, the Viking Invasion game cd disappeared on me.

So, I decided to simply insert the Medieval Total War game cd and cross my fingers - figuring the game was playable on its own - even though if my memory isn't playing tricks, the Viking Invasion expansion fixed a few major and not so major bugs.

No joy. I'd click "install Medieval Total War" and nothing. So, I went hunting to see if anyone else had an answer, and found several. First of all, most of the people installing the game successfully were installing the Medieval Total War Gold edition, and not the original one, and one solution described was to copy the disc onto the computer first. Didn't work for me - mine is on two cd-roms. So, lets hunt further. If the price is right I'm not going to object to rebuying the game if that's what it takes. Besides, that way I can get the Viking Invasion campaigns again.

Bingo! Turns out that the gold version of the game is available through Steam - and for only $11.00. That install worked - on both computers, and from what I can see, it will also work on Windows 10.

However, that wasn't the end of my initial troubles - some of which were that I'd forgotten some of the game-play tricks and methods (solved by digging out the manual for the game). Others though were not. After the first couple of hours of play - when I'd begin to try and attack other factions, the game began to crash - always on that first turn when I'd triggered an attack.

There is a solution to that problem though - at least so far. First of all, go into the game options and adjust the game resolution up to match that of your screen. That may be enough to fix it. Also, I read that turning off the tool-tips and computer movement visibility from the options on the upper left corner of the game screen will fix some crashes. That one didn't work for me on it's own. However, adjusting the screen resolution did for me. Almost 10 hours later on both computers and no problems.

I have to say, for the age of the game, the graphics and game play are still really good. I'm definitely enjoying the trip down memory lane - amazing how well the music and sound-effects have stuck in my head.