Vista Sucks, avoid at all costs... Medieval Total War II: Kingdoms, buy on sight!

Sorry about the lack of updates of this blog lately. I should have some here shortly. However, I made the mistake of 'up-grading' to a desktop computer with the virus known as Microsoft Windows Vista... So I'm resolving that mistake with the company who made the computer, in fact, I'm on my second Vista box... I've already returned on unsatisfied to the retailer...

...on the good news side however, I have Corel Painter X on the way in the mail box. How does this effect gaming? Well, Corel Painter X is the top of the line RASTR graphics editing program on the market able to simulate painting in most traditional media virtually flawlessly... While exporting multi-layerd files in .png or .jpeg or .tiff formats where GIMP and Inkscape can be used to add stuff to them. In other words, I can paint terrain! Should prove an interesting challenge. Mainly for the fantasy or science fiction based surfaces. If I want modern, I'll dig up imagery from web and throw on a hex grid... However, I want a a unique map of some exotic world like Mars as described Edgar Rice Burroughs Warlord of Mars trilogy, or the some ice ball moon like Europa... I will have the ability to paint it. And then once I figure how to put the grid on it in Inkscape or GIMP, expect a tutorial or walk through!

I'm also plugging my way through a few books about Medieval Scotland, on top of getting distracted with Medieval Total War II: Kingdoms Britannia campaign... Worth every penny for this version of one of the finest computer Turn based strategy/Real Time Tactics (optional!) games produced.

Medieval Total War II is based on the game engine found in Rome Total War, and the rest of the Total War series. These games provide a turn based strategic map where you use your armies to capture important cities to command various regions on the game map. The Real Time Tactics (really just real time strategy, however, its a tactical battle map...) option is if you want to resolve a battle yourself involving your armies instead of allowing the computer to auto-resolve. This is a fantastic feature, however, it can really lengthen your game to command every battle. My recommendation is to command the battles where you don't have a good general present; those times when its just your units with no characters to lead them! The Kingdoms expansion the the Medieval Total War II game adds four new campaigns, all of them localized to particular theaters in the medieval world. So far I've played Britannia which focuses on the British Isles,(the countries of Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, and Norway on the northern tip of Scotland, the Orkney Islands and McKay/Sutherland...), and the Americas campaign (New Spain, Aztecs, Mayans, and New England and New France vying for power in Central America and the South East of North America).

Addictive like the rest of the series!