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Required Pixel Shader 1 - NNNOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! My pc really needs an upgrade. . . I wonder if the laptop has the capactity . . . .

It looks to be a great game though! :D

Those minimum requirements scare me. I'll wait until my next upgrade before I even consider it, I think. Which may be some time. I can always drool from a distance...those screenshots do look absolutely lush.

Wow. The 18 month old laptop can actually cope just about with this game. That is on a mobility radeon 9600 series too! The speech is a little funny as it sometimes skips and the battles take an age to load up.

I am going to see if it is playable over the next few days, if so then mr_e should be able to play on his more up to date pc. . . you would hope so anyway! The main concern I have is if the game decides to randomly crash. The stutter mid battle can be a little painful, especially if your army is getting wooped.

I still have not really figured out the use for Merchants, my only one was murdered by an inquisitor. What a so and so.

I have played this game for a couple of nights now. The main item of interest is that the stats really play more of a part in the game compared with earlier versions.

The welsh longbowmen really went to town on my ram as I attached the Caernarfon and it never reached the walls. This meant I had to fight my way off the walls and into the castle which really, really, really screwed me through massive troop losses. It was not going my way until their general died, the routing helped!

So far I would give it a just because of the fun new touches such as burning heretics, taking over merchant businesses and being elected as pope. The game play is very similar to previous versions and though much prettier it is not a breaking news sort of game.

I'd be tempted to play it just to get elected as pope, then crush everyone. Just like the good old days. Slicker and prettier is never a bad thing, the gameplay itself, certainly in battles, was pretty good already. Have they improved the battle AI much?

The AI was good. I think the battle AI used the longbow men very well. The other item I noticed as an improvement was that the enemy on the campaign map responded with a threatened attack when I overstretched myself. They seem to take advantage of momentary weakness etc which is different from previous incarnations.

I found a weird bug in the AI last night. I was under attack by superior forces, they had better armour, attack and charge bonuses across the board. I tried to hold the outer wall of my Castle but eventually I was down to very few men so rather than try to throw away my two remaining units I decided to beat a retreat back to the inner keep.

All my troops ran back but instead of taking the gate tower and charging after me thus making my troops rout not run. The enemy kept building up its troops on the wall until they had all their infantry on the walls. The gate way then fell to the enemy and the general charged after my troops who were now safely in the inner keep.

This is where the bug came in. The general charged into the inner keep (somehow I lost control of the inner gates - I think it was a spy!). This left his cavalry in the inner keep and my troops quickly closed the gate. The general died, because no horse unit can take two units of spear whilst being charged from the flanks by my remaining horse. This left me in charge of the inner city and the enemy in the outer city with no way in. Eventually they routed and I was able to drive them all off. In reality I should have been wooped, why did the general storm off ahead just to get slaughtered?????!!!!

This is getting to be a seriously hard game. I have now been told to make peace with Scotland or be excommunicated. Scotland, France and Denmark have decided to make my life a living hell to the North and South and I have armies running around all over the place trying to prevent the loss of my most valuable cities.

All in all it just goes to show that the bigger you get the more enemies you make. It is very entertaining but I now have my Wii to distract from the ME2: TW gaming. :D

Well I fought a 1 hour battle yesterday for the control of Paris the computer was really really slow during the battle which made it all difficult to control. I have lowered the resolution etc now in a vain hope the speed will improve as the battles increase in size.

I won the battle btw! Now all I have to do is finish off scotland without being excommunicated, defeat a French army on my soil and see off the Danish all the while building up my economy which is screwed by the number of troops required to fight this four front battle. . . .

Don't forget: losing can be fun!

Not for all those electronic fighters spilling their electrodes for my cause!