Medieval: Total War is the second game in the Total War strategy franchise. As a sequel to the first part of the series, Shogun: Total War, it shares many aspects of graphics and gameplay with the latter game. Starting in the late 11th century, the player takes control of one of the many kingdoms ruling over Europe and the Mediterranean. Through a mixture of manoeuvring armies and provincial administration on the Risk-style campaign map and fighting real-time battles whenever a province is invaded, the player seeks to win the game either through dominance of the map or through fulfilling given victory conditions.

Medieval: Total War is the last game in the series to feature a purely "Risk"-Style Map for the campaign, as well as the last to depict soldiers on the battlefield as 2-dimensional sprites. From Rome: Total War onwards, armies can be manoeuvred to individual places on the campaign map rather than just between provinces, and soldiers on the battlefield are depicted in 3d. Despite the comparatively antiquated technology, Medieval: Total War is nevertheless worth playing for its dense atmosphere, good balance and stronger AI than most of the following games in the series until Total War: Shogun 2.

One expansion pack was released for the game, Viking Invasion. Set in Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia during The Early Middle Ages, the player seeks to gain control of the British Isles as one of the Anglo-Saxon or Celtic kingdoms and fend off Norse threat, or to play as the Vikings and conquer the place yourself.

Was followed up by Medieval II: Total War.

This game provides examples of:

• Already Done for You: This can happen when finishing off a faction. Say you're going at one from the west and then a rival takes their last province from the east.
• Alternate History: Naturally, the Viking Invasion campaign ends with your faction achieving total domination of the British Isles, a feat which would not be accomplished in real life until the English Commonwealth in the 1650s.
• Annoying Arrows: Your archers main role isn't about killing units, but to soften them up a bit before reaching your troops. So they by default, deal miniscule damage, further compounded by the fact that they have limited arrows in their quivers. Once armour starts being a factor, arrows go from "sometimes lethal" to "barely scratching".
• Anti-Cavalry: Spears, trees and hills. Also, camels are capable of taking down horse units of far greater quality than the camels, an effect that all later Total War games that had camel-riding cavalry incorporated; all camel units naturally give all nearby horse units significant penalties, because the horses can't stand the smell of the camels. Bedouin Warriors can become the bane of western crusader armies.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Longbows, crossbows, axes... it may be a good idea to keep a few unarmoured units around specifically because of the vast range of units who actually get a bonus fighting heavily armoured troopers. This is particularly problematic for nations who invested heavily in upgrading their soldiers armour via the various armoury buildings, as even their militia may be armoured in heavy mail.
• Arranged Marriage: You can use the princesses in your family to form alliances with other factions. On the other hand, if another faction has a daughter, she can be married to one of your sons.
• Artificial Stupidity: Sadly, a recurring theme in the series. Re-emerged factions are perfectly willing to attack the faction that has eliminated them multiple times within the last 100 years when said faction controls more than 60% of the map. On a related note, it is not unusual for factions with just one or two provinces to suddenly attack factions that control most of the map.
• Artistic License – History
  • In the alert of the Golden Horde's emergence, which occurs about 1230, it is stated that the Great Khanate extends all the way to Japan. This is a Continuity Nod to Shogun: Total War more than anything, and curiously implies that Japan is a province of the Mongol Empire. In reality, the historically unsuccessful Mongol invasions of Japan would not occur for another four decades, and Europeans would not even be made aware of Japan (Thanks, Marco Polo.) until the turn of the next century.
  • In the historical battles, the Battle of Hastings is presented as a battle between England and France. The problem is, they are depicted as their post-Norman Conquest incarnations from the Medieval campaigns, with the Normans being represented by the blue coat of arms of France and the Saxons being represented by the red Three Lions coat of arms associated with the descendants of William of Normandy. Strangely, Saxon England is also represented as such in the Viking Invasion-exclusive Battle of Stamford Bridge, rather than as the Saxon faction from the expansion.
• Ascended Extra: Burgundy and Switzerland are both provinces which will have their own factions emerge to take over later on down the line.
  • Holds true for all the factions in Viking Invasion since England is the only proper faction on Britain in the original campaign. In this prequel, pre-Norman England is divided between an independent Northumbria, Mercia and the Saxons representing Wessex. Scotland is divided between the Picts and the Scots, whom also contest control of Ireland with the Irish. Wales is also a faction which includes Cornwall. Whereas Denmark was just another faction in the original, the Vikings here are in their prime, encompassing both Norway and Denmark and giving the expansion its title.
• Assassination Attempt: Assassins can be recruited to eliminate enemy assets.
• Assassin Outclassin': The natural result of a failed assassination.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: Units with low morale have a tendency to rout the very moment a stronger enemy unit engages them. This is particularly common with Peasant units and low-end militia units.
• Atop a Mountain of Corpses: Corpses persist for the duration of battles, which can lead to this, especially in a spot where two lines of evenly matched infantry come together. Units fight over the tops of the corpses with no ill effect, however.
• Badass Family: As your faction is controlled by one clan, and your Generals are all born from or marry into it, this can easily result.
• Balkanize Me: Your faction can be fractured by a Civil War if you have enough disloyal generals and you are given a choice of which side to pick, with the opposing side becoming rebels. Medieval is also distinguished in that eliminated factions can come Back from the Dead thanks to secret heirs and take a stab at their occupied homelands. There are also emergent factions in the Burgundians and the Swiss, which will be a thorn in the side of France and the Holy Roman Empire, and the Golden Horde storming in from the east, with local rebellions declaring alleigance to these factions. Viking Invasion is set in Dark Ages Britain, which the game defines as "a patchwork of competing petty kingdoms" following the withdrawal of the Romans.
• Battle in the Rain: Can occur and does (mostly negatively) affect the units. For instance, projectile units suffer reduced range and accuracy while archers cannot use flaming arrows.
• Barbarian Tribe: A lot of minor nations such as Scotland, Sweden, Aragon, etc. are represented by "rebel" factions which are at war with everyone else and can't be engaged in diplomacy. The cheat code to play as the rebel factions as a collective is "conan".
• The Berserker: A unit for the Danes.
• Big Damn Heroes: A possibility when you bring in reinforcements.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: Your generals are all elite warriors in their own right, but they still have bodyguards to protect them on the battlefield, as well as on the homefront against assassination attempts.
• Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards: The Varangian Guard for the Byzantines, and the Swiss Guard for the Pope.
• Catholic-Hating Christian: Christendom is split between a mostly Catholic Europe, where kingdoms answer to the Papal States, with Orthodox Russia and the Byzantine Empire to the East. If a campaign lasts long enough, conflict will be inevitable, with the Orthodox factions potentially becoming the target of Crusades. Additionally, a province whose population is split between Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity can be subject to religious unrest.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Raising multiple armies in Campaign mode can be egregiously difficult since most of the commanders attached to your units tend to be, more often than not, untrustworthy enough (Loyalty: Less than 3) to be allowed to move independently from your King's Army.
• Church Militant: The Roman Catholic Church won't hesitate to commission Crusades, nor will it hesitate to send its armies out to smash the uppity heathens. The Pope will attack the player and excommunicate them if they try to fight back. On occasion, the Pope will ask for a Crusade, receive payment and then give the player 1000 florins, the cost of the Crusade's blessing.
• Civil War: Can occur if enough generals are disloyal, splitting your faction's provinces and armies between two sides. It is then up to you to chose which side to stick with, which will result in the opposing side becoming rebels.
• Color-Coded Characters: Each faction has a color to distinguish them:
  • In Viking Invasion, the Irish are apple green, the Mercians are bright blue, the Northumbrians are mustard yellow, the Picts are brown, the Saxons are bright red, the Scottish are dark blue, the Welsh are dark green and the Vikings are white.
• Composite Character
  • Though the setting long predates the real world unification of Italy, the Italian faction encompasses the states of Milan and Venice among others. Medieval II: Total War would mitigate this somewhat by making Milan and Venice separate factions.
  • The Viking faction presented in Viking Invasion is composed of a union between Norway and Denmark. Not were the two nations not united at that point, but neither country were themselves unified then.
  • The Welsh faction includes not only Wales but the Kingdom of Cornwall.
• Crack Defeat: Attacking provinces with rivers can easily turn into this. All the defenders really need is a unit of spearmen + archer combo for each bridge and simply Hold the Line.
• Critical Failure: Gunpowder Siege Weapons can detonate catastrophically, depriving the attacking force of their means to demolish a Castle's walls and defenses. Though this is a rare issue that happens completely at random. (See Random Number God)
• Critical Existence Failure: Your agents and generals only serve you better as they grow older and more experienced, right up until they pass away of natural causes.
• Culture Clash: Religious unrest can cause rebellions in provinces.
• Darker and Edgier: While of course the Sengoku period was hardly a walk in the park, Medieval presents an extremely pessimistic and dire view of the European continent in the Middle Ages. It's a horrible time to be alive, where your rulers reign with near-infallibility and wage near-Forever War with each other for petty religious grudges and squabbles over territory and riches, not even getting into the famines, plagues and inquisitions. Viking-age Britain was even worse, as the Romans abandoned the island and left the people to fend for themselves against invading Norse and Saxon cutthroats who come looking to build their own empires in the shell of the old.
• Decapitated Army:
  • As in all games in the series, killing an enemy general will cause his army's morale to drop significantly.
  • If you try to engage the Mongol hordes when they arrive, you just might get lucky enough to kill the Khan. You will probably still lose the battle unless you had a huge force sitting on the eastern border of the map, but the entire Mongolian army turns into disorganized rebel scum after the battle... albeit with very good units.
• Digitized Sprites: How soldiers are depicted on the otherwise 3-dimensional battlefield.
• Disaster Dominoes: Battles between evenly matched forces tend to play out like this. One moment, the sides will be evenly matched, then one unit will break and flee. The units next to them will now suffer a drop in morale due to seeing a friendly unit flee as well as having their flank exposed, then they too will flee. It is possible to see a battle go from "balanced" forces to one side routing completely within seconds.
• The Dreaded: A character in either of the Medievals can keep order with a high Dread rating. It even says that the room goes silent when your character enters the room in Medieval with maxed out Dread, and Dreaded characters lower the morale of entire enemy armies by their mere presence. This is very annoying when fighting the Mongols, who all have high Dread generals. Use Chivalrous generals to balance it up... or use a general of your own with even higher Dread to make the Mongols break first. With a general whose Dread is maxed out, it's possible to break an entire enemy army by simply charging them. You don't even have to hit them; simply charge the entire army straight at them, and there's a pretty good chance that the lower-morale units break immediately, starting a chain reaction of routing that sends the entire army fleeing.
• Dungeon Bypass: You can invade any given province with a port in it, provided your own army is in port and you can see the province, too. Enemy clan having all its armies parked right next to border? Just land in their back.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first Shogun and Medieval games differ from the later parts of the series both in graphics and in gameplay.
  • Technical limitations mean units on the battlefield are represented by 2D sprites. Rome would introduce 3D models, which in turn affects how units fight each other, especially in melee.
  • Shogun and Medieval are the only ones to use tokens that can move only to the next, bordering province, but in the same time, always can move to neighbouring territories. From Rome onwards, armies would have movement range, further affected by army composition and roads, which meant crossing a single province could take a few turns.
  • Assassins cannot be used to sabotage enemy buildings. This ability was introduced in Rome.
  • Like Shogun, battles on the campaign map were introduced with a simple box which gave the number of men in your army vs. the enemy and your choices to proceed ^note Command the Battle Personally, Auto-Resolve, Abandon Province or Retreat to the Castle (if there was one). This changed with the Viking Invasion Expansion Pack, which expanded the box to allow you to assess your armies and generals compared with that of the enemy, with a portrait of your general opposing the enemy general. Funnily enough, the expanded Medieval also included a roaming shot of the battle map on which you would be fighting, which does not feature in later games. Rome would add a bar to the box displaying an estimated probability of victory versus defeat.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Elite units have more fancy armor that make them stand out from the rank and file units.
• Enemy Civil War: A faction whose royal family was destroyed or are in possession of a particularly weak monarch could suffer rebellion as rival claimants attempted to seize the throne for themselves. Catholic factions who have been excommunicated may suffer from widespread hostility from Papal loyalists, which can be seen as an Enemy Civil War from the perspective of any Muslim factions holding the Holy Land at that point. When the French are sending crusaders to Frankfurt, they're not sending them to Jerusalem...
• Evil Pays Better: Practically speaking, it's better to just outright execute enemy prisoners than release them. Ransoming them might get you some money, but doesn't earn your general Dread, which is an incredibly useful trait to have when pushing the enemy to the Despair Event Horizon.
• Faction-Specific Endings: Each faction gets a unique cutscene visual and narration when you win.
• Fair-Weather Friend: Don't count on your allies to support you when you really need them. Conversely, abandoning your allies to fight a war on their own is bad diplomatic form, and will result in a hit to foreign relations.
• Flavor Text: Unit and Building cards naturally contain a brief description detailing the unit or building in question. These descriptions are reasonably historically accurate.
• Fractional Winning Condition: Similar to Shogun, Medieval encourages you to conquer all of Europe, though you an settle for 60%. Likewise, in the Viking Invasion, you can stop yourself once you've conquered two thirds of the British Isles.
• Friendly Fireproof: Averted. Your missile and siege weapons make no distinction between your own troops and those of the enemy when they hit.
• Frontline General: At the game start, your general's guard unit will be the best thing in your army and the game openly encourages you to use them in combat, especially against ineffectual rebels.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: Downplayed. In another example of Early-Installment Weirdness shared with Shogun, agents cannot die of old age and so can only be killed through assassination or execution.
• Game Mod: The XL Mod, one of the first mods for Medieval, expanded the scope of the game by introducing new factions and units.
  • Hellenic: Total War, set in Ancient Greece.
  • Napoleonic: Total War began a series of mods preceding the official Napoleon: Total War.
• Global Currency: This game uses the florin — partial Truth in Television, as it was a standard coin throughout much of medieval Europe, containing 54 grains (3.5 grams) of gold.
• Government in Exile: Factions can occasionally reappear to try and reclaim their independence. Taking control of Rome and defeating the Pope will result in the immediate election of a new Pope, who generally appears right next to Rome with a sizeable army.
• Grim Up North: In Viking Invasion, Scotland is divided between the Scots and the Picts. This trope is invoked in the Picts' victory cutscene, which observes that that the climate of North Britain has molded them into strong warriors, giving them an edge over their softer neighbors in the South. Viking Invasion itself covers the eponymous invasion of Dark Ages Britain, playing this trope relative to the rest of Europe. The Vikings' victory cutscene identifies Britain as a great Northern fortress.
• Holy City: Rome is the seat of power for the Papal States, which functions as an Obstructive Bureaucrat for the Catholic kingdoms of Europe. Jerusalem lies in the Muslim-dominated Holy Land and is the most popular target for the Papal-sanctioned Crusades.
• Horse Archer: A staple of the eastern/steppe factions. They can also be recruited as mercenaries by other factions in those regions. They can be devastating if used effectively, though this requires series practice and micromanagement as they are Fragile Speedsters who need to use Hit-and-Run Tactics to survive.
• Improvised Weapon: The Peasant units of some factions use pitchforks as their primary weapon.
• In the Back: Always the best way to handle your foes - while there may be some other factors to it, as a rule, being attacked from behind will cause a significant morale penalty that will rout enemy units faster.
• Island Base: There's the British Isles, the western Mediterranean islands of Corsica and Sardinia, the central islands of Sicily and Malta, and the Eastern islands of Crete, Rhodes and Cyprus. Viking Invasion has Manau, the Isle of Man, and ends with one faction as undisputed masters of the British Isles, a "great Northern fortress" as the Viking victory narration notes.
• Keystone Army: If a faction loses its last remaining province and/or heirless leader, any armies elsewhere will become minor rebels.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: You see that routing unit that's running away from you helpless and unable to harm your units? Kill them anyway. If they aren't shattered, they might rally to attack your units again, and while a routing unit is under attack, it cannot rally.
• The Kingslayer: A Total War staple. Naturally, faction leaders are the most difficult characters for an assassin to kill.
• Losing the Team Spirit: As is standard for the series, troop morale is a huge factor in battle. Outnumbering the enemy, having their flanks protected, and having a General nearby are some of the many factors which increase troop morale. However, losing your General or having nearby friendly units flee will badly demoralize your army.
• Luck-Based Mission: Agent actions and naval battles can only be resolved automatically, leaving you with no ability to influence the outcome. You are merely given the probability of success as you hope the Random Number God is on your side.
• Mercenary Units: In a franchise first, it is possible for a General out in the field to recruit mercenaries, providing that they have space for them in the army, and their faction has the money to pay for them.
• Mercy Rewarded: In one sense, as letting prisoners go will earn your generals points for Chivalry in Medieval. But there's nothing preventing those prisoners from fighting you in the next turn. If you do it too often, you start to lose Dread. The best way can be the rather schizophrenic tactic of letting all of them go, then killing them all the next time.
• The Middle Ages: As the title suggests, this game takes place in this time. Medieval uses its own divisions for the campaign.
  • The Low Middle Ages: Viking Invasion spans from 793 to 1066.
  • The High Middle Ages: The "Early Period" campaign starts in 1087, with the "High Period" starting in 1205.
  • The Late Middle Ages: The Late Period campaign starts in 1321, with all three campaigns concluding in 1453.
• Multiple Endings: The game allows you to declare victory after conquering 60% of the map or to go for 100% instead. If you choose the latter course, the ending is suitably more epic... "more epic" meaning that the little cutscene was the same, but the text below is slightly different.
• Narration: Courtesy of Sean Pertwee, who narrates the trailer and the campaign victory speeches.
• The Need for Mead: An Inn allows you to hire mercenary armies, a Tavern allows you to hire assassins.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Variety of early-to-mid game buildings from baseline game become end-of-the-line upgrades for your infrastructure in Viking Invasion, it being set few centuries earlier. Most notably, motte-and-bailey, normally the very first building in the castle line, is something most players won't even end up constructing in non-vital settlements due to how late it shows up in the tree. Similarly, certain basic units like mounted noblemen, end up being your top-quality.
• Old Maid: If a princess is not married past childbearing age, she becomes a spinster and thus is retired.
• One-Man Army: Medieval, like the first Shogun, features the infamous "Jedi Generals". Simply put, the more command stars a general accrues (mostly by winning battles), the harder and tougher to kill he becomes (this to counterbalance the fact that killing him makes the entire army's morale drop like a stone, and the AI isn't programmed to protect its generals). A single dude on horseback can rack up hundreds of kills until he is finally put down... or he could win the battle by himself.
• Palette Swap: Units who can be recruited by multiple factions will look exactly the same save for the faction's primary color being swapped out.
• Pariah State: A Catholic faction excommunicated by the Pope is considered, at least nominally, an outcast for all its co-religionists, who can attack it without fear of consequences from the Papal States, including by participating in a crusade against its settlement, in case the Pope's dissatisfaction with the excommunicated faction is great enough for him to take this step.
• Politically Active Princess: Princesses can act as emissaries and negotiate with other factions.
• Prequel: Viking Invasion, which ends a quarter century before Medieval begins. Medieval itself can be considered a prequel to the 16th century-based Shogun: Total War.
• Promoted to Playable: Aragon, Hungary, Sicily are non-playable in the vanilla game, despite being established factions from the get-go. This was rectified when the Viking Invasion update made them playable.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Absolutely possible to do, particularly when invading enemy territory. While your army might win the battle, it can come away too weakened to actually capture any cities or take on the enemy's other armies. Inversely, this is a good strategy if you find your own army hopelessly outmatched. (For example, if a formerly neutral faction launches an attack on one of your cities and reinforcements are too far away to get there in time to help.) Use any strategy you can to make sure your opponent's inevitable victory becomes a Pyrrhic Victory, thus slowing down their invasion of your territory.
• Quantity vs. Quality: Both sides of the axis can be played effectively, even against each other. A handful of high-tier, fully upgraded units can tear apart an army of peasants without even slowing down. An large enough wave of freshly recruited militia can simply Zerg Rush some Elite Army due to the size disparity.
• Random Number God: When using Cannons, there is a chance for a catastrophic explosion that kills some of the crew and removes the weapon for the rest of the battle. If you're lucky, you can fire 50+ shots (if the option of Limited Ammo is turned off) out a Cannon before it explodes. If not, you'll lose the Cannon before all of the ammo is expended. A crew with high Valour can reduce the chance of an accident but not prevent it completely.
• Risking the King: Sending your Faction Leader into battle is incredibly risky, but regardless of his other traits, simply being the Faction Leader gives him boosts to command rating and increases the size of his bodyguard unit of powerful cavalry in battle, so he may actually be the best choice for leading an army. Carries huge risk though should he die, especially if you don't have many other of-age family members since you lose if your Faction Leader dies and has no heir.
• Save Scumming: In yet another example of Early-Installment Weirdness, both Shogun and Medieval have a significant disadvantage compared to later games since most actions cannot be performed in real time and are left to the space between turns. As a result, anything from battles to assassinations to treaty proposals are all bunched together and cannot be tackled individually.
• Scotireland: In Viking Invasion, Ireland is initially divided between the Irish and the Scots, whom inhabit Northern Ireland, plus rebels.
• Shown Their Work: The Byzantine faction starts off very strong in the Early Middle Ages but gets weaker on the later ones which historically reflects their gradual decline and eventual downfall at the hands of the Turks who themselves start off as weak but become stronger with better units and solid control over the anatolian territories.
• The Siege: There is the option to hold a siege until the province falls with relatively no bloodshed. However, this can be undesirably time-consuming and so Storming the Castle is recommended.
• Sliding Scale of Turn Realism: Has the "Round by Round" variety, with each turn representing a year.
• The Smurfette Principle: Joan of Arc features as a player-controlled general in a series of historical battles, the sole female general in this game and, indeed, most of the franchise.
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: Especially noticeable on the battlefield, but also present on the campaign map.
• Spy Versus Spy: One of a spy's functions is counterspying, allowing them to intercept enemy spies and assassins in your territory.
• Starting Units: Medieval is full of these. The Holy Roman Empire started off with some Vikings they can never train more of, the Byzantines start off with a unit of Varangian Guard (which they can't build for several decades, until they build the needed buildings somewhere) and a non-mercenary unit of Alan Mercenary Cavalry (which they can't build at all, and can only hire as mercenaries). The Sicilians also start off with a pair of Barques, which they can't build at all, being limited to the Galley/Dromon line of ships, same as the Italians, Papacy, and Byzantines. Aragon has a valor bonus to building Gungalleys, which neither the Aragonese nor Spanish can build at all. Tripoli starts off (depending on era) either owned by the Egyptians or French, yet it has a valor bonus to building a unit only the Turks can build. Several provinces have valor bonuses to units NO ONE can build, such as Chivalric Foot Knights in Ile de France, Gothic Foot Knights in Brandenburg, and Hospitaller Foot Knights on Rhodes.
• Storming the Castle: When laying siege to a castle, you may choose to storm the castle provided you have artillery to take down its walls and gates. The defenders understandably have a number of advantages which can make capturing the city a time consuming process with high potential for heavy casualties.
• Succession Crisis: The game manual actually suggests engineering a Civil War to dispose of a weak family line, and a savvy player who sees one coming can pick his best general, give him the biggest army, and then marry him to a princess. If you're going to have a succession crisis, it's best to make sure it's a quick one. Should a leader die with no heirs whatsoever, their faction will simply degenerate into rebel provinces, though another faction may absorb them if one of the generals married a princess from the fallen faction.
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Cavalry beats archers, archers beat spearmen, and spearmen beat cavalry.
• Tactical Withdrawal: If one of your provinces is invaded, you can choose to fall back to the castle or abandon the province for the next one.
• Take It to the Bridge: A Total War staple, bridge battles can be initiated and are an excellent opportunity to defend yourself against numerically superior foes.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: The image for an assassinated faction leader presents him as having been murdered this way.
• A Thicket of Spears: Spear units of some sort are available to nearly any faction, and allow both the front and second ranks of a unit to attack.
• Timed Mission: As in Shogun, battles have their timers. Depending if you are attacking or defending, once the clock hits zero, it's an automatic defeat or victory.
  • The main campaign lasts until 1453.
  • Viking Invasion spans from 793 to 1066.
• Took a Level in Badass / From Nobody to Nightmare: A universal constant. Generals accumulate command stars through winning battles whilst units gain more experience, assassins become more effective killers through success and whole nations grow into Rising Empires.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: This can happen to a faction if the Reasonable Authority Figure Faction Leader dies and is replaced by a bloodthirsty, psychopathic, authoritarian heir.
• Undying Loyalty: Faction Heirs and Leaders can never be Bribed into changing their Faction. This also includes those traveling with them, or any cities that they are in, as a result.
• United Europe: Players are encouraged to conquer all of Europe, which also includes North Africa and the Middle East, though they can settle for 60%.
• Units Not to Scale: Averted on the battle map, where units are all reasonably relatively sized compared to one another. Cities and other structures are also reasonably to scale compared to the units.
• Universally Beloved Leader: Among the many other advantages it brings (increases to command, influence, troop morale, popularity, protection from assassination...), your Faction Leader having traits that fit this trope will greatly reduce unrest and the probability of revolt across your empire. Even conquered provinces who resent being under the heel of a foreign faction are somewhat soothed by knowing that at least their conquerors have a reputation for valor, fairness, and honesty. The same is also true for any Generals you have situated as governors within the province they are governing.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • In the first Medieval, you can actually use Inquisitors. Leaving your inquisitor alone in an enemy province for a few years has interesting results. Your inquisitor starts a rebellion and usually hundreds or thousands are killed. One writer once had 90,000 people killed in one round. Another discovered that enough inquisitors (of both plain and grand varieties) in a single province will result in an uprising no matter how many units are in it. At last count 4000 is not enough.
  • During a battle, a player can have all captured enemy prisoners executed, in order to prevent them from being freed in case of an enemy victory.
• War Is Glorious: Very much presented as the case by the game, much as it would have actually been in the Medieval Age. Winning many battles and conquering many territories not only gives your General traits making him a better commander and increasing troop morale, it also makes him more popular with the people and increases his influence.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: If a faction's leader dies without an heir, that faction is eliminated. Any remaining cities will become Rebel cities or be ceded to another faction in the event of a marriage alliance.
• A Winner Is You: Likely the most egregious case in the series. All you get after conquering much of the known world, having been campaigning for days or even weeks in real time, is an image with a short congratulatory text.
• Young and in Charge: It is possible for a family member as young as 16 to become the Faction Leader.
• Zerg Rush: A viable option for warfare provided you have the numbers and money to back it up.