Since I’ve bought the Medieval 2 Gold Edition which includes the Kingdoms expansion, I thought it’d be a waste if I didn’t play any of it at all. The expansion consists of four additional campaigns, each of which is actually a separate installation and executable. The campaigns are the Americas, covering the arrival of the Europeans at the Americas in the 16th century; the Britannia campaign, set in the 13th century during which various factions fought for control of the British Isles; the Crusades campaign covering the Third Crusade in the 12th century and the Teutonic campaign covering the struggle between Christian and pagan forces for control of what is now Germany.

I chose to play the Americas campaign first because it’s easily the one that’s most different from regular Medieval 2. Basically you can choose to either play as New Spain, representing the newly arrived Spanish forces, or one of the established nations in the Americas, mostly meaning Mayans or the Aztecs in the south or the Appacheans in the north. It’s pretty obvious that playing as New Spain is where most of the fun lies, what with the special mechanics and scripted events in place for that faction, so that’s what I chose.

New Spain begins the campaign with its capital at Havana, Cuba and small landholdings on the Central American mainland. Havana is basically an impregnable fortress for the Spanish because none of the natives have a navy. The conquistadors have all sorts of advantages over the native: they have steel weapons and armor which allows a single Spanish infantryman to worth around five poorly armed and almost naked natives, they have horses which not only afford them superior maneuverability and charging power but also scare the inhabitants of the New World who have never seen these strange beasts before and of course, they have gunpowder.

Balanced against this is the fact that the Spanish are horribly outnumbered by the natives and even worse, their losses in battle cannot be easily replaced. Many of the advanced troops the Spanish field cannot be recruited in the New World, at least at the initial stages, and New Spain must rely on a constant stream of reinforcements from Europe. This, in turn, is dependent on the player’s ability to successfully carry out orders issued by the King of Spain. It can be very inconvenient for the Spanish to have the King order that a city be conquered when your forces are already committed against another target. This means that New Spain also needs to rely on native mercenaries to round out their forces.

I haven’t gotten very far in my game, but so far I’ve already been embroiled in a two-front war against the Aztecs and the Mayans. I’ve also gotten reports that France has landed an expeditionary army of its own somewhere to the north, which will no doubt will a major rival when I finally get up there. As expected, the Spanish infantry, even with 60-man units against the 150-man units of the natives, cut through the opposition like a hot knife through butter, and charging conquistadors quickly route almost anything the other factions can field. It’s important not to get them bogged down and surrounded, however, as they can lead to staggeringly high losses that the Spanish will have a hard time replenishing.

I’ve had mixed success with the gunpowder units. The culverins (cannons) are awesome for assaulting settlements. Just one hit will destroy a wooden gate or tower. They’re also good as artillery for raining down death on the enemy troops massed in the town square. On the other hand, they’re not much good against an enemy that is charging at you. The musketeers seem to be exceptionally long-ranged and are perfect against the stupid AI who often stand and do nothing while being whittled down to death, but their line-of-sight only weapons make them completely ineffective when assaulting walled settlements.

I’ll hopefully have more when I get deeper into the campaign.