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Anyone seeking this game out should be aware that there are two versions of it available.

The original diskette version of the game, which is what this version is, is essentially an unwinnable nightmare. The computer Lords do not follow the same rules the player is bound by. For instance, they can send wave after wave of no-fail saboteurs against your kingdom without having it affect their own resources. They can police their realms indefinitely without it reducing their happiness. As for the diplomacy system, it is all but non-functional, making alliances out of the question. The Lords will betray and attack you randomly even if you have a rating of 9 with them. Not that you are likely to reach 9 since your ratings start out so low. Once you are at war (and you will be) it is for all practical purposes impossible to appease them through diplomacy, although that won't stop them from sending demand after demand for gold.

The CD version of the game, which was released maybe a year after the original diskette version, patched a lot of these problems. Your starting values for relations with other Lords are much higher, making it possible to form alliances. The computer is less wonky about sending the endless waves of uber ninja across your borders. The Pope will also no longer get randomly pissed off at you for attacking other Lords (unless they are Blessed, which you can find out by holding a Council), and best of all, if your ally wins, you get the "second place" victory where you hold a high position in his court. The CD version is also fully voiced, has cut scenes for all the (optional) plot sequences, and has a ton of video about historical castles!

The downside of the CD version is that those historical castles are available to be built in place of castles you the player design. And these historical castles come with little bonuses... building one increases your realms happiness. Building another improves your archers. Etc. This means in a game that is supposed to be all about designing your own awesome fortresses, you are actually being punished for doing so since player designed castles have no special advantages.

Not that it really matters, because if both versions of the game have one critical flaw, it is just how little castle design really impacts the game. It always just comes down to the siege engines knocking down the walls... there is no "siege" involved. No tactics.

Another massive downside of both versions of the game is how stupid it is to try to defend a castle rather than just retreat and retake it. When you get attacked, you only have 50% of your troops. When you attack the enemy, the enemy only has 50% of his troops. It only costs 1 Iron to attack. So why would you EVER try to hold a castle?

For a classic era DOS game, Castles 2 is pretty fun. But don't expect Crusader Kings level complexity here. Even in the CD version, the games systems are really simplistic and the computers algorithms and "strategy" gets pretty transparent.

[Vanshilar]

I've recently cracked the save game files, so now I can read through the data that's saved for the game. I'm still working on figuring out what each byte means, but at least I can look up the values. I've already figured out stuff like what task everyone is doing, how much resources and army units each faction has, etc. So let me know if you have questions on stuff.

In theory I could also edit the save game files, but it takes some doing because of how the file is encoded; eventually it should be easy to do with a program, but I'm not quite there yet.

Additionally, a number of the data files such as the terrain maps for each territory and information about the different tasks can be directly edited.

I haven't figured out the plots yet.

In messing around with the game files, it turns out that you can play as the Pope! I haven't really explored this though so don't know how it might break the game. But the first byte of OPTIONS.DAT is the faction that you want to be for the game. In the game, the factions are 0 = Valois, 1 = Anjou, 2 = Albion, 3 = Burgundy, 4 = The Pope, 5 = Aragon, 6 = UNKNOWN, 7 = Neutral. So if you set the first byte of OPTIONS.DAT to "4", it'll allow you to play as the Pope. (Trying to play as UNKNOWN or Neutral seems to give you garbage, though, even if the game doesn't crash.)

Originally Posted by Phillip of Burgandy

Anyone seeking this game out should be aware that there are two versions of it available.

The original diskette version of the game, which is what this version is, is essentially an unwinnable nightmare. The computer Lords do not follow the same rules the player is bound by. For instance, they can send wave after wave of no-fail saboteurs against your kingdom without having it affect their own resources. They can police their realms indefinitely without it reducing their happiness. As for the diplomacy system, it is all but non-functional, making alliances out of the question. The Lords will betray and attack you randomly even if you have a rating of 9 with them. Not that you are likely to reach 9 since your ratings start out so low. Once you are at war (and you will be) it is for all practical purposes impossible to appease them through diplomacy, although that won't stop them from sending demand after demand for gold.

Um as far as I know I'm playing the diskette version of the game and I don't have a problem beating it on impossible. The computer players are limited in the same way as human players (can only have 2 tasks per area at a time, etc.), although yes they can get a discount on tasks (they can get one resource for free if they're missing it when they want to do a task). You don't see all the times when they send saboteurs that die en-route, you only see the ones that succeed. Policing the realm takes up one of their military tasks. I don't think I've had a computer attack me once I get to 8 or higher relations with them (maybe they do once I claim, forgot), a relations of 8 or 9 essentially means "allied". The Pope only gets pissed at you for attacking someone if they're already blessed (relations of 8 or 9 with the Pope).

I haven't played the CD version (i.e. pre-made castles with bonuses) so can't comment on them. But if you find it to be an "unwinnable nightmare" yet say the strategy gets "pretty transparent" then I'd say there's more you still have to learn about the game.