Medieval 2 Disk - Without Steam

[Myrmidon.1989]

Good day all,

Seems I've not been on here since 2017 damn. Anyway long story short I've not been on steam in over 2 years, we lost my partner and it was a big part of my life, I'm not going back on steam, I'm not using steam and would appreciate it if no one bought it up nor gave me a hard time about it. If you're not interested or just want to troll then there is no obligation to assist in this thread. We're not doing steam here.

Now I've had a nostalgic craving for some Medieval 2 lately and if I remember correctly it was the last title to release on disk that could actually be played as a physical game, old school before the great dominion of digital took over the world. I've read that it's still possible to play old Medieval 2 on disk on windows 10 but that it's very awkward and confusing to get working. Just wondered if anyone is familiar with this personally? Or if not could point me to any other discussions they know of? I've found a thread or two from about 6+ years ago but they haven't been very helpful.

If anyone could offer any insight I would genuinely appreciate it.

Regards

Myrmidon

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

The largest issue I'm aware of for the disk version is the DRM attached to it. Various methods to cope with it are available, none of them very clean but you may find something if that is the source of issue. The 'simplest' option listed on bottom of the original post is probably the path of least resistance but we can't give a direct link and you need to use judgement in ensuring you get something clean.

Otherwise the game to my knowledge should run fine on a newer system out of the box, perhaps with compatibility settings applied. It would be preferable to update the game to 1.5/gold but when I tried to find the relevant thread I discovered all manual patch downloads are dead so until that can be pieced together that's a non starter for now, someone may be able to turn up with progress.

If you encounter other issues feel free to specify what happens and someone here may be able to check up on it. There are a handful of users around who still use CD versions. Last time I attempted CD on Win 10 it worked quite well out of the box but that was before 2020 and no doubt more trickery is needed now, but I'm not sure exactly what it would be for this title.

Ultimately with the first line in mind, I'd give it a try and work through concerns one by one and report what exactly becomes a snag. It may be useful to others down the line if you find a solution on your own terms and make a note of it when reporting here. If a clean process comes out of this it might be worth turning into a snazzy page for twc wiki for others to refer to but I'm getting ahead of myself...

[alhoon]

Probably there are other platforms like Epic Games.

[Myrmidon.1989]

There are absolutely no other platforms. Warhammer and Troy are on Epic as the latter was timed-exclusive and Warhammer has all kinds of different rules. No Total Wars are available anywhere else digitally.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

In fact, Medieval 2 is the last game you can buy independently, the rest is bound to a store - overwhelmingly Steam - as Myrmidon describes.

Still holding out to hear how the original response is proceeding. To my knowledge it's really the only path to take.

[alhoon]

There are absolutely no other platforms. Warhammer and Troy are on Epic as the latter was timed-exclusive and Warhammer has all kinds of different rules. No Total Wars are available anywhere else digitally.

Warhammer is not bad at all. I liked WH2. Haven't played WH3 for more than a few minutes yet but I will at some point... probably not this year.
Troy I also hear good things about. Personally, I would start with Troy. Also, WH3 has tradeable regions again.

[Gigantus]

I still have the original disks and after repeated new machine installations have created disk images from it's two installation disks as well as the DLC. Installation from the images is no problem.

I am running it on Win10 with the main disk image (disk1) mounted instead of the physical disk to avoid damaging the original disk. Also applied Large Address Awareness (4GB patch) to both executable files for better handling of mods and haven't looked back since.

It did come handy as my latest pre-build machine actually hasn't got a CD drive anymore.

[Myrmidon.1989]

I still have the original disks and after repeated new machine installations have created disk images from it's two installation disks as well as the DLC. Installation from the images is no problem.

I am running it on Win10 with the main disk image (disk1) mounted instead of the physical disk to avoid damaging the original disk. Also applied Large Address Awareness (4GB patch) to both executable files for better handling of mods and haven't looked back since.

It did come handy as my latest pre-build machine actually hasn't got a CD drive anymore.

I have very little idea what you just said but..... It sounds interesting and potentially very useful for me... Is it complicated? I'm trying to google disk images and large address awareness now, I'm not very computery myself, I remember back in the Rome 1 days I often struggled greatly to get the old epic historical mods working.

[Gigantus]

The link to LAA has some info, and here is some stuff regarding the creation of so called ISO files from a CD.

[Myrmidon.1989]

The link to LAA has some info, and here is some stuff regarding the creation of so called ISO files from a CD.

Much appreciated but it seems I have another problem that I hadn't even anticipated... It seems my CD/DVD drive cannot read disks... It's installed. It shows in windows explorer but putting in a disk does nothing. Re-installing drivers, uninstalling device and restarting, repair, rollback, nothing works. I guess I'm doomed... Unfortunately every single.... Literally every single god damn google search tells me how to get the drive to read in explorer which isn't what I want, I can see it, it's there, it's the putting disks in and nothing happening that I want to fix. Sigh technology.

[Gigantus]

Most likely the drive is defect - sometimes the lens gets dirty if it isn't used.

"how to get the drive to read in explorer" is actually exactly what is needed, right now it's not doing so. You are mixing it up with "getting the drive recognized in explorer" - that is happening.