Yesterday, PC Gamer got all patriotic and looked at the British Isles campaign from forthcoming Medieval II: Total war expansion Kingdoms. Today, it's taking a trip across the ocean to the Americas, one of the later campaigns in the expansion and based on the movement of the Spanish and other European nations into the body of the American continents.

Players get to be the Spaniards who arrived in the Americas and began conquering and Empire building like it was going out of fashion. You'll have to impress the imperialists back home with your conquests if you want the full range of toys, and the greater your achievements in both military and diplomatic arenas the better off you will be. Achieve the missions set for you and win some key battles and the better resources will be gifted with by the Spanish nobility.

Of course you can also play as the native races, including Apaches, Mayans and Tlaxcalans, as they resist the invasion of disease-toting Euros. Each of the native nations has quite different unit types and their own peculiar approaches to combat. Clearly they'll struggle to take on the well-armed Europeans, so it's down to your tactical insight to find the best ways to use these lightly armed skirmish units against the Conquistadors, as well as rival native cultures.

You can also expect to see a bunch of new hero characters for factions across the world. Including William Wallace, Llywelyn The Last and, presumably, popular south American Aztec king, Moctezuma II. Hero characters will act as a kind of 'super general', bringing big stats and special units to your force. Keeping these guys alive and using them to win your most desperate battles will be crucial to a successful Kingdoms campaign.

via cvg