"Egyptian" Holywood mummies...necessary?

[hellenes]

While observing the wide abuse of the dumbed down for the ignorant masses overpowered "Egyptian" units online, and the reaction from the veteran players, I have a question: Was it necessary to dedicate all that time and money to make up, design, and generally allocate recourses on a concept that insults the intelligence of its audience and incourages immature gameplay?
Would the community miss the mummies if it got the Hellenic Ptolemaic faction?

Hellenes

[Puzz3D]

When you target your product at 12 year olds or thereabouts, yes it makes perfect sense that Egypt and lots of other stuff would be represented in a way that conforms to their concept of history which is largely formed by Hollywood movies. I remember one CA executive saying in an interview that RTW was like a movie. He said that as a selling point for the game. We'll just forget about Egypt not even trying to fight Alexander only 50 years before RTW's starting date, and imagine that Egypt had an extremely powerful army that they chose not to use.

The community that has gathered here for the last four years was not the target audience of RTW. CA was not candid about that. Tim Ansel has his 30 million dollars, and the Total War series has been a successful endeavor for him. I'm left with the most expensive game in the series having the worst gameplay, and a growing realization that none of the mods people are working on can fix the underlying problems. In MTW, several mods were made which played very well, but the more I look at RTW's mechanics the less I believe it can be modded to work well. So, even if the Egyptians are replaced with hellenic type units, I don't think that would fix the game enough for me.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

There is hope Puzz3D - Check out Europa Barbarorum. There are doing everything they legally and physically can differently from vanilla RTW. :charge:

[AntiochusIII]

Have you ever been forced to sit in a damn boring history class where you know everything (and I mean everything) that is being taught already but was forced to listen to ignorant sh*ts keep insulting other nations will simple-minded and stupid questions as if the Asians are some sort of another species? With the teacher teaching like: "France was the biggest guy in the street but got beat 'up by *England* so they came back to piss them off in America?"

That's pathetic.

And I believe this is Rome's target customers.

So, the mummies must be here. :dizzy2:

[Rodion Romanovich]

When you target your product at 12 year olds or thereabouts, yes it makes perfect sense that Egypt and lots of other stuff would be represented in a way that conforms to their concept of history which is largely formed by Hollywood movies. I remember one CA executive saying in an interview that RTW was like a movie. He said that as a selling point for the game. We'll just forget about Egypt not even trying to fight Alexander only 50 years before RTW's starting date, and imagine that Egypt had an extremely powerful army that they chose not to use.

The community that has gathered here for the last four years was not the target audience of RTW. CA was not candid about that. Tim Ansel has his 30 million dollars, and the Total War series has been a successful endeavor for him. I'm left with the most expensive game in the series having the worst gameplay, and a growing realization that none of the mods people are working on can fix the underlying problems. In MTW, several mods were made which played very well, but the more I look at RTW's mechanics the less I believe it can be modded to work well. So, even if the Egyptians are replaced with hellenic type units, I don't think that would fix the game enough for me.

Well said. I can't deny though, that Rome has been fun, but they way it's been made is a waste of the potential the engine could have had. The basic idea with the new style for the campaign map with free movement instead of provinces like in M:TW and the 3D rendered armies is a good start, but unfortunately R:TW has failed to implement the best parts of M:TW together with this good start. The battle speed is another thing that's been made to target 12 years old players - keeping reserves and waiting for enemies to be pinned is no longer a useful tactic, and cavalry is way too overpowered.

And a question - how many 12 years old players DO play R:TW? Not many, I think. Those who do play R:TW, are usually such noobs at tactics that they barely know about basic concepts like flanking and fake charging. It would have been much better to continue targeting the older customers, this way there's a chance they'll lose them and the 12 years old gamers won't start buying R:TW anyway...

BTW Europa Barbarorum looks nice, but they can't change the most important things, like game mechanics, bugs and changes on the stratetical level. All they can do is change unit stats, change unit skins, faction names, faction starting provinces and provinces. They're doing an ambitious work but as long as the unrealism on the strategical level as well as bugs and some AI problems can't be changed, most improvements in the mods will be of the visual kind, not of the technical kind.

[Wishazu]

they can change the way battles are fought, on RTR(another great mod) cos of the slowdown in kill speeds etc. its actually possible to have units properly engage 1 another, cav is no longer a WMD and you can actually use proper tactics etc.

[hellenes]

What makes me wonder most is: are the people so ignorant and of so low intelligence as the entertainers (books, movies, games) presume?
Or its more convenient to keep the masses in darkness?
Would it hurt anyone if there was a faction called Ptolemaic Empire with eagle banner, elephants Hellenistic pikemen and heavy cavalry?
Would anyone come out and say I dont like them they are unrealistic, dump looking? Or people would in an easy and not boring (as a history class can be) shape automatically a fairy accurate image of that area at that time?
Just wonder...

Hellenes

[Rodion Romanovich]

they can change the way battles are fought, on RTR(another great mod) cos of the slowdown in kill speeds etc. its actually possible to have units properly engage 1 another, cav is no longer a WMD and you can actually use proper tactics etc.

Yes, kill rates and unit balancing during battle can be changed. But some important balancing issues in battle can't be changed. Examples:

* chariots should be very weak and unmanouverable in steep terrain
* cavalry should be a little weaker in steep terrain

chariots should still be as powerful as they are on flat ground, but if you want to give chariots the relatively small strategical importance it had in the R:TW period, you'd have to remove their strengths too by decreasing attack stats etc. That's only an emergency solution to the problem, and not a good one. However, the R:TW mechanics don't allow anything better due to lack of modability. Same thing is the case for cavalry - you can't deny cavalry was extremely powerful on flat ground even in those days, but a defender with weak cavs against an opponent with strong cavs would seldom be stupid enough to pick a battlefield with flat ground if it was possible to avoid.

The most important thing to balance in order to improve realism is the stratetical level. As Sun Tzu said: strategy without tactics is the slowest way to victory, tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. The strategy is FAR more important than the tactics, but the mods can't change much more than tactics. Modding to change things at the strategical level will affect gameplay much more than some modding of the battles. Some bugs like the siege bug, which mods can't do much about (although there are some "emergency solutions" to that problem too by making AI assaults more likely), further limit the strategy map.

One thing I heard when CA announced the game was that they had finished the game when their producer told them they'd get another entire year to play around with the game and improve it. They apparently spent that time making the campaign map in 3D instead of in 2D like it was in M:TW and originally was inteded in R:TW. IMO they could have spent that time fixing those bugs, and AI, instead...

Like I said I'm impressed by the work carried out by EB and RTR and others, but unfortunately their work can't address the worst issues in R:TW because of the limitations of the engine.

I'd also like to say CA did an amazing work in some aspects, but the lack of modability in combination with the bugs and the 2-patches-only treaty with their former producer Activision, along with the imo very stupid and greedy decision to target 12 years old players instead of giving their main consumer group what they want has led to the central parts of the engine not living up anywhere close to it's full potential.

[hellenes]

The question was:
If there werent any 12yolds' favourite dumped down "Egyptian" mummies would anyone miss them?
Would it harm anyone to say: "Hey at Rome's time there were no "Egyptians" but the Greeks ruled there!!I didnt know that!!"
Would some enjoyable(gaming) education harm anyone?

Hellenes

[Rodion Romanovich]

The question was:
If there werent any 12yolds' favourite dumped down "Egyptian" mummies would anyone miss them?
Would it harm anyone to say: "Hey at Rome's time there were no "Egyptians" but the Greeks ruled there!!I didnt know that!!"
Would some enjoyable(gaming) education harm anyone?

Hellenes

No, it wouldn't hurt. I'd have liked ptolemaic egypt better even when I was 12 years old and didn't know a sh*t about history.

[hellenes]

Whn EB mod is released I hope that more people will use it online since I dont touch the mummies and play only against non "Egypt" players...

Hellenes

[The_Mark]

The strategy is FAR more important than the tactics, but the mods can't change much more than tactics. Modding to change things at the strategical level will affect gameplay much more than some modding of the battles.
Actually, I find that the strategy map AI is not so bad, compared to the tactical AI. Imagine if AI would use its troops on battlefield in a less stupid way and even cause some attrition to your troops instead of those 15 dead soldiers, could you then steam-roll the AI so effectively? Generally players (at least I do) use one good army for attacking, and they, turn after turn, beat AI armies of similar numbers to a man with minimal casualties. Player doesn't have to wait for reinforcements and he can just continue to roll through AI's dwindling armies.

If AI would do some damage to player's army, if it would kill off even 1/5 of the player's army, player won't be able to just advance, he'd have to wait for a relief forve after some battles, in which time AI gets some time to breathe and continue to fight the player without loss of efficiency. If the player captures one major city, then he can of course retrain his units, which leads us to the other problem...

No, it wouldn't hurt anyone if the Ptolemaic faction would be there. Hell, when I began to play MTW I didn't know anything about Almohads or Aragonese, and I didn't care about not knowing about them.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Yes, the strat map AI is fairly good. It's just the siege bug that also makes some non-sieging armies behave strangely too. Also, I'd say the brigands were a bad thing, they should've been replaced by larger armies more coming seldom. I agree that better battles will change the strat level, but as long as you can retrain troops in newly conquered cities it's way too easy. I've been thinking about ways of making retraining impossible and I think I know how to achieve it so if EB doesn't change it, I'll mod it myself after installing EB. Anyway, the strategical level BUGS are the main problem, because even if AI would be powered up in some ways it would behave strangely as long as they're there.

Here's how to win a campaign against any AI: if it's safe, go conquer an enemy city. If it's not safe, stay in a settlement and keep making money and training better troops. If you are besieged, reload before ending turn. When you have a strong enough army, attack the enemy army that's just standing outside your settlement. When you're strong enough, go for a new enemy settlement. In the beginning of the game cities are so small that they can be held after conquest, so you needn't worry about revolts until later, and by then you've grown so strong you don't have to worry about revolts either, because you have stronger armies than the opponent.

I agree though that improved battles will change many things. The limit of max 20 units means that strategy is no longer as important as in real life, which means the game will, after a certain point, almost favour tactics over strategy. I see no better solution to that than the method CA has implemented, as it would result in battles with too heavy hardware requirements - somewhere there HAS to be a limit. So perhaps, after some thinking, I'll take back part of my statement and simply say that the bugs are the only problem at the strategical level, once battle speed issues etc. have been fixed. The battle speed is after all one of the main reasons why cavalry is so powerful in R:TW, because their speed and ability to hit isolated units and rout them quickly is what makes them so important - otherwise they'd have to use more hit and run tactics, and take casualties each time when withdrawing.

[The_Mark]

I've been thinking about ways of making retraining impossible and I think I know how to achieve it so if EB doesn't change it, I'll mod it myself after installing EB.
Don't worry about that ~;)


The battle speed is after all one of the main reasons why cavalry is so powerful in R:TW, because their speed and ability to hit isolated units and rout them quickly is what makes them so important - otherwise they'd have to use more hit and run tactics, and take casualties each time when withdrawing.
That is true, and also due to the fast battle speed the units don't even have to be isolated, if one has enough cav, i.e. spamming, as the unit under charge will rout in seconds.

And back to the topic, playing a 3v3 against egypt only-enemies in desert is not fun. We destroyed one isolated player, and that cost us my other allies army almost to a man and one quarter of mine. You can guess what happened after the eggies had desert cav-spammed my another ally..

[Rodion Romanovich]

Don't worry about that ~;)

~D ~:cheers:

[Ginger]

Sorry, being incredibly dumb here. By egyptian mummies- what do you mean?? ~:)

[The_Mark]

It's a metaphor. RTW's Egyptian unit roster would be historically quite (well, almost) correct if it'd be in the era of the first kingdom [of Egypt] (way before Romans, way before Alexander, before the Greeks got their moment in the sun. That's way back.), where mummification was common.

Someone will be quite soon here to correct me I presume...




And no, there's no Egyptian Mummies unit ~:)

[hellenes]

Well Mark is correct on this one...
Ginger
By mummies I meant the dump colourful 12yold's treat with those ludicrus pharao hats and shiny gold armour...
Unfortunately the pattern of the industry is: Whant to make money? Dump your game down!!!

Hellenes

[CMDR Coconut]

so Egypt has an army of mummies??? Please say no...

[CMDR Coconut]

Ah, sorry for posting so soon.. I just read further in this thread.

So the good news is there are no mummies in the ranks, the bad news is the ranks are dressed poorly right?

[AntiochusIII]

Ah, sorry for posting so soon.. I just read further in this thread.

So the good news is there are no mummies in the ranks, the bad news is the ranks are dressed poorly right?No mummies no. Unless, of course, those axemen are mummies without linen around them. ~;) Go play the game, choose custom battle, choose a normal Roman legion and an Egyptian axemen, and let them fight each other. You'll know what I mean...

In fact, they look quite neat and natural. It's just that they're for erm... an Egypt that was already dying at least a thousand years before the game. And that - is a long time.

You know, those units look typically ancient Egyptian, like those Hollywood mummy movies popular a few years back...

It was sooooooo insulting to intelligence for anyone with even decent knowledge of history that the rulers of Egypt at the time - Macedonians by the way - fought like the ancestors of their "slaves" (practically) a millenia back.

Oh, and, as you can guess, they're old and obsolete. However, in game, they beat all other units very unrealistically and unbalancingly.

Worst of all, if you think "oh well, I'll beat them out of the game quick so not to see them again" or "I'll just avoid them." It's impossible as the Egyptians, in almost every campaign, overrun all its neighbors, including fun factions (to fight and to play) like Seleucids, Armenia, and Pontus.

That's why everybody hates them.