CA clarifies turns

[Duke John]

Posted on .COM by prasthereaper

Reading through these forums, it seems there's a number of issues with the whole turn limit thing and there seems to be a tendency amongst some of the more vocal members to start making a lot of assumptions. Given that we are limited in what we can tell you at any given point, I guess that's only natural. The issues I have identified from reading through all these posts seem to be:

1) Game length - too few turns to suit certain play styles
2) Role-Playing - how do characters age?
3) UI - not showing the year
4) Eras - lack of multiple starting positions

Just spoke to Bob, our lead designer, for further clarity and taking each in turn:

1) The game is currently paced to be a 225 turn game, and is optimally played at that length.All this information is still being kept in .txt files.
2) Characters still age 1 year every 2 turns, so you will be a ble to roleplay them as you did in Rome. This issue is actually one of the reasons for dissociating years and turns. We wanted to cover a large period of history and streamline the gameplay whilst still allowing players to get some kind of attachment to their characters.
3) While some may argue it eliminates immersion, as wikiman mentioned previously, it's surprising how little you realise the change once you actually play it.
4) Each era is effectively a completely new campaign that needs to be individually setup, tested and balanced. Having multiple eras would inevitably delay release of the game.
So 500 years played in 225 turns while characters still age 1 year per 2 turns. That means that you will get 112 years of character development if you played the game optimally. However it appears that if you play less optimal (by roleplaying, not rushing or doing silly things) you could play more than 225 turns.

I agree with point 3. If the game shows events anchoring the turn into history then it will give me enough immersion and I won't realise it. But I think that the people who roleplay their characters or pay much attention to them will notice how the entire middle ages can be played with just 5 characters or so and that might kill the game for them.
And I am glad that they won't bother with multiple eras. I rather have the game released sooner than they spending time on something that could easily be done by modders.

[screwtype]

Dammit you beat me to the punch Duke John. I was just going to start a thread here with the same title!

Yeah, it appears that avoiding turn dating is just a very kludgy way of getting around the uncomfortable fact that characters "live" four times longer than they should in this game. I suspected I was kidding myself to think this was ever going to be anything more than an awkward kludge, LOL.

[Duke John]

From a modder's perspective I think this provides more opportunities to do some interesting things. The aging system of R:TW seems to be untouched. The only thing changed is the exact year is no longer shown. And for that loss we (hopefully) gain more possibilities in showing events, which is far more valuable for immersion than "1350 AD".

[screwtype]

Yeah, look this is obviously a problem that arose because they wanted to confine the game to 225 turns in order to appeal to the mass market. I don't think it's of much consequence provided they give modders the usual tools to tinker with stuff like dates, events, number of turns etc. And there is no reason judging by pras' post to believe they won't be.

[Quietus]

Reading through these forums, it seems there's a number of issues with the whole turn limit thing and there seems to be a tendency amongst some of the more vocal members to start making a lot of assumptions. Given that we are limited in what we can tell you at any given point, I guess that's only natural. The issues I have identified from reading through all these posts seem to be:

1) Game length - too few turns to suit certain play styles
2) Role-Playing - how do characters age?
3) UI - not showing the year
4) Eras - lack of multiple starting positions

Just spoke to Bob, our lead designer, for further clarity and taking each in turn:

1) The game is currently paced to be a 225 turn game, and is optimally played at that length.All this information is still being kept in .txt files.
2) Characters still age 1 year every 2 turns, so you will be a ble to roleplay them as you did in Rome. This issue is actually one of the reasons for dissociating years and turns. We wanted to cover a large period of history and streamline the gameplay whilst still allowing players to get some kind of attachment to their characters.
3) While some may argue it eliminates immersion, as wikiman mentioned previously, it's surprising how little you realise the change once you actually play it.
4) Each era is effectively a completely new campaign that needs to be individually setup, tested and balanced. Having multiple eras would inevitably delay release of the game.

Wait a sec.

Character age = (1 year/2 turns)(1 turn/2 campaign years)

Character age = 1 year/4 campaign years.

Characters age 1 year for every 4 campaign years? :inquisitive:

Hence a 50 year old character is 200 years old...? Maybe we're missing something.

The implementation of 1 turn per 2 years has to be explained further. :oops:

[Duke John]

No, you understood it right. It is the opinion of CA developers that while playing the game you will not notice this. Impossible when looking at the bare facts, or when you get too worked up over this making it impossible to forget it while playing.

It is a game and mechanics have to be introduced to make it interesting to play. And some may not appeal to everyone. I think it is a bit silly for people to say that they won't buy this game for not being able to see what year it is, while army organization and battlefield tactics are nowhere near resembling history.

[TB666]

Well atleast it seems to be moddable.

[Zatoichi]

OK - well this is good additional information - props to CA for trying to keep us in the loop. I'm glad that the number of turns will be mod friendly. I was hoping for the more dynamic turn system Screwtype was proposing, but I still think this new system will be OK. Not neccessarily my preferred option, but I'll not rush to judge it until I've given it a decent try.

[Voigtkampf]

Personally, I liked one year/one turn of Medieval, but I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that the game will work well this way, as CA claims, and that players will not notice much change…

But, the comment


All this information is still being kept in .txt files.


is what I am still glad to hear the most. I wish MTW2 to be moddable to its greatest possible extent, and few tiny details is something we can change ourselves if we do not like them.

[doc_bean]

It seems a little strange to have 200y old characters, but then again, they were immortal in MTW (w/o VI) weren't they ?

[screwtype]

It seems a little strange to have 200y old characters, but then again, they were immortal in MTW (w/o VI) weren't they ?

Yeah, I was going to say, it's not as though it's the first time a computer strategy game has done this sort of thing. In the Civ series, the leaders live for the entire span of world history!

[Duke John]

Well the thing is that they aren't exactly 200 years old. They might exist for 200 years, but they are only 60 years old. They live for 120 turns or so and each turn makes a character a 1/2 year older. But at the same each turn also represents an average of around 2 years... And now I dare anyone to say that CA is dumbing down the TW series :wink:

[Prince Cobra]

Then maybe the season system will be better ( with the years i.e. 1321,1322,1323.., more historically accurate).
The three eras- I am patient, if that will make the game better .

And why only 225 turns?

[Bob the Insane]

And why only 225 turns?

Play testing?

It was indicated that the mad rusher type of player can finish the game is 115 turns (which sounds much like RTW) so they have balanced the game to incorporate that fact and to allow much of the time period as possible to passed even for the "rusher"... (this is obviously idle speculation)

By the sound of it there is going to be a lot of pressure on the modding groups (RTR being my personal favourite at the moment) to get a mod out ASAP after release...

If they can have two turns a year via a simply mod I will certainly be happy (making a 900 turn game) I could even try to ignore the turn counter unless an enterprizing method of making it tick over once every 2 turns could be found (then you could start the game on turn 1080)...

It was a pretty reasuring post...

[Puzz3D]

No, you understood it right. It is the opinion of CA developers that while playing the game you will not notice this.
You might not notice it if you are stupid.

[Vladimir]

Ah yes. Wait for the first price drop AND when the first mods are finished.

[econ21]

You might not notice it if you are stupid.

Oh come on, it's not a matter of IQ. It is how much abstraction you are willing to accept in a strategy game based on history. I've been amazed to see the kind of people who hang out in the Civ Fanatics forum. You have these PhDs in Maths who can effortlessly crank through the most complicated mathematic formula to work out the combat mechanics. But these "stupid" types aren't bothered at all by the Praetorians wearing the wrong type of armour or having redcoats shoot down pikemen.

[Puzz3D]

Oh come on, it's not a matter of IQ. It is how much abstraction you are willing to accept in a strategy game based on history.
Wrong. The statement by CA is that you'd be surprised how little you notice it. I'm going to notice it, and I have an average IQ. They might as well get rid of aging altogether. That would streamline the game further. Streamlining is being presented by CA as a benfit. The question is to whom is it a benefit?

[Kraxis]

I don't mind 3 that much as long as you can somehow get a feeling of the date fairly easily.
I do not like being put in a situation, in a historical simulation (as this type of game is being labeled), that I can't figure out where I am.

This unfortunately conflicts with the character age. For they could give an aproximate period of the current 'year'. Now they seem to be oddly aged.
I mean if the people age about one year in 4 years how am I going to get a feeling of the time?
Apparently the 450 years have not only been compressed into 225 turns but abstracted so that the events and progress over those years will now happen in 112½ years. Nice...:dizzy2: This is only a short step away from the AOE games, with their abstract timeperiods.

Agreed on 4, but it worked very well in both MTW and STW:MI. It was fun trying out other ages, and it gave a good spread of technology.

On a more positive note 1 does seem to indicate that the game can actually play for more than 225 turns, but then again so could RTW past AD 14.

The more they say the more I dislike it. This is no longer the TW games I grew to love. Well, that is the way with most revolutionay games...

[NagatsukaShumi]

I think this is excellent news and I'm alot happier with the way that CA are answering questions this time round.

I knew, even now, this would upset some people but by the sounds of things these are entirely moddable and if you really do not like them, they can be changed.

Like DJ said, I think the addition of our own events and such forth adds to immersion far more than "Oh look, its 1178, in this year.....". My personal opinion is that you really shouldn't give a damn what date it is, fact is from turn one's completion history is different, NO faction will act exactally as it did in history and I somewhat doubt everyone will refuse to invade any further than the respective faction did in reality simply because that is accurate. (Not trying to plug in here, but Medieval Auctoriso is addressing the fact you will be creating an alternate history whilst trying to cater for those who want accuracy and I can imagine it will be a task that will not please everyone and I certainly see why its difficult for CA).

Fact is the moment you start a campaign it won't follow a historical accurate line, unless you plan to fight every battle of certain years and deliberately lose them to keep it accurate, which I somewhat doubt you would do. Its something I've pointed out before, your game isn't accurate and never ever will be unless the AI is scripted to act a certain way every turn which makes it very dull and predictable, it also would mean you could place certain armies in certain times because you know of a faction's weakness that is approaching and so on, its a bit daft and I support CA's descision and always would on the basis that anything they did was moddable.

It may not have the year anymore, but personally its not a worry for me, I treat the game as my own history, panning out as I wish to influence it and although accuracy in units and certains things are a must for me, the dates don't really fuss me too much, I will be roleplaying my way through my own history, not real history and I'm afraid this is true for everyone.

[econ21]

Wrong. The statement by CA is that you'd be surprised how little you notice it. I'm going to notice it, and I have an average IQ.

Well, I suspect that after a while, I won't notice it - as the CA folk said they didn't. How stupid of us. :wall:

[Butcher]

The lack of Era's is a big disapointment. I missed it a lot in RTW.

[Braden]

Whilst I’m against this abstracting of Dates in relation to Agent and Family member aging, I’m at least glad that CA are starting to give us some firm details so we can make an informed decision.

I still though am finding it impossible to reconcile how this will work. I’m familiar with the 1 year = 1 year and the 1 turn = 6 months systems now in place. I just can’t get my head around it. So the game will be 225 turns, characters age 1 year for each turn so the turns are 6 monthly aren’t they? Meaning 112.5 years, too short a game for me as a Vanilla but I feel I’m still not grasping what or how this works in practice and potentially never will. I can’t detach how my Characters Age to how the world around them grows. To me, both are linked as they are a total organism, a total game.

If I’m playing and my characters are aging then I’m going to go by the characters ages, to be honest that’s what I do mainly anyway. I don’t worry in Rome what year it is I worry more about how many potential years I’ll get out of my faction leader for example, dates are very handy though for narratives which I do like to write up as well. I’m certainly confused by this system.

The info will still be in .txt files and I hope they mean the linking of Turns to Age. Potentially the first mod would be to change the turns back into a realistic number and one that directly relates to the Age of your in-game Characters, but would this make a shorter or longer game? See how confused I am! I’m sure the game will “work” mechanically but will this system be “user friendly”, the raw explanation isn’t.

Right, I’m going to stop thinking about this as it’s giving me a headache now. Suffice to say I won’t be buying this when it’s released, I’ll wait until others start giving feedback or even perhaps wait until some patches, Mod tutorials and even an Expansion are out before buying. Sorry but I just want to make sure I have a workable game when I get it – or not get it if I decide this isn’t for me. After all, I waited before buying Rome, waited until patch 1.2 to be honest.

Getting off the confusing bit – Era’s. You have two “Era’s” in Rome – Pre-Marius and Post-Marius. They are effectively “Era’s” much like Medievals Early/Late/High as the turn from one to the other starts an immediate update in units whilst its different as its linked to a Faction performance rather than a Date. I never had an issue with either way of doing it, I think CA are trying to get a smoother, organic progression in the Tech tree but I’m not sure if this bizarre method will do that and I’m not sure if something like that is possible in an RTS of any kind due to balancing issues.

[Servius]

1) so happy to hear at least something's being left in a .txt file. If it's anything like MTW, it will be easily modable, which would be wonderful.

2) If 2 turns = 1 character year, but 1 turn also = 2 calendar years, then 1 character year = 4 calendar years. That means that characters will age 4x more slowly, relative to the calendar years at least.

But since there's only 225 turns, that's 112 character years, which is barely 4-5 generations. That means, if you imagine yourself the last king, the game starts with your great grandpa...

For you LOTR fans, MTW2 is ruled by Numenorians :-)

3) I don't like this either, but who knows, he might be right and we really might not notice. And even if we do notice, the game could be so cool that most of us don't care. Puzz3D will care, and I probably will as will others, but we won't really know how much this will bug us until the game (or demo) comes out. And, if CA continues to use .txt files for much of the game, the way MTW did, this, too, might be modable. I hope so.

4) I agree that it would take longer I guess, but it just seems odd that MTW had this feature but RTW and MTW2 won't. However, to be honest, I never played the High or Late ages, I always started with Early, but then again I was invulnerable about half way through the High age too.

So CA, please be sure to make this game super-easily-modable.

[Kraxis]

Getting off the confusing bit – Era’s. You have two “Era’s” in Rome – Pre-Marius and Post-Marius. They are effectively “Era’s” much like Medievals Early/Late/High as the turn from one to the other starts an immediate update in units whilst its different as its linked to a Faction performance rather than a Date. I never had an issue with either way of doing it, I think CA are trying to get a smoother, organic progression in the Tech tree but I’m not sure if this bizarre method will do that and I’m not sure if something like that is possible in an RTS of any kind due to balancing issues.
No you did not have two eras in Rome. Besides the post Marius Roman units the game was surprisingly indifferent to the change. Also you couldn't go in and select the post-Marius era. You had to play through it each and every time unless you modded it.

NagatsukaShumi, you seem to forget one thing. We aren't all EB or RTR fans, we aren't all "OMG France invaded the HRE?!?!?! This is sooooo wrong!" We are talking about immersion. If you are making a historical simulation you want the players to actually feel that what they do could have hapened to an extent. But fast forwarding the pace of events fourfold and not telling us, removes any historical connection the game ever had.

M2 has in my eyes now become "another game including knights and abstract time."

[Dead Moroz]

This thread is like zombies fiesta. CA said you that black is white, and you all: "Cool! The black is white! In CA we trust!".


Oh come on, it's not a matter of IQ. It is how much abstraction you are willing to accept in a strategy game based on history.
Then you gotta play Tetris: Total War.

[econ21]

This thread is like zombies fiesta. CA said you that black is white, and you all: "Cool! The black is white! In CA we trust!".

A game is a model. A key part of modelling is abstraction. Unless you expect real people to stick their heads out of your monitor and try to brain you with a halberd, it's always going to be a matter of where you draw the line about how much realism you want.

Making time fuzzy seems rather sensible to me, if the alternative is the current 8 year sieges and campaigns that make WW1 look like a lightning war. I think of CAs move as similar to what people do when editing a film - sometimes events move fast so you spent screen time on them, sometimes little happens so it gets cut. You don't need an hour clock on the screen (unless you're watching 24).


Then you gotta play Tetris: Total War.

Nah, way too busy with RTR, BI and EB.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Making time fuzzy seems rather sensible to me, if the alternative is the current 8 year sieges and campaigns that make WW1 look like a lightning war.

I'm curious as to how having more years per turn will make for shorter sieges and campaigns. Is it like doublethink - thinking, 'these turns are an abstraction, it's really just 5 turns to siege this place' while knowing that each turn is over one year? This system confuses and angers me. ~;p

Crazed Rabbit

[Puzz3D]

Whilst I’m against this abstracting of Dates in relation to Agent and Family member aging, I’m at least glad that CA are starting to give us some firm details so we can make an informed decision.

I still though am finding it impossible to reconcile how this will work.
I know how it will appear to me. The aging of people and movement of armies will seem ok to me, but the technology tree and historical events will seem compressed into 1/4 the time. The campaign will seem like it's 112 years long with 2 moves per year.

Since I'm mostly focused on battles, I don't need the big tech tree to enjoy the game. I'd be ok with 112 years of tech tree. Since I don't expect MTW2 multiplayer to be well balanced, I'm hoping that the campaign is good. That means carefully balanced gameplay and features that work properly. If CA is going to throw those two things (balance and working features) on the modding community, then they are going to have to wait for their money from between 6 months to a year after the game is released.

[NagatsukaShumi]

No you did not have two eras in Rome. Besides the post Marius Roman units the game was surprisingly indifferent to the change. Also you couldn't go in and select the post-Marius era. You had to play through it each and every time unless you modded it.

NagatsukaShumi, you seem to forget one thing. We aren't all EB or RTR fans, we aren't all "OMG France invaded the HRE?!?!?! This is sooooo wrong!" We are talking about immersion. If you are making a historical simulation you want the players to actually feel that what they do could have hapened to an extent. But fast forwarding the pace of events fourfold and not telling us, removes any historical connection the game ever had.

M2 has in my eyes now become "another game including knights and abstract time."

Lets be honest, how does not having dates take away any immersion? Yes, you can't see what date it is but I stand by my point that its not historical once you end the first turn. Fact is, if its accuracy people want no game will provide and thats a fact, only in the units will you see anything approaching it. It may go faster, but events will still occur, just not on specific dates, ideally I'd love a game to have hundreds of events and I would rather it was dated not marked as turns, but all I'm saying is TW has never been entirely historical and never will be. What you feel could have happened depends on how you look at history, what if Henry V had become King of France, England could have gone on to conquer yet more land, thats one way of thinking what could have realistically happened but didn't because one event never occurred for example. I prefer turns to be years and have lots of historical events, but I aren't going to jump on the "omg CA are doing this all completely wrongly" bandwagon that many have done, I will reserve my judgement to the release of the game or atleast the demo. I have faith, some people think thats daft but I think its unfair to crucify a game thats not yet released, it may be great, it may be not so great but its a bit early to be against it just yet. Bare in mind I'm not suggesting your one of them, but there are a great number of people who have been quick to dislike new ideas from CA and I think its a tad unfair when their usual argument is its not historical, now if people say its too short I fully understand, but most think its just too unhistorical yet conveniently forget no Total War has been.

[econ21]

I'm curious as to how having more years per turn will make for shorter sieges and campaigns.

I thought we were debating turns no longer representing a fixed number of years?

The critics of the new system seem to be taking a surprisingly literal - one could even say fundamentalist view - of a game engine. Did anyone ever seriously think the Total War campaign map was realistic - seeing as turn 1, you typically inherited a town no more developed than something out of the bronze age?

Whether a turn represents a fixed period of time seems inconsequential compared to the other abstractions and simplifications of the game.

[Dead Moroz]

A game is a model. A key part of modelling is abstraction. Unless you expect real people to stick their heads out of your monitor and try to brain you with a halberd, it's always going to be a matter of where you draw the line about how much realism you want.
Abstraction? Do you REALLY mean that CA bother themself with making more abstract game for people with high IQ? So what all that mixable heads, bodies and armour, finishing moves, rust and blood are for? The ultimate level of abstraction?

There is much more simple explanation of recent CA decisions that most of you just don't want to accept. Instead of real solutions of different TW problems they just masked it all under new eye candy (brilliant, I have to admit) and standard monstrous RTS tricks (that crowd of AOE/RON/EE fans will not really notice).

I am glad to see "so much" info from CA too. It will help me to don't waste my time on this game.


Nah, way too busy with RTR, BI and EB.
Stop playing it all in the same time! It's messing up your mind! :)

[player1]

Here is how I reason the situation.

1 gameplay turn represents 1 winter or summer sesion.
1 gameplay turn represents 6 months of general life.

So game with 225 turns represents 112.5 years.

But not any 112.5 years, but selection of most interesting years/generals/rulers from 450 year period.

That why there is abstraction.
1 turn is not 2 years, it's just that only 1/4 of years from campaign are represented in the game (and generals/rulers).

[screwtype]

all I'm saying is TW has never been entirely historical and never will be.

Of course it's not historical. The campaign is highly abstracted and always has been. What's historical, or realistic, about having to build an Inn to recruit mercenaries, or a Brothel or whatever to recruit spies?

It's a game, people, designed to just give you a flavour of combat and conquest in an earlier period.

That's not to say it couldn't be made a lot more historical, but to do so you'd have to invent almost an entirely new game. In the Medieval period, for example, the emphasis would be on the economy and diplomacy. And not just diplomacy with foreign powers. You'd have heaps of domestic diplomacy, having to build relationships with barons and perhaps stop them from taking the throne themselves. There'd be endless politicking.

Major battles would be few and far between, instead you'd be conducting pillaging raids against the enemy and making a nuisance of yourself. I mean, look at the hundred years war between France and Britain. How many major battles in that? Half a dozen?

Half a dozen major battles in 100 years. Is that the sort of game you want to play? Maybe it is, but then you wouldn't be playing a game called "Total War".

[ZombieFriedNuts]

Im confused:inquisitive: , so instead of a set time each turn, it will be if something happens like an enemy besieges you it will stop and start a new turn for you. Or am I just horribly confused

[NagatsukaShumi]

Of course it's not historical. The campaign is highly abstracted and always has been. What's historical, or realistic, about having to build an Inn to recruit mercenaries, or a Brothel or whatever to recruit spies?

It's a game, people, designed to just give you a flavour of combat and conquest in an earlier period.

That's not to say it couldn't be made a lot more historical, but to do so you'd have to invent almost an entirely new game. In the Medieval period, for example, the emphasis would be on the economy and diplomacy. And not just diplomacy with foreign powers. You'd have heaps of domestic diplomacy, having to build relationships with barons and perhaps stop them from taking the throne themselves. There'd be endless politicking.

Major battles would be few and far between, instead you'd be conducting pillaging raids against the enemy and making a nuisance of yourself. I mean, look at the hundred years war between France and Britain. How many major battles in that? Half a dozen?

Half a dozen major battles in 100 years. Is that the sort of game you want to play? Maybe it is, but then you wouldn't be playing a game called "Total War".

Thats my point though, it will never be much more historical than it ever has been, certainly not in the near future. People need to stop griping over this, the earlier ones were no more historical than the recent, difference been that the combat was alot better and thats what is the difference, not historical accuracy. I just think we should reserve out judgment until we are in a position to deliver it. I never believe in crucifying a game before it actually makes it to the shelves, not in the way some people have done.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

What people are complaining about are the systems, not the content. For the most part, the people complaining here wouldn't mind if all the units wore pink tuxedos and fought with nerf guns, as long as it can be modded. As long as the time system can be modded then there is no issue; some mod will take care of it. It sounds like CA may grant us moddability to the time scheme, with the reference to "text files".

"Our Lady of Moddability, deliver us from the unwashed hordes of historical inaccuracy. Grant us the tools and the means to fix everything."

[screwtype]

Thats my point though, it will never be much more historical than it ever has been, certainly not in the near future. People need to stop griping over this, the earlier ones were no more historical than the recent

Exactly. All this ranting about dateless turns destroying the game's historicity is really quite laughable.


the combat was alot better and thats what is the difference, not historical accuracy.

Yup.


I just think we should reserve our judgment until we are in a position to deliver it. I never believe in crucifying a game before it actually makes it to the shelves, not in the way some people have done.

Again, I largely agree. Nothing I've heard about this game indicates that the gameplay itself is going to be worse than RTW's, on the contrary, it sounds as though some aspects at least are going to be considerably better.

It seems that some people have just got into a habit of complaining about everything that CA does. If there was evidence that CA was dumbing down the game still further from RTW, I'd be complaining too, but most of the announcements suggest the contrary. My impression at this stage is that M2 is going to be substantially better than RTW in a number of ways, but it's still going to be far from perfect, and the vanilla campaign is probably going to suck.

What concerns me though is not the vanilla campaign or the tinsel like turn dating, but whether or not the underlying game engine is better, because that's what the modders will have to build on. And everything I've read about the engine thus far indicates that it will be better, in at least some respects.

Not to mention the eye candy... ~;p

[Kraxis]

I find it interesting that apparently those that complain are only concerned with historical correctness. That has very little to do with it, and I wonder why you guys keep pounding that issue when people AREN'T complaining about that.

What is the problem is:
How 'correct' (in any form) can the game feel if the current king's granddad was at Hastings while he himself is trudging his final steps of conquest in the early 1500s? It just doesn't connect very well.
It could be argued that we are just so much more focussed and have hindsight to guide us that technology has leaped, but in the same sentence must be added that we could have chosen not to, and that the AI factions obviously won'y be doing that.

I will try to use a more modern variant.
A historical simulator has the player take charge of a person as a young tank commander early in WWII. By the end of the game that very same person, in his military prime now, leads an armoured brigade (his old buddies from WWII) into Iraq in Operation Desert Storm. It simply doesn't add up, and would feel wrong. Either the man would be long pensioned, or he would be much much older.
As long as the person is abstract, as in not really part of the game, then you can do it. But if he and all others around him are actual characters in the game it is not good for immersion. You wouldn't be able to put yourself in his shoes.

To be honest, I liked to think in historical terms, even if the games were horribly ahistorical from the outset. But it was nice to be able to create a small story in the Mead Hall about how king Whoever battled king Anotherguy over dominion of Hungary in our Lords year 1139. Following up on his success king Whoever advanced the next few years and got himself a nice kingdom.
I fear such little stories will vanish, for where is the connection between dates and lifespans?

[Ignoramus]

Look, if people give CA the thumbs up, we'll get another RTW that everybody complains about after its released, when nothing can be done about it. Frankly, I think the way CA is handling the turn system is shocking.

[Powermonger]

So from my understanding with this new turn system, MTW2 is no longer a historical game but a game based on a historical theme? Even though they've stated the game follows the period between 1090 and 1500 (or whatever the actual quoted dates are), the only significance the dates hold are what historical figures, technologies and nations were attributable during the time.

So in essence it is more similar to Age of Kings where a medieval theme was used but it wasn't based on any factual historical events during the main campaign.

I agree with Kraxis, part of the fun was reading people's narratives of their campaigns and how they changed history with their actions. It won't have the same impact if people start saying '...at turn 48 King Knudd annihilated France, what will future turns hold?'.

[Xiahou]

"Our Lady of Moddability, deliver us from the unwashed hordes of historical inaccuracy. Grant us the tools and the means to fix everything."
Hey, if you can increase the game length and change "turn x" to "summer 1121" and "turn x+1" to "winter 1121" I might be able to live with it...... Actually, now that I think about it- that'd still suck since you'd climb to tech tree way too fast that way. :shame:

Maybe someone can mod the times for that too- then we'd be getting somewhere. :idea2: I'll just have to hold off buying the game until I see what shapes up I guess. Call me knitpicky, unrealistic, or whatever but I only get TW games for single player and removing years/making rulers live for 200yrs sounds like it'll ruin the fun of a single player campaign for me. :shrug:

[Quietus]

Well the thing is that they aren't exactly 200 years old. They might exist for 200 years, but they are only 60 years old. Fifty years old! You're off by 10 years Character time or 40 years Campaign time. :)


They live for 120 turns or so and each turn makes a character a 1/2 year older. But at the same each turn also represents an average of around 2 years... And now I dare anyone to say that CA is dumbing down the TW series :wink: Perhaps same gameplay as RTW then.

RTW = Easy Gameplay + Long Campaign (more total turns) = partial period covered (by the player).

CA's goal was to cover the whole Medieval period hence the possible options:

1) M2TW = (????) Gameplay + Short Campaign (less total turns) = Whole period covered.

2) M2TW = Easy Gameplay + 3 Short Campaigns ("eras") = Whole period covered.

3) M2TW = Harder Gameplay + Long Campaign = Whole period covered.

M2TW seem to be Option 1 right now.

The only way to make a continuous, complete campaign with 400+ turns is to make the Gameplay significantly harder.

[magnum]

Basically it sounds pretty much as I had expected. As CA has said all along, it is the RTW engine with a few updates. So the turn system is the same as it was in RTW. Characters age at the same turn rate. Unfortunately CA decided that 225 was the optimum number of turns. While I almost always played GA from early to the end which meant about 450 turns and it never bothered me - I would not be surprised if the majority would prefer 225 turns :wall:

The real problem I have is that instead of trying to fix the pacing problem that arose in RTW - a 450 turn game usually ending in about 200 turns - they instead decided to simply abstract years. The entire pacing in RTW is messed up. Most cities you can take from 400 population to 24,000 population in 50 years. Now that is massive population growth. You can build all the improvements, the entire tech tree, in the same amount of time. They basically went from 1 turn = 1 year in MTW to 2 turns = 1 year in RTW, and halved all the build times making RTW play 4 times as fast. Supposedly to hide those boring periods... but I don't seem to remember those boring periods in MTW. Heck, I still play it and I don't remember them.

There are many things about RTW that I love. The graphics, the map, the modability, but I never liked the pacing they decided upon. Hopefully the next TW, which is supposed to have a new engine, will be a bit better paced from the start.

[Duke John]

A question for anyone who thinks CA has gone insane with this new turn system:

How come you do accept such an abstract, ahistorical, unrealistic system like techtrees, but refuse to buy M2:TW because they abstracted the flow of time?

Or are some of you just slightly hypocrite? Accepting a big old abstract game mechanism but getting furious on a new smaller one.

[Braden]

Although I was confused yesterday I’m a bit clearer on how this system will work “in-game”. That said, I’m still not happy with it for the following reasons:

1) TW games have always portrayed themselves as “Historically based re-enactments”. They’ve given you custom battles set at particular times, with particular characters. Even in a normal campaign you saw actual historical events.

2) Having a date to key in on is comforting. This change is radical and scary. In the words of Lurg from the planet Omicron Percii 8 “I’m confused and angered by it!”

3) Tech Tree progression will be too fast and seem just “wrong” somehow.

4) General confusion with the age of your Characters against how your Campaign is progressing. We’ve all picked this out, you’re likely to complete a game with only 2 faction leaders gone by, perhaps he’ll only have 2 son’s….where has the RP value gone?

5) This change “appears” to be more a concession towards the 3-minute memory gamers rather than an enhancement of the game as a whole.

This is why I am upset and I can’t see any assurances about it changing many of these views above as the system is in place and we now know how it works and the reasons behind it. Hence the five points above are (and will stay) valid until you nice Modders start to carve it up.

[Zatoichi]

There are a whole bunch of unknowns regarding how all this will pan out, and we will have to try the new system out before we can say one way or another whether abstracted turns are better/more fun than years (although it seems a majority on the boards will not exactly go in with an unbiased opinion on this). Me, I'm still undecided - truthfully I'm a little irked, but I want to at least try it before I throw my toys out of the pram.

OK - I've had a thought - it may bear no relation to reality, but I'll not let something as trivial as that stop me - I'm on a roll!

If we go with the current turns = bad, years = good sentiment that is the view of the vocal majority here, how's about the following quick and dirty 'fix': if we assume that we can play passed 225 turns (like you can in all other TW games) and change the turns into dates via the text files, we're still left with the rapid progression of technology compared to actual history. If everything is 4 times faster at present, presumably we'd be able to increase the construction times of everything by a factor of 4 to balance this out. So your generals live the right amount of game time and the gameplay is slowed down. It may not be neccessary to have everything 4 times slower - a bit of experimenting will resolve this.

Yes, I've made assumptions. This may not be possible, there may be events tied to turn progression that are hard coded, the AI may struggle with extra build times, and a whole host of other things. It's not ideal that you have to mod a game to get it working how you want if from the get go, but as I already did this with RTW, I don't feel to bad expecting to do it with M2.

So yes, if I don't get on with the turns/years design I'm still hopeful that by editing 3 or 4 text files I'll get the game to play out how I want it too.

I mean no disrespect to the folks who are angry about this whole thing - I'm just pointing out some possibilities. Possibilities based on assumptions. Possibilities based on assumptions based on hopes...

[spmetla]

I have to say that this news does make me more irritated than relieved at least I have an idea of what the game will be.

I myself have never said that I won't buy the game because I know I will, of course I'd rather the game stick to features I like in earlier games of the Total War series so don't get irritated when somepeople dislike the change. I also accept that the game can't be truly accurate and I'm cool with that I tend to tinker with the game so it gets the feel I want. I do hope though that it can be changed withing text files, as was said it's really just a UI issue which I can change on my own so I'm really more irritated at myself for the stupid arguing I did on the other thread (I don't think straight when irritable).

Anywho, so long as I can change the game to be the 112 years I want it to be through the text files I'll be happy (if all the other additions go well as well). I just hope in this case that the battle and strategic AI is much better to counter this further abstracting of the series.

[Samurai Waki]

I'll have to play it before it before I can pass judgement, but I have this gut feeling like its not going to be all that CA thinks it will be. Some say progressive, some say traditional.

I just like years better than turns, it actually sort of gives me a cozy feeling like I'm actually there fighting the battles in that year, opposed to being detached. I doubt it will really affect the gameplay a whole lot... but for the sake immersion, for the hardcore gamer, it seems like my (or should I say "our") opinion(s) are being ignored completely. Wheres the old sage of guidance in CA's developing room these days?

[Mount Suribachi]

A question for anyone who thinks CA has gone insane with this new turn system:

How come you do accept such an abstract, ahistorical, unrealistic system like techtrees, but refuse to buy M2:TW because they abstracted the flow of time?

Or are some of you just slightly hypocrite? Accepting a big old abstract game mechanism but getting furious on a new smaller one.

How? Because I can understand the concept of tech trees. But this whole characters age at a different rate/no years thing has me utterly confused :inquisitive: I've tried getting my head round it, but I can't.

As others have said, much of the game is all about immersion and atmosphere. Right now I'm still trying to figure out the connection between turns, years and characters aging, and I can't reconcile it in my head. I've read other peoples explanations, but the concept is so - for want of a better word - abstract, my mind won't accept it. Its like Salvadore Dali designed the system :dizzy2:

[Duke John]

If you only object against the system because you cannot understand it:

Your characters age 1 year per 2 turns. Each turn the season switches between summer and winter. Just like R:TW.

The campaign is designed to be finished in 225 turns. On its own nothing horrific. Some PC games take 8 hours to finish, others take 80 hours. It is just a decision to be made by CA.

You reach historical milestones by:
techtree development: you have build the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Le Krak in the Middle East.
conquest; driving the English out of France, the Spanish Reconquisita and the conquest of America.
the crusades against the muslims
Still making sense to me.

The difference is that instead of requiring 10 kings to achieve the above, you'll only need 3. And instead of seeing 1070 AD you see Turn 4. Perhaps I am bit biased, I have long abandoned the hope that CA can provide me with pleasant campaigns and I will only touch the official one to understand the features of M2:TW. So I really don't care what they are doing as long as they provide us with more options to mod. I do feel sorry for the people who do not mod :wink:

[Furious Mental]

Now I get it. They won't bother making the AI challenging enough to hold you off for 450 turns so they shorten the campaign to 225 turns and cram the entire Middle Ages into one or two centuries. Then when people cut through the computer factions like a hot knife through butter and complain about how retarded their opponents are CA will just say "See, you finished it in the optimum time. Kudos for us".

[Bob the Insane]

While I will be willing to give the game a chance and all, I am having a little difficulty with this concept myself...

Not because I don't understand the concepts being put forward, but simply because on a conceptual level I prefer the way it worked before.

I liked that fact that we had our very own historical figures we could trun in villains or heros that fitted within our own version of history...

People had problems with the AI, the battle speed ,the diplomacy and the amount of content, but no one had any issues with the core concepts of how the game worked and its (quasi)historical base...

I think there are some of us who are simply surprized at this change because in some ways it feels like we are getting less (not necessarily a rational feeling)...

Maybe the focus of the game was always the battles and the campaign being so much fun was an 'accident'... Maybe RTW was an effort to expand on the campaign and maybe it was not seen as a particular success. Perhaps they are trying to move the focus of the game away from the campaign map and back to the battles again (Much like STW)...

[Puzz3D]

Perhaps I am bit biased, I have long abandoned the hope that CA can provide me with pleasant campaigns and I will only touch the official one to understand the features of M2:TW. So I really don't care what they are doing as long as they provide us with more options to mod. I do feel sorry for the people who do not mod.
This just isn't right. You shouldn't have to depend on mods to get a good game. After all, they are not giving this game away, and CA isn't paying you to fix their game. Don't forget that CA doesn't support mods.

You can be sure that despite what's been said about putting parameters in text files, you're going to run into hard coded parameters that stop you from doing something. For example, take fatigue rates. You don't have any control over that in any total war game. If you change movement speeds, the fatigue rates are wrong, and you can't fix them.




How? Because I can understand the concept of tech trees. But this whole characters age at a different rate/no years thing has me utterly confused I've tried getting my head round it, but I can't.
The reason you can't get your head around it is because the game now embodies a logical paradox. Turns are not simply a non-fixed time period as previously stated. They are two different fixed time periods. That's clearly a logical impossibility.

In MTW, time was a single fixed rate per turn, and the movement was abstracted. With the new map used in RTW and MTW2, the movement can't be abstracted to the same degree, and the big squeeze is coming from the decision to cut the length of a campaign in half from 450 turns to 225 turns but retain a big tech tree.

[Duke John]

This just isn't right. You shouldn't have to depend on mods to get a good game.
True. But even when CA uses years and has reasonably balanced factions throughout the period I cannot stand the techtree system. For me it lessens immersion far more than this new turn system. The RTS crowd out there might like techtrees, but I prefer something more original and historical.

[screwtype]

This just isn't right. You shouldn't have to depend on mods to get a good game. After all, they are not giving this game away, and CA isn't paying you to fix their game. Don't forget that CA doesn't support mods.

You're right about that, but as CA have said the game is pitched toward the average gamer, not the grognards who want a campaign to last 500 turns. That's a commercial decision and they have every right to make it.

Unfortunately it means that those who want a longer, slower campaign have to resort to DIY. But at least we have the option to do that.

I don't really have the time to fool around with my own mods these days but I doubt it would be all that difficult to wind the turn rate back so it matches character ageing. The hardest bit I think would probably be readjusting the tech tree build rates.


You can be sure that despite what's been said about putting parameters in text files, you're going to run into hard coded parameters that stop you from doing something. For example, take fatigue rates. You don't have any control over that in any total war game. If you change movement speeds, the fatigue rates are wrong, and you can't fix them.

Yeah, I think probably the most disappointing thing about RTW is that CA left too much stuff hardcoded. It would be great to be able to adjust stuff like fatigue and morale but I suspect they are geared too tightly to the graphics engine for that.

[screwtype]

True. But even when CA uses years and has reasonably balanced factions throughout the period I cannot stand the techtree system. For me it lessens immersion far more than this new turn system. The RTS crowd out there might like techtrees, but I prefer something more original and historical.

Yes, I totally agree Duke John the tech tree is boring, ahistoric and basically just plain absurd, and yet you never hear the self-appointed guardians of historicity complaining about that. Or about the game's many other patently unrealistic mechanics.

The only part of the game that's ever borne anything like a resemblance to reality is the battle engine, and even that got dumbed down a lot with RTW. Everything else about the game has always been, quite frankly, pretty cheesy.

Just out of interest, what kind of system would you envisage to replace the techtree? I'm just wondering if you have anything particular in mind.

[Kraxis]

The reason you can't get your head around it is because the game now embodies a logical paradox. Turns are not simply a non-fixed time period as previously stated. They are two different fixed time periods. That's clearly a logical impossibility.

In MTW, time was a single fixed rate per turn, and the movement was abstracted. With the new map used in RTW and MTW2, the movement can't be abstracted to the same degree, and the big squeeze is coming from the decision to cut the length of a campaign in half from 450 turns to 225 turns but retain a big tech tree.
Wow... ehm yeah. That pretty much sums it up. I hav tried to say this but could never really find the proper words apparently.

Now, if we connect this to the tech tree question earlier, then it is clear that the tech tree is logical, not correct or historical, but logical. It is simply and easy to understand and progresses with logic. Besides it is still a game.

But because it is a game, it doesn't mean that then everything is just going to be ok. A line has to be drawn somewhere. Or else M2TW could jsut be reanemd Warrior Kings, or what that game was named. It was so clearly based on the same timeperiod M2 will be, but time was not an issue or very abstracted, can't remember which. But do we really want that?

It is unreasonable to say, "if you don't like A why do you like B?" In the previous games it has ben possible to put yourself into the shoes of the character and imagine that he is standing somewhere overlooking a buildingproject and have him think "oh I wish I will see the day when this cathedral is finished." That can't happen now, nor can you imagine the Battle of the Three Creeks in 1231, or the Battle of the Elbe in 1127. They don't exist in history because they never happened, but it is nice to think that chroniclers in the little gameworld would notice.
It is your little medieval world, one that fits with your expectations but one you can control at the same time. That is about to get messed up, and for me I doubt it will feel very well.

I'm not going to say I won't buy the game, for Ithink I will eventually. But I fear that my lust for it has vanished. I bought everything but RTW (gift) as soon as I could. Not any more... Now I will wait and see what people say. If they say the campaign is well balanced, the AI good and the troops cool and a whole range of things, and don't complain too much about this issue, then I might very well buy it. I have to admit that this is not the most important issue for me, but I also reserve the right to express my concern over this.

[Duke John]

Just out of interest, what kind of system would you envisage to replace the techtree? I'm just wondering if you have anything particular in mind.
For my Wars of the Roses mod I devised a system where you issued a call-to-arms. Your most loyal nobles (3 of them at the max) would then appear on the strategic map and would move towards a rendez-vous point which you can set. Lesser nobles would also appear on the map but they need to be picked up as you move your royal army towards the enemy (who is doing the same). If the enemy threat was erased the troops would return to their home province. You could influence the loyalty of nobles by winning/losing battles, becoming king , etc. Now it becomes a bit complicated, but the bottomline is that the player needs to depend on his vassals to win the wars and become the sole King of England.

For NTW2 I have come up with a similar system but then with a scripted strategic and tactical AI. In this case you have depots which provide troops which can be placed into slots in a army template. Unlike medieval times armies were more permanent and professional so once you have a depot you will have the troops unless they died on the battlefield. The amount of units is then capped by population, economy level and amount of depots.

I have pretty much worked it all out and only time is stopping me from making it. I am hoping that M2:TW will have the same scripting system so I can just copy it and have my own "perfect" little wargame. I believe that developers can come up with far better game mechanisms that will be fun to play and realistic. And I think that designing them is what makes game development fun to do. It is a shame they just stick with techtrees.

[Bob the Insane]

Interesting Duke John, but from what I read it does not really account for technological progression through the timeperiod, it is different method of recruitment basically...

I do like it though, the Roma mod had something like that. Zero build times for most units and prohibitively high maintainance costs forced the player to raise large armies when needed (as long as you had the cash and population) but then disband those armies before he went seriously broke...

[screwtype]

For my Wars of the Roses mod I devised a system where you issued a call-to-arms. Your most loyal nobles (3 of them at the max) would then appear on the strategic map and would move towards a rendez-vous point which you can set. Lesser nobles would also appear on the map but they need to be picked up as you move your royal army towards the enemy (who is doing the same). If the enemy threat was erased the troops would return to their home province. You could influence the loyalty of nobles by winning/losing battles, becoming king , etc. Now it becomes a bit complicated, but the bottomline is that the player needs to depend on his vassals to win the wars and become the sole King of England.

For NTW2 I have come up with a similar system but then with a scripted strategic and tactical AI. In this case you have depots which provide troops which can be placed into slots in a army template. Unlike medieval times armies were more permanent and professional so once you have a depot you will have the troops unless they died on the battlefield. The amount of units is then capped by population, economy level and amount of depots.

I have pretty much worked it all out and only time is stopping me from making it. I am hoping that M2:TW will have the same scripting system so I can just copy it and have my own "perfect" little wargame. I believe that developers can come up with far better game mechanisms that will be fun to play and realistic. And I think that designing them is what makes game development fun to do. It is a shame they just stick with techtrees.

That sounds very like the kind of system I would probably want to come up with for a medieval era type game. I was just mentioning something similar on one of these threads a day or two ago.

Yes, some sort of system where you had to unite barons under your control, who would each provide a particular and unique military force to add to your campaign - that would be a much better simulation of the era.

Then I guess foreign provinces you captured would just provide something in the way of tribute (mainly to keep those barons on your side!), but otherwise, perhaps, take many years to integrate into your military pool. But how you managed to actually mod the game to come up with something like this I can scarcely imagine.

BTW what is NTW2, another mod you are working on?

[screwtype]

...the Roma mod had something like that. Zero build times for most units and prohibitively high maintainance costs forced the player to raise large armies when needed (as long as you had the cash and population) but then disband those armies before he went seriously broke...

Yeah, that sounds like an interesting system too.

I never really experimented much with the RTW mods. I felt the underlying game was just too broke to be able to fix with a mod no matter how good.

I'm hoping the basic engine will be better this time around so there's really something worthwhile for the modders to work with.

[Duke John]

I favour small time periods because the smaller focus can be more intense increasing the immersion. I have never been a fan of huge mods with as many units, factions and regions as possible. But if there is technological advancement it should be more automatically, perhaps with certain actions triggering a few events. Comparing the current strategic gameplay with passages of a history book shows very little resemblances.


But how you managed to actually mod the game to come up with something like this I can scarcely imagine.
Few seem to believe me anyway, but I know better! :wink:

NTW2 is Napoleonic: Total War 2.
http://forum.thelordz.co.uk/files/squares_defence_129.jpg

http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload7/melee_2.jpg

http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload7/melee_4.jpg
Oh, eyecandy, bad boy! :grin:

[screwtype]

I favour small time periods because the smaller focus can be more intense increasing the immersion. I have never been a fan of huge mods with as many units, factions and regions as possible.

Yeah, I tend to be of the opinion that less is more myself. STW is still my favourite TW title, and I'm sure part of the reason it's better is that it concentrates on one short period in history and doesn't try to cram in everything bar the kitchen sink.


NTW2 is Napoleonic: Total War 2.

Those graphics look great! Did you do all the work by yourself?

Are your mods publicly available BTW? Can't say I've heard much about them up to now. All you ever seem to hear about on the boards is RTR, the gargantuan EB and one or two others.

[Braden]

First off – what a professional looking Mod! Please supply a link to your project forum Duke.

Lastly, huge thank you to Puzz3D for finding the words to fully describe what concerns me (and apparently most other people), and Kraxis for elaborating on that point.

“Logical Paradox” should now be the buzz word for this issue. We all knew that TW games weren’t realistic but had elements of realism balanced with game systems but this issue touched on something that, until now, I (and others) couldn’t completely explain.

Logical Paradox…..if I were an android my head would have exploded by now.

[Duke John]

NTW2 is under development by the Lordz of which I am a member. I am busy with animations, vegetation, coding and the UI. You can find more info at http://forum.thelordz.co.uk For screenshots look here: http://forum.thelordz.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=2770

What a shameless plug :grin:

[NagatsukaShumi]

NTW2 is under development by the Lordz of which I am a member. I am busy with animations, vegetation, coding and the UI. You can find more info at http://forum.thelordz.co.uk For screenshots look here: http://forum.thelordz.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=2770

What a shameless plug :grin:

Oh DJ you attention whore......

Me likes :laugh4:

[Dead Moroz]

The only way to make a continuous, complete campaign with 400+ turns is to make the Gameplay significantly harder.
Bingo! That's what CA had to do instead of inventing "improvements" that nobody asked for.

[Craterus]

I can't decide which idea was worse. This one, or Germany invading Russia in 1942.

[Kraxis]

The only way to make a continuous, complete campaign with 400+ turns is to make the Gameplay significantly harder.Bingo! That's what CA had to do instead of inventing "improvements" that nobody asked for.
Ah, but you fail to see that hard gameplay is what turns the 'broad market' away. You know the 'average player' (and we all know who that is).

I must say that it sounds very well with that system DJ. I would like to try it out, but I guess it would ruin a little of my control of my armies. To you it is the recruitingsystem that is bothersome, but to many of us it is the 'being there' that is soon going to be a problem.
But now that we are at it. Your system is innovative and cool, no doubt, but it also sounds sluggish and outside a very small fanbase it also sounds like it would not be too popular. That can't work for a game developer. But this is unneeded, I don't think CA is going to get more fans on this account. Thos who work alongteh lines CA is beggining to walk are more experienced and quite simply better at it.
Further, given how your recruiting system isn't likely to be part of it, are you really willing to let the same happen to a lot of other things as well? Isn't that a bit lethargic? Are you really giving up because of this?
Just because other aspects are more important doesn't make this unimportant.

[Dead Moroz]

I can't decide which idea was worse. This one, or Germany invading Russia in 1942.
It was 1941! Sunday 4:00 AM 22.06.1941.

[Dead Moroz]

Ah, but you fail to see that hard gameplay is what turns the 'broad market' away.
I know it. And that's why I don't really expect from CA anything better than RTW.

[Craterus]

It was 1941! Sunday 4:00 AM 22.06.1941.

GAH! Typo! :oops:

[Zenicetus]

Basically it sounds pretty much as I had expected. As CA has said all along, it is the RTW engine with a few updates. So the turn system is the same as it was in RTW. Characters age at the same turn rate. Unfortunately CA decided that 225 was the optimum number of turns. While I almost always played GA from early to the end which meant about 450 turns and it never bothered me - I would not be surprised if the majority would prefer 225 turns :wall:

For what it's worth, the lead developer of GalCiv2 said recently on their forum that a typical GalCiv2 game should run 250 turns. So this seems to be what many leading strategy game developers have settled on, as what the "average" gamer wants for number of turns. Frankly, that's about my personal limit too, for an enjoyable game.... as long as I can replay it with other choices and starting factions. I understand that some people want longer games, but they may be in the minority, and CA may feel that modding can provide the longer games they're looking for.

All the other problems here flow out from taking 225 turns and trying to fit that against the long timeline CA has chosen for MTW2.

I'm a little surprised they didn't break out the late Medieval/early Renaissance period for a separate expansion pack, featuring the discovery and conquest of the New World. That would have eased some of the problems, and would have funded the design and playtesting for new starting positions in the second era.

[Kraxis]

For what it's worth, the lead developer of GalCiv2 said recently on their forum that a typical GalCiv2 game should run 250 turns. So this seems to be what many leading strategy game developers have settled on, as what the "average" gamer wants for number of turns. Frankly, that's about my personal limit too, for an enjoyable game.... as long as I can replay it with other choices and starting factions. I understand that some people want longer games, but they may be in the minority, and CA may feel that modding can provide the longer games they're looking for.

All the other problems here flow out from taking 225 turns and trying to fit that against the long timeline CA has chosen for MTW2.

I'm a little surprised they didn't break out the late Medieval/early Renaissance period for a separate expansion pack, featuring the discovery and conquest of the New World. That would have eased some of the problems, and would have funded the design and playtesting for new starting positions in the second era.
Interesting...

But if CA expects peole to mod the game so it is longer, they should make the game highly moddable. That would be sort of sugar on the bitter pill.

I agree it would have been better if the game had been ranged from 1150 to 1450 (or so). The initial structure wouldn't be too different from the 1080 scenario and the 1450 date would open the game up for said expansion. Then we arrive at 300 years, which at 1 turn a year would be about the limit of the acceptable range. And we would all get our wishes to an extent (though I do know that some people would nag about the 'short' span, and perhaps the lack of seasons, but it would be much much less than now).

[Xiahou]

If we go with the current turns = bad, years = good sentiment that is the view of the vocal majority here, how's about the following quick and dirty 'fix': if we assume that we can play passed 225 turns (like you can in all other TW games) and change the turns into dates via the text files, we're still left with the rapid progression of technology compared to actual history. If everything is 4 times faster at present, presumably we'd be able to increase the construction times of everything by a factor of 4 to balance this out. So your generals live the right amount of game time and the gameplay is slowed down. It may not be neccessary to have everything 4 times slower - a bit of experimenting will resolve this.That sounds ok, but would you be able to mod population growth per turn?


For what it's worth, the lead developer of GalCiv2 said recently on their forum that a typical GalCiv2 game should run 250 turns.Yeah, the difference is that that number is totally customizable by the player. Want a quick game? Choose a tiny galaxy. Want an insanely long game? Choose a huge galaxy with 8 races. M2TW is going to shove a 'one size fits all' on gamers instead and leave it to modders to try and let people play the game they want.

[econ21]

Ah, but you fail to see that hard gameplay is what turns the 'broad market' away.

I'm not sure that's true. I've found the Civ series to have pretty "hard" gameplay - i.e. requiring complex strategies and with a competitive AI - but it sells well enough. Civ4 seems to have ramped up the difficulty level far above Civ2, so that I'm happy settling on the level just above (supposedly) balanced.

When Civ4 came out, I wished Rome Total War could match its challenge at the strategic level (at the tactical level, TW is still unrivalled).

The Heroes of Might and Magic franchise (up to Homm3) also could teach TW a trick or two, in terms of AI challenge at the strategic level.

Even the twitch type games - RTSs and FPSs - seem to depend on delivering hard gameplay, albeit of a less cerebral challenge. (Or maybe I'm just useless at them).

[screwtype]

GAH! Typo! :oops:

Actually your typo wasn't so far from wrong. Invading Russia in 1941 was, from a purely military standpoint, not indefensible. Choosing the Caucasus instead of Moscow as the grand objective in '42 was what really blew the campaign.

(But then, Hitler was such an appallingly bad commander, he probably would have found another way to lose the war even without such a huge mistake).

[screwtype]

I'm a little surprised they didn't break out the late Medieval/early Renaissance period for a separate expansion pack, featuring the discovery and conquest of the New World.

Yeah, the inclusion of the New World in this game is a bit gimmicky, isn't it?

I guess they felt they had to come up with something extra so the game wouldn't simply be perceived as "MTW in 3D".

[Brighdaasa]

Yeah, the inclusion of the New World in this game is a bit gimmicky, isn't it?

I guess they felt they had to come up with something extra so the game wouldn't simply be perceived as "MTW in 3D".

the irony, i think 90% of this forum population would love nothing more than just MTW in 3D

[Kraxis]

I'm not sure that's true. I've found the Civ series to have pretty "hard" gameplay - i.e. requiring complex strategies and with a competitive AI - but it sells well enough. Civ4 seems to have ramped up the difficulty level far above Civ2, so that I'm happy settling on the level just above (supposedly) balanced.

When Civ4 came out, I wished Rome Total War could match its challenge at the strategic level (at the tactical level, TW is still unrivalled).
Look around you. Who plays the Civ games? We do, our parents, and those kids who tend to read more than playing games or enjoys sport. All groups are perhaps part of the broad market, but it is clear the civ games have never been intended for the broad market. Sure a lot of the more active players know the civ games, but ask if they own it and you will see. With STW and MTW that was true as well, most would just say "Huh?". With RTW that has begun to change. I have seen enough 10 yearolds in cafés trying to play it, or rather playing it effectively in MP. In fact I see that more than older ones like myself (25) playing it. Obviously CA has done fairly well with the younger group by now.

What Civ has done so nicely is to collect all the niche groups into one more or less. That way it can sell as good as most others. And then it doesn't hurt that they are all quality games (though some argue they are repitative).

[Kraxis]

the irony, i think 90% of this forum population would love nothing more than just MTW in 3D
But then again, we aren't the targetgroup, or at least we are negliable in numbers.

[Powermonger]

the irony, i think 90% of this forum population would love nothing more than just MTW in 3D

I think a lot of us want an improved MTW, not a gimmicky MTW.

[Trithemius]

The lack of Era's is a big disapointment. I missed it a lot in RTW.

Expansions, anyone? I expect that being able to cut out the need for a lot of engine-building and coding and still charge some cash-money for it is a pretty attractive proposition to whoever is writing the cheques for CA these days.

[Voigtkampf]

NTW2 is under development by the Lordz of which I am a member. I am busy with animations, vegetation, coding and the UI. You can find more info at http://forum.thelordz.co.uk For screenshots look here: http://forum.thelordz.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=2770

What a shameless plug :grin:

And, as always, we want more of this shamlesness! :bow:


I think a lot of us want an improved MTW, not a gimmicky MTW.

I'd settle for 3D version of old MTW, but I am also not per se against any tweaks or improvements that could add to gameplay.

[Duke John]

Further, given how your recruiting system isn't likely to be part of it, are you really willing to let the same happen to a lot of other things as well? Isn't that a bit lethargic? Are you really giving up because of this?
I am giving up official campaigns because of the techtrees yes. Techtrees are used in Diablo, AoE, Civ, Starcraft, TW, etc. No matter the timeframe or setting the developers always tend to use the same trick to make their game addicting to play; keeping an even bigger carrot just around the corner. I am sick and tired of being seen like some addict who longs for the next shot. Sadly the techtree system is the dominant one in the strategic part of TW, ignore it and it becomes a very empty game.


Just because other aspects are more important doesn't make this unimportant.
According to some people are now not able to write stories about their empires. Instead of "In the year 1254 King Henry IV builds a Weaponsmith in Wales." it will be "In turn 41..." (multiply by 4 add 1090 and you get 1254, but I guess that is a bit hard to do). Complaining about that sounds to me like complaining someone coming into your house with poo under his shoe, while there is a big pile of it in your living room.


And, as always, we want more of this shamlesness!
Must listen to the moderators! NTW2 is coming! ...in the words of EB team: soon :grin:
http://files.upl.silentwhisper.net/upload7/melee_3.jpg

[spmetla]

For the tech tree generally what I did for my personal mod of MTW was allow all units to be built with a castle except militia units and heavy siege equipment. The buildings I had then just serve as upgrades to valour and discipline. I made armour upgrades also depend on the iron resource like the weaponsmiths to make those areas more valuable. Merchant buildings I had only one level of and they did full potential at trading post level (more of a market descision than the rulers of how well business did) while farms and mines were the same but yield greater returns than before.

I also tried to add in as many factions as possible (tunisian arabs, syrian turks, kiev, lithuania, genoa (split from italians which I had as venetians), scots, and portuguese. The game turned out a lot harder because I'd face armies consisting of good troops and there was only limited rebel land grabbing in the beginning. Frankly I think that the tech tree for units at least detracted from the game. Lords of the Realm III tried a different approach to tech trees but implemented it badly. I do notice that their choose a different city type is now being carried over MTW2 without the bishop towns though. LoTR3 had potential but the lack of good battles and the lack of uniqueness between the different factions made each campaign the same but with different starting positions (to me at least). Frankly I was excited when LoTR3 came out because I enjoyed two so much but was hugely disappointed and like the earlier game better (and still play it occasionaly). The battles of MTW2 will probably stop me from abandoning the Total War series as I did LoTR3 but who knows about the single player aspects, ball is in the air right now.

[Duke John]

I searched for Lord of the Realms 3 and came up with this response from a developer ( http://forums.vugames.com/thread.jspa?threadID=3803&tstart=0 ):

Actually over the few hundred years from 1000 to 1400, technology (at least military technology) changed remarkably little.

[He goes on with supplying examples]

Consequently there's not a tech tree by the usual RTS standard (oh, look I learned masonry, now I can research round towers!). Tech is more determined by the time period of the scenario -- a later scenario may allow more specialized castle pieces, have more heavy infantry, or allow light cavalry (not recorded until after 1250 or so), and through specialists (either vassals or mercenaries) who confer a bonus to your lands (better farming techniques, Florentine bankers who improve your cash production, etc.).

This is what comes from reading too much.

[...]
Yes it should. First, it discourages "hot-swapping" your vassals. ("Ooh look, I got a better one, I'll just throw out this old one." ;) Your vassals should be considered long-term investments.

Second it represents in part the immensely complicated web of politics and loyalty of the time. The whole feudal vassal system was never as clear-cut or rigid as the simple description suggests. It is a two-sided not a one-sided arrangement. Vassals frequently refused, dallied, or otherwise made life difficult for their lords, often with little or no consequence. Obedience was more a negotiation than a duty. Even kings had a hard time removing disloyal vassals and almost always there were consequences. People of the time regarded it more from self-interest which was often, "If he can get away with doing that to Sir So-and-So, what's to say he won't try that on me?"

Our vassals already will be more loyal and obedient than real-life so this is a balancing effect.

David "Zeb" Cook
That is what I call designing a game the right way. We never see such replies from CA, they only talk about gamemechanisms and how they affect gameplay (while using words as if they cost $1000 each). Where are they showing the love for the period they are basing a game on? Or is the above David Cook a rarity among developers?

[screwtype]

That is what I call designing a game the right way. We never see such replies from CA, they only talk about gamemechanisms and how they affect gameplay (while using words as if they cost $1000 each). Where are they showing the love for the period they are basing a game on? Or is the above David Cook a rarity among developers?

Are you guys sure you're talking about the right game? LOTR II was a brilliant game but looks rather dated now (especially the PC version), but LOTR III was made by an entirely different mob and it really is a terrible game. I played it for about three days and took it back to the shop for a refund.

I don't remember a tech tree of any type in it. All I remember is a crummy RTS-style interface, barely controllable battles, badly animated AI armies constantly creeping toward your territory, and a pokey little gameworld consisting of just a handful of provinces. LOTR III was not remotely like the earlier games in the series and IMO was a blatant rip-off of the name for commercial purposes.

[Duke John]

The execution might be poor but I do like how the developers talked about their ideas. That was my point. And I am not bothered with having no techtrees as long as it provides interesting gameplay (I have no idea wether that was the case with LoR3).

[Butcher]

What I see is a problem is the 'Golden Horde' effect. If you played a High campaing, for example, you knew what year they would be turning up, and if you were Russia, or example, would be focussing on this year and prepare for it.
Focussing on turn 34 isn't just quite the same.

[TosaInu]

If you played a High campaing, for example, you knew what year they would be turning up, and if you were Russia, or example, would be focussing on this year and prepare for it.


While it might be authentic, it's unrealistic at the same time. Russia did not have this retrospect knowledge. Funny: more realism kills realism :juggle2:

[Dead Moroz]

A question for anyone who thinks CA has gone insane with this new turn system:

How come you do accept such an abstract, ahistorical, unrealistic system like techtrees, but refuse to buy M2:TW because they abstracted the flow of time?

Or are some of you just slightly hypocrite? Accepting a big old abstract game mechanism but getting furious on a new smaller one.
I guess your real question was not about new turns mechanism specifically, but about reasons of our antipathy to CA new product. My answer is late and most of the reasons I could say were already mentioned by other guys (it doesn't mean that I'm too lazy and just waited for other people to make all dirty work). So I won't bother you, myself and the rest of the company with repeating of that issues. To summarize it all in few words - recent changes destroys the aura of history and participation in epic events. It turns all gameplay into constant rush and adaptation of your mind to new "abstractions". This game will have 240 years old personages and fantasy mix of units of absolutely different eras in the same battle. This game squeeze giant period of history into only 225 turns without any separation on unique eras (imagine XVII century musketeers participating in Iraqi war or modern Americans still looking like first colonists). The map of this game will be unbalanced, unhistorical and will produce more or less predictable gameplay, because almost all factions concentrates in western part of map.

Many people hopes for high moddability of this game to improve all imperfections. What the heck this game will be if even now most of fans wants to change numerous things themselves? And who the hell did think out that a game should rather be moddable than good made? It's like to buy new car without wheels, headlights, bumper and some other stuff which you have to make and install yourself. Moreover, I don't actually think that this game will be moddable enough to make it really better. Most of the things in RTW which ya'll used to take as moddable (such as 3d models and textures) and which made all major modifications possible, were not supposed to be moddable at all. CA did not even open it for modding. Without programming skills of some community members and their kind of hacks of RTW files we would never ever get access to those files and no any real RTW modifications would be possible. But even these possibilities could not really improve RTW gameplay because many of necessary things are just hardcoded and AI (that could be actually improved only by programmers) is still poor. Btw, Duke John, I wonder how fast you forgot your own recent discontent with moddability of RTW.

Now I have to say that I don't think CA gone insane as Duke John mentioned. They made predictable and right step in their business. They are going to make their products as popular as possible and thus more profitable. What are the ways to make your product more profitable?
1. To get more income with lesser inputs. In game terms it means developing things that make more impact on customer's decision to buy product (means eye candy that produces "wow!" effect) and ignoring things that are not important for this decision (means gameplay which you cannot estimate before you play game long enough).
2. To expand the outlet. It means involving fans of other genres into playing your games. RTS is most close to TW genre so RTS fans is the most logical choice for expansion (btw, "General view" battle camera shows that CA have plans on FPS fans too). Popularize TW among RTS fans is complex task for long time. Is's much more easy to adapt TW to RTS "rules" (especially that original TW fanbase is quite small and can be easily sacrificed to new tasks). So CA doesn't actually invent anything new, they are just making M2TW more customary and comfortable for common RTS fans.

Have I right to blame CA for their decisions? No. Game development is business first of all. Just a business, nothing personal. Just making of money. And nothing else. So you cannot expect company to go on less profitable way. Though I don't think that the way CA choose is the only possible variant of development. It's just most easy and quick way to money. Development of really great TW game and popularizing this genre among masses is hard and long way and brings good money only in far perspective. I don't blame CA for their decision to step on easy way, but I'm sad that great genre is being killed by its own creators.

[doc_bean]

Ah, but you fail to see that hard gameplay is what turns the 'broad market' away. You know the 'average player' (and we all know who that is).


Actually, reading an interview with a GalCiv2 developer yesterday I came across an interesting comment:


Consider the coverage. The sales levels for first person shooters doesn't even remotely justify the coverage they get. How many magazine covers each year do first person shooters get? How many of the top 10 most popular games in terms of sales do they have? No where near the same percent.

So we make first person shooters because there is more gratification. While World of Warcraft, Civ IV and Age of Empires 3 absolutely crush the sales levels of most first person shooters, they get relatively little attention compared with their sales levels.

He might be right you know, this 'average gamer' might be something an illusion. I know people who could certainly fall into this category that play Civ. I've seen how fast CivIV sold when it first came out, based on reputation alone. Similarly, RTW sold out in most stores around here pretty quickly after release, and shortages happened until Christmas. I think this can be attributed for a large part to the reputation of the TW series (and the greatness that was MTW).

I find it ironic in this day and age when people like to talk about 'franchises' rather than games that they are still developing for this 'average gamer', who apparently likes easy and simple games. What was the biggest commercial success of the last decade apart from the Sims? Would anyone contest that it was GTA after it went 3D ? Can anyone that has played that game honestly say that it is easy ? Can anyone claim that it still looks great ? San Andreas has basically the same graphics as GTA3.
What are some other big successes ? Ninja Gaiden, God of War, both have a reputation of being hard. In the FPS genre FarCry was the most unexpected hit of the current gen, and it's bloody hard.
On the other hand, games that have focused on graphics over gameplay don't always do so well. Everyone said Doom3 looked gorgeous, but it got repriced a few months after it's release, becoming almost a budget title.

What makes great games, and great game franchises is gameplay. Pure and simple, the aw-factor last a second, great gameplay can last for years.

[Braden]

Has anyone else noted that the topics relating to CA updates have been removed from the .com?

I think CA are upset.

[Duke John]

I guess your real question was not about new turns mechanism specifically, but about reasons of our antipathy to CA new product.
No, my question is just what I wrote.


Btw, Duke John, I wonder how fast you forgot your own recent discontent with moddability of RTW.
I didn't. What I did do is accepting the poor modding support of CA (not 1 single tool released! The battle editor was locked for public use!) and try giving some atmosphere to R:TW, currently in the form of NTW2.


I think CA are upset.
Of course, they think they are creating the perfect game with fireballs flying at besiegers, introducing america, finishing moves and compressing 450 years into 225 turns. Now the public is not accepting it and screaming mayhem at every feature they thought was cool.

[Braden]

BTW Duke - once I can get Medieval & VI to work on one of my computers (darn thing not working on the laptop) I'm installing your NTW first mod (version 6.01 isn't it?).

Although I'm still having too much fun with RTW and BI to overwrite it at the moment, I'm sure I'll be ready for NTW2 when its released.....good looking product.

[Duke John]

For the record; I have done nothing for NTW1. It is largely a different team that is now doing NTW2 as the 3D engine requires different skills.

[Kraxis]

He might be right you know, this 'average gamer' might be something an illusion. I know people who could certainly fall into this category that play Civ. I've seen how fast CivIV sold when it first came out, based on reputation alone. Similarly, RTW sold out in most stores around here pretty quickly after release, and shortages happened until Christmas. I think this can be attributed for a large part to the reputation of the TW series (and the greatness that was MTW).

I find it ironic in this day and age when people like to talk about 'franchises' rather than games that they are still developing for this 'average gamer', who apparently likes easy and simple games. What was the biggest commercial success of the last decade apart from the Sims? Would anyone contest that it was GTA after it went 3D ? Can anyone that has played that game honestly say that it is easy ? Can anyone claim that it still looks great ? San Andreas has basically the same graphics as GTA3.
What are some other big successes ? Ninja Gaiden, God of War, both have a reputation of being hard. In the FPS genre FarCry was the most unexpected hit of the current gen, and it's bloody hard.
On the other hand, games that have focused on graphics over gameplay don't always do so well. Everyone said Doom3 looked gorgeous, but it got repriced a few months after it's release, becoming almost a budget title.

What makes great games, and great game franchises is gameplay. Pure and simple, the aw-factor last a second, great gameplay can last for years.
That is not hard gameplay, it is hardness! I have played of those games, God of War, GTA 3 (and San Andreas), Far Cry and I have played the Civ games until III, so I expect that my experiences can carry over he same is true for AOE (where I played the demo of the latest for quite some time). Of those only Civ has what I would consider hard gameplay. There are simply many things to consider at each corner, do this or that or a hundred other things that will hold benefits and problems. But the strength is it is straightforward.
The other games are comparably simple. They will put stress on your abilities, no doubt about that, but they are easy to get into, very easy indeed. You can't say that about MTW for instance, it took time to learn it (if you weren't an STW veteran) even the basics.

The controls of the older TW games were fairly hard to learn, but when you learned it they were superb. That changed in RTW. Now they are comparably easy to learn, but nowhere near as good (the turner is a major step down from the very effective and fast right-click hold system of previous titles).
The battlespeed was enhanced significantly, fatigue was basically removed and so were terrain features. That indicates that CA was afraid that someone might not understand these things and get annoyed when they got beaten all the time because the AI took advantage of it.

The 'average player' might not actually exist, I don't know, but it it is clear that he is continually sought out. Who knows, it could be the marketing people who are wrong. But the fact remains that we are seeing a decline from sofisticated to 'streamlined'.

DJ, about your pile of poo, I would say you are going too far. I would say you have the pile in the backyard and then someone comes along and just keeps dumping more on it. Who said you wanted more of it? Thus it is fair to tell him that you would prefer him not to dump more poo on the pile.

[Duke John]

The techtree system is a big pile of poo, while the new turn system is just a bit of poo in comparison. But let's leave the poo behind since I realize that my views are not that of the common TW fan.

I am reading a thread on .COM and there are a few good comments that I haven't read here or missed:


The reason for this 225 turn thing is obvious - it is greed. CA bit more than they are willing to chew. They wanted first crusade, but they also wanted discovery of America. Hence 1080-1530 period.
Good point. STW focused on a small period and had lots of atmosphere. The 4 seasons per year added alot to the gameplay. CA could have gone for just the early or high medieval period. Instead they seem to think the bigger the timeframe, the better the game. How good would Lord of the Rings have been if it was crammed into a single 2 hour movie?
CA realizes that 450 years of history is alot and takes too long (in their opinion) to finish with 1 or 2 turns per year. At that point they should have made the decision to divide the campaign into eras or make the eras seperate expansions. I think few of us would mind paying for the main game and 2 expansions if each of them had the atmosphere of S:TW.

[econ21]

The controls of the older TW games were fairly hard to learn, but when you learned it they were superb. That changed in RTW. Now they are comparably easy to learn, but nowhere near as good (the turner is a major step down from the very effective and fast right-click hold system of previous titles).

You may be confusing greater accessibility with dumbing down. I went back to Shogun the other day and found the controls very clunky. Even when I used to be proficient with it, I still found it a bit of a pain to manage the camera and some other stuff. RTWs controls are more accessible and I can't see why they are "no where near as good" (how hard is it to press , and . to turn?). Hard gameplay as in hard to play is a bad thing. The challenge should be working out winning strategies, not mastering the controls or the manual.


The battlespeed was enhanced significantly, fatigue was basically removed and so were terrain features. That indicates that CA was afraid that someone might not understand these things and get annoyed when they got beaten all the time because the AI took advantage of it.


The faster battlespeed in itself makes the game harder (and again, in a bad way, IMO).

Fatigue is definitely still there and may even be one factor that inhibits the AI (when attacking, it seems to be very tired by the time it arrives at my side of the map).

Similarly, I think terrain still matters. Hills still seem to be a big plus for missiles and in melee; woods are an even bigger pain; bridges are still there and seem less ridiculously constraining than in STW and MTW.

I don't think RTW was deliberately dumbed down. I think the move to a new engine was a massive design undertaking (and one well worth making, commercially and from my own perspective) and diverted some time/energies from content. Some things got lost in translation. I think you see a similar thing, for example, when Bioware went from Baldur's Gate to Neverwinters Nights. The NWN OC reminds me a lot of vanilla RTW - it has its moments, but ends up just too easy and uninspired. Bioware gradually came back to form with the NWN expansions and especially KOTOR. I see CA making similar improvements with BI - let's hope Alexander and M2TW continue the progress. Then everyone can bitch about how dumbed down the next generation of Total War games is. ~;)

[Kraxis]

The techtree system is a big pile of poo, while the new turn system is just a bit of poo in comparison. But let's leave the poo behind since I realize that my views are not that of the common TW fan.

I am reading a thread on .COM and there are a few good comments that I haven't read here or missed:


Good point. STW focused on a small period and had lots of atmosphere. The 4 seasons per year added alot to the gameplay. CA could have gone for just the early or high medieval period. Instead they seem to think the bigger the timeframe, the better the game. How good would Lord of the Rings have been if it was crammed into a single 2 hour movie?
CA realizes that 450 years of history is alot and takes too long (in their opinion) to finish with 1 or 2 turns per year. At that point they should have made the decision to divide the campaign into eras or make the eras seperate expansions. I think few of us would mind paying for the main game and 2 expansions if each of them had the atmosphere of S:TW.
Agreed. That is pretty much all I can say about that.

It is not hard to press , or . but they are inadiquate. Have you ever tried to do finetuning with them? It tends to mess up my formations. Some units turn, others don't. Sometimes it simply starts out too far in the given direction, forcing you to go a full revolution, which takes a lot of time often needed elsewhere. Also the time the turning takes is too much in general and I don't feel I can be as precise as I want to be. Your argument would be as if I installed a fingerstick as a controller for a helicopter. How hard would it be to control? Not very, but it would be inadiquate.
The old system of actually holding the cursor over the target you wanted the unit(s) to face was great! It was fast, done in a splitsecond, it didn't mess up the formation and it was accurate.
Maybe I'm strange but I used it very much. I liked to keep the troops lined up facing the enemy.

Btw, I didn't notice anything about the camera that I found to be different. At least nothing I use (such as following a unit and that). The same old + - * and / and the mousewheel.

Fatigue matters because the AI has a nasty tendency to run across the map. I don't find myself in situations where all my units are Exhausted and I'm sitting scared on a hilltop with dead enemies in piles around me. And while the features do affect battles I found it to be less (unless we are talking phalanxes, in which case we are talking a 'feature').

[Braden]

Certainly some things in Rome appear to have slipped back, weather this was deliberate or a knock on effect of different coding I don’t know. Perhaps it was due to inadequate play testing in beta form. Many were improved in the BI expansion though, AI is more challenging for a start (not ideal but a vast improvement on Vanilla Rome).

Fatigue doesn’t play as big a part in Rome as it did in Medieval as the battles are not as “Epic” due to the poor re-enforcement method (remember being able to queue up your re-enforcements….how I miss that) and the inability of the AI in Rome to match Medieval AI’s ability to combine forces into significant armies (I’ve yet to face an AI army bigger than one stack). The Fatigue I guess is just the same or even perhaps more realistic now, but the key is: when have you played a 2hr open field battle on Rome? Never. When did you play 2hr battles in Medieval? More times than I remember. Doesn’t a default 45min timer say something about what CA wanted to do?

Size of battlefield and terrain play a big part also. Whilst Rome has much smaller battlefields and a very much reduced deployment area when compared to Medieval, I think Rome has better, more realistic Terrain. Plenty of times in Medieval (an in Shogun) I was presented with near sheer cliff’s to climb and over scaled hills. Rome’s terrain is generally more representative AND you have the ability to choose your field of battle via placement on the campaign map (no more just a list of “generic” battlefields as in Medieval). However, due to Rome having far smaller battlefields we, again, loose that “epic” feel.

I never use the , & . keys. Whereas I always used the R-C-hold move, to re-angle my units in Medieval – testament to some of Rome’s controls being easier to use whilst others are worse/inadequate.

So, I feel personally that the main items “dumbed down” in Rome are Battles (too smaller scale, battlefields smaller to enable faster battles) and Campaign AI. The battle AI appears to have remained on the same par as Medieval whilst the Campaign AI has regressed somehow.

Truth is this isn’t the Sequel to Medieval we wanted but will be just good enough to encourage 70% of the TW players to buy it and get a good chunk of first-time players to buy it also. Those of us so obsessed with the TW series that we post here and on the .com only account for a small player base to be honest, an experienced player base that CA do look to for suggestions. Unfortunately, they only look to us after they’ve already hard-coded stuff – wish they’d consult us indirectly before they start things.

Things I’d like to see now in M2 is a better campaign AI causing bigger battles as well as a return to the very large battlefields of Medieval. The “turn” issue cannot be addressed now for the main release, I wait to see if there are any genuine improvements beyond this issue and that M2 isn’t just an even more “streamlined” version of Rome with slightly better graphics (which most of us won’t notice as we don’t all have Alien-Ware, top line, computers).

THEN, we’ll know if CA are serious in continuing to develop the TW series in the vein before Rome OR will continue to speed the game up at the behest of gaining new customers of lower attention span.

[Dead Moroz]

Actually your typo wasn't so far from wrong. Invading Russia in 1941 was, from a purely military standpoint, not indefensible. Choosing the Caucasus instead of Moscow as the grand objective in '42 was what really blew the campaign.
Actually Caucasus was right decision. Initial German rush through central part of Russia into Moscow had no any tactical or economical advantages, except morale impact on Russians in case of capturing our capital. After success in battle for Caucasus Germany would get access to rich oil deposits that Russians on the contrary would lost. This would certainly strengthen German economy and thus military while cause serious problems for Russians. On the other hand Germany would get base for future invasion into British-controlled Iraq and Russian-controlled Iran which had even greater deposits of oil. Such invasion could possibly involve Arabs and Iranians into war on German side as opposition to British and French control over most of muslim lands. Success in Caucasus would also lead Germany into more close contact with Turkey that would likely became its ally (it's not secret that Turkey sympathized with Germany but didn't dare to support it openly).

[Dead Moroz]

The controls of the older TW games were fairly hard to learn, but when you learned it they were superb. That changed in RTW. Now they are comparably easy to learn, but nowhere near as good (the turner is a major step down from the very effective and fast right-click hold system of previous titles).
The battlespeed was enhanced significantly, fatigue was basically removed and so were terrain features. That indicates that CA was afraid that someone might not understand these things and get annoyed when they got beaten all the time because the AI took advantage of it.
Well, those suspicions are kinda true. Strange unusual controls in STW was one of the reasons I din't played this game after trying its demo (the other reason was poor graphics). When MTW demo came out I made more effort to understand its controls and logic (don't already remember why). But when I got it I just forgot about almost all other games.


(how hard is it to press , and . to turn?).
Harder than to just turn. That's why I didn't like new RTW camera and always used old one. Though in the rest I'm satisfied enough with RTW controls (especially since 1.2) except for bugs and some minor weaknesses.


The faster battlespeed in itself makes the game harder (and again, in a bad way, IMO).
(Not in opposition to your words.) Fast battlespeed is just pure fantasy. People never used to kill each other as fast as in RTW before invention of machine gun.

[Orda Khan]

While it might be authentic, it's unrealistic at the same time. Russia did not have this retrospect knowledge. Funny: more realism kills realism :juggle2:
But in actual fact they did. On the march west the Mongols conquered the Volga Bulgars who had resisted them the year before, 1236. This resistance was aided by Russian forces so they would/should have been aware of the impending threat. However, I do agree that events should not necessarily happen 100% according to history otherwise we see what happened in MTW, everyone building and reinforcing ready for the event. I thought it would have been better to rely on intelligence reports from your agents rather than know regardless

........Orda

[Vladimir]

But in actual fact they did. On the march west the Mongols conquered the Volga Bulgars who had resisted them the year before, 1236. This resistance was aided by Russian forces so they would/should have been aware of the impending threat. However, I do agree that events should not necessarily happen 100% according to history otherwise we see what happened in MTW, everyone building and reinforcing ready for the event. I thought it would have been better to rely on intelligence reports from your agents rather than know regardless

........Orda

Hell I just like preparing because it's the only guaranteed castle defense you'll ever play. Max out your fort and bring pleanty of spears!

[screwtype]

Edit......

[Puzz3D]

You may be confusing greater accessibility with dumbing down. I went back to Shogun the other day and found the controls very clunky. Even when I used to be proficient with it, I still found it a bit of a pain to manage the camera and some other stuff. RTWs controls are more accessible and I can't see why they are "no where near as good" (how hard is it to press , and . to turn?).
I think the Shogun controls are quite elegant. You have two levels of grouping: groups and alternate groups on hotkeys. You could rotate an entire army, groups or individual units to a precise angle and then move it linearly before the rotation finished, and it only took two seconds to issue that command combination. You have separate buttons for hold formation and hold position. In RTW, these are combined into one button which reduces funcionality. You have a rally button in STW/MTW which acts on the currently selected units. You have custom army formations which can be maintained during movement and are tactically important. In RTW, the AI decides if your formation is disorganized, and, if it deems it so, reforms it when you move it into a basic line formation which is the least imaginative formation possible and very susceptible to being flanked. In STW/MTW, you have a fatigue indicator on each unit's icon which means you know the fatigue state of all oyur units at a glance. The is no delay of units responding to orders which for my style of play is a killer in a game with accelerated combat and movement speed.

The biggest disadvantage to the Shogun controls is the left click to select units and left click to move. The left click to select units and right click to move of RTW is a big improvement, and this suggestion was made by players many times starting back in 2000. We didn't see it incorporated in the game until 2004.



The faster battlespeed in itself makes the game harder (and again, in a bad way, IMO).
I agree. It's bad because it makes mastery of the interface the determining factor in winning when you can't or don't pause. This is especially detrimental to multiplayer because not only can't you pause the game, but human players are more aggressive than the AI.



Fatigue is definitely still there and may even be one factor that inhibits the AI (when attacking, it seems to be very tired by the time it arrives at my side of the map).
Fatigue is still there, but units move greater distance in RTW because the running speeds are 50% faster. Even so, as Kraxis points out, the AI gets exhausted because it runs everywhere. The AI has no idea how to manage fatigue.



Similarly, I think terrain still matters. Hills still seem to be a big plus for missiles and in melee; woods are an even bigger pain; bridges are still there and seem less ridiculously constraining than in STW and MTW.
CA did tell us here at the org that the effect of height on combat in RTW was reduced because new players wouldn't know how to handle it. Also, I never see the AI in RTW set ambushes on the tactical map. I played an STW battle recently and the AI split its forces into two groups. One group was hiding in trees to my front and the other group was hiding in trees to my right. When I approached the trees to the front, the AI attacked with the front group first and then attacked with the flanking force after I was engaged. I remember another battle where there were trees to the right and left. As I marched my army forward into the open space between the trees, the AI attacked from concealed positions on both sides simultaneously.

In STW, the AI will never make a frontal attacks with a weaker unit. It will always try to make indirect attacks with weaker units. This makes the AI seem smarter because it's the sensible thing to do in most cases. In RTW, I see the AI making frontal attacks with units that can't possibly win the matchup.



I don't think RTW was deliberately dumbed down.
In the case of the effect of height on combat, it was intentionally made less of an effect. In the case of the squeezed too tight penalty and the distance calculation for shooters, it appears a decision was made that these features were not worth including. No new player of RTW will ever notice that those things are missing.

In the case of fatigue in MTW, we pointed out to CA that the fatigue was a rather high for the largest maps in MTW. LongJohn posted that fatigue rates in MTW were the same as in STW, and that fatigue rate had not been optimized for the larger maps in MTW. It was still optimized for the smallest size maps. We were further told that relatively high fatigue rate made the battlefield play as though it was larger, and that this was good. He did make a concession in this case and reduced the running fatigue rate for cavalry by 10%.

We were also told before RTW was released that the maps in RTW would be larger than the maps in MTW. Not only are the maps smaller in RTW, but running movement speed is 50% higher making the battlefield play much smaller. What happened to the concept that larger scale battles were better? I see a lot of screenshots of large scale battles, but, in fact, the battles in RTW don't play as large scale battles.

[Butcher]

I remember the old 'less but more important' battles quote. Tell that to poor maximus fedupius as he goes to fight the 400th bunch of rebels who have turned up.

[doc_bean]

That is not hard gameplay, it is hardness! I have played of those games, God of War, GTA 3 (and San Andreas), Far Cry and I have played the Civ games until III, so I expect that my experiences can carry over he same is true for AOE (where I played the demo of the latest for quite some time). Of those only Civ has what I would consider hard gameplay. There are simply many things to consider at each corner, do this or that or a hundred other things that will hold benefits and problems. But the strength is it is straightforward.

Hmm, I was probably still thinking about another thread when I wrote this. I was mostly thinking about how bad the AI is on the battlefield and on the campaign map, thus providing no challenge, thus having bad gameplay.

I should have ellaborate more on complexity.

I don't think the TW concept is that complex really. Certainly campainging in MTW wasn't. I have to admit I don't know much about RTW campainging since that knowledge is never really required to win. The battles then, they're only complex because people are so used to RTS style combat by now. Surely, height and flanking effects aren't difficult to understand. Fatigue is also a pretty natural phenomena. The most difficult thing to teach new players is probably morale, and the many variables affecting that. But true understanding isn't really needed at first imho.

What made MTW such a difficult game to learn was all the different unit types (and upgrades) that were all marginal different from eachother, it takes a while to figure out what you should use when. It certainly didn't help that within a few turns you were having two-stack battles and had to figure out how to use reinforcements too.
I just played the STW tutorial, that was just hard the way GTA is hard: they give you a unit that can barely beat the opposing unit even if used right. This is not the kind of thing to do in a tutorial.

[Kraxis]

I agree, the concepts shouldn't be too hard to grasp, but aparently either they are or the dev community thinks they are. Or of course we are just that special...:2thumbsup: And it is this percieved, or real, hard gameplay that I commented on.
The learningcurve for the other TW games was rather high. It took a considerable time to learn the game. The strategic aspect has grown more complex (though some things are less complex, such as many buildings required for a unit), while the battles have grown less complex. I'm not sure that is the way to go.

The STW tutorial was more of a promotionvideo you could control. It only gave you the very basics. And I must admit I lost many many times before winning. But just because it was hard didn't make it bad. It gave me a incentive to actually play something that is usually skipped after the first time (or for that matter skipped entirely).

[Cesare diBorja]

!!!!!!!!!!!!Stupid if you ask me. The Conch of Disputatio is back. Now hear this. Now hear this. Mod. Mod. Mod. I am not some easily pleased twelve year old. it seems every step forward has a step back. Maybe..........................

diBorgia

[Keba]

!!!!!!!!!!!!Stupid if you ask me. The Conch of Disputatio is back. Now hear this. Now hear this. Mod. Mod. Mod. I am not some easily pleased twelve year old. it seems every step forward has a step back. Maybe..........................

diBorgia

One of my friends has this saying ... one step forward, two to the side. I don't think turns are a step backward ... maybe to the side, but not backwards.

It is just an experiment, to see how the consumers would react to such a change ... and to see what sort of things they can change.

[Duke John]

I doubt that they see it as an experiment. If it was wouldn't that mean they would at least wait after the game was released before saying that the next game will have normal turns again? It is just a quick and dirty fix to get a big period in a relative small amount of turns.

[screwtype]

The STW tutorial was more of a promotionvideo you could control. It only gave you the very basics. And I must admit I lost many many times before winning. But just because it was hard didn't make it bad. It gave me a incentive to actually play something that is usually skipped after the first time (or for that matter skipped entirely).

I lost my first couple of STW campaigns, but that just made me keener to try and beat it. As I recall I won the third campaign with the supposed elite unit, the heavy cav, but it was tough going.

After that, I tried out buddhist monks instead, and never bothered with heavy cav again ~:)

[Peasant Phill]

[QUOTE=Keba]One of my friends has this saying ... one step forward, two to the side. I don't think turns are a step backward ... maybe to the side, but not backwards.[QUOTE]

The procession of Echternach: a pilgrimage where you have to take one step back for every two steps you take forwards.

[Quietus]

A question for anyone who thinks CA has gone insane with this new turn system: CA's not insane. They are the top strategy game developer.

The issue is that they are currently so way ahead of competition that they can make the "turn" changes (for example) without taking into account how the TW community would react.


How come you do accept such an abstract, ahistorical, unrealistic system like techtrees, but refuse to buy M2:TW because they abstracted the flow of time?

Or are some of you just slightly hypocrite? Accepting a big old abstract game mechanism but getting furious on a new smaller one.

1) The techtrees are still the relic of Shogun where the recruitment buildings were Dojos (or schools?). It made sense since without schools, there would be no soldiers. However, it was carried over to MTW and even RTW.

2) One of the CA reps did mentioned devising a more complicated recruitment system for RTW, but it was abandoned because it was, just that, too complicated.

[Cesare diBorja]

WHAT!

I agree with Duke John. May the Conch of Disputatio burn bright, by day and by night.:furious3: . I am all for maximum immersion. So what if it takes 3months, 6months or a year to finish a game. More turns means more excitement and never a dull moment. I care not for the quick, dirty and all too easy. I want a challenge, not some kiddie game. Make a game that lasts and you have dojne something different in the history of gaming. Boost your sales. Toughen the AI without an unfair point spread. Do the right thing. The problem with gaming today is its like tv, quick, satisfying and without depth....
Live the life, gain the same attributes. Time well spent is time well earned.....

diBorgia:no:

[Ignoramus]

Seconded.

[Puzz3D]

Make a game that lasts and you have done something different in the history of gaming. Boost your sales.
The single campaign of 225 turns could be part of a planned obsolescense strategy. That is a way of boosting sales of future releases. It isn't as though the series continually builds on the previous release. They reinvented the wheel when they made RTW.

[Nelson]

The single campaign of 225 turns could be part of a planned obsolescense strategy.

Planned obsolescence! Shogun: Total War is 6 years old now. It is obsolescent. So is Medieval. CA never planned them to be so. Time has taken its’ inevitable toll.

Games become obsolete plenty quick enough in the natural order of things.

[Zenicetus]

I agree with Duke John. May the Conch of Disputatio burn bright, by day and by night.:furious3: . I am all for maximum immersion. So what if it takes 3months, 6months or a year to finish a game. More turns means more excitement and never a dull moment. I care not for the quick, dirty and all too easy. I want a challenge, not some kiddie game.

I like maximum immersion and a challenge. I don't enjoy kiddie games, and I'm not a kid. I also like campaigns that take around 200-250 turns to complete, so I can try a different strategy next time, or a different faction.

We don't all enjoy the same things. There is no automatic equation saying that <500 turns = kiddie game for unsophisticated players.

That said, I understand that some people enjoy longer campaigns. It would be nice if the game design could somehow accomodate that, or at least allow modding for it.

[Cesare diBorja]

Here, here!:2thumbsup:

[Orda Khan]

I understand that some people enjoy longer campaigns. It would be nice if the game design could somehow accomodate that, or at least allow modding for it.
Which is one of the reasons for the difficulty levels I would have thought. If somebody has the game won in under 50 turns I see that as a problem, however if the game is not won by 225 turns there should be the option to continue for as long as you like

......Orda