Who's still playing?

[edyzmedieval]

The Seljuk campaign is damn entertaining, XL Mod 3.0. Egyptians have been easy to defeat, Byzantines kept up their stride successfully against me but now I'm worried that if I don't defeat them soon enough the Mongols will come and I will fight on three fronts, destroying me completely. I'm ramping up my defences but I only have 70 years left to train defensive units.

This will be tough.

[Kamakazi]

im still here not on the forums so much but im always playing

[fuzzbomb]

Kudos to the guy who figured out how to get the game playing on my NVIDIA system. Got tired of X3 Terran Conflict and went back to MTW. I think I'll still be playing this game when I'm in the old age home (I think someone else said this in this thread....but it is certainly true).

Anyway, started this time as the English, early just to get back into it. When I'm done I think I'll try the Danes early. I have never been able to win with that one.

[gollum]

Welcome to the org and the main hall fuzzbomb, enjoy your stay.

The Danes are pretty easy if you:
1. take on Sweden
2. Build 2 longboats
3. Land on Britain (can start from Northumbria and move south)
4. Conquer Britain
5. Conquer Flanders and Normandy

From that point on you can either conquer the rest of France or land in Spain and conquer that starting from Leon and Castile before taking the rest of the provinces there.

The advantage of Denmark is that they have the Viking unit that has higher attack and morale and armor piercing ability available from the Fort level and costing cheaper to maintain than the equivalent mele unit for the rest of the Catholics (FMAA) that is made available from the swordsmith in Keep level and is less able and has less morale. This means you can spam them and swamp early opposition pretty easily.

If you want a more challenging game with the Danes (or other factions) in the vanilla setting/context you can try the pocket mod (follow link in my signature), or any of the many other mods available.

[drone]

Welcome to the Org, fuzzbomb!

The Danes have some advantages, especially in Early. As gollum said, they get Vikings, which you can spam from anywhere. They get Longboats, cheap and good ships you can use to set up trade routes. And their location, which lets them keep their borders to a minimum if you expand correctly. You do need to be a little aggressive though, taking Sweden is a must and you need a good income to keep your many heirs' RK units paid.

[Brandy Blue]

Also, if you play the Danes you have to watch your spending until your economy takes off. Denmark alone with no trade just doesn't support too much troop upkeep and leave cash to build. Getting Norway is a nice bonus too. It gives +1 valor vikings.

[gollum]

Indeed Norway produces valored up Vikings, but i usually set up there after i conquer Britain and my cash flow rolls. In the opening stages every second counts and i accelerate preparations for invading the isles. Norway is poor and does not contribute towards that goal at that point, but later its only too easy and natural to make a fort for valored up Vikings and get more trade income from it.

There are by the way a few other routes one may take as the Danes; one is to start bashing the HRE and another to get to Novgorod. However, taking too early on the HRE may fire back and waiting for the proper moment may take too long - as for expanding at teh expense of Novgorod leaves you to take over the steppes that are poor, underdeveloped and most importantly unsafe: by the time you take them over and have built a decent income the Mongols will be knocking at your door.

Invading Britain on the other hand is absolutely safe; the rebels in Scotland and Wales can be left for after you have taken out teh English, and by the time you have Essex taking Flanders and Normandy is just natural and very easy. At that stage taking over France or going to Spain is the only real dillema, although in the long term they both give the same result :)

Generally speaking, taking over Spain at that stage (ie invading by sea) is slightly more adventurous. taking over France is more standard and stable. You'll be moving into Spain anyway, but by land and while being properly set up in France, with trade routes, secure borders and proper infrastructure.

[Brandy Blue]

Well, yes, Norway is a nice bonus, but Britain is a more important objective.

[gollum]

One of the problems with MTW is that after having played most factions for a while, openings become very predictable. Partly its because of the player being able to read the AI, partly because of the mercenaries that allow the player to force an outcome and partly because certain regions are just too good and so much hinges on them.

The reason the AI os predictable in the strategy portion is because the AI personalities are the same for a kingdom throughout. In STW, every new ruler gets a different AI personality. This means that his faction will play differently upon him taking over the clan. This was possible and worked because changing of the Lord of a clan was a relatively rare event due to teh time scale - STW takes place within roughly 85 years with 4 turns per year, which means that you get 2 or 3 different rulers (Daimyos) at the very most usually.

In MTW on the other hand, rulers change every 25 to 40 years on average as the game covers roughly 370 years with 1 turn per year, and rulers produce progeny that is not "set" to follow historical personalities as in STW, hence it may yield several rulers and the passing of power is a common event - in a full campaign there can be litterally tens of rulers.

In that respect, MTW factions have a faction-centric AI personality, while in STW the AI personalities are person-centric. In MTW this is implausible as the very few years that are available to each ruler would have probably messed AI builds if the personality is changed too often.

On the other hand, although MTW kingdoms benefit by having the same organisation plan, they are more predictable in their actions over time.

In my view, it would have been better to keep the local character of the game with seasonal turns and economics and personal focus (focus on king/sultan/emperor); release many smaller campaigns in various theaters as add-ons; the Crusades, the Reconquista, teh Teutonic Wars, the Hundred Years War, Italian City state wars, etc etc There were very many possibiities without the need to bloat the game in scope and size and every campaign may have had only 2 to 4 factions but well done and well balanced against each other. Campaigns would have more character, better historical plausibility and better balance and so challenge as a result.

But TW went the other way : ) oh well...

[cogre]

i firmly believe that mtw is the ubber title of the total war series, i enjoy the other games, sure, but always come back to the best.

[gollum]

It certainly has many virtues, yes :)

[edyzmedieval]

i firmly believe that mtw is the ubber title of the total war series, i enjoy the other games, sure, but always come back to the best.

I fully agree with you on this.

It certainly has many virtues, yes :)

The most in a Total War game.

[gollum]

Not for me although it comes close - but each to his own :)

[edyzmedieval]

Not for me although it comes close - but each to his own :)

STW taking your top spot, my friend?

[gollum]

yup :)

[cogre]

i didn't like , and it was the only thing i didn't like in stw, was the habit of the factions dying out as the game came to conclusion, ya know finishing the game with only rebels to fight, no grand scheme. other than that i love everything about the game. the ai is intense, i would say the best in the series. mtw hit the ground running and didn't look back, except for missing the throne room and the mini movies and such, but i like the fact that the factions could reappear.

[gollum]

Indeed cogre,
in the original game (STW v1.0 to v1.12) factions die for good once killed and teh AI treats his Daimyos as just another general's unit, which makes it easy for them to be killed. This was compensated to a certain extent by a less forgiving economic game as well as the AI bonuses for the harder difficulty (the AI can spend infrastructure money he does not have), especially if you play as the southern clans (Shimazu. Mori and to a certain extent Oda)and have to face any clan coming from the northern rich land. In STW/MI though (with the expansion) there are faction re-appearances just like in MTW.

The AI in STW was good, but in MTW it was slightly better - most notably in flanking with cavalry. One thing however that helped the AI in STW was the pretty strong RPS gameplay and the few, well balanced types of units, as well as teh inability to disengage engaged units, which meant that you had to be careful how you match your units. The AI is pretty good at match ups. In MTW units and most notably cavalry that is helped by virtue of its mobility can disengage which somewhat hurts the importance of match ups (you can correct bad ones).

MTW had many ups over STW too though - the campaign game is more looked after and the battle engine has many improvements. It also has more flavor and more scope for role-playing.

[Brandy Blue]

I've heard that MI also made it possible for the AI to take advantage of the port bug, though I've never seen it happen.

[gollum]

Yes, i've seen the AI do port raids in MI. It was in a Shimazu camp. and the mori landed in Chikugo at the first 2-3 years of teh camp. essentially they tried to rush me. They got their emmissary there and suddenly landed out of nowhere - it was a bit of a surprise.

[cogre]

bummer i was never able to find mi , only have stw 1.12. that sounds like a fun ai adaption

[gollum]

There is now the "Gold" version in dvd-rom (Warlord's edition i think its called) cogre, available pretty cheaply that has STW/MI.

The expansion also introduces certain unbalances in the orignal units and their stats, most notably the guns are increased 300% in power (from power=4 to power=16) which means they can stop cav charges while they were not intended to do so and can't in the original, but thankfully their stats can be modified in a txt file.

Here is a veteran player's suggestion how to do so:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...old-unit-stats...

[cogre]

yeah , money is tight at the moment. however i plan on keeping this rig for as long as i can to enjoy the best games ever. i want to play with the gunpowder stops a cav charge. that sounds fun , unless, of course, one is on the recieving end

[gollum]

Its fun at first but wears off pretty quickly imo - but of course each to his own. You can mod the arquebusiers to bekillers in MTW though ;)

[edyzmedieval]

I do feel musketry wasn't quite well represented in MTW but since it finished in 1453 muskets weren't quite as advanced. Still, those siege cannons Muslim factions have are killer! Love them!

[caravel]

The musket wasn't really invented during the timeframe. MTW's timeframe encompassed the handgun and arquebus which were earlier smoothbore firearms that were not as widely adopted as the later muskets. In view of this the representation in the game is probably ok, not perfect, but maybe good enough.

[edyzmedieval]

Darn this! After 1175, the English want the Crusade points on GA so they declared a Crusade on me and sunk almost all of my fleets, my profit went from 9000 a turn to 800.

This will be very interesting. Crusade and the Mongols soon to lurk around, luckily I allied with the Cumans, I hope they resist.

[gollum]

I think Caravel is right. If the game extended more in timeframe like M2, then gunpowder could be more powerful.

Historical plausibility aside, strong guns are not very well used by teh AI so in a way its a plus. Of course in MTW the same problem exists, just its with arbalesters :)

[gaijinalways]

Could very well be. I often don't make much use of gunpowder, as I find the range is not very good, with arbs knocking the handgunners and arquebusers off pretty easily. I also find the gunpowder units are generally dreadful at hand to hand, with even peasants giving them a run for the money.

[gollum]

Try using arquebusiers behind your arbalest/crossbow line, and use them to give extra punch in the volley. You can coordinate volleys by putting all missiles out of fire at will and then either click to an enemy unit for them to fire or just enable fire at will so they fire all at the same time. Its devastating.

edit: one more advantage of the coordinated volley is that you can use more effectively your ammo, as you can prevent units from firing when there are less chances to do damage or run at out of ammo due to firing all the time and hence remain without missiles for many more attackng waves from the enemy. This is particularly important with the horde.

Handgunners are a unit used best to melee and its shot can aid that. They aren't fit for missle duels.

[caravel]

I always used coordinated volleys, very rarely targeted enemy units directly. The trick is to select your units in sequence and mouse over the approaching enemy. Once you get a green targeting arrow on all (or almost all) units, it's time to hit the fire at will. I would always hold off a bit longer though to ensure that the leading units got the most devastating volley I could muster. Usually that's more than enough to trigger a rout and you should place all the units back on hold fire and wait for them to regroup and try again - rinse and repeat.