Total War, How fareth, thee?

[Colovion]

Greetings, fellow soldiers, generals and jesters.

I haven't been back for a long long time, and likely many don't remember me. A world known as Azeroth stole me away from these noble chambers. As of late I began to itch for the feel of true war once more and have stumbled back upon what was once my home of strategic reprieve.

Now to the point, Lords and Ladies:

Initially I extricated myself from this fair game and community because I was less than enthralled by the expansion pack's demo. I had been waiting with baited breath for the throngs of adulation to ring true once more for the Total War series and for a bastion to be saved of what once enticed me with the first of the Series'.

I now return to beg a question, simply stated:

How does the battlefield look 'neath thine noble brows? Have the Barons of the EB Mod struck a chord in your heart of hearts? Has the new expansion determined your love renewed? What of the most recent, Alexander? I pray you return my questions with the most honest of replies; I care not to tarry hither when vanity is the toll of passage

I hope everyone can give their honest opinion, doused with both harsh assertations of faults and glorious tales of surprises unforseen.

Blade and brawn, brethren.

/salute

[econ21]

Hi Colovion, I did not even bother to play the expansion pack demo - I have little interest in standalone battles. But the actual campaign was pretty good; I think the campaign is the best of all the TW expansion campaigns we've had. The hordes spiced up the action and some factions had tricky strategic situations. The WRE in particular are a fun challenge. For a taste of it, have a look at the PBM we did as them:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=60372

I think the expansion also reworked some of the combat - raising defence stats and lowering elite missiles, so that the battles play a little better than the vanilla game. There is a very nice mod - Goth's all factions mod - that reskins and reworks BI to make it even better.

EB looks excellent - you've probably got a good taste of its realism and gorgeous skins from the previews, but what impressed me was how much thought and innovation has gone into improving the gameplay. They are doing very clever things with scripting. The only fly in the ointment is that it currently CTDs too much to be fun on my machine; the next version should be more stable.

Alexander is a damp squib at the moment, IMO. The Macedonian strategic situation is interesting, but the battles are not fun - too fast and over too quickly - faults of the vanilla game but even more obvious when fragile AI Persians meet rock hard player Macedonians. It is being modded as we speak to correct these problems.

But the best thing out now on the RTW front in my opinion is Rome Total Realism. It has now been ported to 1.5 (as RTR Platinum) and has pretty much got RTW to be as good as you could have reasonably expected (ie up to MTW standards but with better graphics and faithfulness to history). It has slowed down the battles, made the rosters and starting positions historical, and like EB just oozes historical flavour and sumptuous looks. A taste is provided here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=65721

There are lots of other quality mods going on for RTW - have a look at the Blue Lotus and Crusades threads here at the Org, for example. In the Arena we were discussing legendary games and I concluded RTW is a bit like the RPG Neverwinternights - it is becoming a legendary game for the mods it has spawned.

[Ludens]

I cannot speak from personal experience, but from what I heard most people who liked R:TW also liked BI, while most who didn't weren't pleased with BI either. It offered, like any expansion pack, more of the same, though it must be said it did improve the game more than most expansion packs do. The A.I. is better (no more save-load bug and more coordination on strategic and battle maps) and the strategic game more challenging, and CA was kind enough to release two more patches that brought most of these improvements to vanilla R:TW as well.

EB is very impressive due to the amount of detail put in it and the challenge it provides. However, at the moment it is still incomplete and suffers from the flaws of the 1.2 version. The team is had at work at completing and testing the 1.5 port, though, and I hope this will sort out most of the problems.

There are lots of other quality mods going on for RTW - have a look at the Blue Lotus and Crusades threads here at the Org, for example. In the Arena we were discussing legendary games and I concluded RTW is a bit like the RPG Neverwinternights - it is becoming a legendary game for the mods it has spawned.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

We finally do have someone who is active and energetic in working on giving us new things on the battlemap Colovion. I'm hoping we will have the last things needed to post a huge new preview any day now, with another big announcement for something new in EB that we've been waiting a long time for. I am biased though, of course. I really don't have any desire to play BI or the other expansion, or MTW2 or any other game for that matter, but I'm pretty weird like that. Keeping folks excited and working hard is difficult though. That downward curve for every videogame is working its magic on RTW now too, and some folks just don't want to stay at it - but there are so many new things for me working with EB that I'm still addicted to pouring more content into it.

[gmjapan]

I never tried the mods. The only addition I have to the official patches is bug-fixer (thanks Player_1!) and that is primarily because I believe it opens up features that were always meant to be there.

I have BI but I never play it now. Not that its bad but there are few things I dont like and the performance is poor on my comp (compared to RTW which runs like a dream - makes no sense). My main complaints are the world is too established and the horde feature, which was fun at first, has worn really thin. Its not fair to BI to leave it on a negative note so I will say it has lots of excellent touches and there is plenty fun to be had.

I am thinking of getting Alexander now but I am still weighing up the pros & cons in my view. Such as the progressive style of the historic battles (pro) and the time limit / single minded nature of the campaign (con).

If I could unlock Persia and have a try at stopping Alexander on his rampage then I wouldnt need to think twice about it. That just sounds like great fun! To me, making all these factions and units and then not letting people play them, even as reward for completing the game, is just a waste of effort. It would add instant replayability and is already there!!

Instead I have more thinking to do.