What state is the game at?

[lancelot]

Hello all,

Ive been away from the game for a while now and Ive looked over this forum and seen a lot of talk on the state of the game.

I dont have Kingdoms at the moment- I refused to buy when news of all the securom stuff broke on top of CA's shall we say 'relaxed' patching policy.

So, regarding vanilla MTW2, what state are we at now?

Is the game patched to a sufficient state- last time I played pikemen would drop their pikes after a cavalry charge!?! (this being my 'time to move on moment' when CA cant even get spearmen right! but I digress)

Oh and by the way, do the latest 'Kingdoms' patches have vanilla content?



....And I suppose for the sake of asking- what state is Kingdoms in too? Still securrom-ed I take it? Playability- any game breaker bugs?

Cheers.


PS: I asked in the modding forum about any mods out there that put Kingdoms units in vanilla and no response yet. Have to say Im quite surprised no-one has donr this yet...

[Zenicetus]

Here's my take on it. I'm in a similar situation -- didn't buy Kingdoms because of the SecureRom debacle, and waited to see if the Kingdoms patch would do anything about that so I could buy it. Also was curious whether they'd bother patching the vanilla game in any way.

As far as the vanilla game goes, there hasn't been any official upgrade so it's the same game we've been playing. There is a mod that installs the new Kingdom units, and the overall unit balancing that was done for Kingdoms in the vanilla game, but you need to have Kingdoms installed, for it to work. I haven't tracked the mod forum enough to know if there's any other independent mod that improves the vanilla game in a major way.

So, basically, if you were able to enjoy the game pre-Kingdoms, taking into account all the small glitches and holes here and there, then you can still enjoy it now. If you were frustrated enough to quit, then you won't like current vanilla M2TW any better.

I've been away from the game, mostly playing GalCiv2 for my strategy fix. This week I came back and started up a new M2TW campaign just as a break from that, playing the Danes since I never tried that faction. I'm enjoying my current campaign, partly because it's fun after the long hiatus, but also because I never got as frustrated as others did with certain things.... like whether a particular unit behaved 100% "accurately" or was perfectly balanced vs. other units. Pikes are still sorta bugged, but I just avoid playing factions that use them heavily. I do still get annoyed at how easily the AI can be manipulated, and how poorly it puts together army stacks. But I use enough house rules, like limited re-loads and no cheese tactics, so the game is still challenging and fun. For a while anyway.

There just isn't much else out there, that combines some degree of strategy with soldiers bashing and stabbing each other in close combat (unfortunately, that's also a reason I'm not too thrilled with the idea of the upcoming Empire game). So I'm keeping it on the hard drive for a while, as a break from space-age strategy until the Next Great Thing comes along... whatever that is.

As for Kingdoms and the SecureRom thing... I keep asking about that here, and there's still no official answer (AFAIK) about whether that's been addressed in the new Kingdoms patch that was just released. So unless we hear something, I'm still avoiding Kingdoms.

[Zim]

If it was Vanilla MTW2 1.2 that you were disatisfied with, nothing has changed. If not, diplomacy has been improved (you can actually keep an ally, even on very hard), the shield bug fix has helped most units but all but ruined many two handers (which were balanced according to unit performance before the shield bug was fixed), and spears actually work against cavalry now (if they are fixed in place when the cav charge). Pikes still don't work properly.

As far as I know, the new patch does not change the Securom situation. Since Securom is used with a lot of accounting software, and my father is an accountant, I haven't given it much thought, but I understand a lot of people don't like it. It's unfortunate, because Kingdoms is much better in many ways than vanilla, even before the patch fixed so many of the broken features.

[lancelot]

Thanks for the replies guys.

So, in effect- a game that was released in late 2006 still has fundemental flaws in it such as pikes not working properly!????!...and for all intents and purposes is still pretty bug-ridden...

Just to confirm- I am correct in saying that 1.2 is in fact the latest patch for vanilla MTW2?

Is vanilla MTW2 not likely to recieve any more patches, ie- only Kingdoms is 'supported' now?


Seriously CA...wow. Is CA in reality one lonely guy in an office somewhere? If it were I could perhaps understand such shoddy and slow game production. What possible justification is there for such lacklustre product support? Are you guys really that busy?

[Zim]

Well, there is a 1.3 patch for vanilla MTW2, but it does nothing but make the game compatible for MP with Kingdoms users. :juggle2:


Just to confirm- I am correct in saying that 1.2 is in fact the latest patch for vanilla MTW2?

[FactionHeir]

The newest patch is for kingdoms only, yes. :no:

[Old Geezer]

The pike bug is fixable by modding as most, if not all, mods remove the pikes secondary weapon which arguably makes pikes too powerful. But my worst peeve is having to move units out and back into a settlement to get the retraining to take and if you forget to do so you waste more money and then the fact that some guilds don't give the initial bonuses they are supposed to give.