Fog

[Didz]

Anyone else think the fog is a bit wrong in this version of the game?

I just played a Spain v Peublo battle in thick fog and couldn't help thinking that something had changed and it didn't look right. But it may just be my memory thats a bit off.

I can still remember the first battle I ever fought in fog. It was a Shogun TW multiplayer player battle and I can recall it being swirling clouds of white vapour which your troops moved through. It was awesome and I recall managing to move my troops successfully through it to outflank my opponents line and having to stop every now and then to listen for enemy troop movements to guage where the were.

The ETW fog was a bit disspointing by comparison it just seemed to be a layer of uniform white which doesn't actually affect vision but just takes all the colour out of everything. Also it doesn't behave like fog at all but lies in a uniform layer over the entire terrain following the contours of the hills etc. instead of settling the valleys like it should. And it looks like the troops uniforms have been turned pale for some reason.

Not very convincing, just wonder why they threw out the old system which was much better as far as I can recall.

[antisocialmunky]

Because STW had the best atmosphere ever period. Hopefully it can be modded...

I dunno, it looks good enough. But everytime I see fog, I think about the move "The Mist" and Lovecraft monsters breaking through and eating my troops.

Granted, that would be pretty epic to watch musket action vs Cthulu.

[Forward Observer]

What bothers me more is that this is the first total war game that no longer gives one an option to try to wait out bad weather. I know that the developers want to show off their fancy weather effects by having it snow in Morocco, but let's face it, this is the age of black gun powder, and armies of the period tended to avoid battle if there was any precipitation what so ever.

Rain, sleet, mist, and snow effectively turned musket carrying missile troops in to mêlée only spearmen and artillery into big useless bronze paperweights. They modeled this correctly in Shogun when arquebus bearing troops simply became useless in the rain, and if I remember correctly they made a big point of this facet of early warfare. Until breech loading weapons firing metallic cartridges became the norm toward the latter part of the 19th century, black powder army strategies were were pretty well ruled by the weather. Remember Napoleon was defeated by the Russian winter and not the Russians.

The same is true about naval warfare also. It was enough of a problem keeping black powder dry given the moisture ridden ocean environment that ships fought in, without adding pouring and blowing rain to the mix. That's why I find the opening CGI movie of two ships of the line duking it out in a rainstorm so bothersome. Ships of this period simply could not function well as gunpowder based combat platforms in rainstorms, and if they did at all, it was certainly not the norm.


--and yes, I agree that the fog effects in Shogun seemed better than in Empire, which is odd considering it pre-dates Empire by over 9 years.

Don't get me wrong, I still like game, and love the visuals for the most part----it's just that there are a lot of odd design choices made for this game that I think are not improvements from previous TW games.

In other words they seemed to have tried to fixed some things that were not broken in the first place.

Cheers

[Nelson]

The Shogun weather effects have never been equaled. You had to pay attention to both weather and season.
Fog obscured the enemy while rain hurt archers and teppo even more so. Winter was hard on stamina.

[al Roumi]

What bothers me more is that this is the first total war game that no longer gives one an option to try to wait out bad weather. I know that the developers want to show off their fancy weather effects by having it snow in Morocco, but let's face it, this is the age of black gun powder, and armies of the period tended to avoid battle if there was any precipitation what so ever.

True accurate weather effects, as with STW, would differentiate troop types further.

[Didz]

I can still remember praying it wouldn't rain everytime I was defending a bridge, and then praying for rain everytime I was attacking one.

[Vlad Tzepes]

I still miss Shogun. If I were SEGA, I would hire the Shogun designers once again.

I don't think weather has any effect on troops in ETW - or at least it doesn't look like.

[crpcarrot]

I may be wrong but i dont remember weather affects changing during abttle in MTW2 or empire which did happen in STW and MTW. if made a big difference when it suddenly started to rain and all u firearms became useless or vice versa.

[al Roumi]

I think i remember reading somewhere that rain increases mis-fires (which are apparently a randomly occuring incident, with a % chance of occuring on every shot fired) -hence the percussion caps tech. I've not personaly noticed any such effect, and only once played a campaign long enough to get the tech... but then during the RTI campaign, i never noticed barbary pirates raiding my coast-line either...

Is it fair to say that TW games have been following a trend towards greater player control of situations and fewer adverse situations to cope with? or is it only the weather playing the greatest part in that?

[Didz]

I think its true to say that over the years the trend has been to 'demote' the player, further and further down the command chain.

Shogun units more or less took care of themselves. You told them where to go, they went there, if they met opposition they fought it. 'Fire at Will' was pretty logical and units knew not to kill men on their own side. You could as the general overide that and order them to do it, but unless you intervened personally they did the sensible and honourable thing. So, commanding an army in STW was largely a case of choosing a formation, choosing a place to fight and then monitoring the battle to decide where and when to commit your reserves.

As each successive game has been released the player has had to take over personally more and more from the programme.

Until now we are more or less the equivalent of 'Company Commanders' than generals. In ETW, units will do nothing without being told to do it.

'Threatened by Cavalry?' who cares,
'Friendly Troops standing in front of my gun mussle' so what?

I suspect in the next TW release we will be required to click a button to order our men to reload, and eventually we will be reduced to tapping the 'left foot' and 'right foot' button alternately to get them to march.

Whether this is an honest belief that players are turned on by the desire to micro-manage every aspect of a game, or whether it just makes good economic sense to cut down on coding by getting to the customer to do all the work is difficult to say, but its definately a trend in the gaming industry.

A couple of years ago I bought a game called 'Uncommon Valor', which took this trend to extremes. In that game the player literally had to micro-manage the loading and unloading of every can of spam being transported to your troops. The really weird twist being that whilst you had to micro-manage every aspect of the logistic's, you were not allowed to decide what targets your aircraft attacked. So, that game not only demoted the player to the rank of 'Quartermaster' it actually wouldn't allow you to be the General.

Needless, to say that game is gathering dust on my bookshelf as we speak. I think I played it for a about 3 days tops, big waste of money and a big shame as it was supposed to be a simulation of the war in the pacific in WW2, but 10 hours of managing supply convoys was enough for me. I know supplies are an important aspect of war, but I want to be the General, not the Quartermaster.

[Vlad The Impaler]

I will never forget the feeling when playing as Oda attacking Echizen I marched trough fog in order to attack rebel monks. suddenly, their a monks army appeared on the peak of the mountains in front of me, on each side of the passage. it was a bloody battle and I won after a desperate attack of daymio and heavy cavalry after a lucky flanking maneuver trough mist. Echizen surrendered the next day for the glory of Nobunaga! GAH!

Empire simply don't have the same feeling, there is nothing wrong with the mist, but the game is lacking. it seems that it has no story, no depth and the inaccuracies are simply too many. I will wait for appropriate mods.