Note on whinging

[Tamur]

hi all,

I left the Org at the end of 2004 primarily due to the endless avalance of whinging (whining, for those who spell it that way) at the time. It appears that has not changed.


Here's a few gems, from the top ten threads as I am writing this...

"I didn't see Rome's demo, but I'm guessing it wasn't very good."

(after describing a single battle) "I gave up playing after that."

"[he] is just a bit cranky after CA messed up R:TW, just accept that."

"...when the AI is discovered to be incompetant, I am sure there will be those who agree that resources should be channelled into important areas first."

"I get as much fun out of playing whack-a-mole as I do playing RTW/BI"

"The lousy AI of R:TW has put me off enough not to buy M2:TW on the day of its release."


This is brilliant! What a litany of discontent and despair! Hmm, I wonder why CA rarely post here anymore? Perhaps because well over half the threads disintegrate into picking apart every bit of news to see what's wrong with it?

The problem is, making literally hundreds of posts marking out your personal vendetta against CA is not helping anyone. You may think it makes you feel better, but it just makes you more frustrated, and you want to post more and more bitter diatribes and one-off backstabs until you've got a 4000 post count and out of those there are 500 that say, "I stopped playing after that" and "CA is never getting my money".

Why are you here? Do you think CA are listening anymore?

[econ21]

Well, I fear this thread will lead to a further outburst of whingeing but to try to avoid that, posters should make sure they have read the sticky on CA bashing. No derogatory terms should be applied to CA or their work that would not be acceptable in the workplace or in formal education.

[Byzantine Emperor]

I agree with you about whinging Tamur. People who 'nitpick' really get on my nerves sometimes if it is not constructive.

[TB666]

Excellent post Tamur and I agree 100% :2thumbsup: .
The atmosphere at the .org is right now is very negative and depressing.

[Faenaris]

I agree with Tamur. People shouldn't write off CA that quickly. The game isn't released yet, for the love of Feth! There is nothing wrong with hoping things get changed, people, but bashing CA and already saying that M2TW will suck is a "no-no".

[IrishArmenian]

Optimisem is the nam of the game...Have fathe.

[Ibn Munqidh]

Spot on Tamur!:2thumbsup: Heck even the demo hasnt been released, and most people are already whining. I would say that CA is doing a great job, and the CA team are unique in presenting the gaming community a series of unparalleled games in realism and diversified gameplay. No one else other than CA, is making similar games to the TW series, succesful ones that is. Imperial Glory, Lords of the Realm, these all SUCK. The best game ever was MTW, and I firmly believe that CA has pulled it off again with MTW2.

[Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)]

It is very hard to make a new game and a new engine.Rome total war was the first game that used that type of engine.Now the creative assembly has more
experience.I think medieval 2 total war is better than rome total war like medieval total war 1 was better than shogun total war.I know that rome's AI was like a piece of shit.But what you say doesn't matter.There will be enough gamers who will buy this game.So you can shut up.:furious3: :furious3: :furious3: :furious3: :furious3: :embarassed: :embarassed: :no: :no: :no:

[Puzz3D]

"I get as much fun out of playing whack-a-mole as I do playing RTW/BI"

I said that, and it is the way RTW multiplayer gameplay strikes me. The gameplay has been transformed into a test of reflexes and anticipation. Many people over at .com posted that anticipation was the key factor in RTW multiplayer gameplay rather than reacting to what your opponent does. There is even a delay built into response to movement orders which further inhibits reactive gameplay.

We tested the speed of the units, and found that the running speeds had been dramatically increased over what it was in the previous games. In addition to that, units would rout very quickly. I played in 3v3 multiplayer games where the successful tactic was for 2 players to swarm 1 of the enemy armies if it became even slightly separated from his allies. Even if the army wasn't separated, swarming 2 on 1 worked if the enemy allies didn't react immediately. There was no time to command units individually when you reacted to this situation. You had to send everything into a big furball of a melee. Gone was the type of gameplay where you won because you coordinated 16 units better than your opponent or where a 2 on 1 rush was repelled with a hammer and anvil tactic.

Most of my clan (10 active players) stopped playing RTW multiplayer right away because of the gameplay, and the 2 or 3 who continued gave up on if later. Maybe there is 1 guy from that group who still plays it once in a while. These are people who had been playing Total War online for years.

[Orda Khan]

Well Tamur,
After doing your own outburst do you feel any better? Since you chose to quote from two of my posts I feel entitled to reply.
I described one battle and went on to say 'I gave up playing after that.' What you fail to grasp is the fact that I have played the entire TW series since its release; that 'one battle' was the final straw after watching the game deteriorate progressively. When the AI becomes so inept that an army of 800 cannot beat one unit does that leave much anticipation of any real challenge for the rest of the campaign?
Just so you will know, as you left the boards in 2004, I made many positive posts regarding RTW and you must realise that there have been many suggestive posts aimed at CA. We have been told that the AI is being worked on for MTW II but that is all they will say. Why? What is wrong with expanding on this statement? Nobody expects trade secrets, just some reassurance that the battefield AI will operate cohesively would be very welcome. I am sure there are many who would rather hear this news than see a new unit per week. As for my other quote that you have used, I'll ask you a question.
What would you rather see, a repetitive clip of some spy or an AI that actually is a bit intelligent?

......Orda

[Puzz3D]

It is very hard to make a new game and a new engine. Rome total war was the first game that used that type of engine. Now the creative assembly has more
experience. I think medieval 2 total war is better than rome total war like medieval total war 1 was better than shogun total war.
What I'd like to know is if the new battle engine is going to be brought up to the level of the old STW/MTW battle engine and the multiplayer gameplay improved enough that my clan will start playing again. Just having it improved over RTW isn't enough. It depends on how much it's improved.

[Lord Adherbal]

I agree the whining can be unnecessarily excessive, but it is just a sign of how disappointing RTW was for the hardcore TW fans. It was just miles away from the TW gameplay we got used to. So what can you expect?

This is what happens if a developer chooses to aim for a different (younger) market over it's original fanbase, and changes the gameplay accordingly. What did they expect? Everyone saying "oh it's hardly the realistic and tactical game we expected from the series, but hey it's refreshing!"?

The only way CA can regain the faith of their old fans is by moving MTW2 back to the original gameplay. I have reasons to believe this is going to happen, so I'm quite optimistic. That and that alone will stop (most of the) "whinging"

[Tamur]

hi all,

I'm not saying that there are no problems with RTW, especially in the multiplayer component. There are loads of people who would agree that the major changes from MTW to RTW caused some big problems with gameplay, and have made many dedicated players go away. I miss seeing posts from Sjakihata, Maedhros, Sanctaphrax, RH, and many others.

What I am saying to everyone is, give CA a chance. They've been battered endlessly for nearly two years now re: RTW's problems. I would guess that some on CA's staff wish they had not made some of the design decisions they did. I would also guess that they are contractually obligated *not* to say, "Yes, the design team wishes they could have done something besides what the marketers wanted", as well as expanding on AI changes as you suggested Orda.

All of that is in the past though. It's gone. No one can do anything about it. What we have in front of us is another chance for CA to make things "right" again, in the way that many of us think is right.

I think they deserve a bit of optimism before release, no matter what has gone on in the past. After all, MTW was one hell of a game, and the same company made it.

Sound ok?

[SpencerH]

Look at the threads on religion, guilds, and recruitment. I think there has been lots of optimism. Most members are actually discussing the good and bad points of what we've heard so far. They're also suggesting alternatives to whats known then discussing those. That's not coming from a bunch of pessimists. Personally I think (and hope) that CA are monitoring those types of threads but if they're not they're making a mistake.

[sunsmountain]

I'm willing to give CA a second chance, and on that note be more positive. I'm still waiting for someone to test the RTW AI "faults" in Custom Battles (to get replays), though its probably too late now. I'm too busy to do that or even play MTW2.

But I would like the AI of MTW2 to rock, and would be disappointed if it stayed at Rome's level. I see their intentions, just not the implementation which needs many hours of programming little (one constant tweaked this way or that way, for example), which is hard to sell perhaps.

Hope for the best, and let's whine less.

[Tamur]

A bit off topic, while I'm reminded of it...


I'm still waiting for someone to test the RTW AI faults in Custom Battles

Yes, I checked into that. With all the mods out there, it appears that even packing up the replay, unit & terrain files in a zip will not guarantee a correct replay. Too much has been changed by modders for sure compatability.

I do wish there were an easy way to coordinate this, though, that would be an excellent resource.

[parcelt]

To be honest, I think this thread is a piece of whining itself. I mean, sure, there's been a lot of criticism on RTW on this board, but a lot of it was very justifiable. To the extent that it wasn't, other boardmembers have often been quick in pointing that out.

My point is, an open discussion where criticism can be aired freely (even if some go further than is really justified) does in the end lead to a thorough dissection of the game's flaws ánd possible solutions for those flaws. I have read and enjoyed countless threads on this forum (and if I may add, you won't find that so much on the .com) that have yielded exactly those results. I also believe that, therefore, CA is still on these forums as there can be no doubt that they're picking up on very valuable ideas/hints/flaws identified here.

So keep up the critical attitude, of course as long as it is within reason and, especially, with due respect to CA. After all, with all its flaws RTW (or VI, I change my mind on a daily basisa almost) is IMHO still the very best game ever made. :2thumbsup: Just hoping the next one will be even better!

[Puzz3D]

I think they deserve a bit of optimism before release, no matter what has gone on in the past. After all, MTW was one hell of a game, and the same company made it.

Sound ok?
What are you basing this optimism on other than it's just your general disposition? The pessimism is based on CA's recent performance developing RTW. What is the project director, Bob Smith, doing micromanaging kill rates? They hired a supposedly talented player to do that, but if Bob Smith says to change it, do you think the guy they hired can stand his ground? It could be that he just threw that statement out to give the impression that they are more concerned about gameplay now.

When Bob Smith says that they are catering to both vets and new players, it's reminiscent of the same PR spin they used when marketing RTW, and it certainly doesn't make me think he's in the STW/MTW gameplay camp especialy when he said the gameplay in RTW was awesome. I clearly remember MikeB's sarcastic remark to me when I said that the RTW Demo represented a new vision at CA for the Total War series. Well, I was right. There was clearly a shift of influence at CA with the development of RTW.




I'm still waiting for someone to test the RTW AI faults in Custom Battles
That's already been done. At this point, the RTW AI doesn't matter. After M2TW is released, there will be a window of opportunity where CA looks at the forums to make a list of M2TW issues to be worked on for the patch.

[Myrddraal]

But Puzz, what are you achieving? What, by your endless pessimism do you achieve? You certainly don't give CA and objective criticism... You don't encourage interaction between CA devs and the fans. You're basically sticking your middle finger up at CA, and if CA get it into their heads that you represent the average veteran player, and please God may they never think that, they may just give us all the middle finger and produce the game without our interaction at all.

I have a large quantity of respect for those who can judge themselves, because it is very hard to look at oneself dispassionately, but I ask you to re-read your posts in the recruitment pool thread and elsewhere and ask yourself if you attitude is justified or constructive.

I dislike the "Elephants with cannons, WOW" syndrome as much as the next man, and I was disappointed with the AI in Rome. Having said that I've seen much more promising things from M2TW.

Remember, when Rome was coming out, the graphical engine was revolutionary, and I'm sure it was the focus of the CA team at the time. Now, just as MTW was an evolution of STW, M2TW is an evolution of RTW. They have the graphical engine, from viewing CA's recent work with an open mind, it seems they are now focused more on the gameplay and AI than they were in the development of RTW.

[x-dANGEr]

Oh.. Whinging also works.. Good to know.. (I'm sure - not - you've got my point now)

[Tamur]

What are you basing this optimism on other than it's just your general disposition?

Scholarship, for the most part. It's well established by researchers that an optimistic approach to athletics is essential to good performance (University of Minnesota (http://www.d.umn.edu/cehsp/documents/NewquistProp.doc), University of Vermont (http://www.uvm.edu/~dhowell/StatPages/Swimming/Swimming.html), UCSD (http://psychservices.ucsd.edu/wellness_center_web/wellness_stress.html)). It is also very well established in the medical community that patient optimism consistently speeds recovery and reduces reinjury rates following release from care.

And yes, I am optimistic by nature. So I don't have much problem transferring this to the programming scene. I lived through the .com disaster and have seen what depression and despair do to performance in computer-related areas.

Believe me, Bob is not on my list of favourite persons. But I have to hope that the organisation can override him in some way.

[L'Impresario]

The game is probably finished or at least near completion by now. I can be relatively sure the CA team was really optimistic during its creation and is also optimistic on how the customers and reviewers will welcome it.
From the potential/previous customer's side one can be optimistic as well; the equivalent of crossing one's fingers. This won't change reality unless we 're moving towards more supernatural systems of perceiving our environment and the actions performed therein.
Ofcourse I don't mean to say that bad carma/negative energy waves/ bad eye etc don't exist; who knows for sure?

Hmm, what was the subject again?
Ah, "they who drove away CA" from the green .org pastures. "they" have condemned the community to an eternity of no-interaction with the developers. This is already seen and verified. It's clear, some people among us are to blame for the alienation.

What should the penalty be...
Hmm, I don't know what Tamur would do, but Timur would have their eyelids cut off and their eyes googed out - for starters. "Without respect for sex, degree, or age,/ He razeth all his foes with fire and sword". I think we should be a bit more lenient though:sweatdrop:

[Puzz3D]

I dislike the "Elephants with cannons, WOW" syndrome as much as the next man, and I was disappointed with the AI in Rome. Having said that I've seen much more promising things from M2TW.
So, I'm supposed to be optimistic that M2TW is going to return my clan to multiplayer because they incorporated eras? I haven't heard anything about slowing down the game or penalizing overlapping units. A dev posted at .com that they had looked at running speed and didn't think there wasn't anything wrong with it. Well, I think there is something wrong with it. No explanation was ever given for why the running speeds were increased by 50% in RTW. Do you think this is some minor thing that a whole clan that had played for years stopped playing?


Remember, when Rome was coming out, the graphical engine was revolutionary, and I'm sure it was the focus of the CA team at the time. Now, just as MTW was an evolution of STW, M2TW is an evolution of RTW. They have the graphical engine, from viewing CA's recent work with an open mind, it seems they are now focused more on the gameplay and AI than they were in the development of RTW.
Does finishing moves sound like thay are more focused on the gameplay? I saw a whole unit of mounted knights get blown away by a cannon in the video. I saw fire arrows being used in rain.

The AI doesn't know how to use a shield, doesn't know what is causing ranged casualies, attacks with inferior forces and doesn't protect its flanks. There seems to be some problem with the general as well, but I'm supposed to be optimistic that this stuff will be fixed, and if isn't, its not important anyway.

[Husar]

Hmm, sounds like the second "fanboard" that managed to drive the devs out with too much criticism.:no:
And I'm talking only about boards I visit often.

[Tamur]

I'm supposed to be optimistic that this stuff will be fixed, and if isn't, its not important anyway.

No no, that isn't what anyone is saying, I don't think. It is important, and worth discussing the details, no doubt.

parcelt said earlier that it sounded like I am advocating saying only nice things. This is not at all true. Instead, what I am trying to get across is that expressing a complete sense of hopelessness that CA will make a better game than RTW is simply not constructive.

Optimism will not solve problems except to make the boards a place where people including devs feel like they can come without being attacked.

If they come and engage in discussion, then the boards become the ideal vehicle for player feedback. They come when they can, we analyse the heck out of the game, and everyone benefits from it.

On the other hand, if they come and read post after post about how CA "probably won't fix" issue X, or "screw up every time" on issue Y, what does that provide to them? Nothing at all. Why would a dev come back to boards like that?

I very much appreciate the measured responses, all, it's a tough balance to strike being critical and constructive at the same time.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Personally, I think if CA listened to Puzz, we'd get a better game. :juggle2:

I'm having problems feeling bad for CA right now because they expect us to pay for this game. If they want my money, they have to listen to me (on some level). I think there would be justified criticism of CA if they took morale, fatigue, ammo, and all money management out of the game completely. But why? Shouldn't we be optimistic?

It's spelled "Whining" not "Whinging"! The verb is to "whine" not to "whing." ~;)

[Puzz3D]

Hmm, sounds like the second "fanboard" that managed to drive the devs out with too much criticism.
When 70% of my clan drops the game like a hot potato, I have a hard time believing that the gameplay issues aren't serious. I guess people at that other fanboard thought so as well. I remember the load/save issue wouldn't have gotten changed without criticism because CA took the positition that the game was supposed to work like that. In fact, they banned disscussion of the issue at the official site. Then some devs who seemed to actually care about gameplay fixed it in the v1.3 patch, and when they inadvertently broke pila and naval invasions they made another patch to fix that. They fixed other things as well such as the Parthian shot but couldn't get to all the stuff possibly because it was too time consuming to do in a patch. The hope is that these devs have been able to address the remaining issues, but they have to work on what the managers tell them to work on.

[econ21]

It's spelled "Whining" not "Whinging"! The verb is to "whine" not to "whing." ~;)

No, there are two verbs - to whine (Oxford dictionary: "an instance of feeble or undignified complaining) and to whinge (Oxford: "to whine or grumble peevishly"). The latter is a colloquialism - maybe it does not travel well across the pond?

In this context, the two verbs could be used interchangeably, but I think "grumble peevishly" might be closest to what Tamur was meaning.

[Myrddraal]

but I'm supposed to be opti

mistic that this stuff will be fixed, and if isn't, its not important anyway.

In your last post, you seem to think that I'm saying 'don't complain' which is akin to "you'll eat everything that you put on your plate, including the mushy peas!"

You must realise this isn't what I'm saying... Really Puzz, I don't know why you have to be so aggressive. You sound seriously stressed m8. This is a fansite for a game, let's get things into perspective. :bow:

I'm not saying accept bad features, I'm not saying shut up when you think it is. What I am saying, is there are better ways of responding to a feature you don't like than by saying "well I think this feature is bad, I haven't got much hope for it getting better though, seeing as CA don't care for realism/are pandering to simpler minded people than myself/are in a world of their own" etc etc.

I've seen the new radar map including the new world. I think it could be done better. I've discussed various ways I think it could be better. Other members have engaged me with their own suggestions and hopefully a CA dev may notice it. Even if I achieve nothing of it, at least I've had a civil and enjoyable conversation with fellow fans of the totalwar series, which (speaking as an observer) is not the case when reading your posts.



On to a different subject completely - your bitterness over Rome. I know you're very dissapointed in Rome, but there are times when you have to look to the future. Let me quote your post before last:


The AI doesn't know how to use a shield, doesn't know what is causing ranged casualies, attacks with inferior forces and doesn't protect its flanks. There seems to be some problem with the general as well
This is about RTW right? Unless you've played M2TW already.

Your bitterness about RTW permeates everything you post in this forum. You haven't seen the AI of M2TW, but you aren't even willing to give it a chance. If you can't see a problem with that, then I'm wasting my breath (figuratively speaking)


In the meantime, I've got no problem with you. Nothing personal, but it's much easier to read other people's complaints than it is yours, because of the manner of expressing those complaints.

Keep taking the pills :bow:

[econ21]

On the substance of Tamur's post, I have some sympathy with it. I find it interesting to learn about specific deficiencies of the RTW engine, but the complaints do seem to get repetitious.

I think the serenity prayer may be apt here:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change those that I can
And the wisdom to know the difference"

For what it's worth, I think lots of things in M2TW will be similar to RTW, including many of the deficiencies people whinge about (whinge sounds a softer word than whine). We can't change that. The game's pretty much done. Moaning about it endlessly seems a little pointless and lacking in grace - not to say premature - but each to his own.

It's nothing to do with my courage, but I take great consolation in knowing what the modders can change. Mod teams such as RTR, EB and others have shown with RTW, they can change many of the things I (and others) grumbled about - the fantasy units, the fast kill rates, the fast movement speeds, the lack of AI challenge, the garish BI colours, even the lack of personality (see some of the amazing scripting done with traits) etc.

Whether you think the changes outweigh the remaining deficiencies is a matter of taste. Personally, I am still having a lot of fun with RTW after two years now and expect to get similar value for money out of M2TW.

[NeoSpartan]

Hmm, sounds like the second "fanboard" that managed to drive the devs out with too much criticism.:no:

Fellas there is nothing wrong with Critisim, and there is nothing wrong with poing out the mistakes someone makes. THE PROBLEM IS IN THE WAY A LOT OF PEOPLE DO THE CRITISISING

You gotta understand something, its not What you say but How you say it
If you start yelling, getting offencive, using vulgar language, being disrespectful, showing disgust, etc. NO MATTER HOW RIGHT YOU MIGHT BE. Nobody is going to listen or take u seriusly. WHY? Because using this language and tone of voice makes the person you are trying to help/persuade into getting ANGRY. As a result they wont pay attention to what you say.

A lot people, like Puzz3D, have vary valid reasons in their arguments and CA should pay attention to what they say. But the TONE and LANGUAGE they use is NOT going to make any human being read and say "You know what? He is right". All it does is get the other person Angry/Offended and you will get labled "Just another Basher".~:argue:

Remember, humans are Emotional Creatures. You gotta know how to talk to people. :book:

CA doesn't post as much because they most what they got were Offecive Replyes. :tomato2:

[Tahanaman]

Dialog between CA and its players here is like oil and water trying to mix. Myddraal. Clan Takiyama is one of the orginal clans from the Shogun days. I joined since MTW and since then we have seen a steady decline in game play from CA. Many old vets have thus gone the way of the dodo bird since RTW release online because of game play. Sadly to add insult to injury CA would flat out deny gameplay issues at fault that the online community would point out. Reluctantly, some issues in question were addressed but with spin from CA. Ohwell, Yuuki's and Ordas points are valid....a decline has occured in game play......:help:

[NeoSpartan]

Dialog between CA and its players here is like oil and water trying to mix. Myddraal. Clan Takiyama is one of the orginal clans from the Shogun days. I joined since MTW and since then we have seen a steady decline in game play from CA. Many old vets have thus gone the way of the dodo bird since RTW release online because of game play. Sadly to add insult to injury CA would flat out deny gameplay issues at fault that the online community would point out. Reluctantly, some issues in question were addressed but with spin from CA. Ohwell, Yuuki's and Ordas points are valid....a decline has occured in game play......:help:

So true and so sad.

All I hope is that they make it better this time. And if they don't, then I hope simple Economics will help them understand. And if that fails, then CA won't be around for long.

[Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)]

NeoSpartan is right.

[Hepcat]

It is an awful shame, I am still only new here but I have also notice some of the anti-CA sentiments. We should try and do something about it to get CA members back. There will be no better source for answers about the games.

[Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)]

If CA makes the game like rome or even better I think that the game will be from start the best strategy game ever.So all who have something against rome or medieval should shut up.We don't want to hear what you say.If you want to say something against any of total war war games make your own site.

[screwtype]

if they come and read post after post about how CA "probably won't fix" issue X, or "screw up every time" on issue Y, what does that provide to them?

Um, how about feedback, on how people are actually feeling about CA's performance?

[R'as al Ghul]

[..] and if CA get it into their heads that you represent the average veteran player, and please God may they never think that, they may just give us all the middle finger and produce the game without our interaction at all.


~:confused: Please point out the latest interaction to me.
I seriously don't remember any reaction whatsoever to Yuuki's well thought out criticism on R:TW.
His points are shared by many, he knows that and acts accordingly. I admit that sometimes he does sound a bit angry or even bitchy but you probably don't know what has been going on behind the curtains between those two parties.
His points are all valid and not being addressed at all. CfAdherbal makes equal points (perhaps a bit more friendly) and he also doesn't get any response. Same with Duke John and others.
In my opinion CA is not posting enough to clear controversial matters and serious concerns. PM's are being ignored (my experience) and when they post they insult us (see post by Shogun in MTW Gold petition thread) or inform us that they are not on the team but that the game is looking awesome.
We could all be a happy community if there was more and better communication. Mistakes are being made on both sides and communication on a bulletin board is difficult. My advise to CA would be to order one of their team to thoroughly check the threads for the main concerns and answer them. We even could give them a list (as in the past). Of course that only makes sense if they care. My impression is that they have moved away from their fan base. If this is because of one person (Puzz3d) I wouldn't know what to say........

:bow:

[econ21]

~:confused: Please point out the latest interaction to me.

AFAIK, the last interaction was an informative post:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1213254&postcount=28

But they are not going to argue with critics and I can't blame them. It's a fools' game (don't wrestle a chimney sweep) and most creative workers generally avoid it. If you want to find an exception that proves the rule, you might consider the example of Derek Smart and his Battlecruiser 3000AD game, shudder.

[caravel]

Personally, I think if CA listened to Puzz, we'd get a better game. :juggle2:

I'm thinking along the same lines. Puzz3D is not a whinger (nor a whiner for that matter). Any negative criticism he has for CA or TW games is based on the facts (and the sad truth), not some warped personal RTW hating agenda. There are members of both the .com and the .org that have this sort of vendetta attitude, but there are few of them.

Basically a few people, including myself, were dissillusioned after the release of RTW, and with regard to M2TW, I think they need to see the 'goods' before they can change this mindset. I for one am pessimistic about M2TW, and this is based on the spin I've seen so far.

RTW marked a change in direction for TW games, it appears that M2TW continues in this direction. Some people don't like the way RTW and M2TW turned out, I suppose they have to live with it. CA will take the direction that they want to, that which generates the most profit. Veteran players from a bygone age are not the whole consumerbase, only a small part of it.

[CBR]

Im a pessimist too. I have a long list of issues with RTW engine and unfortunately it seems most of them will still be there in M2TW.

Im here here because of two good years of MTW MP and I reserve my right to stay here as long as I want.

Also I dont think CA has been pushed away from Org. They are still posting here and Im quite sure we will see more of them when the game has come out. It was the same thing with RTW IIRC.

We also have to remember that the old garde apparently isnt involved much in M2TW and the new ones have more forums to check out compared to old days.


CBR

[Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)]

I think rome total war was better in many ways than shogun and mtw .MTW's graphics were shit so rome's graphics are better.But there is a price to pay for good graphics.Rome's price was the AI.Now with m2tw the AI will be improved.
The EXPERIENCE is very important.

[Riadach]

reminds me of an irish proverb

más maith leat moladh, faigh bás, más maith leat cáineadh pós, nó cruthaigh cluiche ríomhaireachta atá bunaithe ar thosca staire ach bí beagán mí-chruinn ó thaobh firící is cathanna srl de ar mhaithe le so-imearthacht an chluiche sin, agus bí cinnte naimhdeas náisúnaíoch a ath-adhaint ag an am céanna, ar mhaithe leis an gcraic tá fhios a'at.

if you like praise die, if you like criticism marry, or create a computer game based on historical circumstances but be a little bit inaccurate about facts and battles etc for the sake of playability of that game, and be sure to reinflame nationalistic enmnity at the same time, just for the craic you know.

Ah the boundless wisdom and foresight of the Gael :-)

[L'Impresario]

There was certainly much more criticism around when the RTW demo was approaching and after its release. Before that negative comments were less gameplay-oriented.
Nowdays opinions and facts about how the engine works and what can be expected have been enhanced by 2 years of experience and intensive, periodic dialogues about the patches. Certainly the points put forward now are much more substantiated than early RTW days.

And if you think Yuuki is being constantly pedantic, bitter etc. nowdays, you should have seen his cynicism after the demo came out heh
From my point of view though it turned out that he was right on most issues mentioned back then and since the earliest mods we 've seen some recurring themes regarding what needs to be "corrected".
At least if the game turns out to be a RTW rehash, some people who didn't like RTW won't be disillusioned, since expectations seem to be lower than with RTW. I also believe it 'll also lead to healthier approaches once the game is out.

Now, if some CA developper were to answer to all this, the precedent is set (things were uglier during those days, so it may be a bit misleading pointing to that thread but it's true that the Guild's arches have heard the story before) (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=37980).

EDIT: In a link in the link there's also nice proof that CA people have a human side or something akin to this heh

[sunsmountain]

That's already been done. At this point, the RTW AI doesn't matter. After M2TW is released, there will be a window of opportunity where CA looks at the forums to make a list of M2TW issues to be worked on for the patch.

No, that window of oppurtunity is NOW, during development time, since MTW2 is an evolutionary upgrade. Ie, the basis of the AI will not change, and tweaking small numbers can have big effects.

I honestly believe that the current Rome TW AI can be a near-perfect AI, if enough polishing is done. Knowing they add the new features first (princesses, pope, traders, diplomacy options, assassin movies etc.), they will continue programing the AI second. They are starting with that now! Why wait with your (consistent, reproducable) feedback for the patch, when you can get it right the first time??

The reason Puzz3D will never believe the Rome TW AI's potential, is not because he doesn't base himself on facts (he does), but because he views CA as incapable of changing their mind, which they are not. Plus I don't think most people take the time to understand why CA have made the decisions the way they did.

[AussieGiant]

NeoSpartan raises a very valid point and got me thinking.

Gentlemen, for me,

the bottom line at this point in time is this “product” is now maturing, and quite rapidly in my opinion.

This release is going to have consequences as to where CA ends up going in the mid term future.

Like all maturing industries or products, it becomes much harder to maintain the sales, profit margins and success at this point of the cycle.

For me focusing on Graphics (while very important) rather than game play at this stage of the product life cycle, is like Ford releasing a Mustang with a new spoiler kit and electric windows. With some marketing excellence, the “Brand” knowledge and influence that CA enjoys in this market segment, MTWII will be more than likely be successful if that is all they have done.

But, the writing is on the wall since the last model was released (RTW).

If companies at this stage of product management allocate too many resources to the spoilers and electric windows and not enough to the real performance areas of the product, the consumer will make you pay.

Right now, what CA needs to do is not change the shape of the Mustang which looks great already (graphics), but deal with the engine and suspension (game play).

The game looks great, that is something most people will agree on, but if you don’t revise and improve the performance characteristics of a car through 2 or 3 models then you are going to decline, because that is where the real sustainability of a “mature product” lies.

Now maybe CA’s believes their niche gives them the ability to ignore this for a little while longer, and maybe they are correct. But this is a delicate time in the overall scheme of things and generally the dudes and dudetts that run companies in their early stages of development do not do well when those same companies move to the following stages. Some adapt and realise, and some don’t. Those who don’t realise that the dynamics are different generally fall by the wayside.

I think Screwtype is a valid and important voice, even though the tone may not be always pleasant.

Equally if you can’t get past the tone of voice to understand and comprehend what the message behind it is, then you’re in some trouble. For me when someone stays on a board as long as many do here then it shows that they care. And when people care, then their likely to get upset and emotions will make them sound unhappy. The bottom line is whether the point is valid or not. And when it is, and there seems to be no definitive response from the manufacturer, then I would not expect a different result form most people.

So, we’ll all see very soon how things have gone in the dark rooms of CA.

In the end we can cut of the XXXX beer supplies in Queensland if things have not gone too well :laugh4:

[SpencerH]

Something that hasnt been mentioned is that SEGA now owns CA. I think it has had, and will have, a big positive effect on the final product.

I believe SEGA purchased CA to enter the strategy market not the RTS market. Given that assumption it makes sense to make a more "in depth" product.

[AussieGiant]

Certainly SEGA bought CA at a traditional time of a company's development.

They will hopefully be providing the cash and "environment" that CA needs in this next stage of work.

An important step CA has made is to essentially have two teams. One in the UK and one in Australia. While one is "active" the other is already on the next project.

The best thing about SEGA buying CA is that SEGA would have done a Business Analysis on them and come to the conclusion that the future is bright.

What that means it that the next 3 to 4 completely new games will be excellent...or they will lose a lot of money.

[Myrddraal]

SEGA didn't buy CA did they?

I thought they were the new publishers... like activision were before. No?

[TB666]

SEGA didn't buy CA did they?

I thought they were the new publishers... like activision were before. No?
Well according to wiki, SEGA acquired them for 30 million dollars.
What ever that means.

[Puzz3D]

No, that window of oppurtunity is NOW, during development time, since MTW2 is an evolutionary upgrade. Ie, the basis of the AI will not change, and tweaking small numbers can have big effects.
Have you seen any dev come here and ask for a list of things to be fixed the way they do for a patch? They've never done that in 6 years when a new product is being developed. Besides, the suggestions based on experience with RTW/BI have already been made.


I honestly believe that the current Rome TW AI can be a near-perfect AI, if enough polishing is done. Knowing they add the new features first (princesses, pope, traders, diplomacy options, assassin movies etc.), they will continue programing the AI second. They are starting with that now! Why wait with your (consistent, reproducable) feedback for the patch, when you can get it right the first time??
I still don't see how the public can give any feedback on M2TW AI since they haven't seen the game yet. The kind of info you would need to do that isn't being released by CA.

Features are a problem for the AI programmer if they are changed too close to the end of the schedule. New features were being incorporated into RTW late in the development. If they do this in M2TW, the AI programmer is really going to have to scramble just to get something done in time that works. Near-perfect AI would be a huge undertaking and not finacially viable. The programmers are under time pressure. CA have stated that they aren't sitting around smoking cigarettes. We see features in RTW which the AI doesn't seem to have any awareness. It would appear that the AI programmer didn't have time to incorporate the feature into the AI.



The reason Puzz3D will never believe the Rome TW AI's potential, is not because he doesn't base himself on facts (he does), but because he views CA as incapable of changing their mind, which they are not. Plus I don't think most people take the time to understand why CA have made the decisions the way they did.
The gameplay in RTW isn't an accident. RTW was a big commercial success. What basis do you have for thinking that they are changing the formula now? Just read Bob Smith's interview, and you will see that they aren't.

CA never said why they made the running speeds 50% faster. All they've said is there's nothing wrong with the speeds. I certainly have spent a lot of time trying to understand why they did this. Increasing the speed and increasing the number of units to be controlled runs counter to actually being able to control those units.

[Lord Adherbal]

although I somehow prefer SEGA over Activision, I doubt it is the publishers who decide about the actual gameplay.

[Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)]

,,Bob Smith: The overall aim with Medieval 2 is to improve upon and bring the awesome gameplay of Rome to the medieval era, while raising the spectacle of the Total War series to a whole new level.

The period is of course renowned for huge castles, lots of armour, colorful flags and heraldry. We set out to build new systems that can do justice to all of this. In terms of gameplay we looked to address all areas of the game and raise the bar across the board - from the turn-based campaign game to the real-time battles.

We have created high standards for ourselves and that is challenging but we're always striving to perfect the Total War formula. With Medieval 2 we're making another huge stride. "
This shows that the gameplay will be improved.It will be stil from rtw but it souns better when he says that will be improved.

[AussieGiant]

"The period is of course renowned for huge castles, lots of armour, colorful flags and heraldry. We set out to build new systems that can do justice to all of this. In terms of gameplay we looked to address all areas of the game and raise the bar across the board - from the turn-based campaign game to the real-time battles."

CA obviously understand that they need to continually pay attention to game play and not just graphics.

I think the most difficult thing about game play that nearly everyone agrees with is the moment speeds and kill rates.

Until this day I have never seen any CA person address why both were increased...AND THAT IS ANNOYING, given the impact to game play it has had.

Any kind of engagement on this would be very appreciated I believe.

@Myrddraal

maybe "bought" is a little inaccurate, but there was a financial transaction to acquire "publishing rights".

[Orda Khan]

Your bitterness about RTW permeates everything you post in this forum. You haven't seen the AI of M2TW, but you aren't even willing to give it a chance. If you can't see a problem with that, then I'm wasting my breath (figuratively speaking)


In the meantime, I've got no problem with you. Nothing personal, but it's much easier to read other people's complaints than it is yours, because of the manner of expressing those complaints.

Keep taking the pills :bow:
Maybe, as a moderator, you should consider the tone of your replies. Warnings are handed out for this type of thing, if you have received one then please ignore this post.
People suggest we should all give CA a chance (yet again) Well all I can say is this......
When one reads the last page of a book, all one knows is its ending. To comment on the book one needs to read its contents

......Orda

[SpencerH]

Adherbal']although I somehow prefer SEGA over Activision, I doubt it is the publishers who decide about the actual gameplay.

SEGA arent just the publisher's of the Total War series (as Activision was), CA is now owned by SEGA.

EDIT 1:

From the CA webpage


SEGA Buy The Creative Assembly

(March 9, 2005) The deal sees SEGA acquiring a company at the very pinnacle of games development - a unique group of talent, second to none, with an outstanding global reputation. The style and genre of The Creative Assembly’s games perfectly complements SEGA’s own long-term strategic vision, and SEGA will empower the team to continue on their existing development path whilst also expanding their resources for the future. SEGA will not only be releasing Spartan: Total Warrior this year, but will also be supporting The Creative Assembly to develop the Total War strategy series, as well as exploring ambitious new ventures.

EDIT 2:

Also if you weave your way through the SEGA SAMMY webpage you find CA listed under the Group Companies List. http://www.segasammy.co.jp/english/pr/corp/list_kaigai.html

[Myrddraal]

Orda... I'm lost for words.

If you take offense at my post, I appologise unreservedly. It certainly wasn't meant that way. If you want me to edit my post, I'll do that too, just point out the bits that need to go.


In your last post, you seem to think that I'm saying 'don't complain' which is akin to "you'll eat everything that you put on your plate, including the mushy peas!"

You must realise this isn't what I'm saying... Really Puzz, I don't know why you have to be so aggressive. You sound seriously stressed m8. This is a fansite for a game, let's get things into perspective. :bow:

I thought (clearly incorrectly) that I had managed to set a light enough tone to say what I felt needed to be said.

Just in case it's the 'keep taking the pills' that you're taking offense to, where I come from and whenever I've ever heard it used it has been a lighthearted way of ending a tough conversation. For example, I may be struggling with my work, and someone might say before leaving "See you later, and keep taking the pills"

If it's this that you're referring too:

In the meantime, I've got no problem with you. Nothing personal, but it's much easier to read other people's complaints than it is yours, because of the manner of expressing those complaints.

This was meant to take any sting out of my previous comment, which could be taken personally. As to the comment itself, I'm sure Puzz would be the last person to deny he is bitter about RTW, and when you feel that way, it is very hard to notice or stop it lingering in what you say. Sometimes it takes an outside observer to tell me when I'm being bitter, and I was trying to do this whilst at the same time keeping both of your respects.

I have clearly failed and if you can help improve my communication skills, then please do so.

Now for a bit of pettyness myself - I am very dissapointed that you responded in such a petty manner Orda. Not only have you directly attacked me, but you've commented (in a rather unsubtle attempt at subtlety) on my knowledge of the Totalwar series from beginning to end. I would like an appology for that.

Then, for my sake if not for anyone else's, let's drop the tension level a bit.

~:cheers:

[R'as al Ghul]

But they are not going to argue with critics and I can't blame them.

I don't know what you mean by argue with critics.
Posting their opinions on matters would be more than I expect. I can't imagine Bob Smith in a Backroom thread with Yuuki. :laugh4:

The way I see it is that a huge part of the community had and has issues with the R:TW gameplay (no need to repeat them). Some of us post more actively than others and fight more for a better gameplay for all of us than the average poster. Puzz3d is such a person who speaks for many. And he repeatedly does so. Personally I admire his hardheadedness in this matter. There're few players among us who love the game as he does.
If CA doesn't react to this person who speaks for many they are making a huge mistake and they fail to interact with an important part of the community.

[L'Impresario]

Well since quotes from specific memberswere brought up from post #1, it would have been hard not to make the issue personal.

Maybe the thread could have been avoided altogether, as now one wouldn't be hard pressed to feel a certain polarization that leads the supposedly two "sides" towards either a debate that will end up offering nothing new, or entrenching them behind positions that could lead to "I told you so" instances when the game is out.
Ofcourse one could say that PMs could have not allowed the voicing of concers in an effective way, but still..

[Tahanaman]

I often wonder as I read through various threads in our beloved forums; what does it take for CA to listen to it's fan base and act upon their player fanbase suggestions?
I cant begin to second another person mind let alone the business ecthics of an entire company which in compasses many minds working in unison. However, CA's blatant absolve of not listening to its fan base is absolutely amazing.
Rather than argueing amongst ourselves about who said this and in what tone, we should all take alook at ourselves as to ask the question: Are we not glutten for punishment as we continue to purchase a product from a corporation that could careless about its fan base?
United we Stand, Divided we Fall. I say we stand united and argue are points to the corporation.
What I would really like to see is Bob Smith running flat out with a sword in chainmail armour against a rider on horseback in platemail and sword and tell me that his rendering speeds are credible in RTW! What a laugh....and worst yet, that laugh was his in the end when we all bought into RTW, complained about the speeds and CA did nothing to support us- the very fanbase who paid their salaries and those of their publisher when we bought the game!
Admittly, I yet again (as being an optimist) and wanting for punishment in spin marketing and corporate denial of poor game play issues will buy MIITW in hopes CA has made a full redemption or not.....:shame:

[Puzz3D]

Adherbal']although I somehow prefer SEGA over Activision, I doubt it is the publishers who decide about the actual gameplay.
Don't you remember the post by EatColdSteel, the MTW/VI strategic AI programmer, where he said that Activision had insisted that replacement generals be equal to the guy who died? All you got was a name change when a general died as the default behavior. He did go ahead on his own and put in his system as an option in VI that you activated with the -green_generals switch. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the "all kings die at 56" bug was introduced. That was fixed in the v2.01 patch to MTW/VI which the programmers did afterhours on their own time. LongJohn took the opportunity to make some improvements to the battle engine. He fixed the "infinite charge" bug, removed the battlefield upgrades in multiplayer and made some playbalance adjustments.

I also remember a post by LongJohn where he said Activision had made him reduce the bonus given to armor piercing weapons. He said just prior to the MTW v1.1 patch that this had messed up the playbalance. He put it back to what he wanted in the v1.1 patch.

We saw the same pattern in RTW. I've looked but can't find the post where Jerome said he was really happy that he had been able to satisfy a variety of demands. The programmers are apparently in a better position to impliment what they want during patch time than they are during the development of the game or an add-on. Unfortunately, some things cannot be changed in a patch because it involves too much work.

[Lord Adherbal]

in the end the Demo will prove whether CA "listened to us" (or in fact just chose to go back to it's roots) or not. If it is still no were near the gameplay us old fans got used to, then I bet these old fans will not buy the full game and probably give up on the TW series. Many bought RTW after the disappointing demo, but I seriously doubt many will do that again with MTW2.

I know I won't spend €50 on a CD key if the game's MP is as poor as it was in MTW2. The only other reason why I would get the game is for modding.

That said, I know there is discussion inside CA to bring the gameplay closer to how it was in STW/MTW. How close that will be I do not know, but there is hope.

[Tahanaman]

I, like many other old vets, hope they (CA) get it right this time. Hopefully, CA will get it right!

[Alim]

At the time of making of STW and MTW CA was a small company trying to break into the games market. In order to survive, small companies need to do something differrent, something innovative, maybe to get a foothold in some niche market. CA achieved that with the uniquely realistic and tactically complex gameplay we've had in STW and MTW. But now that they are owned by Sega, and the TW brand has become much more recogniseable (not least because of the TV series), they have differrent aims. SEGA isn't interested in niche markets, they are interested in maximising their customer base (as an established company should be) and are looking to appeal to younger gamers. Since RTW the accent has been on better graphics and on making the gameplay "cool" and "fun" at the expense of realism and the AI and I think this trend will continue in MTW2 as well as the next titles in TW series.
From the information we've got on MTW2 so far there's been nothing to disprove that - in videos we've seen so far there is always insanely powerful artillery, even though artillery of that period wasn't really that effective at killing people, but mostly used in sieges. The often-mentioned movement speeds do look unrealistically high. In the campagn England has to conquer Rome as an objective to winning the game (and there are Aztecs). The biggest 'improvement' to the diplomatic engine that CA announced so far, is that AI characters will say what they 'think' about your empire when you click on them. The average gamer isn't necessarily looking for realism (or a really challenging AI) though and just because the vets are bored with this gameplay it doesn't make it wrong per se.
I agree with what Tamur said about the volume of complaining: it doesnt accomplish anything at all. Times change, life moves on, and we can only accept it. After all, companies exist to make profits. Anyway, most things in game can be modded (and here credit must be given to CA - the TW games are I think some of the most moddable out there). Of course, the one thing that cannot be modded is the AI and that is a shame. I know you cannot change the algorithms used but perhaps there could be some variables exposed in the text files, e.g. an interger between 1 and 10 regulating the AI aggression, or maybe a way to change the focus of AI spending from military to economic depending e.g. on the amount of florins in the AI treasury, or even something like ArchersJoinInMelee: true (which you can change to false). Making the game more moddable is the best way to appeal to wider masses with cannon elephants and the like while enabling the modders to change the game so it could appeal to the MTW and STW veterans more.
Anyway, sorry for the longwinded post, hadn't posted here in a while.

[Myrddraal]

Times change, life moves on, and we can only accept it.

I'm not sure I agree. I think we can make a difference.



From the point of view of modding, I hope someone steps into what was Jerome's role after the RTW release. I really hope for a more moddable game. I think if I had one request, it would be a better (or programmable) AI. If I had two, it would be a more modable game.

[Orda Khan]

Myrddraal,

Your bitterness about RTW permeates everything you post in this forum. You haven't seen the AI of M2TW, but you aren't even willing to give it a chance. If you can't see a problem with that, then I'm wasting my breath (figuratively speaking)
Though the Keep taking the pills part was not particularly nice, it was the above which offended me most. I remember a post very similar, nastier maybe, but similar none the less which resulted in a ban. I have had numerous disagreements with Puzz3D but I would not say the things that you have posted. I do not ask that you edit your post, rather consider the tone before posting.
Then in another paragraph I said..

People suggest we should all give CA a chance (yet again) Well all I can say is this......
When one reads the last page of a book, all one knows is its ending. To comment on the book one needs to read its contents
Commenting on giving CA a chance, notice I say yet again, implying that we have already.
I then say

When one reads the last page of a book, all one knows is its ending. To comment on the book one needs to read its contents
So we should consider RTW and give them another chance? I have seen the AI issue discussed over and over since well before RTW. So to the people who say give them another chance, I am saying how many times are we going to do just that?
I could have gone on to ask how many times have we seen this?

If CA makes the game like rome or even better I think that the game will be from start the best strategy game ever.So all who have something against rome or medieval should shut up.We don't want to hear what you say.If you want to say something against any of total war war games make your own site.
Seems like the lead up to every new release to me.

Every member here who whines or whinges, who gets bitter or angry, frustrated or even disappointed, has been loyal above all else to the TW series. We love it for what it was and for what it could be but we despair that certain things have happened, wanting them to be remedied and most of all wanting to say Congratulations CA, you did a Great Job!.

....And on a lighter note, next time I will try to be less subtle :oops:

......Orda

[Tamur]

So all who have something against rome or medieval should shut up.We don't want to hear what you say.If you want to say something against any of total war war games make your own site.

Oj, I missed this somehow, but I hope this is not a sentiment most agree with. Elsewise discussions around here would be fair full of pastry sugar.

[econ21]

Oj, I missed this somehow...

Don't worry, I didn't miss it.

[Myrddraal]

Neither did I


Every member here who whines or whinges, who gets bitter or angry, frustrated or even disappointed, has been loyal above all else to the TW series. We love it for what it was and for what it could be but we despair that certain things have happened, wanting them to be remedied and most of all wanting to say Congratulations CA, you did a Great Job!

Orda, what I don't understand is (to use the phrase of another) the polarisation of this thread. You talk to me about 'we' the upset veteran players. I'm not criticising dissapointment (how could I).

Though I joined the .org two years after you, I've played the entire series, STW, Mongol Invasion, MTW, VI, RTW, BI, and modded MTW, VI, RTW and BI.

I've seen the changes over the years, I'm not blind. I don't agree with lots of them, particularly many that came about in the jump from MTW/VI to RTW/BI.


When one reads the last page of a book, all one knows is its ending. To comment on the book one needs to read its contents

I was upset because, with that sentence you strongly imply me as a 'new player' who hasn't considered the background of the total war series, and is blinded by shiny graphics. I take offence to that.

Re-reading my own post, I see nothing malicious, or at least, nothing intended as such.

I do give allowance for the fact that it was a new engine, nonetheless I'm dissapointed in RTW.

I'd be willing to bet there isn't a grievance you have that I don't share. It's the manner of expressing those grievances that sometimes gets on my nerves, and the seeming lack of hope for the future that I disagree with. The automatic defensive reactions in this thread are something I'd lump in with the stuff that annoys me (though in this case, the first post doesn't really help much)

Take screwtypes thread on comparisons with LOTR2. It makes a good read, makes good observations. In short, it's enjoyable to view. When I read yet another comment about CA's lack or respect/ability/etc, which has little or no constructive criticism and is entirely fixed on the RTW experience rather than the possibilities of M2TW, it certainly isn't enjoyable to read. After all, are we not all here because we enjoy discussing the series with (mostly) like-minded people?


So to the people who say give them another chance, I am saying how many times are we going to do just that?

You know you want to give them another chance really. Go on, you know you do, or else why are you here? :grin:


I realise that maybe the pills comment was out of order, but it was genuinely meant as a joke. Maybe that's just my upbringing, keep taking the pills is commonly used by members of my family, not that we're nuts or anything.

@ Puzz, I don't know if you took offence, but please accept my appology, I am posting with good intentions.

[Kraxis]

I also remember a post by LongJohn where he said Activision had made him reduce the bonus given to armor piercing weapons. He said just prior to the MTW v1.1 patch that this had messed up the playbalance. He put it back to what he wanted in the v1.1 patch.
I remember that post. In fact I believe I was an important part of the discussion that lead to the 'revelation'.

On a general note on the thread.
I complained here for a while. I didn't like the apparent road M2 was taking. That doesn't mean I don't like a whole lot of issues, but so far I'm not impressed. So I complained, and I foun myself getting more and more unfriendly towards CA.

In the end I figured that
1) I was not contributing much really. Other people saying the same things but in a more eloquent way were being ignored as much. How could my posts be of any use then?
2) That it was better for me to just leave. I have been silent and have stayed away. I might return for the demo, I might not. I will however look at the first true reviews here from people I respect and know. If they like it, then chances are I might too. Until then I will wait, but not with a whole lot of optimism. I have been burned too many times...

[Puzz3D]

Adherbal']in the end the Demo will prove whether CA "listened to us" (or in fact just chose to go back to it's roots) or not. If it is still no were near the gameplay us old fans got used to, then I bet these old fans will not buy the full game and probably give up on the TW series. Many bought RTW after the disappointing demo, but I seriously doubt many will do that again with MTW2.

I know I won't spend €50 on a CD key if the game's MP is as poor as it was in MTW2. The only other reason why I would get the game is for modding.

That said, I know there is discussion inside CA to bring the gameplay closer to how it was in STW/MTW. How close that will be I do not know, but there is hope.
That's right. All we have to see is the demo to assess the battlefield gameplay, and this time there won't be a lot of multiplayers buying the game then resorting to a petition to try and get the gameplay changed. I've already withdrawn from multiplayer, so I don't have to deal with that aspect, and I won't be spending 2 months on a beta team hoping to get the gameplay adjusted as I did with RTW. There are a couple of other games coming out in the fall which may provide satisfying tactical gameplay to the vets who left Total War.

The SP campaign players who don't like RTW/BI gameplay have to wait for the full game to be released, but they can take a long term view since patches and mods are likely to substantially improve the gameplay.

[Tamur]

I won't be spending 2 months on a beta team hoping to get the gameplay adjusted as I did with RTW

Very irritating that you spent that much time. I must have missed this during my time away.

Are there threads in the multiplayer area talking about this? I did a quick search in the archive but couldn't find anything terribly relevant. If there aren't, no problem, but it would be enlightening for me personally to read this sort of thing.

[NeoSpartan]

Well, so far CA has not said much about AI improvment or anything. Plus CA is rarelly posting anymore.

So far all I see is that we are left waiting for the Demo and the Game. And in the meantime:
1- hope that CA IS READING WHAT WE SAY, (for their own good really)
2- Keep them fingers Crossed
3- Keep discussing how/what/when/why/if/maybe/I did/do/will do/won't do/think/and don't think, etc about MTWII.

At least the Flaming has gone down a bit and we can now discuss MTWII a little better.
I do know FOR SURE that once MTWII comes out, its sales won't be as great as RTW if its demo is no good. Not only will Vets and Realist gamers (like me) won't get it when it hits the shelves, but also the so called "Average Player/Young Player" isn't CREAZY about MTWII comming out. If CA wants gamers (old, young, vets, realists, etc) to be like they will be when Blizzard annouces that StarCraft II is comming out. CA needs to stick to its roots. It is that what made TW series become a hit WITHOUT really fancy graphics.

[AussieGiant]

The Demo will be the acid test.

I will be reading with interest what Puzz3D and screwtype have to say.

These two guy's will be able to assess the situation very quickly I believe.

It is good to see this thread getting back to being a little more friendly.

[Captain Fishpants]

Just to confound all expectations, I thought I'd post in this thread. It conflates many issues, some of which I'm in a position to refute, others I'm not. As always when posting in this particular place I must point out that I'm not part of the Medieval 2 team, and therefore not in a position to comment on that title.


CA don't listen to us.

Obviously, we spend all our time not listening. I personally spend nearly 23 hours a day not listening, with the remainder of my time spent ignoring things. Oh really, please. Don't be so silly. How many times do we have to say this: forums are monitored and sensible comments are fed back into the system.

CA don't talk to us.

So this is probably true but, there are a couple of reasons that I could cite:

(a) When a CA post is made it is quite often dismissed because the answer isn't *exactly* what people wanted to hear. It doesn't matter whether what they are being told is the truth, it wasn't what they wanted. Or we're accused of lying. Eventually, even the most dedicated will give up trying to explain in the face of that kind of attitude, now won't they? I now predict that this post will produce a similar rash of negative comments.

(b) Posting up anything as gospel during a development process is risky, because development by its very nature means that things are developing. What's mentioned one week may not be true the next, but by then the rumour machine will have constructed a complete "Grand Unified Theory of Everything And Why It's Rubbish".

(c) Given the hostility and simple rudeness that CA posts have met, are you surprised? I suggest that one or two people would be well advised to think about how they would react if their work and/or competence was publicly attacked in such a fashion. How would you react if someone came up to you in your workplace (or school, for the worst offenders - the people who really haven't worked out that politeness costs nothing). The internet is a marvellous device for encouraging a lack of people skills to be the virtue of "free speech" when really it's just being uncivil at best and foul-mouthed at worst.

CA are deliberately damaging TW by doing/not doing X (whatever X may be).

No, we're not. It might surprise people to learn that we do actually think about this stuff, quite hard, and for quite a long time. You might not like some of the solutions we arrive at (and yes, we do think you're entitled to your opinions), but that's not the same as us "damaging" the games. There's also an element of the "shock of the new" still going on: it's not the same as it was, therefore it can't be as good. Well, things have to move on in this world; that's the nature of a competitive, commercial, capitalist system.


We "know" what's going on inside CA. CA are secretly plotting to do X (whatever X may be) and the proof is that they don't talk to us.

Anyone but us who claims to know what is going on inside CA is not telling the truth. We have a code of silence round here that makes the mafia looks positively chatty because we take commercial confidentiality seriously. And because we are so secretive, we don't know everything that's going on either. I don't want to know everything that's going on - some of it is probably very disturbing and not nice. :)

Whatever "they" do, it will be rubbish.

Really? Well, there's no arguing with this one, is there? It's really a matter of opinion. However, there are grounds for assuming that some people will never be happy with anything that's done. There are always people who would be unhappy if you gave them the moon on a stick, because the stick would be the wrong colour and the moon would be too big to fit on their shelving.

But to be sensible for a moment, in "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" Koster makes a good case that the sense of fun of discovering something new (Shogun, in this case) is impossible to recapture on later occasions (MTW and RTW). In short, he argues for a variety of "familiarity breeds contempt". This also goes some way to explain the rose-tinted view of the past that also happens, not just in the case of TW games, but in the case of many things. The excitement of the new is replaced by the blandness of the familiar. The other reason why some will never be happy -- and some here will immediately get all offended by this, I'm sure -- is simple peer pressure. In order to be part of an in-group, it's necessary to adopt the social norms of the in-group, and there's a natural human tendency to unite around a negative. The norm here for a vocal group has become one where they are the innocent hobbits and True Fans and CA are Sauron's orcs and are Messing Things Up.

Personally, I think that there are people here who are squandering an opportunity. You could be feted by the entire community of players. Instead, many here exhibit an almost irrational dislike of noobs and enthusiasts - those who express any kind of liking for games that the group thinking has decided are flawed. That's a real pity. As the expert players, you have the chance to turn yourselves into netgods of helpfulness.

CA are a bit stupid because of all the above.

Maybe we are stupid. But then, if we are, we're just as stupid as the rest of humanity. And in the long run, that's pretty clever.


We are the only true fans, and we're being let down because of all the above.

Well, yes, we've never denied your enthusiasm. I don't think you are being let down, for all the reasons I've already cited. If you let yourselves admit it, TW games have been immensely entertaining so far, and that's what they are supposed to be: games, entertainment, fun. You know, the good stuff that makes life better.

The demo will be rubbish, you know.

I don't think it will be, but you have the freedom to arrive at your own opinions. Isn't it annoying when someone is reasonable? :)


And finally, there may be a solution available to one or two of you, if you have the courage of your convictions. You could always apply for a job here. We're looking for extra designers at the moment: www.creative-assembly.com/jobs.html#gamedes

Who knows, you may even be exactly what's needed. But obviously, you have to bring something special to the party, not just negativity, a pack of cigarettes and half a tank of gas.

[SpencerH]

There are a couple of other games coming out in the fall which may provide satisfying tactical gameplay to the vets who left Total War.

Which?

[Duke John]

I don't know at who your post was aimed at, Captain Fishpants, but few if any of the "veteran" critics who posted in this thread look at CA the way you descirbed. I think you are quite capable of discerning the complaints that are based on "I just don't like the game" and the ones that are based on actual playtesting.

And I hope that you know that most us ignore the posters who make such general statements about CA. So to be honest, I don't know why you wrote your post.

[TB666]

His post is aimed at the people that do say those things inclueding some of the veterans.
But true the veterans do not say things like "CA sucks" and those do say that are indeed ignored.
However some of the veterans do say things that is brought up in his post such as :
"We are the only true fans, and we're being let down because of all the above."
"We "know" what's going on inside CA. CA are secretly plotting to do X (whatever X may be) and the proof is that they don't talk to us. "
"CA are deliberately damaging TW by doing/not doing X (whatever X may be)."
"CA don't listen to us."
"Whatever "they" do, it will be rubbish. ".
Now they don't say those exact words but they are however implying it and it is very obvious in the attitude they write in.
Hence it is what some people have pointed out, it isn't the criticism that is bad but in the way they write it in.

[Ringeck]

Bashing is never a good idea, but I sorely hope that reasonable constructive criticism or good ideas, which is usually more difficult to spot, is heeded by the developers (of which Fishpants is not one, if I recall correctly - he is in England while M2TW is being developed in Sheepland-Downunder ~:) )

We will see this when the game comes out. Since the release date is a mere three months from now, I strongly suspect most major points of concern for fans are already well settled, one way or the other. Since the game is never going to satisfy me anyway (to satisfy me, I fear the game would be greatly disappointing to the regular consumer, which is a reasonable enough thing to avoid), I just hope some of the modding concerns have been ironed out - faction limits and province limits, that sort of thing - the easier the game becomes to mod, the more people can customize it to their liking (one way or the other).

The only thing I'm really hoping for, which I suspect will not happen, is for the mod-loading to be built into the game, much as CivIV (and most shooters) did it. That would mean we could easily play mods MP on public servers, which would be great.

[Lord Adherbal]

wow, did people actualy say the says Fishpants quoted? I guess I have the tendency to ignore comments like that, because what are people who think like that still doing on a TW forum?

I myself didn't like RTW, and the only thing that prevented me from giving up on it after a month or two is modding. Considering how much I still like MTW and enjoy it in MP almost every week, I am still hoping CA will decide to go back to the old gameplay. MTW2 is their last chance for me - if it isn't the game I hoped for I'll just leave the TW series. But I certainly won't be hanging around these forums making claims such as "Whatever they do, it will be rubbish.
"

[L'Impresario]

And finally, there may be a solution available to one or two of you, if you have the courage of your convictions. You could always apply for a job here. We're looking for extra designers at the moment: www.creative-assembly.com/jobs.html#gamedes

And there was this fellow in a Monastery thread asking what one can do with a History degree :eyebrows:

[SpencerH]

I don't know at who your post was aimed at, Captain Fishpants, but few if any of the "veteran" critics who posted in this thread look at CA the way you descirbed.

I dont see it either


I think you are quite capable of discerning the complaints that are based on "I just don't like the game" and the ones that are based on actual playtesting.

I disagree


The other reason why some will never be happy -- and some here will immediately get all offended by this, I'm sure -- is simple peer pressure. In order to be part of an in-group, it's necessary to adopt the social norms of the in-group, and there's a natural human tendency to unite around a negative. The norm here for a vocal group has become one where they are the innocent hobbits and True Fans and CA are Sauron's orcs and are Messing Things Up.

Personally, I think that there are people here who are squandering an opportunity. You could be feted by the entire community of players. Instead, many here exhibit an almost irrational dislike of noobs and enthusiasts - those who express any kind of liking for games that the group thinking has decided are flawed. That's a real pity. As the expert players, you have the chance to turn yourselves into netgods of helpfulness.

I think those comments speak for themselves.


TW games have been immensely entertaining so far, and that's what they are supposed to be: games, entertainment, fun. You know, the good stuff that makes life better.

You just dont get it. STW and MTW were "immensely entertaining". RTW was not. While I agree with your comment by Koster and "the sense of fun of discovering something new", I'd point out that it doesnt mean that the games are "doomed" to decline. CIV4 is arguably the best version of the game.


And I hope that you know that most us ignore the posters who make such general statements about CA. So to be honest, I don't know why you wrote your post.

I think my tank is filled wrt comments and threads about "whining". I sincerely hope that MTW2 is a great game but I guess I'll just lurk until the reviews by players I respect come in (assuming any remain to play).

[AussieGiant]

Thanks for throw'in that into the thread Cap'im Fish.

I'd say you "Hit the nail on the head" with that post.

-----------------
Dear All,

Please note that "hitting the nail on the head" is not to be taken negatively or literally. :2thumbsup:

If you do then it is your own choice.

[sunsmountain]

Have you seen any dev come here and ask for a list of things to be fixed the way they do for a patch? They've never done that in 6 years when a new product is being developed. Besides, the suggestions based on experience with RTW/BI have already been made.

I do see mr. Fishpants again who shows a somewhat emotional response towards us. Evidently, CA are humans who care about us. Your seem to imply they don't. Where are those suggestions based on experience with RTW/BI? Haven't found them, and NOW is the time to repeat them!


I still don't see how the public can give any feedback on M2TW AI since they haven't seen the game yet. The kind of info you would need to do that isn't being released by CA.
Look mate, would you understand if I put it like this: You have Shogun:TW, and you can give feedback before Medieval:TW is released. I think MTW would have been even better if you did, as you know MTW has some weak points introduced since Shogun (in particularly, spears are useless in multiplayer, you could have warned them saying stuff like: The rock-paper-scissors balance is excellent in Shogun, don't change it!)


I think the most difficult thing about game play that nearly everyone agrees with is the moment speeds and kill rates.

Until this day I have never seen any CA person address why both were increased...AND THAT IS ANNOYING, given the impact to game play it has had.

Would it make you feel better if they said: "Movement speed is based on motion-captured animations. Kill rates are also based on those. The result we feel is more realistic"
?
Because that is the case. Apparently, CA are choosing realism over gameplay, and hope gameplay will get used to it. The AI is lacking in any case. I don't agree with current speeds either.


Unfortunately, some things cannot be changed in a patch because it involves too much work.
All the more reason to state what is wrong with RomeTW now instead of later.


ps.: Maybe I'll apply for that job, though I don't hold degrees ~:)

[Ser Clegane]

You just dont get it. STW and MTW were "immensely entertaining". RTW was not. While I agree with your comment by Koster and "the sense of fun of discovering something new", I'd point out that it doesnt mean that the games are "doomed" to decline. CIV4 is arguably the best version of the game.

The issue is that these are things that very much depend on personal taste - I see that a lot of patrons actually do consider RTW to be "immensely entertaining" (personally I enjoyed M:TW more, but that has various reasons), while others disagree - perhaps their criteria regarding what qualifies as "immensely entertaining" simply differ.

The same is the case for Civ IV. Personally I think it is a great game and I have a lot of fun with it, however, this thread (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=2131) shows that a lot of people disagree.

[TB666]

You just dont get it. STW and MTW were "immensely entertaining". RTW was not.

No he do get it.
Entertaining is in the eye of the beholder.
I enjoyed all TW-games so far and RTW is my favorite.
You disagree which is your right to do so but you can't state that I don't get it because I do, I just don't agree with you and neither does Fishpants.

[econ21]

Would it make you feel better if they said: "Movement speed is based on motion-captured animations. Kill rates are also based on those. The result we feel is more realistic"

Because that is the case. Apparently, CA are choosing realism over gameplay, and hope gameplay will get used to it.

Yes, that explanation has been given several times in this forum. I think - hope - it applies to the movement speed only. I would not like to be one of the guys killed in order to get motion-captures of kill speeds. :laugh4:

It would be interesting to debate this explanation in detail, especially with CA, but I fear this rather defuse and emotional thread may not be the best place for that kind of specific debate.

[AussieGiant]

I recind my previous post on the "general feel" of the post getting better. I don't think it is now.

It seems Fishpants can read the future are things seem to be heading down the path he described.

There seems to be very little common ground to discuss things.

[Duke John]

Both movement and moment of an attack is determined by the animations and related files. The rate of showing attack animations and wether an attack becomes a hit is determined by the stats and in the case of missiles also by collision detection.

As far as I know that has never been an issue for people. But that routing units melt away when attacked and the decision to have high movement speeds and kill rates does bother alot of people. Those decisions have been made with a certain vision of what makes a good game, and it seems that CA thinks that a fast-paced game that is decided in 5 minutes is the fitting gameplay for an engine that can display epic battles with thousands of men. Nowhere do I read that they are changing their idea of good gameplay, I only read about improvement. And in my opinion, fast paced battles where the AI rushes towards you cannot be improved, that concept is flawed from the beginning, at least if the goal is to provide the player with epic battles.

So in short, CA advertises improvement of the R:TW engine, while the "whingers" want change. And that is what keeps most people away from being optimistic... just my random thought for today.

[Puzz3D]

I do see mr. Fishpants again who shows a somewhat emotional response towards us. Evidently, CA are humans who care about us. Your seem to imply they don't. Where are those suggestions based on experience with RTW/BI? Haven't found them, and NOW is the time to repeat them!
You have to be kidding. What they care about is bad publicity, and I've posted a lot about the gameplay.

Make the battlespeed slow enough that you can coordinate 20 units
Balance the maneuver and attrition aspects of a battle
Balance offensive and defensive styles of play
Get rid of the bias that favors the AI on auto-resolve on normal difficulty
Put back the combat penalty when units overlap
Fix the suicide general
Make the infantry running speed 1.66x the walk speed
Make the cavalry run speed 2x the infantry run speed
Make sure that units fight long enough so that hammer and anvil tactics work
Make the AI understand how to protect a unit's flanks
Fix the group movement commands so they work so that you don't have to use drag all the time
Get rid of the delay to movement orders
Get rid of the battlefield upgrades in multiplayer
Increase the rock, paper, scissors back to the level it was in STW
Stop using heavy artillery as anti-personnel weapons
Make crossbows use their ammo faster so that battles don't drag on for an hour with boring shootouts
Make the AI understand how to use a shield
Make the AI respond better to ranged attack
Make ranged units use their ammo before they charge into melee
Stop having the AI make frontal charges with units that are weaker than the target unit
Stop AI units from walking towards the enemy only to turn around and walk away
Get rid of exploding rocks
Stop using fire weapons in the rain
Reduce the uncertainty in combat results to the level it was in STW
Stop horses from jumping into pikes
Stop the skirmish AI from shooting its own men in the back so often
Put LOS for individual men back in the game
Bring back the weather effects of STW
Make the AI use the secondary weapon when it's better than the primary weapon
Provide more settings on fatigue rate, morale level, and ammo
Separate the fatigue, morale and ammo settings
Make the loyalty of a province dependent on distance and isolation from the faction leader
Stop having the AI sail around with a full army on a single ship until it's sunk
Make the AI provide reasonable garrisons for cities
Make sure the traits are working
Shorten the timespan of a campaign and provide multiple campaigns
Return to seasonal turns



Look mate, would you understand if I put it like this: You have Shogun:TW, and you can give feedback before Medieval:TW is released. I think MTW would have been even better if you did, as you know MTW has some weak points introduced since Shogun (in particularly, spears are useless in multiplayer, you could have warned them saying stuff like: The rock-paper-scissors balance is excellent in Shogun, don't change it!)
I was on 2 MTW beta teams and put in hundreds of hours. I tried to get LongJohn to reduce the cost of spears in MTW/VI, but for some reason he wouldn't. I don't know why.



Would it make you feel better if they said: "Movement speed is based on motion-captured animations. Kill rates are also based on those. The result we feel is more realistic"?
Because that is the case. Apparently, CA are choosing realism over gameplay, and hope gameplay will get used to it. The AI is lacking in any case. I don't agree with current speeds either.
CA said that realism and historical accuracy are not their focus. You won't get anywhere with them using those two things as reasons for making a change. In RTW, the men appear to go into slowmotion when they are fighting compared to the speed at which they run. It doesn't look logical. At least CA could try to retain a sense of logic in the battles. The illogic extends to the diplomacy as well with, for example, factions attacking you on the same turn they make an agreement that is supposedly beneficial to them. Now in M2TW we see an illogical time paradox being implimented. Where does this kind of thinking end? It's dramatically altering what the game once offered in terms of plausible gameplay which allowed a suspension of disbelief.

[Rodion Romanovich]

1. this forum is visited by many STW and MTW fans, even if they didn't like RTW, so there's no surprise there might be some who do and some who don't like RTW here
2. as long as the new games are moddable and offer better engines than previous ones, there's a chance even people who don't like the game will buy it, but perhaps with less tendency to buy it as early after release unless they're modders
3. all modern entertainment based on historical wars that is published today looks/feels like fast, blinking Christmas trees with less and less realism, strategy and tactics - movies, games, books, everything. It's no wonder that CA too wants to be in that market, especially because it seems to be selling better than the realism market
4. i've seen equal amounts of disgusting blind criticism as I've seen blind praise of equally disgusting character in the discussions here, for instance some people more or less implying that criticism isn't allowed
5. CA are creating the product they want to create and are succeeding very well at that. That that product at this time isn't what some are wishing for, means many fans will probably buy it a bit later after release than they've previously done, waiting for mods, or not buying it at all. If it would be true that the realism fans are more in numbers than the fast-paced fans it'll show up in CA's market analyses sooner or later, unless the mods keep the realism fans hooked onto the tw games. From CA's point of view which of those are true doesn't really matter, a company must try to maximize profits primarily
6. if CA has made market analyses judging by sales of STW, MTW and RTW and drawn the conclusion that fast-paced non-historical is more popular, that may or may not be a correct conclusion because of the many factors that could confuse such market research. For example at the time I first heard of MTW, it had already been out for over a year, whereas I knew about RTW before it came. Similarly it was through my enthusiasm over MTW that I affected many friends into buying RTW even though they hadn't heard of the game from anyone else. The question is whether the sales figures of RTW should be seen as the measure of the popularity of MTW1, or as the measure of the popularity of RTW. Maybe it's the former, maybe it isn't.

[Lord Adherbal]

if RTW sold better then MTW then it's because it had much more mainstream GFX, and probably a much bigger PR campaign. No one knew RTW's gameplay would change as much as the GFX did (compared to MTW). So you can't say it sold better because of the new fast-paced gameplay. In fact, if the "vets" had known about the change of gameplay that might've stopped them from buying the game. Which is probably part of the reason why some are so frustrated: we were never informed about the new design course.

[Ser Clegane]

Adherbal]So you can't say it sold better because of the new fast-paced gameplay. In fact, if the "vets" had known about the change of gameplay that might've stopped them from buying the game. Which is probably part of the reason why some are so frustrated: we were never informed about the new design course.
But wasn't the faster gameplay already part of the R:TW-demo? IIRC there were quite some discussions about this when the demo was released (a lot of players were not particularly happy about the speed-increase).
I am not very fond about the increased speed (actually I was really missing M:TW's speed slider that allowed you to change speed depending on the battle phase), however, IMHO it is a bit unfair to state that there was no information about the change in game design with regard to battle speed.

[Lord Adherbal]

I guess a lot of us were just kidding ourselves to think that CA would address this "issue" before the full release.

[Orda Khan]

Orda, what I don't understand is (to use the phrase of another) the polarisation of this thread. You talk to me about 'we' the upset veteran players. I'm not criticising dissapointment (how could I).
No, I have tried to stay on topic and any we reference is to we the ones who whinge.


Though I joined the .org two years after you, I've played the entire series, STW, Mongol Invasion, MTW, VI, RTW, BI, and modded MTW, VI, RTW and BI.
I never said that you did not.


I was upset because, with that sentence you strongly imply me as a 'new player' who hasn't considered the background of the total war series, and is blinded by shiny graphics. I take offence to that.
I already explained that. You misunderstood. I will explain again.

So to the people who say give them another chance, I am saying how many times are we going to do just that?
That was my explanation of this

People suggest we should all give CA a chance (yet again) Well all I can say is this......
When one reads the last page of a book, all one knows is its ending. To comment on the book one needs to read its contents
I clearly wrote people, I did not mention your name and I was talking about giving CA a chance. Where my post was directed at you was my initial response and your quote above. In the following paragraph (and back on topic) I directed my response to people so I fail to see how you can take offense or deduce that I question your knowledge of the TW series.


Re-reading my own post, I see nothing malicious, or at least, nothing intended as such.
Not even this?

Your bitterness about RTW permeates everything you post in this forum.
That is the particular sentence that I find offensive. You may think these things but I question whether you should actually post them, or at least not until you have some justification such as a similar attack on yourself.


You know you want to give them another chance really. Go on, you know you do, or else why are you here? :grin:
I have been asking myself that very question for quite some time. For the first time I will go on record as saying I will not be rushing to purchase MTW II and will instead wait for feedback. I never thought I would say that because somebody has to buy the product to test it but considering how little I actually played RTW, I must ask myself if I can really afford to squander money in this way. For the price of RTW and BI, I could have made two dozen arrows.

Just to make my own grievances clear, my main concerns are....

1. The Tactical AI......which has become steadily worse since STW.
2. Game speed ....Simply too fast to be believable. IMO any motion capturing did not include weapons or armour.
3. Faction Imbalance ....harder to remedy but not impossible.
4. MP Lobby.....The current one is so bad that no words can describe it.
5. Map Editor......Let's have it as an option without altering the target address and maybe make it a little more user friendly. I did enjoy the challenge of creating nice fair maps that people enjoyed using.

Finally, it was nice of Captain Fishpants to air his views but I tend to agree with Duke John's reply

........Orda

[therother]

But wasn't the faster gameplay already part of the R:TW-demo? IIRC there were quite some discussions about this when the demo was released (a lot of players were not particularly happy about the speed-increase).
I am not very fond about the increased speed (actually I was really missing M:TW's speed slider that allowed you to change speed depending on the battle phase), however, IMHO it is a bit unfair to state that there was no information about the change in game design with regard to battle speed.To be fair, it was raised, but CA gave what (at least to my reading) amounted to assurances that the gameplay had not been adversely affected: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=575213#post575213

[sunsmountain]

You have to be kidding. What they care about is bad publicity, and I've posted a lot about the gameplay.

I'm not kidding, the list you gave (i hope you copy-pasted that from your archives somewhere) is written in an imperative way: Do this, do that, as if CA was some kind of obedient dog.
And while I agree with most of your "commandments", it would be better to summarize them in a non-imperative way and give examples of reproducable ingame behavior. I know you already lost a lot of time, but given your "Posts: 3,958" I cannot imagine this taking that much more time...
...if one of the moderators could then sticky it CA wouldn't have to look through piles of old posts...

There are also some of your remarks i do NOT agree with, like:
"Make the loyalty of a province dependent on distance and isolation from the faction leader"
and
"Get rid of exploding rocks"

That faction leader is too reminiscent of STW/MTW to me and I didn't like it back then, nor do I now, certainly not under the present (and may i say much better and clearer) loyalty system. But I do like exploding rocks ~:)

To give you more examples of what I mean:

"Increase the rock, paper, scissors back to the level it was in STW"
This is too general and impossible given the difference number of units,

"Make the AI understand how to use a shield"
This is too judgemental and vague (unclear which situations you mean here).

If I were a programmer there would be little I could do with it. Given objective facts, however, I could make a rational decision and justify it to my business manager who is obviously only caring about bad publicity and money.

[econ21]

To be fair, it was raised, but CA gave what (at least to my reading) amounted to assurances that the gameplay had not been adversely affected: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=575213#post575213

That old thread is a fascinating read. It reinforces my suspicion that we are just rehashing a two year old debate here, but never mind.

The thread initially focuses on the "unrealistic units" criticism. That sees to have lost its force somewhat, as people can opt for realism mods. And IMO, the criticism proved overdone anyway - dogs, pigs etc were not a noticeable blight on my unmodded games & many factions had largely historical line-ups (Rome, Carthage, Macedon, Parthia, Seleucia etc - just stay away from Egypt).

The movement speeds/kill rates criticism also came up - Puzz3D has certainly been consistent. To my mind that has also been largely defused if you are into realism mods. It's obviously still a sore point for some ex-STW/MTW multiplayers and may be also for SPers who don't want to bother with mods.

I am a little sad that we seem to have had a greater level of CA interaction then than now. I guess that is the result of the negativity that Captain Fishpants has commented on in this thread.

[JFC]

Pick that up, put it down, get out, come here, go away, never again, it's you fault, you don't appreciate me, if you don't know I'm not going to tell you, you're a mess, I hate you, come with me, leave me alone, what time do you call this, what have I told you, I told you this would happen, I'm cold, I'm hot, your trouble is you don't think, you'll break it, you'll burn it, turn it up, turn it down, stop showing off, stop showing me up, get off, don't wipe it there, turn it over, come to bed, go to bed, get out of bed, etc.
My Girlfriend (every day)

NOW THAT'S WHINGING!

[Puzz3D]

I'm not kidding, the list you gave (i hope you copy-pasted that from your archives somewhere) is written in an imperative way: Do this, do that, as if CA was some kind of obedient dog.
I didn't copy the list from anywhere. Those are the issues I have with the game, and there are even a few more that I forgot to mention. I intend to continue to state things in an imperative way. CA can take it or leave it.


There are also some of your remarks i do NOT agree with, like:
"Make the loyalty of a province dependent on distance and isolation from the faction leader"
That faction leader is too reminiscent of STW/MTW to me and I didn't like it back then, nor do I now, certainly not under the present (and may i say much better and clearer) loyalty system.
Simplistic things are clearer. So you like the new simplified system where loyalty is tied to the straight line distance from an instantly relocatable capital, and it doesn't matter whether or not there is a logistical path back to the capital. In the new system, you don't have to be concerned about where your heirs are located since it doesn't matter. Let's find a nice word that puts a positive spin on simplification: Streamlining. That has a nice ring to it.


and
"Get rid of exploding rocks"
But I do like exploding rocks
Then be happy. The game has exploding rocks, and they aren't being removed. You aren't concerned that I have any influence with CA are you? I certainly do not.


"
Increase the rock, paper, scissors back to the level it was in STW"
This is too general and impossible given the difference number of units
That's right. They overloaded their combat system with too many units. This has also made it impossible for them to balance.

""
Make the AI understand how to use a shield"
This is too judgemental and vague (unclear which situations you mean here).
My intention is to be judgemental. Take a horse archer, ride up to shooting range off the right flank of the enemy battleline and start shooting into the right side of the enemy infantry unit that's there. Dumbo unit will just stand their facing my battleline which is nowhere near them. Those men have a shield which they could use to protect themselve, but they don't use it. Another example is: watch the enemy AI advance a single, lightly armored unit, with a shield while under ranged fire, half-way across no man's land, turn it around and walk back to it's battleline and be decimated because its shield no longer protects it. I've seens this hundreds of times. It happens in virtually every battle where the AI has weak units.


If I were a programmer there would be little I could do with it. Given objective facts, however, I could make a rational decision and justify it to my business manager who is obviously only caring about bad publicity and money.
Well that's naive. The only way the programmer will get a change is if he can convince the manager that it won't hurt sales and the game will still be fun and spectacular. It doesn't matter how logical the change might be from a gameplay perspective. If it's something he hasn't been told not to change, he might change it on his own initiative. Just look at the years changed into turns to see irrational gameplay that is apparently rational from a business perspective.

[Puzz3D]

I am a little sad that we seem to have had a greater level of CA interaction then than now. I guess that is the result of the negativity that Captain Fishpants has commented on in this thread.
Well, I don't miss the PR spin. The Captain has said they operate under a code of silence. He's also said that they won't reveal if they have accepted or rejected a suggestion.

[screwtype]

Pick that up, put it down, get out, come here, go away, never again, it's you fault, you don't appreciate me, if you don't know I'm not going to tell you, you're a mess, I hate you, come with me, leave me alone, what time do you call this, what have I told you, I told you this would happen, I'm cold, I'm hot, your trouble is you don't think, you'll break it, you'll burn it, turn it up, turn it down, stop showing off, stop showing me up, get off, don't wipe it there, turn it over, come to bed, go to bed, get out of bed, etc.
My Girlfriend (every day)

NOW THAT'S WHINGING!

Well that certainly helps put things in perspective JFC! :laugh4:

[lars573]

SEGA didn't buy CA did they?

I thought they were the new publishers... like activision were before. No?
By and large in the games industry the relationship between publisher and developer is leige (publisher) and vassal (developer). There are very few developers that are 100% independant. ID, Valve, Epic, and Maxis are the only ones that I know of that are for sure where the publisher doesn't have a controlling interest in the developer. But you'll notice that 2 out of those 4 are more in the buisness of making and selling game engines that actual games. The amount of direct influence that the pub. has over the dev. depends on the corporate culture of the pub.

You'll also notice that CA has been passed from the most domineering and draconian publisher (EA). To the more hands off do your own thing publisher (SEGA). With Activision being in the middle in a bunch of ways.

[Myrddraal]

The amount of direct influence that the pub. has over the dev.

:laugh4:

[lars573]

Shut-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup! ~:mecry: Did I just use some Britishisms without knowing it. :eyebrows:

[Myrddraal]

lets just say that I'm sure that Captain Fishpants appreciates the pub. I'm sure it has a direct influence on him too. :grin:

[TosaInu]

Have you seen any dev come here and ask for a list of things to be fixed the way they do for a patch? They've never done that in 6 years when a new product is being developed.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=17904

[Little Legioner]

Make the battlespeed slow enough that you can coordinate 20 units
Balance the maneuver and attrition aspects of a battle
Balance offensive and defensive styles of play
Get rid of the bias that favors the AI on auto-resolve on normal difficulty
Put back the combat penalty when units overlap
Fix the suicide general
Make the infantry running speed 1.66x the walk speed
Make the cavalry run speed 2x the infantry run speed
Make sure that units fight long enough so that hammer and anvil tactics work
Make the AI understand how to protect a unit's flanks
Fix the group movement commands so they work so that you don't have to use drag all the time
Get rid of the delay to movement orders
Get rid of the battlefield upgrades in multiplayer
Increase the rock, paper, scissors back to the level it was in STW
Stop using heavy artillery as anti-personnel weapons
Make crossbows use their ammo faster so that battles don't drag on for an hour with boring shootouts
Make the AI understand how to use a shield
Make the AI respond better to ranged attack
Make ranged units use their ammo before they charge into melee
Stop having the AI make frontal charges with units that are weaker than the target unit
Stop AI units from walking towards the enemy only to turn around and walk away
Get rid of exploding rocks
Stop using fire weapons in the rain
Reduce the uncertainty in combat results to the level it was in STW
Stop horses from jumping into pikes
Stop the skirmish AI from shooting its own men in the back so often
Put LOS for individual men back in the game
Bring back the weather effects of STW
Make the AI use the secondary weapon when it's better than the primary weapon
Provide more settings on fatigue rate, morale level, and ammo
Separate the fatigue, morale and ammo settings
Make the loyalty of a province dependent on distance and isolation from the faction leader
Stop having the AI sail around with a full army on a single ship until it's sunk
Make the AI provide reasonable garrisons for cities
Make sure the traits are working
Shorten the timespan of a campaign and provide multiple campaigns
Return to seasonal turns


Hats off Puzz3D

I'm totally agree with you. Any person who wants to critisize him first should check the main subject of this long list.

Behind the scene this list focuses on strong points of STW and MTW solid gameplay and critisize RTW's weak points wisely. This is not demand or wishlist. Just only smart manifest of TW series gameplay which is directly related past and close future itself.

CA has changed entertainment attitude of TW series in RTW. Entertainment with historic accuracy and serious strategic and tactic warfare replaced with fantasy mixtured and RTS style speed and click based new brand. We don't need any discussion over unnecessary details again and again.

So, why did RTW sold too much? Because of STW and MTW. Thats all folks. I speak for myself. When i bought the game from the store i thougt that i'll play old gameplay with new engine but in a different time frame.

If we focus this subject from this point of view we may complete the puzzle.

I demand that only CA puts the realism bar high again.

So, who am i? I'm a simple man that trying to make his way in the universe :book:

[NeoSpartan]

....

I demand that only CA puts the realism bar high again.



AHMEN TO THAT!

I didn't play STW, and only played MTW for about 3 months before I got RTW. So I can't compare RTW with S/MTW. BUT the reasong I bought RTW, (and why I told about 5 other people that they should buy it too), was because I EXPECTED HISTORICAL REALISM!

I was preatty bumbed out once I saw Egypt, Gaul/Brittain/Germania, and the Greek Cities. Back then (in 05) I knew enough about History to know that Egypt was way off, the Barbarians looked too generic, and the Greek Cities's hoplites fought overhand.

That was my MAIN BEEF with RTW. But then I started downloading Mods to get the Historical Accuracy I paid $49.99 plus 5% State Tax to get the 1st time. (thank God for u guys who know how to screw aroudn with PC codes and stuff :bow: )

So this time with MTWII, coming out, my main causion is again HISTORICAL ACCURACY. I will wait to see what there forums 1st say, and then wait for mods like "Medieval Total Realism II" or "Medieval Barbarorum" to come out. :2thumbsup:

Now, there is one thing I don't agree with Being A Problem in RTW.
That is the Rock-Paper-Sissor thingi.
-There are many different types of units that preform the same basic funcion, say Spears which have a bonus VS cavalry. But not all Spearmen were trained and equipt equally across all factions. So their effectiveness will vary. Also, there were units who although being Specialised in One type of combat, (say Hoplites) they were also exelent at another type of combat (say good swordsmen too, like the Spartans).

[caravel]

CA don't listen to us.

Obviously, we spend all our time not listening. I personally spend nearly 23 hours a day not listening, with the remainder of my time spent ignoring things. Oh really, please. Don't be so silly. How many times do we have to say this: forums are monitored and sensible comments are fed back into the system.

I think the general consensus is, not that CA "don't listen", but that CA listens very selectively and to only that which fits their underlying agenda, and that agenda does not appear to fit with what some of the mature strategy gamers want. Evidence of this is the issues that Puzz3D has already listed with regard to RTW gameplay vs MTW/STW gameplay.


CA don't talk to us.

So this is probably true but, there are a couple of reasons that I could cite:

(a) When a CA post is made it is quite often dismissed because the answer isn't *exactly* what people wanted to hear. It doesn't matter whether what they are being told is the truth, it wasn't what they wanted. Or we're accused of lying. Eventually, even the most dedicated will give up trying to explain in the face of that kind of attitude, now won't they? I now predict that this post will produce a similar rash of negative comments.

This is the whole issue. A forum will always contain those that attack and post negative comments, those who rubbish everything because that is what they do best. Even members come under attack and have their views rubbished by other members, they don't then just stop posting, they just rise above it. Using this as an excuse for lack of communication is quite poor in my opinion. From most of the CA posts I've seen here at the org I've noted much of the responses by members to be very positive. CA just refraining from posting because of criticism looks bad and actually worsens the situation.


(b) Posting up anything as gospel during a development process is risky, because development by its very nature means that things are developing. What's mentioned one week may not be true the next, but by then the rumour machine will have constructed a complete "Grand Unified Theory of Everything And Why It's Rubbish".

I understand this, and so do most others. The few that don't are usually just immature. Example would be the video with the big gun, it was quite amazing how a bit of hyperbole stating the gun was on an elephant ended up in a multiple page thread consisting of "omg this is stupid elephants carrying cannons", followed by many theories as to why elephants could not carry and fire cannons... if those people had actually looked at the video in question they would have seen no elephants just a big gun. The valid criticism for said video would be the gun being fired at a unit of cavalry and the whole unit dropping dead on the spot. That was quite ridiculous, though funny as well. I sometimes feel that CA put that one particular one out to wind up the Ne'r-do-Well's. ~;)

Another example of this was spawned from the following comments made by Bob Smith.


They also act far more realistically. We’ve put in hundreds of hours of motion capture work and as a result our combat animation is far more realistic and the battles far more cinematic. You’ll see troops block, parry, carry out spectacular finishing moves. You’ll also see them scan the battlefield for their next opponent and fidget restlessly before engagement. The result is real-time battles beyond anything you’ve experienced in Total War games or the genre as a whole.

The hysteria generated from this was some of the most inane drivel I've ever read on any forum anywhere. A huge thread at the .com about "mortal kombat" style fatalities occuring in battles ensued, and went on for many pages followed by a few more threads before it died out. Yes it happened...


(c) Given the hostility and simple rudeness that CA posts have met, are you surprised? I suggest that one or two people would be well advised to think about how they would react if their work and/or competence was publicly attacked in such a fashion. How would you react if someone came up to you in your workplace (or school, for the worst offenders - the people who really haven't worked out that politeness costs nothing). The internet is a marvellous device for encouraging a lack of people skills to be the virtue of "free speech" when really it's just being uncivil at best and foul-mouthed at worst.

Again, the hostile and rude people are a minority. Why should CA stop providing information to the majority userbase because of a few negative people. From my own point of view, my work is criticised and attacked on a weekly basis, and it doesn' do much for my morale, so I can sympathise with CA, this comes with the job though. Games development can be like the film industry in some ways. You can put in alot of time and effort, but with the best intention in the world, the movie can be a complete flop, and get slated by the critics. This is why many movies, and indeed games, are very samey. Sticking to the tried and tested formula. This is what set CA apart with regard to strategic warfare simulations. STW was different to anything seen before, MTW was a continuation of the same thing. RTW seemed like more of a step towards commercial gaming, with it's faster pace, kill rates and overall look and feel. This is what gave rise to the general concern about the "direction" TW games are taking.

I also agree 100% about the internet "encouraging a lack of people skills". It seems ok for some people to talk to others like something they've just scraped off their shoe from the safe anonymity of the net. They would do well to remember there is a human at the other end of the wire not AI.


CA are deliberately damaging TW by doing/not doing X (whatever X may be).

No, we're not. It might surprise people to learn that we do actually think about this stuff, quite hard, and for quite a long time. You might not like some of the solutions we arrive at (and yes, we do think you're entitled to your opinions), but that's not the same as us "damaging" the games. There's also an element of the "shock of the new" still going on: it's not the same as it was, therefore it can't be as good. Well, things have to move on in this world; that's the nature of a competitive, commercial, capitalist system.

I don't think anyone with any sense is saying that CA is "deliberately damaging TW". People are of course entitled to their opinions and it's a good job that we have this forum, the .org, as a medium with which to express them. I don't agree with "shock of the new", this may be your's or CA's perception (I'm not applying your opinion to CA as a whole) of how some of the so called 'veteran' userbase think. There may be an element of this but it is small, it doesn't represent the majority opinion of veteran users. Everyone wants new stuff in new TW games. I for one wouldn't want MTW/STW's battlemap graphics in the next TW release for example. But "moving on" should also take the form of an intelligent AI. I want to sit back in complete and utter shock at how the AI just completely outwitted my army. I don't want to sit about on a board discussing "iron man rules", that is rules that I have to impose upon myself in order to give the AI half a chance. Nor do I want an AI that simply cheats in order to be more difficult (invisible morale bonuses etc). I am not asking for a flock of CA representatives to magicaly appear and post a long essay about how they're improving the AI, just a comment such as "we're working on it" or "it will be improved" or "it will be much better than in RTW". So far everything related to the AI has been a few vague offhand comments posted at the .com forums and not alot else.


We "know" what's going on inside CA. CA are secretly plotting to do X (whatever X may be) and the proof is that they don't talk to us.

Anyone but us who claims to know what is going on inside CA is not telling the truth. We have a code of silence round here that makes the mafia looks positively chatty because we take commercial confidentiality seriously. And because we are so secretive, we don't know everything that's going on either. I don't want to know everything that's going on - some of it is probably very disturbing and not nice. :)

Well, I do feel that statement to be rather OTT. I for one don't listen to those that claim to know what CA's secret agenda consists of. Obviously source code and other commerically sensitive information is not going to be leaked to public, but aspects of the general gameplay are not so top secret. If CA can release demo videos and screenshots they could also do a bit more talking about gameplay aspects and AI, this would stave off any of the Ne'r-do-Well's that prey upon the silence and uncertainty. (to see the Ne'r-do-Well's in action visit this fabulous link (http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm55))


Whatever "they" do, it will be rubbish.

Really? Well, there's no arguing with this one, is there? It's really a matter of opinion. However, there are grounds for assuming that some people will never be happy with anything that's done. There are always people who would be unhappy if you gave them the moon on a stick, because the stick would be the wrong colour and the moon would be too big to fit on their shelving.

Not sure who said that... Though I've assumed here that none of your statements are exact quotes just a summary of the types of common attitudes. Some people are simply trolls for their own reasons. Maybe they just hate all the newcomers to the forums that new TW games bring? The "I was here before you and my postcount is larger" sentiment is common on some forums, though not so much here. I don't feel this is a TW userbase problem, just a specific 'forumite' issue and as such not really much to worry about. Some of these people probably disliked the "gamey" (kiddy interface, flashing markers, arcadey feel, faster unit movement, decreased importance of the morale/fatigue/height/flanking, RTS style campaign map, cartoon romans barking in american accents, etc etc factors, blah blah blah) feel of RTW and see this as persisting throughout subsequent releases of newer titles in the series. In short yes there is some negativity, and yes there is probably a reason for this, but blatent "CA will make a crap game" comments are good for nothing. If I got to that stage I'd go 'on holiday' for a while...


But to be sensible for a moment, in "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" Koster makes a good case that the sense of fun of discovering something new (Shogun, in this case) is impossible to recapture on later occasions (MTW and RTW). In short, he argues for a variety of "familiarity breeds contempt". This also goes some way to explain the rose-tinted view of the past that also happens, not just in the case of TW games, but in the case of many things. The excitement of the new is replaced by the blandness of the familiar. The other reason why some will never be happy -- and some here will immediately get all offended by this, I'm sure -- is simple peer pressure. In order to be part of an in-group, it's necessary to adopt the social norms of the in-group, and there's a natural human tendency to unite around a negative. The norm here for a vocal group has become one where they are the innocent hobbits and True Fans and CA are Sauron's orcs and are Messing Things Up.

I agree, the "same old same old", is a bad thing. CA didn't stick to the same formula when they produced STW, but in order to break into the games market a developer has to innovate. ID innovated with 'Doom' (or Wolf3D). Core design really took off with Tomb Raider, there are countless others. Though ID stuck to the same formula and are still making money producing what is still basicaly a souped up 'quake', they have also made a fortune from the game engine which is the foundation of games such as Half-Life and the Medal of Honour series to name but a few. Core continued producing Tomb Raider games based around the same game model. All have been a great success. Sticking to the same formula does work and is easy money. CA should be commended for not doing this but instead moving forward. The issue at hand is the actual direction. Many feel that CA has a new target consumerbase of the younger player, and this has been mentioned in the the general propaganda. I don't have a problem with the younger player being targetted by CA, though I would hope that the 'arcadey' aspects can be disabled, to give a better 'simulation' style of play, for us "old gentlemen of MTW". Nothing more, nothing less.


Personally, I think that there are people here who are squandering an opportunity. You could be feted by the entire community of players. Instead, many here exhibit an almost irrational dislike of noobs and enthusiasts - those who express any kind of liking for games that the group thinking has decided are flawed. That's a real pity. As the expert players, you have the chance to turn yourselves into netgods of helpfulness.

Cliques always occur. I tend to ignore them. I must stree however that they don't really operate here. They tend to be actually trolling up your own forums over there on the dark side. Sorry but it's true. Sometimes CA's aproach to this board is the same as that used when dealing with that other place. It is not necessary to enter here with your sword drawn, we don't bite... ...unless you want us to. :eyebrows:

I really feel that CA themselves have either been affected by the cynicism of some of these forumites or that perhaps CA are quite cynical anyway...


CA are a bit stupid because of all the above.

Maybe we are stupid. But then, if we are, we're just as stupid as the rest of humanity. And in the long run, that's pretty clever.

Gah! Who said that? The problem is, that as the game is now targetting a younger (younger minded even? So as not to come across as insulting to some of our maturer younger members) audience, this is becoming evident by the general dialogue seen at the official forums. Statements such as "CA are stupid" seems quite immature, and as there is no way of working out the ages of people on the net, you've no idea who you're dealing with have you?



We are the only true fans, and we're being let down because of all the above.

Well, yes, we've never denied your enthusiasm. I don't think you are being let down, for all the reasons I've already cited. If you let yourselves admit it, TW games have been immensely entertaining so far, and that's what they are supposed to be: games, entertainment, fun. You know, the good stuff that makes life better.

Entertainment is not always 'fun' in the sense of sitting in front of your pc grinning widely while executing 10,000 rebels, then laughing hysterically. sometimes entertainment can be in the form of a more serious strategic simulation. My idea of 'fun' games are those multiplayer playstaton type thingies involving cars, motorbikes or martial arts. Those type of games are more "chill out", for me anyway.


The demo will be rubbish, you know.

I don't think it will be, but you have the freedom to arrive at your own opinions. Isn't it annoying when someone is reasonable? :)


And finally, there may be a solution available to one or two of you, if you have the courage of your convictions. You could always apply for a job here. We're looking for extra designers at the moment: www.creative-assembly.com/jobs.html#gamedes

Who knows, you may even be exactly what's needed. But obviously, you have to bring something special to the party, not just negativity, a pack of cigarettes and half a tank of gas.

Well I can't offer you fags and petrol either, but I can sort out your networks and fix pc's/printers? Or I can clean the CA toilets? ~:mecry:

Regards


Caravel

[iwantmyaccountdeleted]

The voice of reason. Thank you caravel.

I sympathize for the vets for their concerns about the game. Myself - my expectations for the game.

-Powerful adaptable engine
It should be able to suit most modder's needs and have a lot less hardcodes.

-Mod compatibility
Make it easier for modders to create cohesive mods. Even with RTR I sometimes see the AI make really stupid moves that I can take advantage of to rip a faction apart.

-some realism
Hounds of Culaan. Come on. They're toting realism as a selling point. Hounds of Culaan? They even pretended these people were actually there historically. I'm not an expert on that area of history but I didn't know there was some sort of church of ChuCulain.

Basically, I don't mind what they do to an extent. my main issues are mod compatibility and historical realism to a certain extent. Modders always correct most of the faults in a game.

Anyway - to the whingers - I'm learning Ruby programming language. I wrote a program recently, and when my friends test-played it, they found issues that I had not seen. Please don't bash the 1.0 version of M2TW when it comes out. They don't have ten years to make everything perfect. That said, the patches should solve something each time

The (comparitive) newbie
Stormbringer

[lars573]

Let's have a look a Puzz3D's list. If I think it's a bad idea, there's a line through it. My comments, if I have any, are undernearth.

Make the battlespeed slow enough that you can coordinate 20 units
Pause. Plus it's supposed to be a challenge to mangage an army.
Balance the maneuver and attrition aspects of a battle
Make a battle too complecated
Balance offensive and defensive styles of play
Get rid of the bias that favors the AI on auto-resolve on normal difficulty
Put back the combat penalty when units overlap
Bad idea.
Fix the suicide general
Done, play 1.5.
Make the infantry running speed 1.66x the walk speed
Would slow down the battle too much.
Make the cavalry run speed 2x the infantry run speed
Would slow down the battle too much. Fast battles are better battles.
Make sure that units fight long enough so that hammer and anvil tactics work
I take it you got used to planning a battle after you press start battle. :no:
Make the AI understand how to protect a unit's flanks
Fix the group movement commands so they work so that you don't have to use drag all the time
Learn how to use the groups right. I took me a while but I got there.
Get rid of the delay to movement orders
It's a second or two tops. Always has been.
Get rid of the battlefield upgrades in multiplayer
I though you wanted to not change things from S/MTW? :laugh4:
Increase the rock, paper, scissors back to the level it was in STW
Gods no, never that!! That's one of the myriad of things that made STW battle suck like a black hole.
Stop using heavy artillery as anti-personnel weapons
It's too much fun never do that.
Make crossbows use their ammo faster so that battles don't drag on for an hour with boring shootouts
It's two to tango. The AI to start a shootout and you to keep it up.
Make the AI understand how to use a shield
Make the AI respond better to ranged attack
Make ranged units use their ammo before they charge into melee
Stop having the AI make frontal charges with units that are weaker than the target unit
Stop AI units from walking towards the enemy only to turn around and walk away
Get rid of exploding rocks
Rocks don't actually explode
Stop using fire weapons in the rain
Reduce the uncertainty in combat results to the level it was in STW
Stop horses from jumping into pikes
Stop the skirmish AI from shooting its own men in the back so often
Put LOS for individual men back in the game
Bring back the weather effects of STW
Make the AI use the secondary weapon when it's better than the primary weapon
Provide more settings on fatigue rate, morale level, and ammo
Needlessly complex.
Separate the fatigue, morale and ammo settings
Make the loyalty of a province dependent on distance and isolation from the faction leader
I hated that in STW and MTW. I'm glad they ditched it.
Stop having the AI sail around with a full army on a single ship until it's sunk
Make the AI provide reasonable garrisons for cities
If the AI though the city was threatened it would have a garrison.
Make sure the traits are working
Only a few don't.
Shorten the timespan of a campaign and provide multiple campaigns
Return to seasonal turns
These two are incompatable.

[Puzz3D]

Don't worry. Creative Assembly isn't going to do anything to detract from the awesome gameplay of RTW.

[TosaInu]

Make the battlespeed slow enough that you can coordinate 20 units
Pause. Plus it's supposed to be a challenge to mangage an army.

I consider pause cheating. High speed is also cheating, but now for the computer.


Put back the combat penalty when units overlap
Bad idea.

At times I'm a fan of realism: 100 men cramped into a square yard can't fight well.


Make the infantry running speed 1.66x the walk speed
Would slow down the battle too much.

That's exactly what some of us want. True, others don't.


Make sure that units fight long enough so that hammer and anvil tactics work
I take it you got used to planning a battle after you press start battle. :no:

Hammer and anvil tactics are planned.


Get rid of the battlefield upgrades in multiplayer
I though you wanted to not change things from S/MTW? :laugh4:

multiplayer battlefieldupgrades have always been a problem in online games. At first it wasn't understood and then there was a lasting lobby by many multiplayers to remove it, which was done in MTW:VI.


Increase the rock, paper, scissors back to the level it was in STW
Gods no, never that!! That's one of the myriad of things that made STW battle suck like a black hole.

It did (for some of us) because of the non-specific 9 levels upgrade.


Stop using heavy artillery as anti-personnel weapons
It's too much fun never do that.

But some of us are 'serious' at times. I've played different types of games: arcade, fun and groignard serious (sorry for the stupid labels). You know what: I enjoyed them all.


Provide more settings on fatigue rate, morale level, and ammo
Needlessly complex.

Not needlessly complex. Such things would easily allow the many different types of players (n00bs, vets, chillers, arcade, Pichatus(TM), groignards, dogs) to play the type of game(s) they like. TW games attract a wide audience: a simple submenu in settings serves them all. STW for example had morale on and morale off. That was a difference of some 12 (?) points. So, you either had to be mega n00b or ultra vet (all other players had no luck).


Make the loyalty of a province dependent on distance and isolation from the faction leader
I hated that in STW and MTW. I'm glad they ditched it.

Others love it.


Shorten the timespan of a campaign and provide multiple campaigns
Return to seasonal turns
These two are incompatable.

They are compatible. Timespan is the era the campaign plays in. Instead of one 1100-1400 campaign with 1 turn a year you get say 3: 1100-1200, 1200-300, 1300-1400, each having 2 (or more :2thumbsup: ) turns a year. A campaign is now only ~200 turns instead of ~300, but what matters most (for some of us :2thumbsup: ) it allows more realistic games and/or the time to use the technology you developped (~200 instead of ~100 turns in 100 years) without being outdated again.

It's a pity and a missed opportunity that we are still stuck in this inability to grant the other fun with his/her game. Am I going to hurt any of you when I like exploding rocks? Am I going to hurt any of you when I like RPS? Am I going to hurt any of you when I say I strongly dislike campaigns with less than 4 turns? Or admit my groignard nerd love for sliders? That it pleases my n00bgland when I can turn on an arcade toggle?

[Monarch]

Get rid of the battlefield upgrades in multiplayer
I though you wanted to not change things from S/MTW?

I guess then that you couldn't think of a decent "come back" for that one, or that you don't play much MP.

I totally agree, lets disable upgrades, OR lets have an option for the host to disallow/allow upgrades. IMO we should allow the host to setup rules that arnt a typed list, but the game actually enforces, for instance when hosting a game in the same screen as say map selecting theres also a UI to set some rules that mean people litterally cannot take units like artillery. Host needs more power, ATM he can't even change peoples team which needs to be done to prevent noobs coming into a 2v2, going on their own team, spending two peoples worth of cash and having to change teams and build another army, whilst we sit there twiddling our thumbs. In addition money should actually be team money, not atm how team money is say 25k it means each person is given 12.5k. It'd be good for clans to make the most out of the money given by coordinating their faction selection, because on rome if say you have a spare 10 denarrii and your fellow clannie is 10 florins over then surely it makes sense that you should be able to give him your spare? Perhaps now a function that the masses would like, just clans, but again why not give the host the option to give players money or teams money.

TBH I just clicked "last post by" as it shows up in the forum index, god knows what the topic of this is and I'm sure I've gone off it. Which I apologise for. But I think my suggestions for MP are actually plausable, its not like I'm running around moaning for an mp campaign is it? :inquisitive:

[caravel]

@lars573

Your attempted quickfire demolition of Puzz3D's points, is totally without substance. As TosaInu's post has already demonstrated. You seem to have gone out of your way to simply disagree with as much as possible without producing any valid counter-argument. :no:

[Orda Khan]

Some people obviously have no experience with MP

.......Orda

[todaswarriors]

Gah !!! :wall:
Great to see all is well and normal in the world of total war.:2thumbsup: see ya soon
I just hope mtw2 has some of the old controls for online games.it was much easier to fight & control..and i think that's one of the things i used to enjoy the most..after 3-4 games of stw/mtw you know you had played them :dizzy2: it was a faster game alround but the server lagg slowed it down...
ah well those were the days :shame:
Anyhow back to books
sayonara!!

[lars573]

I consider pause cheating. High speed is also cheating, but now for the computer.
I almost never pause. I do however use high speed, when manuvering.



At times I'm a fan of realism: 100 men cramped into a square yard can't fight well.
But a penalty would be a pain, as it's going to happen a lot.



That's exactly what some of us want. True, others don't.
But I do. Faster battles are always better. Why? Less chance for me to lose interest.



Hammer and anvil tactics are planned.
Yes they are. Which you should be doing if you have an ounce of sense in the deployment phase. Sure you can't always pull it off but who cares.



multiplayer battlefieldupgrades have always been a problem in online games. At first it wasn't understood and then there was a lasting lobby by many multiplayers to remove it, which was done in MTW:VI.
I never play MP in a strategy game. Buggy messes, and I don't have the time.



It did (for some of us) because of the non-specific 9 levels upgrade.
RPS calculations are the bain of strategy games. Any strategy game. I really hate games where a spearman could never defeat a swordsman because a sword is rock and a spear is sissors.



But some of us are 'serious' at times. I've played different types of games: arcade, fun and groignard serious (sorry for the stupid labels). You know what: I enjoyed them all.
There have been lots of posts about how Onagers used on the battles feild aren't right, act to much like a cannon. Lots of stuff, most of which I can't remember. Well I've seen reconstructions of seige weapons. And an onager ball would bounce and take out men, much like a cannon ball. Artillery has always been used as anit-personel weapons. To suggest otherwise is foolishness. Hence the foolishness of my retort to it.



Not needlessly complex. Such things would easily allow the many different types of players (n00bs, vets, chillers, arcade, Pichatus(TM), groignards, dogs) to play the type of game(s) they like. TW games attract a wide audience: a simple submenu in settings serves them all. STW for example had morale on and morale off. That was a difference of some 12 (?) points. So, you either had to be mega n00b or ultra vet (all other players had no luck).
Diffculty has modifiers on morale. Fatigue and ammo go away for arcade. So yes multiple setting are too complex. For the user and the developer.



Others love it.
But if your leader died you faced rebellions, or massive unrest. Tying it to a city is much more orderly, predictable, and quicker to wrap your brain around.



They are compatible. Timespan is the era the campaign plays in. Instead of one 1100-1400 campaign with 1 turn a year you get say 3: 1100-1200, 1200-300, 1300-1400, each having 2 (or more :2thumbsup: ) turns a year. A campaign is now only ~200 turns instead of ~300, but what matters most (for some of us :2thumbsup: ) it allows more realistic games and/or the time to use the technology you developped (~200 instead of ~100 turns in 100 years) without being outdated again.
But if you want and are desiging the game to be about the middle ages having a campagin ends in 1204 really breaks that. But having a campagin that covers 400 years with 4 turns per year no one would finish it. I only ever finished 1 MTW campagin. Yet I started dozens.




@lars573

Your attempted quickfire demolition of Puzz3D's points, is totally without substance. As TosaInu's post has already demonstrated. You seem to have gone out of your way to simply disagree with as much as possible without producing any valid counter-argument.
What I said is a version of what I believe (I wasn't thinking just reacting). I hated most of what was about the S/MTW battles. I never played them. I play about 1 in 5 RTW battles. Because of the vast improvements that CA has put into them. I can only hope that M2TW has kept most of these improvements.

[caravel]

RPS calculations are the bain of strategy games. Any strategy game. I really hate games where a spearman could never defeat a swordsman because a sword is rock and a spear is sissors.

I don't get this "bane of strategy games" argument. Under the RPS system level used in MTW or STW, spearmen would not always lose to swordsmen, but swords have an advantage over spears in hand to hand melee combat that I would have thought would have been quite obvious. Cavalry have the same advantage over the swords, and spears have that holding advantage against cavalry. It is not a clear cut system though. For example Trebizond Archers or other skirmishers can often take on light, or even medium cavalry and win. Swordsmen can win against cavalry when flanking, wheras in a head on assault they would surely lose. Morale fatigue and height all play a big part in this. When a unit is more seasoned, better equipped or elite it can counterbalance those effects, this adds another dimension to battles removing their predictability. If predictable easy battles are what you want then your simplified system is ideal.

You seem to be calling for a simplification of battles down to a high speed RTS style clickfest level. These type of fast battles don't involve any kind of tactical manouvering or outflanking. They are unrealistic and dull.

[Myrddraal]

I agree with almost all of Puzz's list, with a few exceptions, and a few elaborations, and a few questions for Puzz, which I've added below. I've also taken the liberty of removing or rearranging some of the points so that they aren't too repetitive.


Battle Speed

Make the battlespeed slow enough that you can coordinate 20 units
:thumbsup: - Basically reduce movement speeds across the board, reduce kill rates, and increase morale. It would seem that the current style of play is to get into battle as quickly as possible. Once battle has started, it isn't very long before one side breaks, and this tends to leave no time for maneuvering, before or during battle. This (for me and I think for a lot of players) is at least half, if not much more than half, the fun.

( Make the infantry running speed 1.66x the walk speed
Make the cavalry run speed 2x the infantry run speed
Make sure that units fight long enough so that hammer and anvil tactics work ) - are all included in the above, there's no need to repeat them.


Battle AI

Get rid of the bias that favors the AI on auto-resolve on normal difficulty
:thumbsup: - Absolutely

Fix the suicide general
:thumbsup: - Again, a necessity.

Make the AI understand how to use a shield
:thumbsup: - I agree, but again it's too general a statement. To elaborate a bit more: if individual men in units (with the exception of those in the first rank) turn to face the direction of the last missile attack, you wouldn't get the stupid situations where men are slaughtered without even trying to protect themselves.

Make the AI understand how to protect a unit's flanks
:thumbsup: - Only, it's another general statement, which isn't much use to CA or to anyone trying to analyse the situation. To make a practical suggestion with respect to this, the key point is that the AI needs to put holding formation as a higher priority than it currently does. It is because AI formations break up so easily and so quickly that they expose their flanks so often.

Make the AI respond better to ranged attack
:thumbsup: - Again, I agree, but these are far too general statements, and not much use by themselves. I think this links back to the priority of holding formation. Fire a few arrows at the enemy in RTW and they will respond. The problem is that the AI generally responds by trying to redeploy most of their army, and attack with maybe 1 unit. The result it a lot of units moving around, exposing their flanks and other units getting isolated.

Some simple triggers could improve AI behavior a lot here.

AI defending: If the player only has ranged units within a certain distance, the AI hold formation and (a.) fire back with it's own missiles, and optionally (b.) send out cavalry to chase them off, without getting too close to the enemy line.

AI defending: If the player has their line up close and is firing arrows at the AI formation, the AI should either charge, or hold formation and fire back

AI attacking: Just attack, with the option of sending cavalry to attack the ranged units.

Stop AI units from walking towards the enemy only to turn around and walk away
:thumbsup: - Once more, it's all about holding formation.

The above three points are effects of the importance of holding formation

Stop having the AI make frontal charges with units that are weaker than the target unit
:thumbsdown: - This is far far too general. If the AI has a large army of weak units, then a frontal charge is necessary to tie down the enemy units. Similarly, if they have units with generally weaker stats, but a heavy impacts (such as medium cavalry vs swords or halberds, then a charge may be the best tactic. This is too general a statement.

Stop the skirmish AI from shooting its own men in the back so often
:shrug: - It's not something I've noticed particularly. However, if its a problem it needs to be dealt with. From a scripting point of view, it's hard to come up with any suggestions on this front... I'm sure someone knows better than me though.

Make the AI use the secondary weapon when it's better than the primary weapon
:thumbsup: - This is obviously true, and should be quite easy to implement, though I hadn't noticed it as a problem actually.


Campaign AI

Stop having the AI sail around with a full army on a single ship until it's sunk
Make the AI provide reasonable garrisons for cities

The thing is about these two points is that again, they are the obvious effects of something a bit deeper. Here is something I've posted before, which I think I'd like to say again here:


I think the core reason why it became a steamroller effect in RTW was the lack of co-ordination in the AI's armies, I was playing as the Romans recently. I just had a couple of armies personally stationed near my gallic borders to mop up the almost constant flow of 2 unit stacks and unaccompanied family members who strayed into my lands.

The one time I saw a nearly full stack (without a family member), they besieged a town of mine which was mostly un-protected. Right! A challenge!

Next turn, the gauls broke off the siege (my relief force wasn't even gathered yet) and marched away...


I'm sure CA aren't ignorant of these things, but a little reminding can't hurt :bow:



I think there are a couple of simple additions to the AI which would have a huge difference to gameplay:

If all stacks smaller than a certain number in the same province were programmed to converge on the town, and only leave once the army is large enough for safety.

If armies only moved if triggered to do so by a specific event or tactic (to strengthen a border here to attack or counter attack)


Battle Mechanics

Balance the maneuver and attrition aspects of a battle
Balance offensive and defensive styles of play
~:confused: - I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Some suggestions of what would make the game more balanced would be helpful.

Put back the combat penalty when units overlap
:shrug: - I'm not sure this applied with RTW and the historical style of battle during that period.

Fix the group movement commands so they work so that you don't have to use drag all the time
:shrug: - I can't really comment because I'm not sure what the problem is, if you're talking about the fact that selecting a group and telling it to move will sometimes make the formation end up facing the wrong way, then :thumbsup:

Get rid of the delay to movement orders
Get rid of the battlefield upgrades in multiplayer
:thumbsup:

Increase the rock, paper, scissors :thumbsup: back to the level it was in STW :thumbsdown:
Now this is a tricky one. I would agree with "Increase the rock, paper, scissors" but not to the level of STW. I don't want STW with better graphics, the game has to evolve. I think a more complicated stats system is a good thing as it requires you to have a better knowledge of your unit's abilities to be a good general, and it allows for more variety in a unit's skills. However there is a tendancy in Rome for it to be as simple as "good unit beats bad unit". I think more specialised units (i.e. spear beats cav) are a good basic idea. It can be evolved, but I don't think it should be replaced.

Stop using heavy artillery as anti-personnel weapons
:thumbsup: - Historically inaccurate, and not much fun either.

Make crossbows use their ammo faster so that battles don't drag on for an hour with boring shootouts
:thumbsdown: - I disagree, crossbows are not machine guns. Boring shootouts only happen if you let them happen.

Make ranged units use their ammo before they charge into melee
:thumbsdown: - I disagree, this isn't always the best tactic, in fact it often isn't. Forcing either the AI or the player to do so isn't good.

Get rid of exploding rocks
Stop using fire weapons in the rain
:thumbsup: - Nothing to add to these

Reduce the uncertainty in combat results to the level it was in STW
:thumbsup: - It is true that in RTW, individual unit combat is too predicatable. Unit x will always beat unit y. If combat is more uncertain, problems occur, and dealing with these problems was part of the challenge and part of the fun.

Stop horses from jumping into pikes
:thumbsdown: :thumbsup: - I sort of agree. I don't think it should be stopped, I think it should be suicidal. A line of pikes should mash any cavarly charge that tries to break it head on (which it does to some extent in RTW, but not enough), but I don't think it should be impossible to try.

I think an excellent additional feature would be if horses had a percentage chance of hesistating from a charge like this. In which case, a charge would be broken up, but that's an extra.

Put LOS for individual men back in the game
:shrug: - I'm not sure I agree. If a unit is ordered to fire in a situation where part of the unit can see around a hillock, but the other half can't, the entire unit should still fire. Direct line of sight is not needed in mass archery.

Bring back the weather effects of STW
:shrug: - The weather system could be better, but it's not a vital selling point for me.


Campaign map mechanics

Make the loyalty of a province dependent on distance and isolation from the faction leader
:shrug: - Not a critical point. I think a better and slightly more realistic option would be to have the loyalty of your generals tied to the proximity of your faction leader. Generals accompanying the king are much less likely to rebel, whereas generals far from the power and decision making are more likely to try to carve out their own kingdom. What do you think?

Shorten the timespan of a campaign and provide multiple campaigns
:shrug: - Even in MTW you could play from beginning to end, you could just start a bit later if you wanted to. This might be a nice touch.

Return to seasonal turns
:shrug: - I haven't played the new system yet, I'm not in a position to judge. I'd like to give the new system a go though.


To return to the subject of whinging, these are the kind of comments that annoy me, and make any post loose it's quality:

Make sure the traits are working

Is there any point to this statement? NONE!

Aren't these already the case:
Provide more settings on fatigue rate, morale level, and ammo
Separate the fatigue, morale and ammo settings

Reading your list, it seems you've tried to pad it out. You repeat yourself, you make general sweeping statements. Why is this necessary? This is what I call whinging, this is the negative attitude that annoys me. Why spoil a post that otherwise contains some very valid and important points?

[Ignoramus]

I do admit I have gotten into the habit of whinging and complaining, and for that I apologise.

I am disappointed, however, that CA has been ignoring all the forum communities like this for so long.

[econ21]

Brilliant use of spoiler quotes and smillies, Myrddaal. :thumbsup: Maybe it will catch on?

On the issue of campaign AI, I wonder how many people have tried using the BI.exe to play RTW?

Just add "-mod" to your BI shortcut command line.

I may be imagining it, but it seems CA may have improved the campaign AI already between RTW and BI. I did a small test.

I ran through 10 turns of the same mid-game campaign (RTR PE as Rome) doing nothing (just autoresolving), first with the BI.exe and then with the RTW one. It wasn't much fun. :wall:

And I found the AI did better with the BI.exe.

:book: At the end of the BI.exe run through, the AI had taken more of my settlements than at the end of the RTW one.

I have hunch why it did better.

:idea2: It concentrated its stacks more - there were less of the silly small stacks moving around aimlessly that was a feature of RTW.

It's funny, but I always thought the AI in the BI campaign gave a better fight than that in RTW.

But I assumed it was because of the campaign setting not the AI. Maybe I was wrong? ~:doh:

It would be interesting if anyone else can confirm this.

Especially any CA folk. :bow:

On reflection, I am not sure Myrdraal's new posting style works for me.

Are the smillies and spoilers driving you crazy? :dizzy2:

[cromwell]

Hello,

Let me jump in here with a word about whinging and Puzz's gameplay point's.

I will agree that we all have done our own share of whinging, it's easy to complain, and pick apart things. However, speaking from my own personal experience, my involvement and joy from the TW series has diminished overtime.
To start with I only play MP. I have played a couple of campigns with each series, but never extensively. I have invested probably hundreds if not thousands of MP time with all the series.

There is no doubt the Multiplayer aspect peaked with MTW/VI. This includes everything from gameplay to the MP community.

I have been playing RTW/BI online since they were released and have never had as much fun, or more importantly felt the growth of tactics and overall skill improvement, as I had with the two previous series. The MP feels very limited in RTW, and I believe, in part, it's because of those issues Puzz has listed.

I'm going to cut to the point, you may agree or disagree. All these finishing moves and the extra animations that MTW2 has....it's all marketing Bullshit! Here's my reasoning why.

1. Single players, many people like to auto fight so the computer runs the simulation and says who won. They won't see the moves.
2. If you fight all the battles in SP, and you can afford to zoom in 3/4 times in the heat of the battle, not the setup phase or ending, but the height of battling, the AI sucks.
3.MP, I doubt anyone playing a good MP player can afford the time to zoom in more than 1/2 times, and even then only for a couple of seconds. I'm talking again here about the heat of the battle, anyone can zoom in when it's 10 units to 2, or when the enemy is routing.
4. 99.9 percent of the time when fighting online or battles in SP, you have to be zoomed all the way out to see your 20 units. As soon as you zoom in you have lost visual contact, and run the risk of losing that battle.

The amount of time anyone is going to see these finishing moves is slim to none. It's great for scripting battles, and making movies. That's eactly why the marketing team likes it. You the buyer, even TW vets fall to the eye candy, but thinking about what I have listed, especially MP's it will mean nothing to us. I particpate in these marketing meetings, in my own field, and branding is everything to companies, even if it means the product is not as good, or even faulty.

The finishing moves are animations to watch, there is no gameplay to them at all. You the player are not participating in this "move", you are watching!
Gameplay is everything, eye candy is a bonus.

Ok I have ranted long enough, I just want a good MP experience, one that gets me excited again.

Cromwell

[lars573]

I don't get this "bane of strategy games" argument. Under the RPS system level used in MTW or STW, spearmen would not always lose to swordsmen, but swords have an advantage over spears in hand to hand melee combat that I would have thought would have been quite obvious. Cavalry have the same advantage over the swords, and spears have that holding advantage against cavalry. It is not a clear cut system though. For example Trebizond Archers or other skirmishers can often take on light, or even medium cavalry and win. Swordsmen can win against cavalry when flanking, wheras in a head on assault they would surely lose. Morale fatigue and height all play a big part in this. When a unit is more seasoned, better equipped or elite it can counterbalance those effects, this adds another dimension to battles removing their predictability. If predictable easy battles are what you want then your simplified system is ideal.
That is not RPS. In a RPS system it's not that spear vs. spear lack advantage over each other. It's that they can't damage each other very well at all. AoE uses RPS. Where if two spear units could attack each other for 5 minutes and not get very far. But a sword unit would kill either in 5 hits.


You seem to be calling for a simplification of battles down to a high speed RTS style clickfest level. These type of fast battles don't involve any kind of tactical manouvering or outflanking. They are unrealistic and dull.
RTW battles are the best form. Not over simplified (if you don't turn on arcade battles), not overly complecated (like S/MTW). Optimal. Now could there be improvement, yes. The AI needs work on army management. I won't mind working a little harder for victory in M2TW.

[L'Impresario]

Regarding some of the elaboration here:


Put back the combat penalty when units overlap
- I'm not sure this applied with RTW and the historical style of battle during that period.

This is one of the most important things that need to be fixed. This means you can lump all your cav units together in one mass and win vs an opponent that will try to pin and flank you. The importance of this can't be understated.


Aren't these already the case:
Provide more settings on fatigue rate, morale level, and ammo
Separate the fatigue, morale and ammo settings

No, you don't have multiple selection regarding these, it's a "use it or leave it" approach. If one wants to play with fatigue, but not with the standard fatigue system that doesn't penalize enough (as in MTW/VI for example) running around, then no other option exists. Same thing with the other settings, some people don't want to use upgrades to most units in order to bring them to a desired general morale level, and sometimes the upgrade system works contrary to intuition and number-crunching methods ("army selection skills") become more important than the actual use of your units.
With ammo it's maybe harder more settings (like 1/2, 1/4, x2 ammo?), but we 're not talking mainly about an arrow exchange with the AI, but rather vs intelligent players, where you might be relunctant to move unless the opponent has used a good portion of his ammo/ tired his shooting units. Now, if this means 15 minutes of non-stopping, pure shooting, then it's something that can alienate a portion of the players (I can speak of VI here), that consider it an extremely long time, given that over time units start becoming less effective, slowing further the combat resolution phase. Just to be able to cater to different tastes without small modding that makes games incompatible.

[AussieGiant]

It seems Lars is "type casting" himself into the exact market segement that CA is now aiming at.

It could be more than possible that CA is designing the game to this mass market segment, knowing full well that this segment is not able to modd the game.

The hardcore groups can use the modd community to get what they want.

Hitting two birds with one stone hey??

[AussieGiant]

Speaking of "RPG click fests",

Check this idea out at the official site.

It makes me wonder how much CA will cater to this crowd in the future?

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm55.showMessage?topicID=3369.topic

[Puzz3D]

On the issue of campaign AI, I wonder how many people have tried using the BI.exe to play RTW?

.......

And I found the AI did better with the BI.exe.

At the end of the BI.exe run through, the AI had taken more of my settlements than at the end of the RTW one.

I have hunch why it did better.

It concentrated its stacks more - there were less of the silly small stacks moving around aimlessly that was a feature of RTW.

It would be interesting if anyone else can confirm this.

I play XGM and use the BI.exe to play the RTW campaign. The strategic AI does consolidate it's armies. It seemed to me AI army consolidation was improved in RTW v1.3 when I compared it to RTW v1.2. I haven't played XGM using the RTW.exe.

[caravel]

That is not RPS. In a RPS system it's not that spear vs. spear lack advantage over each other. It's that they can't damage each other very well at all. AoE uses RPS. Where if two spear units could attack each other for 5 minutes and not get very far. But a sword unit would kill either in 5 hits.

When we say 'RPS' we are not speaking of RPS in it's pure form, but the RPS style of unit melee engagement 'rules' used in all TW games. Basically that one unit is more suited to taking on a certain type of unit than another. For example Pikes should do a great deal of damage to any type of cavalry, and a 9 star general's Kataphraktoi unit should be no exception. Yes they should fare better, but the end result should be the same. Brute forcing your way through with valour and upgrades is not sound tactics. The overriding factors of the unit type should take priority. A pike is a pike whether wielded by elite bodyguards or the conscripted peasants. The player should be forced to use his units intelligently... not bumrushing.

With TW it works as basically: Spears beats horses beats swords beats spears. If that system wasn't in place we would have a situation where certain units would become pretty useless. More definition of the 'RPS', as it was in STW would only improve gameplay and tactics while enhancing the overall multiplayer, and singleplayer experience.


RTW battles are the best form. Not over simplified (if you don't turn on arcade battles), not overly complecated (like S/MTW). Optimal. Now could there be improvement, yes. The AI needs work on army management. I won't mind working a little harder for victory in M2TW.

In your opinion. In my opinion they are boring, fast paced, simplistic slugfests, and in the opinion of many other RTW players they are the same. Which is why so many mods for RTW tend to address these sorts of issues. They are in no shape or form 'optimal'.

[econ21]

With TW it works as basically: Spears beats horses beats swords beats spears. If that system wasn't in place we would have a situation where certain units would become pretty useless. More definition of the 'RPS', as it was in STW would only improve gameplay and tactics while enhancing the overall multiplayer, and singleplayer experience.

I guess RPS opens up more scope for tactics, but personally, I would prefer the modelling to be based on history and realism than artificial gameplay considerations. If a battalion of M1 Abrams renders most other land units "useless" by comparison, so be it. However, I freely admit one of the problems for my perspective is that people don't agree on what's a realistic model of historical conflict. When MTW came out, I recall an epic thread in the Org on the "Myth of the Cavalry charge", where it was hotly disputed whether cavalry was underpowered in MTW. At the time, I was struck by a lot of informed people arguing that - contrary to the original thesis of the thread - actually knights were not as vulnerable to spears etc as people assumed.

Personally, I think RTW did a good job of modelling some of the interactions between units, at least after tweaking of the stats as in RTR or EB.

For example, contests between phalanxes and non-phalanxes often evolve in believable ways. For me, this was to be the litmus test of how RTW modelled combat between different types of units: who would win, the legion or the phalanx? People argued about it endlessly, but I am happy with the answer provided in RTW. The phalanx slowly grinds through if its flanks are secure; otherwise, the swordsmen slowly work around the phalanx and things fall apart. The weakness of the RTW phalanx is in the AIs inability to maintain a solid line and defend its flanks. It may also be too vulnerable to cavalry (although if you keep it at rest and get rid of the 2 hit point generals, it may do better).

I actually like the fact that the swords vs spears difference is muted in RTW. It seemed wholly unrealistic in MTW and my heart sinks at the thought of it inevitably returning in M2TW (please, no repeat of the 100 strong Byzantine sword-armed infantry! For realism, give 'em long spears and make them anti-cavalry shields, not legion type meat grinders). Most Medieval units (like Ancient warbands) used a mix of melee weapons. And I'm not convinced swords are much superior to spears in infantry combat, as throughout history spears have been favoured (including the gunpowder period with the bayonet, not the sword, being adopted as a secondary weapon). For much of the Medieval period, the best Catholic infantry should be dismounted knights, who would be equipped to handle both cavalry (using their - possibly shortened - lances as spears or polearms) and other infantry (using a variety of swords, axes, maces, pole-arms). They should also be the best cavalry. Yes, this might render a lot of other Catholic units potentially "useless" but pricing and availability constraints should mean that they have nonetheless to be used. I always hoped people would do a kind of "MTW - Total Realism" mod that reflected this - they never did; hopefully we will see that now with M2TW.

I think RTW did a better job modelling horse archers than STW or MTW. The shooting on a the move ability is welcome and foot archer vs horse archer contests are not so lopped side (I confess, I would have thought the edge was with the foot archer, but playing Mount and Blade made me question that presumption - it's not so easy to hit a fast moving, skirmishing horse.) The AI uses its horse archers rather well too. A Hun or Parthian army can be a painful thing to handle, whereas in MTW, Mongol or Turkish horse archers could provide something of a turkey shoot (no pun intended).

In terms of cavalry and archery, I think CA have given us the ability to mod their power as we wish by altering the stats. I've tried a lot of different representations - IMO, cavalry and archery are rather too strong in vanilla RTW. I like EBs representation and can even live with the extreme nerfs in RTR. However, I felt knights were a little dull in MTW. Giving them a bit of the vim they enjoy in RTW would not be inappropriate. I always found knights were an optional extra in my MTW armies (all my comments are SP only) - that does not feel right.

I fear I have gone off-topic a little, but there's only so much one can say about whingeing.

[Puzz3D]

I agree with almost all of Puzz's list, with a few exceptions, and a few elaborations, and a few questions for Puzz, which I've added below. I've also taken the liberty of removing or rearranging some of the points so that they aren't too repetitive.


Battle Speed

Make the battlespeed slow enough that you can coordinate 20 units
:thumbsup: - Basically reduce movement speeds across the board, reduce kill rates, and increase morale. It would seem that the current style of play is to get into battle as quickly as possible. Once battle has started, it isn't very long before one side breaks, and this tends to leave no time for maneuvering, before or during battle. This (for me and I think for a lot of players) is at least half, if not much more than half, the fun.

( Make the infantry running speed 1.66x the walk speed
Make the cavalry run speed 2x the infantry run speed
Make sure that units fight long enough so that hammer and anvil tactics work ) - are all included in the above, there's no need to repeat them.

These aren't repetitive. First, there is the absolute speed of the game that should be such that a human can coordinate the 20 units. It shouldn't be easy, but it should be doable with practice. Second, there is the issue of relative speeds, and I gave the specific relationships of 1.66x and 2x that worked well in the previous games. You would have some variation around that to differentiate between lighter and heavier units. Third, there is the combat resolution speed which should be such that a hammer and anvil maneuver can work if the opportunity is there. For example, using 60 man units in STW a warrior monk (the best sword unit costing 500) is 2.5x better in combat than a yari infantry (the standard spear unit costing 200). A warrior monk will defeat a yari infantry in about 30 seconds. It will also defeat two yari infantry frontally. However, if one yari infantry engages the warrior monk frontally while the other moves to attack it from the rear, the two yari infantry will win if the maneuver can be carried out so that rear contact is made within about 15 seconds of the frontal contact. In STW, you could successfully do this with both yari infantry starting out side by side, and the flanking maneuver started immediately upon frontal contact.

1) There is an issue of coordinating the units.
2) There is an issue of relative speeds.
3) There is an issue of speed of combat.

Simply raising morale to slowdown frontal combat can adversely affect the effectiveness of flank attacks. Reducing the unit size made the system more difficult to balance, and the increase from 16 to 20 units reduced the player's control.



Again, I agree, but these are far too general statements, and not much use by themselves.
Creative Assembly doesn't recognize any of my points as problems. You have to get over that hurdle first.



Stop having the AI make frontal charges with units that are weaker than the target unit
This is far far too general. If the AI has a large army of weak units, then a frontal charge is necessary to tie down the enemy units. Similarly, if they have units with generally weaker stats, but a heavy impacts (such as medium cavalry vs swords or halberds, then a charge may be the best tactic. This is too general a statement.
The AI isn't sophisticated enough to carry out that tactic. The older battle AI never did this, and it gave a more challenging game. My suggestion is very specific.



Stop the skirmish AI from shooting its own men in the back so often
:shrug: - It's not something I've noticed particularly. However, if its a problem it needs to be dealt with. From a scripting point of view, it's hard to come up with any suggestions on this front... I'm sure someone knows better than me though.
It's a big problem with slingers. LOS for individual men would fix it for low tragectory weapons. For higher trajectory weapons such as archers, you reduce the accuracy of the volley. BTW, the velocity of arches is too high.

M2TW is going to have guns. This is going to be a disaster if they shoot through their own units because of the nearly flat trajectory.



Put back the combat penalty when units overlap
:shrug: - I'm not sure this applied with RTW and the historical style of battle during that period.
Turns out it's important in multiplayer. It's not as important in single player as the AI doesn't overlap its units.


Fix the group movement commands so they work so that you don't have to use drag all the time
:shrug: - I can't really comment because I'm not sure what the problem is, if you're talking about the fact that selecting a group and telling it to move will sometimes make the formation end up facing the wrong way, then :thumbsup:
Yes. The ALT click movement of a group sometimes rotates the group, although, sometimes this is just a preliminary indication by the yellow arrows that gets corrected later. In anycase, it's very bad in multiplayer because you can't afford such a mistake in movement.

I have to stop here for now.

[caravel]

I guess RPS opens up more scope for tactics, but personally, I would prefer the modelling to be based on history and realism than artificial gameplay considerations. If a battalion of M1 Abrams renders most other land units "useless" by comparison, so be it. However, I freely admit one of the problems for my perspective is that people don't agree on what's a realistic model of historical conflict. When MTW came out, I recall an epic thread in the Org on the "Myth of the Cavalry charge", where it was hotly disputed whether cavalry was underpowered in MTW. At the time, I was struck by a lot of informed people arguing that - contrary to the original thesis of the thread - actually knights were not as vulnerable to spears etc as people assumed.

Modelling based on history would be ideal though some abstraction has to occur. There were few 'M1 Abrams' units during that period. Knights were not the mainstay of an army, they were moreso the well armed and well protected nobility. Neither were armies organised into units of like types and weapons, 'feudal men at arms', for example, would have been armed and armoured with whatever they could scavange/steal/afford. There were no real 'standing armies' as such.

[Little Legioner]

If we take presantation movies as a solid reference your lists are already dead guys. I just hope they've been increased the overall speed only for movies not actual game. ( infact i'm praying for that :sweatdrop: )

As a clarification CA may give some information in their FAQ section about this matter titled "battle mechanics". :book:

[econ21]

There were few 'M1 Abrams' units during that period. Knights were not the mainstay of an army, they were moreso the well armed and well protected nobility.

Point taken on the knights. I was using it loosely to refer to a well-armoured, semi-professional warrior with a horse - I guess a man-at-arms would be the proper term for this. Knights, as in the nobility, would be included here but not the majority. By the high period, I suspect most men-at-arms might be functionally armed and armoured to a similar extent to the knights proper, but with less finely crafted equipment.

AFAIK, by the High Period of MTW, such men-at-arms were the mainstay of many Catholic armies; for example, the Hundred Years War French. They were supplemented by some missiles (mercenary crossbowmen) and probably at times had a lot of low grade feudal infantry along with them as well. But my impression is that the cutting edge of the medieval French army, for example, was it is large number of men-at-arms. And the decisive encounters in the many of iconic Hundred Years War battles were when they were be met by English equivalents, often dismounted and supported by longbowmen and billmen etc.

Yes, men-at-arms were not invulnerable M1 Abrams, as the longbowmen and the pikemen showed, but at their prime, they were rather more than one element of an RPS system of warfare. They were the mainstay.

I guess you could say MTW models these non-knight men-at-arms with the mounted sergeants and men-at-arms swords units. But:
(1) The mounted sergeants in MTW are too lightly armoured, at least in the High Period. They should be closer to the MTW chivalric knights unit.
(2) These men-at-arms units should have had the mount/dismount option before battle, as should the knights proper.
(3) When dismounted, the knights and men-at-arms should have been at least as good against cavalry as the spears.

All three changes would undermine the RPS system. Basically, Catholic players would want men-at-arms plus missiles - most other units would be, if not "useless", then clearly inferior. But arguably this would model history better.

Medieval scholars feel free to contradict me; I'm no expert.

[Lord Adherbal]

It's a big problem with slingers. LOS for individual men would fix it for low tragectory weapons. For higher trajectory weapons such as archers, you reduce the accuracy of the volley. BTW, the velocity of arches is too high.

M2TW is going to have guns. This is going to be a disaster if they shoot through their own units because of the nearly flat tracjectory.

this is incorrect. I believe the problem was addressed in some patch. The NTW2 mod has musket units who all have a flat firing trajectory and shooting friendly units in the back only happens VERY rarely.

[lars573]

When we say 'RPS' we are not speaking of RPS in it's pure form, but the RPS style of unit melee engagement 'rules' used in all TW games. Basically that one unit is more suited to taking on a certain type of unit than another. For example Pikes should do a great deal of damage to any type of cavalry, and a 9 star general's Kataphraktoi unit should be no exception. Yes they should fare better, but the end result should be the same. Brute forcing your way through with valour and upgrades is not sound tactics. The overriding factors of the unit type should take priority. A pike is a pike whether wielded by elite bodyguards or the conscripted peasants. The player should be forced to use his units intelligently... not bumrushing.
Actually a generals Kata unit should be an exception. Just as a pike isn't going to the same if weilded by a conscripted peasant or elite bodyguards. Your examples are both flawed. Kataphraktoi and pikes are mean't to brute force your way through with valour and upgrades. And when used this way they tend to excel. Sword units also tend to be good at that, provided they have armour.


With TW it works as basically: Spears beats horses beats swords beats spears. If that system wasn't in place we would have a situation where certain units would become pretty useless. More definition of the 'RPS', as it was in STW would only improve gameplay and tactics while enhancing the overall multiplayer, and singleplayer experience.
And that's a bad model. It always has been. It means that a spear unit has 10 points of defense for spear attack. But only 5 for sword attack. It would also mean that in terms of damage calculations melee cavalry is all the same. Lance or sword makes no differnece. No RPS systems mean that every faction has to have at least one of every type of unit in the RPS wheel. Without regard to history. It worked in STW because every faction used the same army. Save the Mongols but they were given a tone of Korean and Chinese subject infantry to compensate.



In your opinion. In my opinion they are boring, fast paced, simplistic slugfests, and in the opinion of many other RTW players they are the same. Which is why so many mods for RTW tend to address these sorts of issues. They are in no shape or form 'optimal'.
Not as many as you think. They are optimal. The lack of an RPS system means that if your lacking a certain kind of unit you can still win many kinds of battles. The faster movement speeds mean that battles only take 10 minutes. Rather than 30, which is far far far too long.

[Lord Adherbal]

makes me wonder why on earth some people bothered playing TW games, instead of sticking with AoE and other "fast" RTSes. What is most painfull is that CA decided to listen to these people and not their old fanbase who prefered tactics and thinking and for whoSTW/MTW was not too complicated. Its not like we have a lot of alternatives.

[Puzz3D]

I guess RPS opens up more scope for tactics, but personally, I would prefer the modelling to be based on history and realism than artificial gameplay considerations. If a battalion of M1 Abrams renders most other land units "useless" by comparison, so be it. However, I freely admit one of the problems for my perspective is that people don't agree on what's a realistic model of historical conflict. When MTW came out, I recall an epic thread in the Org on the "Myth of the Cavalry charge", where it was hotly disputed whether cavalry was underpowered in MTW. At the time, I was struck by a lot of informed people arguing that - contrary to the original thesis of the thread - actually knights were not as vulnerable to spears etc as people assumed.
You do realize that the consequence of that thread was a degrading of the multiplayer gameplay. Swords were given a hidden +1 attack vs spears, cost of spears was increased 15%, cost of cavalry knights was decreased 25%, and the cavalry was given some pushbacks (+6 attack on the next combat cycle which is a 300% attack bonus) against spearmen. All this done with no improvement to the morale of spears. Since swords were also cheap, they were given upgrades making the problem worse. The system only worked as a combined arms game with either no upgrades or uniform upgrades across all units. You can't play multiplayer with no upgrades because the morale is so low that the gameplay is a routfest. Creative Assembly refused to provide stepped morale settings as an option. After the MTW v1.1 patch multiplayer quickly deteriorated into cavalry and sword armies, and that remained to be the case despite fixing of the infinte charge bug and removal of battlefield upgrades in VI v2.01.



I actually like the fact that the swords vs spears difference is muted in RTW. It seemed wholly unrealistic in MTW and my heart sinks at the thought of it inevitably returning in M2TW (please, no repeat of the 100 strong Byzantine sword-armed infantry! For realism, give 'em long spears and make them anti-cavalry shields, not legion type meat grinders). Most Medieval units (like Ancient warbands) used a mix of melee weapons. And I'm not convinced swords are much superior to spears in infantry combat, as throughout history spears have been favoured (including the gunpowder period with the bayonet, not the sword, being adopted as a secondary weapon). For much of the Medieval period, the best Catholic infantry should be dismounted knights, who would be equipped to handle both cavalry (using their - possibly shortened - lances as spears or polearms) and other infantry (using a variety of swords, axes, maces, pole-arms). They should also be the best cavalry. Yes, this might render a lot of other Catholic units potentially "useless" but pricing and availability constraints should mean that they have nonetheless to be used. I always hoped people would do a kind of "MTW - Total Realism" mod that reflected this - they never did; hopefully we will see that now with M2TW.
The sword units are a fabrication in STW and MTW, and I agree the swords were made too strong in MTW v1.1 and thereafter. They also cost less than the spear they beat in MTW. At least in STW, the sword unit was more expensive than the spear it beat which is what makes the RPS gameplay work in a system like Total War multiplayer where you can buy as many of whatever you want.


I think RTW did a better job modelling horse archers than STW or MTW. The shooting on a the move ability is welcome and foot archer vs horse archer contests are not so lopped side (I confess, I would have thought the edge was with the foot archer, but playing Mount and Blade made me question that presumption - it's not so easy to hit a fast moving, skirmishing horse.) The AI uses its horse archers rather well too. A Hun or Parthian army can be a painful thing to handle, whereas in MTW, Mongol or Turkish horse archers could provide something of a turkey shoot (no pun intended).
That's true, but if HA don't have a counterunit you don't have a combined arms game in multiplayer. If HA are going to be uncounterable, they should be significantly more expensive than the unit they can beat. In STW, a cav archer cost 450 and could beat a no-dachi infantry which cost 300, but they couldn't beat a warrior monk that cost 500 and the only difference between the no-dachi and warror monk was the melee combat power. This was in a game where the cav archer had a clearcut anti-unit in the yari cav. In Samurai Wars, we will model the mongol horse archer with a better bow and perhaps more armor to reflect increased difficulty in hitting them, but the cost is going to have to go up otherwise the gameplay will be damaged.

We have taken steps in the new Samurai Wars stat to make the standard cav archers better by giving them the same accuracy as the foot archers and increasing their morale. We can't lower their cost because the no-dach which they beat are in the next cost slot below them. You can't make a higher mobility unit beat an equal cost lower mobility unit because then you aren't placing any cost on the higher mobility. In RTW, mobility doesn't seem to have a proper cost associated with it.


In terms of cavalry and archery, I think CA have given us the ability to mod their power as we wish by altering the stats. I've tried a lot of different representations - IMO, cavalry and archery are rather too strong in vanilla RTW. I like EBs representation and can even live with the extreme nerfs in RTR. However, I felt knights were a little dull in MTW. Giving them a bit of the vim they enjoy in RTW would not be inappropriate. I always found knights were an optional extra in my MTW armies (all my comments are SP only) - that does not feel right.
That's why we need options on the number of arrows for multiplayer. We didn't need that in STW because the effectiveness of archers was fine. Remember the STW demo where you had to beat a yari samurai with a samurai archer? To win you had to shoot, fall back to higher ground, shoot again, fall back to higher ground and finally charge down using the hill advantage. What's happened to that kind of balancing that Creative Assembly used to perform? Now they don't do that because the players they are aiming the game at won't notice it anyway?

[Myrddraal]

That's why we need options on the number of arrows for multiplayer.

OH NOW I GET IT! So you want an option for MP whereby you can reduce the amo of all units. Sorry I didn't get that at first. Duh.

I think the problem we have here is a problem which cannot be solved universally. Cost is meant to represent the actual cost in money for a Lord to raise a unit, but when it comes to MP and custom battles (where unit production is limited by nothing except money), this can prevent balanced armies from being selected. Things like a cost associated with mobility don't make sense in SP but are (it seems) necessary for MP. A seperate currency (called MP points or something) could be implemented for MP and custom battles maybe?

This probably wont happen, but it's the only way I see of resolving these issues.

[Lord Adherbal]

I think RTW did a better job modelling horse archers than STW or MTW. The shooting on a the move ability is welcome and foot archer vs horse archer contests are not so lopped side

it is an improvement, but the ability to shoot 360° is unrealistic too. A HA unit chased by light cavalry shouldn't be able to fire backwards. An exception being elite HA's who master the "parthian shot" technique, but this would still not be as effective as shooting forward. And the right flank of a HA unit should definitly be a "blind zone" because it is physically impossible for a horseman to shoot in that direction unless he can shoot both left and right handed.

[Lord Adherbal]

A seperate currency (called MP points or something) could be implemented for MP and custom battles maybe?

There already is a seperate cost value for a unit in the SP campaign and in MP/custom battle.

[Puzz3D]

That is not RPS. In a RPS system it's not that spear vs. spear lack advantage over each other. It's that they can't damage each other very well at all. AoE uses RPS. Where if two spear units could attack each other for 5 minutes and not get very far. But a sword unit would kill either in 5 hits.
That's too extreme. In STW, two 60 man (YS) spears will fight for about 2 minutes and possibly less, and it will take about 30 seconds for the best sword (WM) to beat the standard YS spear. The absolute longest combat is between two NI (naginata infantry) which are much more defensive than spears and fight for about 3 minutes. On top of that, two YS can beat one WM by using maneuver, but I know that for you this is too complicated.



RTW battles are the best form. Not over simplified (if you don't turn on arcade battles), not overly complecated (like S/MTW). Optimal. Now could there be improvement, yes. The AI needs work on army management. I won't mind working a little harder for victory in M2TW.
If something can be improved then it is not optimal. If RTW is best, why did my clan stop playing the game? Why did the FF clan stop playing? How could there be a successful Knights of Valor Clan Wars Competion involving many clans long after RTW was released if RTW was so good? That competition was a direct result of RTW gameplay issues not being addressed in the RTW v1.2 patch. There were were over 500 signatures on the multiplayer petition asking that, in addition stability issues, specific gameplay issues be addressed. The stability was addressed, but the gameplay issues were not addressed. Cavalry spamming and rushing ruled RTW, and it's still a problem if you happen to be a player who wants to play a combined arms game.

[econ21]

You do realize that the consequence of that thread was a degrading of the multiplayer gameplay. Swords were given a hidden +1 attack vs spears, cost of spears was increased 15%, cost of cavalry knights was decreased 25%, and the cavalry was given some pushbacks (+6 attack on the next combat cycle which is a 300% attack bonus) against spearmen. All this done with no improvement to the morale of spears.

Well, this might be an example of a conflict between SP and MP; or between realism and gameplay. I felt after these changes (primarily the pushback effect, I guess), CA finally got the balance between spears and knights in SP to a reasonable level. There certainly seemed to be less complaints. In MTW 1.0, knights seemed to bounce off spears (maybe the same is true in STW). After the tweaking, a unit of royal knights was dangerous, a real threat if they hit your flanks or get behind your lines. After the changes, if royal knights charged head on into a unit of feudal spears, they might prevail. But it would be very bloodly for the knights and given the rarity/cost issue, the general of the spears would be happier at the trade. That was my rough impression from my SP games - I did not do formal tests of outcomes before and after the patch - and intuitively it seemed fair enough.

However, as I said earlier, I'd like to see M2TW knights retain a little bit of the power of RTW cavalry. Knights against good infantry - say Flemish pikes etc - should like MTW. But knights against run of the mill stuff, should be a bit more like RTWs uber-cav. Otherwise, historically, why did people go to all the cost of training and maintaining knights if a run of the mill infantry could negate them? It does not compute. An example of the kind of balance I am thinking of may be Goth's mod for BI. It seems to do a reasonable job of modelling Dark Age and super-heavy cavalry. It's nasty but you still don't want to charge Gothic spears head on, you still want to go for the flanks and you still want to set up a good charge.[1]

I take your points about swords and MP, but I tended to under-use swords in SP. I regarded them in MTW as most of us regard Egyptians in RTW - sure, they are powerful but they are so unhistorical, they are aesthetically ugly.

[1]BTW, I wonder if RTW has improved the modelling of the cavalry charge? Playing RTR Platinum, where the cavalry attack stat is nerfed, and also Goth mod where there are no 2 HP uber-bodygyards, I am starting to appreciate the nuances involved in getting a charge bonus to kick in. Ideally, you want to be in formation, facing the right way, start at a trot and have enought time for the run up. Do that and your men lower lances, and hit with great impact. Mess it up and you go straight into a messy melee with no advantage either side and much lower lethality. I don't recall these subtleties from STW and MTW.

[Ser Clegane]

The faster movement speeds mean that battles only take 10 minutes. Rather than 30, which is far far far too long.
To reduce the overall "battle-time" during campaign I would rather liked to have seen a reduction in the number of battles than in the length of individual battles.
That the former did not happen was actually my major gripe with R:TW as I was looking forwards to less but more decisive/meaningful battles (especially as the developers announced that this would be the case) and I got the impression that the number of battles actually increased compared to M:TW.

I would be very happy if M:TW2 would change this situation as I would love to play a campaign with relatively few but epic battles that leave you with a feeling of having changed the course of history instead of having to fight lots of quick battles that I forget as quickly as I fought them (I know that I can auto-resolve but doing so insituation where your forces aren't clearly superior this might be a waste of troops)

[Puzz3D]

OH NOW I GET IT! So you want an option for MP whereby you can reduce the amo of all units. Sorry I didn't get that at first. Duh.

I think the problem we have here is a problem which cannot be solved universally. Cost is meant to represent the actual cost in money for a Lord to raise a unit, but when it comes to MP and custom battles (where unit production is limited by nothing except money), this can prevent balanced armies from being selected. Things like a cost associated with mobility don't make sense in SP but are (it seems) necessary for MP. A seperate currency (called MP points or something) could be implemented for MP and custom battles maybe?

There are different considerations between single player campaign and multiplayer. For instance, there is no upkeep cost in multiplayer and the general has no command stars in multiplayer. The only controls in multiplayer are the florin level and "arcade" on or off which turns off fatigue and morale and provides unlimited ammo. If you raise the florins to get more morale on the units it wrecks the rock, paper, scissors gameplay as players try to make superunits with the upgrades or as Orda says they numbercrunch the cost/benefit ratio with stat compare tools to the disadvantage of those players who don't want to have to use those tools. Above all, newbies get blown away by players who have mastered the unit purchase/upgrade optimizations. What's strange about this is LongJohn used the reason that newbies would be confused when he refused to provide more options on multiplayer. Creative Assembly has made the game extremely confusing with the upgrade system they have implimented.

Why not simply provide generals with increasing command stars for various levels of play? With a system like that, multiplayers could find a setting which provided a good balance between maneuver and attrition gameplay without upsetting the combined arms balance. LongJohn is on record as saying he thinks the optimal morale level is different for 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 games, and this system would allow adustment for that. You would still have the possibity of low morale battles (mostly maneuver) and high morale battle (mostly attrition) with this system. This system would actually make the gameplay more like a campaign game, and some players do come to multiplayer after playing campaign.

Variable fatigue and ammo is not necessary if Creative Assembly does a good job of optimizing, but since STW they haven't shown the ability to continually improve the game in this area. They oscillate around the optimal point by a wide enough margin that the gameplay is significantly affected. For instance, ranged units too weak in MTW only to be too strong in RTW, and fatigue rate too high in MTW while too low in RTW. We don't see a steady improvement in these optimizations since original STW. That's why when someone posts how RTW is improved over STW, I don't see it that way.

In MTW, you can designate a unit for use in single player campaign or custom/multiplayer or both. We use this in STWmod for MTW/VI to separate the cost and morale level of each unit whether it's intended for SP campaign or multiplayer. Creative Assembly could do this, but if they don't want to then I don't see how multiplayer can ever improve especially when there are ever more units and more factions in each release. I see a steady degradation of the gameplay with each release if they stick to the multiplayer system they used in STW.


This probably wont happen, but it's the only way I see of resolving these issues.
I don't think this is going to be solved either.

[Puzz3D]

Well, this might be an example of a conflict between SP and MP; or between realism and gameplay. I felt after these changes (primarily the pushback effect, I guess), CA finally got the balance between spears and knights in SP to a reasonable level. There certainly seemed to be less complaints. In MTW 1.0, knights seemed to bounce off spears (maybe the same is true in STW). After the tweaking, a unit of royal knights was dangerous, a real threat if they hit your flanks or get behind your lines. After the changes, if royal knights charged head on into a unit of feudal spears, they might prevail. But it would be very bloodly for the knights and given the rarity/cost issue, the general of the spears would be happier at the trade. That was my rough impression from my SP games - I did not do formal tests of outcomes before and after the patch - and intuitively it seemed fair enough.
Royal Knights were never supposed to be a viable combat unit according to LongJohn. They were put in there for flavor, and I think against his wishes. Changing the playbalance to accomodate that unit would be wrong.


However, as I said earlier, I'd like to see M2TW knights retain a little bit of the power of RTW cavalry. Knights against good infantry - say Flemish pikes etc - should like MTW. But knights against run of the mill stuff, should be a bit more like RTWs uber-cav. Otherwise, historically, why did people go to all the cost of training and maintaining knights if a run of the mill infantry could negate them? It does not compute. An example of the kind of balance I am thinking of may be Goth's mod for BI. It seems to do a reasonable job of modelling Dark Age and super-heavy cavalry. It's nasty but you still don't want to charge Gothic spears head on, you still want to go for the flanks and you still want to set up a good charge.
I'm sure that you'll get what you want to the detriment of multiplayer.


I take your points about swords and MP, but I tended to under-use swords in SP. I regarded them in MTW as most of us regard Egyptians in RTW - sure, they are powerful but they are so unhistorical, they are aesthetically ugly.
I don't care what unit represents the third component of the rock, paper, scissors system just so long as there is one. MTW multiplayer deteriorated to a two component system, and RTW to a one component system. I'd like to know what happened to Creative Assembly's attention to gameplay which they claimed was their focus just before RTW was released. They have stated that historical accuracy and realism are not their focus.


BTW, I wonder if RTW has improved the modelling of the cavalry charge? Playing RTR Platinum, where the cavalry attack stat is nerfed, and also Goth mod where there are no 2 HP uber-bodygyards, I am starting to appreciate the nuances involved in getting a charge bonus to kick in. Ideally, you want to be in formation, facing the right way, start at a trot and have enought time for the run up. Do that and your men lower lances, and hit with great impact. Mess it up and you go straight into a messy melee with no advantage either side and much lower lethality. I don't recall these subtleties from STW and MTW.
Cavalry charge bonus was broken in STW. There was no noticable charge bonus given. In MI, +12 morale was added to all units in multiplayer, and the power of guns increased from 4 to 16 eventhough anything above power 8 didn't do anything because the system saturated at 8. On top of that, the weapon and armor upgrade costs were incorrectly calculated. The naginata cav unit was introduced with identical stats to a warror monk except faster and it was cheaper in cost! The single man kensai simply cannot be balanced in that combat system, and the invisible ninja with 100 ammo was another indication of changes which were not historical or gameplay improvements unless you think extreme units are fun. What it did to multiplayer was to make some bizarre exploits possible.

In MTW/VI v2.01, the charge bonus was finally fixed and the subtlety of managing the cav charge properly as you describe does exist in lower florin battles, but most games were played at such high florins that pumped swords beat cav frontally. You could even beat cav frontally with pumped ranged units due to that screwy discount on ranged unit upgrades. These aren't problems in MTW/VI SP as far as I remember.

[Puzz3D]

I would be very happy if M:TW2 would change this situation as I would love to play a campaign with relatively few but epic battles that leave you with a feeling of having changed the course of history instead of having to fight lots of quick battles that I forget as quickly as I fought them (I know that I can auto-resolve but doing so insituation where your forces aren't clearly superior this might be a waste of troops)
In playing XGM, you can't go anywhere near that auto resolve if you play a faction such as Carthage which doesn't have as high income as several other factions. The strategic AI programmer thought it would be fun to force the player to play every battle, and that's why he put the bias that favors the AI in the auto-resolve. It seems to me the tactical difficulty setting could be used for that or maybe the strategic difficulty if the tactical difficulty settings tracked the bias accurately so you could match them up if you wanted to.

[econ21]

Royal Knights were never supposed to be a viable combat unit according to LongJohn. They were put in there for flavor, and I think against his wishes.

Well thank goodness they were put in - they were the only knights I tended to see in MTW early campaigns for a long time. The thing about knights in MTW SP was that it took so long to get them and then they were just so-so.

But I do think RTW went over the top with its "royal knights" - the general's bodyguards. Giving them 2 HP unbalances things and means they often determine the outcome of the battle. I once watched an AI vs AI battle in RTR Platinum (which nerfs cav but retains the 2HP). The two generals' units were decisive, pulling off devastating rear charges in hammer and anvil tactics. A battle report is here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=1202379&postcount=22

Interestingly, I did not find the AI tactics too shabby. For example, I liked the way the Gallic warband (an inferior unit) methodically lined up a rear charge on the engaged principes (an uber unit in RTR) and so brought it down. You could think that battle report involved a human player.

[Orda Khan]

Otherwise, historically, why did people go to all the cost of training and maintaining knights if a run of the mill infantry could negate them?
Prestige mainly. Or old boys school, or elitists club, or them and us, the have and have nots. Precisely the reason why the Longbow 'serfs' did not find it so disagreeable to despatch them (Agincourt murder of prisoners)


the ability to shoot 360° is unrealistic too.
Agreed.

A HA unit chased by light cavalry shouldn't be able to fire backwards. An exception being elite HA's who master the "parthian shot"
That would cover most of the horse archers who ever rode the steppes. All these HA were 'elite', if elite is the correct word.

this would still not be as effective as shooting forward.
Agreed, or to the left side.

And the right flank of a HA unit should definitly be a "blind zone" because it is physically impossible for a horseman to shoot in that direction unless he can shoot both left and right handed.
Though there were bound to be some left handed HA, not enough to negate the above statement.

The most obvious thing I have noticed about this thread or any whingeing on these boards seems to be that the MP side of TW is suffering most. How do we expect to substantiate our concerns about overlapping units when some think that is how battles were fought in these times?

"This left the infantry unprotected and so closely huddled that a man could hardly wield his sword or draw back his arm once he had stretched it out." Ammianus Marcelinus.

I wonder how eight cavalry units on top of each other would fare?
I find it extremely odd that some like Lars in particular, find the tactical battles so boring as to want them over as quick as possible. There again, given how easy it is to defeat the AI, I suppose boring is a good description of SP battles against the current AI

.......Orda

[caravel]

Actually a generals Kata unit should be an exception. Just as a pike isn't going to the same if weilded by a conscripted peasant or elite bodyguards. Your examples are both flawed. Kataphraktoi and pikes are mean't to brute force your way through with valour and upgrades. And when used this way they tend to excel. Sword units also tend to be good at that, provided they have armour.

Maybe you've misunderstood me. My example of a 15th century pikeman vs 11th century obsolete Byzantine Kataphraktoi was chosen to illustrate some of the imbalances already present in MTW even. When Pikes are in formation and braced to take a cavalry charge the effect should be devastating on the cavalry as it would be historically. They are there to stop cavalry, and stop it they did. A warhorse would be very reluctant to charge into a row of gleaming spikes. Armouring up the horses makes little difference, horse armour is mainly frontal, it slows animal down significantly and the underside is still exposed.


And that's a bad model. It always has been. It means that a spear unit has 10 points of defense for spear attack. But only 5 for sword attack. It would also mean that in terms of damage calculations melee cavalry is all the same. Lance or sword makes no differnece. No RPS systems mean that every faction has to have at least one of every type of unit in the RPS wheel. Without regard to history. It worked in STW because every faction used the same army. Save the Mongols but they were given a tone of Korean and Chinese subject infantry to compensate.

Not a bad model because it's not absolute. Spearmen are not invulnerable to knights, swordsmen are not invulnerable to spearmen. Spearman though should lose vs swordsmen most of the time, unless the spearmen are of a particularly elite type. Even then it would be close, because at the end of the day horses can't just charge head first into a wall of spears. This is realistic, if it wasn't the evolution of the spear into the pike, into the square formation, wouldn't have occurred.


Not as many as you think. They are optimal. The lack of an RPS system means that if your lacking a certain kind of unit you can still win many kinds of battles. The faster movement speeds mean that battles only take 10 minutes. Rather than 30, which is far far far too long.

There is no lack of rps in RTW, it's just not as obvious. There will be the same sort of system in M2TW also. If you didn't need specialist units for specialist roles there would be no point in training spear type troops and one may as well deploy all swords or all cav and just bumrush. If you're lacking a balanced force and the enemy isn't, then the enemy should gain the upper hand. My goal is not to simply win a battle, but to play it well. Historically battles didn't last ten minutes. I've often played defensive battles against the Mongols as the Turks lasting over 1 hour, where the enemy sent wave after wave of reinforcements. The mongol's strength, and weakness, is their cavalry. When deploying an army against them one knows to field an army that is heavy on spears, missiles (preferably arbalests) and anti-cav/anti armour units. Swordsmen would be simply outflanked and butchered by the charging cav. Sounds wrong? Well think about it. A man with a sword and shield standing on the ground is pretty much defensless against a cavalry charge, there's not alot he can do but wait and hope that he doesn't get his head split open in the first passage, once the melee starts he has a slight chance to unhorse the riders though the still have the height advantage, which is critical. For me this makes for an interesting tactical battle. Without this aspect I could simply bumrush my upgraded and teched up swordsmen at the enemy cav and not bother with any kind of unit selection or strategising.

[Kraxis]

Overlapping units are also important in SP, less than in MP, but still.

As it is now bridges are hardly that much of an advantage as they should be. Right now the attacker can 'just' punch through with a mass of units, the same in cities. The only reason the AI fails is because it doesn't rest and doesn't apply critical force (it come in drips and draps).

And overlapping phalanxes are downright impossible to beat.

And no, I don't think overlapping happens too much. I at least try to keep my forces from overlapping, and if the AI can't keep it's forces properly seperated (could have something to do with it's inability to keep a line), then why cater to that, rather than fix said problem? The problem is still there, and it is going to ruin battles regardless.

[Puzz3D]

There is no lack of rps in RTW, it's just not as obvious.
There is an RPS system in RTW, but it has been weakened since STW. This means RTW requires more precise balancing to make it work properly. Who thinks CA has time to do this more careful balancing? I don't especially when LongJohn said he though 25% imbalance was ok. A multiplayer can easily exploit a 25% imbalance. It was done in STW with the warrior monks and they were only about 15% out of balance. Also, multiplayer requires enough cost differential to fit the units into the RPS system. I would say the minimum should be that the spear cost no more than half of the cav it beats. Triarii do meet that requirement.

[lars573]

Maybe you've misunderstood me. My example of a 15th century pikeman vs 11th century obsolete Byzantine Kataphraktoi was chosen to illustrate some of the imbalances already present in MTW even. When Pikes are in formation and braced to take a cavalry charge the effect should be devastating on the cavalry as it would be historically. They are there to stop cavalry, and stop it they did. A warhorse would be very reluctant to charge into a row of gleaming spikes. Armouring up the horses makes little difference, horse armour is mainly frontal, it slows animal down significantly and the underside is still exposed.
But Cataphracts were created to fight pike phalanxes and not suffer huge casualties. Hence the horse armour. Should a cavalry unit take huge losses frontally charging a spear unit, yes. Should they always lose, no. That should depend on the units involved.



Not a bad model because it's not absolute. Spearmen are not invulnerable to knights, swordsmen are not invulnerable to spearmen. Spearman though should lose vs swordsmen most of the time, unless the spearmen are of a particularly elite type. Even then it would be close, because at the end of the day horses can't just charge head first into a wall of spears. This is realistic, if it wasn't the evolution of the spear into the pike, into the square formation, wouldn't have occurred.
RPS models are absolute. If what you call the TW RPS system isn't then it isn't an RPS system. By their nature they are iron clad and absolute. The phalanx was created to counter chariots. The western pike phalanx (developed by Phillip of Macedon) was created to turn the phalanx into a more offensively capable unit. Also the only pike block that was used to counter cavalry was the western one (which was re-used in the 16th century). The medieval Hawaians and the ancient Sumerians both developed densely packed blocks of men with pikes. Neither of whom would have ever seen a horse, let alone a group of men riding them into battle.



There is no lack of rps in RTW, it's just not as obvious. There will be the same sort of system in M2TW also. If you didn't need specialist units for specialist roles there would be no point in training spear type troops and one may as well deploy all swords or all cav and just bumrush. If you're lacking a balanced force and the enemy isn't, then the enemy should gain the upper hand. My goal is not to simply win a battle, but to play it well. Historically battles didn't last ten minutes. I've often played defensive battles against the Mongols as the Turks lasting over 1 hour, where the enemy sent wave after wave of reinforcements. The mongol's strength, and weakness, is their cavalry. When deploying an army against them one knows to field an army that is heavy on spears, missiles (preferably arbalests) and anti-cav/anti armour units. Swordsmen would be simply outflanked and butchered by the charging cav. Sounds wrong? Well think about it. A man with a sword and shield standing on the ground is pretty much defensless against a cavalry charge, there's not alot he can do but wait and hope that he doesn't get his head split open in the first passage, once the melee starts he has a slight chance to unhorse the riders though the still have the height advantage, which is critical. For me this makes for an interesting tactical battle. Without this aspect I could simply bumrush my upgraded and teched up swordsmen at the enemy cav and not bother with any kind of unit selection or strategising.
Historically battles did last hours. Combat however didn't. That would only be 10-20 minutes tops. And no a man with only a sword and shield would not be defenseless against a horse.

[Myrddraal]

To be honest, I've never noticed the overlapping units problem.

This is because I've never overlapped my units, and neither has the AI.

Apart from it being a stupid situation to have that many units tucked into such a small space, what are the tactical repercussions. Are overlapping units very hard to beat or something?

FYI, when I said I think it represents the style of fighting of the era, I'm speaking of RTW in particular the 'barbarian' factions, where the distiction between individual units is very blurred, and not to the amount of men per square feet. However, the quote does raise an interesting point.

In many cases, that is how battles were fought. Shield walls, both in the Roman sense and in the later saxon and early medieval sense, were compact formations where individual flexibility is sacrificed for greater saftey. In 'shield wall battles' battles were often prolonged with few casualties until one side decided enough was enough.

This part of the quote: "so closely huddled that a man could hardly wield his sword or draw back his arm once he had stretched it out" is fairly accurate with respect to the shield wall. Anyway, this is irrelevant since it isn't represented in the TW system.

[Lord Adherbal]

But Cataphracts were created to fight pike phalanxes and not suffer huge casualties.

who told you such nonsense??


FYI, when I said I think it represents the style of fighting of the era, I'm speaking of RTW in particular the 'barbarian' factions, where the distiction between individual units is very blurred, and not to the amount of men per square feet. However, the quote does raise an interesting point.

barbarians fought in much loser formations then the romans, which was one of their weaknesses. They needed more room to swing their swords.


In many cases, that is how battles were fought. Shield walls, both in the Roman sense and in the later saxon and early medieval sense, were compact formations where individual flexibility is sacrificed for greater saftey. In 'shield wall battles' battles were often prolonged with few casualties until one side decided enough was enough.

shield walls are dense organised units, not mobs of men compressed into a tiny square uncapable of even moving their arms. And shields walls - and pike phalanxes - would be highly vulnerable to flanking attacks exactly because they could not easily turn around to face in another direction.

I can't believe how you don't see how important a serious combat penalty for overlapping units is. The only times this happened in history is when the losing side was being pushed back into a massive blob were no one could move, men would be trampled by their own allies and panic and confusion would spread in no time (ex: Cannae).

In RTW you place 10 cataphract units on top of eachother, hardly taking up any more space then if it was a single unit. Then charge the enemy head on, watch the horses jump over eachother in an endless wave with a continuous charge bonus, and victory is yours. Now explain to me how such a situation is anywere near realistic.

[Myrddraal]

I can't believe how you don't see how important a serious combat penalty for overlapping units is. The only times this happened in history is when the losing side was being pushed back into a massive blob were no one could move, men would be trampled by their own allies and panic and confusion would spread in no time (ex: Cannae).

In RTW you place 10 cataphract units on top of eachother, hardly taking up any more space then if it was a single unit. Then charge the enemy head on, watch the horses jump over eachother in an endless wave with a continuous charge bonus, and victory is yours. Now explain to me how such a situation is anywere near realistic.


...

Like I said, I haven't seen it affect gameplay myself, because I don't do it, and neither does the AI, so I was asking, not telling.

what are the tactical repercussions. Are overlapping units very hard to beat or something?

--------------

The historical note was an aside... :shrug:

this is irrelevant since it isn't represented in the TW system.

--------------


Now explain to me how such a situation is anywere near realistic.
You present a ridiculous situation, ask me to justify it, when I have no desire to do so, in response to a question...............

--------------

I must say I'm getting tired of this thread. This is meant to be a discussion forum. Not a place to list woes. If I can't even ask a question on the gameplay without Adherbal of all people jumping down my throat, then I see that discussion is not wanted.

This place resembles the backroom, with several groups of people, listing opinions, hardly reading what others post before re-stating the same oppinions again. I don't post in the backroom.

No offence to backroom posters, I'm sure there is a lot of good content in there (somewhere :wink:)

[econ21]

I've not noticed overlapping units being a problem either. I can see it could be a potentially big issue in multiplayer where competitive players will seize on anything to get an edge. (I've read of ahistorical tactics like phalanx "squares" and all-elephant armies that make me glad I've never tried MP.) But in SP, as Myddraal says, it does not arise much. It would be nice, I guess, but it's not a biggie IMO. I only remember it really kicking in MTW and STW with bridges.

Even if it is missing from bridges (which I am not sure it is - my boys seem able to hold the end of a bridge rather well), I am not sure it is a big deal. Bridges are still extremely advantageous to the human defender - players in an on-going PBM are wracking up enormous kill rates over bridge and ford defences. So I don't really feel they need more of an edge there. The fact that you can concentrate your army on tearing up one unit at a time as they cross is a major advantage. BTW, I don't agree with an earlier poster who said peicemeal approaches across bridges are an AI flaw - to some extent, it's a logical corollary of a bridge (it's narrow, so only one unit can get across at a time).

On a separate point the RTW AI seems rather less good at defending bridges than in MTW or, shudder, STW. They seem to let you get across unmolested a lot of the time. I don't attack across bridges a lot though, so I am not sure how accurate that observation is.

[Kraxis]

...

Like I said, I haven't seen it affect gameplay myself, because I don't do it, and neither does the AI, so I was asking, not telling.


--------------

The historical note was an aside... :shrug:


--------------


You present a ridiculous situation, ask me to justify it, when I have no desire to do so, in response to a question...............

--------------

I must say I'm getting tired of this thread. This is meant to be a discussion forum. Not a place to list woes. If I can't even ask a question on the gameplay without Adherbal of all people jumping down my throat, then I see that discussion is not wanted.
Well, to be honest you do fall right into a battle here. A person claims that under no circumstances should overlapping be included. Then a number of reason for this comes up. Accidentally you post your question just when the 'overlappers' feel they have presented their view with clarity.
Result: A belief that your are attacking that stance. And the response is somewhat more unpleasant than it should be.

It is about the timing really.

In RTW you can be lucky and press the enemy together, or fight him in a congested space (city square in a few places) and you can literally see unit upon unit upon unit fighting you, but you can't do anything about it as as soon as your guys approach them thee-four guys attack them... freely. Your losses might even be higher than theirs as a result, when the situation should have been reversed in the extreme.
Cannae is a good example of this, but so is a number of other instances where forces got congested and subsequently butchered. For isntance Watling Street in one such case where a hugely outnumbered Roman force managed to get the Celts to bunch up, then proceed to cut them down. And such instances can in fact be recreated in RTW. On bridges, in cities and a few times through tactics. That is more than enough for me to complain about.

[caravel]

But Cataphracts were created to fight pike phalanxes and not suffer huge casualties. Hence the horse armour. Should a cavalry unit take huge losses frontally charging a spear unit, yes. Should they always lose, no. That should depend on the units involved.

No. There was no cavalry designed to counter phalanxes. Any The formation had to be either loosened up, vollied with missiles, and charged hammer and anvil style or engaged by other infantry and flanked by shock cavalry. Cataphracts are simply eastern armoured cavalry, their armour is for protection against arrows, javelins and sword cuts. It doesn't magically allow them to charge a phalanx head on. The same applies to Western European Knights.


RPS models are absolute. If what you call the TW RPS system isn't then it isn't an RPS system.

Call it what you will. The TW community call it "rock, paper, scissors", as a loose definition.


By their nature they are iron clad and absolute. The phalanx was created to counter chariots. The western pike phalanx (developed by Phillip of Macedon) was created to turn the phalanx into a more offensively capable unit. Also the only pike block that was used to counter cavalry was the western one (which was re-used in the 16th century). The medieval Hawaians and the ancient Sumerians both developed densely packed blocks of men with pikes. Neither of whom would have ever seen a horse, let alone a group of men riding them into battle.

There is absolutely no conclusive evidence that the phalanx was created to counter chariots. There are many cases of phalanx vs phalanx battles throughout history.


Historically battles did last hours. Combat however didn't. That would only be 10-20 minutes tops. And no a man with only a sword and shield would not be defenseless against a horse.

It would depend on the conditions and size of the engagement. 20 minutes would be a minor skirmish though not a large scale engagment. Not defenseless, but at a disadvantage.

[Lord Adherbal]

If I can't even ask a question on the gameplay without Adherbal of all people jumping down my throat, then I see that discussion is not wanted.

whoa I'm not attacking you at all. I just don't understand why you say a penalty would not be necessary just because you don't use it and see it in SP. A lot of people stick to specific rules in SP to make the game more realistic and challenging but I'm sure we agree that it shouldn't be necessary to restrict one's creativity? Finding ways to beat the enemy is what makes a game fun. But if those methods are blatent unrealistic exploits it becomes plain annoying. Regardless of whether you use it or not, it's an exploit that needs fixing.

[Puzz3D]

This is meant to be a discussion forum. Not a place to list woes.
I disagree.

[AmbrosiusAurelianus]

Are we not glutten for punishment as we continue to purchase a product from a corporation that could careless about its fan base?

Admittly, I yet again (as being an optimist) and wanting for punishment in spin marketing and corporate denial of poor game play issues will buy MIITW in hopes CA has made a full redemption or not.....:shame:

I have a certain sympathy for this sort of point of view, although I wouldn't have expressed it in quite this way. I bought BI even though I told myself I shouldn't and might well buy M2TW in spite of the fact that I don't have much (I have some) hope that the nature of the gameplay will be considerably improved, because of past experience of the series.

I do however understand Captain Fishpants' frustration. CA does in fact listen to its fans (wait for the explanation!), it simply doesn't view its games in quite the same way that its fanbase generally does, and has different ideas of what makes a good game. That I think is the problem with which the community and the developers struggle.

My reason for stating this is as follows. In the Total War: Eras pack there is a bonus materials disc in which a CA spokesman (I cannot remember which one offhand) discusses the history of the series. He comments on the fact that the games have a rather "vociferous" fanbase with strong ideas about what they want, and states that CA does not always agree that the fans really want what they say they want even if they (CA) were to do it. I am paraphrasing a little here because I am writing from memory, so the words are not verbatim, but this is what was said.

Now, regardless of whether one agrees with this spokesman's view (and for the record I don't - most fans in my experience know exactly what they want and go to great pains to mod the games to achieve it!), this sort of statement does at least prove that CA are aware of the frustration of their fanbase, but have their own ideas about where the series should go.

I think that I agree with the earlier comment that people will be less inclined to but M2TW if the demo does not meet expectations than they were with RTW. Personally I am looking at the upcoming XIII Century game with a great deal of interest, and might seriously consider investing in it rather than M2TW, in spite of its obvious graphical inferiority to M2TW, if I have had a more favourable experience of its gameplay from the demo. This would be a shame, because I have been a loyal customer of CA's since Shogun, but there is little else that one can do.

If I were to give CA one piece of friendly constructive advice, it would be to make less the content of their future games hardcoded and more of it mod-able, so that people could adjust as much of the game to suit themselves as possible, and resolve as many of what they feel are issues as possible. This seems to me to be all that they can really do to bridge the gulf between what they feel is a good game and what the fanbase feel is a good game, and dispel some of the tension between the two.

Sorry for rambling on like this, but I feel that "whinging", (which the right of any customer after all!), is something that we all (fans and developers alike) have to deal with on the forums. Since it causes a lot of intense feeling on all sides and this thread it devoted to the topic, I thought I might as well put my two pence in!

[Lord Adherbal]

IMO RTW is VERY moddable. Maybe not easy to do so, but you can change almost everything. The only obvious thing you can't mod is AI.

But modding is no solution for those who are interested in MP. As mensioned many times before, it is not possible to convince a majority of players that a certain mod is "the best" and make them play it.

[AmbrosiusAurelianus]

Adherbal']IMO RTW is VERY moddable. Maybe not easy to do so, but you can change almost everything. The only obvious thing you can't mod is AI.

But modding is no solution for those who are interested in MP. As mensioned many times before, it is not possible to convince a majority of players that a certain mod is "the best" and make them play it.

I though you couldn't mod individual unit movement speeds, for example, only increase or decrease them for all units as RTR does? Also what about modding the CA phalanx mode for example? Many people would love to make it charge, or otherwise change it!

In respect of MP you might be right, but this is ultimately a fanbase problem not a CA one. You're never going to get everyone to agree on which mod is the best, but you're not going to get everyone asking CA to make exactly the same kind of multiplayer experience from the word go either.

I don't really see why it is necessary to get a majority of players playing the same mod in MP anyway. Like I said, I don't see a way other than modding to bridge the gap between what CA thinks is good and what individual groups of fans want. Sad but true! I'd love to hear another solution though...

[Puzz3D]

Adherbal']IMO RTW is VERY moddable. Maybe not easy to do so, but you can change almost everything. The only obvious thing you can't mod is AI.

Modding cannot fix deficiencies in the battle engine or the combat penalty the player gets in the auto-resolve or parameters that are not saved in a savegame.

[Myrddraal]

I though you couldn't mod individual unit movement speeds
You can, it just involves making different animation speeds for them. It's harder work than an across the board reduction in speed.


I disagree.
I have a question: is my contribution here wanted? As I understood it I was attempting to discuss the importance of issues raised, and from my own knowledge of programming discuss possible solutions.

It seems that genuine questions are not wanted (in fact they anger people). If these kinds of discussions are not wanted, then I'll leave you to increasing the length of your list.

[Lord Adherbal]

Modding cannot fix deficiencies in the battle engine or the combat penalty the player gets in the auto-resolve or parameters that are not saved in a savegame.

no, but unless a developer releases an SDK (which is very rare) there are always such restrictions. You can hardly say RTW isn't highly moddable because some things are still hardcoded. Unless you can give me another (RTS) game that is more moddable.

[hellenes]

Adherbal']no, but unless a developer releases an SDK (which is very rare) there are always such restrictions. You can hardly say RTW isn't highly moddable because some things are still hardcoded. Unless you can give me another (RTS) game that is more moddable.

Rome total war is not an "RTS"...
Its a TBS RTT hybrid, it has no real time strategy just tactics no basebuidling recource collecting clickfests....
Just a correction:book: ~:rolleyes:

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

To be honest, I've never noticed the overlapping units problem.

This is because I've never overlapped my units, and neither has the AI.

Apart from it being a stupid situation to have that many units tucked into such a small space, what are the tactical repercussions. Are overlapping units very hard to beat or something?



I'll try to answer less agressivly... :sweatdrop:

AI is coded not to overlap. Although sometimes it does, or at least it used to do in MTW (remember the Hord all in 1 square?). In MTW there were a pretty big nast negative modifier for stacking units on top of each other.

In RTW, I' ve seen MP battles with ridiculous tactic: you buy 20 cavalry units, stack them on top of each other, and charge whatever unit you face. It does not really matter. The power of your stacked unit will instantly rout that unit, you move to the next one, already scarred because 1: it faces 20 units, 2: there is nearby unit routing, and you rince and repeat.

Whether you resist that charge or not, the game is over in 2 min over a stupid gimmick attack.

If, when playing MP, you face that a bit too often, along with other silly gimmick formation (although, to be fair the all phalanx square you mentionned is really not a problem at all to defeat or even for gameplay), then honestly, the fun is gone.

I saw that a few times in MTW too, but it did not work at all, so after trying it, people gave up on it. It works in RTW, so you keep seeing it.



FYI, when I said I think it represents the style of fighting of the era, I'm speaking of RTW in particular the 'barbarian' factions, where the distiction between individual units is very blurred, and not to the amount of men per square feet. However, the quote does raise an interesting point.

In many cases, that is how battles were fought. Shield walls, both in the Roman sense and in the later saxon and early medieval sense, were compact formations where individual flexibility is sacrificed for greater saftey. In 'shield wall battles' battles were often prolonged with few casualties until one side decided enough was enough.

This part of the quote: "so closely huddled that a man could hardly wield his sword or draw back his arm once he had stretched it out" is fairly accurate with respect to the shield wall. Anyway, this is irrelevant since it isn't represented in the TW system.

I got to say I can't care less whether it's historic or not. Seriously you got to see once, and it's pretty clear it's not :laugh4:

But even if it were, there is really no fun in playing a game where someone would buy 20 cav, charge right away with all units stacked on one point and hope for the best.

Louis,

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I agree with almost all of Puzz's list, with a few exceptions, and a few elaborations, and a few questions for Puzz, which I've added below. I've also taken the liberty of removing or rearranging some of the points so that they aren't too repetitive.


Battle Speed

Make the battlespeed slow enough that you can coordinate 20 units
:thumbsup: - Basically reduce movement speeds across the board, reduce kill rates, and increase morale. It would seem that the current style of play is to get into battle as quickly as possible. Once battle has started, it isn't very long before one side breaks, and this tends to leave no time for maneuvering, before or during battle. This (for me and I think for a lot of players) is at least half, if not much more than half, the fun.

( Make the infantry running speed 1.66x the walk speed
Make the cavalry run speed 2x the infantry run speed
Make sure that units fight long enough so that hammer and anvil tactics work ) - are all included in the above, there's no need to repeat them.


It's a bit trickier than that.

Right after 1.2 was out, FF gave a last ditch effort into trying to mod this game along with CeltiberoMordred. We knew it was unlikely to succeed because of MPer reluctance to play mod... But well, it was that or giving up.
(and eventually, gave up we did)

It's a bit tougher than that. When you slow down the game, you also create unbalance in the fatigue rate; if speed is slowed, units walks more, they get tired more, they get penalty more, and actually rout FASTER... :no:

If you change the kill rate, at the end of the 1st melee, everybody is very tired.

In MP, in most games you have to defeat more than one army... It's a team game, so there is definitly a post melee phase where army get together and go another assault (at which point it's usually final... they're really too tired). When game is slowed down, and melee duration increased, basically, it's fully exhausted unit vs fully exhausted unit...
It's pretty tough to scale. Of course you can make all units very hardy, but then you make rushing more viable, so it migth also increase game speed.

Also, as part of the test made back then, what was stricking was not the speed itself, but the randomness of the breakpoint.
What I mean is; you fight 1v1 for test purpose, it's fine. You test again, it's fine... But once in 10 times, single unit will rout very early.
When you are playing 1v1 unit for mod testing purpose, it does not matter, but on a battlefied with up to 80 units on each side, one early break up is VERY LIKELY to happen... And then it all trickle down, one unit gone, one line/army gone, and the battle is done.



Battle MechanicsPut back the combat penalty when units overlap
:shrug: - I'm not sure this applied with RTW and the historical style of battle during that period.

Fix the group movement commands so they work so that you don't have to use drag all the time
:shrug: - I can't really comment because I'm not sure what the problem is, if you're talking about the fact that selecting a group and telling it to move will sometimes make the formation end up facing the wrong way, then :thumbsup:

I am not going to answer on point 1. Again.

I used to test group control during beta 1.2.
The major issue and complain back then was that, if you used specific formation, and that the AI thought about it as messy, then AI would rearrange it into a nice line. Or any other formation AI would see fit.
Of course if you stick with standard formation, you'll never notice it, but if you make odd line make up, then AI will correct it, whether you like it or not.

There were a few other oddities like running/ not running as a group when on a bridge or not. Minor stuff.


Reduce the uncertainty in combat results to the level it was in STW
:thumbsup: - It is true that in RTW, individual unit combat is too predicatable. Unit x will always beat unit y. If combat is more uncertain, problems occur, and dealing with these problems was part of the challenge and part of the fun.

I think you got it wrong, Puzz wrote REDUCE the uncertainty. I don't know what Yuuki meant, and he'll correct me if I am wrong, but it's a pointer to what I explained before; uncertain combat, and uncertain combat duration with 1 unit may not matter, but with the butterfly effect, in a 4v4 / 80 units *2 battle, odd results and fast rout is bound to happen...
I sure wish I was more certain the fight would be longer...

Louis,

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

You do realize that the consequence of that thread was a degrading of the multiplayer gameplay. Swords were given a hidden +1 attack vs spears, cost of spears was increased 15%, cost of cavalry knights was decreased 25%, and the cavalry was given some pushbacks (+6 attack on the next combat cycle which is a 300% attack bonus) against spearmen. All this done with no improvement to the morale of spears. Since swords were also cheap, they were given upgrades making the problem worse. The system only worked as a combined arms game with either no upgrades or uniform upgrades across all units. You can't play multiplayer with no upgrades because the morale is so low that the gameplay is a routfest. Creative Assembly refused to provide stepped morale settings as an option. After the MTW v1.1 patch multiplayer quickly deteriorated into cavalry and sword armies, and that remained to be the case despite fixing of the infinte charge bug and removal of battlefield upgrades in VI v2.01.


(for context, Yuuki is answering Econ21 on spears being overpowered)

To be honest Yuuki, in MTW 1.0, spears were too powerfull, to the point that it was sword that were not needed. Too bad the correction went overboard.

After 1.1, spears were basically useless. To bring spears into a MP game was one of the fastest way to say you were new to the game (or, if you were a vet, that you wanted some added challenge :laugh4: )

Louis,

[Puzz3D]

I have a question: is my contribution here wanted? As I understood it I was attempting to discuss the importance of issues raised, and from my own knowledge of programming discuss possible solutions.
Creative Assembly knows how to correct the gameplay, and how to correct every item on my list. There is no point of discussing a solution to a perceived problem if CA doesn't consider it to be a problem.


It seems that genuine questions are not wanted (in fact they anger people). If these kinds of discussions are not wanted, then I'll leave you to increasing the length of your list.
That list is my list, and there are a few things missing. Those are the things that bother me about the gameplay. I'm not inclined to shorten my list because you say some of the things are redundant or not important. Some of the things like exploding rocks and traits not working are there as indicators of what I see as generic problems in the games development such as too much emphasis on unrealistic effects and lack of program debugging.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

If something can be improved then it is not optimal. If RTW is best, why did my clan stop playing the game? Why did the FF clan stop playing?

I am not going to answer for the whole clan... Many got accounts here, so they'll answer or correct me if they see fit.

On top of the many reason you've listed and I'd basically agree with, I'd also add a few other points. It was, still is, not possible to play 4*4 large unit size game.
FF liked the large unit size because it helped a bit balancing out the game (normal size helps cavalry), and we like 4v4, because we're a team, we play as a team, and 1v1 is not our thing (ok, it was Crandaeolon specialty... But otherwise, no, nope, no thanks).
Once it became obvious 2v2 was the best we could hope for, a major part of the team game and team tactic appeal was gone for us.

We gave a last try after 1.2, with a modding attempt, we gave up on it... Either modding was too small to affect the gameplay enough, or to large and have unintended consequences.

From there, it became obvious the game was not for us anymore. :embarassed:

Louis,

[L'Impresario]

Honestly, I can't name more than a handful of clans that continued from VI to MTW, and even if they continued I guess they had a revamped player list.

Surely some had enough of the TW series after so many years, but I think the majority didn't.
I remember in the first weeks (maybe a month or two for some) quite a few people from the older eras would come out and state that the game was good and that unwillingness to adapt or try something different (or even lack of sufficient RTW games) was why there wasn't a higher turnout of past players.
I was seriously thinking this for a tenday or two, and maybe winning was preserving some of the belief that would become a general conviction: the game wasn't good for those that played the past versions. Saw an alarmingly large number of persons that went through the same process, the vast majority with the same results.

[Orda Khan]

Historically battles did last hours. Combat however didn't. That would only be 10-20 minutes tops.
Pardon?!?!.......erm ....no.

This part of the quote: "so closely huddled that a man could hardly wield his sword or draw back his arm once he had stretched it out" is fairly accurate with respect to the shield wall. Anyway, this is irrelevant since it isn't represented in the TW system.
Quite obviously not. Ammianus, as an officer and historian, wrote this to describe the desperate situation of the Roman troops. It is in fact irrelevant as you say, since RTW offers no combat penalty in a situation where it should; or more importantly where it once did. I repeat my previous statement. There are obviously those here who are relating SP battle experiences. In MP the situation was exploited to the full, just like any stat imbalance has been. The result is a terrible experience for those of us who appreciate the tactical battles that TW MP once offered. Regardless of whether one plays SP or MP, enough has been posted on 'SPAM' armies in RTW for any of us to be aware that things are not right. Kraxis has posted a particularly good point regarding situations where the AI may overlap units through no choice and actually gain an advantage where it should obviously be disadvantaged.

I am sure that no-one here deliberately sets out to cause bad feeling, I know I don't and I can assure any who may take offense that none is intended.

Because of the obvious differences (ie SP/MP), we should at least begin to understand both sides of the argument before we start to accuse anyone of anything. Somebody even mentioned 'pause', that function does not exist in MP. The AI is never going to exploit the game and bring a SPAM army. Unfortunately, this behaviour is normal in MP....'if it's there exploit it'. Yeah great!! As Louis says, regardless of whether it can be beaten, all the effort of hosting, army selection, deployment has been wasted.

wasted time is gone forever, you will never get it back
I loved this statement when I saw it first, it is so very true.

Whether we whinge or not, let's not lose sight of the fact we all love this game and all we want is for the game to be the best it can be. I am sure everyone must be aware by now that these gripes do not come simply from personal opinions

........Orda

[The Spartan (Returns)]

well i like CA. they made one of the best RTS games (imo the best) and always improved it. (dunno know from STW to MTW though)
but it would be nice if TW was more accurate or listened to our proposals. just look at EB or RTR........

[Myrddraal]

Only got a second to post so before I reply in more detail:

Thank you Louis, your posts are a breath of fresh air, and very useful to an MP newb who's never seen 10 cavalry units grouped as one. :bow:


Whether we whinge or not, let's not lose sight of the fact we all love this game and all we want is for the game to be the best it can be. I am sure everyone must be aware by now that these gripes do not come simply from personal opinions

~:cheers: I'll drink to that

[TosaInu]

Historically battles did last hours. Combat however didn't. That would only be 10-20 minutes tops.

The Nagashino battle, the one in Akira Kurosawa's movie Kagemusha, was not a 10 minutes bam bam boem. Guns did something there, but there was fierce hand to hand combat that lasted for hours (no, there was no break for tea). It might be true that individual combat between two men is over in a few minutes, but not the clash between two armies on a field (added to that is time for manoeuvring).


(for context, Yuuki is answering Econ21 on spears being overpowered)

To be honest Yuuki, in MTW 1.0, spears were too powerfull, to the point that it was sword that were not needed. Too bad the correction went overboard.

After 1.1, spears were basically useless. To bring spears into a MP game was one of the fastest way to say you were new to the game


He comments on the fact that the games have a rather "vociferous" fanbase with strong ideas about what they want, and states that CA does not always agree that the fans really want what they say they want even if they (CA) were to do it.

That's true Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe. I may read it wrong what was said AmbrosiusAurelianus. It looks to me that it's (also?) said that fans do not know what they ask for. When we look at the spears in MTW, there was first a MP voice that they were too strong and when they were fixed in a patch, the same voice said they were too weak. A sort of yo-yo effect.

Spears in MTW 1.0 were quite a force, and that was strongly noticed by many MP players. Proposals were made in the forum about how to fix it, but afaik/iirc/imho CA did not like any of the ideas. So, new ideas were proposed as we felt the problem.

The patch did fix the spears. But now many fixes were stacked on top of each other, which was oversteering. Old problems were still left in (battlefield upgrades), pushback added (?) and a new bug was introduced (swiping iirc, or was that VI 1.0?). Thus spears became obsolete for many players (note: not all and everyone, of course there are exceptions).

It's an unfair suggestion that fans do not really know what they want (sure, some change their mind every now and then :shame:, I'm not dutch enough to understand some demands requests either, and different people want different things). It's also unfair to state that CA does not listen, not tries to fix.

One key is communication, that's a 2-way (two, at least more than one). The other is allowing others their own type of fun. I have the impression that not everyone understands that.



In respect of MP you might be right, but this is ultimately a fanbase problem not a CA one.

You have a point, I agree. However, there's a seller and a buyer. It's unrealistic to have CA fix all problems for MP (just compare the marketshares),
but CA can reach a helping hand. And that can be done by introducing sliders and extensive stats (it doesn't have to be opened with an SDK, hardcoded AI routines can be manipulated by reading a parameter file). Proper CRC will prevent cheating.

Too complex for new players? No, doesn't have to. Put it in an advanced tab. New players just load a factory default. As easy as always.

Too many options for the others -> no agreement -> MP falls apart. Perhaps, it will when everyone sticks to his/her gun and enhances his/her dislike for people who wants something different (about everyone else). But now, many people who don't like the game as is, just quit too.

I have to learn the game again everytime I join one, because the settings will always be different. When, after a few months, a majority of MP players reach an agreement on how to play (I'm sure there are still people who can and will work together), CA could distribute such a stat/AI/slider setting as an official (cheatproof) plugin. There may be more than one: but what's the alternative? Forcing people to play what they don't like at all? More options means attracting more people and keeping them interested. I think this will counterbalance the splitting. I also think, that a few 'stats' will become mainstream. It takes two to tango: it may not be 100% your tango, but it is a nice tango.

New players happy as it's still factory simple. Hardcore MP players happy as they have their game. Modders happy as they can create even more. Me happy as I can play however I want and change as often as I like.

Needless to say that TW games have a strategical and a tactical part. Both deserve more flexibility to suit the needs of gamers.

[caravel]

I agree. There was a time when I wanted nothing less than a risk style map and mtw/stw style gameplay, though I've gotten over that. If the game is very customisable with many options for turning on and off features that people want/don't want, with many variables, there will be few complaints and a game to suit all. It's all about compromise. Personally I don't play multiplayer but I think it's important to the TW genre as a whole that solid multiplayer functionality is implimented without the problems of RTW being carried over.

[lars573]

Adherbal']who told you such nonsense??
An Iranian's graduate thesis in history. His was on the Parthians. Don't have a link. But he said that Cataphracts were an evolution of steppe nomad heavy cavalry. That it was a repsonse to Macedonian pike phalanxes. Or rather the Parthians use of only HA/Cata armies was. Can't recall much more than that.



Pardon?!?!.......erm ....no.
Er, um yes.


The Nagashino battle, the one in Akira Kurosawa's movie Kagemusha, was not a 10 minutes bam bam boem. Guns did something there, but there was fierce hand to hand combat that lasted for hours (no, there was no break for tea). It might be true that individual combat between two men is over in a few minutes, but not the clash between two armies on a field (added to that is time for manoeuvring).
Personal combat 2 guys slugging it out, rinse repeat. Didn't last long. There are limits to human endurance, even if you factor in adrenaline. 10 minutes was a low ball. But a melee wouldn't ever last more than an hour. TW condenses and abstracts a lot. Battles length is a one such condensation. Combat has to be shorter than it would have been. I would accept battles that were 15 minutes, with manoeuvring, but never 30. That's way to long.

Also optimal doesn't mean perfect. It means that a general good place has been reached and tweaking should be a priority.

[Myrddraal]

There are limits to human endurance

When two groups of 50 men fight, it doesn't become 50 duels, each over in a couple of minutes. It becomes two lines of men with most of the men behind and not in actual combat. Generally the men fighting are much more keen to stay alive than to kill. Combat did last longer than 15 minutes.

Let me quote Wikipedia on Medieval warfare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_warfare#Employment_of_forces


The infantry, including missile troops, would typically be employed at the outset of the battle to break open infantry formations while the cavalry attempted to defeat its opposing number. When one side gained superiority in cavalry (or had it at the outset of battle) it could attempt to exploit the loss of cohesion in the opposing infantry lines caused by the infantry conflict to hit the opposing infantry and attempt to rout it. This could often be difficult, and careful timing would be necessary for a direct cavalry assault, as an ordered infantry line would often be able to beat off the cavalry attacks. Pure infantry conflicts would be drawn-out affairs.

Gah! Not the best of quotes either, but I assure you, it's true.

[sunsmountain]

IMO RTW is VERY moddable. Maybe not easy to do so, but you can change almost everything. The only obvious thing you can't mod is AI.

The point is not moddability of game content or game settings, it's moddability of gameplay. By its nature, it is not very moddable. If you change one gameplay parameter (like walking/running speeds) you change all of them.

So either CA have got to
1. Get It Right the first time. Unlikely, since they didn't manage that with RTW, see the whingers.
2. Provide Different Settings for different style players. TosaInu is hinting at these, though it is more likely CA will release different settings in the "normal speed, double speed, triple speed" fashion rather than releasing the numbers to any value. If they do this, only 2 styles come to mind: Fast & arcade (see warcraft), or slow & tactical (see shogun). And perhaps 1 setting somewhere in the middle.
3. Leaving The Situation as is, annoying the whingers even further and doing :wall: for forum morale. Which cannot be :2thumbsup: for sales, no matter what the marketing folks tell you...

[Orda Khan]

When two groups of 50 men fight, it doesn't become 50 duels, each over in a couple of minutes. It becomes two lines of men with most of the men behind and not in actual combat. Generally the men fighting are much more keen to stay alive than to kill. Combat did last longer than 15 minutes.
Exactly. I can honestly say that I have never heard of a battle that was decided after fifteen minutes of fighting.
Battle of Sajo.
Battle comenced before dawn and went on late into the day.
Battle of Chalons.
This battle raged on through the afternoon and into late evening, in fact it became so dark that opposing troops became lost and struggled to find their own lines; Aetius being one of these.
Battle of Stamford Bridge.
Harold's Saxons were held up longer than fifteen minutes (all of which were melee) by one Viking berserker until he was speared from below.
Battle of Hastings.
Hard hand to hand and cavalry charges that lasted most of the day.
Cannae.
All those Romans killed in fifteen minutes?
Adrianople.
All those Romans killed in fifteen minutes?
What on earth is this fifteen minute claim?

......Orda

[R'as al Ghul]

Exactly. I can honestly say that I have never heard of a battle that was decided after fifteen minutes of fighting.

What on earth is this fifteen minute claim?

......Orda

Maybe that's because a skirmish (if we even can call it that) of 15 minutes isn't a battle and not worth reporting to the generations following.
The fifteen minute claim seems to come from a viewing experience of Hollywood films like Braveheart. Anything longer extends the attention span of the viewers too much and they become lost (like in one of those real battles that dragged on for hours). :wink:

[lars573]

Exactly. I can honestly say that I have never heard of a battle that was decided after fifteen minutes of fighting.
Battle of Sajo.
Battle comenced before dawn and went on late into the day.
Battle of Chalons.
This battle raged on through the afternoon and into late evening, in fact it became so dark that opposing troops became lost and struggled to find their own lines; Aetius being one of these.
Battle of Stamford Bridge.
Harold's Saxons were held up longer than fifteen minutes (all of which were melee) by one Viking berserker until he was speared from below.
Battle of Hastings.
Hard hand to hand and cavalry charges that lasted most of the day.
Cannae.
All those Romans killed in fifteen minutes?
Adrianople.
All those Romans killed in fifteen minutes?
What on earth is this fifteen minute claim?

......Orda
Way to miss the point. Actual melee didn't last more than an hour at a single stretch, any claims otherwise are romantic fantasy. I'm not claiming that there couldn't and wouldn't be multiple stretches though.

At Hastings the Normans charged the Saxon sheild wall dozens of times. Engaged for 10-15 minutes then withdrew to their own line. This was a deliberate strategy by William. To save the stamina of his own men, tire the Saxons, and hope to entice them to chase after his men. Thus breaking the sheild wall. Which they did. eventaually. Some times at about 5 PM a group of the armoured sword weilding professionals that Harold had placed as the front of the sheild wall from the center left broke the sheild wall and chased some of Williams men-at-arms. This was what William had been waiting for. He sent in his charging milites, which he had been saving for this. Sent them to charge the exposed fyrd. Which he though correctly wouldn't last long under direct attack.

[Fenix7]

..so when will be MTW 2 demo relseased?..

[TB666]

..so when will be MTW 2 demo relseased?..
No one knows.
Probably in October.

[Orda Khan]

Battle actually raged along the shield wall for ages, with fresh troops entering at intervals to relieve those who were exhausted. This was after the shield wall had stood up to archer attack for quite some time.
Towards the end of the day things looked ominous for William but the Saxon right broke discipline to chase the Breton contingent of Williams army who were routed. The Saxons found themselves in marshy ground at the foot of the slope and the Norman cavalry were sent to eliminate them. Nobody knows whether this was planned or just opportunity but at least the shield wall had lost its discipline. The archers were given orders to aim high, allowing the arrows to fall down on the Saxons from above. The Normans took the upper hand as gaps appeared and finally won the battle.
In all but very minor skirmishes, engagement lasted well over fifteen minutes. Not romantic fantasy; historical fact

.....Orda

[Puzz3D]

To be honest Yuuki, in MTW 1.0, spears were too powerfull, to the point that it was sword that were not needed. Too bad the correction went overboard.
Yes that's true, and AMP had already perfected a highly effective spear/sword army tactic within about 2 weeks of the game's release. The problem is that Creative Assembly was only willing to perform one playbalance adjustment to MTW. I don't think you can get the game balanced well enough with just one pass. MTW/VI got a total of three playbalance passes, and it's still not as well balanced as original STW which never had any playbalance adjustments made after it was released unless I'm forgetting something about the v1.12 patch. Bob Smith says CA has set the bar high. Well, it's not as high now as it was back in 2000 with regard to playbalance or battle mechanics.

Tosa is right that LongJohn did ask for playbalance suggestions prior to the release of VI. We asked for pavise xbow and arbs to be moved to the late era. Instead he moved both regular and pav arbs to the late era which left high era with weaker, shorter range xbows, and they had the pavise on top of that! This shows a misunderstanding of what was being asked. It was made very clear back when MTW first came out that ranged weapons were too weak.

[L'Impresario]

Tosa is right that LongJohn did ask for playbalance suggestions prior to the release of VI. We asked for pavise xbow and arbs to be moved to the late era. Instead he moved both regular and pav arbs to the late era which left high era with weaker, shorter range xbows, and they had the pavise on top of that! This shows a misunderstanding of what was being asked. It was made very clear back when MTW first came out that ranged weapons were too weak.

IMO that was a sound decision, making a distinction between crossbows and arbalester based on eras. Arbalesters were very powerful and could break archer/HA based armies much easier than xbows one at a slightly higher cost. At 15k the extra cost was practically nullified.
The cheap upgrades OTOH could turn Xbows into decent line units with the ability to shoot. Still, an LB army could be a better value for money if used correctly. As I 've said before, the problem with missiles is more tied to florin levels and consequently armour than the nature of the units themselves.

[Puzz3D]

I think you got it wrong, Puzz wrote REDUCE the uncertainty. I don't know what Yuuki meant, and he'll correct me if I am wrong, but it's a pointer to what I explained before; uncertain combat, and uncertain combat duration with 1 unit may not matter, but with the butterfly effect, in a 4v4 / 80 units *2 battle, odd results and fast rout is bound to happen...
I sure wish I was more certain the fight would be longer...
In RTW, the statistical uncertainty in the combat result has increased because the unit size was reduced and the combat cycle was lengthened. I haven't measured the length of the combat cycle in RW, but it's clearly much longer than the 1 second cycle of STW/MTW. This means many fewer combat cycles determine the winner which is going to increase the statistical noise. You won't notice it when one unit is much stronger than the other, but it's very apparent when the units are closely matched in strength.

Another thing that might be increasing uncertainty is the way striking at someone's back is being handled. In RTW, only the armor offers defense to the rear. If defensive skill or shield are the major contributors to that unit's overall defensive power, a strike to the back is almost a sure kill. This means that, in a one-on-one fight, once a unit gains a numerical advantage and can doubleteam some of the enemy souldiers it's probably going to win more quickly than it did in STW/MTW where a rear strike was a fixed increase in the chance to kill.

The problem too much uncertainty causes is it inhibits the player from making intelligent tactical decisions because he/she can't make as good an estimate of the probable outcome of those decisions. Some uncertainty is good, but too much can increase luck to the point that it overshadows skill.

[Puzz3D]

IMO that was a sound decision, making a distinction between crossbows and arbalester based on eras. Arbalesters were very powerful and could break archer/HA based armies much easier than xbows one at a slightly higher cost. At 15k the extra cost was practically nullified.
Both xbow and arbs were not in early era, so the archers can have their day there. I don't agree that archers were sufficient in high era because armor was high; late era being a lost cause. The archers in MTW were the same archers used in STW where you could kill more than a whole very valuable low armor unit such as warrior monks which had armor = 1.

I'm not concerned that archers would not be able to stand to arbs in high era. I'm concerned with the fact that ranged weapons were too weak, and that was the idea behind getting rid of the pavise. We had already tried to get archers improved without success because all we got out of that request were the confounded discounts on ranged units which were used by everyone to increase the melee capability of ranged units which is counter to the idea of combined arms gameplay. Once players realized that they could pump ranged units so that cav couldn't defeat them it was very hard to get them to stop using 15k even after the +2 morale that came in with VI.

I never did understand what happened to morale in MTW. We could see the 16 warrior monk exploit in STW that arose due to being able to sell off the honor 2 that units had when purchased. At first, the MTW system of purchacing units at valor=0 and a +4 cap on that looked great. However, it soon became apparent that the +4 morale, which the honor 2 of STW had provided, wasn't included in MTW. This is why people played at 15k, and the game turned into an upgrade fest especially when the ranged unit discounts were introduced in the MTW v1.1 patch. Total Miscommunication is what this game should be called.

[L'Impresario]

Both xbow and arbs were not in early era, so the archers can have their day there. I don't agree that archers were sufficient in high era because armor was high; late era being a lost cause. The archers in MTW were the same archers used in STW where you could kill more than a whole very valuable low armor unit such as warrior monks which had armor = 1.

Archer had their role in the high era as well. When you faced an army with cheap light cav or longbows, the slow firing rate of xbows could be a liability, esp. if there was plenty of room for the cav and maybe HA support. As I 've said plenty of times, the slow pavs that negate archers cause worries of another nature in maps where initial contact isn't "automatic", like in steppes for example.
I don't think that this is an issue where an agreement between players with different styles of playing can be reached easily. Definately there was room for improvement. Prices, SP & overall gamplay considerations, player perceptions, historical or pseudohistorical factors, all things matter. Inside the pav-xbow-archer/ HA scheme a different R/P/S could develop, but its intensity would still constitute a point of discussion. I also don't think that game length (an issue linked with ranged units in MP) is something that can be agreed upon by the developers for each player category.
In STW you had significantly different consideration for that line of questions. There is a historical context and some game-engine changes/updates each time, and comparisons between STW and MTW on such issues can't help in resolving the "missile debacle" (according to some heh) beyond a certain limit.

Now, if one is to mention that rush armies were successful in 10k, then I'd refer to my previous points and answer that this isn't a universal truth for VI as a game and a setting differs from another. I don't remember any CA developper claiming that there is an optimal setting for VI MP, I could be mistaken ofcourse.

[TosaInu]

There was an move arbs to late lobby (shows again that people want different things):

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=258923&postcount=13 point 8.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=258925&postcount=15
Moving arbalest to late is a great move.

Then I half changed my mind in https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showpost.php?p=258928&postcount=18 after reading CBR's argument in #17 where he says:



So if no changes are done #I would suggest putting crossbows in early just to have some missilepower in that era. Pav crossbows in High #perhaps arbalester too and then move pav arb to late.



Morale is indeed, as mentioned again and again but it can't be mentioned enough, a very important issue. STW offered morale off and on: that was a huge gap of some 12 (?) points. Simply playing at higher money levels did unlock large amounts of other trouble, as honour that was purchased, included not only morale but also attack and defense bonuses that swamped TW RPS system. A simple 2 points step morale slider there, would have provided the right game (STW!).

[Puzz3D]

Now, if one is to mention that rush armies were successful in 10k, then I'd refer to my previous points and answer that this isn't a universal truth for VI as a game and a setting differs from another. I don't remember any CA developper claiming that there is an optimal setting for VI MP, I could be mistaken ofcourse.
For MTW v1.1, LongJohn said 12k would be about right for a 1v1. He did agree that this might not be the same for team games. My tests in STW showed a maximum outnumbered penalty of -14 morale, and a rout point of -24 morale. In MTW v1.1, I believe the maximum outnumbered penalty is about the same, but the rout point is -16 morale. A yari samurai in STW had a base morale of 2, but you purchased it at honor 2 which made its morale = 6. In MTW, spears had either morale = 0 or morale = 2, and you purchased them at valor 0. So, there was no increase over the base morale which means an STW yari samurai had a 30 point cushion before it would rout while an MTW spear has either a 16 or 18 point cushion. In VI, this was increased by 2 points, but it's still a lot less than in STW.

In STW, an honor upgrade cost 40% of the unit's current value, and this was the same for a valor upgrade in MTW v1.0 which had the same effect of +1 attack, +1 defense and +2 morale in both games. However in MTW v1.1 and thereafter, the cost of valor upgrades was increased to 70%. So, in addition to the morale of spears being lower in MTW, the cost of raising it is greater. My position is that a unit is useless if it runs away too easily. In MTW v1.0, spears were upgraded more because they cost less and the valor upgrade cost less. In MTW v1.1, the 15% increase in the cost of spears coupled with the 75% increase in the cost of valor made the spears nearly twice as expensive while the cav knights became 25% less expensive and were used with no valor upgrades (since their morale is 8) so were unaffected by the increase in the cost of valor.

In the end, I stopped playing MTW/VI because only two of the four components (spear, sword, ranged, cavalry) were being used, and to counter it you had to use the same army. This is interesting because LongJohn is on record as saying the gameplay objective was that all armies have counterarmies. I think MTW/VI ultimately failed in this regard because the battlefield gameplay wasn't balanced well enough.

[sunsmountain]

So you're saying that you need Rock, Paper, Scissors (RPS) for multiplayer lastability and good AI for single player lastability.

BOTH are lacking in RomeTW. You can mod the game such that RPS works (and then cry hard enough until they patch the game), but you cannot mod the AI enough for it to work. Therefore, it is crucial that CA spend most of their extra time on the AI.

[Furious Mental]

The troops which broke from the English shield wall at Hastings to pursue the Normans when they initially retreated after the first attack, and then later carried out their feigned retreats from noon through the afternoon, were most likely to be fyrdmen, not housecarles. Most historians believe Harold's strategy when battle began was to simply defend the position he had chosen. The housecarles, being a professional corps who tended to be found surrounding the King or earls, were less likely to contravene Harold's orders. Even if they did, they are less likely to have pursued the Normans in a disorderly fashion and therefore get wiped out. In fact some have speculated that the hasty formation of the English army meant the housecarles were concentrated in the center and that this allowed fyrdmen on the flanks to be drawn out of the shield wall, and attribute the Norman victory to this.

As far as stamina goes, to say that "battle raged along the shield wall for the whole day" is an overstatement in so far as it suggests that everyone was going at it for the entire duration of the battle. There were only two times when the whole body of both armies clashed- at the beginning and the very end. What happened in the interval was skirmishing and a couple of instances where the Norman cavalry drew significant portions of the English forces out and then rode them down with relative ease. Probably part of the reason why the English lost in the end is that they had been fighting sporadically for the whole day while the Norman infantry had likely just been standing around doing nothing after their first failed attack in the morning, therefore the former would have been more fatigued. Also the rout of the Bretons happened after the first Norman assault (in fact it caused the assault to collapse), not at the end of the day.

On the subject of the Battle of Hastings, it has a lesson (actually plenty but heres just one) for the programming of the AI in M2TW: if the AI faces a player on a strong position on a hill, it should skirmish with missile troops and cavalry and try to draw the player's forces down from the hill.

[Lord Adherbal]

if the game's MP balance is as bad as it was in RTW then MP is dead for good. Stop suggesting SP is more important then MP just because you don't play it.

[Puzz3D]

You can mod the game such that RPS works (and then cry hard enough until they patch the game), but you cannot mod the AI enough for it to work. Therefore, it is crucial that CA spend most of their extra time on the AI.
You cannot mod the battle mechanics either. Also, if they are going to keep using the rock, paper, scissors battle AI that they are currently using, they should make sure the rock, paper, scissors works.

[Spino]

Adherbal']if the game's MP balance is as bad as it was in RTW then MP is dead for good. Stop suggesting SP is more important then MP just because you don't play it.

In the grand scheme of things SP is more important than MP because the developers have said as much over and over again ad nauseum. The MP feature of the TW games has never been given the attention and resources it requires for maximum stability & balance because the overwhelming majority of TW gamers play in SP mode. If I recall correctly MP was incorporated into the TW series as a bonus feature outside of the original design plan which is why it has been treated like a red headed stepchild by the developers since Shogun was first released. CA gave TW's MP feature just enough love and nourishment to let it function and grow (slowly) with each iteration of the series but not nearly enough to let it realize it's full potential. Given the enormous popularity of MP games these days you have to wonder why CA hasn't made a greater effort to give TW MP a thorough going over. I fail to see how a strong MP component would adversely affect sales.

[sunsmountain]

Given the enormous popularity of MP games these days you have to wonder why CA hasn't made a greater effort to give TW MP a thorough going over. I fail to see how a strong MP component would adversely affect sales.

It's typical that both of RTW's weaknesses fall in the same category. Poor battlemap AI and campaign map AI reduces value/lastability of the game, and poor multiplayer balance does exactly the same.

It's also ironic that the poor AI makes the game easier (winning) which stimulates total war MP while the poor MP balance detracts from it. So in effect, the two are counterproductive, as far as MP is concerned.

Friends i know who picked up and dropped MTW typically never joined MTW in MP. While those who picked up RTW almost always at least tried its MP.

[SpencerH]

Way to miss the point. Actual melee didn't last more than an hour at a single stretch, any claims otherwise are romantic fantasy. I'm not claiming that there couldn't and wouldn't be multiple stretches though.

At Hastings the Normans charged the Saxon sheild wall dozens of times. Engaged for 10-15 minutes then withdrew to their own line. This was a deliberate strategy by William. To save the stamina of his own men, tire the Saxons, and hope to entice them to chase after his men. Thus breaking the sheild wall. Which they did. eventaually. Some times at about 5 PM a group of the armoured sword weilding professionals that Harold had placed as the front of the sheild wall from the center left broke the sheild wall and chased some of Williams men-at-arms. This was what William had been waiting for. He sent in his charging milites, which he had been saving for this. Sent them to charge the exposed fyrd. Which he though correctly wouldn't last long under direct attack.


And wouldnt it be great to play a game where one had to use such tactics instead of RTW's move forward with missle fire, engage with spears, flank with cav and rout. Repeat battle ad naseum.

[CBR]

And wouldnt it be great to play a game where one had to use such tactics instead of RTW's move forward with missle fire, engage with spears, flank with cav and rout. Repeat battle ad naseum.
Sounds awfully complicated...


CBR

[SpencerH]

lol For some I suppose ...

But then there are also those of us who've seen the rules for (and played) SPI's "Wellingtons Victory".

[Orda Khan]

The troops which broke from the English shield wall at Hastings to pursue the Normans when they initially retreated after the first attack, and then later carried out their feigned retreats from noon through the afternoon, were most likely to be fyrdmen, not housecarles.
Quite probably so, I never said otherwise. IIRC the huscarles more or less fought to the end alongside Harold's body.



As far as stamina goes, to say that "battle raged along the shield wall for the whole day" is an overstatement
You misquoted me

Battle actually raged along the shield wall for ages, with fresh troops entering at intervals to relieve those who were exhausted.
My point being that there was no 15 minute melee.


Also the rout of the Bretons happened after the first Norman assault (in fact it caused the assault to collapse), not at the end of the day.
Towards the end of the day is not the end of the day. The Bretons did not rout early in the battle.

The tiredness of Harold's army probably had a lot to do with the fact that they had marched the length of the country, fought a battle, then repeated the feat

.....Orda