So, is 1.2 actually good enough?

[Satyr]

I quit playing a long time ago and was wondering if 1.2 was actually good enough not to frustrate the heck out of me like 1.1 did?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I'd say yes. Diplomacy is so much better and other things are generally improved. 2H bug is fixed, and while it might unbalance things a little, it's far improved.

[FactionHeir]

Well, except for the retraining bug, the outrageously silly siege/sally AI, the nonsensical auto-pick of heirs, the diplomatic oddities, the lack of unit balance and only very slightly improved 2H unit animations, I would say 1.02 is playable.
A bit better with various fix modifications, but the AI, retraining bug and heir issue cannot be fixed by modders without violating the exe/hardcode. And of course the random port blockades.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Retraining bug?

[FactionHeir]

The one where:
1. if you load a game where a unit is still in retraining and do not remove/reenter it
2. if (sometimes) you build a building giving a local experience bonus to a unit type trained
3. if you add/remove a unit repeatedly from train/retraining
4. or even sometimes randomly occuring

All unit training facilities you own will churn out experience 0 units (either trained or retrained) until you fix it by removing all units from training AND retraining queues and perform an action that resets the seed (i.e. spying) and then end turn.

[econ21]

I quit playing a long time ago and was wondering if 1.2 was actually good enough not to frustrate the heck out of me like 1.1 did?

Probably not, given your previous hostility to the title.

The main change in 1.2 is fixing the shield and two hander bugs. They had become gamekilling bugs to me, but that was probably more because I knew they existed than because they really ruined the gameplay. With those fixes, kill rates generally fall a little, poor units (spears + 2H) become a little better. It feels more realistic as a result.

The other big thing I have noticed is that diplomacy has been tweaked, so that even on VH, relations with allies don't seem to worsen over time and in fact seem to improve. If you want a game where you don't have to fight every neighbour (without spending lots of florins and effort on diplomacy), then 1.2 allows that.

Beyond that, it's largely the same game. The tactical AI is not that different. I find it good enough, although we have disagreed about that before and it's certainly not stellar.

The big weakness for me is the strategic AI - I started a AAR in the Throne room to try to prove that the game could be challenging. However, the surprising thing I discovered were that nearly all the battles I fought were ones where I was attacking at favourable odds. The strategic AI just does not give the AI a chance. It desperately needs more coding to keep small armies out of danger and to only attack when the odds are well in its favour.

[Didz]

The one where:
1. if you load a game where a unit is still in retraining and do not remove/reenter it
2. if (sometimes) you build a building giving a local experience bonus to a unit type trained
3. if you add/remove a unit repeatedly from train/retraining
4. or even sometimes randomly occuring

All unit training facilities you own will churn out experience 0 units (either trained or retrained) until you fix it by removing all units from training AND retraining queues and perform an action that resets the seed (i.e. spying) and then end turn.
Sorry, that makes no sense to me, can you go over it again but with a bit more explanation.

[Skott]

1.2 did fix some things but not all things. It was a step forward but not a huge jump or anything like that. IMHO its the mods like LtC that truly make this game playable and enjoyable enough to keep me playing it. The modders were fixing things and getting better play balance than anything CA did.

CA is going to have to make a huge stride forward with Kingdoms or they're gonna start losing fan base I think. They got really sloppy with M2TW IMHO. Bugs so obvious a 5 year old could point it out. And there were alot of them too. Play balance testing was needed more too I think. If they repeat this in Kingdoms its gonna hurt them badly I think.

[FactionHeir]

Sorry, that makes no sense to me, can you go over it again but with a bit more explanation.

Basically you know that some buildings give a local or global bonus to experience for certain units trained. Say a barracks giving armoured sergeants that are normally trained with an experience of 0 now getting trained with experience 1.
This bug, when the conditions I listed occur, causes those sergeants who should be trained at experience 1 to come out at experience 0 and thus available to retraining.
If you retrain them, they still stay at experience 0 but burn up the florins you spent on retraining (which you didn't even have to spend if the bug didn't make them 0 to start out with). You can keep doing that and lose florins that way.
This of course applies mainly to cavalry, which can, with the right buildings, be trained at experience 4 or higher. Getting an experience 0 cavalry due to this bug and then spending some 600 florins for retraining that does nothing and eats up your queue in addition is a very annoying and, for me, game breaking bug.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

That's ugly, though I haven't noticed it.

Retraining bug notwithstanding, I'd say 1.2 makes MTW2 better than BI 1.6 made RTW. Actually playable and pretty fun.

Of course, I've been tweaking 1.2 with my own changes (stolen off these boards and TWC) and have had some improvements and some frustrations.

[Didz]

If you retrain them, they still stay at experience 0 but burn up the florins you spent on retraining (which you didn't even have to spend if the bug didn't make them 0 to start out with). You can keep doing that and lose florins that way.
OMG! I think I had/have that bug in my Moorish Campaign but didn't realise it.

In Marrakesh I built a Hashashim's Guild and trained 4 groups of Hashashim there. The first group was trained and sent to join the army at Tunis. The other three were not completed until after the Guild had been upgraded and for some reason seemed to need retraining every turn so they never left the city.

I must have paid for their retraining four or five times before they finally stopped demanding it.

So, how consistent is this bug?
Does it always happen when the conditions are met?
and is the solution you mention (e.g. removing all units from training and retraining, and resetting the seed) reliable?

Also can you explain the 'resetting the seed' concept in a bit more detail, I just want to ensure I understand it if its necessary to resolve the problem.

[Shahed]

I quit playing a long time ago and was wondering if 1.2 was actually good enough...

No.

[crpcarrot]

well depends on whats fustrating you

if u play VH n strat map and go all out to get the 50 provinces within 10 turns and u find a diplomacy silly you wont find any improvements.

battles are better shuild units can stand and take the charge while the other units work around them for tactical advantage. 2h kill quick but die too quickly for higher end 2 handers. i enjoy the game very muchbut thats subjective

[FactionHeir]

OMG! I think I had/have that bug in my Moorish Campaign but didn't realise it.

In Marrakesh I built a Hashashim's Guild and trained 4 groups of Hashashim there. The first group was trained and sent to join the army at Tunis. The other three were not completed until after the Guild had been upgraded and for some reason seemed to need retraining every turn so they never left the city.

I must have paid for their retraining four or five times before they finally stopped demanding it.

So, how consistent is this bug?
Does it always happen when the conditions are met?
and is the solution you mention (e.g. removing all units from training and retraining, and resetting the seed) reliable?

Also can you explain the 'resetting the seed' concept in a bit more detail, I just want to ensure I understand it if its necessary to resolve the problem.

The conditions I posted are as far as I know the only triggers for this bug. The fact that some randomness is involved doesn't make life easier. Basically if you ever retrain a unit and notice it didn't get the exp bonus it should and it is retrainable again, you should finish your turn up to the point you'd press the end turn button but instead save the game, load it, empty/refill all training queues (ALL), go any action that reseeds (using an assassin, using a spy, using a diplomat/princess and actually get a treaty, using a princess to charm, autoresolve battle, normally fought battle, denouncing a heretic) and then end your turn. Normally it will be fixed then, but given the fact that you might be building a building that gives a local experience bonus for units trained, you may have to repeat this every single turn to ensure you won't have to mindlessly retrain. Its safe to do it even when you currently don't have the problem to prevent it for at least a turn.

[Lusted]

Or the easiest way to get round the bug is just to do all your actions for the turn, then add the units to retraining and it works fine.

[FactionHeir]

Well except if you finished a local experience granting building that very turn. Then you got a chance of getting that bug.

[andrewt]

If you finish a local building that turn, does it affect just the local settlement or everything?

[FactionHeir]

Afaik everything. The building thing is more or less random though and it doesn't happen each time you finish such a building.

[Barkhorn1x]

Or the easiest way to get round the bug is just to do all your actions for the turn, then add the units to retraining and it works fine.

This is good advice as you really cannot combat the randomness completely so you must do what you can to trigger "resets" as often as possible.

This one needs to be fixed CA.

[Xehh II]

This might not have anything to do with this but I saw something about the 2 handed units attack animation being too slow, why do you say this? I think that it's good, I mean they do have to swing a big weapon around take billmen for example, I think it would be a slow weapon to use so it makes sense that the opponent would have time to block/counterattack.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

@FactionHeir

Actually the reloading isn't the cause but saving at the end of a turn (not auto-save). If you ad an unit to the training queue and right click on its card you will see the XP upgrades are there. If you save the game next and then look again the upgrade is gone. All buildings that give an experience upgrade suffer from this bug: horse-breeder, sword-smith, woodsmen, tourney field

[FactionHeir]

I can save at the end of my turn just fine after fixing my queues via the method I proposed. Next turn I get my properly trained units.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Well. If I save at the end of a turn with full training queues (three units) and hit end turn, all I have next turn is green units. If I save first, then train them and hit end turn I get experienced units. I posted a English save game in Sinans thread. If I want triple gold Hospitaller knight in Pamplona(HQ) or Sophia (masters) I have to use my method. Same with archers everywhere.

[johnmcd]

I agree MTW2 is too sloppy and will cost good will - it feels like the budget was spent on graphics, which when you're courting a strategy fan base is a shocking understanding of priorities.

[Didz]

Thats true.

I've just been playing the demo of Railroads and came to exactly the same conclusion. I loved Railroad Tycoon, but Railroads is all graphic's and no gameplay.

[Burns]

1.2 is alright. Seems to have done mostly what community wanted (aside from the MP guys).

[anders]

I dont have 1.2 yet, but from discussions here i understand that dis. feudal knights is the supreme infantry unit, besting later knights, two handers and pike alike.

is this true?

[Kobal2fr]

Yes and no. They're not better in a fight than later knights, but then later knights are usually much more expensive for a marginal upgrade, so you get more bang for your feudal buck so to speak.

As for 2 handers and pikes, well, they don't have the same role as knights on the battlefield, so saying "DFKs beat them" is a bit unfair.

2-handers kill *way* more guys on the charge than footknights do, but they don't last as long in a protracted fight, making 2 handers better at flanking, and knights better at holding the line or taking/defending walls.

And pikes... well, pikes are a bit whacky, they insist on closing to sword range instead of pushing everybody back soooo :sweatdrop:.

[a_ver_est]

It's great to see that now you cannot build large armies of high tech units, it seems that the number of them available in the recruit queue are tunned down.

[Lusted]

Anyone else noticed that Inqusitors can no longer target faction leaders, heirs or people on crusades in 1.2.

[FactionHeir]

<inquisitor_target_crusades bool="false"/>
<inquisitor_target_leaders bool="false"/>
<inquisitor_target_heirs bool="false"/>


Yeah, but I turned the leader and heir thing back on personally. Inqs have been toned down generally by lowering their base chance and their per skill chance. Makes them almost never target witches and heretics either because their chance of winning is too low.

[dopp]

It's great to see that now you cannot build large armies of high tech units, it seems that the number of them available in the recruit queue are tunned down.

Really? The recruitment pools seem to be the same.

[FactionHeir]

They are the same according to the buildings file.

[Lusted]

Yeah, but I turned the leader and heir thing back on personally. Inqs have been toned down generally by lowering their base chance and their per skill chance. Makes them almost never target witches and heretics either because their chance of winning is too low.

I just increased their max chance float to make up for it.

[Foz]

A bit of speculation on the seemingly "random" happening of the training bug when you build a bonus-granting building. Let's assume that this experience problem occurs when the game tries to retroactively apply an XP bonus to a unit that's already in a queue. In the main case, that would mean when you load a saved game that has units in the queue, the game likely sets up the queue before it applies the XP bonus. Then when it tries to do so, the glitch happens.

Now how about the building problem? Well, let's say the game pumps out the upgrade building before it deals with any units that are currently in the queue. Then, if you have a unit that should come out with higher XP in the queue the turn when that building completes, the game would again try to retroactively change that unit to receive the upgrade, but it instead would cause the glitch. So basically I'm guessing that if you are training a unit that should receive the upgrade on the turn when the new building will complete, then you get the bug.

This would likely hold true for faction bonuses as well, meaning you have to be careful about your queue if you're accepting a guild building upgrade, as some include unit bonuses. If you normally queue cautiously, though, then your unit queues should typically be empty when the guild upgrades are offered at the beginning of the turn, so it is an easily avoided problem at least where guilds are concerned.

Note that I haven't tested this, it's just a thought from reading the thread. Perhaps FactionHeir would want to? I'm at work for a while, so cannot do any testing ATM, but I know some people at least are really motivated to pin this one down so it can be avoided since it's annoying to clear the status once it triggers, so I wanted to get the thought out there.

[FactionHeir]

Probably won't be till the weekend. Practicing M2TW abstinence to get my work up to schedule. Although being on the forum doesn't really help with that now.

[Miracle]

Just did some testing and found that crossbows work better now.

There's a noticeable difference between 12 and 14 missile attack, in contrast to 1.1 where the effective xbow missile attack was capped at 10 (according to Carl).

Aventuriers and Genoese Xbows can now do more damage per volley at medium range than even Musketeers.

On a side note naphtha bombs get a new exploding animation upon impact. Sure makes using them a lot more satisfying.

I wonder what other neat improvements 1.2 has up its sleeves.

[dopp]

Since the whole crossbow unit fires each volley rather than just 33% of a musket unit (in fire-by-rank mode), it's no wonder that crossbows do quite a bit more damage.

[Miracle]

Since the whole crossbow unit fires each volley rather than just 33% of a musket unit (in fire-by-rank mode), it's no wonder that crossbows do quite a bit more damage.
I always deploy gunpowder troops in a two line dense formation. Each volley kills about 8 men/7 horses regardless of range. The overall rate of fire is slightly slower than crossbows.

I tested a two line dense formation of Aventuriers vs. DFK's. The initial volley killed only about 4 men. As the DFK's drew near one volley managed to kill 11 men. The DFK's were down to about 30 men before they reached melee range and were slaughtered.

Next I tested Arquebusiers vs. DFK's in a similar fashion. The DFK's were whittled down to about 35 men before they reached melee. Realistically they would have routed but since they were the general's unit they did not. The Arquebusiers took massive casualties before (barely) managing to beat them off due to the enemy general's death. If he didn't die so quickly I would have lost the battle.

So it appears that Aventuriers are slightly more effective than Arquebusiers in physical missile damage against advancing armored infantry. They may lack gunpowder's fear factor but they make up for it in melee prowess.

In pure ranged duels gunpowder troops are still superior. Their accuracy does not diminish with range and they will promptly slaughter longbowmen and pavise xbows alike.

[SpencerH]

Hmmmm, I thought I'd drop in and see whether M2TW was worth buying yet (given the bugs etc of RTW and what appeared to be a focus on form rather than substance in the pre-release hype I was determined to wait). So I guess I made the right choice?

Maybe I'll wait for Kingdoms to go 'gold' and drop in price. Pity really, I bought a PC with a decent VC s I could play M2TW.

[Lusted]

Kingdoms is the expansion which will be out in the Autumn sometime, i heard a September release date posted on gamespot or something.