Rant - Experiment to see how hard game is... [Archive]

Kadagar_AV

06-28-2007, 07:27

So how hard is this game really? *Long rant, summary at the botttom*

Bugs and bad gameplay aside, the most frustrating aspect for me is the lousy AI. I mean, is it even POSSIBLE to lose a round?

Come to think of it, through medieval, rome, and now medieval 2 I dont think I ever did anything but win, most other games (all?) have some sort of learning curve to beat the game, not so here, in my oppinion.

Soooo, I decided to test it.

I took a friend who has NEVER played any Total War game, and let him play a campaign on VH/VH.

He got to read the manual before starting, but that's it.

So, conditions:

He decided to play Denmark (only cause we're swedes and somehow the idea of rampaging vikings just touch our souls).

As said, on very hard / very hard seetings.

advice OFF!

Long campaign rules.

patch 1.2

About him, 24 years old, X military, pretty smart. Admittedly he's smarter than the average player, but hey, this game is designed for these kind of players, from the look of it.

So how did it go?

* At first he built pretty damn randomly, only in the late stage of the game did he begin to steer provinces in different directions.

* He quickly took Hamburg as he thought he might need some distance between his capital and border.

* Her then followed up by taking Sweden and Norway.

* Now, a crusade to Jerusalem started, and he sent a general away, but quite some turns after the crusade was started. He had barely reached Byzantine space when France took Jerusalem. This army he then used to march through the Byzantine Empire, the Turks, the Egyptians and the Russians. He got tired of city fights as they were bugged beyond repair, so the strat he used was to siege a city, and autoattack it the next turn. Reinforcements he got from mercenaries, and the constant sacking of the cities and forts meant a HUGE and steady supply of cash for the whole kingdom.

* With these money, he simultaneosly jumped over to the brittish islands, and finished off england and scottland (france had taken englands mainland provinces). He got excommed, but it didnt bother him much.

* He then started attacking Russia, taking the coastal provinces and working his way inland... Then the golden horde showed up... He retreated, and gave all of the russian provinces to the Horde, in return for alliance and them attacking poland (then his enemy).

* As Poland and the Golden Horde happily killed eachother, he collected funds and did a crusade.... he then very swiftly took on Both poland and the Golden Horde at once, by now he found the game so easy he didnt even bother fighting them one on one.

* He did VERY little diplomacy....

* He finished game objectives in some 190 turns or so.

* About the battlemap, in the battles he had huge problem at first with moving his units orderly. He gave up on heavy cav alltogether as he just couldnt bother to work out how a charge should work.

* Cityfights, as mentioned, he gave up on playing alltogether out of boredom (in his first fight defending, the comp AI just stood there after one failed ladder attempt, so he had to wait for the time limit to end... Very frustrating!

* He won just about every battle, even the first when he didnt really know how to controll the units.

* In one of his last battles, the pre-battle-meter was clearly against him, and yet at the end he had a heroic victory, with 1300+ men killed or captured, and some 40 men lost on his side... And NO he didnt use any bugs or cheats, just pure tactics (something the computer clearly lacks).

If a total n00b can beat this game on the very hardest settings the first time he tries it, what does it say about the game? He built pretty randomly, didnt bother with heavy cav, didnt use his princess at all, nor his merchants.... only built one assassin, and two diplomats... a LOT of priests though.

So what's my point? Well, the game is just to easy. It doesnt really give you that feeling of "reward" when you win a battle or the game.... You just feel like a complete loser those very few and odd times you do lose a battle.

Next I plan to test it on my semi-retarded cousin, 12 years old...

What can be done about this? The problem, as I see it, is that the game is much more complex than the computer AI can handle. This is quite ok in a player vs player game, but not in a primarily single-player game like this.

All the variables and options means that human players just auto-win, as there are usually soooooo many ways to handle situations.

So to make the AI have even a small chance, they'd need to either make the game less comples so the AI can handle it, OR cheat even more than now and give the compuers outrageous bonuses, but that's not very fun either:wall:

Any ideas? Points? Rants?

Summary: A person who has NEVER before played a Total War game, beat it first try on the hardest settings, quite easily too I might add. He played as Denmark, and finished the long campaign in some 190 turns. He is smarter than the common man, and has been in the army.

My 2€

Tambarskjelve

06-28-2007, 08:50

Good post, and a fun read :2thumbsup:

Your friend had a few things going for him, his much trumpeted superior intelligence,
and more importantly, a knowledge of basic tactics, like flanking, as valid today as a 1000 years ago.
He also picked the right faction for a n00b, the Danes being in a safe starting position, with access to sweden, the holy grail of economic development. His initial strategy was also by the book.

However this only confirms what we know, it simply isn't challenging in a traditional way, so we need to add houserules and play in a certain way to have fun. And fun being the operative word, I still get tons of it from M2

hisn00bness

06-28-2007, 10:22

besides using mods such as lusted's; a very simple trick you can do is these two things:

- triple the kings purse value in descr_strat.txt
- don't blitz the AI for the first 30 turns or so. during this time only attack rebel settlements and excommunicated factions.

this will not improve the common sense of the AI; but it gives him the time and funds to build up quite decent armies.
As hungary I ended up getting attacked by 2 full stacks of Russians (boyar's sons; cossack musketeers and dismounted dvor; NO peasants) at kiev; another 2 full stacks of russians at halych in the east; all this in the same turn mind you; three stacks of turks are on the way through sarkel;
and in the west i'm having to defend Vienna and Zagreb against uber agressive venetians and danes.

Didz

06-28-2007, 10:56

Interesting test......its notable that what your friend did was effectively blitz the game rather than play it, which confirms my own theory that there is a problem with the game in that it allows this expliot to work.

My view is as expressed in another thread.

What is needed is a more realistic penalty for maintaining armies in the field and less reward for doing so.

As SunTzu warned "When an army engages in protracted campaigns, the resoruces of the state will not suffice. When your army is exhausted and its morale sinks and your treasury is spent, rulers of other states will take advantage of your distress and act. Then even though you have wise counsellors, none will be able to make good plans for the future. Thus, though we have heard of excessive haste in war, we have not seen a clever operation that was prolonged."

In fact, MTW2 completely reverses this rule and rewards players who conduct constant and prolonged hostilities, enabling their factions to survive on nothing but the proceeds of war.

In my opinion the game needs to be changed so that:

- troops are extremely expensive to maintain in the field and even more so in hostile territory.

- Armies should suffer attrition on a rising scale dependant upon their situation and location.

- Troops should steadily lose morale when employed on foreign soil. Such that unless provided with constant rewards they will become rebelious and desert.

- There should be little if any financial reward to the treasury from sacking cities.

This would force players to play the game, rather than blitzing it and increase the need to plan operations targetted at specific local objectives rather than indulging in wandering loot-fests.

Marius Dynamite

06-28-2007, 12:02

Next I plan to test it on my semi-retarded cousin, 12 years old...

LOL I burst into laughter when I read that line. Especially after the way you talk about the first guy.. Good one :)

diotavelli

06-28-2007, 12:40

It sounds to me that your test case got a bit lucky.

He didn't lose any battles. That's good - very good, in fact. I very rarely lose battles but there are occasions when, due to bad luck or bad planning, I simply find I have a force that is outnumbered and/or outclassed by an AI force. If the AI ambushed a couple of militia units with a half stack of heavy cav and generals, your friend would have lost in most circumstances, no matter how good he is: he couldn't run away and he couldn't have outfought them. So, luck was on his side some of the time, at least.

He didn't use his princesses or any merchants. Why not? Did he work out that he didn't need them? If so, how?

What I'm getting at is that, if your friend had been an economist say, rather than ex-military, he might have tried to make use of merchants and to build trade links and his economy. He'd have found the game much more of a challenge as, without knowing about high-value resources and their locations, he'd have struggled to get a good return from his merchants (to begin with, at least). In focusing on building his economy, he'd have found he had less cash in the early stages than was the case through his blitzkrieg approach.

As you say, he used very little diplomacy. Why? It's there in the game and it can make the whole thing more interesting. Two of your allies go to war: who do you support? One of your allies is threatened by a stronger neighbour: do you come to their rescue? None of these things are essential but they add flavour to the game; by ignoring diplomacy, your friend missed out on all this.

As Didz said, the game does seem to fail to hold its own when confronted with a capable blitzkrieger. Does that mean its a rubbish game or that the AI is rubbish? No. Because someone with a different approach would have found the game more interesting and challenging.

Most computer games (most games of any sort, come to think of it) have weaknesses that you can learn to exploit, should you wish. Does that mean they're all failed games? No.

diotavelli

06-28-2007, 12:51

Corka

06-28-2007, 13:44

Garnier

06-28-2007, 13:51

You have to mod the game or play with serious houserules.

The trouble is that blitzing is too easy and you can win if you get the jump on conquering. Also sacking cities gives too much money it seems. If the AI had a garrison script, the game could be harder.

Kadagar_AV

06-28-2007, 13:58

Tambarskjelve>>> I do of course admit that my friend isnt the "average player", but as I mentioned, I dont believe this game is directed to the average joe.

His military experience of course helped, but c'mon, this isnt rocket science... "You mean archers should be BEHIND the spears when horses are about to charge?". You could basicly get the level of tactics needed to win from reading 3$ pocket fantasy books on sale...

hisn00bness>>> I know about houserules and modding to make game better or more enjoyable, but that wasnt the point of this thread. My next campaign, I plan to conquer almost the whole world, and then give ALL of it except the brittish islands to the only other remaining faction, and then go to war... should be massive:smash:

Didz>>> He kind of blizzed yeah, but note that almost EVERY player ever play the game in the way the game points them. Basicly you stick to what seems to be working when you first get a new game... So if he blizzed, it was because the game taught him to do so.

I do like your suggestions a lot, but they are problematic as it would make the learning curve of the game significantly steeper. Newer and younger players wouldn't touch the game (it allready takes a lot to get started).

diotavelli>>> He won just about every battle, not every battle... Of course he sometimes was simply overrun, but he rarely if ever moved anything but full stacks, and a full stack of good ol' scandinavian berserkers with 2h axes can beat pretty much anything...

Oh, and BTW... he did something I VERY rarely do, namely "withdraw from battle", that is, the option you have when you also decide to auto-attack or controll the battle...

I almost never use this option, but it didnt seem to give him many if any negative traits.

His stand on merchants and princesses was "I'll use them when I need them", and he never needed them...

And yes of COURSE someone with a different approach would look at the game with another perspective... But the point is that this playstyle is what new players learn FROM the game... New players dont learn (from playing) they need merchants to win, they learn that the micro-management needed for controlling, say, merchants isnt worth it as you can beat the game regardless... And games ARE about winning, and having fun.

At least for me.... Sure I like to have fun, but I do have fun when I win... see my point? I'm not bashing the game, I have several hundreds of hours invested in different total war games, so obviosly the game has some sort of charm:beam:

And yes, most games have tricks you can learn to win... But you can not honestly say that most games can be beaten on the hardest settings first time you give them a go.... I know it takes me a bit of time in any other game to start winning against "hard" or "brutal" AI or whatever...

My friend agreed to play on VH/VH cause I said it was an experiment, to see how a new player did against the hardest AI. We challenge each other now and then, nothing mysterious about it really...

I did not in any way before or after talk about the game at all.... Nothing about blitzing, diplomacy or anything... So I did in no way suggest "blitz through and dont care about politics", for all he knew, politics might have been the only way to beat the game, by say assassination or marrying into families (as it says on the back of the gamebox)...

He did some diplomacy, but found AI to irrational to bother (kingdoms randomly blockading your ports, anyone?). :wall:

I must admit I challenged him to do it (we often do), and therefore he probably spent more energy on doing planning and testing than most inital players... Also, as usual the winner of the challenge got a beer... So of course this means any sane person would do his very best to win! :laugh4:

I'm not saying test is perfect, but it at least hints towards the problems...

I mean, I dare anyone to call the game challenging without house rules... when was the last time any of you guys lost a campaign?

Thanx for all the replys! I got to say this is the best forum I've ever been on.

diotavelli

06-28-2007, 14:33

I would have thought that 80% of players when first playing the game would throw diplomacy to the wind and go on a conquering spree regardless. I know I did. I mean, you're told from the get go 'You have to conquer 45 settlements to win.', which automatically puts players in the frame of mind to go a conquering.

This is true but the game blurb also makes much of the diplomatic and economic elements of the game. I for one didn't realise initially that I could make more money from buying troops and sacking cities than I could through building my economy.

I'd be interested to know the proportion of players who bought M2TW and simply ignored vast elements of the options for gameplay in their first few games. Ignoring diplomacy and economic development and concentrating solely on conquest is a deliberate and far from inevitable decision. The game blurb gives the impression that it will be difficult to win without handling all elements correctly (an erroneous impression but one given, nevertheless), so ignoring important elements would seem illogical without additional information to suggest the contrary.

OF COURSE someone with a different approach would look at the game with another perspective... But the point is that this playstyle is what new players learn FROM the game... New players dont learn (from playing) they need merchants to win, they learn that the micro-management needed for controlling, say, merchants isnt worth it as you can beat the game regardless... And games ARE about winning, and having fun.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Most factions start the game with a merchant: in your first game, most people would assume they'd been given this merchant for a reason and would therefore try to use him. What they "learn FROM the game" therefore is that you need to learn how to use merchants effectively, not that you don't need merchants (that's something you might realise later on).

The game throws diplomacy at you. Most factions start with a princess or diplomat and are approached throughout the early stages by the same from other factions. All of this gives the impression that diplomacy is significant in the game: I can't see how someone could think otherwise.

The idea that you'd realise diplomacy and economic development were less effective than blitzkrieg without playing the game for a considerable period or hearing from another source that this is the case is unlikely: as unlikely as guessing that the AI would be passive at sieges or that shields were bugged without fighting any battles.

If players are presented with lots of prompts from the game to develop their economies and utilise diplomacy (by the presence of diplomats, princesses, merchants and economic buildings) and yet decide, in their very first game that they don't need any of these things to win, they must be possessed of a degree of perspicacity that I don't share.

Didz

06-28-2007, 15:37

Tambarskjelve>>> I do of course admit that my friend isnt the "average player", but as I mentioned, I dont believe this game is directed to the average joe.
I don't think that was a major factor, my 15 year old son recently started playing MTW2 and he uses exactly the same tactics with exactly the same results.

Its basically a flaw in the game design that allows players to win easier by explioting the reward system.

Didz>>> He kind of blizzed yeah, but note that almost EVERY player ever play the game in the way the game points them. Basicly you stick to what seems to be working when you first get a new game... So if he blizzed, it was because the game taught him to do so.
Exactly, the problem is that as it stands the game rewards this sort of play and because it does it encourages players to expliot that approach.

If this were not the case and the rewards were removed then players would be forced to play the game as it was intended to be played and utilise all aspects of the games design.

Flavius Merobaudes

06-28-2007, 16:06

When I played the game for the first time (it was RTW back then), I was very careful and prepared every offensive step twice. It didn't take me long to learn that the AI was not that aggressive. So I soon started taking more risk.

If we were able to play the campaign against a human player and still employed our same old anti-AI strategies, I'm sure we'd get our a*s kicked:
Leave a town undefended for 2 turns? No problem. The AI stack nearby would never bother taking it. Sitting three miles away in the woods is far more relaxing than keeping the enemy population quiet.:no:

DesertEagle

06-28-2007, 16:44

Didz>>> He kind of blizzed yeah, but note that almost EVERY player ever play the game in the way the game points them. Basicly you stick to what seems to be working when you first get a new game... So if he blizzed, it was because the game taught him to do so.

I disagree, as someone else mentioned, the computer gives you tools other than blitzing, they give you diplomats, princesses, and merchants at the start of your game. This seems to be the game "pointing" you in the direction of using them. It does seem to me to indicate there was something driving him to use military force to accomplish his goals as fast as possible. Whether influence from you, or his natural personality, or whatever else, I couldn't say. Maybe blitzing is just the way he does things the first time he tries something, then only moves to a slower pace if that doesn't work for him.

I do like your suggestions a lot, but they are problematic as it would make the learning curve of the game significantly steeper. Newer and younger players wouldn't touch the game (it allready takes a lot to get started).

So wait, first we're saying the game is too easy and that's bad; now we're saying the game being harder would be bad. Also you make a post illustrating how players can accomplish total victory without much effort, but yet also saying "it takes a lot to get started."

And yes of COURSE someone with a different approach would look at the game with another perspective... But the point is that this playstyle is what new players learn FROM the game... New players dont learn (from playing) they need merchants to win, they learn that the micro-management needed for controlling, say, merchants isnt worth it as you can beat the game regardless... And games ARE about winning, and having fun.

Again, I believe the game tries to teach you to use diplomacy and merchants, rather than 100% brute force.

And yes, most games have tricks you can learn to win... But you can not honestly say that most games can be beaten on the hardest settings first time you give them a go.... I know it takes me a bit of time in any other game to start winning against "hard" or "brutal" AI or whatever...

But do other games that take you a bit of time to start winning against {insert highest AI setting here} enemies have a "do this and you won't fail pretty much no matter what" strategy? If not, then you're making an apples to oranges comparison. Think about it this way, if any other game had an "unlimited lives" code you used on your first play, you could win your first time against the hardest AI. Same thing here, it's just not a "true" cheat and you don't have to manually activate it. In fact, you have to manually DEactivate it by how you choose to play.

I mean, I dare anyone to call the game challenging without house rules... when was the last time any of you guys lost a campaign?

I find the game challenging, but then I don't blitz. I don't have like "house rules" in that I do this, or don't do that. But, I develop before moving on. So like I start a game, develop my core, take what rebels I can get to first. Then I develop my core some more and the new territory I captured. I treat excommunication very seriously (usually a catholic faction) and so I obey non-agression orders, and I don't let myself be excommed.

Ultimately, I don't think anyone is going to deny that, yes, if you do things a certain way, it makes the game very easy. But equally, if you know a glitch in a shooter that lets you shoot everyone else and not be hit, you'll have a very easy time with that game also.

As you said yourself, playing games is about having fun, nothing more nothing less. It comes down to choosing the most fun way to play for you, and playing that way.

If your main source of fun is the victory itself, then using exploits in the way a game is designed to make your job as effortless as possible to beat the game quickly will maximise your fun as you'll win more often. Like the guys who can beat the game in under 20 turns. Hey if that's fun, go for it! Win 10 games between getting home from work and dinnertime.

If you enjoy the road to victory as much as the final outcome, you can do that to, it's what I always do. Choose to take it slow and have as much fun as you want. Set the game to 1/2 year turns and you have time to go like molasses and have loads of fun.

I'll repeat it. As you said yourself, playing games is about having fun. As a gamer it is up to you to decide what experiance is "most fun" for you, and give yourself that enjoyment. Whether that means blitzing in vanilla, or taking the slow simmering approach in a fully modded game that gives an entirely new experiance due to the hard work of our talented community, that's up to you.

I'll leave you with this thought:
Ultimatly, the vanilla game is relatively easy. I don't think anyone here will argue that. However, it is that way for a reason. Company's make games to make money, and that's a fact of life. What is also a (sad) fact of life, is that the games that are most likely to make money will appeal to the lowest common denominator - that is the casual gamer who wants to play for 10-15 minutes when they have free time, and feel like they accomplished something. That's why you don't see very many hardcore simulators anymore, like many of Janes sims, or Falcon 4.0, where you have to spend time learning how sonar, radar, thermal layers, and flight dynamics work.

The final word (at last :dizzy2: )- The game is what you make of it.

Ramses II CP

06-28-2007, 18:07

Kobal2fr

06-29-2007, 11:42

I don't think that was a major factor, my 15 year old son recently started playing MTW2 and he uses exactly the same tactics with exactly the same results.

Its basically a flaw in the game design that allows players to win easier by explioting the reward system.

Exactly, the problem is that as it stands the game rewards this sort of play and because it does it encourages players to expliot that approach.

If this were not the case and the rewards were removed then players would be forced to play the game as it was intended to be played and utilise all aspects of the games design.

While looking for something else entirely, I stumbled upon this little nugget in descr_campaign_db.xml :

<settlement>
<sack_money_modifier float="0.4"/>
<exterminate_money_modifier float="0.5"/>

Tweaking this up, or maybe down, or even sideways is probably the key to making blitzkrieg less doable/profitable. Might tank the AI's already appaling financial abilities though, especially early on in the "grab land from rebels" phase. Needs a test subject. Your son seems a perfect candidate for sneaky and unethical science :saint:

Sentinel

06-29-2007, 16:52

I think the point that the original poster was making is related to the difficulty setting.

The game provides easy, medium, hard and very hard setting for both campaign and battle maps. A total of 16 different levels of difficulty. In addition this can be fine tuned by choosing harder (e.g. Scotland) or easier (e.g. England) factions. This should enable a suitable level of challenge (with a risk they could loose) to any player, irrespective of their intelligence, experience or playing styles.

Easy / Easy settings should be suitable for

my semi-retarded cousin, 12 years old...

Medium / Medium settings should be challenging for most, average intelligence, players coming to the game for the first time.

Hard / Hard setting should present a challenge to players with a few campaigns experience. That have learned the how to use all the different element of the game.

Very Hard / Very Hard settings should be for skilled, experienced players that know how to effectively use all the elements of the game to achieve victory conditions.

The fact that the OPs friend (despite military training, good intelligence) was able to easily complete a VH/VH campaign, whilst ignoring the advantages that some of the main elements could give him, is proof that game gives insufficient challenge at the higher settings.

Currently the higher setting difficulties are set too low. I have played several campaigns on VH/VH and have never felt that I was about to loose this campaign. The worst situation I have experienced is that I have made a series of blunders and said to myself, this is going to set back my campaign 10 turns to recover.

I know that by turtling for 50 turns, never blitzing, adopting a host of house rules, I can make the game more of a challenge, but this seems to be the complete opposite to the principle of the game.

As a leader you are to use your skill and experience to conquer the other factions as efficiently as possible. You should be aggressive and use any weakness in the enemy’s defences to your advantage. Your enemy should be trying to do the same to you.

If you adopt the strategy that because the enemy is stupid and makes a stupid move.
E.g.
He camps a full stack army being paid to do nothing, for ten turns, next to a rebel settlement.
He charges his cavalry at your archers, sat behind a row of stakes.
He tries to siege your settlement, garrisoned with a full stack, with 4 units of peasants.
Then I should not exploit his stupidity and should likewise make equally stupid moves.
E.g.
Not take over the rebels yourself, but allow him plenty of time to attack the rebels if that’s what he eventually decides he wants to do.
Position your archers in front of your stakes to prevent his horses getting a nasty splinter.
Sally forth with only your peasants to make it a fair fight.
Is completely at odd with the principles of being a good General. Of being smarter, more skilled than your opponent.
You shouldn’t be asked to increase the challenge by matching your opponent’s stupid moves with your own stupid moves.

I accept that the AI is never going to give the same challenge as a human opponent would. No game with this level of complexity could every be cost effectively programmed to do that.
Most games of this type have to “cheat” in some way to give the computer an advantage to increase the challenge.
Most gamers accept that harder setting will give the computer advantages to compensate for the lack of AI. Most experienced gamers hope / expect that setting the difficulty to VH/VH will make the challenge very hard with a good risk that they might loose the battle / campaign, if they make too many mistakes.

CA have used some factors, but not enough, to make the game more challenging. They seem to have aimed to game too much towards the casual player and forgotten to cater for the full range of gamers.

diotavelli

06-29-2007, 17:29

I The fact that the OPs friend (despite military training, good intelligence) was able to easily complete a VH/VH campaign, whilst ignoring the advantages that some of the main elements could give him, is proof that game gives insufficient challenge at the higher settings.

No, it's not. It's a one-off, unrepeatable test with circumstances that made its validity highly questionable. How many gamers have military training? As a proportion of the total, it's probably not that high. The OP's friend is therefore an atypical test candidate. His background greatly increased the likelihood he'd blitz and anyone who visits this forum regularly could tell you that that approach is the one the game is least capable of challenging.

As I said previously, if the OP's friend had a different background, the result of his campaign could have been very, very different: would that prove that the game is sufficient "challenge at the higher settings"? If not, why does the contrary apply?

Currently the higher setting difficulties are set too low. I have played several campaigns on VH/VH and have never felt that I was about to loose this campaign. The worst situation I have experienced is that I have made a series of blunders and said to myself, this is going to set back my campaign 10 turns to recover.

But, if you check previous threads, you'll find that other players (some quite experienced) have failed to complete the game in time or have got themselves into a situation they felt to be irredeemable. You can't generalise from your own specific situation and prove a case thereby.

I know that by turtling for 50 turns, never blitzing, adopting a host of house rules, I can make the game more of a challenge, but this seems to be the complete opposite to the principle of the game.

As a leader you are to use your skill and experience to conquer the other factions as efficiently as possible. You should be aggressive and use any weakness in the enemy’s defences to your advantage. Your enemy should be trying to do the same to you.

This seems to be a misrepresentation of the situation. The game includes a diplomatic and economic element that is clearly intended to be significant. The fact that your playing style doesn't lend you to utilise these elements doesn't mean the game is at fault, necessarily.

You shouldn’t be asked to increase the challenge by matching your opponent’s stupid moves with your own stupid moves.

Agreed. As you said previously, you've been held up by as much as 10 turns due to your own blunders: presumably the AI didn't match your stupid moves with stupid moves of its own? Or is this one of those irregular verbs:

I blunder
You make ill-advised decisions
The AI makes stupid moves

? :beam:

Most gamers accept that harder setting will give the computer advantages to compensate for the lack of AI. Most experienced gamers hope / expect that setting the difficulty to VH/VH will make the challenge very hard with a good risk that they might loose the battle / campaign, if they make too many mistakes.

As previous: some "experienced gamers" have abandoned/lost campaigns due to making too many mistakes. Clearly, as they play more, they'll play better and lose less often but the point still stands.

CA have used some factors, but not enough, to make the game more challenging. They seem to have aimed to game too much towards the casual player and forgotten to cater for the full range of gamers.

I very much doubt they forgot experienced gamers when they made M2TW. It seems they didn't do a good job of preventing blitzkrieg from being too easy a route to victory. That's a whole different thing. Most other approaches are far less easy and so the difficulty levels work well enough.

Here's an analogy. Monopoly is one of the most popular board games in the world. Regular players know what real estate to buy to effectively guarantee victory. Do they always buy that real estate? Well, the ones who do probably don't enjoy Monopoly for long. Does that mean Monopoly is a flawed game? I don't think so. The players who mix the game up and try different strategies play it for years.

You can say the same about most games, computer-based or otherwise. There are easier and more difficult routes to victory for all of them.

The fact that one person once beat M2TW on VH/VH proves nothing. The fact that a particular playing style makes winning it too easy is regrettable but it doesn't mean the game is flawed.

Ulstan

06-29-2007, 19:32

How challenging did you find the WRE campaign in BI? Set him up with that and see what happens :D

Alos, MTW2 will be horrifically easy as long as players can simply blitz their way to victory. This would obviously not have worked historically, and it's a very poor design that allows you to maintain an empire by sacking cities as fast as possible.

The player (representing the sovereign or the state) should get almost nothing from sacking a city. Sacking a city should raise dread, tank the cities infrastructure, decrease the population quite a bit, and make those troops be upkeep free for a few turns. You get virtually no gold to fund further conquests, because that is basically the way it worked historically. Commanders didn't routinely tell their troops to go forth and indiscriminately rape and pillage in the newly city, because that was often the exact opposite of what would be most economicallyhelpful for the empire. Instead they exterted much effort preventing such things from happening.

Also, players shouldn't be able to take an AI's city and sell all the buildings and then abandon it.

The AI is far too vulnerable to a scorched earth set of tactics, and such tactics are ahistorically rewarding to the side that adopts them.

alpaca

06-29-2007, 21:06

I second Didz opinion, the game is much too easy if you blitz. Sacking is just too powerful, it should be dropped altogether or at least the AI should defend their settlements more effectively.
This is definitely a design flaw, together with the fact that difficulty settings barely scale at all. On vh the game plays very much the same as on medium.

If you have a sound strategical and tactical understanding you'll have no problems with the battles, either, because CA removed the stat bonuses in M2TW. Add to that the exploits that even new players can easily find and you get the situation you describe above.

If you can afford to wait a few months, I'll try address as many of these points as possible in Italia Invicta. The game will be much harder on the higher difficulty settings because I'll introduce more meaningful asymmetries between the player and the AI, for example regarding restrictive features (a glimpse of that has already been revealed: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=87295) that aren't imposed on the AI.
This could turn off a few people but since I can't make the AI better I think it's necessary to have it cheat better, like in Civ4 for example. There, the AI gets huge bonuses on the high difficulty settings which provides a challenge even for very good players.

By the way: Even though the game is quite easy for good players, there's a lot of players for who the game is difficult enough, or even too difficult in some cases. The problem here is, as I said above, that the difficulty levels don't scale well.

Corka

06-30-2007, 08:37

I find it well and truely believable that someone brand new to the game could win on VH/VH. I don't think the 'military training' would be of awesome help either. On the combat side all you need to know is that flanking is good, and spears beat cavalry.At times its like the AI doesn't even realise this as they rush out their cav to charge your spears head on.

I don't find it terribly unbelievable that someone would abandon diplomacy and merchants and just go on their way to conquering. When my friend first played the game, I distinctly remember him getting his first merchant, moving it over to a resource and going '.... I get 5 gold a turn from this? The merchant cost 500. I am never ever building one of these again.'

And then with diplomats you have to physically move the damned things across the maps, and for what? Trade rights, and Alliances which for the most part are fairly worthless.

Seems only natural to me that a new player would just grab their armies and go a conquering. Its not hard to see "More cities = more gold + bigger armies to conquer more cities."

Sentinel

07-01-2007, 00:21

Originally Posted by Diotavelli
No, it's not. It's a one-off, unrepeatable test with circumstances that made its validity highly questionable
You are quite correct it doesn’t. There is no way this would stand up to scientific scrutiny and would probably be dismissed in a court of law. I apologise for not making my opinions clearer.

This evidence should be viewed with other facts
E.g.

Reports that a few payers have managed to complete a VH/VH long campaign in about 20 turns.

The number of threads / posts discussing ways to mod the game to make it more challenging.

The number of threads / posts discussing member disappointment at the level of difficulty the game offers.

My own performance. I do not have any military experience or training (unless you count a year in the boy scouts a long, long, long time ago) and my knowledge of medieval history is very poor. I do have experience of playing MTW, VI, RTW and BI but would not class myself as an expert.

This and many other incidents have satisfied my level of proof that there are a small, but significant number of people that would have preferred the VH/VH setting to be more of a challenge.

The final piece of evident milord before I rest my case is

Originally Posted by Diotavelli
I very much doubt they forgot experienced gamers when they made M2TW. It seems they didn't do a good job of preventing blitzkrieg from being too easy a route to victory.

****************************************

Originally Posted by Diotavelli
How many gamers have military training?
Probably not many, although how much relevance / advantage real life experience in modern warfare gives to someone playing a computer game set in medieval times is debatable. It certainly would not help him manage the politics, spies, aristocracy, economy or any of the other non-military aspect of the game. Try turning the question around. How much of an advantage is having experience of playing this type game to someone in the real military. Would it be worth putting on your CV when applying for a job? (General Lusted is an exception to the rule)

Originally Posted by Diotavelli
This seems to be a misrepresentation of the situation. The game includes a diplomatic and economic element that is clearly intended to be significant. The fact that your playing style doesn't lend you to utilise these elements doesn't mean the game is at fault, necessarily.

Never said it was.
If your style does not include these, Fine.
If you can still easily win whilst not using some small elements of the game also fine
If you can still easily win whilst not using several significant elements of the game, on its hardest setting, then this suggests that the game is not offering enough challenge.

Originally Posted by Diotavelli
Agreed. As you said previously, you've been held up by as much as 10 turns due to your own blunders: presumably the AI didn't match your stupid moves with stupid moves of its own?

Yes it did, that’s how I managed to catch up again.

Originally Posted by Diotavelli
Here's an analogy. Monopoly is one of the most popular board games in the world. Regular players know what real estate to buy to effectively guarantee victory. Do they always buy that real estate? Well, the ones who do probably don't enjoy Monopoly for long. Does that mean Monopoly is a flawed game? I don't think so. The players who mix the game up and try different strategies play it for years.

True, but board games are played against other humans that learn to adapt to any given strategy. This game does not learn and repeats the same mistakes over and over. The interest with monopoly is the variation introduced by the human players.

You are probably right that CA did not forget their experienced players. They chose not to cater for them.

IMO There is small but significant number of player who currently feels the VH/VH level does not offer significant challenge.
CA could have made the higher levels harder, to cater for these player without inconveniencing other players.
CA thoughtfully provided many level settings, but unfortunately made the jumps between them too small, so that the range of challenge did not match the range of players requirements.

If the VH was harder then for those that are less experienced can turn down the difficulty settings until they achieve the balance they require.

Those who’s playing style means they wish to impose their own handicaps (by adopting a set of house rules etc) can turn down the difficulty until they achieve the balance they require.

Given that they had to balance their sales, marketing, programming cost, timeline etc I cannot say whether in the big scheme of things, this was a good or bad decision by CA. I just feel that it was a missed opportunity to satisfy more of its customers without penalising the rest.

Didz

07-01-2007, 11:07

Here's an analogy. Monopoly is one of the most popular board games in the world. Regular players know what real estate to buy to effectively guarantee victory. Do they always buy that real estate? Well, the ones who do probably don't enjoy Monopoly for long. Does that mean Monopoly is a flawed game? I don't think so. The players who mix the game up and try different strategies play it for years.
Sentinel has already answered this point rather well but I thought I would add my own support to his response.

I happen to own a book (The Monopoly Book by Maxine Bradley) which describes strategies for playing Monopoly and essentially there are two basic player strategies normally referred to as 'Prince' or 'Pauper'. The Prince strategy relies on the acquisition of high rent sets e.g. BLUE (Mayfair, Park Lane) whilst the Pauper concentrates on lower value but high payout sets like ORANGE(Vine Street, Bow Street, Marlborough Street).

However, the point which Sentinel makes is the key to the success and replay value of this game. No player is likely to be able to acquire the properties he wants simply by rolling dice and moving round the board, particularly if you play the Auction Rule for unwanted title deeds. Therefore, at some point the strategies become dependant upon the negotiating skills of the human players in setting up deals for the exchange of title deeds.

This is why computer controlled monopoly games don't work, the computer either gives away vital properties or refuses to negotiate reasonably on anything, and so the result ends up determined by pure luck of the dice.

To put your analogy into context. Monopoly is a flawed computer game for preceisely the points which you make in your post, and is only popular when played against human opponents. Likewise, MTW2 would not be a flawed game if we could play it against 15 other human opponents, in fact it would be absolutely brilliant, the reason it is a flawed game is precisely because it lacks strategic challenge and options.

Kobal2fr

07-01-2007, 12:06

Didz

07-01-2007, 14:14

You. Own a book. About Monopoly strategies.
Yep! its actually very interesting with lots of statistical analysis of average returns on investment for various properties and sets. Plus, a lot of information on its history and variations to the rules. There is even information of special historical games and monopoly events, such as the exhibition game played with and for real money which was held in the Manhattan Savings Bank in November 1973. The players were:

Brain Nuttall - National Monopoly Champion of Great Britain
Lee Bayrd - Monopoly Champion of Western America
Don Lifton - USMA Champion of the Midwest Regional Mens Invitiational Monopoly Tournament.
and
Russell Smith - Chairman of the Manhatton Savings Bank, who was playing Monopoly for the first time and acted as Banker.

The game actually ran out of money and so the bank had to lend them some, but in the end it had to be abandoned after 90 minutes with no clear winner and all funds were returned.

Incidently, the longest recorded monopoly game was played continuously for 41 nights and 42 days. The largest outdoor game was played over an area of 550' x 470' at Juniata Colege Huntingdon Pennsylvania, using real streets. The largest indoor game was played on a board 52' x 52' , the winner was Lem Barney of the Detriot Lions football team.

I have actually owned two copies of computer monopoly, one for the Commodore 64 and one for the PC, neither of which are currently installed as the game is now available as a DVD game.

alpaca

07-01-2007, 14:23

You. Own a book. About Monopoly strategies.

And you've read it, so it's not like it's one of those embarassing christmas gifts from deadly enemies that lay all too visibly on your shelves, to the subsequent (and somewhat cruel) mirth of all your guests ; like an .mp3 of Britney Spears somehow winding up in your playlist between Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, "it's not mine it's not mine my sister downloaded that I swear !"

I find this deeply worrying. Perhaps even more so than your implicit acknowledgment that you've gone and played computer monopoly.
Hey Monopoly is a very good game considering it's one of the first "modern" board games released. Keep in mind it was released in the 30s and is one of the first complex games for more than two players. A lot of the classics like Chess, Go and chequers are for two players only which is a much better-controllable situation.
I agree it's not up to scratch anymore, but it's still a very good attempt.
The main problem is that it shares one of the fundamental bad things that happened to almost all early modern games I know, which is a termination problem. If all players really play sensibly, the chance that the game will be finished is fairly low. This is even worse with a game like Diplomacy where there's no randomness involved.

By the way, we Germans immensely enjoy playing authored games, like "Die Siedler von Catan" which introduced a new wave of very complex, well-balanced and challenging games in the late 90s. They have then been dubbed by English-Speakers "german-style board games" which is admittedly a bit weird.

Edit: Although Britney Spears is really a no-go area :P

Kobal2fr

07-01-2007, 14:57

"It's one of the first board games" doesn't mean there aren't virulent strains of the plague with more entertainment value to them than your average game of Monopoly :grin:. I mean, you don't play Pong anymore, do you ? (And now my mind reels because the idea is dawning on me that there's probably a USMA Regional Pong Champion out there...)

And I'm not knocking board games either, I love 'em. Settlers of Cathane ? Brilliant game !
But given a choice between playing Monopoly and say, drilling a hole all the way through my skull with a rusty pickaxe, I'd consider the pros and cons of an open-topped brain, and find the silver lining in septicaemia. Monopoly lost its appeal to me when I was 8 and there weren't any more metal pieces or dice to swallow.

SoxSexSax

07-02-2007, 03:52

Just responding to a few individual points:

The game does seem to fail to hold its own when confronted with a capable blitzkrieger. Does that mean its a rubbish game or that the AI is rubbish? No. Because someone with a different approach would have found the game more interesting and challenging.

I disagree. Blitzing (AKA Rushing) is a very common occurrence in any strategy game, and if the AI cannot cope with it (and let's face facts, M2TW's cannot) then the AI is, if not rubbish, very weak.

I know that by turtling for 50 turns, never blitzing, adopting a host of house rules, I can make the game more of a challenge, but this seems to be the complete opposite to the principle of the game.

As a leader you are to use your skill and experience to conquer the other factions as efficiently as possible. You should be aggressive and use any weakness in the enemy’s defences to your advantage. Your enemy should be trying to do the same to you.

This seems to be a misrepresentation of the situation. The game includes a diplomatic and economic element that is clearly intended to be significant. The fact that your playing style doesn't lend you to utilise these elements doesn't mean the game is at fault, necessarily.

I don't see this as a misrepresentation at all. The most EFFICIENT strategy is the strategy that wins the game the quickest, simple as. It is therefore entirely inefficient to build any non-military unit, as they are simply not needed to win within 50 turns with any faction.

The fact that a particular playing style makes winning it too easy is regrettable but it doesn't mean the game is flawed.

I disagree again. Actually, I don't disagree with the statement, but I disagree that it applies to M2TW. M2TW isn't just "too easy"...it is "easy to the point of worthlessness". Big difference. I just cannot lose a campaign unless I deliberately use a very unsound strategy. And frankly I don't feel like I should have to deliberately play badly to have fun.

I very much doubt they forgot experienced gamers when they made M2TW. It seems they didn't do a good job of preventing blitzkrieg from being too easy a route to victory. That's a whole different thing. Most other approaches are far less easy and so the difficulty levels work well enough.

Please provide a brief summary of a playstyle that is not deliberately weakened to give the AI a chance that will provide me with even a modicum of challenge. And I do not consider "it takes longer" to be the same as "it is harder".

Sacking is just too powerful, it should be dropped altogether or at least the AI should defend their settlements more effectively.

Totally agreed. This would SERIOUSLY help fix the problem of "Steamrollering" and would add some much needed tactical decision making to the game. (Right now the only choice is "who's next?")

Ulstan

07-02-2007, 16:03

Likewise, MTW2 would not be a flawed game if we could play it against 15 other human opponents, in fact it would be absolutely brilliant, the reason it is a flawed game is precisely because it lacks strategic challenge and options.

Precisely!

At the very least, people shouldn't be able to gain money from sacking or exterminating cities: it should spread mayhem and destruction and maybe keep their troops free of upkeep for a turn or two, but it's not a huge revenue getter.

Ideally, it should take a while to assimilate new cities into your empire, so that you can't just blitz your way across the map in 20 turns. You would need to tear down old buildings (which should take time) and rebuild your own, convert them to your faith, and reduce the cultural penalty. This should all take time and someone who didn't take the time should have a nice civil war on their hands :)

Dorkus

07-02-2007, 16:53

pretty much every TW game has been incredibly susceptible to the blitzkrieg strategy. my two biggest complaints with game design are:

1. ease of the game for aggressive players

2. imbalance of units and buildings

Kobal2fr

07-02-2007, 18:10

imbalance of buildings ?! What, like, "Drill_Square pwnz Fairgrounds all the time on Grassy Plain", sort of thing ?

SoxSexSax

07-02-2007, 18:31

imbalance of buildings ?! What, like, "Drill_Square pwnz Fairgrounds all the time on Grassy Plain", sort of thing ?

My assumption is that he meant it is too cheap to upgrade towns and castles. If so, I'm inclined to agree. If not, well he'll need to clarify won't he? :yes:

Kobal2fr

07-02-2007, 18:48

(my own guess was that he really meant that "Faction X gets building Y, and Faction Y doesn't", but it's such a minor detail that I just had to make fun of him :sweatdrop:)

Malkut

07-02-2007, 19:22

SoxSexSax

07-03-2007, 00:11

Megaman 2 is an extremely easy game if you forego the main weapon and use Metal Blades all the time, and there's no reason not to, because it throws power-ups at you like candy.

You can beat either God of War game by putting all your red orbs into your knives. They level up faster, and you can just destroy everything in the game with ease. You don’t need anything else to beat the game, anyway.

Building a character with 10 Luck, five in every other stat, and the Jinxed trait will make Fallout 2 an easy, quirky game.

There has yet to be a Final Fantasy game where you can't just power-level and completely obliterate the last boss in five seconds.

My point being, if you set out to find flaws in a game's level of difficulty, then you will find them, far more often than not. Every game ever made, regardless of complexity, can be exploited, but you have to chose to do so. Amping up the game's difficulty will never remove this choice, nor will it make it similar to playing against another human being.

I (and nobody I know of) am not asking for a game that cannot be beat, I am merely asking for a game that provides some semblance of resistance if I choose to be a bloodthirsty warmonger right from the start. Is that honestly too much to ask? It's blatantly obvious what the AI does wrong so how is it remotely unreasonable to complain until its fixed?

Edit: As a side note, the game actually FORCES me to blitz on VH because the FUBAR diplomacy will quite literally never accept a ceasefire with me if we share land borders, not matter how much its getting crushed. This mechanic practically forces me to eliminate any faction I war with...sacking as I go.

John_Longarrow

07-03-2007, 01:23

Kobal has been so nice as to ID what couple lines need to be changed to make sacking/exterminating less cost effective. I'm wondering if that can be nested inside of an IF of CASE statement that will make both less effective as you increase the diplomatic difficulty.

NOTE: Military experience doesn't mean that you would be better at this kind of game. Playing strategic games would.

2nd NOTE: The test subject had one of the easiest factions to learn with as their starting faction. If they had either Venice of the HRE they may have discovered very quicky that blitzing wrong results in you loosing quickly.

Dorkus

07-03-2007, 04:31

Imbalance of buildigns means just that. You want a building's real value to reflect its monetary cost in the game. This is part of what makes well-balanced strategy games (such as COH or blizzard games) so long-lived, in both the multiplayer and singleplayer settings.

The TW games are notoriously bad in that regard. Late game buildings are far too expensive for what they're worth. You are far better focusing on a few key early game units with all of your resources, than teching up to largely ineffective late-game units. The same is true of non-military buildings. The first level port, for example, is by far the most valuable economic building (at least in coastal provinces).

The upshot is that players who naturally favor aggressive, early-game strategies tend to dominate the map with ease. The AI, which does not realize the inefficiency of teching, and the ineffectiveness of most units, will necessarily lose.

Kobal2fr

07-03-2007, 06:59

@John_Longarrow : probably not - the variable is in an .xml file that is just a spreadsheet of multiplicators to be applied to equations and codes and whatnot that are either in the .exe itself or in other files. The "if medium, then use variable x, if VH use y" would have to be in there. I think.

Malkut

07-03-2007, 08:30

I (and nobody I know of) am not asking for a game that cannot be beat, I am merely asking for a game that provides some semblance of resistance if I choose to be a bloodthirsty warmonger right from the start. Is that honestly too much to ask? It's blatantly obvious what the AI does wrong so how is it remotely unreasonable to complain until its fixed?

Edit: As a side note, the game actually FORCES me to blitz on VH because the FUBAR diplomacy will quite literally never accept a ceasefire with me if we share land borders, not matter how much its getting crushed. This mechanic practically forces me to eliminate any faction I war with...sacking as I go.

It's not an unreasonable request, it's an unnecessary one. The only 100%, sure-fire way to get the AI to build a big enough army at the start to stop a blitz and still be able to afford it during the money-tight early game is to make them blitz.

That's exactly what you're complaining about in your edit, though, except that the AI loses, and you didn't.

I don't see how balancing sacking would help, either. You'd just have to blitz with smaller armies, which can easily be done if you use spies on the cities and don't auto-resolve any of the battles. It still wouldn't be even remotely challenging. If anything, that would put the computer at a disadvantage by limiting a source of starting income.

Even if they made the AI build huge armies to just set around in their cities and wait for you to come and conquer them, then you’d still find a way to totally annihilate the AI (because it's an AI), and be right back here, complaining about how easy it all is.

The company's limited resources should be aimed at fixing actual problems in the game, not patching exploits that people could easily avoid simply by not doing it.

Didz

07-03-2007, 11:14

I don't see how balancing sacking would help, either. You'd just have to blitz with smaller armies, which can easily be done if you use spies on the cities and don't auto-resolve any of the battles. It still wouldn't be even remotely challenging. If anything, that would put the computer at a disadvantage by limiting a source of starting income.
The removal or reduction of income from capturing settlements would prevent both 'Blitzers' and the AI financing the retraining their armies from the proceeds of a seige and thus force them to rely on earned funds to finance their war. That means that they cannot simply ignore their economies, or use the proceeds of their wars to finance their build strategy.

You're right that this might just result in the determined Blitzer using smaller armies, but if this change was also allied with penalties for mantaining armies on foriegn soil such as doubling or trebling maintenance cost and constant attrition I've mentioned then any army on foriegn soil is going to be both expensive and difficult to sustain.

That should put any attacker at a distinct disadvantage to an army defending its homeland, whether AI or Player controlled, and mean that any attacks will need to be conducted with enough strength to ensure a quick, but limited, victory. If nothing else this would make the game more realistic, but it should also change the game play.

It would certainly need more planning and strategy to work.

The use of spies would need to be countered with counter-spying, but at least using spies indicates a slight expansion in the utilisation of the games features, so it would be a step in the right direction.

Even if they made the AI build huge armies to just set around in their cities and wait for you to come and conquer them, then you’d still find a way to totally annihilate the AI (because it's an AI), and be right back here, complaining about how easy it all is.
That has already been tried in STW with the purple horde, and it has been repeated in MTW2 with both the Mongols and Timurids. It doesn't work unless the strategic AI is capable of making effective use of the massed troops it has been given.

The issue of sacking cities is not about the quality of the AI, its actually about poor game design. There is a flaw in the basic structure of game play that allows players to expliot the game to win without playing it.

I agree with you that the AI is a seperate issue that cannot be resolved by merely throwing more resources at the AI factions.

The company's limited resources should be aimed at fixing actual problems in the game, not patching exploits that people could easily avoid simply by not doing it.
I disagree, in many respects the Blitzing expliot is one of the fundemental flaws in the game, highlighting a problem with its basic design and if anything it should be dealt with first simply becuase until it is resolved its impossible to determine how many of the other flaws are being fed from it.

Changing the game design to make it harder to sustain large armies in the field might actually have a big impact on the strategic AI and the way it plays, until that has been established its difficult to see how one could begin to address the other AI issues.

khaos83_2000

07-03-2007, 11:32

one true experience:

I lay siege to a city. I end my turn. And i immediately went off to take a leak and get a drink. Unknown to me is that the city sally out and im not there. Forces on both side is evenly matched. When im back, victory! Loses r not that great but my missle units are badly hurted.

khaos83_2000

07-03-2007, 11:35

One good way is to give a faction 99999999 florins.
I experience this in RTW.

I started a game w/o realising that my brother gave Egypt that. When i landed on their side, i got bombarded by lots and lots of chariots and high tier units. It almost made me want to withdraw my forces there, but i held on.

Didz

07-03-2007, 11:37

alpaca

07-03-2007, 15:52

@khaos83_2000

I've been there and done that so often,:laugh4:, glad I'm not the only one.

I'm in the habit of kicking off a battle and then popping to the kitchen to get a cup of tea or coffee whilst the loading screen and pre-battle speeches play through.

The number of times I've done that and come back to find the battle has already started without me, because it was a sally battle and I hadn't twigged.

Tactial surprise being acheived by the AI in real life:oops:
http://forum.justgamers.de/images/justgamers/smilies/smile_rofl.gif you guys are killing me.

Anyways, I believe we can already do a fairly good job with creative modding to prevent players from rushing, and even more.
CA apparently didn't balance the campaign game to any sensible extent though, or maybe they like rushing :laugh4:

Another theory is that the devs themselves aren't very good players and therefore the game isn't too easy for them, but saying that would be mean, so I won't. I just think they didn't spend enough time playing their game, which is actually something that as a modder I can understand. You don't play the game, you make it.

John_Longarrow

07-03-2007, 16:24

Alpaca,

One issue I've heard of with game designers is that, since they know the in's and out's of the game, they assume they are much better at it than they actually are. As such, they assume if its at all a challenge for them it will be too hard for others.

This is a problem that used to be very true in FPS in the late 80's / early 90's, one of the reason some of those early games were actually so easy.

My guess is, since the designers know everything about the game they don't skip things that "Should" (from the designers perspective) be done. As such, skipping building up settlements to pay for an army isn't something that would be obvious to the guy who's spent a long time working on the code to build stuff.

For me, the best beta-testers I've ever found have been secretaries or call center phone operators. Just grab one at random, have them sit down with the manual, and start using the program. I'm betting if CA started doing that with non-gamers they'd have a LOT of changes and updates to the manual.

Of course it would also be really funny to hear this little old lady who's supposed to be the one answering phones asking a developer who's just spent a couple years "Why is this game so easy???"

:evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin:

Didz

07-03-2007, 16:39

I'd certainly be interested to find out if changes to sacking cities, upkeep and attrition does have an impact upon the way the game is played. Logic suggests it should but until a determined blitzer gets his hands on it and tries to expliot the system you can't be sure.

John_Longarrow

07-03-2007, 17:18

Didz,

I think we may have a winner in that department. If there is a mod that has lower sacking and higher upkeep, we could ask Askthepizzaguy to give it a try and let us know how it changes his blitzing.

Kobal2fr

07-03-2007, 19:02

Higher upkeep won't slow him down one bit, the madman's on full crusade mode all the time :laugh3:

TinCow

07-03-2007, 19:35

The blitz problem has been discussed countless times throughout the TW series. When it comes down to it, I have seen only one solution that works: homelands. Once you expand beyond your faction's 'traditional' homelands, recruitment should be limited and slow. Foreign lands should be capable of being converted to your 'culture' but it should take a LONG time. RTR and EB implemented this style of play very well and reduced the blitz syndrome, but I think even more work can be done. In TW games, the more territories you hold, the stronger you are and the easier the game gets. This needs to be reversed in order to prevent the blitz from working.

Kobal2fr

07-03-2007, 22:51

Satyr

07-03-2007, 23:05

For those with short memories who think it was always like this, harken back to the days when VI first came out. No one could win as the Northumbrians, or the Welsh. It took a while to figure out how to manage it and guess what, it turned out that really aggressive blitzcrieging was the best way to go. Since then no one has looked back. Still, MTW2 is so much easier than MTW, especially VI, that I would be very interested in ways to slow the juggernaut down.

Personnally, I never build merchants or most other special persons except as I need them for defense. I find the extra micro a pain and the extra revenue unneedded to win quickly and easily. And for an example of how to make a game with good gradations in difficulty, look no further than Civ4 or GalCiv2. Both have levels of difficulty that the average player doesn't even want to play, it is hard enough at the middle levels.

Rebellious Waffle

07-03-2007, 23:20

True, but that wouldn't slow down a blitzer like pizzaguy either, because he exploits the cheap crusader mercs, and the more expensive regular mercs. Normal troops are just a bonus to him. And he doesn't have to worry about their high upkeep either, because he's always on crusades and so his armies are upkeep-free.
It's almost beautiful, in a dark, twisted way. Kind of like Hollywood accounting.

I wonder if we couldn't get around that by having a Crusader Faction -- instead of giving well-organized central governments access to lots of obedient professional soldiers (which isn't how it happened at all) you could make an independent AI faction that runs for the Crusade target like the Huns and Timurids running to their target settlements when they first appear. Using a modified version of the code that makes rebels spawn, Crusading armies would create "Crusade unrest" (for want of a better term at the moment) in whatever province they're passing through and cause Crusader Faction armies to spawn, lumping into the mob and carving a path of ruddy chaos towards the objective. Normal factions could still join the Crusades, but the special Crusader mercenaries don't much care what anyone thinks as long as they go on pilgrimage to wherever it is they're going.

(Real-life crusaders caused a great deal of unrest wherever they went, not having anything like a logistical support system or organized government bureaucracies to support them on long marches. Crusading armies were, often as not, roving hordes of angry peasants lead by charismatic blokes like Peter the Hermit. Crusader States like the Principality of Antioch, the County of Edessa and the Kingdom of Jerusalem were not particularly answerable to the folks back home, as is the case with vanilla M2TW provinces captured by Crusaders.)

Kobal2fr

07-03-2007, 23:39

Well, yeah, but what would be the point of joining the crusades then, if it only bolsters some other faction's power ?

To tell you the truth, I really don't get the rationale behind the free upkeep on crusades thing, and I'm not that fond of the way they're handled in M2. Apart from the 4 year building time + special building, which were really meh compared to the Knight Order guilds and papal favor thing of M2, I think that on the whole they were much better in MTW/VI.
They spread chaos wherever they went by draining soldiers (thus tanking public order), they got huge all by themselves (which could be a nuisance in itself too if you led them, because then you had to pay the bloody freeloaders), and having one cross your lands was a huge pain in the neck that could set back your expansion plans by years if they took the long way...

Rebellious Waffle

07-04-2007, 01:56

That's a better way of doing what I was thinking -- as long as it gets the messy, unpredictable, git-off-mah-prop'rty nature of the Crusades down, it's cool.

SoxSexSax

07-04-2007, 04:52

Aside from a serious reduction in the effectiveness of sacking, the strategic AI needs the following changes (IMO) to be credible:

1) It must accept a ceasefire when involved in a hopeless war. I have seen the AI turn down an offer of peace that involved me giving its capital back when it had just 2 cities remaining...there is simply NO cirsumstance whatsoever where that is the correct course of action. Difficulty level should be irrelevant. It just doesn't seem like it shouldn't be hard to get the AI to compare military to military and cities lost to cities taken and come to the 'right' choice.

2) It must stop sending low quality stacks to siege well defended castles/cities. So you've got 10 crossbow militia and a shedload of catapults/ballistae have you? How many units of cavalry will I need to beat that, hmm? 3? 4 possibly if they're light? Don't waste my time with this feeble rabble, save your florins and put a proper army together, fool!

3) It must properly garrison front line and important cities and castles. Too often do I lay siege to a frontline city and find just 4 units defending it.

4) Stop building fleets before it can even defend its lands. It's good that the AI builds a navy, but it is bad that it builds one before it has enough military to fend off an attack from a land neighbour who has forgone a navy. Boats are not cheap, and while the money isn't exactly wasted, it is spent on them too early into the game 99% of the time.

5) Stop building every building in cities/castles. This is possibly a slight exaggeration but still, the AI builds too much in each city/castle and doesn't specialise. It should be trivial to assign a value such a "ARHERY_UNITS" or "HEAVY_CAV" to each castle and then get it only to build stuff that opens new units in that category. Too much money on buildings and not enough money on units is one of the primary reasons behind sacking that the game is easy to blitz.

As I see it the above are all script problems, nothing to do with the engine or imbalances. They're all decision making issues and as such should probably be fixable. If you addressed any two of them you'd make the game much harder for a fast attacker. But when all five remain, even reducing sacking by a lot won't make a huge difference I predict. The computer wastes too much money on A) unnecessary construction and B) hopeless attacks that it will simply not be able to respond effectively enough to counter a quick war vs a strong blitzer.

I would comment on the battlefield AI too, but I'm hoping that the, how should I put this, toothless effort it puts up is down to its weak troops and not its actual thinking. Once the AI actually starts using stronger troops on a more frequent basis, that'll be the time to whine if it's not up to par. At the moment, with the battles the strategic AI likes to get it into, I can't blame it for getting beat!

John_Longarrow

07-04-2007, 06:39

TinCow

07-04-2007, 14:33

John_Longarrow

07-04-2007, 17:50

Kadagar AV

Has your friend tried the game again as a less potent faction? Has he tried it as, say, the HRE instead? Or the Turks? From my personal experience playing as the Danes is comparable to playing the game at a lower difficulty.

zaher

07-04-2007, 20:08

The simple way to avoid rushing and such a strategies is to change campaighn objectives, first of all - remove hold 15 or 45 settlements objective. Also you must hold all settlements you started with, add to this some building objective, like " build Sistine chapel " for France or " discover first New World " for Spain ,etc..
I really CAN enjoy vanilla MTW2 if i play very peaceful way in game. For example, playing as Scotland i made marriage alliance with england on first turn, and got attacked by them only on turn 103. I always keeping my papal standing not lower than my enemy have. I try to get my reputation as high as possible. I attacking only if i know that some religious buildings will be built in next turn. I totally ignore game objectives, playing only for fun. Now is turn 200 and i hold only 12 provinces in long campaighn, but 2 from them are in Carribean and i gonna fight Aztecs. Played all other factions before ( except Danes and Byz ), everytime i started new game , i tried to reach objectives without blitzing in relaxing way, and, to be honest, everytime i stopped to play near turn 160-180, just after i got almost all high tech buildings and troops enought to raise whole world, i saved game under faction name and never returned to it. But now, playing as a Scotland, i enjoing every short ( if compare to factions i played before ) turn, and even dont want to stop.
And i always like peaceful decisions, thats why i like option to build rocket in Civilisation games, and thats why it always keep me from blitz and exploit decisions.

Sgt Kelly

07-05-2007, 10:11

How heavily do blitzers rely on mercenaries ?

I'm far from an expert since I never blitz, but if you sack a city it is unable to provide recruits for the next 2 - 3 turns. If there were no mercenaries it seems to me the blitzers would have a hard time replenishing their losses and would quickly run out of steam.

Didz

07-05-2007, 10:24

In my game you can start re-training units after one turn in a newly captured city so that isn't really an issue.

Mercenaries obviously help in raising powerful armies quickly but they are relatively expensive anyway and would be harder to recruit if sacking did not boost your treasury funds. They also form a pretty fundemental part of the game and so I whilst I think the whole system for how they work needs to be reviewed I would not want them removed completely from the game just to prevent an unrelated player expliot.

Kobal2fr

07-05-2007, 12:32

In my game you can start re-training units after one turn in a newly captured city so that isn't really an issue.

That all depends on how you capture it, the replenishment rate of the pools, and how the folks you captured it from left it. If you occupy, the existing pools are left untouched, sacking cuts them by 1/3rd and extermination empties them. If the AI has recruited everything in sight before you arrived, then even occupy will leave you with empty pools.

Meaning that if you lengthen the time needed for one new "unit" to appear in the pool, and/or reduce the maximum pool, and couple that with increased public order problems, then even a sacked city can become impossible to hold if you are to move your whole army away next turn, as witnessed in LTC.

Didz

07-05-2007, 12:47

Even so, all that you are doing is putting speed bumps under the path of the blitz, you are not actually removing the motivation for using this expliot.

The removal of the sacking bonus and introduction of attrition and maintenance penalties would not only do this but bring the game play more into line with the real problems faced by real commanders when keeping medieval armies in the field. Likewise, operational goals would need to be much more focussed and limited if the treasury was not topped up instantly with the spoils of war and if armies suffered heavily on prolonged campaigns.

Ulstan

07-05-2007, 15:45

I like the troop selection and such for the crusades, but I feel overall they are too reliable and easy for the player to utilize.

The troops should definitely have to be paid for, and I believe they should also suffer attrition every turn until they reach their destination.

Kruniac

07-05-2007, 22:54

Blah blah-blah blah-blah blah blah. Geeze guys. So many long winded posts "debating" over nothing in particular. The AI sucks, the game is too easy for MOST people, and playing a "happy merchant game" just doesnt make up for the CRAP of the AI.

The selling point of this game was supposed to be the 3d battles. Real strategic goodness. Yeah, great. The AI FAILS to battle effectively, and that causes the game to suck right there.

Add in the fact that compared to games such as Europa Universalis III, the Strategic Map area of the game is the most empty, lifeless, and generally hindering aspect of life for the next five thousand years, and you have a game that does one thing very well...

Fails.

An improved AI, a working and complex diplomacy system, a complete overhaul of the trade system (yeah my merchant is going to walk over to Yorkshire, and stand around some grapes or something. Try having merchants compete in a MARKETPLACE, not in the middle of nowhere), and a general change to the "feel" of the game is the only thing that will really fix it.

I keep installing the bugger for two reasons. One - I like the graphics, especially of Militia units and archery units. Two - I bought the game instead of warez-ing it, so I have the CDs for when I get a craving. Trust me - if this game were a download, the peice of crap would have been deleted like Space Force Rogue Universe (THAT is a horrible game. UGH)

Anyways... Add more DEPTH to the game. Add more TRADE Depth. Add more PROVINCIAL Depth. (Holy Roman Empire anyone? What, its a gigantic nation, spamming armies? No, its a political body of many nations, whom sometimes slapped each other around, and generally were very interesting.). Finally, add more COMBAT Depth.

If im recieving a charge from the enemies calvary line (which could very well be a head on charge - nothing really wrong with that, just a bit suicidal.), the calvary should NOT turn around and run off after receiving a few volleys of arrow fire. Note I am not speaking about morale - im talking about literally being given a double-move(run) order to run in the opposite direction...

Oh it gets better.

Guess what happens next?

...The calvary comes back towards my archers, full speed. After taking another volley, they turn around again(!) and head back to their own front lines. This continues until the enemy is massacred and routing.

Dont even get me started on seiges.

This lack of intelligence in the combat department is enough to bury this game forever. It isnt the ONLY thing wrong, but if you are trying to put out a game whose entire point is the "awesome 3d strategic battles!", then at least make it worth playing. Make it a challenge.

Hey, you want a good example of how to stop people from "bum rushing" the AI? MAKE A BETTER AI. No excuses, no "Well use house rules"... JUST FIX THE GAME.

Yeah, end rant. :smash:

SoxSexSax

07-06-2007, 00:16

Soxsexsax,

Something you may wish to do as a mental exercise is to write out a script that does what you say. Once you do that, you can then give a credible example of what should be changed and we can discuss the merits of it.

Having written scripts for programs in the past, I've learned that some times what seems "Obvious" isn't so easy when you have to write out the steps you take to make a comparison / plan. I DO think that if some people give example scripts CA may be able to use a collected brain storming session from the players as an example of what they want to face.

I'm a computer programmer by profession and have been for years. While I have better things to do with my valuable free time than write a whole bunch of conceptual scripts, I assure you that I consider it to be relatively trivial to do the 5 items I said:

1) 1 is utterly trivial, no need to explain this, simple number comparisons

2) Trivial, the autocalc knows roughly how powerful a stack is, the AI should have a minimum power value before using a stack to siege. I forsee no difficulty here

3) Again, trivial. If City.NumberOfDefenders < 8 Then IncreaseDefensePriority(City). How's that for a conceptual script?

4) I fail to see any difficulty with limiting fleet building until a militray rating sufficient to its neighbour count is acheived. Trivial.

5) This one is less trivial in terms of work but I would only envision fairly straightforward coding. Might be time-consuming but not hard.

Every suggestion I made is straightforward from a coding point of view, and hence difficulty of making changes is just not a valid argument against them doing it.

John_Longarrow

07-06-2007, 09:11

Marius Dynamite

07-06-2007, 11:30

I agree with Kroniac 100%.

Doesn't CA have programmers and game designers who have been making TW games for a while now? Why do we need to give example scripts? The entire point of a programmer is to change english (or any other language) into programming language.

M2TW AI is just bad work. Graphically and in concept the game is brilliant, AI is poor in all fields.

What annoys me most is that Mods are turning out to have better AI than the original.

Derventio

07-06-2007, 16:23

John_Longarrow

07-07-2007, 00:45

Marius Dynamite

I don't think its the programmers who are making the AI do dumb things. I think its the person who's supposed to be generating the spec for how the AI handles conditions that is doing it. I drop it dead in the lap of who ever is supposed to be in charge of the AI team / development. That's the person who has to be shown "Here is what we wan't, not what you are giving us".

Telling someone "It sucks, fix it" gets interpited as "I'm whining and I've got no clue what I want". That is from sitting on the other side of the table and asking "OK, so show me the problem" and having the other person not be able to. If you can't tell someone how it is broken, give examples of how it is broken, and show what you are looking for, they will NEVER be able to produce what you are asking for.

SoxSexSax

07-07-2007, 17:57

SoxSexSax

1) Please define hopeless then. Its easy to write "If situation = hopeless", but what would the the actual comparison? Would it be hopeless to have 3 provinces lets, 6 stacks, and be faced by an army of 20 stacks from a 20 province empire? Gotta add in what else is going on on the map. Some times yes its hopeless. Other times, it would cost the human 15 provinces if they tried to go after those 3.

(Code is abstract)

If (CitiesLostInWar > 0 and CitiesTakenInWar < CitiesLostInWar) _
And (MyMilitary < TheirMilitary / 2) Then AcceptCeasefire.

If I have lost more cities and my military is less than half theirs, accept a ceasefire. Acceptable?

2) Would require your script to be dependant on a known bug. Autocalc doesn't work correctly during siege fights. It compares the fight as an open field battle, not a siege battle. Any script working based on this would give exactly the same problem as now if the human waits for the attack or sallies.

This is just plain pedantic. When PLANNING, you ASSUME everything else is bug free, otherwise what's the point? ASSUMING the bug was fixed, my original method stands. Even if it wasn't, divising a noddy but workable strength value from a stack would be trivial.

3) Your script is almost as good as the current one. The problem is what is required for a garrison is dependant on local enemy forces and what can be used against the target. That suggestion would result in a worse situation for the AI than the current one. Just as useless while being more expensive.

No, my script is vastly BETTER than the original, as the original will not prioritise defence for frontline cities for multiple turns even when they have less than 4 units, which is just wrong. Mine might be wrong in certain cases too, granted, but it is better to have and not need than need or not have. And as for being more expensive, some of my other changes would recoup the money.

4) You are not including a strategic picture. As Sicily I'm not sure I need to have an army as large as the HRE before I build a fleet. That would result in the game being a bit easier as some of the smaller coastal nations wouldn't have the fleet to take rebel islands.

Thinking primarily about the strategic side of things gets AI nations killed. Furthermore, my formula would take all land border sharing nation's militaries into account, meaning sicily would need less defence than the HRE before building boats...but still MORE THAN NOW!

5) Correct, there should be a script that identifies what needs to be put where, but the logic isn't trivial as it would require a lot of input based on what is around and what the factions goals are.

No, the logic is (relatively) trivial. Seriously, all it would need are some hardcoded values per faction (probably percentage based) to determine how many castles of each type to devote to each unit class. Nations that rely heavily on horse archers would lean towards more stable based castles, archery heavy nations would have more bowyer based castles and all round nations would have evenly distributed types. Perfection isn't required, but it simply has to spend less per castle/city than it currently does if it wants to keep up.

(BTW, when I say something is trivial, I mean compared to, for instance, writing an 8 way A* pathfinding algorithm, or an efficient alpha blending routine...trivial to a professional coder, basically)

From a coding stand point none of these are that hard to do, conceptually. What we need sample scipts for is to develop a specification that nails down the boundary conditions. How you play and how others play are not the same. As such what you would consider a "Trivial" task to make it more of a challenge for you would be seen by others as a major bug that makes the game too easy for them.

I'm sorry, are you suggesting that my changes (properly implemented) could make the game easier for somebody? Are we playing the same game, where winning a short campaign with any nation on VH/VH is EASILY doable in 50 turns without losing a battle? I refute this point entirely.

I'd suggest you put on your project manager's hat or client liason hat rather than your coders hat. What we really need to do is figure out first and for most how to identify different play styles that require different AI reactions. That would be the hard part.

You're making a relatively easy task much harder than it needs to be, for no good reason. Maybe that's because you're a project manager, not a coder?

(EDIT: fixed about 10 typos and finished a half written sentence)

alpaca

07-07-2007, 22:01

Well I enjoyed the generally intelligent discussion here, but it left me totally depressed.
You see I am a pretty intelligent man (IQ 149) I have an interest and understanding of military tactics. BUT I CANT WIN THIS GAME!
I'm great at CIV and I beat Shogun but stuff since I suck at.

Ah well the siege of Dublin awaits ---again.:embarassed:
Are you kidding me? If the game is really hard for you (and you're pretty intelligent as you claim :tongue2:) I daresay you never thought about it properly. Once you sit down to figure out how it works it's damn easy (especially the battle part)

Didz

07-07-2007, 22:42

Are you kidding me? If the game is really hard for you (and you're pretty intelligent as you claim :tongue2:) I daresay you never thought about it properly. Once you sit down to figure out how it works it's damn easy (especially the battle part)
Actually, when I read Derventio's post my first thought was that this demonstrates the difference between having an understanding of history and tactic's and being a game player.

A gameplayer will work out how to expliot the weakenesses of the game in order to win, an intellient person with an understanding of tactic's will tend to do what historically and logically ought to work and trust the game to reward him for doing the right thing.

A classic case of too much knowledge being a bad thing.

John_Longarrow

07-08-2007, 07:08

SoxSexSax

(Code is abstract)

If (CitiesLostInWar > 0 and CitiesTakenInWar < CitiesLostInWar) _
And (MyMilitary < TheirMilitary / 2) Then AcceptCeasefire.

If I have lost more cities and my military is less than half theirs, accept a ceasefire. Acceptable?

As it doesn't take into account either factions other war commitments, I'd have to say no. If you go up to Milan after you've just taken a city or two of theirs, and you offer a cease fire, I'd say they would be nuts to accept it if you've just been excommunicated and your capitol is now the target of a crusade. More would need to go into this decision than just a simple calculation of "Us VS them". That is why I think we, as a community, would need to work out what we think would be a good way to handle these situations. If we can create an actual specification, the coding would be very easy.

This is just plain pedantic. When PLANNING, you ASSUME everything else is bug free, otherwise what's the point? ASSUMING the bug was fixed, my original method stands. Even if it wasn't, divising a noddy but workable strength value from a stack would be trivial.

Other issues also arise. What is the religious situation in the city? What other armies are around? What are the real chances of holding it once you've taken it is the better question. If I'm the player and I have only two units of town guard in the place, the AI would be very dumb to attack with 4 units of town guards if they can't hold it after taking it. We'd have the same disappointment as now, but the AI would be further limited because it would waste more resources in trying to take the city and losing it.

No, my script is vastly BETTER than the original, as the original will not prioritise defence for frontline cities for multiple turns even when they have less than 4 units, which is just wrong. Mine might be wrong in certain cases too, granted, but it is better to have and not need than need or not have. And as for being more expensive, some of my other changes would recoup the money.

For reference to number 4, please see your own post on number 2. You are stating "We can make the AI spend more, but thats OK because we will fix it some where else". The AI shouldn't be forced to increase its expenses when it has a hard enough time handling a player as is. This is why we would need to actually work out how the AI should garrison a city by taking in to account what could be used against it. The Moors should never have a large garrison in Timbuktu unless there is a reason for it. Deciding that they should always have 8 units in it once they've take it is less useful than the current situation. There is no way to say an arbitrary increase is better in all cases than working out a good solution. That sounds like something a customer would come up with, followed by them being pissed off when it doesn't result in their expectations.

Thinking primarily about the strategic side of things gets AI nations killed. Furthermore, my formula would take all land border sharing nation's militaries into account, meaning sicily would need less defence than the HRE before building boats...but still MORE THAN NOW!

Odd, I've never heard someone state that planning strategicly isn't the best way to handle decision making in a strategic game before. It is not something I've ever encountered, but I've seen many people who concentrate on tactical situations lose horribly in strategic games.

So it would be a good thing for the player to have unrestricted access to all AI boarders without the AI being able to counter? So playing as the Danes, I SHOULD be able to attack any other nation that boarders the Atlantic secure in the knowledge that they won't build a fleet that can oppose me for a looooong time? Hmm. I don't think you have thought through the player's options for this.

(BTW, when I say something is trivial, I mean compared to, for instance, writing an 8 way A* pathfinding algorithm, or an efficient alpha blending routine...trivial to a professional coder, basically)

Ah, I see the problem now. You are thinking like a programmer, not a developer. Now I'm not sure how long you've been coding for (any suggestions for keeping proper track of punch cards besides writing sequence numbers on them?) but I've met too many "I can write the code" guys who have no understanding of how to actually meet the clients demands instead of the clients needs.

I may have only been doing coding for about 12 years, but I have learned that giving the client what they need instead of what they ask for often has made me a lot more money in a lot less time. Since I do know that asking a developer (or a coder) to simple "Make it work" or "Fix it" often results in the exact same arguements I read on this board, I'd prefere to tell CA WHAT we think is broken, HOW we think its broken, and WHAT we really want them to change.

I also know that I've gotten very tired of these types of meetings because too few of the individuals involved were versed well enought in the clients business, how businesses need to work, what the employees in the business were actually doing, and what can reasonably be expected from programs that I've gone on to a much more enjoyable career. Now I only have to talk folks currently serving in or recently returned from combat deployments into staying in the military. Much less stressful for me. :2thumbsup:

Kadagar_AV

07-08-2007, 09:36

John_Longarrow, I have developed a game (nothing fancy, peaked at some 40k users), and been an avid strategic games player since, well, the early 90's.

And I must say that much, if not most, of the problems are due to sloppy code, non-existant beta-testing and general bad management from the devs.

I mean, geez, they released the game with a 100% passive AI and game breaking mechanics... *I seriosly doubt any beta tester could have missed the passive AI, hence my claim of non-existing beta testing*

There is, in my view, only one problem, as mentioned before. The game is simply to complex for this particular gaming company to handle.

The more options you give a player, the harder the AI has to struggle to keep up.

Rake the board game of GO as an example... The rules takes about 10 seconds to learn, and it's EXTREMLY straightforward. Yet they have yet to build a computer able to beat a champion.

It was only rather recently a computer could beat a chess champion, and chess is an EXTREMLY dumbed down game (dont get me wrong, of course chess is challenging, I'm just comparing it to medieval 2).

Basicly, this means the AI will have NO chance in medieval, unless it cheats, and a cheating computer isnt very fun.

I guess the conclusion is that the devs wanted more than they could handle, and THAT is just poor management.

I wouldnt mind if they removed the diplomacy alltogether, as an example. Why? Because I'd rather have a game designed around non-existing diplomacy, than as now, a game designed around broken and bugged diplomacy.

Like today.... I offered HRE cease fire, 30k gold and 2 provinces, and they just wouldnt take it. The very next turn (nothing had changed), they ask for peace and give me a province as thanks... :wall:

Is it any wonder many experience the diplomacy as rather random?

Solution would hence be to dumb down the game to a level where the computer AI with only a modest bit of cheating can play evenly with the community.

/rant

Didz

07-08-2007, 09:56

What seems to be lacking amongst the AI controlled factions is situational awareness. They don't seem to take into account their relative strength to each other or the player controlled faction, or the threat currently posed by other factions to each of their settlements. Their actions are purely reactive to local opportunies and events no matter how dumb that action is given their overall situation.

There is obvioulsy some sort of mechanism in the game assessing the relative power of factions because we actually get a graph showing precisely that information. There is also a constant montoring of factions to determine how close to victory they are because we are warned when a computer controlled faction gets close to victory. So, in theory at least it should be possible to modify AI behaviour to take into account where its faction is in the pecking order relative to the others and to modify its strategy and goals to take this into account.

e.g. Do I need more income?, Do I need more troops?, Do I need more settlements? Do I need more Allies?

The risk is that what results is a Settlers IV type game where the AI faction remains totally passive until it has an overwhelming advantage and then swamps the human player. This produces a rather poor gaming expereince where the AI does not challenge the player at all, unless it can win the game and is then virtually unstoppable.

However, with so many factions it seems unlikely that this sort of result would occur. Most factions would find themselves neighbours to at least one faction which was weaker than they are and one which is stronger and should be coming up with sensible strategies for dealing with all of its neighbours, not as individuals but as a group. The idea being to try and reduce the threat these neighbours pose whilst increasing the threat it poses to each of them.

The following is my attempt to come up with a foundation model for a strategic decision making routine based upon relative power, using four neighbouring factions.

North (6) bordered by East (11) and West (12) total threat (23)
South (5) bordered by East (11) and West (12) total threat (23)
East (11) bordered by North (6) and West (5) total threat (11)
West (12) bordered by North (6) and West (5) total threat (11)

North and South cannot hope to survive an attack by either East or West and so must avoid any direct hostility towards their neighbours. However, were they to form an alliance they would significant reduce the overall threat posed by either East or West by creating a power block of (11).

Both East and West are reasonably confident of victory over either of their immediate neighbours North or South, but only if they can be sure that the other remains neutral and does not intervene. Therefore, they will be seeking some sort of alliance with either North or South which will ensure that they remain passive whilst a war is pursued against the other.

Both West and East need to increase their power base before their factions come into direct border contact, because whoever is the stronger at this point will be in the best position to win. Merely, annexing North or South will not ensure victory, unless you can also prevent the opposition to annexing the other smaller faction, the goal must be to secure one or both of the other factions whilst denying either to your main opponent.

Therefore, if East were to invade the North, then West must react immediately to protect the North either by forming an alliance with it, by moving troops into the North to counter the Eastern invasion unilaterally, or by persuading the South to launch a counter invasion of the East.

An alliance between West and South would produce a power block of (17) to oppose the Easts (11) which means that the East would need to break off hostilities with the North immediately and seek a ceasefire in order to prepare to meet the new threat. The most obvious counter to a West-South threat would be an alliance between East and North producing a power block of (17) to match that of the West-South alliance. The North currently has a power block(17) and a power (11) block to deal with and so has little option but to agree. If it doesn't the most likely result is an invasion by the West which has just succeeded in neutralising the threat from the South by allying with them. The only other option it has is to try and break the alliance between the West and South thus returning the situation to its initial state.

John_Longarrow

07-11-2007, 00:21

Kadagar_AV

I agree that the current AI logic isn't up to snuff. I don't think the Dev team has enough resources to handle what the playing community can come up with to throw at them. The ONLY way I can see for the Dev team to work out a better AI would be for us, the players, to specify what is going wrong and how we believe it needs to be fixed. Just as the playing community has has identified problems with the game for CA to fix, we need to identify what the AI is doing wrong, what the AI needs to look at, and how the AI should react.

P.S. What game did you work on? The only strategic game I've had input into (so far) has been Federation An Empire by ADB.

Didz,

North can also side with West/South and work with them to remove East. If North can gain enough from a war with East, it could wind up an equal parter to West. If they are already at war with East, that makes more sense than making an alliance with them.

This would result in one faction (East) being ganged up on by everyone else. It also means that both North and South would want to carve out big chunks of East so that they can (as non-bordering allies) keep West in check.

Didz

07-11-2007, 09:56

North can also side with West/South and work with them to remove East. If North can gain enough from a war with East, it could wind up an equal parter to West. If they are already at war with East, that makes more sense than making an alliance with them.

This would result in one faction (East) being ganged up on by everyone else. It also means that both North and South would want to carve out big chunks of East so that they can (as non-bordering allies) keep West in check.
Absolutely right....the key point I was trying to make the about example is that MTW2 (and any other similar wargame) needs to be able to model this sort of 'strategic' planning and manoeuvring BEFORE it even begins to consider where and what to attack.

What I was trying to demonstrate was the need for strategy games to adhere to step 1 on Sun Tzu's doctrines of war.

e.g. Generally the best policy is to attack the enemy's strategy.

If the strategy of the West(12) and South(5) is to form a West/South power block (17) to attack either the North or East. Then defeating that strategy is the easiest way to undermine their plans either by forming a similar power North/East power block (17) or working to break the West/South alliance.

Likewise, if the North's strategy was to join the West/South power block, this would produce an almost unstoppable alliance North/West/South(23) v East(11). In this instance by far the best defence East has is to undermine the strategy of the North/West/South alliance by destroying their alliance, and this should be its first and second priority.

1st: Attack the enemies strategy.
2nd: Disrupt his alliances by diplomacy.

Only if these steps fail should East find itself having to resort to option 3 and attack the enemy armies in the field.

Jambo

07-11-2007, 15:31

All TW games are easy. The only way to lose a TW game is if the objective is to lose. :dizzy2: You see, TW games are unique in that it's actually harder to lose a game than to win.

I now have my game modded through scripts to give the AI money and city garrisons upon being besieged by the human, and even now I still win 95% of my battles; the ones I lose tend to be from the odd unexpected naval skirmish.

The problem is incurable. One can endeavour to make the campaign as hard as you can through modding, but ultimately you still win every tactical battle you play. In effect all you're doing is giving yourself twice the number of dough-ball AI stacks to fight. Remember the Hojo "Stack of DOom" from Shogun? The only way to nullify a human player is to bore it into submission through sheer weight of AI numbers and the enormity of time it then takes to complete each turn. ;)

I remember when CA removed the AI's ability to outspend its money in Shogun. With the Hojo hoarde removed the challenge disappeared immediately. I actually preferred Shogun with the cheating horde, and so did many others once they realised their complaints of "AI cheating" resulted in an easy game.

On the battlefield there's only ever one winner. The reason for this is the formula for winning on the battlefield is so simple. Shoot missiles as the AI approaches, engage infantry, then once engaged use cavalry to flank and initiate the chain rout. This could be made more difficult to achieve if the AI acted in a similar way. Unfortunately, it doesn't. It likes to charge its cavalry first!

So, make mental note everybody - don't buy a TW game for a challenge. Buy it for immersion (sometimes), graphics and ... um... fun...

Edit: It would seem that CA's way of introducing the challenge for Med II revolves around the greatly reduced timescale to complete the campaign. 225 turns instead of 400+ in Rome.

John_Longarrow

07-11-2007, 16:34

Jambo,

You could also mod the game so that all AI factions are Mongol hordes. They seem to know how to shoot first and charge later! :devilish:

Jambo

07-11-2007, 19:00

John,

I think one of the best ways to make the harder might be to use a script that spawns a Generals unit for the AI every 5 turns or so as long as they're underneath a certain amount cf to their city number. The AI using captains to lead big armies does a lot of harm.

Didz

07-11-2007, 20:07

So, make mental note everybody - don't buy a TW game for a challenge. Buy it for immersion (sometimes), graphics and ... um... fun...
Whilst I don't deny that what you say is true, do you really think that its inevitable and can't be fixed?

Jambo

07-11-2007, 21:34

Whilst I don't deny that what you say is true, do you really think that its inevitable and can't be fixed?

I'd love to say no Didz, but I really believe the current format of TW games makes them impossible to make difficult per sé. They're just too complex with too many variables to enable competent AI to be designed. Maybe under the "Risk" style of campaign map, as seen in Shogun and Med I, the campaign element could have been made more difficult?

However, the Battle AI hasn't improved one iota from the days of Shogun and Med I so it's difficult to believe it's going to improve drastically in subsequent titles as the maps, units, etc, get more complicated in design and function.... What I'm alluding to here with respect to Med II is that the complexity of siege warfare has far surpassed the ability to program competent AI to deal with it.

Where did they go wrong? Well, for starters I believe the more advanced campaign map was a bad move. While there's no doubting that it adds to immersion and realism, I'd argue it's far too complex for the AI. I'd have much preferred a more traditional and simplified boardgame style of map layout; one which has less freedom and the AI can utilise choke points, river crossings, high ground, etc to its full potential. Secondly, the idea of captains... urgh. Why o' why captains? They're the bane of any AI army. All armies should automatically contain a general unit thereby eliminating this particular AI weakness in a oner.

John_Longarrow

07-12-2007, 06:57

Jambo,

I do think the AI can be improved to the point that it will challenge any player. Half of the problem is that they don't have any way to push updates for the AI scripts on a regular basis.

If you take a couple hundred players who like to mod and let them regularly update the campaign AI to counter existing player tactics and strategies, you will eventually get an AI that can be a challenge. I'm not sure how long it would take to do so, but I'm pretty confident in the abilities of the players to come up with continual tweaks to make the game better.

One behavior that I personally think needs to be changed is the predictability of the AI. I personally think there should be multiple different AI scripts to reflect different leadership styles. One for an isolationist AI, one for an expansive AI, etc. By having varied responses to a given player generated situation you will find out that the player has a hard time coming up with a "Best solution", especially if two scripts behave radically different to the same player actions.

Think of how a player would react to an AI that follows AskThePizzaGuy's blitzing strategy. That could result in just enough of a stalemate for the player to allow several other AI factions to really get ahead.

Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)

07-12-2007, 08:50

Why everyone is complaining about the AI.Just don't play this game if you don't like it,go and play Bomberman and Packman.

Didz

07-12-2007, 10:10

@Jambo

Well I would like to say your wrong but I have yet to play any strategy game other than chess and backgammon where the AI managed to provide a challenge without using the standard 'mass unit production' and 'universal knowledge' cheats.

I do think that the AI could be improved though, particularly at the strategic level where it does make a lot of really dumb mistakes. Battlefield AI is much more of a problem as its difficult to isolate the poor how much of the poor performance is down to the strategic AI and how much just to poor tactical handling.

In my current 0.5 years per turn game, I've noticed that the biggest problem the AI has is in army composition. With all its cities and castles fully developed one would have expected it to have a full choice of troops. But instead of using this to generate balanced armies that are engineered to maximise its performance against mine, it has developed a fetish for Venetian and Hungarian armies heavy in pavise crossbowmen, trebuchet's and hussars. The result is usually a turkey shoot for my horse archers against the hussars followed by a mounted raid to wipe out their exposed trebuchets and then a mass charge to overrun their crossbows.

However, Egypt did manage to pull off one surprise victory last night when an army heavy in Royal Marmalukes destroy my fully stacked Turkish army on its way to beseige Gaza. That army still had far too many trebuchets wasting units slots, but the combination of heavy infantry and elite mounted archers was enough to wear down my battleline and eventually cause it to rout. Lots of flanking by the marmalukes too, which is something I've not noticed since RTW.

Certainly, good army composition (e.g. Armies designed to counter the strengths of their opponent) by the strategic AI would make a big difference to battlefield performance as would a clear strategic goal that avoided wandering army syndrome.

Kadagar_AV

07-12-2007, 17:58

Why everyone is complaining about the AI.Just don't play this game if you don't like it,go and play Bomberman and Packman.

Very constructive...

If we wouldnt like the game we wouldnt be here, what we are trying to do is make a good game better.

Basicly, the biggest frustration the game has is how good it COULD be if it functioned correctly compared to the current state of the game.

If the games functions all worked correctly this would be an outstanding game of the century, but in the current state you will have to be very forgiving to enjoy the game.

SadCat

07-13-2007, 14:14

[QUOTE=Kadagar_AV]John_Longarrow,

"I wouldnt mind if they removed the diplomacy altogether, as an example. Why? Because I'd rather have a game designed around non-existing diplomacy, than as now, a game designed around broken and bugged diplomacy.

Like today.... I offered HRE cease fire, 30k gold and 2 provinces, and they just wouldnt take it. The very next turn (nothing had changed), they ask for peace and give me a province as thanks... :wall:

Is it any wonder many experience the diplomacy as rather random? "

Question did something change? It is now their turn. This brings up the question does the AI use old data? Half way through my turn I ask the AI if it wants a cease fire, does it looks at data from the start of its last turn for the answer? Then at start of it's next turn recalculate and want a cease fire? If looking at old data it would not know that I have taken 3 cities and broken its army this turn. It may still think it is on the offensive about to take one of my cities. SadCat :clown:

diotavelli

07-13-2007, 17:50

Question did something change? It is now their turn. This brings up the question does the AI use old data? Half way through my turn I ask the AI if it wants a cease fire, does it looks at data from the start of its last turn for the answer? Then at start of it's next turn recalculate and want a cease fire? If looking at old data it would not know that I have taken 3 cities and broken its army this turn. It may still think it is on the offensive about to take one of my cities. SadCat :clown:

I suspect it has less to do with old data and more to do with the AI being imperfect at providing a "human" perspective on diplomacy.

If you offer to give/sell a province or two to another faction (even at odds very favourable to them), they'll often refuse - with the rationale that they can't trust you (not to take the province(s) back soon after). This also applies when you attempt to initiate a ceasefire and offer provinces.

However, when they initiate ceasefire discussions, the AI does not seem to consider that your proposals may be dishonest and takes them at face value - and is therefore prepared to give up provinces in return for a ceasefire.

This seems crazy and is - but it's also a reflection of how complex the issues the AI designers were dealing with. If you initiate diplomacy and are less than Reliable, the M2TW AI will automatically suspect you of chicanery because you initiated the dialogue and may therefore be planning something tricksy. However, if the AI initiates the discussion, it will give credence to your position so long as it feels you are responding fairly to its requests - and doesn't consider that you're double-crossing them because they made the initial approach.

What's the alternative? That the AI never trusts you? No point having diplomacy at all at that point. That the AI always trusts you? Too easy to exploit and, again, a case for not having any AI.

So CA had to tread a path between these two extremes and it chose this one. It's not ideal but I don't think it's too bad. I regularly have to negotiate in my job and know that concessions are far more palatable if they made seemingly on your terms, not those of your opposite number; the current approach reflects that.

It could be better but it could be much, much worse.

Didz

07-13-2007, 18:06

What's the alternative? That the AI never trusts you? No point having diplomacy at all at that point. That the AI always trusts you? Too easy to exploit and, again, a case for not having any AI.

It shouldn't be about trust in the first place in my opinion. The AI should base its decision on whether it is in its best interests to accept or not. If its a good deal for that particular AI faction why should it reject it just because it thinks your a lying toad, and if its a bad deal why would it accept even if it thinks your a saint.

As for not accepting a gift becuase it thinks you intend to take it back again....why the hell should that matter?

Surely, what matters is whether the AI faction feels confident that it can hold onto the gift long enough to make it worthwhile to accept.

Askthepizzaguy

02-19-2008, 17:59

Auto-calc'ing city battles removes a small factor of difficulty as auto-calc ignores walls.

Effectively, though, this just shows what we already know, blitzing in any way breaks the game model, and the strategic AI is grossly incompetent. That last is true of all the TW games, IMHO, I'd be surprised if there was any realistic situation a player couldn't win their way out of on the strategic map.

Agreed entirely.

I admit, I didn't even become a decent general until my War for Independence campaign forced me to use... archers.

When one can easily field massive all infantry and cavalry armies and blitz straight through all resistance using superior strategy map positioning and recruitment... why would anyone need to learn to battle effectively? You can always simply massively outnumber or outmaneuver them.

I HAD to blitz by a certain TURN number in order to give the AI a chance. The faster I move, the weaker I am on the field, the fewer troops and funds I have, and the less advantageous my strategic positioning. Actually having to win seige battles with only a unit of cavalry is difficult.

Winning seiges with basic militia infantry and archers, while undermanned, is very difficult.

Blitzing gave me that. But only when I had the much more difficult house rules of War for Independence did I even begin to meet real resistance from the AI.