It's just not fun to be in constant war all the time

Yes, another rant post.

I've noticed many people here are complaining about the AI's suicidal tendency to declare war. I've just stopped playing my British campaign, because the AI of France and Spain, despite 15 years of attempts to appease them, decided to declare war on me. Did I want to fight them? No. Did I want to give up the chance to play with late-era tech and see what things are like at the later-half of the game? No. Why? Because I'd have to raze the map and spend hours conquering territories just to shut the f***ing AI up. All my ideas of playing proxy wars in America alongside building a big trade empire have gone out the window, and I'm not having fun.

This has always been this way in Total War series. I guess "Total War" means that fighting is the only form of "fun" you are allowed in this game. I don't know why they bother with most of the units and tech, since we never see them. What a waste of effort on CA's side to make all that cool tech, all those cool units, all those cool abilities, but we never see them because the AI will never, ever let you get there. They will declare war first, and beat you out of frustration (you'll stop playing eventually, or crush them/win the game first). Personally, I don't want to spend dozens of hours of hard, hard work just to see the late-tech units, which you're forced into because the AI constantly declares war, regardless of what you do.

I just want to play the game in different ways than "conquer the entire map" route that the AI logic forces you down. There is no turtling, because the AI won't let you. There is no squashing one empire to demonstrate to another to leave you alone because the AI won't let you. There is no building of a huge trade empire, because the AI forces you to destroy them all (they'll all declare war on you eventually, so your trading empire will come to nothing, even if you simply ignored them and played defensive). Games that force you to play in only one way are boring. I've conquered the world a bazillion times since Shogun days, and want to do something different in a TW game.

Why can't CA let us play the game like we *WANT* to? Why must we play the game the same way like some broken record?

My Maratha campaign has been the only fun one so far because you can capture India, then the AI's suicidal nature can be ignored while you build up your empire. You can't do that with any other faction.

Ok. Rant mode off. I feel better.

Maybe playing for a Prestige win will alter the AI's tendancy. I'll give that a go, but if that doesn't help, ETW is getting shelved and uninstalled.

If you ask me, the game is based on battles. the campaign is just created so that you can make battles more unique, to a better extent than just the basic menu option.

Doom is about shooting people. Let's not bother with multiplayer, or moving players, let's just have them shoot, and do the moving for them.

Grand Theft Auto is about doing missions. Instead of giving a world for the player to travel and explore, let's just let them imagine it, and just have them type actions into a box.

Please, add to the list.

The words "Total War" are in all franchise titles.

It's going to be a hard sell to try and ask them to create a system in which you don't have to go to war to win.

Play Civilisation if that's the case.

Wait for mods to come out because vanilla Total War is never gonna be like that. Both RTW and M2TW had more historical simulation mods but the vanilla games are about fighting the battles. There isn't a ton of stuff to do without battles. (Majority of game time is playing battles.)

You're all right of course. The name is "Total War". I guess I was hoping for more in this incarnation, hoping that there was more to the strategic mode than an excuse to throw a bunch of battles at you. There's so much suggestion in the game, in the media, in the reviews, in the talks with the CA folks to imply that there's the *option* of playing in a way that isn't just battle after battle after battle. Heck, I keep reading about how the diplomacy is so much better in this game. Yet the same old "declare war on my longtime ally and trading partner for no obvious reason" thing happens just like in STW, MTW, RTW, MTWII, etc. The Civ series has shown that it is possible to have a fun varied gameplay, where you can choose different ways to play, *and* have a diplomancy model that makes sense and you can work with (and not just be at the mercy of).

Incidentally, if you're going to do something that a player might not like, make it *obvious* why it happened. Working in the videogame-making industry for 12 years has taught me that doing stuff that makes the player scratch their head w/o any explanation is a bad idea. Doing something like a random "declare war" from a friendly nation who's traded with you for a long time and you've been nice to is bad enough. Not providing you with a) a darned good reason, b) the opportunity to learn why so that you can adjust and learn for next time, is simply bad game design.

Plus, it boggles my mind that if the intent is to have you in non-stop all-out "total" war, why do they bother with an in-depth long-term tech tree? Why to they bother with techs and buildings and units that you will never reach? It seems the only way to reach those levels is to trash everyone in the world, conquer most of the territories, then turn turtle once the AI is impotent. That's the only way to get the 50-100 or so unmolested turns necessary to reach those levels. But that's no good because you'll have these shiny kick-butt units and the AI will have nothing (because you had to trash them to keep them off your back). Much better to try those fancy units out in the battle mode outside the campaign, which leads me right back to the question of why they bothered with a big tech tree and so many units you never get to really use in the campaign. Their recent "downloadable content" of high-level custom per-faction units also makes me scratch my head, why try to sell those if you can't use them in-game because of the diplomacy model?

Again, it's the videogame-maker in me that puzzles over this. There's obviously a lot of work done to make all those pretty units, to work out all those buildings, get the tech-tree right and varied for all the different factions, animate the units, de-bug the movements and behaviors, etc. They could have shaved a year off their dev cycle had they not done all those high-end units and buildings, since most players will never get to them in a regular campaign.

I guess my big beef is that I was led to believe that the game had more depth than "play-for-20-turns-then-everyone-attacks-you-with-no-explanation" type gameplay that's been done over and over again. I guess I'll just have to wait for Civ5 to play a game that lets me play via trade or tech or something other than the beaten-to-death "go for a while, oh someone small declares war, oh that snowballs in 5-20 turns into all-out war".

Anyway, I seem to have gone back into rant mode. I'm turning that off and going to do something else!

I also agree that they need a strong robust diplomacy system. This is a key part of how nations speak and relate to each other.

I'd settle for an occasional outbreak of peace between any factions, or even factions forming an alliance.

To be honest I've given up, playing mod's from now on, vanilla is a total wet squib and is just annoying, at least I can ignore the core game faults & concentrate on mod features.

The dev's are not going to fix anything anyone wants, just break the stuff people don't care about or like, have to admit its a novel approach.

At the moment I can hardly be bothered to start a new campaign because I know I will just be forced to slaughter all my neighbors instead of, say, conquering colonies etc.

I agree I hate constant war as well but the games are clearly designed towards that not only because of the AI but because of the relatively strict time limit you have to finish the campaign. If you existed in a state of peace just building up your empire, history would run out on you and sadly I can't see CA going a different direction with this anytime soon.

If u dont want to be in war, make peace. Go to diplomacy and use the knife button if neutral faction dont want peace or to become protectorate. Thanks to this way u can be allied/protector of half factions in the game. So, they wont declare war on you, others factions will be scared to declare war on u and u will have a great game.

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Originally Posted by hoof

Yes, another rant post.

I've noticed many people here are complaining about the AI's suicidal tendency to declare war. I've just stopped playing my British campaign, because the AI of France and Spain, despite 15 years of attempts to appease them, decided to declare war on me. Did I want to fight them? No. Did I want to give up the chance to play with late-era tech and see what things are like at the later-half of the game? No. Why? Because I'd have to raze the map and spend hours conquering territories just to shut the f***ing AI up. All my ideas of playing proxy wars in America alongside building a big trade empire have gone out the window, and I'm not having fun.

This has always been this way in Total War series. I guess "Total War" means that fighting is the only form of "fun" you are allowed in this game. I don't know why they bother with most of the units and tech, since we never see them. What a waste of effort on CA's side to make all that cool tech, all those cool units, all those cool abilities, but we never see them because the AI will never, ever let you get there. They will declare war first, and beat you out of frustration (you'll stop playing eventually, or crush them/win the game first). Personally, I don't want to spend dozens of hours of hard, hard work just to see the late-tech units, which you're forced into because the AI constantly declares war, regardless of what you do.

I just want to play the game in different ways than "conquer the entire map" route that the AI logic forces you down. There is no turtling, because the AI won't let you. There is no squashing one empire to demonstrate to another to leave you alone because the AI won't let you. There is no building of a huge trade empire, because the AI forces you to destroy them all (they'll all declare war on you eventually, so your trading empire will come to nothing, even if you simply ignored them and played defensive). Games that force you to play in only one way are boring. I've conquered the world a bazillion times since Shogun days, and want to do something different in a TW game.

Why can't CA let us play the game like we *WANT* to? Why must we play the game the same way like some broken record?

My Maratha campaign has been the only fun one so far because you can capture India, then the AI's suicidal nature can be ignored while you build up your empire. You can't do that with any other faction.

Ok. Rant mode off. I feel better.

Maybe playing for a Prestige win will alter the AI's tendancy. I'll give that a go, but if that doesn't help, ETW is getting shelved and uninstalled.

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Well, Britan on one side and France + Spain are natural enemies. If you do not want to destroy them, control them how Britain did: by naval means. It's possible.

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Originally Posted by Onemanshow

If u dont want to be in war, make peace. Go to diplomacy and use the knife button if neutral faction dont want peace or to become protectorate. Thanks to this way u can be allied/protector of half factions in the game. So, they wont declare war on you, others factions will be scared to declare war on u and u will have a great game.

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All that does it reduce your relations with everyone

I haven't had threatening work a single time in 1.3, while in 1.2 it seemed way too easy to scare people to act nice.
I don't even complain about being at war all the time, but what pisses me off is that AI doesn't understand when it's defeated. Playing Russia, Sweden is just 1 province nation surrounded by me and Denmark, they won't go to peace even if I'd give them 10000 and all conquered provinces back.
One way or another the same goes for any other AI nation, as it thinks that the player is weak.
AI should have some sort of appeasement policy towards the player, or it should form alliances with other factions bordering the player.

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Originally Posted by AussieGiant

The words "Total War" are in all franchise titles.

It's going to be a hard sell to try and ask them to create a system in which you don't have to go to war to win.

Play Civilisation if that's the case.

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im with him. if you are looking for a less militaristic route to win, TW is not your game.

and who says turtling doesnt work? it sure works for me. as sweden, im turtling on my west front while fighting two wars on my east front.
i dont think you are very clear on the concept of turtling.

You can't really turtle because your trade lanes will end up raided and you have to send your fleets out to protect them or starve (the AI on the other hand since 1.3 is unable to go bankrupt it seems, which is maddening). Also, the more AI declare war on you, the larger a fleet you need to get em all.

the concept of turtling, as far as i understand it, is staying put in terms of conquest. all military actions, ie defending trade routes, are defensive. and defending trade routes isnt so important. mine are raided quite often and still im making about 10k per turn, mostly through trade.

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Originally Posted by Hooahguy

the concept of turtling, as far as i understand it, is staying put in terms of conquest. all military actions, ie defending trade routes, are defensive. and defending trade routes isnt so important. mine are raided quite often and still im making about 10k per turn, mostly through trade.

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Exactly. But the objective in a Total War game is to conquer territory and if you just turtle, you can certainly survive but the turns will eventually run out. This is why I think the Total War games should have other objectives like the winner being the nation with the most points after a certain time period. The games may be called "Total War" but it's clear they have moved away from it simply being a game about blitzing. Thankfully.

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Originally Posted by hoof

Maybe playing for a Prestige win will alter the AI's tendancy. I'll give that a go, but if that doesn't help, ETW is getting shelved and uninstalled.

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I totally agree with your post. I have played prestige a few times and the AI is just as suicidal and aggressive in that gameplay mode.

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Originally Posted by AussieGiant

The words "Total War" are in all franchise titles.

It's going to be a hard sell to try and ask them to create a system in which you don't have to go to war to win.

Play Civilisation if that's the case.

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Look!

Total War is about the infrastructure you control to wage a total war!

Not to be totally at war with everyone all of the time!

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Originally Posted by GFX707

I totally agree with your post. I have played prestige a few times and the AI is just as suicidal and aggressive in that gameplay mode.

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just to point out, military acheivements is the biggest prestige factor.

Hmm for me the enlightenment always seems to be 50%

Yes, unless you have a lot of money and troops to toss around, not an good idea!!

To the people saying that the games are named Total War and therefore the way the game is is how it should be, then you obviously never saw any of the advertisements for the game. In the months before the game was released CA released several trailers showing us how the AI would be superior to any other game in the franchise, how diplomacy was going to be very important, how the player could focus on 3 different ways of dominating their neighbours. Through military, industrial or enlightenment means.

Every trailer didn't simply hint that there were different ways to play a campaign, it outright SAID there would be different ways to play the game other than mindless conquest forced by the suicidal and unintelligent AI.

So please stop with this old, arrogant argument that the games are named Total War and therefore should be about nothing but war, because even CA themselves said this wasn't so in 3 of the 5 trailers they released before the game went on sale.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

You can't really turtle because your trade lanes will end up raided and you have to send your fleets out to protect them or starve (the AI on the other hand since 1.3 is unable to go bankrupt it seems, which is maddening). Also, the more AI declare war on you, the larger a fleet you need to get em all.

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Exactly

As prussia I control Austria, Hungary, Poland, Bavaria, Saxony, and the other German provinces, with such minimal garisons most go in and out of rebelion

I am bankrupt

with half of mainland europe and no armies I am bankrupt

Poland has 1 province left and it arrives every 2 turns with a full stack of line inf and cav

sorry but this is BS

The AI throws itself at me leaving its provinces completely unguarded, so any other AI that wants to can take them, and will then proceed to throw itself at me

YEH!! way to make a game challenging CA

Im with the guy at Paradox who said he wasnt aware there was an AI in ETW.

FIX the game CA and then hand over control to people who know how to make a fun game (the modders) by giving them modding tools and access to key parts of the engine

That way at least it may not be a complete TRAIN WRECK :furious3:

we have had this argument many times, and there are 3 types, there are people who say its total war, there are people who say there is too much war, and then there are the people playing empire total war! lol

I look at this as it meant to be being a strategy game, like a four X game, Xpand Xplore Xploit and whatever the fourth one is. There is no reason that I can see that this game cannot have intelligent opponents like games like Civilizations 4 and Galactic Civilizations. If the campaign was all just about the battle maps, why bother with diplomacy and all the little other bits that make the campaign interesting, why bother with all those little tidbits of history? I think however those little tidbits of history could have been events that changed the game and randomly gave one nation an advantage over the others. The closest game that comes to this series of games I would say is Galactic Civilizations 2. The reason for this is that in GC2 they finally decided to depict the battles, unfortunately they are predetermined by the game, but they gave them graphical demonstrations. So GC2 battles = crap ETW AI = crap.

The black knight AI is still very much alive (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhRUe-gz690 watching it always makes me feel better :laugh4:)

I Was 5 turns into my british campaign and i was already at war with spain and france and I think a few others lol, I don't mind being at war with france and spain though, nautral enemies of GB,

Although by 1720, most AI's were at war with the rest of the world, and it now being 1779, NOT A SINGLE ONE. Has made peace with any other AI nation, unless they destroyed that faction. At least I could rely on the Black knight AI to declare war on me, I wiped out the last of the Marathas on the indian continent because I need Hindustan to win the campaign for GB, but Mughal owns it, as soon as I owned maratha's lands, Mughal declared war on me, losing 8k a turn in trade revenue.

It is easier to have friends in the latest version of the game now and having reliable allies, I am an ally with Prussia, I was having trouble in that Sweden would continually cut off our trade revenue, which was worth 6k a turn to me from prussia, so I had to sit a navy near prussia's trade port, unfortunately there was alot of swedish agression and it was impossible to keep repaired ships there as it took 2 turns to get them abck to a british port and repaired and by then the swedes had blocked the trade route again. So I sent an army to attack and take courland, and the region right next door to it across the bridge. Prussia slowly over the next few turns put an army next to courlands capital and I was wondering if they wanted it. Anyway sure enough ending a turn, Prussia Asked me if they could have Courland (Seeing they were an ally and probably needed it for a victory condition and I didn't I gave it to them and they gave me some random territory theyd captured deep in russian territory, so i've been allies with them since the start of the game, strangely enough even though spain lost its main territory to portugal, (Spain wiped out portugal, I took spain and portugal, allowed portugal to rebel and gave them portugal and spain in return for protectorate)
Spain and France have been allies since the game started and now spain only owns flanders.

It looks like naval invasions for france and spain might be broken or at the very least, they find it hard to cross the channel because there are many many french armies sitting along normandy looking like they badly want to attack the british isles.

Anyway for me its a strategy game and if they keep going into the direction of total war all the time every minute, I will go back to civ 4 and other games, and even if they make the battles prettier ( won't help me don't have the computer for it) not everyone can appreciate graphics, but EVERYONE, EVERYONE EVERYONE can appreciate GOOD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

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Originally Posted by Durallan

Xpand Xplore Xploit and whatever the fourth one is.

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Xpletive, what you shout at the PC when the game CTD's for the 5th time in 3 hours.

I think the thing thats really sad is that when you start a new campaign you get 'Miss Whiplash' pop up and give you a strategic briefing which actually makes the game sound like it has some structure to it.

I've just started an Austrian Campaign and I recall being told that Austria was in the frontline against muslim incursion from east, that Austria's role is to defend the true faith and protect its Catholic neighbours from the spread of the protestant faith from the west and the muslim faith from the east, and to ally with its catholic neighbours to provide mutual support.

Can't remember if those were the exact words she used but that was the gist of it, and Turn 1, I actually tried to follow her guidance. Except that none of my Catholic neighbours were really interested in mutual support or alliances, or even trade, so I ended up trading mostly with protestants and muslims.

Then you Press End of Turn and everything just goes to hell in a handbasket. In my case, Poland, the very country I was charged with protecting from the evil influence of Protestantism, Othodoxy and Muslim influence immediately declared war on me, and from that point on every faction you play seems to just degenerate into a pointless slug-fest.

The only solution that seems to work is to play at reduced difficulty levels (e.g. Normal), in which case the Campaign AI seems to take a valium and go into a stupor for the duration of the game. Its just as stupid, its just too lazy to act on its own stupidity.

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Originally Posted by AussieGiant

The words "Total War" are in all franchise titles.

It's going to be a hard sell to try and ask them to create a system in which you don't have to go to war to win.

Play Civilisation if that's the case.

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I don't really understand this sentiment. What's the point of fighting some sort of infinite war? Because grind is fun? If I wanted pointless grind, I would be playing WOW.

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

I don't really understand this sentiment. What's the point of fighting some sort of infinite war? Because grind is fun? If I wanted pointless grind, I would be playing WOW.

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Besides that, Civilization 4 is a completely different kettle of fish. Building the pyramids in London just felt wrong to me no matter how hard I tried to keep an open mind. Such structures came about as a result of the cultures environment and not simply because of them taking a certain technological path.