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I was wondering which people prefered, the campaign and empire building, or doing the battles. I bought the game mainly for the battles, but i now find myself auto fighting the battles, except at the beginning when i'm fighting with relatively small armies.
I played the RTW demo for a while - with mods too - but after a while it got boring for me. It looks amazing and I love playing battles but I think I enjoy it when the battle has a point and a reason to it and isn't just fighting. Sometimes I feel lilke just having a battle - but most of the time I want a more long and drawn out kind of game.
I never play any custom battle, but play all the battles in a campaign game. Auto calculation is way too dodgy. I like when there's a goal for fighting like Colovion pointed out.
As has essentially been said by Colovion, the battles are certainly a major highlight of the Total War games, but I find that if left to that alone I grow rather weary of the whole process. The battles, and correspondingly the game, have much more depth and a sense of purpose when in conjunction with the campaign mode. Taken alone you can find better battle simulation games, or better campaign style games, it's the merging of the two that makes the Total War games stand alone.
I play the campagin, as soon as I realized after playing shogun for a little while that you could skip the battles. I started skipping them and never looked back.
I tend to actually skip battles later on in the game when you have thousands of units on each side and a battle might last over an hour. It is also annoying that after I break the enemy, I have to wait for the reinforements to show up for a few seconds before they get routed too. After a while these battles turn into a babysitting fest with me waiting for their 2nd or 3rd teir units to get onto the field and then route a little after that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rikdemedici
So, yeah, it's mostly campagin for me. Though sometimes nothing is more satisfying then watching a carefully planned flank pay off...
I really enjoy smaller battles, but after armies get to several stacks of units, I tend to autobattle, because the battle gets old, and it takes waaaayyy too much time. Especially if you are heavily outnumbered and are defending. The enemy never seems to stop coming (See Golden Horde). Once I conquer about 40%, I tend to either drive out the enemy without a battle, or autoresolve to speed things up. If only there were a way to keep the game interesting after that point...
I think that's why CA made the Senate turn on you once you hit a certain mark of power in R:TW. A good move, although I wonder how the player will react when his carefully laid empire is suddenly torn in two.
I usually auto calc the following battles:
a) Sieges. I 'm a total wuss at sieges; the computer does a much better job than me.
b) Any battle with reinforcements. I don't like the reinforcement system ni MTW. You have the main battle, and then when things have seemed to reach a conclusion, lo and behold some reinforcements appear on the horizon, and then takes ages to get to where the action is. This turns what might be a conclusive victory (or defeat) into a long drawn out affair.
I enjoy both custom battles and campaign battles.
During campaign, I actually pick big and interesting fights to play, I usually auto calc the smaller ones or sieges.
The reinforcement system in MTW is poor, sometimes when you corner an enemy, their reinforcement appears behind you, which can get pretty annoying.
I enjoy them both, but tend to play as some of you already stated...meaning I prefer the campaign, and play battles mainly at the beggining, or when when army sizes arent too large to my taste.
The average army size for manual battle in my case is some 2000/3000 men for each side.
I do enjoy assaulting/defending castles and fortresses, and do those manually all the time!
They are both as important as each other to me . Yes I love battles but a battle is meaningless if it did not achieve some thing on the campaign map.At the begining of a battle your thinking "cant loose here Flanders is my richest province", or if ," I win here theres a gold mine".
I do both but the reason i keep playing is for the Campaign map.I never auto-calc when my army has a lot of Javelin or archer units in it but in the later stages when my armies are nearly invincible it's auto-calc time.
I play campaign to survive... tis good... yeearr... that's it... good campaign... playing always as factions which have a tactical specialty (eg. sicilians on Early, build an economy, try to cause a rebellion in Naples using bishops, bribe your way to victory, yatter yatter yatter) and i hate factions like Byz on early, cos they are surrounded by rebels and are huge and very easy.
They both lend meaning to the other and provide a meaningfull context. I like how you can practice with just battles and hone your skills. I like it all.
D
www.dimeolas.com
I like the campaigns a bit more.
I also lean to autocalc later on in the game.
I play early battles out or those that matter. I will also play with new toys such as getting gunpowder arty for the first time or teched up to chiv knights or the like but might not bother in some cases.
even the horde battles get boring after a while and I now sometimes mow them down with archer hordes led by a 9* on autocalc or drop 50 jihad markers on em.
damn they are gone fast! ~;p
I definately favor the battles slightly more. In battles there is more strategy involved than just putting troops in provences. I'm looking forward to more strategy in RTW as you can position troops on the map. Anyway, I do end up using auto for battles in campaign but usually ones I am positive I will win. Close battles I trust myself more than the computer. Either way these games have to be the greatest historical military strategy games of all time and I am predicting that Rome TW will be just plain the greatest strategy game of all time, no, greatest game of all time!!
Battle to defend territory.
Battle to conquest new land.
Battle to justify a long-term objective.
Not just kill'em all. Otherwise I'd play doomlike games.
Definitly, I play ONLY campaigns.
And I think most of players of totalwar are very fond of strategic aspect of the game...
Galien