An appeal and an apology to CA. (And several suggestions.)

I would first of all like to apologize to all CA staff members for my senseless "CA bashing". I may not have bee actively attacking CA, but my comments could hardly be described as constuctive criticism.

I would like to bring attention to the CA team some issues about Medieval: Total War II, which are very important to me.

1.) Please Improve the AI.

No matter how good the graphics and units are, if the AI isn't up to it, the game isn't worth playing. I understand that not everyone is a tactical genius, and that making the AI too hard would not be in some peoples interests. However, I was very disappointed about the general behaviour of the AI in Rome: Total War. AI factions would continually send out armies consisting of 1 unit of peasants or near useless unit, and in the battles would attack in piecemeal making it a piece of cake to defeat them. I was disappointed, especially seeing that the AI in Medieval: Total War was the best I had seen in any game.

2.) Please Include More Regions in the Campaign Map.

After viewing some screenshots of the Alpha version of the campaign map, I was suprised to see that England only controlled 4 regions at the start of the game. Assuming that England controls Normandy, which I very much hope it does, that would mean that there are only 3 regions in England itself. Now I know that the Total War games are based on war, and thus micromanging is not the main feature of the games, but I sincerely hope that you include more regions in the final map.

3.) Please Have Historical Victory Conditions.

When I viewed the before mentioned screenshots, I discovered that England's victory conditions were: [I]"Control 14 regions including London, Rome, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, and outlive France.[/I] Quite frankly, I find those rather strange considering what England really did in history. Now I know that not everyone is a historical nut, and people enjoy creating their own history, and I do not want to deny them that. However, no English army ever set foot in Italy in the Middle Ages, or ever attacked Rome. And Constantinople was conquered by French Crusaders in the Fourth Crusade in 1204. It would make no difference to the people who didn't care about history if England had victory conditons which read something like this: "Control 14 regions including London, York, Normandy, Flanders, Anjou, Aquintaine, and Paris, and outlive France."

4.) Please Have Slower Battles.

From the few trailers I have seen, the battles take place at a lightning speed. In fact, in the German trailer of the battle between the English and the Egyptians, cavalry routs in 10 seconds. That is not very realistic. Also, the Egyptian infantry goes straight through the English infantry like a hot knife through butter. Perhaps you could make the battle speeds between the original Medieval's battle speeds, and Rome's batle speeds.

5.) Also, Please scrap the turns thing. Years are the only way you can continue to call this a historical TBS Game.

Forumers, please post your support of suggestions in the poll, so that CA can see people's thought's on these issues.

Totally Agree.

I went with improve Ai as it is the most important by far. Other suggestions would be:

Battle Speed Slider: As it was in M1TW this makes everyone happy as you can adjust the speed to your own personal preference.

Realism settings in Options Menu: Have a "Grognard Mode" and an "Arcade Mode" for the more casual gamer. Again everyone wins!

Just regarding 3 (Historical Victory Conditions):

What a faction did and what a faction may have liked to do are two different things. That French Crusaders conquered Constantinople to me would suggest that English Crusaders doing the same would be very reasonable. Whether that means it should be a goal for the English (or the French for that matter)...

Goals for a faction should be inspired by history, but mainly drawn from the historical situation as it was when M2TW starts (i.e. what may have happened after then is not so relevant). However these goals should also encourage an enjoyable game - shaping both the player and the AI's actions.

I must say I quite liked the GA system in MTW (although of course it could be improved), especially how conquering new lands or defending your existing ones had different degrees of importance for different factions.

CA, just make the game as you see fit.

Please just give people the greatest freedom to mod all of the above.

Can a CA staff member please post if they have read this.

Regarding your concern 5),

It is clearly visible on this screenshot

http://www.mitglied.lycos.de/eagleey...hots/mtw04.jpg

that the current year, in this case the year 1080 is displayed in the faction scroll. So taking everything else CA has said about the year/turn issue into account and comparing it with this screenshot, while one turn will probably not equal one year, you will still get the full immersion of conquering Constantinople exactly in 1453 A.D. if you so desire.
(Well probably only 1452 or 1454 but let's not get too complicated on this)

So I guess we can scrap that point.

As expressed in my vote I do however agree with most of your other suggestions and I am faithful that CA will deliver on all of them and make another awesome game!

Cheers!

Ituralde

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Divinus Arma

CA, just make the game as you see fit.

---

Ditto. So far I've enjoyed all the CA games I've played immensely, and I see no reason why this will change all of a sudden.

29 out of 31 voters: Please improve the AI :)

I had to check all the options :laugh4:

Now surely even CA can see what everyone wants.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ignoramus

Forumers, please post your support of suggestions in the poll

---

Even if you don't agree with them?

Quote:

---

2.) Please Include More Regions in the Campaign Map.

After viewing some screenshots of the Alpha version of the campaign map, I was suprised to see that England only controlled 4 regions at the start of the game. Assuming that England controls Normandy, which I very much hope it does, that would mean that there are only 3 regions in England itself. Now I know that the Total War games are based on war, and thus micromanging is not the main feature of the games, but I sincerely hope that you include more regions in the final map.

---

Why? How would additional regions benefit the game? BI was more enjoyable to me than RTW, precisely because there were fewer regions and therefore a higher ratio of field battles to sieges. You may enjoy sieges more than field battles, of course, but don't expect everyone to agree with you.

Quote:

---

3.) Please Have Historical Victory Conditions.

When I viewed the before mentioned screenshots, I discovered that England's victory conditions were: [I]"Control 14 regions including London, Rome, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, and outlive France.[/I] Quite frankly, I find those rather strange considering what England really did in history. Now I know that not everyone is a historical nut, and people enjoy creating their own history, and I do not want to deny them that. However, no English army ever set foot in Italy in the Middle Ages, or ever attacked Rome. And Constantinople was conquered by French Crusaders in the Fourth Crusade in 1204. It would make no difference to the people who didn't care about history if England had victory conditons which read something like this: "Control 14 regions including London, York, Normandy, Flanders, Anjou, Aquintaine, and Paris, and outlive France."

---

What exactly are "historical victory conditions"? I guarantee you that the english kings did not have a list of regions they needed to hold to "win", so any such list will always be completely arbitrary and meaningless in the context of history. The list is a game mechanic. CA's list ensures that the player of the English gets involved in the game throughout Europe, while yours confine the English to one corner of the map. This have the effect of making the game easier for the player and lower the diversity of opponents for a player that choose to pursue the victory conditions over their own goals, such as most newbies.

In historical reality, England was actively involved in diplomacy and warfare throughout Europe and CA's victory conditions makes this more likely to happen than yours, which would confine them to Britain, France and the Low Countries.

Quote:

---

5.) Also, Please scrap the turns thing. Years are the only way you can continue to call this a historical TBS Game.

---

Whether you call them years or turns is entirely irrelevant to the games genre. Some people like years, as they find it improves the atmosphere of the game, but in no way does calling it one thing or the other improve the games historicity or validity as a historical simulation. The game is a historical TBS game because it is turn-based and the setting is historical to some degree. What CA decide to call their arbitrary units of game-time does not change this.

Slower battles is a big one for me. I've been playing Alexander and it is quite hard to get used to after RTR, EB etc. Once I charged Alexander's escort into a town forum: the action was so fast and chaotic, my son and I just looked each other in bewilderment. It was literally too fast to see what was going on. Some of the battles - even in the campaign - are so big, you can easily lose track. Whole (enemy) general's units have disappeared without me being aware how. And I'm a player who is addicted to the pause button. I guess modders can fix it anyway, but I'd rather be happy with the vanilla game and, unlike STW/MTWs speed, it does not encourage a historical fighting style.

Better AI is like more money - who doesn't want it? Despite what some people say, though, I am not convinced TW AI is worse than most other games I play. Some tweaking would be good though.

The game really needs better diplomacy, at least if you don't want to play it characterfully and not as just unrelenting "total war". This is one area where CA have made some promising statements about M2TW. Personally, I think Civ4 got it pretty right with diplomacy - populating the AI factions with a mix of psychos and nice guys, where your strength and your favours really affected their actions.

The other stuff on the list, I'm easy about.

More provinces could just mean a slower game and more sieges. I actually liked BIs settlement density more than RTWs and still more RTRs clutter.

Historical victory conditions: I am not sure what that means in a game like TW. If it were a historical simulation, then requiring England to take Constantinople would indeed be odd. But given what humans can do in TW games, I think the M2TW English victory conditions suggested so far (kill France, take Jerusalem and Constantinople) strike a good balance between being epic but not being tedious.

The length and the turns - I guess I'd prefer years and longer, but I'm not that fussed. Alexander is 100 turns and I'm only on turn 10 or something, and I'm already feeling tired. Wading through battle after battle in TW can be exhausting, which is one reason I like PBMs - they give you the motivation to see it through.

I agree with all except the "historical victory conditions" part. To me the point of a TW game is not to replicate history but to take it from a reasonably accurate starting point and then turn it down whatever course you wish. I have no problem with, say, the Spanish needing to conquer Poland. It's not what actually happened, but therein lies the nature of a game as opposed to a simulation.

Diplomacy does need to be improved a great deal, from what I have seen it looks as if the process of AI reasoning is going to be a bit more transparent. However, none of this is any use if a faction is never going to request, or accept requests for, many of the options. I have never had an RTW faction ask for a loan, request or accept military access, ask for an attack on a faction or offer one in return for any kind of benefit.

The best diplomacy system I have ever seen was in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (strong AI and in-depth gameplay with mediocre graphics, something of an anti-RTW!). Factions there would make proposals that would make sense, they would try to build alliances, broker loan deals, solicit or sell information, and horse-trade for council votes. They would regularly send military forces to aid their allies, transfer units to their allies' control and accept the reverse. And when they were losing a war badly, they would sue for peace unless they hated your guts because of your having committed atrocities against their people. If Total War could include a diplomacy system like this, the game would be fantastic.

If they are really going to have a 225 turn campaign they had better have BI style victory conditions.

Here's mine:
1) I'd like to see a combined religious / language / ethnicity factor for population happiness. The idea would be to keep one kingdom from potentially steam-rolling everyone else.... like what the Spanish, English, and Egyptians have a tendency to do.

Whereas priests and imams could change religion, it would require schools or universities to change a language, and potentially "resettlement" and genocide to create a homogenous ethnicity. And, unlike priests / imams who could spread their message anywhere, you'd have to first occupy a territory before building schools / universities.

Not only would this make the steamroller a little more difficult, but it would also bring a little more realism into the game.

1A) Switching allegiance: If a group of ethnically similar people were unhappy with their current king (such as Swabia and Bavaria with the HRE), in the case of revolt the "rebels" could instead be part of say Switzerland, by proxy, fighting to become a part of Switzerland. Or, if Lithuania shared more with the Polish and Russia overtook them, they would rebel and re-align with the Poles (whether the Poles occupied the territory or not).

2) The pope: If the pope is eliminated, perhaps his rebellions could be a little weaker? Or, he could set up shop in some rebel province close by, or unhappy province close by... if at all. - One of the primary reasons I never played as the Italians or Sicilians was the Pope.... who always came back... again, and again..... and again.....

3) Societal Classes influence unit production: Royalty create knights / swordsmen / et al.... Burghers create Town militia, maybe archers, Basic cavalry, peasants create... well, peasants ~ but perhaps also basic archers, scout cavalry, whatever. The richer a province, the greater the number of royalty. The more trade a province conducts, the more burghers. The rest would be divied up by the peasants.

Also, although there would be "standing armies", which would cost yearly but be of greater morale / experience, conscripted or volunteered armies could either be automatically called up to defend a province, or "purchased".

4) Peasants and other conscripted / volunteered units: Peasants do nothing in an army ~ They attack, hit the enemy, die by the hundreds, and then they flee ~ sending the rest of the army with them. Peasant stats should be beefed up a little, both in terms of morale and in power ~ but to call them up should impact the economy (as in: Full mobilization = 5 years at 50% production, Partial mobilization = 2 years at 50% production).

Peasants and militia would also be used to man the walls during a siege ~ This group would not take part in any land battle, but would instead be part of the "garrison" during any attack. In a sense, they would be part of a standing army, but their sole purpose would be to guard castles or towns, and could not venture out in an offensive role. To see the statistics of a garrison, one would wave the mouse over the castle in question.

5) Secondary forts / keeps: Similar to a castle, these would be used to house soldiers, and in the event of a loss in battle, some soldiers (or many, depending on how many "keeps" are present, could flee here. The benefit would be that, if the primary city / castle was besieged, soldiers from these locations could "sally forth" to engage the enemy from behind. Likewise, they could be assaulted in a similar fashion to that of primary castles (but would be weaker).

6) Roads: Roads would of course be useful for trade, but they would also be useful for troop movement... both to the benefit and to the detriment of the builder.

7) Civil wars / Rebellions: When a civil war happens in a game, one can almost always count on being set back 20 - 30 - 40 years in progress. Perhaps this was realistic, but I think it would be more beneficial to allow capture of a province with minimal damage to the infrastructure... I don't know how, but it's something I would like.

8) Build times: I'd rather have farms and farming (and for that matter, trade houses and ports) be seperate from military improvements. Perhaps there could be an ongoing cost associated with keeping up farms and trade, and if that cost is neglected, over a period of years the production of that farm or trade house or port declines with it. But, if maintained, the farm/tradehouse will prosper and continue to grow. This is different from the "build farm improvement: 80%", which if unhindered, will continue to be at 80% for 100 years or more... it's unreasonable, as throughout history rich regions have become poor, and vice versa. It should be a conscious decision to either build armies or support industry, and limited funds do not always allow for the both.

9) Wonders, and buildings "just for the heck of it": Rather than simply having a "tavern", there should be buildings specifically designed to benefit one class group, or for no other reason at all except to make a civilization all the better? (ex: The Eiffel Tower, Big Ben).

Well, that's it for now....

Hopefully, CA had a realization with R:TW and its flaws. Optimistically, I would like to think that CA speed up those videos we have all seen to show Joe Shmoe how the game works to some degree and what it will look like. However, if CA has't speed up these vids then evrything written above is a mute arguement and you guys are all doing :wall: that thingy.....Though it would be great if CA surprises all of us this time around rather than disappoint us a second time. :2thumbsup:

Simply make it exactly like MTW/VI, make spears cheaper to buy, include some new factions and units, along with the new graphics...and you're done. :idea2:

Those victory conditions shown on the pre-alpha campaign map at E3 - surely those are for a short campaign game like you had in RTW. So I wonder what the full campaign victory conditions will be? 50 regions again, but including specific regions a la BI? I'll go along with the 'Historical Plausability' idea for the specific regions required.

I like slower paced battles - I've had a modded descr_battle_map_movement_modifiers.txt from day one of owning RTW. If the battles play as fast as RTW, then I'm hoping that I can slow it down again just as easily. Instant routing could be adjusted in RTW as well by minor text editing, so if it's still present in M2TW, it should be easy to address it for personal preference.

I'm sure the AI will improve from it's current RTW 1.5/1.6 levels on both the strategic and tactical levels - or at least I'd like to believe that.

The turns to years thing - I've still not made my mind up about it. Imersion killer or abstracted game device - I'll make my mind up in November.

I'm encouraged to hear that the Diplomacy system is being revamped and improved, and I'm looking forward to the Papal stuff and the Council of Nobles - it'll be interesting to see what these bring to the game.

One thing I would love to see brought back is the choice of starting era - having to start from scratch each time compared to playing with better technology from the off will get annoying once you've had the game a while.

I doubt that they would have more than one era, which is probably what will happen, considering that there are only 225 turns.

I just hope that there are more regions in key areas, Italy and the Low Countries for example.

Quote:

---

If the battles play as fast as RTW, then I'm hoping that I can slow it down again just as easily. Instant routing could be adjusted in RTW as well by minor text editing, so if it's still present in M2TW, it should be easy to address it for personal preference.

---

not
in
multiplayer


but if they want the kind of MP community that forces them to shut down the public chat to stop the abuse, then they should stick to the RTW gameplay.

Quote:

---

When I viewed the before mentioned screenshots, I discovered that England's victory conditions were: "Control 14 regions including London, Rome, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, and outlive France.

---

London, Jerusalem, ok. But the other 2? Rome perhaps when angry at the Pope and wanting to control/dispatch of him (for which they used assassins if at all). But Constantinople? Crazy CA, but remember, this is a pre-alpha screenshot! Sure they will change these goals, I'm glad they have decided to implement glory goals at all!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by [cF]Adherbal

not
in
multiplayer

---

Ah, yes. Quite right. I've never played any TW games online, so this has never been an issue for me.

Is there any way to play other like-minded players who have also set their speeds slower? Or is that impractical? Like I say, I've never tried multiplayer, so I wouldn't have a clue.

it's possible - and it's been tried. But there is no way to convince a large enough amount of people to use a specific mod, because no one ever agrees on what's the "perfect balance". If the vanilla gameplay isn't right, MP is doomed. Some brave souls keep playing, using artificial rules such as "no elephants/berserkers/egypt/HAs/..." but I rather sacrifise the better gfx of RTW for the much better gameplay of MTW MP (not that RTW looks so much better from a high camera angle, certainly not easier to recognise the units).

I think all suggestions have merrit, but I voted A.I., diplomacy and battle speed. These are my priorities; the first two because they cannot be modded and the third because it is something I really disliked about R:TW. The others would be nice too, but I can do without them. They seem to be suggested with a slow strategic game in mind, and I think the designers are actually trying to speed it up. Also, since I probably will be downloading a realism mod shortly after installing M2:TW, they aren't really important to me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by [cF]Adherbal

if they want the kind of MP community that forces them to shut down the public chat to stop the abuse, then they should stick to the RTW gameplay.

---

I hope MTW/VI multiplayer doesn't get shutdown because a lot of effort is going into NTW, DUX and STW mods for multiplayer. The gameplay you can get in MTW/VI with mods is not achievable in RTW/BI.

Quote:

---

I hope MTW/VI multiplayer doesn't get shutdown because a lot of effort is going into NTW, DUX and STW mods for multiplayer. The gameplay you can get in MTW/VI with mods is not achievable in RTW/BI.

---

let's hope Activision's financial department doesn't notice the "Gamespy MTW lobby hosting" line on their bill

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by [cF]Adherbal

let's hope Activision's financial department doesn't notice the "Gamespy MTW lobby hosting" line on their bill

---

Right now Activision is still selling MTW and VI in the USA, but soon MTW Gold will replace them, and Sega publishes that.

I didn't know is Multiple Choice Poll :furious3: :juggle2:

edit:I only vote for better AI

I agree with most of the points, but my biggest gripe to me is the victory conditions. This is new news to me and once again I am dissapointed with CA for this. One of the reasons MTW was so good was that it was totally free-form, with you being able to anything you wanted to win. Conquer 60% of the world. With that you could play the game differently every time. But with Victory conditions you are forced to go in the same or a similar direction every time. Using the English as an example, what if I just wanted to conquer Europe? With this conditons you will be forced to attack Rome and Constantiople which I may not want to do. They are taking away the freedom of the game. The more I hear of the game, the more I wish I hadn't lost Disc 1 of MTW and could just play that and have no worries about restrictions or inferior AI.