A veteran-n00b's take on the latest and greatest CA title

Greetings folks!

A short introduction of myself here, I'm a self-proclaimed TW vet and forum n00b and wanted to throw in my 2 cents on the latest and greatest from CA. :bow: Been playing the TW games since Shogun was released back in the day, and playing PC games for 16+ years. I'm an Aries, love long walks in the moonlight, and slaughtering Gauls and now Moors by the thousands at a go. :2thumbsup:

I've divided this bit into a few sections for hopefully easier reading and quotability for flaming purposes. :beam: The lists are in no particular order, and this was also written over a period of time so stuff may appear a bit out of order, please bear with me. Please do note, some of the article I present as fact, others as my opinions, and generally I try to distinguish betwixt the two, my goal is certainly not to offend (at least not too much :yes: ). I also do not believe there is any CA bashing in any way and have tried to word it, for the most part, as polite and constructive, if the powers-that-be feel otherwise please let me know. Also note, I play on medium unit size, whenever I give references to #'s of men in the units, etc.


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A. Likes:

- The game is beautiful, love the graphics. Turn off shadows and it runs comparable to RTW on my system.

- The sounds are great, voices are a bit corny but they're good. The french accents are horrible and it only makes me enjoy smushing them more. :beam: /kidding Clicking on enemy units/stacks/characters on the campaign map is fun for their reactions. Nice attention to detail here.

- The new campaign map is much improved over RTW visually, I very much like it. The little arrows indicating land bridges are also very nifty.

- Merchants were a creative new touch that I very much enjoy. The 'number limits' on them could stand be higher though as I would like more running around the map, I do hope this is modable!

- The music in the TW series has always been one of it's very strong points, I imagine many of you would agree. Really, really, really dig the music, especially the main screen themes. Gotta love that Gregorian style chant. Great job Jeff!!!

- The graphical variations for the soldiers in the units is outstanding, as well as the visual cues to improved weapons and armor. It's just eyecandy but it's still great, and I'd imagine with experience we'll be able to tell approximate unit upgrades just from their appearance. Cool!

- The base campaign does feel solid and replayable (but needs work), and it feels like there's some challenge, even on easy. This is important to me as I prefer the single player experience much moreso to the multiplayer. Further, for those of us who wish to fiddle with the game...

- ... from perusing the install directories, personal experience so far, and given other's testimony, more modding features appear to be in the game than were in RTW. Good stuff!

- Excommunication *feels* like it means more than it did in MTW. Being able to see one's standing with the pope helps with that feeling. Playing as the english, I was excommunicated for annihilating the Scots fairly quickly, within 10 turns my french holdings were swarming with inquisitors, literally about 3-4 of them. It's kept me from putting my named characters on the mainland so far and my assassins are just about useless for dealing with them. As such, I'd say it's more effective!

*** Addendum: I just attacked the French and Mr. Pope excommunicated me again. I had so far managed to kill or run off the inquisitors so my opinion of the above was changing to "Maybe it's not that bad after all", when WHAM! I get nailed with a crusade on one of my french holdings. Needless to say I was impressed, the French threw a whole stack at me that I was barely able to fend off. Good stuff!

- Combat speed feels about right to me. It's definitely slower than in RTW, but it's faster than MTW. MTW was almost too slow for me, and RTW was a bit on the fast side. M2TW is somewhere in between, and it feels ok so far.

- The 2D sprites used when units are at a distance on the battle map look better than the RTW 2D sprites, imo.

- The new unit recruitment method is neat, and I like it. Some units don't seem to regenerate fast enough for my tastes, but overall it's nice. Also, the number of recruitment slots could stand to be higher as the city/castle sizes get towards the top, imo. One thing that I did like doing in RTW that I can't do in M2TW is retrain very large numbers of units at a go, I have to wait and do the number of units per slots per turn, this I do not like.

- The diplomatic system seems and feels to be somewhat improved over RTW. However there have still been some dumb occurrences, like for example me massing in plain view of the french with some very large powerful stacks, I took one of their towns (that they left empty btw, right in front of one of my full stacks), and the next turn a diplomat comes back up and says "return the town for a ceasefire", when they have NO forces in view to resist me, not to mention my "power" rating in the diplomatic screen is levels above theirs. Either they're trying to bluff very unsuccessfully, or the diplomatic AI needs some work. /shrug

- Carrying my siege equipment such as cannons INTO the city past the walls, finally!

- Crusading/Jihad armies get those extra movement points.


B. Dislikes/Requests/Suggestions:

- 2 years per turn? Ugh. 2 turns per year is much better. At least it's modable.

- What's up with this encrypted pack file nonsense? OK so I just read on the blog that it's "compressed", yet it's not compressed with any kind of algorithm that 3 major compression tools I have can detect. Using my favorite example, ID software and Raven didn't encrypt their pack files in the Doom/Quake series. Furthermore, ID and crew have released and sanctioned a number of good quality SDKs and tools over the years to help their modders. C'mon CA, stop treating us like little kids that need to be controlled and let us HELP you. Look at what happened to ID over the years, half of their tools were developed by fans who wanted to help, and in most cases the fans developing the tools were acknowledged and helped (think QuArK, a few of the *Radiant series) by ID! Think of what you could do with help from the full weight of talent behind the communities like the org, twcenter, and the Lordz, people like verci and ep. richard and others. Before anyone jumps me on this, I do realize in reading Mr. Epistolary Richard's great reports that some tools are likely forthcoming, which is great, but this encrypted pack file stuff is still utter nonsense, and my overall message is still valid in my view. In fact, if CA *really* wants to demonstrate a commitment to the community and it's customers, open source your tools! Let the community help with them!! (look at gtkRadiant for example, how it was started, and the support it gets from the relevant modding communities, not to mention how *insanely* useful and full of features it is!)

- Dismounting units aren't in the game?!?? What in the nine hells happened?? So I made it to a castle with a large stack of knights I had made, assuming I could dismount them to assault, as you can no doubt tell I was very unpleasantly surprised! Yeah so I didn't RTFM all the way... C'mon CA, this was a MAJOR part of MTW, not putting it in the game is incredibly lame and borders on insulting to the fans by leaving this well known and expected feature out, in my opinion. Please fix this CA, pronto!

- Titles. This was another great part of the original MTW and RTW:BI, and in my humble opinion it should be back in. Given that they were in BI, this should not be hard to implement. I would further like to see them implemented in some fashion like the risk style drag-and-drop on the generals, rather than fiddling with ancillaries like in BI. Also give us the ability to strip a general of his titles, a la MTW.

- I'm not really sold on the whole city/castle difference. I can understand it's purpose but I don't unnecessarily like it, nor do I feel it's very useful.

- The building browser is not the least bit intuitive. One of the mods said in another post, "RTW's was perfect, why change it?" I couldn't agree more.

- In terms of "building cards" when selecting buildings to be built, or showing what is built in a settlement on the campaign map, I can't help but feel that they are graphically not as good looking as in RTW. It's not very easy for me to establish what the various buildings are.. In other words it's not always obvious, at least to me. I can't really think of a good way to describe this, but I just feel that a better job could have been done on the images to make them sharper or more distinct.

- There really needs to be an easier way to remove excommunication (recommunicate) with the Pope for catholic factions besides the pope dying or your faction leader dying. I know this wasn't in the original MTW and can appreciate that it's in M2TW. Excommunication was a very big factor in the middle ages, "recommunicating" with the catholic church was also a very real deal and a natural counterpart to the removal process, in fact if I remember correctly part of the process of excommunicating someone is extending the olive branch and stating how they can be recommunicated, a "penance" if you will. In other words, the papacy should automatically send a recommunication mission that doesn't expire after a few turns which you can ignore or complete, imo. The way for resolving diplomacy shouldn't be terribly difficult, but it shouldn't be mind-numbingly easy either. For example, an open-ended (no time limit) quest with several line items would be a great idea, imo. For example, 1. join/start a crusade, 2. build several churches, 3. recruit x priests. At the very least it should put you back to neutral status with 5 crosses on the Pope-o-matic-chart. :)

- Likewise, I would still like to see the option for a catholic faction to change it's faith, this would have been an outstanding idea in the original MTW. For example, to go "protestant" and sever ties with Rome, on the premise that you'd be vulnerable to crusades, reduced diplomacy with other catholic factions, lots and lots of unrest for a transition period, other factions catholic priests could make your life hell, etc. I understand that the probability of this making it in is near zero, but it's still a great and entirely logical idea, and can probably be done without too much trouble. Also going with my above statement, it should be possible to reestablish ties with Rome, but in this case it should be *very* difficult to do. One of my main reasons for wanting this is avoiding those damn Inquisitors. Speaking of which...

- Give us back inquisitors for all the catholic factions. :)

- Give us back the ability to assassinate our own named characters!

- Give us the ability to gracefully retire unwanted/unused characters, such as diplomats/priests/assassins, who are otherwise just sucking up cash flow. SORELY missed in RTW/BI/A, which was my most recent memory.

- Move rates and move distances for units on the campaign map are woefully inadequate. I'd like to see them increased by at *least* another 50% across the board, even for crusading/jihad armies. After all, crusade/jihad is pretty much a race and a special condition.

- Just fought a custom siege battle for poops and giggles. Set myself up as the french, 1 late commander, 6 dismounted chivalric knights, and 10 trebuchets vs a single unit of polish peasants in an unwalled village. After expending ALL trebuchet ammo (flaming), including dead cows, with the city in flaming ruins dripping with cow chunks all around them, I calmly marched my army into the mess, and when in range I charged with the knights followed closely by the general. The poor bone-stock unbuffed peasants, after spending a good deal of time having large, ugly, smell, demoralizing unpleasantries lobbed at them, were able to kill ***25*** knights and 3 general's horsemen. Something just does *not* feel right about that.

- I ... don't unnecessarily like the new damage models for city structures during sieges. I think there's a happy medium somewhere between RTW where buildings collapse into a generic featureless "rubble pile" and M2TW's "it's got a few holes in it". Just my 2 cents. For one thing, I think it'd look much better and it'd be easier to tell what buildings you've demolished already. Also, structures that catch on fire tend to stay on fire and smoke, which imo isn't a good idea, especially for frame rates, and might be one of the reasons they made this so. The best possible solution I can think of is simply to limit how long destroyed structures remain on fire, say maybe 3-5 minutes max. Perhaps this is modable? Irregardless, I'd like to see this addressed in the base campaign by CA.

- I don't like the fact that huge cities cannot be converted into citadels, but citadels can be made into 3rd level cities with no going back. This goes hand in hand with my above comment about the castles/cities system.

- The routing-unit-kill-rate feels far too slow for my tastes. I actually liked RTW's routing-kill-rate, in fact if anything I would have preferred that cavalry chasing down routers would kill them faster. I do understand that CA wanted to make routing units harder to do, and for them to recover earlier, which is fine, but if kept on and after by chasers, they should be mopped up in short order. After all, it's been well noted during large battles in the past that quite often the vast majority of the slaughter occurs when the losing army routes. If a unit routes and I let them go due to negligence or I have other pressing issues like the rest of the enemy army, fine, let them go, and then when they recover with what should be very reduced moral, let them come back to haunt me. This is perfectly logical in my view. If I make a unit route, I need to keep on them and either kill them all or chase them off the map. If I can't expend forces to do this or I just forget/whatever, then the opponent should be able to recover them and send them back into the melee.

- Cavalry not being able to move through troop formations, friendly or foe, is really annoying. I liked RTW's cavalry movement implementations for this issue with horses being able to "pass through" lines of units who would make way for them. Even when not standing still, cavalry should still be able to pass through units much easier than they can in M2TW. /shrug I still liked RTW's implementation of this. If the complaint was being able to charge THROUGH infantry formations, that I can understand, to me the fix is just removing the charge bonuses if you choose to have cavalry attack through already-engaged troops.

- I tend not to use archers so this took a bit of using them to come to this conclusion; they don't always shoot cohesively. I don't know whether to list this as a bug or a suggestion, so I listed it here, because I almost get the feeling CA designed it this way. I don't unnecessarily like it, if that was the intent. If it is a bug, then great let's get it fixed. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect them all to shoot at the EXACT same instant, but a trained group of medieval archers should fire as a single cohesive group with VERY little margin of difference in release time. Like maybe half a second on the far outside, imo.

- Someone else made this comment and I can't agree more, this was also badly missed in RTW. We need the ability to tell enemy army stacks to get the #@$!@# off our land or else, and if they don't then THEY started the war, not us. I can't count how many times I was held as responsible for starting a war in RTW just by parking some army stacks on a neighbors land, then not removing them when warned. That's fine and dandy, but the same thing needs to hold true for the cpu players.

- Only named characters with above a certain size stack can go on crusades? Tripe. Give me the ability to send just a big stack w/out one of my characters on a crusade!


C. Bugs:

- My assassins are beyond useless. The percentages given are NOT accurate, my basis for this is empirical testing (Mr. Puzz3d would be proud). I ran (by saving and reloaded), for multiple assassins, several attempts of varying difficulty (11%, 16%, 23%, and 35% iirc) 25 times each to see if they succeeded. Not *once* did they accomplish their goals, and the ratio of agents dying in the attempt vs just failing was roughly 50%. Before anyone berates me or disagrees, this is hard math and statistics. If a probability is given at say (just for giggles) 16%, that means 16 times out of 100 my attempt should succeed, or reduced this would be 4/25 attempts. 0/25 is *not* 16%, that is 0 percent. Before anyone says "you should have done it more", that argument is invalid, based on the probabilities given, I should have succeeded at least once given my attempts, and the probability of me trying 100 times and it succeeded the last 25 in a row is about as close to nil as one can get. One successful attempt out of 25 would be 4%, not 16%, and so on. As such, I list this is a bug and believe there are several possibilities:

1. The percentage is accurate but the code is broken.
2. The percentage is NOT an accurate portrayal of their chances, this also qualifies as "broken" as the correct indicator should be displayed.
3. The percentage is accurate, at the beginning of each turn the agent "pre-rolls" against all possible characters and it's already decided how it will happen when you make the attempt, as opposed to "making the roll" when you try to execute the action. I *highly* doubt this is how it's coded as it would seem to be an utter waste of RAM, but if it is, it should be fixed to function as "calculated upon attempt" imo.

Whatever the case may be, it is HIGHLY annoying.

*** Addendum: I just tried this for a priest on a heretic with a 33% chance. Tried it 33 times, there were 2 successes. Given the probability listed in the game I should only have had to do it ~3 times max for it to succeed. For those who didn't do the math, 2/33 is 6%.

****** Addendum 2: FINALLY after countless reloading, got a few of them above 1st/2nd grade, up to 5-6 each after a few turns. Even still, they aren't as effective as what I feel they should be, and the rule I stated above about inaccurate percentages and failed attempts still holds true. bleh.

- The campaign AI is extremely passive. I am playing on easy to start out with, but there haven't been any hostile attempts toward me except for that crusade I was nailed with earlier. Apparently this is a "known" bug and will be patched. Still, the fact that this got into the gold code is quite irksome, to put it politely.

- The Siege AI is still pretty bad from RTW. I haven't experienced the 1 ladder slowdown bug, but I *have* experienced incredibly bad pathing on par with, if not worse than, RTW for siege equipment. My units tend to go all over the place when trying to get siege equipment to walls or doors. I've fought several battles where the team pushing my ram took a zig-zag shaped pattern to the gate when it was, quite literally, a straight shot with no obstacles. I've had siege-tower-bearing-units that I swear couldn't find their rear ends with a compass, flashlight, both hands, and a road map. I've had units carrying rams TURN AROUND AND START MOVING AWAY FROM THE GATE instead of towards it when I click on it, and yes they were very far away from the walls! On a positive note, I want to say that unit pathing inside the city has improved over RTW. I haven't had any instances of the "three guys stuck between houses half a mile away from the main group" syndrome yet, but I have had other issues somewhat related, read on for them.

- I've had several instances where when I was sieging a city/castle, there was an enemy army nearby that would reinforce the city during the battle. On both attempts I tried this, I set up my forces to snag them immediately when they entered the map and slaughtering them before they could get into the city to reinforce. The bug is, when I finally caused the enemy units to route, my units REFUSED TO FOLLOW AND FINISH THEM OFF!!! Even when placing my units in their line of travel, they wouldn't attack them! Clicking to attack would do nothing, my units would simply sit there! Even ranged units wouldn't attack them! I had upwards of 200 routing people slip through my forces when they should have been annihilated!! ARGGG!!!

- Likewise, I've played numerous battles and custom battles with 1 unit of my cav against a single enemy unit of infantry. Invariably when I win and start to chase them off, the route-killing AI is abysmal. They spread out and all seem to be going away from the routers as opposed to towards them. It's a bit hard to explain, I'd attach some screenshots but I don't know how at this point.

- I can't target about 90% of the structures inside (or outside) cities when doing custom battles with my artillery, but errant hits can destroy them??? This *has* to be a bug.

- I will submit that I cannot get my cav to charge correctly, no matter how much time I give them to set up or line up. I simply cannot get my units to charge in a cohesive fashion, and more often than naught they end up plowing into the enemy piecemeal and are chewed up. Also, I have had several instances where a few of the people in the unit will stray very far off from the main group while in combat, for seemingly no good reason.

- The above has also happened to my and the cpu's infantry on the walls and on siege towers during siege combat. There was one guy running around on the walls several towers away from the main body of the unit (RUN AWAY!!!), and I had a few instances of a unit being broken up and completely losing cohesion when issuing multiple commands while climbing or on the siege towers.

- Town square flags do not change to reflect the current owner if seized. For example, english besieging french city. English take the square but the battle is not decided/over yet. Flags surrounding square still show french flags.


D. Overall impressions, final thoughts:

It's a solid fun game with some really really really really annoying bugs, and some sorely missed features that should (imo) been included. If anyone were to ask me if they should buy the game, my response would be a reserved "yes". While I do consider myself a "vet" and a long time loyal customer and TW player (I've bough every TW title within a week of it's release, hell I've bought a few titles more than once :P), I feel no shame in stating that CA has some major work to do with this title, almost to the point where it doesn't feel like a gold code quality game. Some of the things that I've read and experienced bug-wise are very obnoxious and to me bespeak of either or both of; a very poor QA process, or very bad management trying to push an incomplete game out the door for the holidays. If I had to guess, the latter is more probable and understandable given todays market conditions and expectations by management/investors, However, I as the customer still do not feel that is excusable (if it is the case) and so my position does not change on the general principle of it. I do expect that these problems and bugs will be fixed down the road though. As such I'd lump M2TW in the same experience category as Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Oblivion was/is another game which I thoroughly enjoyed, but it had a large number of really bad bugs and very badly needed to be patched by Bethesda and some fan-made improvements installed before I could truly enjoy it. Bethesda's track record is somewhat marred by having a reputation (not entirely undeserved, in my long experiences with them) for not releasing bug-free products on launch. :) I hope CA does not go that same route with future titles.

Before closing and in keeping with the theme of my review, I would like to extend a humble suggestion to CA that has probably been oft repeated: Gentlemen (and ladies), in my view you had and missed a VERY good opportunity for both product improvement and community interaction with RTW and BI that you should NOT pass up this iteration. By this I am referring to the "Bug-fixer" fan-made patch by the highly talented player1 and others. The fact that there was still a very long list of items in the fan patch even after the 1.5/1.6 official patches does not give me the best view of the company as a whole in terms of software fixes and listening to the community. Now I understand that there are constraints in the software development process and what can make it into patching cycles, but there still should have been a far greater effort, at least in my view, to both 1. publicly acknowledge efforts such as player1 and crews', the existence of the bugs, and the need for those fixes, as well as 2. working with the community to involve and include them in the patch cycles with the suggestions in #1. Please note that I am not referring to "balancing" or "feature addition" issues which opinions vary widely on, I am referring to bugs, which for the most part are rather black and white "it needs fixin'", and who better to help than your customers. There's no shame in this at all, in fact it would bespeak of a high commitment to us, your customers, that you would be doing so and not halfarsing it.

My final assessment: 7 out of 10. It's good fun, but I still feel this was released too early before the game could have been fixed and not rushed out the door last minute, and it needs some real elbow grease and some good spit and polish. :) If CA can squish the bugs, implement some of those much needed features than the old and new fans want, and make good on their promises to support the community and modders in general through real tools and support, they could easily make this 9+/10 game and possibly GOTY material in my view. As such....

Best of luck CA! AND DON'T FORGET YOUR ESTABLISHED FAN BASES! FOR CRIPE'S SAKE *USE* US TO HELP AND CONTRIBUTE!! :smash:

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Comments/suggestions/dialogue are welcome!

Cheers! :balloon2:

CA are releasing an unpacker tool with the first patch, apparently it is not compatible with the release day code, but is compatible with the first update code.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Whacker

C. Bugs:



*** Addendum: I just tried this for a priest on a heretic with a 33% chance. Tried it 33 times, there were 2 successes. Given the probability listed in the game I should only have had to do it ~3 times max for it to succeed. For those who didn't do the math, 2/33 is 6%.

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OK, jus for the record, you are wrong. Either you didn't do the math or you don't know how to do it, since if there is a 33% chance that something will occour, that doesn't mean it should happen in 3 tries. You can't just sum up the percentage. Probability calculus and that stuff...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Quin

OK, jus for the record, you are wrong. Either you didn't do the math or you don't know how to do it, since if there is a 33% chance that something will occour, that doesn't mean it should happen in 3 tries. You can't just sum up the percentage. Probability calculus and that stuff...

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Greetings Quin

You are both wrong and right, as am I. My apologies for my statement, I was trying to keep it both simple and not talk over my head, my stat and calc courses are distant memories. :juggle2:

In general, a 33% chance of occurrence does indeed mean that a 1 in 3 attempt *should* succeed. Now as you stated, it's not a given, given 100 attempts 33 of them should succeed, it could be that the last 33 attempts are the successful ones but the probability of THIS occurring is extremely low. This also scales as you please, it can be done for any X number of attempts, however given the stated 33%, the number of successes should be (1/3)x. Of course I could be completely wrong but don't believe I am, any stat majors are welcome to put me in my place. :book:

Good post whacker and i agree with most of your points (i would give the game a 8 out of 10 but...).

Kill speed should be slower in my opinion, but old STW/MTW times never come back and i expect this will be easier to mod as in RTW.
The overall feeling of the campaign map is also much better now and thats very important, 'cause since RTW the player spend much more time on the strategical level of the game as on the battlefield. The Campaign Map in RTW was just boring.


The Excommunication stuff - in MTW i always had the impression, the pope and all other catholic factions just gang up on me. In M2TW, the AI factions have to deal with the pope much more (or at least it feels so).

Well we know that CA's random numbers are somewhat under question after the 'siege load/save' saga ;)

Yeah, your probability testing method doesnt make a lot of sense.

It just means that each chance has a 33% chance of success. It does *not* mean, that every 3rd attempt will be a success.

Have you tried a non-catholic faction yet? The AI passiveness could be a result of the pope-thingy. Everytime i attack a catholic faction, my relation with the pope drops significantly. The AI has the same problem maybe they pay to much attention to it. Could be better, if we play a muslim faction ?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tadajon

Have you tried a non-catholic faction yet? The AI passiveness could be a result of the pope-thingy. Everytime i attack a catholic faction, my relation with the pope drops significantly. The AI has the same problem maybe they pay to much attention to it. Could be better, if we play a muslim faction ?

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I don't know sir, but that's a good point. I aim to finish my campaign as the English first, then play as the Byzantines. So far I'm taking a bit of a break, as the bugs are starting to vex me greatly, and I don't want them to ruin the game for me so I'm waiting for the first patch.

Perhaps others can offer their experiences?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Whacker

IPerhaps others can offer their experiences?

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You said you were playing on easy? I suspect AI passivity on the campaign map comes with that setting.

I'm playing England on VH and by turn 60, every single faction that borders me as attacked me - France, Scotland, Denmark, Milan and Spain. (Players of RTW on VH campaigns will not be surprised to hear that.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by econ21

You said you were playing on easy? I suspect AI passivity on the campaign map comes with that setting.

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Greetings econ21 :bow:

I'll submit a point of clarification for my experience; in RTW the campaign map AI felt more aggressive. For example, playing as the Scipii, if I tried to turtle in my city on Sicily invariably both the Greeks and Carthage would be knocking on my doorstep (in an unfriendly manner) within 5-10 turns on easy. I waited 5 turns for the Scots to come at me with a significant force, yet instead of coming at me they went toward Ireland and Inverness (sp?). When I finally moved my stack across into their territory and besieged them, they offered essentially no resistance, i.e. they didn't recall their other stacks to help them fend me off, when I checked with toggle_fow for giggles their stacks were just sitting idle a good 2-3 turns of movement away. In RTW, if I were to go after one of the Gaulish cities in northern Italy as the Julii, besieging one of the two cities would almost always draw out *some* kind of force from the other city to help in the defense. Please don't get me wrong, I don't want to see N/H/VH level aggressiveness on the AI's behalf at the level I'm playing, but the AI in RTW on even easy just felt... a bit sturdier. Perhaps time (and a patch?) will tell. :juggle2:

Wow, nice analysis! how many hours did you already spend on the game ?
I agree with most points, but I do like the castle/city distinction. You can't rely on only a couple of fortresses to mass produce elite units, you need more to maintain a high number of elite units. In addition, you can have start by taking a safe haven in infidel land (I actually took Alep during my first crusade with the French, Krak des Chevaliers, and got the St Johns knights for that, which is historically accurate :-)

About stats, missing a 16% try 25 times in a row has a 1.28% probability, something IS broken there (either in the code, or Whacker has been cursed... and needs more inquisitors his your land !)

PS: could you really strip a guy of his title in MTW ??

I think the Scots are in a terribly precarious position, much weaker than the English- one settlement to England's three. Giving them only five turns to attack you is far too short. It makes much more sense for them to take the two rebels settlements near them, then they might in due course be able to rival England. If I were playing the Scots, that's what I would do - try to get peace at any price, until I had a strong army.

Even on VH, the Scots only belatedly attacked me - after France and Denmark had piled in. And even then, it was some daft sea encounter - they did not have advantage of numbers to make marching south smart.

One thing I would say about the M2TW campaign AI relative to RTWs, is that it seems much smarter at maneouvring. I played a lovely game of cat and mouse with an enemy army - I was screening Antwerp and outmatched it, so it maneouvred around, trying to avoid my army but get my settlements. It was lovely and reminded me of the basic AI mechanic that made Heroes of Might and Magic 3 competitive but was not in RTW - if an enemy army is stronger than you, keep out of its reach. Especially when a second enemy army came in from another direction and snagged Antwerp before I could rush back to defend it.

Another nice thing I observed was two Milanese armies playing doubles - always moving together. I was afraid to attack two such supporting armies and they were careful not to attack my defending powerful stack. It was a nice standoff, but a mobile one, to ruin my metaphor.

On the assassination woes:

Odds for not succeeding at all in 10 tries (at 1/3 chance of success) are about 1.7% [=(2/3)^10] - this is about 1-2 times every 10 sets of 10 tries you make. Odds for not succeeding at all in 100 tries are VERY low [=(2/3)^100)].

This has few options:

- code is broken and success is not possible. This is unlikely as there has been some playtesting.

- "the dice" for each assassin is rolled beforehand (you do not need to roll for each target, merely for each assassin and adjust to the target you then try.
So if you have a 10% pre-rolled, there is no way to make 6% chance tries on that turn. It may be like this as it really does not use too much RAM...

- some bug related to just the given incident (sometimes some conditions could trigger a bug).

Playing two campaigns on medium, and in neither would I accuse the AI of being passive. Especially playing as the HRE, I had a period of peace in the beginning, but mid-game I was at war with up to 6 other factions simultaneously, and all those were hot wars too, not just poor relations.

I think it would make sense to let the AI be passive on Easy, as this is the difficulty for players who'd like to do things at their own pace and not be seriously pressured. In pretty much every strategy-game I've played this has been the way it's been done.

When you think that's boring, you're ready to move on to a higher difficulty.

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3. The percentage is accurate, at the beginning of each turn the agent "pre-rolls" against all possible characters and it's already decided how it will happen when you make the attempt, as opposed to "making the roll" when you try to execute the action. I *highly* doubt this is how it's coded as it would seem to be an utter waste of RAM, but if it is, it should be fixed to function as "calculated upon attempt" imo.

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Actually, if it works like in RTW, it's exactly the case.
But it's not really working like you suppose it is.
It's not that the game "pre-calc" all what you could do this turn. It's just that the "seed" (the number on which the pseudo-random generator base its rolls) is saved in the savefile.
So each time you reload, if you don't take another action which will "use up" the number generated and generate another, you'll get the exact same results.
In fact, if you do exactly the same actions in the same order during the same round, you'll end up with exactly the same results.

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Originally Posted by Rothe

"the dice" for each assassin is rolled beforehand (you do not need to roll for each target, merely for each assassin and adjust to the target you then try.
So if you have a 10% pre-rolled, there is no way to make 6% chance tries on that turn.

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Then, no matter how many times you reload the outcome would always be the same. This is not the case.

Would it be possible that the percentage shown is an estimation, not taking into account hidden (unknown) factors (spy in a city, bodyguard in retenue...) ? That would make sense.