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Just a personal note on game selling economy: the only reason I bought M2:TW Kingdoms was that I heard it will be needed for EB II. At least a small financial aid to the developers by a mod. :wink3:
And I also later bought E:TW because I like the timeframe and I expected mods. I'm not sure I will buy S2:TW cause the setting is not very interesting for me and modding may be not possible. Let's wait and see.
At the same time, though, I'm not going to bother with S2:TW or even R2. Why? 'Cause I'll be too busy playing EB2! :laugh4:Quote:
Originally Posted by geala
I still haven't bought ETW .
I've finished - vanilla- MTW2 with every nation on vh/vh ( and I must admit it was a better experience than the -vanilla- RTW one ) .
I still prefer EB .
I am currently obsessed with Paradox games , especially EUIII .
After that I don't know if I'll be able to go back to "new-generation-TW-non-A.I."
Shame they alienate the modding community , such a shame .
Even more so if they finally get to release a decent A.I. , at last .
Satyros
P.S. : Not knowing where this would be appropriately posted , I'll say it here :
Keep up the good work guys ( and gals - ? - ) ! Thank you for your time and effort . Υγεία .
It was a little bit easy, I reconstructed WWI with the HRE and blitzed Russia within notime but had lots of fun slaughtering Frenchies at 'Verdun'. But I liked RTW vanilla way better, just landing with the Pharaohs army in Gaul at the beginning was wonderful.[Quote:
Originally Posted by Satyros
Huh, me too, I preordered Victoria 2 today.Quote:
Originally Posted by Satyros
M:TW2 was the last CA game i bought and will buy.
I've gone back to playing FPS's,for the most part,as i prefer the realism where i have to faceshoot a guy 6 times to put them down.
In my opinion the problem with recent total war games is that they try to cater the casual gamer (not used in a derogative way, what i refer to are the players that prefer simple games for having fun, not too in depth complex games) and they make their games accordingly. Bad AI, simple controls, unrealistic speed of units, units with "magic powers", limited role play and character advancement, etc. all those are faults that i think the recent CA games have. On the good side they have better graphics, naval battles, and... i think i already said better graphics. If you look at what has improved since M2TW, it is all things that enter throught the eyes, are simple and quick. CA is not adding complexity and more realism, but simplifying things and making them more stream lined so casual players don´t get frustrated playing it.
I remember when i first started playing EB, i was overwhelmed by all the options (english is not my native tongue, so that complicated things as well), and only by continued practice is that i managed to understand how goverments type worked, or why my character gained bad traits all the time. I ended loving all the complexity, and now as i am used to playing mods in general, when i play a vanilla CA game, i find it very lackluster. Another example is when i started playing EUIII, i was completely lost and i still don´t know all the tricks of it but only the basics of how the game works.
In short what i mean to say is that the recent total war games seems to be more simple each time, with less depth and complexity, so that casual players do not feel frustrated and overwhelmed when playing it. This won´t make happy to those that love complex games, like many mod users, but now CA is limiting modding as well, therefore making their games much harder to mod and therefore less attractive to the people that wants complex games and not simply a point and click thing, to use a metaphor.
I know it's blasphemy to say so on a TW forum (where at the mention of CA in a halfway positive light everyone starts screaming bloody murder), but yes, there have been some advances in realism and depth in ETW and NTW. Do you know what the most utterly unrealistic Total War game is in vanilla form? Rome: Total War. That was the game with Roman ninjas, pink pajamaed Parthians, head hurlers, screaming women, the absurd berserker ability, flaming pigs, the ancient Egyptians in 272 BC, AI so stubborn you could reduce them to one region and they would not declare peace, units with such low morale that they broke after 30 seconds of combat or one cavalry charge. It was ridiculous.
Let's be honest, the diplomacy in ETW and NTW is better. Nations will actually offer peace if you are kicking their butt, or at least they will accept it when you offer it. Unit morale has been upped so battles actually may last more than 2 minutes total. Fantasy units have been drastically reduced (although clone units for European factions are the new problem in ETW). Historical accuracy in general is a bit better than in RTW and M2TW, probably in part because it's a much easier era to research.
There has, of course, been movement backwards as well. For instance, I can never bring myself to get attached to characters in ETW and NTW, they just lack personality. But let's be honest, part of that is the time frame. With a professional army you don't have a family tree and hereditary succession for your generals. The AI still blows in most respects as well, and the reaction against modding is of course the most tragic loss.
I'm not happy with CA's reaction against modding, but I think that in many realms (other than the AI and moddability), vanilla NTW and patched ETW are improvements over vanilla M2TW and RTW. The main reason I don't play them a lot is because of the time period, which I am not a fan of. We need to remember that comparing EB to vanilla ETW makes no sense. If we want to measure the company's progress, we should be comparing vanilla RTW to ETW, and in that regard, it's undeniable that ETW features better historical accuracy of the two.
Sorry about the rant, I just think people tend to associate RTW with EB too much and it clouds their judgment in evaluating the vanilla game.
Since I consider myself to be mostly a ( mainly lurking and coming and going ) part of this particular "sub-community" within the greater community of the .org , I'd like to express here that after about 10h of STW2 , I am pleased with the improvements in the gameplay .
After many , many years .
It has been a while and I am really , really , happy with the direction the gameplay is taking ( see below ) .
It seems a greatly promising game and I really hope that the modders can work on it ( be it EB team or any other team with their dedication to perfection in mod making ) .
I've only explored a bit the normal difficulty setting and I was able to have diplomatic relations and even a couple of allies showing up to help against a foe !
Good work CA , thanks !
Ah , it feels good to have a good TW game installed .
Satyros
Sadly, Shogun, Napoleon and Empire don't allow total conversions, so unless CA gives out modding tools, a modder develops them himself or a new game that is moddable is created the chance for a total conversion is very small.
XSamatan
A sad fact indeed .
Still , I wrote the above since I have complained in these forums on many occasions about the poor quality of the recent TW titles .
It would be unfair of me not to say anything .
But it's really sad that the games don't support the modding community anymore . Perhaps they do not agree with us* who think that the good people of the modding community extend the life of the TW games far beyond the expected norm , or perhaps they do not perceive this to be a positive thing ?
Satyros
*not a modder , just a good friend of the modding community and their work
And more on the subject of silly questions :
Anyone knows the key for using the alternate weapon of the units ( if they have one ? )
Satyros
Would be better if CA releases a R2TW and see that their buyers (fans) are mod-fanatics and give the community tools with their new game. Or they hire the EB team so no tools are needed after release............
A man can dream can he not ?
Well, even if there was an EB III on the S2TW engine (I know it's been declined but never say never :tongue: ), we're not certain how well the AI would adapt. I mean, I'm as surprised by the really good campaing AI of S2 but, let's face it, the linearity of movement and the rather small scale of the map help it a lot. I don't know if it would perform as well on the wide steppes, in the plains of Europe and the wide areas in Africa, the Middle East, etc...Quote:
Originally Posted by XSamatan