imbalance of buildings ?! What, like, "Drill_Square pwnz Fairgrounds all the time on Grassy Plain", sort of thing ?
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imbalance of buildings ?! What, like, "Drill_Square pwnz Fairgrounds all the time on Grassy Plain", sort of thing ?
My assumption is that he meant it is too cheap to upgrade towns and castles. If so, I'm inclined to agree. If not, well he'll need to clarify won't he? :yes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Kobal2fr
(my own guess was that he really meant that "Faction X gets building Y, and Faction Y doesn't", but it's such a minor detail that I just had to make fun of him :sweatdrop:)
Megaman 2 is an extremely easy game if you forego the main weapon and use Metal Blades all the time, and there's no reason not to, because it throws power-ups at you like candy.
You can beat either God of War game by putting all your red orbs into your knives. They level up faster, and you can just destroy everything in the game with ease. You don’t need anything else to beat the game, anyway.
Building a character with 10 Luck, five in every other stat, and the Jinxed trait will make Fallout 2 an easy, quirky game.
There has yet to be a Final Fantasy game where you can't just power-level and completely obliterate the last boss in five seconds.
My point being, if you set out to find flaws in a game's level of difficulty, then you will find them, far more often than not. Every game ever made, regardless of complexity, can be exploited, but you have to chose to do so. Amping up the game's difficulty will never remove this choice, nor will it make it similar to playing against another human being.
I (and nobody I know of) am not asking for a game that cannot be beat, I am merely asking for a game that provides some semblance of resistance if I choose to be a bloodthirsty warmonger right from the start. Is that honestly too much to ask? It's blatantly obvious what the AI does wrong so how is it remotely unreasonable to complain until its fixed?Quote:
Originally Posted by Malkut
Edit: As a side note, the game actually FORCES me to blitz on VH because the FUBAR diplomacy will quite literally never accept a ceasefire with me if we share land borders, not matter how much its getting crushed. This mechanic practically forces me to eliminate any faction I war with...sacking as I go.
Kobal has been so nice as to ID what couple lines need to be changed to make sacking/exterminating less cost effective. I'm wondering if that can be nested inside of an IF of CASE statement that will make both less effective as you increase the diplomatic difficulty.
NOTE: Military experience doesn't mean that you would be better at this kind of game. Playing strategic games would.
2nd NOTE: The test subject had one of the easiest factions to learn with as their starting faction. If they had either Venice of the HRE they may have discovered very quicky that blitzing wrong results in you loosing quickly.
Imbalance of buildigns means just that. You want a building's real value to reflect its monetary cost in the game. This is part of what makes well-balanced strategy games (such as COH or blizzard games) so long-lived, in both the multiplayer and singleplayer settings.
The TW games are notoriously bad in that regard. Late game buildings are far too expensive for what they're worth. You are far better focusing on a few key early game units with all of your resources, than teching up to largely ineffective late-game units. The same is true of non-military buildings. The first level port, for example, is by far the most valuable economic building (at least in coastal provinces).
The upshot is that players who naturally favor aggressive, early-game strategies tend to dominate the map with ease. The AI, which does not realize the inefficiency of teching, and the ineffectiveness of most units, will necessarily lose.
@John_Longarrow : probably not - the variable is in an .xml file that is just a spreadsheet of multiplicators to be applied to equations and codes and whatnot that are either in the .exe itself or in other files. The "if medium, then use variable x, if VH use y" would have to be in there. I think.
It's not an unreasonable request, it's an unnecessary one. The only 100%, sure-fire way to get the AI to build a big enough army at the start to stop a blitz and still be able to afford it during the money-tight early game is to make them blitz.Quote:
Originally Posted by SoxSexSax
That's exactly what you're complaining about in your edit, though, except that the AI loses, and you didn't.
I don't see how balancing sacking would help, either. You'd just have to blitz with smaller armies, which can easily be done if you use spies on the cities and don't auto-resolve any of the battles. It still wouldn't be even remotely challenging. If anything, that would put the computer at a disadvantage by limiting a source of starting income.
Even if they made the AI build huge armies to just set around in their cities and wait for you to come and conquer them, then you’d still find a way to totally annihilate the AI (because it's an AI), and be right back here, complaining about how easy it all is.
The company's limited resources should be aimed at fixing actual problems in the game, not patching exploits that people could easily avoid simply by not doing it.
The removal or reduction of income from capturing settlements would prevent both 'Blitzers' and the AI financing the retraining their armies from the proceeds of a seige and thus force them to rely on earned funds to finance their war. That means that they cannot simply ignore their economies, or use the proceeds of their wars to finance their build strategy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Malkut
You're right that this might just result in the determined Blitzer using smaller armies, but if this change was also allied with penalties for mantaining armies on foriegn soil such as doubling or trebling maintenance cost and constant attrition I've mentioned then any army on foriegn soil is going to be both expensive and difficult to sustain.
That should put any attacker at a distinct disadvantage to an army defending its homeland, whether AI or Player controlled, and mean that any attacks will need to be conducted with enough strength to ensure a quick, but limited, victory. If nothing else this would make the game more realistic, but it should also change the game play.
It would certainly need more planning and strategy to work.
The use of spies would need to be countered with counter-spying, but at least using spies indicates a slight expansion in the utilisation of the games features, so it would be a step in the right direction.
That has already been tried in STW with the purple horde, and it has been repeated in MTW2 with both the Mongols and Timurids. It doesn't work unless the strategic AI is capable of making effective use of the massed troops it has been given.Quote:
Originally Posted by Malkut
The issue of sacking cities is not about the quality of the AI, its actually about poor game design. There is a flaw in the basic structure of game play that allows players to expliot the game to win without playing it.
I agree with you that the AI is a seperate issue that cannot be resolved by merely throwing more resources at the AI factions.
I disagree, in many respects the Blitzing expliot is one of the fundemental flaws in the game, highlighting a problem with its basic design and if anything it should be dealt with first simply becuase until it is resolved its impossible to determine how many of the other flaws are being fed from it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Malkut
Changing the game design to make it harder to sustain large armies in the field might actually have a big impact on the strategic AI and the way it plays, until that has been established its difficult to see how one could begin to address the other AI issues.
one true experience:
I lay siege to a city. I end my turn. And i immediately went off to take a leak and get a drink. Unknown to me is that the city sally out and im not there. Forces on both side is evenly matched. When im back, victory! Loses r not that great but my missle units are badly hurted.
One good way is to give a faction 99999999 florins.
I experience this in RTW.
I started a game w/o realising that my brother gave Egypt that. When i landed on their side, i got bombarded by lots and lots of chariots and high tier units. It almost made me want to withdraw my forces there, but i held on.
@khaos83_2000
I've been there and done that so often,:laugh4:, glad I'm not the only one.
I'm in the habit of kicking off a battle and then popping to the kitchen to get a cup of tea or coffee whilst the loading screen and pre-battle speeches play through.
The number of times I've done that and come back to find the battle has already started without me, because it was a sally battle and I hadn't twigged.
Tactial surprise being acheived by the AI in real life:oops:
http://forum.justgamers.de/images/ju...smile_rofl.gif you guys are killing me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Didz
Anyways, I believe we can already do a fairly good job with creative modding to prevent players from rushing, and even more.
CA apparently didn't balance the campaign game to any sensible extent though, or maybe they like rushing :laugh4:
Another theory is that the devs themselves aren't very good players and therefore the game isn't too easy for them, but saying that would be mean, so I won't. I just think they didn't spend enough time playing their game, which is actually something that as a modder I can understand. You don't play the game, you make it.
Alpaca,
One issue I've heard of with game designers is that, since they know the in's and out's of the game, they assume they are much better at it than they actually are. As such, they assume if its at all a challenge for them it will be too hard for others.
This is a problem that used to be very true in FPS in the late 80's / early 90's, one of the reason some of those early games were actually so easy.
My guess is, since the designers know everything about the game they don't skip things that "Should" (from the designers perspective) be done. As such, skipping building up settlements to pay for an army isn't something that would be obvious to the guy who's spent a long time working on the code to build stuff.
For me, the best beta-testers I've ever found have been secretaries or call center phone operators. Just grab one at random, have them sit down with the manual, and start using the program. I'm betting if CA started doing that with non-gamers they'd have a LOT of changes and updates to the manual.
Of course it would also be really funny to hear this little old lady who's supposed to be the one answering phones asking a developer who's just spent a couple years "Why is this game so easy???"
:evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin: :evilgrin:
I'd certainly be interested to find out if changes to sacking cities, upkeep and attrition does have an impact upon the way the game is played. Logic suggests it should but until a determined blitzer gets his hands on it and tries to expliot the system you can't be sure.
Didz,
I think we may have a winner in that department. If there is a mod that has lower sacking and higher upkeep, we could ask Askthepizzaguy to give it a try and let us know how it changes his blitzing.
Higher upkeep won't slow him down one bit, the madman's on full crusade mode all the time :laugh3:
The blitz problem has been discussed countless times throughout the TW series. When it comes down to it, I have seen only one solution that works: homelands. Once you expand beyond your faction's 'traditional' homelands, recruitment should be limited and slow. Foreign lands should be capable of being converted to your 'culture' but it should take a LONG time. RTR and EB implemented this style of play very well and reduced the blitz syndrome, but I think even more work can be done. In TW games, the more territories you hold, the stronger you are and the easier the game gets. This needs to be reversed in order to prevent the blitz from working.
True, but that wouldn't slow down a blitzer like pizzaguy either, because he exploits the cheap crusader mercs, and the more expensive regular mercs. Normal troops are just a bonus to him. And he doesn't have to worry about their high upkeep either, because he's always on crusades and so his armies are upkeep-free.
It's almost beautiful, in a dark, twisted way. Kind of like Hollywood accounting.
For those with short memories who think it was always like this, harken back to the days when VI first came out. No one could win as the Northumbrians, or the Welsh. It took a while to figure out how to manage it and guess what, it turned out that really aggressive blitzcrieging was the best way to go. Since then no one has looked back. Still, MTW2 is so much easier than MTW, especially VI, that I would be very interested in ways to slow the juggernaut down.
Personnally, I never build merchants or most other special persons except as I need them for defense. I find the extra micro a pain and the extra revenue unneedded to win quickly and easily. And for an example of how to make a game with good gradations in difficulty, look no further than Civ4 or GalCiv2. Both have levels of difficulty that the average player doesn't even want to play, it is hard enough at the middle levels.
I wonder if we couldn't get around that by having a Crusader Faction -- instead of giving well-organized central governments access to lots of obedient professional soldiers (which isn't how it happened at all) you could make an independent AI faction that runs for the Crusade target like the Huns and Timurids running to their target settlements when they first appear. Using a modified version of the code that makes rebels spawn, Crusading armies would create "Crusade unrest" (for want of a better term at the moment) in whatever province they're passing through and cause Crusader Faction armies to spawn, lumping into the mob and carving a path of ruddy chaos towards the objective. Normal factions could still join the Crusades, but the special Crusader mercenaries don't much care what anyone thinks as long as they go on pilgrimage to wherever it is they're going.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kobal2fr
(Real-life crusaders caused a great deal of unrest wherever they went, not having anything like a logistical support system or organized government bureaucracies to support them on long marches. Crusading armies were, often as not, roving hordes of angry peasants lead by charismatic blokes like Peter the Hermit. Crusader States like the Principality of Antioch, the County of Edessa and the Kingdom of Jerusalem were not particularly answerable to the folks back home, as is the case with vanilla M2TW provinces captured by Crusaders.)
Well, yeah, but what would be the point of joining the crusades then, if it only bolsters some other faction's power ?
To tell you the truth, I really don't get the rationale behind the free upkeep on crusades thing, and I'm not that fond of the way they're handled in M2. Apart from the 4 year building time + special building, which were really meh compared to the Knight Order guilds and papal favor thing of M2, I think that on the whole they were much better in MTW/VI.
They spread chaos wherever they went by draining soldiers (thus tanking public order), they got huge all by themselves (which could be a nuisance in itself too if you led them, because then you had to pay the bloody freeloaders), and having one cross your lands was a huge pain in the neck that could set back your expansion plans by years if they took the long way...
That's a better way of doing what I was thinking -- as long as it gets the messy, unpredictable, git-off-mah-prop'rty nature of the Crusades down, it's cool.
Aside from a serious reduction in the effectiveness of sacking, the strategic AI needs the following changes (IMO) to be credible:
1) It must accept a ceasefire when involved in a hopeless war. I have seen the AI turn down an offer of peace that involved me giving its capital back when it had just 2 cities remaining...there is simply NO cirsumstance whatsoever where that is the correct course of action. Difficulty level should be irrelevant. It just doesn't seem like it shouldn't be hard to get the AI to compare military to military and cities lost to cities taken and come to the 'right' choice.
2) It must stop sending low quality stacks to siege well defended castles/cities. So you've got 10 crossbow militia and a shedload of catapults/ballistae have you? How many units of cavalry will I need to beat that, hmm? 3? 4 possibly if they're light? Don't waste my time with this feeble rabble, save your florins and put a proper army together, fool!
3) It must properly garrison front line and important cities and castles. Too often do I lay siege to a frontline city and find just 4 units defending it.
4) Stop building fleets before it can even defend its lands. It's good that the AI builds a navy, but it is bad that it builds one before it has enough military to fend off an attack from a land neighbour who has forgone a navy. Boats are not cheap, and while the money isn't exactly wasted, it is spent on them too early into the game 99% of the time.
5) Stop building every building in cities/castles. This is possibly a slight exaggeration but still, the AI builds too much in each city/castle and doesn't specialise. It should be trivial to assign a value such a "ARHERY_UNITS" or "HEAVY_CAV" to each castle and then get it only to build stuff that opens new units in that category. Too much money on buildings and not enough money on units is one of the primary reasons behind sacking that the game is easy to blitz.
As I see it the above are all script problems, nothing to do with the engine or imbalances. They're all decision making issues and as such should probably be fixable. If you addressed any two of them you'd make the game much harder for a fast attacker. But when all five remain, even reducing sacking by a lot won't make a huge difference I predict. The computer wastes too much money on A) unnecessary construction and B) hopeless attacks that it will simply not be able to respond effectively enough to counter a quick war vs a strong blitzer.
I would comment on the battlefield AI too, but I'm hoping that the, how should I put this, toothless effort it puts up is down to its weak troops and not its actual thinking. Once the AI actually starts using stronger troops on a more frequent basis, that'll be the time to whine if it's not up to par. At the moment, with the battles the strategic AI likes to get it into, I can't blame it for getting beat!
Soxsexsax,
Something you may wish to do as a mental exercise is to write out a script that does what you say. Once you do that, you can then give a credible example of what should be changed and we can discuss the merits of it.
Having written scripts for programs in the past, I've learned that some times what seems "Obvious" isn't so easy when you have to write out the steps you take to make a comparison / plan. I DO think that if some people give example scripts CA may be able to use a collected brain storming session from the players as an example of what they want to face.
Good point. Maybe a solution would be to make Crusader Mercs horribly expensive to keep when not on Crusader. So that once you complete your Crusade, you have to ditch them and survive on normal armies. That would allow for Crusading as it is, but prevent the huge accumulation of high-quality Crusader Mercs that results.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kobal2fr
Kadagar AV
Has your friend tried the game again as a less potent faction? Has he tried it as, say, the HRE instead? Or the Turks? From my personal experience playing as the Danes is comparable to playing the game at a lower difficulty.
The simple way to avoid rushing and such a strategies is to change campaighn objectives, first of all - remove hold 15 or 45 settlements objective. Also you must hold all settlements you started with, add to this some building objective, like " build Sistine chapel " for France or " discover first New World " for Spain ,etc..
I really CAN enjoy vanilla MTW2 if i play very peaceful way in game. For example, playing as Scotland i made marriage alliance with england on first turn, and got attacked by them only on turn 103. I always keeping my papal standing not lower than my enemy have. I try to get my reputation as high as possible. I attacking only if i know that some religious buildings will be built in next turn. I totally ignore game objectives, playing only for fun. Now is turn 200 and i hold only 12 provinces in long campaighn, but 2 from them are in Carribean and i gonna fight Aztecs. Played all other factions before ( except Danes and Byz ), everytime i started new game , i tried to reach objectives without blitzing in relaxing way, and, to be honest, everytime i stopped to play near turn 160-180, just after i got almost all high tech buildings and troops enought to raise whole world, i saved game under faction name and never returned to it. But now, playing as a Scotland, i enjoing every short ( if compare to factions i played before ) turn, and even dont want to stop.
And i always like peaceful decisions, thats why i like option to build rocket in Civilisation games, and thats why it always keep me from blitz and exploit decisions.
How heavily do blitzers rely on mercenaries ?
I'm far from an expert since I never blitz, but if you sack a city it is unable to provide recruits for the next 2 - 3 turns. If there were no mercenaries it seems to me the blitzers would have a hard time replenishing their losses and would quickly run out of steam.