Mods are always made to improve the original game, which is why some of them had and still have strong replayability and "pull" factor to make you play them over an over again. :yes:
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Mods are always made to improve the original game, which is why some of them had and still have strong replayability and "pull" factor to make you play them over an over again. :yes:
Did CA really just break every single MOD for Rome 1 and MTW2 today?
These guys are easily the biggest clowns in the gaming universe. I'm currently staring at MTW2 in steam and it appears to now be downloading the entire game again, and all of this just so handful of players can still play MP, meanwhile the vast majority of the people still playing this game are playing SP, using MODs, all of which are pretty much orphaned at this juncture, and once broken will not get unbroken. Bet you money when this F'ing download finishes and I try and start this game it will not work.
Truly, beyond belief.
Is there confirmation that the MP update broke SP mods? Im looking around and Im not seeing anything yet about this breaking SP mods. Besides, plenty of people were annoyed how there wouldnt be any more MP for those games so I guess it was damned if they do, damned if they dont for CA?
I think you should calm down and see what happens before getting all angry. Since it was an MP only update it is still in question whether or not it will break things.
I will be really surprised if this doesn't break everything. Go look for yourself, the entire game is re-downloading just because I clicked on play just now.
Well I would hold off on freaking out until its proven that the update broke mods. So far, no confirmation that Ive seen.
These are the times I'd prefer the choice not to go along with CA and Steam on an update be presented. Some of us were just fine with the way things were when it came to playing decade old games. ;)
Everything I had was set up and working fine in MTW2 and Rome 1. Now, regardless of your assurances, I know for a fact when I click on the custom replaced launcher that allowed me to select any mod I wanted to run for MTW2, or when I try to run EB in Rome 1, neither is going to work w/o me trying to manually sort out why.
The thing with disabling an entire army become pretty necessary at some point (for me at least since I am bad and I can't win battles of 1 vs 3 stacks 3 turns in a row). I am willing to blame the whole thing with the limited number of armies, or rather, set number of armies for mini factions for most of the major battles essentially being 2-3 armies vs 2-3 armies. It gets to the point where the armies that initiated the fight are doing skirmishing while the actual armies get into position so that 20 minutes later, we can start shooting or hitting each other with swords.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
So apparently it does break some mods, but there is any easy fix apparently.
It seems if the mod used a separate folder for the mod to launch from and not just replacing one of the Kingdoms campaign folders then you just gotta rename the mod to replace one of the Kingdoms folders and you are good to go. Though it seems like most mods just replace a campaign folder so it should be no issue, thats what Im reading.
Anyways Im not understanding the anger over this. No mods seem to have been really broken other than a couple of renaming fixes and it allows the people who do want to play MP to play. Can you really blame the devs for putting the base game above add-ons? I mean personally if I was a game dev I would want to make sure the base game is all in working order first, then work with the modders to help them get their mods up and running.
Yeah, I use the replacement launcher to avoid this nonsense with editing kingdom directories, I'm hoping this does not break it.
Back to the agent area of things. Ai is crippling with all their agents. Typically they are well coordinated in order to mess you up the most... its gets very annoying at times
I'm annoyed because what I had worked fine, the patch addresses issues I don't have, creates ones I didn't have before. From my perspective I don't quite see why you'd find my annoyance difficult to grasp.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
I had a product till today that worked perfectly, now I don't. And I've gained nothing by the change other than the aggravation of being forced to sort out how to get myself back where I was before the patch. i.e where things worked:wall:
I'll live btw, and I'll stop hijacking this thread by going back on topic: YES, agent spam drives me crazy in R2.
But the thing is, unless you're a big imperium in R2TW, there's no agent spam at least from your part. And I rarely experienced, if any, agent spam from the AI.
Oh I understand your frustration, I just don't get why people are mad at CA for fixing what became a broken part of their game considering that as a game studio their #1 priority is to ensure a working base product.
And back to topic, I feel that agents is the one place where the AI works very well in, considering that you need a literal army of agents to ensure safe passage of your forces in mid-late game.
Works very well in what sense? In turning the game into spy vs spy? There is no point where I should have more than 50 agents mid-game just because I wasted the money flipping the endless spam sent my way by the AI.
I'm not saying stop agents, I'm saying make the number more rational as it was in Shogun 2, where they made a difference but didn't get ridiculous, this is Total War, spies are supposed to be an aspect of the game, not hijack it.
Ok, could not resist, click on MTW2 and shocker, i get the following little box of joy: Medieval II suffered a fatal error and will now exit.
It works very well as in you cant simply ignore that aspect of the game. Now, if you manage your spies well you can easily hold off the agent spam from doing too much damage. In my Suebi campaign against Rome they had a lot of spies and I managed to keep them off my back.Quote:
Originally Posted by easytarget
And shame about M2TW, which mods are you running?
The agent spam does become a little ridiculous, especially in the mid game, when you have to use your agents alongside your armies. It kind of restricts you to a single 'theater' as well because you only have 2-3 of each, half of which will probably be somewhere completely different, doing something entirely different as well.
Thankfully, in the late game, it is not so important because until the civil war, there tends to be no AI faction capable of outright murdering even a single of your stacks if they don't bring 3-4 of their own.
I consider the money I have to spend to deal with the spam impedes the gameplay sufficiently that it hampers the central purpose of a Total War game. I can deal with it, the point remains, it could be easily tweaked such that it was still a factor, only made to be proportionate to the importance it should have as one of many factors you must weigh in managing your campaign. This isn't black and white, I've no idea why this always turns into "it works fine or it doesn't work fine". Well, other than the internet is one big giant pool of stupidity when it comes to the resolution of differing opinions and nearly always resolves down to a simplification of binary results.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hooahguy
As for MTW2 mods, I had retrofit and SS running on MTW2, there's no option I guess but to go through the hassle of changing directory names when I want to play them. Sigh. The real shocker though, EB1 runs fine on R1 (which was also patched today). Go figure, and thanks for small miracles! :yes:
Fair enough. While I do think that sometimes its absurd, overall its not a deal-breaker for me. I tend to recruit a few spies anyways because of the poison garrison ability which is fantastic.
Also, if you didnt notice already, theres a new beta patch out that supposedly really helps the siege AI. Havent tried it myself but people seem to like it.
This could be because their multi-player server went off-line. I think, the launcher has a link to it.Quote:
Originally Posted by easytarget
They also moved Rome 1 and MTW 2 multi-player to steam today: that might explain the RTW1 update.
I can't really play the game anymore. The improved stuttering the patch notes mention really is an improvement for me.. as in there is more of it now, to the point where it happens in every battle that involves more than 10 units lol.
Wow that stinks, in a quick custom battle I had a FPS increase.
It is not an actual decrease in FPS, just the animation stuttering.
That's rather unfortunate.
Yet another reason for me to wait for the bargain bin. I hate it when ET phones home without your consent......:no:Quote:
These are the times I'd prefer the choice not to go along with CA and Steam on an update be presented. Some of us were just fine with the way things were when it came to playing decade old games.
:crazy:Quote:
There is no point where I should have more than 50 agents mid-game just because I wasted the money flipping the endless spam sent my way by the AI
:2thumbsup:Quote:
I'm not saying stop agents, I'm saying make the number more rational as it was in Shogun 2, where they made a difference but didn't get ridiculous, this is Total War, spies are supposed to be an aspect of the game, not hijack it.
One of the big problems is that while there are agent limits, its not an overall agent limit, its a limit for each type. So if you have a limit of 3 of each type, thats still 9 total agents and that is a lot. I think it should be an overall limit, so if you want 3 spies or 2 spies and a champion thats fine, but 9 total agents is kinda crazy.
That or severely limit their capabilities. Like maybe only spies can assassinate and poison wells, champions can only duel and train your troops, and dignitaries can only change culture and concert enemy agents. Right now they can do a bunch of different things that when you combine them all together its crazy, but when limited its a nice feature.
Well there were no agent limitations in Rome 1 and Med 2 but they worked just fine. :shrug:
MTW2 can get pretty spammy w/ inquisitors and merchants swarming all over the place. Thing is dealing with them in MTW2 doesn't cost you money, just the time to groom the agents to handle them, same in Shogun 2. I can handle that.
In Rome 2 I was spending my entire treasury on dealing with this issue sometimes (not all the time), again, I'm not making this out to be a black and white issue. What I'm suggesting is I should never have 3 or 4x my imperium level limit of agents because the AI is sending an endless stream of them at me I have to kill or convert.
Set a limit to each AI in the campaign, you should no more have an unlimited supply of agent talent than you do armies, everyone complained about single city 3-4 stack armies and that got addressed, but say anything about the same single city joke of a nation sending a dozen agents at you a year and that's just fine. Really? Well how about a small dose of reality is all I'm suggesting. There should be a limit to this resource, make it two dozen. Make it the max you should get when you've maxed imperium times 2. The point is, make it something.
The difference as I recall is that they couldnt do as much. They could assassinate but as I recall they couldnt stop armies in their tracks like they can in R2.Quote:
Originally Posted by Myth
CA must have done something to tune down the agent spam with the latest patches. I remember having 2-3 times my limit around patch 7 or so, but not with patch 13 (14 still needs to be played). I completed a whole Barcid (they tend to have many enemies due to a global diplo-malus so theoretically should be more subject to agent spam) legendary campaign within patch 13 span and very rarely I had more than 1-2 agents above my limit. Never during this campaign I really encountered the agent spam that I witnessed in the earlier versions.
This must be system related. you should report your issue and specs to the CA. I played numerous large battles last night: no stuttering. I have to test it on a major siege battle though. A friend of mine tested on a gaming laptop: no issues there. Another friend is having issues though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sp4
It's the same thing as before, just worse.Quote:
Originally Posted by Slaists
I'm playing a Legendary game as Macedon. I gotta say it has me hooked so far. I have to camp for several turns to bide my time, gather enough troops and conquer a 1 province faction which spams troops. The MCD start with a unit of Companion Cav so that coupled with the general makes them awesome versus skirmisher heavy factions.
I also have to make two 4 settlement reqcruitment provinces, one for infantry and one for cav. So I plan to get the one with Pulpudeva (which encompasses modern day Bulgaria, where I live, so I'll just call it Bulgaria :laugh4:) and Brundisium for cav and infantry and then Hellas for archers.
Technically, Pella should have been the cavalry province - one feature I really wish it existed in R2TW, province specialties.
You make province specialities yourself. I kind of like it.
So here is a great video on siege AI in patch 14 and also mentions why some people experience "skipping" in battles, which I recall some (I think it was Sp4 notably) had issues with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9cftmqL76E
It's gotten less bad with the non beta patch again. For the last two days, I've been enjoying my first co op campaign with a friend, which is pretty fun although I think starting as Egypt and Seleucids may have been a bit over the top.
I had to restart several times with my Macedon Legendary campaign. The early game is a challenge now, it's not a steamroll at all. And your diplomatic decisions influence the actual war on the map. If I ignore the east, Athens and Sparta crush Epirus and stay friends. If I make peace with Tylis (which gives me negative rep) then I have to attack Epirus first whcih gives me more negative rep. But Epirus has Larissa and Apolonia and both are essential for trade because of their resources.
Sparta turned on Athens and churned out huge stacks. I crushed one army with merks and made the bad decision to leave 1 general alone. That general recruited EVEN MORE MERCS and took Sparta back. Overall, those Veteran Hoplites and Thureus Spears that you can hire in Hellas are stronger than early game armies. I'm still to gauge how to have a flawless start. But I love how my troops say "For Makedon" and are generally custom voiced, instead of the bland "YARRRRRRRRRR" all the barbarians have.
Macedon is quickly going up the rankings for me as one of my top 3 factions.
Yeah, those single general armies are dangerous now more than before... Had a situation last weekend where I took Carthagena from Nova Carthago and 2 turns later proceeded to wipe them off the (visible map) by taking the neighboring regions as well. I wondered why the "faction destroyed" message did not pop up.
The next turn I found out; Nova Carthago had a 1 general hiding in Averaci territory nearby. This bugger popped back into Carthagena with an army full of mercs and easily took the settlement back.
I kind of hate the sudden merc armies out of nowhere. I always think it's just there to annoy you. If the AI had all that cash and used it for mercs during the actual war with the player, it could have won then and would not have had to lose its provinces.
It's not exactly out of nowhere. Every faction gets 3000/turn (consider it resistance donations by the nobles resenting your occupation) even if the faction has no taxable regions left (some turns after a faction has lost their last settlement they starve to death though). That merc army I saw appeared a few turns after I had defeated the faction's last visible stack. 3 turns x 3000 = 9,000: quite enough to hire a merc army.
Does the player get that too? I never ran out of regions.
And why don't people start injecting me with ridiculous amount of money when I do lose any region? I assume people live there and wealthy people would want to see it return to me? =p
You get your base 3000 (or 2,500 as a player) income the same as the AI factions. This is independent of whether you own any territory or not. So, when your territory count goes to zero, you still get that base income as long as you have troops remaining.
I personally have not been in that situation, but someone who got wiped off the map by the AI reported this; getting the base income after losing the last territory. Once his remaining troops starved to death, he lost the game.
I had my first siege battle that was worth playing today. For some reason a sudden slave rebellion in Sardinia (on Sardinia?) spawned a stack of pretty elite Carthagenian troops but whatever. I was just happy to see the siege in effect for the first time. The AI managed to make it to my walls, this time with all 4 ladders and not using torches to burn down the gates, which was interesting.
They also managed to put pike infantry in pike formation on a ladder, which killed 2 Hastati before I managed to dogpile enough things on them for them to die:
http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/...6F54595985CB2/
Once my defenders had killed all melee infantry, the rest of their army didn't dismount and start using torches... instead they did what ones army does automatically in TW games of old. It automatically retreats :bounce:
So yeah, this was a positive experience :D (Game is vanilla, all mods are visual)
I have a positive experience too. I daresay i'm getting creamed by the AI if I do even a signle missplay as Macedon. I'm restrating yet again. It's hard to get a steamroll-y stack with only major settlements. I hate upgrading the barracks in a major city when I have to tear it down later, but it just might be necessary. The Thracians have good units. In fact, their skirmishers are so beastly they shred companion cav so long as they can send a volley or two. Charge and retreat with one unit of cav won't work versus 4 units of thracian spearchuckers.
Even when I take out Tylis and occupy Anthea, unless I did so with overwhelming odds (meaning, i take out t heir navy separately AND bait out some armies outside the city) then the Odryssians will just come down and ram me hard.
If I go by way of peace with Tylis and agresson with Epirus (which makes much more sense strategically) I get down to untrustworthy rep. Life is hard, so restoring Alexander's empire will be that much sweeter.
Have you tried letting Odryssians go to war with Triballi (they tend to do that on turn 2-3) and then grab Odryssian capital as soon as their armies leave? Also, I'd try getting everyone and their mothers in law to join my wars with Tylis and later Odryssia. Helps to secure borders later (as you get green all around you).
Molossian dogs work nicely to take care of spear-chuckers; then again, as early Macedon, you hardly have cash to maintain mercenaries.
But yes, Odryssians (and even Tylis) seem to be bad news for any Greek-type armies. I'm playing as Junia now, allied with Sparta and Athens. Odryssians and Tylis managed to take out Macedon and are putting pressure on Athens and Sparta now.
Encouraging news! Also, anything that undermines a phalanx is good, I'm getting a bit sick of pikes (ok, Sarissae?) again (after recovering since R1).
Um, is this right? A Phalanx UP A LADDER? Sounds bonkers. Or a bug....Quote:
Originally Posted by Sp4
Pikes and their phalanxes are close to useless since a few patches ago. Just aim your javelins at them and they're gone in seconds. Don't even need javeliners, or flanking for that matter, though, in many cases, even (good) sword infantry can beat pikes head on.
I did that on my first playthrough. They went and took Appolonia and then the almighty Adriaei came down and crushed them for their insolence. While facing their second stack rebels spawned Tylis again and I conceded. Rebel stacks are very high chevroned units now, can't be shrugged off by garrisons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Slaists
Good sword infantry not so much. It's the throwing spears they throw on their charge. Pike infantry, no matter the quality, are really really vulnerable to anything that flies around.Quote:
Originally Posted by Slaists
The rebels usually spawn with 3-4 units and then recruit more as the turns go by. If you get rid of them at the start, not too much of a problem even with high xp chevrons.Quote:
Originally Posted by Myth
As to rebellions in general, could it be that you're favoring the military side of the research tree? With a few extra points in cultural conversion, public order and pop growth (the latter for temple slots), rebellions dont seem much of an issue even on legendary; unless, pesky AI spies cause unrest, of course.
Will have to pay closer attention to that. I just know whenever I have a stationary line of pikes facing strong AI sword infantry, those buggers somehow manage to get between the pikes causing the pike unit to switch to swords.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sp4
I always get tier 3 barracks before anything else. We're talking early game here, the first 10 turns.
I'm experimenting with a heavy focus on slingers to outrange the Thracians.
Also, this line made me lol "Your worthless goods do not interest Pharaoh, from whom all wealth flows. Sell them to fools elsewhere!"
Yeah that is what they do with the throwing spears. They don't kill 5 or 6 people like in most cases but they'll take out the first line and some people in the second even, so by the time the phalanx has reshuffled and put new pikes up in the first line, the infantry is already fighting sword fights with the second (now first) line.Quote:
Originally Posted by Slaists
Obviously, the devs never watched 300~;)Quote:
Pike infantry, no matter the quality, are really really vulnerable to anything that flies around.
:no:
The guys in 300 are hoplites. They are sufficiently invulnerable to arrows and such in the game, especially the heavy armoured, high morale (Spartan) kind although any hoplites are a bad thing to shoot missiles at. As the Scythians, you'll have a lot of fun fighting mainly Greeks because you'll need to research the more ammo tech for your horse archers before you can even hope to do anything against a half decent stack of hoplites + ranged infantry.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
Pergamon likes spamming stacks of 19 hoplites and a hoplite general. Gave me a hell of a time to wipe out with HAs. I had to fight, retreat and fight a second battle just to have enough arrows to whittle them down. That was with the Massagetae. Perhaps that high tier Royal Scythian jav-cav will shred them if the javs fly from the back?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sp4
Ugh, and that's why I can't bring myself to play as the nomad factions. I know battles are generaly only 5-10 minutes or so usually but having to fight the same one again and again (and i bet they are longer as you skirmish all day!) sounds like a chore.Quote:
Originally Posted by Myth
I started playing a campaign as them but couldn't be bothered after a while. Siege assaults are impossible cause you can't attack with your horse archers and your infantry is the worst in the game (I don't even know why they have any... probably to push battering rams), fighting heavily armoured units is a real pain in the rear. Basically, you want to become friends and not worry about anything Greek from turn one, although I can see factions like the Egyptians and maybe Seleucids not being so terrible cause they don't have quality hoplites.
Still, late game, horse archers aren't that great and you have to combine them with the heavy cav you get as a Nomad faction (they have more or less the same roster) and I think I would try to expand West asap, get into the Celtic regions and recruit an army or two of mercenary Celtic swords and then come back for the hoplite spammers.
The Seleucids DO have quality hoplites. They get Shield Bearers which are only a tad weaker than Royal Spartans but you can produce an infinite amount of them (and you can only get 6 Royal Spartans online)Quote:
Originally Posted by Sp4
Quote:
Originally Posted by Myth
Yes, but he's talking about horse archer faction chances of success against Seleucid AI. As far as the Seleucid AI is concerned, I have yet to see them field anything much higher than desert spearmen... Similar to AI Rome that still fields majority rorarii armies.
Yeah I was talking about SP. The AI rarely gets to the point where they will spam their highest quality units, which the exception for certain Celtic factions with their Oathsworn warriors.
Are horse archers still restricted by a limited firing arc?Quote:
Siege assaults are impossible cause you can't attack with your horse archers and your infantry is the worst in the game
I am not sure but I don't think so. It may show an arc but they'll happily shoot anything in any direction when on the move. So will skirmisher cav.
Horse archers will get creamed by slingers in a siege assault of a major settlement.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
That's pretty much always been the case, even in R1. My question is referring to the firing arc I've seen in video clips. Is that still the case?Quote:
Horse archers will get creamed by slingers in a siege assault of a major settlement.
I don't remember seeing firing archs for horse archers in R2. That was something implemented in Empire (I guess, they just "copied-pasted" the musket cavalry firing arch for horse archers there).Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fWVthMjnok
Amazonian warrior chicks DLC, woohoo!
In addition to the DLC units, the Suebi also got 4 new units (some cavalry, swordsmen, and skirmishers) plus a number of other free units.
A nice overview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZH7HHplSzk
Interesting to say the least... but I will be adamant about not using these units in my armies.... so I cant say that it will affect me much
That new Suebi unit: "horse runners" -- do they use horses as they are historically supposed to (ride horse to destination, then dismount, charge in, do damage, hop back on horse and ride away) or they're just foot skirmishers? I suspect the latter.
Skirmishers.
Can you imagine how fiddly that would be if they were the other thing?
Hmm, Germans already had skirmishers; are the new ones considerably different/better?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sp4
Fidly? Probably, given how long it takes a unit to dismount (maybe could be sped up for such a specialist unit though). Just mentioned it because read of Caesar's troops being caught off guard by German riders who dismounted to fight Caeasar's cavalry (successfully).
Well, yes. They already have skirmishers. They have Germanic youths and I guess some other generic javelin kind of unit as well, like all the Celts have. They get Celtic youths and Celtic javelins, so the Suebi now get another unit that throws javelins.
Hey, the Romans gets 6 different units that hit people with swords and serve exactly the same purpose in any other case as well.