Timid response yet again from CA's Wikiman

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Originally Posted by Puzz3D

I guess you weren't around here when we found out that MTW was using 1 turn per year. There was vehement protest about it. You see the game already had 4 movement turns and one harvest turn in STW where you got your money to build on the harvest turn. Well, they didn't listen to us then, so I wouldn't expect them to listen now.

An STW campaign typically ran from 1530 to 1600 although there was no precise end date. That would give you 280 seasonal movement turns, with unique weather for each season, to take 64 provinces. So, there's a great idea which came from CA that was once in this game and they took it out, and that wasn't because they went to a new game engine because STW and MTW are very similar.

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Yeah, but they couldn't really use the same system in MTW because they wanted to cover a much longer period in history.

Be nice if they put the seasons back in though so the modders at least could take advantage of them. Personally I think the STW setup was much better. Who really needs different generations of troops anyhow? I think I'd rather have four separate campaigns covering four different troop generations, with seasonal turns, than one foreshortened campaign covering all four troop generations with annual turns as in MTW.

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Originally Posted by screwtype

Yeah, but they couldn't really use the same system in MTW because they wanted to cover a much longer period in history.

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That was the mistake in concept. They didn't have to cover 1089 to 1453 in one campaign and have conquest of all 128 provinces the objective. After all, no empire in history ever conquered all that territory. Each period, early, middle and late, could have had its own more limited objective. Each campaign would have been about 120 years long making each campaign 480 turns if turns were seasonal.

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Originally Posted by Puzz3D

That was the mistake in concept. They didn't have to ... have conquest of all 128 provinces the objective. After all, no empire in history ever conquered all that territory.

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I think that's a good point. Some progress has been made (over the conquer the entire map concept of Shogun) in terms of MTWs glorious achievements and BIs faction specific goals. The EB mod also has some very nice faction-specific goals (suitably ambitious for the Romans, more modest for lesser factions).

Operationalising this may require a tougher AI or other inhibitions to stop the player simply conquering the entire map. WesW made a big contribution here, with his "homelands" idea in MedMod, that has subsequently been used for RTR and EB. A tighter economy, attrition, loyalty etc problems may also help. (If anyone doubts RTW engine can constrain the player, have a look at the WRE PBM being played under some houserules.)

But for faction specific objectives to be worthwhile requires a significant investment in each individual faction. That's why I've never signed up to the "we must have 30+ factions" complaints. I'd rather have 5-6 factions done like RTW's Romans - with the equivalent of Senate type objectives and other chrome such as speeches, unique units etc - than 20+ generic Catholic factions from MTW.

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Personally I think the STW setup was much better. Who really needs different generations of troops anyhow?

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I've got to disagree - I love the idea of having a long sweep of history a la MTW and M2TW. I guess that's a matter of personal preference - if I could choose between a Civ like game or an ultra-realistic simulation of the Hundred Years War, I'd probably find the former more fun - I know other people's mileage may differ. And I like the carrot provided by better troop types you can work towards (I'd like it even better if you could upgrade experienced troops to have the new kit too). These panoramic and building aspects of the TW campaigns help make them more than just a string of battles. At the strategic level STW ultimately boiled down to a slugfest. I much preferred the greater strategic freedom MTW offered you. The RTW map gives you even more freedom, IMO, and is more potentially more fun - even if it is harder to program the AI for it.

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Originally Posted by Puzz3D

That was the mistake in concept. They didn't have to cover 1089 to 1453 in one campaign and have conquest of all 128 provinces the objective. After all, no empire in history ever conquered all that territory. Each period, early, middle and late, could have had its own more limited objective. Each campaign would have been about 120 years long making each campaign 480 turns if turns were seasonal.

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Whoe said that conquest of 128 provinces is objective.

If that was true game would have more turns.
It all seems to me that it's as paced as RTW, since usually you get 50 provinces in less then 200 turns (but has 500 turns for some reason :dizzy2: ).

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Originally Posted by player1

Whoe said that conquest of 128 provinces is objective.

If that was true game would have more turns.
It all seems to me that it's as paced as RTW, since usually you get 50 provinces in less then 200 turns (but has 500 turns for some reason :dizzy2: ).

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He was talking about how MTW, the original, was wrongly set up.

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Originally Posted by player1

Whoe said that conquest of 128 provinces is objective.

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I was talking about MTW, and that was the objective of MTW. They did have the Glorious Achievment campaigns. Those were nice, but they got streamlined out of the game. It must be good that the Glorious Achievment mode is gone because streamlining is apparently good. Isn't the word "streamlining" being used to connote something desireable? The battle engine got streamlined as well.

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Originally Posted by player1

Whoe said that conquest of 128 provinces is objective.

If that was true game would have more turns.
It all seems to me that it's as paced as RTW, since usually you get 50 provinces in less then 200 turns (but has 500 turns for some reason :dizzy2: ).

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some of you need to stop saying that most games take less than 200 turns. when people play on H or VH (especially vh/vh) games usually do span 450-500 years. Many times it's a close call at the end.

When you play on "sandbox mode" (medium) it shouldn't take you very long...it's the default difficulty pretty much designed to be a shorter, easier campaign.

It's posts like these that give CA the idea that people want a faster campaign...for the most part (look around here and the .com) people do not.

I personally would like MTW2 to be 4 turns per year, 600-700 turns. I would LOVE RTW's campaign map strategy combined with MTW2 and building a major empire in europe over the course of months of playtime.

I really wish some of the obviously "younger" and more interested in "candy" clickfest players would just shuffle on to other games. This game was never about your AOE berry gathering 1 hour game.

All you're doing is convincing CA that you DO want a dumbed down game...stop, and graze elsewhere.

Again, the bottom line is that if turns replace years (sorry, but whoever thought of this first should be drawn and quartered, not debatable either) and the campaign is limited to 225 turns (again, only a totally incompetent developer would even consider this...he should be shot) They're going to lose about 50 percent of their fanbase for MTW2 before the game even ships. Nobody is going to accept the entire game being dumbed down and changed, with absolutely NO explanation as to why from the devs.

I swear it...unless this changes, I will never play another TW game. However, we have been here before as a community, not knowing what the future holds in the series and what not...but CA is not saying that this is something they're "considering"...they said openly "this is the way it's going to be" before they got ANY feedback from anyone. So the fact of the matter is 1) they couldn't care less what the community as a whole wants, they only create the kind of game THEY envision and we already know they're incompetent and 2) They're just stuffing an AOE clickfest down our throats...don't like it? tough. They are basically destroying the sub genre that this game created. Why? I simply will not stop posting why all over the .com until it's answered.

All I see is sidestepping by wiki and the other CA reps. That's it. They will read 500 posts all going "NO WAY!! you're NOT doing this with this game, I won't buy it!!" and then they finally reply, to the 500 posts by saying something like "seiges look good"...nobody cares. It's just avoiding the issue.

Moderator's edit: Flame deleted. In this thread, I said "let's not make it personal" and reminded posters CA bashing was against the rules.

Lovely elitist vibe going around.

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Originally Posted by General4Hire

some of you need to stop saying that most games take less than 200 turns. when people play on H or VH (especially vh/vh) games usually do span 450-500 years. Many times it's a close call at the end.

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My error, it's 100-150 turns on Medium and 200-250 at Hard and Very Hard. To take 50 provinces of course. With default playble factions (not some Numidia challenge).

Of course, if you wanna play take all the world, it can take a longer but that's not defauly gameplay, in same way as you can continue campaign after end date without any problems.

Also, if you "turtle" it can get longer, but turtling IS self-limiting strategy to enchance experience lacking in original game (too quick conquest compared to history). If RTW had 1/2 of the current number of turns, many less players will turtle and conquest would more resamle history.


P.S.
Anyway if designers though that 225 turns is too little to finish M2TW campaign on various levels of difficulties they would realise that till now.

But I doubt that M2TW map is in any scope lower then RTW one.

"This game was never about your AOE berry gathering 1 hour game."

That was pretty funny though.

Apparently this guy Prasthereaper (CA guy?, check the post "CA clarifies turns") posted about the turns, saying "The game is currently paced to be a 225 turn game, and is optimally played at that length. All this information is still being kept in .txt files." To me at least, that implies 2 important things:

a) The games is "paced" to end around 225, but not capped at 225 turns.
b) Turn and time variables are in a .txt file, which if they're like the MTW .txt files, means this aspect of the game will be easily modable.

Time will tell, but I think that gives more than a glimmer of hope that, if you don't like how CA does it, you can easily change it to what you want.

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Originally Posted by Servius1234

"This game was never about your AOE berry gathering 1 hour game."

That was pretty funny though.

Apparently this guy Prasthereaper (CA guy?, check the post "CA clarifies turns") posted about the turns, saying "The game is currently paced to be a 225 turn game, and is optimally played at that length. All this information is still being kept in .txt files." To me at least, that implies 2 important things:

a) The games is "paced" to end around 225, but not capped at 225 turns.
b) Turn and time variables are in a .txt file, which if they're like the MTW .txt files, means this aspect of the game will be easily modable.

Time will tell, but I think that gives more than a glimmer of hope that, if you don't like how CA does it, you can easily change it to what you want.

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the problem is exactly that...it "implies" things. Why do they flat out refuse to just tell us what they're doing?

1 reason: Because they ARE doing exactly what 99.8 percent of the community is stating is enough to make the definitely not buy the game. So now they have to think of a new marketing strategy to effectively "fool" the majority of the community into believing that our suspicions are not true deleted

remember when the load/save/siege bug was a "feature"?

this is the exact same kind of edit: thing going on

Moderator comment: edited to remove CA bashing

i'm not a legal expert, but I think it's the NDA that might be blocking them from being more precise/specific. It makes sense, CA has said as much, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on that. Besides, it's not like we have much choice, we can't force them to tell us anything.

When CA isn't super specific, we will infer and try to fill in the gaps. If we guess one thing, which CA knows to be incorrect, I'd like to think they'll come out and aim us closer to the mark, like they've done recently about the turns/years thing.

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Originally Posted by Geoffrey S

Lovely elitist vibe going around.

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That's generally what it seems like. I get this whole "Oh, no! The game isn't being catered specifically to me!" vibe. Is it even possible to make every hardcore fan happy? "My faction isn't included!" "I don't like the faction list!" "The unit skins have too much color!" "There are no eras!"

I may be the only one, but the mass of negativity is driving me away from the TW community in general.

My thoughts:

I haven't played M2:TW. Hell, it hasn't even been released yet. I haven't had a chance to try the new turn-based system, so why would I start bitching my head off about it. Isn't it just a little premature?

Even if CA did include eras, and every little historical event between 1000 and 1500, there would still be whining about how every Catholic faction shares the same Men-At-Arms and Urban Milita units and the like, because it "isn't realistic". Eras were nice and all, but it's effectively three times the work.

The goal of the game may be more like BI than RTW. "Do this, this, and this to attain victory", instead of "Beat everyone else". If that's true, victory inside of 225 turns is just fine, with the option to continue if you want to conquer the whole globe.

Another thing:

Can we please find some other arguments than "It's for the eye candy fans!" or the cliched as hell "for the pwns the n00bz crowd"? For starters, why would they dumb down the campaign mode for a group of people that only likes multiplayer? Think about it!

(Where's that "beating a dead horse" smiley when you need it?)

As far as eye candy goes, y'know, I like it. I love, and play MTW regularly, but the low-res pixelly sprites, and limited animation hasn't aged well. They'd get laughed out of the building if they released something that looks like MTW in 2006. Besides, unless I'm completely off my rocker, graphic artists and programmers are two completely different teams. Meaning, the prettier units you get isn't going to be taking away from the AI.

That, and how many "younger and in it for the eye candy" players have $300 to blow on a new video card? Or a processor? More RAM? Again, it doesn't really hold water.

I'm not saying the community has to be overwhelmingly positive, but can we get more well-thought posts instead of "BLARGH! CHANGE BAD!"

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Originally Posted by z2ei

I haven't played M2:TW. Hell, it hasn't even been released yet. I haven't had a chance to try the new turn-based system, so why would I start bitching my head off about it. Isn't it just a little premature?

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I was saying pretty much the same things for every release until now, but at a point you learn that the only time you have a chance to affect the endresult is prior to release. For so far, it has taken alsmost extreme complaining to get CA to fix issues.
So there is a reason why people are paranoid...

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Originally Posted by Kraxis

I was saying pretty much the same things for every release until now, but at a point you learn that the only time you have a chance to affect the endresult is prior to release. For so far, it has taken alsmost extreme complaining to get CA to fix issues.
So there is a reason why people are paranoid...

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Except for the fact they've fixed quite a few things since SEGA bought 'em. Like the (much overblown) load-siege bug.

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Originally Posted by Wikiman

lars573 wrote:

"Wikiman's got a fairly big NDA cover what he can say. "

Bingo.

-wikiman

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mmm. Has the Wikiman been more or less gaged after the recent outcries ? :sweatdrop: High expectations is always difficult to manage. It will require judging wether some information clarify or confuse I hope he can still keep posting updates.

-

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Originally Posted by Geoffrey S

Lovely elitist vibe going around.

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Well when Spartan Total war was about announced it was even worse.

:balloon2:

Very good post z2ei :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by z2ei

Except for the fact they've fixed quite a few things since SEGA bought 'em. Like the (much overblown) load-siege bug.

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Yes... They fixed stuff. They didn't improve much, but what they did was genearlly well liked. Lesser charges, less jumping horses, leass archery, more armour and stronger defences. But those were basically rather simple.
They didn't make up for the glaring problems with the entire system, the game was merely fixed, not corrected.
What they did with BI is not what we are asking for. The only thing in there that was suspected to be problematic prior to release (and at the same time a wow-crowd gatherer) was the jumping horses. We were sadly proven right in that suspicion.

Besides, this is pretty much the story every time. The game is faulty fromthe get go and eventually it is fixed by the time the expansion hits the shelves.
Now is the time to correct that, now is the time to make it right from day 1 (sure, bugs and such can't be guarded against).

The sad fact is that there are no other games as the Total War series. There is nowhere else we can turn if this crumbles. Thus I think it is fair that we want to affect the game in the direction we want it to (while of course we understand that it will never cater to our individual tastes specifically there are aspects that many agree on).

I remember how I defended CA when people complained that they thought RTW might become a dumbed down game (marketing often calls this 'simplified' and 'streamlined'). Well, I have to admit they were right, and I don't do that with ease. I was wrong in my beliefs and now I try to make up for that.

Lot of fuss over nothing. There was the same hooplah over lack of seasons in MTW and most people liked the game anyway.

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Originally Posted by Kraxis

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There's really only so much you can do with a patch.

Part of the problem lies on the fact that Rome was a completely new engine. Take a look at Shogun and Medieval, and tell me which was generally more refined. Making a new engine takes a lot more work than just refining or upgrading an old one. Add the fact that Activision were trying so hard to push Rome out the door, and you have problems.

With BI, it did solve a lot of problems people were asking for. The AI was better than vanilla RTW's, and there were less provinces, which some people wanted. I suppose that's because of..

The real problem with the Rome engine. The fact that the new map largely eliminated field battles, except for some small enemy stacks or brigands. It just because siege after siege, and that gets old fast. Now, I like the new map, being able to see what's going on (with trade and the like) is kind of nice, instead of just a flat, featureless boardgame map. A combination of the old style (Give very visible province borders, and give the province owner a chance to field battle after the enemy crosses. They shouldn't just be able to walk up and siege your towns/castles.) with the new map's look would be just perfect. It doesn't seem like something that would be -too- hard to implement, but I'm not a programmer. ^_^

Honestly, I don't think Rome was "dumbed down". It was streamlined, though..just compare building units or buildings in Medieval to Rome. In MTW, you've got to click on every single province when a building finishes to start the next, but in Rome, you can just click down the list. Much easier.

As far as the AI, Rome's isn't that much worse than Medieval's, for all the exaggeration that goes on. Now, the campaign map's is (because they didn't have to change the entire system from S to M, I'd imagine), but the battle map's AI is pretty much the same. (It even does the same "sit there until drawn out" effect when defending!)

I think Rome is still good, but flawed. I don't think it's as good as Medieval is, but that's just how my taste runs. I prefer the Medieval period to the ancient Roman one.

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Originally Posted by A.Saturnus

Very good post z2ei :2thumbsup:

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Yeah, z2ei definitely gets my "rookie of the month" award for that one ~:)

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Originally Posted by z2ei

Part of the problem lies on the fact that Rome was a completely new engine. Take a look at Shogun and Medieval, and tell me which was generally more refined. Making a new engine takes a lot more work than just refining or upgrading an old one. Add the fact that Activision were trying so hard to push Rome out the door, and you have problems.

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That's why I continue to entertain optimism about M2TW. I see this as the game where CA gets to put some of that spit and polish on the game that was sorely lacking in RTW.

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Originally Posted by z2ei

The real problem with the Rome engine. The fact that the new map largely eliminated field battles, except for some small enemy stacks or brigands. It just became siege after siege, and that gets old fast.

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Actually, I found the opposite. With RTW you NEVER have to fight a siege battle, you just have to wait a turn or two until the AI sends the beseiged army an inadequate relieving force, then you beat the crap out of both in the resulting sally battle and just waltz into the undefended city afterwards.

I really hope CA are going to fix this poor AI behaviour in the new game...

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Originally Posted by z2ei

As far as the AI, Rome's isn't that much worse than Medieval's, for all the exaggeration that goes on...the battle map's AI is pretty much the same.

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Sorry, I strongly disagree. The AI in STW did not try to melee with its ranged units. Nor did it shoot arrows into the backs of the heads of the row of archers just in front. Nor did it throw its units straight into rivers to drown. Nor did it feed its units into the fray one by one. It might conduct a feint with one or two units, but usually it kept its armies pretty much together.

I can beat the AI in STW most of the time pretty easily now, but it took a long time to learn how and it still sometimes suprises me with an unexpected move which costs me the battle. I still have to use my thinking cap with STW. With RTW, all you have to do is lure enemy units out of position one by one and then smack them in the rear with cav.

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Originally Posted by screwtype

Sorry, I strongly disagree. The AI in STW did not try to melee with its ranged units. Nor did it shoot arrows into the backs of the heads of the row of archers just in front. Nor did it throw its units straight into rivers to drown. Nor did it feed its units into the fray one by one. It might conduct a feint with one or two units, but usually it kept its armies pretty much together.

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Well, in STW units cant drown because water-regions are out-of-bounds. But true archers dont fire arrows into their own front rank, and no usually AI armies dont feed units into battles (except cav sometimes). But the AI does try to melee with its ranged units when they have no ammo and as a last resort, I have fought many battles like this.

But STW was a simpler game than RTW, and as time evolved CA wanted to evolve the game play to keep people interested. I can understand how this got caught-up in AI battle controls. More options for the AI gives it more problems.

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Back on-topic. CA don't have to tell us anything. Everytime a new game comes out we as the online community feel that it is our right to have all our questions answered because we talk about the games they produce all the time. There are other people who purchase the game who don't come online and talk. They don't bitch about things.

More to the point I guess its something along the lines that we seem to think we are almost part of the CA team because of the years we have all spent playing and talking about and modding their games. But at the end of the day we are just customers (and a part of their market not the entire market). So yeah we would like CA to deliver a game to us that meets all our wishes but it might not be a viable option to their strategy.

The benefit is that they consistently make their games more and more openly moddable for us to do what we think they left out. Stop giving them a hard time don't forget they make these games for you and they don't have to. THey could scrap the whole series and go onto something else.

Stop bitching and let them do what they do best, then you can all enjoy the surprises, and then mod to your hearts content.

I understand where they're coming from but let me share something with you.

When I first finished MTW I had maybe 10-15 years left and that was on easy.

If the game goes too fast up the difficulty.

Im in 512AD in BI at the moment and I only finished off the ERE and reunited Rome about 20 years ago.

What is needed is more aggressive AI and more stuff to do per turn, not fewer turns. Also for all those "The game will go faster" guys, thing on this.

Currently a town has to be sieged for about 4-6 turns, or 2-3 years. It the change goes through you'll actually be sieging the same town for 8-12 years, it will take 6-12 years to get accros western Europe.

If this stays it will suck.

Maybe I'm missing something, but if kings, generals, etc. age two years per turn, and the typical campaign will last about 225 turns, that's about 450 years. And what is the approximate date span - 1087-1530? So it's not like you'd likely have a campaign where you finish during the reign of the same king/emperor/sultan, etc. you started with, or even his son, or grandson. I don't see a big problem in terms of reducing realism vis a vis the timespan and pace.

I agree, however, that removing the year does remove some of the sense of historical immersion. If CA wants to have the campaign last about 225 turns and about 2 years per turn, that doesn't necessarily preclude them from putting the year on the screen. Instead of turn 1, say "Summer 1087." Turn 2 is "Winter 1089," and so on. I know that makes it obvious that you don't get to do something in 1088, but that's OK. I suppose that could make events problematic, but those aren't pegged to their historical counterparts anyway, right? The year of the Marian reforms varies, for example.

The final issue seems to have more to do with whether 225 turns is an adequate pace, as opposed to whether the year should be posted on the campaign screen. As someone who only has time to play a few hours per week, I actually don't mind the idea of a 225-turn campaign. My games tend to take about 10 minutes per turn - a rough average. Each turn varies widely depending on how much I have to do on the campaign map; what point in the campaign I'm in and whether I fight a battle in that turn. But 10 minutes is about average, I'd say. In that case, a campaign would take about 38 hours, or, in my case, maybe 6 weeks. That seems like a good span of time to me. If a campaign is dragging on and on for months of real time, I tend to lose interest because I can only devote so much time per week. At the same time, I don't want a AOE type game where you're done in a few hours. This seems like a good balance.

So maybe CA is going not for the AOE crowd by shortening the campaign (since it's still far longer than an AOE game) but those of us who are more casual players who can only devote a few hours per week.

I really don't understand people saying "stop bitching! you are only customers and CA can do what they want".

Firts of all complaining doesn't equal to "bitching"

It is because we are only customers , that we should continue to express our concerns/dissatisfactions on these forums. And the sooner the better This is the only way that we can influence CA decisions over the current (and future) game development.

If you read the post from Wikiman and Dutch at the .com, they acknowledge that forum comments and list of things like "Top 10 wishes for TW next game" are seriously taken into account. They also acknowledge that we have to react early if we want to see things change in expansion or future games.

About the siege/load bug (which was a game breaker for some kind of player), I am quite sure that it would not have been corrected if some people had not been so vocal on the internet and shown that it was a serious issue for a good percentage of the gamers.

PYJ99

BTW, it was announced on the .com that the next "full" TW game (after MTW2) will be based on years and not turns.

Yeah!

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Originally Posted by pyj99

About the siege/load bug (which was a game breaker for some kind of player), I am quite sure that it would not have been corrected if some people had not been so vocal on the internet and shown that it was a serious issue for a good percentage of the gamers.

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What's really embarrassing about that is it wasn't a bug. It was designed to work that way! However, this design feature was never mentioned by CA until someone in the player community discovered it. Once it was revealed, we were expected to believe that it was good that the AI forgot its strategic plans between saves. I think this was an attempt at damage control. When that failed, discussion of the matter at the official site was forbidden. In the end, they changed the way load/save works because they couldn't control discussion on the unofficial sites.

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Originally Posted by pyj99

BTW, it was announced on the .com that the next "full" TW game (after MTW2) will be based on years and not turns.

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Because it's already too late to do anything about it for MTW2. I hope the marketing experts haven't completely taken over the development of the series. People like that aren't particularly innovative. They want to turn things into a copy of something that's already successful.

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Originally Posted by Dutch Guy

Well when Spartan Total war was about announced it was even worse.

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True. Cheap shots about consoles being 'dumbed down' and for 'kiddies' are so easy.

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Originally Posted by pyj99

I really don't understand people saying "stop bitching! you are only customers and CA can do what they want".

Firts of all complaining doesn't equal to "bitching"

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Agreed, but some posters tend to go over the line from valid complaints to bitching. Not all posters admittedly, but numerous posts largely based on conjecture complaining about a game only recently announced and which still has quite a development period to get through gets on my nerves just a little.

That said, there'd be a few less posts based on hot air if CA released more information to fill the void. Still, there's enough time for that and I do presume refining an existing engine can only smooth over rough edges.