Re: Is RTW really that bad
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Originally Posted by LittleRaven
And finally, for those of us that enjoy historical strategy, I don't think pushing the idea that Rome is a terrible game not worthy of purchase is going to be very productive. If we do a very good job of that, we may just convince the suits at CA that the Total War line is not worth continuing. But that's about as good a result as we're going to get. Something about Pyrrhic comes to mind.
I'll take a Pyrrhic victory over an outright loss. Simply walking away is the only option open other than maintaining pressure to fix the problems. I've walked away from ones like this before: Age of Sail II is an example.
Frankly, if they are not going to do any better than RTW, I would rather they hung it up or sold out to someone who wants to make better strategy games. Trying to move historical strategy gamers to the wrist flicker market hurts us as a whole. Right now historical strategy gamers are on the losing side either way.
Re: Is RTW really that bad
People keep saying what a heap of potential the game has, but I don't think there's sufficient recognition of the fact that the game is as CA wants it to be.
What they have basically done is dumb down their earlier format to the nth degree to try to appeal to a wider audience. The superfast battles, the ridiculous kill rates, the breaking of the earlier rock/paper/scissors paradigm in favour of flashy horse charges - it's all been done to make the game easier to beat.
We even have the ridiculous situation that CA won't provide any more than the most basic options for fear of confusing the dummies. You have other games like Imp II or Civ III which have literally dozens of different settings which impact the difficulty rating so you can adjust it to exactly how you want it - with RTW you just get easy, normal, hard and that's it. And we see that sort of dumbing down in every area.
RTW is a crap game because there is no challenge in it, particularly when it comes to the battles which are just a walkover. But probably the biggest disappointment for me was the lack of development of the strategy game. Like the previous titles, there is no real economy to play with in RTW - just the ability to set tax levels at different levels and that's about it. I wish CA would take a look at a great old game like Lords of the Realm II to see what a sophisticated economy can look like - but we are never going to see that in the TW series. It might be too hard for the kiddies to figure out.
Re: Is RTW really that bad
Screwtape
I suggest that you download SPQR 4.0.
1:slow battle sppeds
2:Slow run speeds
3:Not a push over(for the roman at least...)
4:Higher morale, but units still rout.
5:Fixed the broken trait system
6:new formation settings. the AI no longer send units at you one at a time.
For more details, see the official forum at Totalwarcenter....
Re: Is RTW really that bad
Quote:
Originally Posted by screwtype
People keep saying what a heap of potential the game has, but I don't think there's sufficient recognition of the fact that the game is as CA wants it to be.
True, but let's hope they change load/save, suicide generals and the difficuly settings to something they don't want them to be. Those three things combined with the improvements to charge and phalanx, which have apparently already been done, would constitute a major improvement to the game, and I don't see how it would cost them any of their RTS market. However, it all has to be carefully debugged, and that means checking the whole game. We saw how the v1.2 patch inadvertantly broke the Parthian shot. They certainly don't want the release date for BI to slip, so I would hope they have closed the window on feature changes by now and are debugging at this point.
Multiplayer is a hopelessly lost cause, but in SP mods can be used to slow down the gameplay which helps the battlefield AI provide more of a challenge and gives the player more to do during the battle. It puzzles me that CA chose parameter values that doesn't show off their AI to best advantage.
Re: Is RTW really that bad
Yes, Rome is pretty bad. The AI provides minimum challenge and the hard settings are messed up :furious3:
Knights of Honor is a much better game. There are many more countries to play. It has much much better strategic play. The battle system is more simple than RTW but the AI gives a pretty good fight.
Re: Is RTW really that bad
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Originally Posted by mongoose
I suggest that you download SPQR 4.0.
What I should probably do for a challenge is mod the game myself to my taste. I should probably start by giving every unit two or three hit points.
However, I've been discouraged by the fact that even the modders complain that they haven't been able to do much to fix the quick battles. I did play RTR for a while, which was a better experience than vanilla RTW certainly, but the kill rate in that is still pretty unchanged.
Re: Is RTW really that bad
LOL. You should play one of the current SPQR mods as the bruti...battles with phalanxes can be very long. Lt got very long battles by using huge defence values. Example: a spear warband has 20+ defence ~:eek:
Some battles can still be a little too fast(but still nothing like vanilla RTW). the trick is too let the AI build up for about 10 turns or so.
Re: Is RTW really that bad
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Originally Posted by Puzz3D
True, but let's hope they change load/save, suicide generals and the difficuly settings to something they don't want them to be. Those three things combined with the improvements to charge and phalanx, which have apparently already been done, would constitute a major improvement to the game, and I don't see how it would cost them any of their RTS market.
Yes I'm hoping the changes are going to improve the battles, but I wasn't too impressed by the comments about the demo. Maybe the changes that have been made will give the modders something better to work with. I'll wait and see what sort of reception the xpack gets.
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Originally Posted by Puzz3D
...mods can be used to slow down the gameplay which helps the battlefield AI provide more of a challenge and gives the player more to do during the battle.
Yeah, what I should probably do is go back to the RTR mod and add a hit point to every unit. But I don't know, all this fudging has caused me to lose interest. I haven't really got the time or inclination to work on trying to fix things. As the saying goes, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and there are plenty of people who've spent far more time than I ever could trying to fix it and ended up expressing their frustration.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Puzz3D
It puzzles me that CA chose parameter values that doesn't show off their AI to best advantage.
Me too. I simply can't understand why they think this absurdly fast combat is a good thing. I can't understand why *anyone* would think that. And yet, the game got rave reviews and sold by the truckload. Go figure.
Re: Is RTW really that bad
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Originally Posted by Veresov
Knights of Honor is a much better game.
Yes although people say the combat isn't much of a challenge in that either.
All the same I will probably take a look at it at some stage. I did actually try to download the demo a couple of weeks ago but it's 400 megabytes in size and after I dl'd it the darned thing turned out to be corrupted.
Re: Is RTW really that bad
Quote:
Originally Posted by screwtype
Yeah, what I should probably do is go back to the RTR mod and add a hit point to every unit. But I don't know, all this fudging has caused me to lose interest. I haven't really got the time or inclination to work on trying to fix things. As the saying goes, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and there are plenty of people who've spent far more time than I ever could trying to fix it and ended up expressing their frustration.
If you want the best battlefield gameplay try MCM-v0.11 English This mod also makes improvements to the SP campaign, and it doesn't overwrite your vanilla RTW install. The mod doesn't make major changes to the game, but it does try to balance all aspects of the battlefield gameplay and I think it does it as well as can be done given the limitations of RTW v1.2. I've played the SPQR mod, and the fighting time in that was increased so much that fatigue becomes excessive.
Re: Is RTW really that bad
Thanks for the recommendation Puzz. I might give that or SPQR a go, but quite honestly, I feel I've had my fill of the game for the time being and have no desire to fire it up again to try out something new. I'd rather go play another campaign of Shogun :). Or at least wait and see what BI adds to the fray...
Re: Is RTW really that bad
I really like the new campaign map. The trade mechanism is much better, naval combat is much better, and the AI can actually put up some kind of a fight at this level (load/save bugs aside).
But i dont enjoy the combat as much. Too fast paced, the AI isnt as much of a challenge as in the previous games, and cavalry is overpowered.
Its still a good game though, and well worth the money. Hopefully the BI addon will improve things further and fix some of the bugs.
