Timid response yet again from CA's Wikiman

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...cID=1076.topic

Although this only awnsers the questions of

Will CA base M2TW upon an historical timeline?No

Will it include Summer and winter?yes

I think that the 225 turn (this has been edited because Simon Appleton told me to, I can give no more information, I would like it if you didn't draw to much attention to it please. I am very sorry) will be included, unfortunatley CA refuse to provide any reasoning for this decision.

Oh Well...
Any other decent TTS/RTS games coming out?

Your link doesn't work but I assume you mean this
http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...cID=1076.topic
I see a reason why they have done this.

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The designers now have the fidelity they need to make the game play better without being tied to very specific historical dates. The player doesn't have wait through long periods of medieval nothingness which detracts from the enjoyment of the game.

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This is like the fewer provinces in BI.
Alot of people whined about it but when we actually got it alot of people found it better then the original map.
Maybe CA has found that this new system adds to gameplay.

Sorry fixed the link.
Well I'll need a bit more enlightenment about the 225 turns.

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Originally Posted by Bopa the Magyar

Sorry fixed the link.
Well I'll need a bit more enlightenment about the 225 turns.

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I think we all do but this system could still be in the works, maybe that is why they aren't giving us the full info on it yet.
Personally I'm not entirely sure about this new system but right now it is in the "try it first" area.

Sounds like what they're doing is just having numbered turns, instead of turns by date.

And then now and again I guess, you will get an announcement about some chronological milestone that has been reached, such as "1390 - the first culverin reach the battlefield" (no I don't know when culverin first appeared, I just made that up).

Sounds fine to me. What's the problem with it?

I've definitely got a bad 'gut reaction' to the idea of seeing turns instead of years - but I can't really put the reason why into words. Maybe it's just the fear of change! I'm not sure how it will work with generals/Kings aging though - that falls under the need for more information category.

So - how will it all work, and how is this better than the way it's worked since Shogun?

Answers on a postcard please...

Erasing the past...

As for the turns 1,2,3... maybe they just haven't written the dates in yet? I don't think that's a big problem...

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Originally Posted by spmetla

It's just silly!

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It's a game. Civ has had a similar system for over a decade and it works wonderfully there.

I thought the campaign map was the real weakness of RTW and am glad they are trying new things to improve it.

If you want to play MTW, play MTW, this is a sequel and not a remake. I'll wait until the game is released before passing judgement.

If they want to get the clickfest RTS crowd that playes AoE and "0wnz de n00bz" they are free to do so what is important is if they leave it MODDABLE!
All the rest can be tolerated...

Hellenes

As someone on he .com said, if there are no dates then this game will just become a game that has knights rather than a historical game. A lot of feeling and atmosphere is put into those little figures. They are important in keeping a feeling of historical progress, even if it has no basis in reality.

But it is so hard to lie to yourself when it says: Turn 16 rather than 1112 Summer.

It is bad enough that apparently each turn is equivalent to two years (not four spmetla), but no dates?

If we have no dates then how does aging work? As it should? Meaning each turn is in fact two years? Or will the people not die in a realistic fashion compared to the dates? The former will be realistic but horrible as we would hardly get a chance to get familiar with the persons (it was hard enough in MTW). The latter will just move the game even more into the 'game that has knights' category.

I'm beginning to fear that 1080-1530 is just the possible range of progress rather than the timeperiod. Pretty much like AOE games. They too range from a certain aproximate date to another aproximate date.
But then I wonder why they have even used dates to say "here it starts, but it doesn't really start here... get it?". Why not just say that the game starts out in the feudal period?

But I refuse to rave until I see a strategic screenshot.

I feel a bit sorry for Wikiman, it is clear that he knows what it is people want to know, and it is obvious that he does not want to say it. He does seem to have some conflicting, emotions would be too strong a word, but it fits quite well.

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Originally Posted by ivoignob

As for the turns 1,2,3... maybe they just haven't written the dates in yet? I don't think that's a big problem...

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Could well be, it seems rather silly not to have dates in a historical game, unless they are aiming this game at casual gamers and people who can't count. :coffeenews:

Actually I see no reason for that. People, don't get panic! I mean, why should they name the turns 1,2,3... there is no reason for that. I am not a programmer, but I think that it's well possible, that they didn't include the dates yet and named them 1,2,3... instead. As for the short turn-time period, I have no idea about that.

The purpose and rational seem obvious. CA wants the game to cover a VERY long period of time, but they don't want the game to take 'too long' and become tedious. CA wants to include major historical events, probably as triggers like the Marian event in RTW, but in order to keep the action going, they feel the need to blow through many years where they feel nothing interesting happened.

So, if turn 1 = 1066, turn 100 =/= 1166. Turn 100 could = 1280. They probably designed it like this:

Q1) How long a time period do we want to cover?
A1) 1050 - 1600, so like 550 years

Q2) But how many turns do we want?
A2) Approx. 225

Q3) But if 1 turn =/= 1 year, how will we mark the passage of time?
A3) We will use major historic milestones, and sprinkle them throughout the 225 turns. They will occur in historic order, but obviously not with the historic amount of turns/years between them.

Basically, CA is treating the medieval and renesance periods like it was recorded on a TIVO. The boring parts are treated like commercials and are skipped over. That way, the 4-hour Super Bowl game is boiled down to a 2-hour high-light film, plus the Rolling Stones half-time show of course.

Its a sad sad day for all TW. Stick to the old system...Im not buying this game until I hear from other people what its like (when it goes for sell). They should keep the 1103 AD and keep it one turn one year or maybe even 1 turn 2 seasons. Why fix something if it isnt broke?

Im looking for historical accuracy, if NOTHING happened for a 100 year period O well. (Not like the retards their aiming for will notice). The marian reforms in RTW happened around 100-70 AD, yet they happened in the game 100 years off.

One word for CA's new changes...
BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! :furious3:

I don't like the way he manages pring .... too much words for saying actually nothing .....

Just mirroring some comments here, turns instead of dates is NOT a good step IMO

.......Orda

I really doubt they're going to keep turns instead of just adding a certain date to a certain turn. They're probably still balancing the campaign pace so they haven't added them yet.

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

Just mirroring some comments here, turns instead of dates is NOT a good step IMO

.......Orda

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Seconded. :yes:

:balloon2:

bottom line, i find any change in this area to be unacceptable. As one person pointed out very clearly: When did someone complain about "nothingness" for long periods of time before?

This better not just be some moron design team's idea that they're going to "try" with a game that has the potential to be the greatest grand strategy game ever made.

225 turns? I don't buy. If you want each game to be a copy of an AOE zerg fest then go ahead...I don't. The prospect of spanning 500+ turns through this entire period was probably the MOST appealing aspect of the game at this early stage.

Erasing the past...

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Originally Posted by PROMETHEUS

I don't like the way he manages pring .... too much words for saying actually nothing .....

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I have the same impression of that wicked man Wikiman. :) I thought I knew English but every time I read his posts I understand almost nothing. He is very tongue-tied and he is one of those people who talk but not tell. Though maybe he's just trying to speak with teens on their language, 'coz I noticed that teeny fans always admire his words.

Talking 'bout turns issue. First time I heard it I thought like: "Strange... But why not!? Maybe it's really better decision." But now the more I think about it and read other people comments the more "contra" I see and no any "pro". That idea of "passing through medieval nothingness" is very-very doubtful. I'd like to ask CA: what are you making the game for if it's just about "nothingness"? And maybe it's better to call this "nothingness" its real name - "poor gameplay"?

Btw, I think I can answer instead of CA to those who ask for turns moddability: "Forget about it!" Remember how much CA spoke about "unique moddability" of RTW before its release? And what did we get instead? Now they don't even mention any possible moddability of the game.

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Originally Posted by spmetla

Civ is a great game that I enjoy playing but it's a RTS

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:inquisitive: No, it isn't, it isn't even real-time.

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Originally Posted by spmetla

and based very loosely on the actual civilizations that existed but that's alright because that's how the Civ games have always been. The Total War series have always been based on certain periods of history and deal with an actual map of Europe instead of just random maps.

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I think 'loosely based on history' would describe the TW games pretty well.

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Originally Posted by spmetla

I am really against this new system if I'm understanding it probably and I see no good reason for a switch from the old,

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How many turns did it take to conquer the map in MTW (or worse, RTW) ? How many turns did it take before you could get such an advantage over your opponents that there really wasn't any point in continuing the campaign anymore ? It probably didn't take most people much over 225 turns. Heck, most games are effectively over (except for rebellions and heirless kings) after 100 turns.

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Originally Posted by spmetla

Like I've said if they think that there would be too many turns in as large a time period as they've chosen than they should focus on a smaller time period.

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I'm curious to how the campaign flow will be, but in general I agree with your point. I tend to prefer games that are more focused.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect MTWII to be as great a game as MTW was (at its time), I do however hope that it will be a decent, enjoyable strategy game in its own right. There are too few of those around as it is.

I'm a bit mystified with this date thing personally. My impression was that they were trying to correct an oft (well, occasionally) complained about realism flaw: the extreme difficulty of finding a single time-period for each turn which would accurately represent both recruitment/construction and movement (EG VI, in which it takes 5 years to move an army across England for a distance which has been historically covered in 5 days) but now I'm not so sure. And even if that were the case, then it sounds like correcting that (minor IMO) flaw would blast open a massive hole in the game as regards immersion/realism. That said, I won't jump to conclusions until I have a better idea what they're doing.

I must say I don't know what people mean as regards Wikiman, though. Surely commentary is better than stony silence? He doesn't seem to be terribly clear sometimes about what he's saying, but nor does he seem like some sinister PR guy trying to win the community's confidence the better to deceive us.

Antagonist

Wikiman's got a fairly big NDA cover what he can say. And they are probably still working out how the progression of time is going to work. And how the campagin is going to be set up.

I find it kind of comical to see people getting all worked up over such a trivial issue. Who cares whether the turns are labelled by dates or numbers? It's 0.001% of the game experience.

For those who argue that turns without dates is not "historical", I find that argument utterly ludicrous. What is not historical now is that armies - heck, even agents - take literally decades to march from one side of the map to the other.

Simply relabelling the turns by number would not be my ideal solution to this problem, by a long chalk, but it's certainly no less unrealistic than having annual or biannual turns where armies only get to march a few miles and fight a single battle. How long did it take Alexander to conquer the world again? Oh, that's right, about 12 years, including long periods of diplomatic consolidation between military campaigns. Try doing that in RTW.

Well, I'm starting to feel less and less bad that I won't be able to play MTW2 with my current system.

I mean, come on, turns? 'Skipping through the boring parts'? WTH?! What if I want to just build up my empire, or move an army in the winter and not have to wait to the following winter to attack? Oh yeah, I conquered England on turn 35! Or, I gave those French a nasty beating on turn 54! *sighs* Oh well. Guess they didn't learn that much from RTW.

Crazed Rabbit

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Originally Posted by screwtype

I find it kind of comical to see people getting all worked up over such a trivial issue. Who cares whether the turns are labelled by dates or numbers? It's 0.001% of the game experience.

For those who argue that turns without dates is not "historical", I find that argument utterly ludicrous. What is not historical now is that armies - heck, even agents - take literally decades to march from one side of the map to the other.

Simply relabelling the turns by number would not be my ideal solution to this problem, by a long chalk, but it's certainly no less unrealistic than having annual or biannual turns where armies only get to march a few miles and fight a single battle. How long did it take Alexander to conquer the world again? Oh, that's right, about 12 years, including long periods of diplomatic consolidation between military campaigns. Try doing that in RTW.

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Well how long did your general live? 58 TURNS? Then 1 turn=1 year. So if it takes 3 turns to march from Italy to Sicily that means 3 years...See your problem still exists.
And what about splitting the campaign in 3 or 4 starting periods like M1TW?
Was that that hard for the RTS impared to understand? What about 4 turns per year? That would give your Alexander 48 turns...with RTW's PO I can get you 50 provinces in 29 turns...
I dont care about gameplay realism, what I care about is IMMERSION and dumbing the game down to the level of AoE's ludicrucy doesnt immerse me at all...

Hellenes

I'm starting to think that Paradox and Petroglyph have the right idea for how a campagin game should un-fold. That is with a ticking clock. Where 1 second in real time is 1 day of the campagin game gone buy.

Take a look over at the .com thread...

For once the .com and the .org is in almost complete agreement. That is new. Also I hope it is a fairly rude awakening, and an incentive to do something.

This is the first time I'm honestly thinking about not buying the game, and I must say I don't like it.

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Originally Posted by hellenes

Well how long did your general live? 58 TURNS? Then 1 turn=1 year. So if it takes 3 turns to march from Italy to Sicily that means 3 years...See your problem still exists.

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Yes, I know the problem still exists, I'm just saying that labelling turns either by date or by number means absolutely nothing in terms of historicity or realism.

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Originally Posted by hellenes

And what about splitting the campaign in 3 or 4 starting periods like M1TW?

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That was a nice feature, but then again isn't that what mods are for?

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Originally Posted by hellenes

What about 4 turns per year? That would give your Alexander 48 turns...with RTW's PO I can get you 50 provinces in 29 turns...

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Yes but it still wouldn't remotely emulate the actual historical campaign. Alexander was only campaigning for a fraction of that 12 years. A few big battles and he had conquered everything from Greece to India.

The campaign side of TW has always been deeply abstracted and from a wargamer's POV, nothing more than beer 'n' pretzels fun. I just find it amusing that people get all bent out of out shape over the scrapping of some tiny so-called "historical" game mechanic that isn't the least bit historical or realistic at all.

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Originally Posted by hellenes

I dont care about gameplay realism, what I care about is IMMERSION and dumbing the game down to the level of AoE's ludicrucy doesnt immerse me at all...

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I'm inclined to agree, but I don't believe for a New York minute that labelling turns by numbers rather than years will affect my level of immersion. Or yours for that matter, after the first half dozen turns.

My guess is that cannot/ will not insert different starting dates and have simply decided that they will allow the player to experience the "Late Middle Ages" by compressing 550 years into 225.

This is utterly ridiculous by CA!

'Turn-gate' rumbles on!

As Kraxis said, there is full agreement over at the .com about this - in fact the responses there are actually much harsher than here.

I'm keen to see more information on this come Monday - as it stands people are getting very worked up - I'm still in the 'suck it and see' camp - I'm disappointed by what sounds like a faster less in-depth campaign, but I'm willing to hold fire on this until I hear more.

For the record, I took well over 300 turns to finish RTW, so 225 turns does sound quite short to me, however they address the 'abstract' nature of years to turns issue.

Well the date/turn thing is probably so that the historically accurate whiners would shut up.
With turns you can't complain about certain events happening too early.

But I'm a slow player, I like to take it easy and build up slowly.
225 turns seems to be too fast for me.
I mean what's the point in improved diplomacy if you don't have time to use it ??
I hope you can mod it atleast.

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Well the date/turn thing is probably so that the historically accurate whiners would shut up. With turns you can't complain about certain events happening too early.

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Which is a little bit ironic, considering their response.

Antagonist

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Originally Posted by Antagonist

Which is a little bit ironic, considering their response.

Antagonist

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Well they probably expected a reaction which is probably why they told us this now instead of later.

One look at the 'turns per year' poll would imply that a majority would prefer 4 turns to equal 1 year. Different eras is surely the best way to approach this game. Turns without dates mean nothing IMO and with different eras, to my mind, there would be no problem at all

.......Orda

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

One look at the 'turns per year' poll would imply that a majority would prefer 4 turns to equal 1 year. Different eras is surely the best way to approach this game. Turns without dates mean nothing IMO and with different eras, to my mind, there would be no problem at all

.......Orda

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Yes, I'd probably prefer seasonal turns myself, or at least an option for seasonal turns so modders can take advantage of the feature. Combined with Civ4 type "eras" it could work quite well.

The good thing about seasonal turns is that you can have different weather effects for the different seasons, as in STW.

lars573 wrote:

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

Bingo.

-wikiman

you guys have gone all timid, no response?!

:)

-wikiman

This is just eerie now?!

someone say something!

-wikiman

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Originally Posted by Wikiman

This is just eerie now?!

someone say something!

-wikiman

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Hi Wikiman,

Are you taking questions? Because we have a lot. Feel free to filter out what you cannot answer as of this moment.

For example: has the kill-rate and speed rate been lowered in M2TW?

Posting when everyone is asleep? How timid is that? :laugh4:

The sooner you Aussies shift your working hours to match us in the motherland the better!

It's good to see you posting here Wikiman - don't forget we do appreciate the extra communication going on, regardless of some of the more heated posts that have cropped up recently.

Just going to copy and paste my post in that poll thread, to the tune of "Do you think a numbered turns system is the way to go?"

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Originally Posted by Geoffrey S

Yes. Having given it some thought I think I can see where this is going, and I like it.

The way it's been described makes it seem like you give your orders to units and things move on until something happens, such as an army reaching its destination or diplomatic actions; management could be done at any time. Hence, dates have no meaning when it comes to turns since turns wouldn't last a particular amount of time. If dates are used it'd purely be for atmospheric reasons but wouldn't have a gameplay purpose: one turn could be half a year, or four years depending on how long it takes for something to occur. There'd be no fixed end date, it'd just end at turn 225 which could be anywhere depending on the time between turns.

That's the way it sounds to me, and if so it sounds good. It's good to see Wikiman and co. even making these posts and also keeping polite. It's more than I could do when working on a presumably tight schedule or faced with rather rude reactions questioning their mental capabilities.

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And it's good to see CA posts here too; much appreciated. Any chance of the same kind of stickied CA threads here that can be found at the .com?

haha Wikiman is spamming :laugh4: j/k.

Wikiman can you atleast tell us that you can mod the number of turns ??
That would get rid of alot of complaints and ease the tention around the forums.

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Originally Posted by Wikiman

This is just eerie now?!

someone say something!

-wikiman

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Very well.

Can you ealaborate on what you have said about the turns?

A lot of ideas have sprung up because, to be honest, what you did say was rather wooly. It was hard to make out what you did say. So have anybody been near what it is going to be?

Civ style? Event style? Evenly spaced? The end defined by number of turns used regardless of year (of course that would demand some sort of flexible turnrate)?

I think a more clear response to this might calm people down.

Sometimes it took me 100YEARS to set up my empire in RTW before I started the real conquering, in M2 that would be 200 turns meaning I have 25 left to conquer the world?
Modern games simply aren´t designed for slow players like me I think, I can play fast sometimes, but most often I just don´t want to. If i want action, I play a shooter, not a strategy game.
Maybe they can let the player choose between fast medium or slow progress of the campaign, like fast means 225 turns, medium means one turn a year and slow means two turns a year. It shouldn´t be that hard to implement, I think there are other games which managed that aswell. I just want my 900turns!!!

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Originally Posted by Husar

Sometimes it took me 100YEARS to set up my empire in RTW before I started the real conquering, in M2 that would be 200 turns meaning I have 25 left to conquer the world?
Modern games simply aren´t designed for slow players like me I think, I can play fast sometimes, but most often I just don´t want to. If i want action, I play a shooter, not a strategy game.
Maybe they can let the player choose between fast medium or slow progress of the campaign, like fast means 225 turns, medium means one turn a year and slow means two turns a year. It shouldn´t be that hard to implement, I think there are other games which managed that aswell. I just want my 900turns!!!

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I'm with Husar. Make turn lengths optional. I want to have a slow, enjoyable game. Some people prefer faster games. Accomodate for both! Please!

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Originally Posted by Wikiman

you guys have gone all timid, no response?!

:)

-wikiman

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You gotta work as fast as you make posts. ~;p

:weirdthread:

Post edited

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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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Translation for the Aussie-impaired: "I could tell you, but I'd lose my job - it's a Term of Employment." The other 2 responses were (taking advantage of the time difference between Aus, US & western Euro) teasing plays on the title of the thread - 'timid', and 'response'...with smileys. :)

#1 requirement when waiting for a game release 6 months out: sense of humour.

#2: patience

By posting infrequently, CA staff is letting us know that they're reading what is written here (maybe taking some of it on-board), but it's too early to divulge many of the gameplay choices they've made. No sense tipping their hand too soon to the competition. Solid info is gonna come out in dribs and drabs, like it always does, 'til about 30-45 days before release.

Fans' job, if you will, at this stage is to dissect and discuss what info DOES get released (we do that very well here), and throw whatever ideas we have for improved gameplay, etc out there. If we have 150 ideas, chances are good, that there's one or two the dev's hadn't thought of.

My 2c.

My apologies to CA.

Polite notice: I'd recommend members take extra care to treat CA staff with courtesy. We should treat all members with courtesy. But with CA, we have an extra collective interest in making them feel welcome. That way we can learn more about their games and also have more chance to have them listen to our ideas.

Wikiman is new here and I don't want ridicule, impatience or grammatical quibbling to irritate him anymore than a dubious thread title may already have done. He probably was not too impressed with seeing a thread entitled "timid response yet again" from him. I certainly would not be too happy to see a thread entitled "timid moderating yet again from Appleton", let alone such a thread about my day job.

Bear in mind that CA bashing is against the forum rules. If people want to continue to complain about removing year labels from turns (and we seem to have several threads all devoted to this), fine, but let's not make it personal.

I think a lot of the problem lies in two points.
1: Wikiman seems to genuinely want to tell us a lot of stuff, but he can't.
2: Trying to keep that in mind as well as calm the masses, he ends up saying a great deal which we can't make sense of. I have experienced such myself too many time to count now.

We of course want clearcut info, and when we get some rather vague sentences we get not only confused (look at the number of interpretations here) but also very frustrated (which is even more obvious). It is then our job to keep our frustrations civil as well as not expect that our confusion will get solved. But we can be allowed to ask and hope, and that I do.

I do see Wikiman on the Org a lot, and when I click on his user profile, he is definitely looking at our suggestions and threads, so lets not make him a scapegoat... :nice:

Some say it's a small thing, but to me this abstract turn system that's being discussed is fast destroying my interest in the game.

Surely there was a better way to address time accuracy besides doing away with it altogether??? I mean, couldnt they instead have tweaked build times or movement rates or anything? I loved MTW, my only accuracy gripe (in terms of time) was overland troop movement. But, couldnt they have seperated out build turns and movement/battle turns? You know, 2-4 move turns for every build turn- heck, you could even make it configurable, so if certain folks just want to run thru the game quickly, they can (1-1 build/move ratio) and those of use who wanted a slower, slightly more realistic time flow couldve gotten that as well. And the option of playing different periods to me is a no-brainer... if someone wants to start early and play all the way thru (like I usually did) great- if you only want to play a certain period, you could do that too.

I definitely wont be the first one in line to buy this, if at all.

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

Some say it's a small thing, but to me this abstract turn system that's being discussed is fast destroying my interest in the game.

Surely there was a better way to address time accuracy besides doing away with it altogether??? I mean, couldnt they instead have tweaked build times or movement rates or anything? I loved MTW, my only accuracy gripe (in terms of time) was overland troop movement. But, couldnt they have seperated out build turns and movement/battle turns? You know, 2-4 move turns for every build turn- heck, you could even make it configurable, so if certain folks just want to run thru the game quickly, they can (1-1 build/move ratio) and those of use who wanted a slower, slightly more realistic time flow couldve gotten that as well. And the option of playing different periods to me is a no-brainer... if someone wants to start early and play all the way thru (like I usually did) great- if you only want to play a certain period, you could do that too.

I definitely wont be the first one in line to buy this, if at all.

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Judging from CA's responses (Wikiman, Dutch, Prasthereaper) it seems like the decision to switch to Turns Numbering is due to the length of the campaign.

I don't think they want to separate the eras and thereby separate the Units (which I think is key for this decision). By lengthening the Turn time they

1) can cover the whole period, events and unit varieties in one campaign.

2) allow players to bypass the eras and train the particular elite troops they wish. (Sadly, this encourages 'pumping out' Knights-with-impunity, RTS mentality, not the TW combined arms of old :sweatdrop: ). With RTW, the series is already heavily tilting to the feel-good, you-can't-lose-gaming (overflowing warchest, negligible fatigue, no feinting penalties, no disadvantageous weather, simplified bridge routing, cheap and fast structures, cheap cavalry cost, upkeep and spamming etc). On the positive note, if the M2TW AI is brutal and merciless that could tip back the direction.

Secondly, I don't think the new Turn System implementation will be overturned. It was already mentioned that the tutorials are being made concurrently (as opposes to RTW where it was made at the last minute) and are thus fully integrated with the core gameplay.

Meaning, the new AI Advisor will be using the the words "Turn 1" or "in five turns".

High Advisor: "Search the lower right hand corner of your screen and you will see the 'Turn 0' button. Left-click to progress the time."

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Originally Posted by Xiahou

I loved MTW, my only accuracy gripe (in terms of time) was overland troop movement. But, couldnt they have seperated out build turns and movement/battle turns? You know, 2-4 move turns for every build turn.

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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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Originally Posted by Quietus

(Sadly, this encourages 'pumping out' Knights-with-impunity, RTS mentality, not the TW combined arms of old :sweatdrop: ).

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Actually, that's a very good point. How are you going to compress a number of different troops eras in just 225 turns without making it really easy to get to the top of the build tree?

Does this mean that they won't have different troop eras? But if so, what's the point in trying to cover 550 years of history?

And if they do have different troop eras, that means that if you ever want to see an early era knight, the build tree will also have to be somehow truncated, won't it?

Hmmm....this is all starting to sound a bit dicey...

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Originally Posted by Quietus

(With RTW, the series is already heavily tilting to the feel-good, you-can't-lose-gaming (overflowing warchest, negligible fatigue, no feinting penalties, no disadvantageous weather, simplified bridge routing, cheap and fast structures, cheap cavalry cost, upkeep and spamming etc).

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Ugh. Don't remind me.

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Originally Posted by Quietus

On the positive note, if the M2TW AI is brutal and merciless that could tip back the direction.

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I'm not expecting miracles. I'd probably settle this time around for an AI that was as good - but hopefully a tad better - than what we got in STW or MTW.

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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.