Lady An must be one of the last of the original Total War multiplayer community playing the latest version of this game online. If you had been here in late 2000 and early 2001 you would have found a vibrant community of extremely talented online tactical gamers. In those days, the quality of the tactical battle engine and the stability of the online connectivity attracted a large number of such players. Although 4v4 battles with 7680 total men in the battle worked well, it was 1v1 battles that were the most popular which is a testament to the high quality of the tactical gameplay, and this was done with only 14 unit types which were common to all factions. You simply do not need 100 unit types and complicated special abilities to have very good tactical gameplay. You won by coordinating the movements of the units better than the other player not by buying better units than the other guy, and if you could only coordinate 15 and he could coordinate 16 you didn't win. Every player and every clan had a rating based on the last 30 battles they played calculated by the game and maintained on a website where you could see both the ratings and casualty results of every battle fought. The level of honor of player conduct in the forum and on the battlefield was very high, and there was none of the stupid BS such as, "Hey anyone want child porn.", that I saw just yesterday in the RTW foyer. What happened to this original vibrant community due to its treatment by CA is a travesty, and the company deserves nothing less than to go out of business for it's deceptive practices and arrogant treatment of its customers.
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