rewrite the ages

**coldpolar** · 09-13-2008, 20:43

does anyone else play aiming to pursue a roleplaying objective or simply recreate history? to my eternal shame i grew weary of the game but recaptured my enthusiasm by playing with objectives that i plan at the outset of the campaign. as an example in my current campaign as the HRE i'm trying to play with the objective of recreating the hanseatic league and dominating north sea and baltic trade. idea is to take lands in scandanavia and flanders while trying to keep peace in the region. well we'll see how it goes anyway!

what similar plots have people used i would be interested to find out as i feel it adds a whole other dimension to the game.

**FactionHeir** · 09-13-2008, 21:00

Personally I also prefer playing using Glorious Achievement (GA, from MTW times) type goals when playing a campaign. So if I were to play France for instance, I would not want to ally with England, but with Scotland, and try for the most part to stay in my own lands and later on expand in direction of HRE, and create a Crusader Kingdom in Antioch.

**Monk** · 09-13-2008, 21:54

I've always found the TW series to be the most fun when you set up goals for yourself, as FH said, much akin to the GA of MTW. Back in STW you really didn't need to do that because your goal wasn't world domination, it was just domination of Japan, but since then the scope has been so broad it's easy to lose interest at times!

If i'm playing the Byzantines I find it very enjoyable to try to recreate a Roman empire, or when I'm a catholic nation I'll pick a spot in the East that I have to hold no matter what. My favorite area thus far to defend to the death is Antioch or Alexandria.

Back in MTW i used to play for the sole intention of beating back the Horde, playing the "defender of the world" role and keeping all the other factions safe. I really don't play long enough games in M2 to see the Horde arrive; when I do they normally just sit around waiting for reinforcements.

**mousestalker** · 09-13-2008, 23:02

I think the most fun game I've had in the past year was one where I set myself the goal of converting the entire map to majority orthodoxy as the Russians as quickly as possible. By starting out pursuing the religious path (churches, abbeys, cathedrals), I limited my military ability. But I had all of the map converted (except the new world) by the time the Mongols hit. The conga line of conversion works a treat in North Africa.

The other solution to a fast conversion would have been to blitz the map, conquer it, then convert all the castles to cities. But I didn't take that path.

**ArtistofWarfare** · 09-14-2008, 00:45

Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Personally I also prefer playing using Glorious Achievement (GA, from MTW times) type goals when playing a campaign. So if I were to play France for instance, I would not want to ally with England, but with Scotland, and try for the most part to stay in my own lands and later on expand in direction of HRE, and create a Crusader Kingdom in Antioch.

Glorious Achievements was fantastic as was the 3 different options for starting periods.

Why these were removed = beyond me.

**PBI** · 09-14-2008, 01:04

Hopefully it looks like ETW will have something similar to glorious achievements. I agree, I really don't know why they got rid of them.

Don't understand the lack of different starting periods either, the whole point of the different eras was that you got to sample combat at the different levels of technology more or less equally. In M2TW, you always have to plod through the tedious early period battles of massed spear militia to get to the more diverse unit types, and even then you still had to hope against hope that the AI will have managed to keep up technologically so that the late battles won't be a total mismatch.

Incidentally, if you want to try a late period start, I would recommend the Stainless Steel mod; it features the option to start in the 1200s.

**ArtistofWarfare** · 09-14-2008, 01:09

Originally Posted by Poor Bloody Infantry

Hopefully it looks like ETW will have something similar to glorious achievements. I agree, I really don't know why they got rid of them.

Don't understand the lack of different starting periods either, the whole point of the different eras was that you got to sample combat at the different levels of technology more or less equally. In M2TW, you always have to plod through the tedious early period battles of massed spear militia to get to the more diverse unit types, and even then you still had to hope against hope that the AI will have managed to keep up technologically so that the late battles won't be a total mismatch.

Incidentally, if you want to try a late period start, I would recommend the Stainless Steel mod; it features the option to start in the 1200s.

The irony is that in MTW, even if you started @ the early period (which I almost always did), the AI factions tech'd up better than they do in M2TW.

That said, including the time periods in M2TW would almost entirely alleviate the problem of AI factions not tech'ing up to an appropriate level to provide the user with a realistic challenge.

Now with Empire, 1) The AI better be solid gold...so tech'ing up should not even be something we have to discuss once when dealing with the AI...it just needs to work. 2) We're focusing on a different era of warfare and a smaller period of time - with more activity during that period of time. I don't think starting periods should be necessary.

**PBI** · 09-14-2008, 01:26

Originally Posted by ArtistofWarfare

Now with Empire, 1) The AI better be solid gold...so tech'ing up should not even be something we have to discuss once when dealing with the AI...it just needs to work. 2) We're focusing on a different era of warfare and a smaller period of time - with more activity during that period of time. I don't think starting periods should be necessary.

Agreed, although the return of GAs will be both nice and I feel necessary; having the victory conditions be "conquer the whole world" would feel a little silly for anyone other than Napoleon.

**ArtistofWarfare** · 09-14-2008, 01:32

Originally Posted by Poor Bloody Infantry

Agreed, although the return of GAs will be both nice and I feel necessary; having the victory conditions be "conquer the whole world" would feel a little silly for anyone other than Napoleon.

Agreed fully - Yeah, no reason for GA to not make another appearance in Empire.

Especially with the length of the campaign and the time period. It just makes sense.

What I'd really like to see is a GA campaign with several different options for victory and the player gets to choose which one(s) he's targeting. I think this would really add another layer to the overall game.