rewrite the ages

[ArtistofWarfare]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[pevergreen]

They are in ETW.