cheats are gone- good or bad thing?

[Hooahguy]

according to Jack Lusted:

The cheat console found in most games is infact a dev console used by developers to help test their games and cheats for those games will be dev commands that are left active in the final game. In most games the console is incorporate in the game, but for Empire the console was run seperately to help aid us in developing and debugging the game. Unfortunately this does mean there is no way for you guys to use it.

so this means no more cheats.

for me this is a mixed blessing.

the good:
the game is harder and you are no longer inclined to cheat. in RTW i cheated a lot. yes, i know, i am ashamed.
now i have to micro-manage, which is always fun for me.

the bad:
AARs were just made harder. the toggle_fow cheat was essential for most of the AARs, especially mine.
role-playing will be harder as well.

thoughts?

[RZST]

the reveal fow was the only cheat i ever used anyway. the rest? nah. most likely there will be trainers around. so it aint all bad.

voted...GAH!....only option there is man

[Sir Beane]

It's a shame Toggle_fow is gone. And I always enjoyed being able to spawn myself a few elephants for my own amusement. It isn't too bad though.

[KozaK13]

Damn no toggle fow means you cant admire the map in all its glory, as for the other commands i never used them.

mixed blessing

[Sheogorath]

Well, no pre-battle speeches means that you dont have to make all your generals crazy anymore :P

[RZST]

no pre-battle speeches? awwww. guess i shouldnt be surprised, m2 didnt have it..... did it?

[A Very Super Market]

'Tis a real shame.

[Praetor Rick]

I chose the "oh noes" one because there isn't an option for "Well phooey, now AAR's will suck because I can't see everything as easily." Lots of legit uses for cheat codes other than, well, cheating.

At least toggle_fow isn't quite as necessary now, since the entire map is revealed from the beginning. No big blackness covering everything I should already know about until I have to send explorers there all over again!

[TB666]

I'm happy with this.
With the other games I found myself using the money cheat everytime I drove my country/kingdom bankrupt.
Maybe now I will run the economical bits properly.

[Dayve]

Don't care either way... i've never cheated in games.

Except when i've played them for years and it's 3am and i can't sleep and i'm bored. That's when i put on Oblivion, give myself a million of every stat and go on a killing rampage in the Imperial City.

[Count Fluffy]

Would it be possible for CA to release their separate console/debug program? I mean, if they used an external one, could it not be ported to us somehow? I'm not so sure about these things, but I imagine it would be possible and not too hard.

[pevergreen]

Dev programs are not for the public. They dont want other groups stealing their work.

[Ishmael]

*sniffle*... Oh Yubtseb Oliphaunts, I shall miss you

[A Very Super Market]

Eh, they sucked anyways. Always crashing the game, and insanely high upkeep.

Also, they warped around and generally looked ugly.

[AussieGiant]

I love the fact that it's gone.

The game gets hammered for not having good enough AI and for being too easy, yet at the same time using cheats was prolific. It doesn't wash out well with me.

They are gone and good riddance.

[Count Fluffy]

Dev programs are not for the public. They dont want other groups stealing their work.

That makes sense. I was just hoping for a way for us to access any type of console. I thought perhaps there might be a way to strip down such a thing, but like I said, I know little about programming and programming security.

[pevergreen]

I think CA have done a huge boost to the multiplayer community, but it seems to have killed the hotseat/RP groups.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I'm not really bothered about cheats being removed. I used to use auto_win sometimes for those annoying little sieges in RTW/M2TW, but now the surrender feature means this isn't necessary.

It could be a little annoying from a modding perspective though, since I use toggle_fow to check my maps.

[Relic]

I like having full access to everything, maybe a petition for them to release the console after they have finished patches, DLC, etc in a year or two's time?

[JeromeBaker]

While I am going to miss cheats becuase of the role playing advantages it will probably be a good thing for me. If I get my treasury low I always use the add money cheat and then it makes the rest of the game more boring. So to help I get even more money from the cheat and get enough troops to start a bunch of major wars which is all action but kills the fun and strategy of building your empire the hard way. I look forward to having to play the campaign focused and with greater strategy now that I dont have the money cheat to fall back on. Mixed Blessings.. but after I complete my first grand campaign, I think it will be positive the cheats are gone.

[Skott]

I used the cheats. Mainly the add_money cheat so I could give the other factions more money during the game so they would build up and possibly become more aggressive as well as better developed when i fought them. It makes for a tougher AI opponent overall IMO. I suppose I could just allocate more money through modding but the money cheat was a quick way of doing it and it also could be done at any time and done as often as needed. I'm going to miss the cheats but thats just me.

[Swoosh So]

Well this could be a bad thing, cheats from the console were sometimes used for modding projects to see ai movements or in the case of my own personal mod to allow multiplayer campaigns, kill character command etc was absolutely essential for this.

[Zarky]

Voted gah because there's not even need for toggle_fow anymore since you can see which nation captured which region without constantly buying map information or cheating.

[Prussian to the Iron]

mixed for me:

good:

-now i actually have some fun in anything but the battles, and am not inclined to cheat.
-i now have a hard choice:

lots of full crappy stacks, or a couple elite stacks?
-now i actually lose battles!!!


bad:

-naval battles are crappy, so i have to save up for great ships just to beat the uber-naval a.i.

[robpa]

I frequently used the madras and vindaloo cheats for when the AI decided to be extremely stupid and decided to attack with an army that had no hope of taking my city,6 times in a row. As long as the AI is much improved from MTW2 I'll be happy.

I will truely miss them.

[Aero]

Well not exactly a toggle but, there's a way to disable the fog of war on the campaign map.

All that's need is to edit this file

Game_directory..\data\campaigns\main\scripting.lua


look for the function OnWorldCreated() and add this line of script to the function

scripting.game_interface:show_shroud(false)


The whole function should end up like this.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

local function OnWorldCreated()
scripting.game_interface:technology_osmosis_for_playables_enable_culture("european")
scripting.game_interface:technology_osmosis_for_playables_enable_all()
scripting.game_interface:show_shroud(false)
end

This script should probably work for those midway into a campaign by adding it to the function

OnFactionTurnStart(context)

enjoy your Empire ..ggrrr

[robpa]

[QUOTE=Aero;2163881]Well not exactly a toggle but, there's a way to disable the fog of war on the campaign map.

All that's need is to edit this file

Game_directory..\data\campaigns\main\scripting.lua


look for the function OnWorldCreated() and add this line of script to the function

scripting.game_interface:show_shroud(false)


The whole function should end up like this.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

local function OnWorldCreated()
scripting.game_interface:technology_osmosis_for_playables_enable_culture("european")
scripting.game_interface:technology_osmosis_for_playables_enable_all()
scripting.game_interface:show_shroud(false)
end

This script should probably work for those midway into a campaign by adding it to the function

OnFactionTurnStart(context)

enjoy your Empire ..ggrrr[/QUOTE

I "hear" theres a trainer out there that actually works gives bunch of money and faster constructionn. I heard it even talks to you so you know its thhre.

[Lord of the Isles]

Bad thing, for sure. I couldn't care less about cheating to improve my chances but that wasn't what I used to use it for.

One more help for modders gone - as if the game wasn't mod unfriendly enough to start with compared to previous TW games.

Furthermore, I've just reached turn 30 odd in my third attempt at playing ETW, and there is a Maratha Confederacy fleet stuck in my only Indian port. This is a bug (reported in the stickied bug thread) - I'm at peace with this faction but they are preventing me using the port and are killing my entire Indian trade. With a console I could move the damn fleet somewhere else. Without it, that's another game I have to abandon. I'm enjoying the game mostly but 0/3 in attempts to get beyond 30 odd game turns because of bugs isn't a good record. I'm starting to get annoyed.

[Polemists]

I never used cheats, but whether they were in or not never really affected me. I've always enjoyed games the same even if cheats are in, I just refuse to use them unless something odd happens. Bugs, stuck issues, etc.

The game will take sometime to mod, though hopefully when CA does release the tools (next month?) we can hope the mod community's new vanilla ETW will include a cheat console if nothing else to avoid game stopping bugs.

For instance I remeber in MTW2 it got very annoying do to all the path's blocked messages you could get.

[Daimon]

I "hear" theres a trainer out there that actually works gives bunch of money and faster constructionn. I heard it even talks to you so you know its thhre.

Must be from Cheathappens.com those guy's are always the first to make great trainers.. One problem, you have to pay for them! And I think it's not really worth it.

You can also cheat (if you really have to) by using CheatEngine.