Has anything really changed from CA?

[GFX707]

I was sceptical as always about this game when I heard about it at first. I pre-ordered it anyway because there is just nothing else like it. I have been playing since Shogun, and I have witnessed the series's decline after MTW.

The main problems with RTW and M2TW were:

1) Bad AI.
2) Useless diplomacy and suicidal enemies.

So, I have been playing since release and despite the BUGGY MESS that this game has been I have been more or less having a good time. In two months of playing through the campaign (and enjoying it) I have come to the following conclusions.

1) The AI is still just as bad, if not worse.
2) Diplomacy is still largely pointless.

Here's why: The AI on the campaign map always does the same thing. If you border Dagestan or Georgia at some point, they will always declare war on you, no matter how good your relations or whether you are trading. They will always be crushed with minimal effort. Then, you now border Persia. Inevitably, they will declare war next and be wiped out after a few turns. They are coded to be suicidal. To seal their own stupid fate they will absolutely NOT accept peace. Time and time again, there I am, at the "diplomacy" screen, my country terrifying/spectacular (or whatever), theirs weak/destitute and they will still NEVER accept peace. This goes on throughout the game. Sometimes you can get a peace but they don't seem to understand that they are in a very bad situation - that by asking for peace you are SAVING them from certain destruction of their handul of 2 stack raiding armies, and even if you offer them twenty thousand to save their lives they won't take it. So, that's our new diplomacy which incidentally should go beyond having some new buttons to click.

The strategic AI is also the usual terrible CA game situation again. When I was playing yesterday I bought Quebec from the French - I hadn't realised it bordered an English settlement and an army was standing right beside my new town as I hit "end turn". There were no troops in my town as I had just bought it, and there wouldn't be until the next turn when I had finished building some. There was a large English army across the river to the south. I think "Woops".

So what does the AI do? It can reach the town in 1 turn. There are no troops to defend it.

It walks its stack PAST the *undefended* enemy town and raids the nearby seminary instead. The AI's strategic approach to war seems to just be chucking tiny two stack armies at you to raid your settlements, even if, combined, all those stacks would crush you. This results in a tedious campaign of chasing piddly two stack armies around which ISN'T FUN.

So since I am now bored of typing, in summary, does this game have exactly the same problems as the past two CA offerings in my opinion? Yes....and more. Did I buy it anyway, pretty sure it would be the same old story? Yes.

Why did I buy it? Why did all of us pessimist CA diehards buy it anyway? Because there is STILL, after almost 10 years, nothing like the Total War series. If this was nature, the Total War series would be the Dodo. It has survived because it has no predators. It can get as fat and as stupid and as useless as it wants because it will still have nothing to fear from any other game because there are no other games of this type to compete. It's in a genre all of its own, and until someone basically does a Blizzard and rips it off, but improves and supports it, it's going to be the same old story.

(same old rant, too)

[Kadagar_AV]

Why so suprised?

Anyway, I know CA really really promised to have worked on the AI. Some developer came out and said "hey, we know we kind of sucked at this in previous games, but this time we wont, I swear!"

Seeing that I just laughed.

Did I believe him? No.

Should I have believed him? Obviosly not.

[antisocialmunky]

Support is way better now though . :) That more than anything has made me happy. Though I can actually get the thing running and not WCTDing all the time.

[al Roumi]

Support is way better now though . :) That more than anything has made me happy. Though I can actually get the thing running and not WCTDing all the time.

True, but results and changes are slow in coming. The appeal of daily updates on what is being worked on wears out when you are still facing tedious bugs. I'm sorry to repeat this but the game was not anywhere near ready for release and it's insulting really.

I was an avid Mount and Blade fan and I enjoyed the anticipation of new updates that slowly moved the game forward, developing gameplay and addressing (and creating) bugs. When it was finally released, I would have said it wasn't all the way there yet either, but damn was it more "complete" and finished than ETW 1.0.

The point being that in M&B I was fine about being a paying beta tester. When I've been a beta tester for other games, I've enjoyed being involved in the dev process too. However, the fact that we are effectivley free and un-acknowledged testers for ETW is galling. More so for having paid about £35 for the sodding special forces edition. Steam is all well and good but IMO it does NOT give a game designer license to sell you something 3/4 completed and finish the development of the game once it's on your machine.

God knows what happened at CA, or Sega Europe, but frankly it looks like they had a novice team with half the head-count they anticipated. As GFX said, they 1, haven't learnt from previous games and 2, have produced something slap-dash, which for some frustratingly unknown reason, I STILL PLAY and care enough to rant about it...

[Fisherking]

The game came with lots of bugs, okay.

But the starting AI was not so bad. Granted they made it as bad as M2 with the change, but that is not how it started.

The diplomacy actually worked. Fine they broke it with the later changes but it worked.

You know RTW started out ok and then everyone wanted this or that and cried its too this or too that and so they changed it…and it got worse…

Well it seems they are taking another game that stared well and are transforming it into something entirely mediocre, but that is what some of the louder fans want.

And that is the part that always seems to be the same!

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

I have to say that I think the complaining is way over the top. We paid (maybe a little much, but that can't be helped) and we got a perfectly good game. I would argue that the AI and diplomacy are much better than what we saw in M2:TW. Sure, there have been bugs, but no real gamebreakers, and we have no right to flame CA for making what is a perfectly adequate game.

[al Roumi]

God knows what happened at CA, or Sega Europe, but frankly it looks like they had a novice team with half the head-count they anticipated. As GFX said, they 1, haven't learnt from previous games and 2, have produced something slap-dash, which for some frustratingly unknown reason, I STILL PLAY and care enough to rant about it...

I haven't called CA novices, I said they have made themselves look like them, which I find shameful as they certainly aren't.

I do agree that attempts to correct the game after release are the inescapable norms of the time. However, 2 months down the line, the devs are still working on some pretty basic features that should arguably have been ready on release day.

[TinCow]

The diplomacy can certainly use some improvement, but I still think it's a great deal better than in RTW and M2TW. Contrary to the OP's statements, I tend to be able to get peace treaties from many AI nations. Sure, many of them declare war again a few turns later if they are still adjacent to you, but peace is certainly possible at least for short periods.

I think one of biggest problems isn't that the AI declares war too often, it's that it declares war at the wrong times. I'm currently playing an Austria game, which is very different from my previous post-1.2 games due to a total lack of trade income. At the start I was only able to afford about 1 army stack and I had a devil of a time fending off Poland. If ANY other nation had declared war on me, I would have been in serious trouble. No other nation did however. I was able to finish off Poland and consolidate my position shortly before the Ottomans declared war on me. If the Ottomans had declared war while I was still invovled with Poland, they could have wrecked me. Instead, I am able to beat them by focusing on them alone.

Europa Universalis 3 deals with this situation very well IMO. In that game, the more wars a nation is involved in, the more likely that other nations that dislike them will declare war on them as well. It's a typical human strategy that works well: strike when your enemy is pre-occupied elsewhere. CA needs some kind of coding like this.

[Yun Dog]

I was sceptical as always about this game when I heard about it at first. I pre-ordered it anyway because there is just nothing else like it. I have been playing since Shogun, and I have witnessed the series's decline after MTW.

The main problems with RTW and M2TW were:

1) Bad AI.
2) Useless diplomacy and suicidal enemies.

So, I have been playing since release and despite the BUGGY MESS that this game has been I have been more or less having a good time. In two months of playing through the campaign (and enjoying it) I have come to the following conclusions.

1) The AI is still just as bad, if not worse.
2) Diplomacy is still largely pointless.

Here's why: The AI on the campaign map always does the same thing. If you border Dagestan or Georgia at some point, they will always declare war on you, no matter how good your relations or whether you are trading. They will always be crushed with minimal effort. Then, you now border Persia. Inevitably, they will declare war next and be wiped out after a few turns. They are coded to be suicidal. To seal their own stupid fate they will absolutely NOT accept peace. Time and time again, there I am, at the "diplomacy" screen, my country terrible/spectacular (or whatever), theirs weak/destitute and they will still NEVER accept peace. This goes on throughout the game. Sometimes you can get a peace but they don't seem to understand that they are in a very bad situation - that by asking for peace you are SAVING them from certain destruction of their handul of 2 stack raiding armies, and even if you offer them twenty thousand to save their lives they won't take it. So, that's our new diplomacy which incidentally should go beyond having some new buttons to click.

The strategic AI is also the usual terrible CA game situation again. When I was playing yesterday I bought Quebec from the French - I hadn't realised it bordered an English settlement and an army was standing right beside my new town as I hit "end turn". There were no troops in my town as I had just bought it, and there wouldn't be until the next turn when I had finished building some. There was a large English army across the river to the south. I think "Woops".

So what does the AI do? It can reach the town in 1 turn. There are no troops to defend it.

It walks its stack PAST the *undefended* enemy town and raids the nearby seminary instead. The AI's strategic approach to war seems to just be chucking tiny two stack armies at you to raid your settlements, even if, combined, all those stacks would crush you. This results in a tedious campaign of chasing piddly two stack armies around which ISN'T FUN.

So since I am now bored of typing, in summary, does this game have exactly the same problems as the past two CA offerings in my opinion? Yes....and more. Did I buy it anyway, pretty sure it would be the same old story? Yes.

Why did I buy it? Why did all of us pessimist CA diehards buy it anyway? Because there is STILL, after almost 10 years, nothing like the Total War series. If this was nature, the Total War series would be the Dodo. It has survived because it has no predators. It can get as fat and as stupid and as useless as it wants because it will still have nothing to fear from any other game because there are no other games of this type to compete. It's in a genre all of its own, and until someone basically does a Blizzard and rips it off, but improves and supports it, it's going to be the same old story.

(same old rant, too)

GFX

I was thinking exactly this then I found your post

quoted for truth

I love your analogy in the last paragraph

Hey if we all beat our heads against the wall long enough - we might make a dent