It's just not fun to be in constant war all the time

[hoof]

Yes, another rant post.

I've noticed many people here are complaining about the AI's suicidal tendency to declare war. I've just stopped playing my British campaign, because the AI of France and Spain, despite 15 years of attempts to appease them, decided to declare war on me. Did I want to fight them? No. Did I want to give up the chance to play with late-era tech and see what things are like at the later-half of the game? No. Why? Because I'd have to raze the map and spend hours conquering territories just to shut the f***ing AI up. All my ideas of playing proxy wars in America alongside building a big trade empire have gone out the window, and I'm not having fun.

This has always been this way in Total War series. I guess "Total War" means that fighting is the only form of "fun" you are allowed in this game. I don't know why they bother with most of the units and tech, since we never see them. What a waste of effort on CA's side to make all that cool tech, all those cool units, all those cool abilities, but we never see them because the AI will never, ever let you get there. They will declare war first, and beat you out of frustration (you'll stop playing eventually, or crush them/win the game first). Personally, I don't want to spend dozens of hours of hard, hard work just to see the late-tech units, which you're forced into because the AI constantly declares war, regardless of what you do.

I just want to play the game in different ways than "conquer the entire map" route that the AI logic forces you down. There is no turtling, because the AI won't let you. There is no squashing one empire to demonstrate to another to leave you alone because the AI won't let you. There is no building of a huge trade empire, because the AI forces you to destroy them all (they'll all declare war on you eventually, so your trading empire will come to nothing, even if you simply ignored them and played defensive). Games that force you to play in only one way are boring. I've conquered the world a bazillion times since Shogun days, and want to do something different in a TW game.

Why can't CA let us play the game like we *WANT* to? Why must we play the game the same way like some broken record?

My Maratha campaign has been the only fun one so far because you can capture India, then the AI's suicidal nature can be ignored while you build up your empire. You can't do that with any other faction.

Ok. Rant mode off. I feel better.

Maybe playing for a Prestige win will alter the AI's tendancy. I'll give that a go, but if that doesn't help, ETW is getting shelved and uninstalled.

[peacemaker]

If you ask me, the game is based on battles. the campaign is just created so that you can make battles more unique, to a better extent than just the basic menu option.

[A Very Super Market]

Doom is about shooting people. Let's not bother with multiplayer, or moving players, let's just have them shoot, and do the moving for them.

Grand Theft Auto is about doing missions. Instead of giving a world for the player to travel and explore, let's just let them imagine it, and just have them type actions into a box.

Please, add to the list.

[AussieGiant]

The words "Total War" are in all franchise titles.

It's going to be a hard sell to try and ask them to create a system in which you don't have to go to war to win.

Play Civilisation if that's the case.

[Krauser]

Wait for mods to come out because vanilla Total War is never gonna be like that. Both RTW and M2TW had more historical simulation mods but the vanilla games are about fighting the battles. There isn't a ton of stuff to do without battles. (Majority of game time is playing battles.)

[hoof]

You're all right of course. The name is "Total War". I guess I was hoping for more in this incarnation, hoping that there was more to the strategic mode than an excuse to throw a bunch of battles at you. There's so much suggestion in the game, in the media, in the reviews, in the talks with the CA folks to imply that there's the *option* of playing in a way that isn't just battle after battle after battle. Heck, I keep reading about how the diplomacy is so much better in this game. Yet the same old "declare war on my longtime ally and trading partner for no obvious reason" thing happens just like in STW, MTW, RTW, MTWII, etc. The Civ series has shown that it is possible to have a fun varied gameplay, where you can choose different ways to play, *and* have a diplomancy model that makes sense and you can work with (and not just be at the mercy of).

Incidentally, if you're going to do something that a player might not like, make it *obvious* why it happened. Working in the videogame-making industry for 12 years has taught me that doing stuff that makes the player scratch their head w/o any explanation is a bad idea. Doing something like a random "declare war" from a friendly nation who's traded with you for a long time and you've been nice to is bad enough. Not providing you with a) a darned good reason, b) the opportunity to learn why so that you can adjust and learn for next time, is simply bad game design.

Plus, it boggles my mind that if the intent is to have you in non-stop all-out "total" war, why do they bother with an in-depth long-term tech tree? Why to they bother with techs and buildings and units that you will never reach? It seems the only way to reach those levels is to trash everyone in the world, conquer most of the territories, then turn turtle once the AI is impotent. That's the only way to get the 50-100 or so unmolested turns necessary to reach those levels. But that's no good because you'll have these shiny kick-butt units and the AI will have nothing (because you had to trash them to keep them off your back). Much better to try those fancy units out in the battle mode outside the campaign, which leads me right back to the question of why they bothered with a big tech tree and so many units you never get to really use in the campaign. Their recent "downloadable content" of high-level custom per-faction units also makes me scratch my head, why try to sell those if you can't use them in-game because of the diplomacy model?

Again, it's the videogame-maker in me that puzzles over this. There's obviously a lot of work done to make all those pretty units, to work out all those buildings, get the tech-tree right and varied for all the different factions, animate the units, de-bug the movements and behaviors, etc. They could have shaved a year off their dev cycle had they not done all those high-end units and buildings, since most players will never get to them in a regular campaign.

I guess my big beef is that I was led to believe that the game had more depth than "play-for-20-turns-then-everyone-attacks-you-with-no-explanation" type gameplay that's been done over and over again. I guess I'll just have to wait for Civ5 to play a game that lets me play via trade or tech or something other than the beaten-to-death "go for a while, oh someone small declares war, oh that snowballs in 5-20 turns into all-out war".

Anyway, I seem to have gone back into rant mode. I'm turning that off and going to do something else!

[Hooahguy]

The words "Total War" are in all franchise titles.

It's going to be a hard sell to try and ask them to create a system in which you don't have to go to war to win.

Play Civilisation if that's the case.

im with him. if you are looking for a less militaristic route to win, TW is not your game.

and who says turtling doesnt work? it sure works for me. as sweden, im turtling on my west front while fighting two wars on my east front.
i dont think you are very clear on the concept of turtling.

[FactionHeir]

You can't really turtle because your trade lanes will end up raided and you have to send your fleets out to protect them or starve (the AI on the other hand since 1.3 is unable to go bankrupt it seems, which is maddening). Also, the more AI declare war on you, the larger a fleet you need to get em all.

[Fisherking]

The words "Total War" are in all franchise titles.

It's going to be a hard sell to try and ask them to create a system in which you don't have to go to war to win.

Play Civilisation if that's the case.

Look!

Total War is about the infrastructure you control to wage a total war!

Not to be totally at war with everyone all of the time!

[antisocialmunky]

The words "Total War" are in all franchise titles.

It's going to be a hard sell to try and ask them to create a system in which you don't have to go to war to win.

Play Civilisation if that's the case.

I don't really understand this sentiment. What's the point of fighting some sort of infinite war? Because grind is fun? If I wanted pointless grind, I would be playing WOW.

[Quickening]

I don't really understand this sentiment. What's the point of fighting some sort of infinite war? Because grind is fun? If I wanted pointless grind, I would be playing WOW.

Besides that, Civilization 4 is a completely different kettle of fish. Building the pyramids in London just felt wrong to me no matter how hard I tried to keep an open mind. Such structures came about as a result of the cultures environment and not simply because of them taking a certain technological path.

[PseRamesses]

Personally I don´t mind the "total war" feature, however unrealistic it seems after all its the battles I love. Last night Wurttemberg declared war on me, Spain, with 45 provinces, more ships than the rest of the world combined and 12 standing elite stacks ready to go, sigh! WHY???
Now here comes the real bugger. I park my best stack outside Frankfurt? and let their puny stack of 7 crappy units attack me. I win ofcourse and only one badly hurt militia escapes to the settlement. Thay have no more troops, anywere! I offer them a blank peace - NO! I, just for fun, offer them Westphalia, Flanders and Netherlands....aaaand 100.000 cash, what do they reply? Yes, you already guessed it - NO! OMG, pissed I assaulted Frankfurt and gifted it to Bavaria. No more Wurttemberg.

This is not the first time this happens. It happens EVERY time. CA/ SEGA should send some trainees over to Paradox and learn how to script realistic diplomatic AI behaviour.

[Didz]

I don't really understand this sentiment. What's the point of fighting some sort of infinite war? Because grind is fun? If I wanted pointless grind, I would be playing WOW.

And its inaccurate anyway. Spartan did not mention Totalwar in the title, and it was possible to complete the Shogun version without declaring war on anyone. This is just the standard not interested response from people who don't really give a damn but feel the need to comment.

[Slaists]

Yes, another rant post.

I've noticed many people here are complaining about the AI's suicidal tendency to declare war. I've just stopped playing my British campaign, because the AI of France and Spain, despite 15 years of attempts to appease them, decided to declare war on me. Did I want to fight them? No. Did I want to give up the chance to play with late-era tech and see what things are like at the later-half of the game? No. Why? Because I'd have to raze the map and spend hours conquering territories just to shut the f***ing AI up. All my ideas of playing proxy wars in America alongside building a big trade empire have gone out the window, and I'm not having fun.

This has always been this way in Total War series. I guess "Total War" means that fighting is the only form of "fun" you are allowed in this game. I don't know why they bother with most of the units and tech, since we never see them. What a waste of effort on CA's side to make all that cool tech, all those cool units, all those cool abilities, but we never see them because the AI will never, ever let you get there. They will declare war first, and beat you out of frustration (you'll stop playing eventually, or crush them/win the game first). Personally, I don't want to spend dozens of hours of hard, hard work just to see the late-tech units, which you're forced into because the AI constantly declares war, regardless of what you do.

I just want to play the game in different ways than "conquer the entire map" route that the AI logic forces you down. There is no turtling, because the AI won't let you. There is no squashing one empire to demonstrate to another to leave you alone because the AI won't let you. There is no building of a huge trade empire, because the AI forces you to destroy them all (they'll all declare war on you eventually, so your trading empire will come to nothing, even if you simply ignored them and played defensive). Games that force you to play in only one way are boring. I've conquered the world a bazillion times since Shogun days, and want to do something different in a TW game.

Why can't CA let us play the game like we *WANT* to? Why must we play the game the same way like some broken record?

My Maratha campaign has been the only fun one so far because you can capture India, then the AI's suicidal nature can be ignored while you build up your empire. You can't do that with any other faction.

Ok. Rant mode off. I feel better.

Maybe playing for a Prestige win will alter the AI's tendancy. I'll give that a go, but if that doesn't help, ETW is getting shelved and uninstalled.

Well, Britan on one side and France + Spain are natural enemies. If you do not want to destroy them, control them how Britain did: by naval means. It's possible.

[GFX707]

Maybe playing for a Prestige win will alter the AI's tendancy. I'll give that a go, but if that doesn't help, ETW is getting shelved and uninstalled.

I totally agree with your post. I have played prestige a few times and the AI is just as suicidal and aggressive in that gameplay mode.

[Hooahguy]

I totally agree with your post. I have played prestige a few times and the AI is just as suicidal and aggressive in that gameplay mode.

just to point out, military acheivements is the biggest prestige factor.

[FactionHeir]

Hmm for me the enlightenment always seems to be 50%

[MasterPhantom]

Yes, unless you have a lot of money and troops to toss around, not an good idea!!

[Claudio]

To the people saying that the games are named Total War and therefore the way the game is is how it should be, then you obviously never saw any of the advertisements for the game. In the months before the game was released CA released several trailers showing us how the AI would be superior to any other game in the franchise, how diplomacy was going to be very important, how the player could focus on 3 different ways of dominating their neighbours. Through military, industrial or enlightenment means.

Every trailer didn't simply hint that there were different ways to play a campaign, it outright SAID there would be different ways to play the game other than mindless conquest forced by the suicidal and unintelligent AI.

So please stop with this old, arrogant argument that the games are named Total War and therefore should be about nothing but war, because even CA themselves said this wasn't so in 3 of the 5 trailers they released before the game went on sale.