CA blog from Mike Simpson

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

If they're worried about tightening belts, I'm pretty sure Medieval (1) was made with a smaller budget than Empire.



/Now if they want some cash to fix their mistakes, have a 50% off "we're sorry!" sale on Steam. $25 sounds about right for the price.

[Beskar]

I think we should rename the entire saga as "Broken: Total War".

Broken Public Confidence.
Broken Brand Confidence.
Broken Game.
Broken Promises.
Total War between the Developers and the Userbase.


While I will be honest and say the patches have gone a long way to fixing the game, after a year, they should have simply done my suggestion in the beginning.

Release a stable product that works, then release the mod tools and allow the community to make this into a great game. If they simply did this, E:TW would be miles better.

[Servius]

I liked that he came out and plainly explained the link between publisher funding/patience --> quality of game --> player reviews --> publisher funding/patience.

I agree that a 67% is a bit low for ETW, but only because ETW added a lot of new (and useful) stuff. I think the "professional" game review folks are daft though. They gave RTW a 9.1 or something nuts like that. IMO, ETW was a 75% on release, and has stayed that way until 1.4. I need to give credit where it's due. 1.4 is probably the single biggest improvement to a TW game I've ever seen, and I've been with the series since Shogun. More on that in a sec. Post-1.4, I'd say ETW is 85%.

If he's blaming players for unfair reviews that hurt the quality of games, he's got it backwards. I mean, I know the cycle does flow that way, I just think he's off on the starting point. The problem started with RTW, the conversion to 3D, and how WAY too much attention was focused on eye candy with RTW and no where near enough time was spent with the AI. The poor quality of the TW games on release since RTW is what's lead to the low player scores, and abuse of trust since RTW had led to some player reviews that are exageratedly low.

AI is the core of the TW games. They are almost exclusively single-player strategy games. That means the only thing the player interacts with is the AI. Graphics are important, and cool new features like ETW's trade system are important, but the AI is far and away the single most important thing about a TW game. A solid AI can excuse less impressive graphics, but eye candy can only hide a stupid AI for so long.

As I see it, CA has done it to themselves by constantly releasing games before they have a competent AI. It was much easier in MTW because there were far fewer variables to deal with. I understand that. But the TW AI has sucked in every game and expansion since RTW...until now. While it's still not perfect, the 1.4 patch for ETW is WAY smarter than it used to be. The AI may not always make brilliant decisions, but it's mostly stopped making stupid ones. It's also finally doing stuff it never used to. Today, like a hour ago, Marathas sent a full stack all the way from India to the Carribean to take one of the Lesser Antilles. Not only that, but they bypassed my garrisoned port and dropped the troops just outside the capital city. WHAAAAA!!!!?? That's HUGE! When ETW came out, the AI couldn't even figure out how to put its own troops on its own ships.

I have to say, when I saw how much improved the AI is in 1.4, I decided I'd buy the Native American expansion pack just to give CA some money for a major improvement.

CA's at the low ebb of the cycle now. They and their publishers have squandered what started out as an excellent reputation by releasing follow up games before they were ready. Both of them need to take a sober look at their business practices to date and decide how they want to move forward. I think the TW franchise could be very strong. 1.4 proves the devs do actually know how to make a smarter AI. If CA and Sega want to continue to make money on these games in the future, they both need to ensure no more TW games come out before the AI is solid. Not barely competent like every release AI has been since RTW. They need to be at least as functional at ETW 1.4.

[Servius]

Jebus, my last post was way too long. No one's gonna read it. Here's the skinny...

Players understand the cycle. Bad player reviews/scores are deserved because the AI is the core of a TW game and the AI has sucked since RTW. Sega/CA have spent too much time on flashy visuals and not enough time on the AI. That's what kills their reputation, angers players, and leads to bad scores.

1.4's AI is a major improvement and has proven CA devs have the ability to make a good AI. If Sega/CA want to make the cycle virtuous again, they need to make great AIs, and those AIs need to be in the game at release, not months after. Never again release a TW game with a poor AI.

[Quickening]

Just so that everyone is aware, mainstream game reviewers are completely bought and paid for which is why it's possible to predict which extreme accuracy what score any given title will receive. Empire: Total War was always going to receive high scores no matter what the reality of the game was.
Because of this, I really don't think anything has or will change. The average person isn't logging onto any website to voice dissatisfaction with any game, only the fans are doing that and writing lengthy posts about why they're broken.
Until either mainstream reviewers start being honest, or the majority ignore them and start logging on to listen to the fans nothing will change. Since neither of these will ever happen, hype will continue to keep the Total War franchise alive. Yeah so a few of us around here have finally learned our lesson and won't be buying NTW but I can't see that seriously making a dent. Maybe I'm wrong.

As for the blog entry, the actor on the last page said it all for me.

[Kantalla]

For me the interesting part of this is reading the reactions of the other posters more so than the blog. I picked up ETW fairly recently (late 1.3). Had a couple of crashes on installation, which worried me a bit, especially after the sales guy had asked me if I had a new computer when handing the game over (after I had paid for it!).

Having played through each of the main games in the Total War series, ETW was an interesting shock when I first started out. I was expecting something similar to previous games, where there would be modest threat to my home territories, and provided I didn't go too crazy I could hold things together, while I figured out how to play in detail. Starting out as the Ottomans I sent some troops to help my protectorate in the Crimea, and sent back the Russians, only to have Poland and Austria declare war and take a province each, and when I brought troops from the eastern side of my empire, Georgia and Persia joined in and suddenly I was in real trouble. Learning from that I tried again, making sure to keep an eye on the build up of forces in my neighbours' territories, and make a more circumspect expansion than expected. I also found some of the battle tactics a little more difficult to adjust to that in Rome. That save game died, meaning I had to start the game again, and this time as the United Provinces did the grand campaign.

A couple of weeks later and 1.4 has arrived and the game is stable and quite fun to play. Some of the things that were bothering me in the Dutch campaign (particularly the AI's inaction in the colonies, inability to use ships and massive and unwarranted diplomacy penalties) are gone, and there seem to be some solid improvements.

From my perspective, I can't imagine with the current game feeling the way a lot of you clearly do. The game is decent now, though I suspect there is a lot of lost ground to make up for many people.

[Servius]

I think you should think of 1.4 as where the AI should have been at release. Release AIs should never do anything stupid. They might not make brilliant decisions, but they should never make stupid ones. 1.4's AI is pretty close to that. A lot of the stupid DOWs are gone, and it's learned how to do some rather complex operations (like trans-theatre naval invasions). I don't expect AIs to be perfect at release, just competent. The players will then go to work on it, point out what should be the few remaining idiocies, and suggest ways to make it better than competent, and the devs should act on that super fast. It's just my opinion, but the programmers should not work on anything else until they (and the players) are happy with the AI. Everything else is secondary to the AI in a mainly-single-player game like TW.

[peacemaker]

Here's the problem I've noticed with this cycle of getting the game out much later and more flawed. If you make people wait longer, some people will decide just not to get the game. If you release it too soon, then the game isn't perfect. If you TELL people that you're planning to release it on a certain day, then you'll have to keep pushing the date back until it's ready. CA noticed this so they decided not to give an exact date.

For the complexness of the game engine and the game itself, how good the AI really is opinion. I've been beaten by the AI on many occasions.

As for naval invasions, I'm not sure why people care so much about them. If I'm in a war with my neighbor, I would go ahead and march my army right to their capital-not sail halfway around the world to take some small island.

The average person isn't logging onto any website to voice dissatisfaction with any game, only the fans are doing that and writing lengthy posts about why they're broken.

I just found that kind of ironic
Until either mainstream reviewers start being honest, or the majority ignore them and start logging on to listen to the fans nothing will change. Since neither of these will ever happen, hype will continue to keep the Total War franchise alive.

I think the problem with the bolded statement is that people on the forums are trying to force opinions about the AI onto others. The few people I know that play this game are satisfied with it, so the only voices you usually hear on the internet are the game reviewers or the critics. The people happy with it don't care as much-They'd rather go play the game than talk about it.

As the game is right now, I would say CA did a semi-poor job on the release. It did have many bugs, but grading your own work is difficult. They've gotten lots of feedback from the players and in a few months have fixed the game up to a good shape. They're not done working and people in general are saying "okay, this game is pretty good".

[Beskar]

As for naval invasions, I'm not sure why people care so much about them. If I'm in a war with my neighbor, I would go ahead and march my army right to their capital-not sail halfway around the world to take some small island.

I mean, if you take Naval Invasions out, the neighbours such as France and Britain can just invadeand take each others capitals right?

Oh wait...

[Kantalla]

As for naval invasions, I'm not sure why people care so much about them. If I'm in a war with my neighbor, I would go ahead and march my army right to their capital-not sail halfway around the world to take some small island.

But what if it's not your neighbour by a handy land route? There are plenty of situations where the most important target for you isn't directly in front of you, and that disregards the potential for avoiding a large army or fortress to attack a key spot.

Before the recent changes to the AI, as Great Britain you knew that your home provinces would never be touched by the AI because they needed to jump on a ship. On top of that you had free reign in the Americas because your rivals would never send troops from Europe, and didn't seem that good at recruiting there either. Similarly France and Spain could depend on Great Britain never to get aggressive toward them in Europe.

Now it's a different situation, and that makes the game much more interesting and challenging. There are still a few enhancements that could happen - I'd like to see more border raiding and willingness to retreat if the odds aren't good, and hopefully there will be more progress in 1.5.

[Durallan]

Well the Americans didn't sail straight to berlin in World War 2, normally you do take out less defended territories first, to weaken your enemy, but this is total war! where you can defeat the enemy and take out his capital region without one hell of a fight.

[antisocialmunky]

Well the Americans didn't sail straight to berlin in World War 2, normally you do take out less defended territories first, to weaken your enemy, but this is total war! where you can defeat the enemy and take out his capital region without one hell of a fight.

But the did fly over it and bomb it on a fairly regular basis. :-p

I think that the main complaint about the AI that people have is that it has gotten progressively worse wince the 2d TWs while the graphics have continually improved. Its not that people think its pure crap, its that people who remember the older games are ticked off that seemingly everything has been sacrificed for the sake of THE ALL MIGHTY GRAPHICS. Graphics actually cost a fair amount of money(motion capture, tons of artists, etc) to produce while other features that would be cheaper to improve are ignored.

This is a strategy game, making it challenging should be a priority up there with making it look better.

[A Very Super Market]

What if you aren't willing to risk your most important armies? What if the war is over a colony in the first place and you do not wish to get the home country involved?

[Owen Glyndwr]

On most occasions, the major European nations had no interest in absorbing their mainland neighbors. Especially in the case of the French and English, war was faught over the colonies. Neither side had any real interest in taking the homelands of the other, which was simply not profitable.

[Zenicetus]

But the did fly over it and bomb it on a fairly regular basis. :-p

I think that the main complaint about the AI that people have is that it has gotten progressively worse wince the 2d TWs while the graphics have continually improved. Its not that people think its pure crap, its that people who remember the older games are ticked off that seemingly everything has been sacrificed for the sake of THE ALL MIGHTY GRAPHICS. Graphics actually cost a fair amount of money(motion capture, tons of artists, etc) to produce while other features that would be cheaper to improve are ignored.

This is a strategy game, making it challenging should be a priority up there with making it look better.

Sure, I'd rather see more time spent on the core engine and AI than unnecessary graphic enhancements. For example, those silly motion capture scenes for dueling. Who will ever watch that more than once? To be fair to CA though, they've chosen to show a depth in tactical battles that does require detailed visual representation, in order for the player to make appropriate decisions in the heat of battle. For example:

Did that cannonball do any damage, or just skip over the line of troops? How many volleys did the enemy soak up before they closed to melee range? Is my cavalry attack about to bog down, so it's time to withdraw?

In a simpler game, like a 2D hex-based strategy game, you can abstract this as simple numbers. "Unit health drops from 100 to 70, gee they must be taking damage!" But it isn't nearly as fine-grained as what you see in the TW battle engine, and I think it makes for a more challenging tactical experience. So, do you want that level of detail, or something more basic?

My personal gripe isn't that they're showing too much detail (or "fancy graphics" if you want to put it that way). It's that having chosen that path, they didn't cook it in the oven long enough before asking us to pay for it.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

I've received every Total War game so far almost as soon as it came out, and I've defended CA for a long time on these forums, in public, and elsewhere on the internet. It's not going to continue. N:TW isn't the first release (Alexander) that I haven't been excited for, but it is the first one I actually don't care about. Napoleonic warfare is one of my favourite styles of the art of war, and yet right now, I couldn't care less.

Why? Not because Empire was terrible - though it had more problems than most other TW games, it also had some upsides. No, the horrendous customer service, PR, and other things that I really hope were SEGA's meddling (but probably weren't) are things that guarantee I will not buy this game on release date. I may not buy it at all.

CA gets posts like this with every release, but they should be concerned here. I'm not someone who was on the fence, I was a total fanboy. And they've lost me.

[antisocialmunky]

I'd have to disagree: MIITW was worse. Atleast the mechanics aren't ridiculously screwed up like shields being NEGATIVE defense values, super peasant attack animations, and useless two handers.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

I'd have to disagree: MIITW was worse. Atleast the mechanics aren't ridiculously screwed up like shields being NEGATIVE defense values, super peasant attack animations, and useless two handers.

I quite agree, which is why I said most.

[antisocialmunky]

Okay, I'll give you that I read that poorly. However, its still only better than one game on release. Though MIITW actually turned out quite well in the end for graphics and modding. I mean... infinite reenforcement armies? :)

[gollum]

Originally posted by Mike Simpson

Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people buy the games.

Quite simply, this is wrong. It is an apparent truth and not an actual truth; STW and MTW were much more quality oriented products for the simple reason that they were aimed at smaller and more quality hungry audiences. The development team for the STW prototype consisted of people that could be hand counted and yet the game was a leap forward in the graphical sector for its day and a revelation in terms of gameplay. Not only the gameplay was something relatively new, it was executed excellently and it is for this reason that the MP community still holds it as the golden standard of TW.

From RTW and onwards that quality was sacrificed for a huge amount of bells-and-whistles type features that were typically coming from other popular genres/games like the civilisation series and popular "classic" RTS games like the EoA series and Starcraft/Warcraft. The original TW community was basically ignored as were many of the gameplay and aesthetic conventions that TW had built for it self up to that time, in order to bring the TW games to the mass of the gaming public. RTW 1.0 had at least 10 fold the bugs of MTW 1.0, just look at the lists of 1.2 and 1.3 patches - the bugs fixed number in hundreds. Clearly CA was putting too much in their games; too many new 'features', too many units, too many factions, too many graphical upgrades and as it is obvious since then, neither the AI, nor their resources as a company could cope with those to provide a solid, immersive, balanced game experience. RTW became the game it should have been after 4 years of intense and continuous modding.

It seems that as long as the formula was a winning one CA was happy to further ignore all the fans, old and new, that observed all this, time and time again. With Empire the trend of putting many secondary features and breadth that the AI and company resources coudnt handle became so ambitiously greedy that even declared fanboys of the .com and twcentre simply turned away (see the notable case of Yakaspat aka Candelarius who despite being perhaps the greater fanboy in the RTW/M2TW era remarkably "gave up" (!) on ETW); also the "new" (past RTW) community has "matured" - the awe/impact factor of the novelty that RTW had, which alone could make the new fanbase "forgive" any quality shortcomings just isnt there anymore. CA thought it apparently funny releasing their games with bugs that were fixed time and time again in the past like say the suicidal generals, a bug trademark really of the company as it almost certainly appears in every v1.0 TW game release.

To be fair, ETW has a lot of potential and many of its featutes and design concepts seemed to be geared towards a more gameplay oriented, more balanced experience at least on the battlefield. Many of these decisions aesthetic or gameplay ones, simply backfired as the RTW/M2TW community was too fond of the cartooninesh of say the pre-battle speeches or the "uniqueness" (that is basically the availability of different skins) of faction rosters. In this respect CA is reaping what is has sown over the past 4 years. While i can see the irony i dont sympathise with them in the least since they were the ones that so fondly embraced the "more" concept and made it an integral(?) part of TW, quite simply because they knew it will sell.

In any case, to try to rally a community that has been fed white lies time and time again with the cheapest marketing sophistries possible (luring in with promises before release and play deaf when half of it doesnt make it to the game and the other half doesnt work) because the TW public image is in crisis and then so might be sales, is frankly pathetic.

And yes, when you are releasing sub-par products for a long time, eventually even your peers take notice
post No 4;

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...d.php?t=407726

Notice that the marketing plautitudes of Mr Bridgen in that thread could not save the day as more and more TW long term fans came out of the woodwork like Garnier, Alpaca and Yellow Mellon to basically agree, even cheer, the statement that "ETW has no AI".

If Mr Simpson and CA demostrate that they can still produce a game as well balanced, gameplay oriented, challenging, well presented, atmospheric, immerssive and respectful of the period it represents as STW/MTW did, i'll be the first to be behind CA. But i know for a fact for years now that this is not going to happen. CA has gone so far downhill that now sells expansions as "new games" while allowing the customers of the mess that was ETW to have a "graphical upgrade from NTW" - apparently the only solution that CA can implement; when people are complaining about the AI, balance and immersivness, upgrade the graphics. NapoleonTW is marketed in the same old, same old tired Hollywood tirade, far from any respect to historical reality and possibly far from any decency, and there is no reason to expect anything new than another commercially oriented venture.

CA and TW have been heading for a crash for years now and unfortunately they deserve it as they are the only ones to blame for the current situation they find themselves in. Get lots of fluffy pillows guys, the higher you jump the longer you fall.

[Yun Dog]

I think we should rename the entire saga as "Broken: Total War".

Broken Public Confidence.
Broken Brand Confidence.
Broken Game.
Broken Promises.
Total War between the Developers and the Userbase.


While I will be honest and say the patches have gone a long way to fixing the game, after a year, they should have simply done my suggestion in the beginning.

Release a stable product that works, then release the mod tools and allow the community to make this into a great game. If they simply did this, E:TW would be miles better.

Yes and this I believe remains one of the largest outstanding issues with ETW

where are the promised modding tools

given the amount of DLC we are seeing I wouldnt be surprised if we dont see any serious moddability for ETW for some time, and Im pesimistic as to ETW being as moddable as previous titles because it will compete not only with their past and future sales of DLC but also NTW for that matter.

this for me is the final nail in the TW coffin - because it was the only thing that saved previous titles from having the lowest replayability of any game in my stable.

It was the modding community that rescued CA in the past and now like the rest of the community they too have been muted.

[jklm192]

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[antisocialmunky]

WORDS

This is pretty much a good summation of the reason why TW has gone downhill in many fan's minds. Too many doodads, not enough on the core gameplay mechanics and polish off each addition. Instead of releasing with a ton of new features and patch up the core part of the game, why not come out with a solid game and then add in a bunch of nice extra stuff. You'd come out with a product that is quality and then you can better focus on the CTDs and all the small things. No more bugged sieges, no more bugged suicidal generals, better diplomacy, better AI. We can get extra skins, multiple soldier skins, traits, certain units later and no one will complain about terrible AI, tons of CTDs, broken this, broken that etc.

Oh well, lets give him a chance to present CA's POV before we completely write if off. It should be interesting at any rate.

[hoom]

Agree with the general trend here: CA has been trying to take TW too big & too quickly = loads of features that would be pretty amazing except that many of them are either broken, the AI doesn't know how to use them or the game balancing never enables them to happen properly.

Go play RTR VII:The Iberian Conflict to see what awesomeness the RTW engine is capable of if the target is kept tight enough.
Its not just good quality, its rollicking good fun.

Not least because the game balance is tweaked so that all sorts of excellent AI behaviour actually happens and despite there being only two playable factions, relatively few turns & not many provinces.

I'd like to see a return to a smaller release polished to perfection.

[caravel]

Good post gollum,

The TW series should be leading the field in AI. A game like ETW should sell itself on recreating realistic battles - and not just visually.

AI has always been a vital component of the strategy game and with TW games CA have twice the work with campaign map AI and tactical AI, but the only time they've ever got anywhere near to decent standards in both of these was back in the days of STW/MTW. Since that time the games have been sold and marketed around the graphics alone with AI and game balance taking a back seat.

[Servius]

Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people buy the games.

This statement has a chronological error. What he should have said (and probably meant to say) is...

"Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people purchased the previous game(s) in the TW series."

You can't spend money making a game that you can only earn after that game is done. I think what he meant to say is the money used to make a new game comes from profits from previous games and/or spec. money from publishers/investors. Thus, if ETW doesn't sell well, CA will have less money to spend on NTW, which may lead to a less-awesome game, which may lead to fewer sales. This is the vicious cycle he talks about.

Normally it’s a virtuous circle, and that’s allowed us to be very ambitious with what we try to deliver. We were not entirely happy with the state of Empire: Total War when it went out, and are only now getting to a point where we are broadly speaking happy with the game. Our own threshold for how we’d like the game to be is much higher than the commercial threshold required by our publisher.

The good news I see in this statement is that problem, cause, and consequence are clear. The problem is that games released before they are ready get panned by players, which leads to lower sales. The cause is that SEGA (and maybe CA?) seem to care more about short-term than long-term revenue, so TW games are released with shoddy AIs and other problems. They'd rather eat the goose that lays golden eggs now than keep the goose alive and get golden egg after golden egg in the future. The consequence is CA has less money to make the next TW game.

The solution is also clear. Never release another TW game before it's ready.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Lastly, on naval invasions and why they're such a big deal, ETW covers the colonial period, which requires naval invasions since the colonies are overseas. It's also a big deal, a big accomplishment for CA's AI designers, because it's also a lot more complex than invading an adjacent neighbor.

[caravel]

Lastly, on naval invasions and why they're such a big deal, ETW covers the colonial period, which requires naval invasions since the colonies are overseas. It's also a big deal, a big accomplishment for CA's AI designers, because it's also a lot more complex than invading an adjacent neighbor.

Diplomacy was also a big deal during the period, more so than in earlier periods. Though we don't see a 3D real time diplomatic engine where you walk your agents into the city and find your way to meet/kill the rival faction leader in person. No TW does not have 3D real time diplomacy/espionage, so does it need 3D real time naval engagments, when there is still so much wrong with the core land battles and campaign map games, that the TW series is supposed to be about? I would say no, it doesn't.

If CA had not spent much of the budget on the naval battles and instead concentrated on doing a good job of building a quality TBS/RTS of the standard TW format they might not have this mess on their hands now. A jack of all trades is usually a master of none.

[AussieGiant]

So while the next patch 1.5, is downloading as I type; (top job there CA)

I have the following thought.

Based on the blog from Mr Simpson, the important lesson is as follows.

Due to the longevity of the franchise there is clearly a very well informed and LARGE player base. Something that is a direct result of the generally high level of quality games produced to date.

Due to this, well informed and large player base, there is clearly a minimum quality threshold for the "retail release" of CA titles.

In this instance I believe CA have realised that, for better or worse, their 1.0 version game was so far below what the, well informed and large player base expected, that they received a harsh set of responses.

The key:

Next time, keep this LARGE and well informed player base in mind, and ensure SEGA "get this", before forcing something out the door. Therefore, release the next game at the equivalent of E:TW 1.3 patch or higher.

To support my point: "If everyone could take a moment to imagine their response to the game if 1.3 was the initial release version...

...there done."

I would expect the criticism to be far less damaging, no?

If you don't make this adjustment, then expect the LARGE informed player base to react in the same fashion and the self fulfilling cycle of feedback, sales and decline will continue.

What you certainly do not want to do, is give an indication that the consumers responses are the reason for the franchise failure.

For better or worse, CA have clearly tens upon thousands of players with more than a few CA titles to compare. Managing expectations is what needs to be the future focus, why, because at the commercial size CA are right now, they can afford two ups, before they are done...finito, kapputt, 'game over'.

Maybe this was one of them...I'm not sure, but it was certainly a "FIRE DRILL" in the first 4 months of the E:TW release, and that is not good for business as we have now read.

Kudos for Mr Simpson's words.

It' bodes well for the moral fortitude and future of this business.

I'll get off the soap box now. **Grin**

[gollum]

Originally posted by Servius1234

This statement has a chronological error. What he should have said (and probably meant to say) is...

"Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people purchased the previous game(s) in the TW series."

You can't spend money making a game that you can only earn after that game is done. I think what he meant to say is the money used to make a new game comes from profits from previous games and/or spec. money from publishers/investors. Thus, if ETW doesn't sell well, CA will have less money to spend on NTW, which may lead to a less-awesome game, which may lead to fewer sales. This is the vicious cycle he talks about.

What i am trying to say is that quality is not a function of resources only. It is a function of scope, of planning of objectives and of resources. If you want a detailed hex grid on the strategy map that has thousands of targets and possible paths and you mount on it an AI that beforehand was treading on the "2d" map of STW/MTW it doesnt take a rocket scientist to guess whats going to happen. CA is overambitious with their games not because, as they'll tell you, they want to make them better, but because they want them to sell more. There is no other explanation why RTW's map was Civilazation-like as were many of the "new" features. Also all the new fanbase that came to TW after RTW was exactly the people the game was designed to appeal to; SP players of mass market RTS games. The original TW fanbase had nothing to do with Civilization or AoE, because STW and MTW had nothing to do with these games.

The statement of Mr Simpson simply goes to show how their whole philosophy, not only of design, but also of development is based around the "more" concept. It has gotten so far now, that they are communicating to the fanbase in order to keep up the sales, because, we are told, they mean more quality. This is an outright lie. Even people who enjoy the newer games agree that the older games were better in terms of quality, and this was clearly not because CA had more resources then but because CA was designing games with the available resources in mind as well as the capacities of the engine and AI and also, crucially, because their fanbase was not so mainstream oriented and quality was essential to it. So the game was more well put together and hence more challenging and the system worked so to make sure that the AI was aware of (most of the) features and options available to the player. CA new that the gamers that picked up STW and MTW were having gameplay and immersivness as priorities and not fancy visuals and tons of micromanagement.

Wether you play it in the latest 3D graphics or in a chess board, a strategy game is a strategy game. Representation is important for clarity and immersion, but ultimately its not were the game is at. When i want to play a first person shooter or a first person adventure or puzzle game, i'll play that. TW is supposed to be about strategy on the battlefield and it makes no difference to that how much i can zoom in and how well things look when zoomed in. Anyone who plays the battles knows that you command better when zoomed out. So all those fancy graphics which i am sure occupy a lot of resources offer little quality in terms of gameplay. So why are all these graphics oriented resources needed? Whats the point of having great 3D sea surface textures and no tack (sailing maneuver against the wind) for sailing ships in the battles? To make the game sell in the mass market, that's why. Nothing to do with "quality". Or "realism". In fact i am pretty certain that CA would make far more interesting games had their budget remained low. They wouldnt be able to count on visuals then to attract people. They would have to make it by interesting and immersive gameplay like they did in the past.

CA started with a brilliant battle engine; the SP campaign was a way to bind the battles and give them purpose, and gradually, for business purposes alone, TW ended up as a AoE/Civilisation/Warcraft/TotalWar/TBTabletop bloated SP hybrid that tries to take players from all these genres/games by offering breadth over depth. This choice of breadth over deapth is responsible for the loss of quality and the loss of direction of TW, as the original concept was watered too much to fit the expectations of players from other genres/games and so break in the mass market. CA as creators did not have the guts to stand by their creation and market it for what it was and not for what the mass market wanted it to be.

For those who like Heavy Metal, CA is the Metallica of PC developers; a company that has strayed so far from its roots and origins, in order to make it in the mainstream, that it cant return to them even if it wanted to.

[Servius]

@ Asai: I agree with you in that land battles are the core of the game and the logical place to start. My point was simply to answer a question posed earlier in the thread about why everyone was making such a big deal about naval invasions, and at least in my opinion, it's a big deal because it shows the CA knows how to make an AI that can execute complex operations.

@ gollum: I agree that there is not a 1:1 relationship between $ and quality. There is a strong relationship between the two to be sure, but there's also the innate quality of ideas of the game designers. No amount of money can make a dumb idea fun to play. I have no idea what kind of development money CA had to work with when they made Shogun, but I'm guessing it wasn't a lot, or at least not a lot relative to what they've had to work with since, so that supports your idea that it's not all driven by money.

I also agree that CA may just have tried to bite off more than they could chew. Mike's blog said they have been "very ambitious", and perhaps too much so. I felt RTW was the best example of reaching beyond your means. The technology and skill existed to make a 3D TW game, but either the programming skill or publisher patience wasn't there to allow the AI programing and other aspects of design to keep pace with the graphical advances. IMO, RTW sucked because the shift to 3D maps and units introduced WAY more variables than the AI could handle intelligently on release, and I'm pretty sure CA moved on to M2TW before they had properly fixed the RTW AI. I think the 1.4 patch represents a major improvement to the AI, which makes me feel that the gap between the AI and the variables it needs to deal with is closing, which is great. That being said, I'm nearly certain I won't buy NTW until ETW's AI is solid. Since NTW will likely just be a reskin of ETW, I don't want to buy it until I know the AI in both games is actually intelligent.