CA blog from Mike Simpson

[Incongruous]

Ladies and Gentleorgahns, I present to you The Death of A Franchise.

How long does CA think it can continue with this before a new company agments the TW game style into something respectable? All it requires is for Paradox to take an interest, then it's game over.


Note: I am angry at the moment because since "up"grading to 1.5 my game no longer starts, my pc can clearly no longer handle the AMAZING V12 SUPERCAR...

[Elmar Bijlsma]

There's a couple of ghastly admission in the latest blog, but him admitting it goes some way. The copies for friends bit is a bit tough to swallow, true. but hey, nothing personal, right?

Anyway, I think the current state of ETW is reasonable. It has a fair few flaws still, but it's a good place to start afresh. If I read it right, the current engine is going to be with us a while, so it'll slowly get better instead of re-inventing the wheel every second title.
Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty annoyed with the way it went with ETW. But I just don't think the future is all doom and gloom.

[antisocialmunky]

Yeah, it wouldn't have been so bad(actually it would have deserved the praise it got on day 1) if ETW was released in the current state.

If they schedules more Q/A at the end of their development cycle would have been nice. Some sort of ten turn campaign/battle public beta/demo would be nice.

[Monsieur Louris]

HINT: Annual financial turnover is calculated in March. NTW is coming out February. Can you connect the dots? I wonder what would happen if the majority of NTW sales took place around April-May instead of the first two-three weeks following the game's release i.e. after the fiscal year ends...
Panic? Closure? Good thing that I don't have the necessary public opinion 'muscle' to launch a 'delay buying NTW' PR campaign.

[mor-dan]

all i know is that i have never played any of the series with the enjoyment and consistency i did Shogun. i finished the campaign for each playable faction, and each in both religions. Medieval was too long. i would get bored trying to reach my goals. Rome was annoying. the trait system basically wouldn't allow you to have any good generals unless you never left them in a city. Medi2 was more of the same from Medi1 and Rome. with Empire, i have had a bit more interest in the trade possibilities, diplomacies, and tech trees, but it has just been poorly implemented so again it isn't fun, it takes too long, and until 1.4 you didn't have to worry about being attacked on islands or in different theaters except by land.

battle AI is always going to be lacking. it's not a computer chess game. not mention, you can see them almost immediately. if they approach you, you know where they are coming from. the only challenge is if it is wooded and you have to approach them because you don't know exactly where the hidden units are, but you have a general idea sinc ethe idea doesn't really deviate from normal stances.

all in all it just isn't a challenge unless you play other people who are less predictable at first. but since there seem to be no rules for engagement, it's a big ball of cluster nuts.

[Monk]

It seems what we've got here is a failure to communicate. We ask for rationality and logic, CA gives us senseless and high aggression in programming.

I think I would consider myself a hardcore gamer, and I have said repeatedly I would rather have a rational AI that declares war only when it needs to than an AI that is constantly at war.

Not exactly what I want to hear really

Neither is emphasis on AI aggression. I want to see Rationality not Aggression.

Aggression obviously has its place but I want to see minor factions rationally stay at peace with me if I leave them alone (unless they join an anti me alliance) or accept peace when clearly on the losing side, having just had their army smashed & with a big army poised to beseige their capital

You guys are taking the words right out of my mouth. The measure of an AI (for me) isn't just how effectively it can fight you in war, it's how effectively it can preserve its state of existence while achieve goals in opposition of the player. Having the AI believe losing its capital province is "only a flesh wound" and refuse all manner of peace offers (including those that offer the lost capital back) is not good AI.

Mr. Simpson says the AI is only firing on two or three cylinders and has much more potential, but how long does he expect me to wait while he paints the Sistine Chapel? All he's given me so far is a few doodles of stick figures, and quite frankly I'm tired of promises of future greatness.

If 1.5 represents the "final" state of ETW then I'm getting off this crazy train.

[antisocialmunky]

Well, his statement doesn't preclude any sort of serious expansion based improvements and patching of said expansions.

NTW is supposed to add some graphical additions if CA is to believed, hopefully they'll add some AI additions as well. I find it hard that they'll risk their credibility even more with a NTW that has a broken AI considering how important diplomacy was during that period.

[gollum]

Originally posted by antisocialmunky
NTW is supposed to add some graphical additions if CA is to believed

CA can always be believed as far as grahics are concerned.

...hopefully they'll add some AI additions as well

Like they did with RTW, M2TW and ETW... yes, yes i know that it will be the greatest AI ever, better than any strategy game, its just that i have a strange premonition that it wont work on release

I find it hard that they'll risk their credibility even more with a NTW that has a broken AI considering how important diplomacy was during that period.

CA have risked their credibility many times before and seeing the sales that brought them i'd say the risk was worth it.

You can have a good AI without good diplomacy.

The Napoleonic period is a perfect setting for a TW game in that it does not need a deep diplomatic model. The period is closer to a Sengoku Jidai, ruthless domination, setting than in an ETW type of setting that diplomacy should be a large part of the game.

[antisocialmunky]

Alexander's AI was much better than BI's and RTW's so its not unheard of. Kingdoms was... quite meh on the AI front? So really they are 1-1 and MIITW's diploAI has been modded quite well for Stainless Steel and friend.

Also, it took an alliance of everyone three times to finally take out Napoleon and the map was reverted back to the status quo so its quite unlike Sengoku Jidai unless you're playing Napoleon.

Last Point:
I think CA's gotten the fact that the core fans are pissed with their lackluster performance. The next title will probably decide whether a lot of us will buy the next several TWs at first day prices, not just NTW. There are ~25000 people registered on this board. If ~$45(mark up by the store is about $5) of each game goes back to Sega, that is $1.1 million right there over a period of several titles. Of course that's not too much and not everyone on this board will buy a TW game but again, that's not the point. Now add to that game recommendations that we give to other people ("Stay away from TWs, they suck now. Go buy EU4 or Civ5.") and you have abit more.

However, the real numbers will come from the huge amount of the first timers that weren't fans coming into it that felt screwed(6.7 1800+ reviews on metacritic) by ETW's CTDs and poor workmanship? Do you think they'll go "Oh, a new TW game, I'm going to buy it even though its non-refundable due to Steam AND the last 2 didn't run for me for 3 patches"? And their recommendations to others are also factored in. Now that's a bit more than a few pennies we can do.

[gollum]

Originally posted by antisocialmunky
Alexander's AI was much better than BI's and RTW's so its not unheard of.

Much better, being the keyword. Considering how "good" RTW's AI was, i can't say that this amounts to much, imho.

So really they are 1-1 and MIITW's diploAI has been modded quite well for Stainless Steel and friend.

I doubt that RTW and M2TW have so much different AIs - if there is a difference is that M2TW offers the AI parameters in data files - that doesn't make the AI all that much better - just more finetuned if modded. I agree however that this can make up for tremendous difference in the gameplay - MTW's AI also lacks significantly finetuning in vanilla as is M2TW's.

Also, it took an alliance of everyone three times to finally take out Napoleon and the map was reverted back to the status quo so its quite unlike Sengoku Jidai unless you're playing Napoleon.

Actually alliances mattered very much in exactly the same light you mention in Sengoku and they played a tremendously important part. This kind of diplomacy, the opportunistic, temporary, buying of time diplomacy TW always had. And its exactly the kind of alliances that existed during the Napoleonic wars.

[antisocialmunky]

Much better, being the keyword. Considering how "good" RTW's AI was, i can't say that this amounts to much, imho.

RTW's AI wasn't that abysmal. It wasn't totally broken and can do some decently intellegent things. Alexander added naval invasions and naval reinforcement, better diplomacy, troop retraining, and some other things.

I doubt that RTW and M2TW have so much different AIs - if there is a difference is that M2TW offers the AI parameters in data files - that doesn't make the AI all that much better - just more finetuned 9if modded. I agree however that this can make up for treendous difference in the gameplay - MTW's AI also tremendously lacks finetuning in vanilla as is M2TW's.

MTIIW's AI was broken upon arrival and still is.

Actually alliances mattered very much in exactly the same light you mention in Sengoku and they played a tremendously important part. This kind of diplomacy, the opportunistic, temporary, buying of time diplomacy TW always had. And its exactly the kind of alliances that existed during the Napoleonic wars.

Not really. The alliances were actually fairly static. Alliances in the sense of Sengoku Jidai were about defeating your neighbors and divining up the land because its a feudal society and the economics of such a society are driven by land the people living on it. Alliances are temporary throughout the conflict and you may apply game theory to see how the backstabbing game resolves itself.

Now, with the rise of the Nation State and the ideas of solid borders seperating sovereign homogenous groups of people you usually end up with two alliances:

You have an alliance of agressors who want to redraw the borders and you have an alliance of nations threatened by the agressor's attempt to disturb the status quo. The major players stay fairly solid throughout the conflict because of a concordance of interests while smaller players might be rolled over or support the winners. If you look at the alliances of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Coalitions that took Napoleon down, you can see that the major players pretty much stayed the same(Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria with Austria and Russia not included in one apiece).

Now the reason I say that the AI in NTW needs to be tuned up is that the AIs and the player actually need to work together to accoplish the job which is more difficult than making an AI that allies with all the other AIs and throw uncoordinate stacks at the player like ETW currently ends up doing.

Since they've announced that you can play against Napoleon this becomes an issue. You can't have destroying the alliance that will defeat Napoleon. I mean, playing as Napoleon would be fine since its all against him like most TW games but playing against him would require a more rational AI that realizes its not a good idea to screw you over until atleast Napoleon is done with and can support the player. Otherwise, they'll need to over power each individual playable faction so they can match France's massive power during the period.

So bottom line: NTW will need more than paper diplomacy. The AI will need to be able to back up the alliance with action.

[gollum]

Originally posted by antisocialmunky
RTW's AI wasn't that abysmal. It wasn't totally broken and can do some decently intellegent things. Alexander added naval invasions and naval reinforcement, better diplomacy, troop retraining, and some other things.

MTIIW's AI was broken upon arrival and still is.

M2TW's AI was indeed worse than RTW's, but not all that different in effect. Being not abysmal and not totally broken doesn't equal good in my book - however it is a matter of opinion too of course.

Not really. The alliances were actually fairly static. Alliances in the sense of Sengoku Jidai were about defeating your neighbors and divining up the land because its a feudal society and the economics of such a society are driven by land the people living on it. Alliances are temporary throughout the conflict and you may apply game theory to see how the backstabbing game resolves itself.

Backstabbing was no longer possible once cetrain clans became too big. There were alliances that lasted a long time during Sengoku and alliances that were never broken too.

In addition the period lasted far longer than the Napoleonic wars (1.5 centuries approx.). There are many 15 years periods of Sengoku too that alliances were static in much the same way as during the Napoleonic wars.

Society wasn't feudal in the strict 6th to 10th centuries sense - there was a rising merchant class the importance of which was acknowledged and even favored by the Daimyo, as it was clear that a blloming economy meant more men and weapons for their armies. It has been long speculated that if the emerged Shogun had a more "progressive" personality (say Nobunaga) the country could have jumped the Imperialist power bandwagon, modernise and take it to the seas from 1600 onwards. Armies of the period numbered in hundreds of thousands, something that took a few centuries more to happen in Europe.

Now, with the rise of the Nation State and the ideas of solid borders seperating sovereign homogenous groups of people.

Sengoku Jidai clans and their territories were pretty much independent states, in the same line of the German States in Europe - if you consider Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria etc states, so were the Takeda, Hojo and Imagawa.

...you usually end up with two alliances:

You have an alliance of agressors who want to redraw the borders and you have an alliance of nations threatened by the agressor's attempt to disturb the status quo.

The major players stay fairly solid throughout the conflict because of a concordance of interests while smaller players might be rolled over or support the winners. If you look at the alliances of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Coalitions that took Napoleon down, you can see that the major players pretty much stayed the same(Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria with Austria and Russia not included in one apiece).

Not necessarily, just this happened to be the set up in the specific period under discussion. Various factors affect the dynamics of the situation and alliances could have happened, in other ways and set ups. There can also be other incentinves for coming together or falling apart than "wanting to redraw the borders".

Now the reason I say that the AI in NTW needs to be tuned up is that the AIs and the player actually need to work together to accoplish the job which is more difficult than making an AI that allies with all the other AIs and throw uncoordinate stacks at the player like ETW currently ends up doing.

Since they've announced that you can play against Napoleon this becomes an issue. You can't have destroying the alliance that will defeat Napoleon. I mean, playing as Napoleon would be fine since its all against him like most TW games but playing against him would require a more rational AI that realizes its not a good idea to screw you over until atleast Napoleon is done with and can support the player. Otherwise, they'll need to over power each individual playable faction so they can match France's massive power during the period.

So bottom line: NTW will need more than paper diplomacy. The AI will need to be able to back up the alliance with action.

Actually, according to your correct "static" depiction of the situation during the Napoleonic wars the game could dispense of diplomacy altogether, binding the coallition forces in a way that cannot go to war with each other. That would be historically accurate, and perhaps from a certain perspective even good for the gameplay.

[antisocialmunky]

Well what is a 'good' AI to you then? I just want an AI that can play the game rationally and preserve itself while trying to acheive its goals...

Well my 'correct' depiction is limited. Yes things could have panned out differently, but you said this:

Actually alliances mattered very much in exactly the same light you mention in Sengoku and they played a tremendously important part. This kind of diplomacy, the opportunistic, temporary, buying of time diplomacy TW always had. And its exactly the kind of alliances that existed during the Napoleonic wars.

I wouldn't mind some sort of immutable alliance either.

[Fisherking]

I find it hard to believe that they are satisfied with the game if their world beating AI is only firing on 3 cylinders.

Shear aggression doesn’t make the game fun. A clever AI would make it more interesting but we sure haven’t seen anything clever.

The Game hating the player and allies sitting with blocked trade ports for 70 or 80 turns might have hurt the player but it didn’t make for an interesting game.

Factions committing suicide didn’t make the game fun.

A few times in some version or other I had protectorates that tried to make life hell for me. That was interesting.

But they keep taking away the interesting parts and replacing it with more aggression and black knight behavior.

Lots of players give regions to a protectorate. To have one of those start a secret war with agents and actions counter to the protectors interests. Things like DoWs on his trade partners, blockading their ports, interrupting trade lanes, and so on.

Things just seem to get more narrow, restricted, and aggressive. It loses scope. Other than the lack of naval invasions and a touch of inaction at times, the diplomacy and actions of the AI were better in 1.1.

No one wants a passive AI but diplomatic actions should be at the hart of a multifactional game. Reasonable diplomacy is just as important as the battle AI. When it works like it is now it can never be more than half what it should have been.

[Durallan]

I tried making a post earlier but then the internet died so I completely lost it. we don't want aggressive AI, well not stupidly agressive, black knight agressive, we want like fisherking said, rational AI.
This Quote is as a matter of fact one of the quotes in the Empire total war loading screen quotes database:

The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
- Sun Tzu

A good example of this is the AI's Hamfisted approach to battle on the campaign map, it will organise small armies, whereas the player will always try to have a full stack army where it can, and then send those one at a time to attack the player, thus ensuring its continual defeat.

They decide to include this piece of strategic wisdom, yet they cannot even get their own AI's to manage such a simple feat.

Once a Rational AI has figured out where its best chance of success in a war is, then and only then should it act agressively, and if it loses badly, then it should retreat.

Another good quote is that the best Tactical decision is where you have the most to gain, at the lowest cost to you. Going out with guns blazing might be heroic, but retreat is often the most sensible decision.

we want to feel, Ooooh that narsty AI is darn clever! damn them!!

but it just don't feel like that.

Developers shouldn't be afraid to make their AI as smart, devious and annoying as possible, like in some first person shooters, not everyone might be able to handle the normal difficulty straight off the bat, the AI's actions might have to be disadvantaged till you get used to it. it would be refreshing if most people had to start on easy difficulty first just so they can figure out how to beat the AI! (gal civ 2 for me when I first played it, couldn't play it on the 'normal' ai setting where it got no bonus or handicap)

[Kantalla]

Depending on the stage in the game it's fair for the AI to become extremely aggressive toward you. If the player starts expanding too much, and becoming dangerously powerful, then the AI nations should gang up to prevent the impending world domination. Once you have captured enough territory, it should be difficult or impossible to get or maintain peaceful relations, without the benefit of fear.

That said, this should be in a cloak of rationality, becoming a protectorate is superior to being wiped off the map.

There is certainly room for improvement, but I'd prefer to err on the side of over aggressive than over passive AI.

[Fisherking]

Depending on the stage in the game it's fair for the AI to become extremely aggressive toward you. If the player starts expanding too much, and becoming dangerously powerful, then the AI nations should gang up to prevent the impending world domination. Once you have captured enough territory, it should be difficult or impossible to get or maintain peaceful relations, without the benefit of fear.

That said, this should be in a cloak of rationality, becoming a protectorate is superior to being wiped off the map.

There is certainly room for improvement, but I'd prefer to err on the side of over aggressive than over passive AI.

Hi Kantalla

No one is talking about being at that stage of the game. There is nothing at all wrong with that. It should happen.

Instead, what happens is there is some sort of AI god in the campaign that starts a lot of small calamities, like the Pirates block your best trade partners ports. Pricing for all your commodities go into the tank and all your allies go to war with one another, leaving you to break treaties or lose trade partners.

But this is not when you become a mega power, no, it is at almost every stage when you have an economic up-swing. You make another 1000 or so in profit and the little AI god cruses you.

There is no counter except to find new trade partners because expanding usually loses you money in administrative penalties.

There is not much rhyme or reason in most of the diplomacy.

If the AI is so clever it should not need over aggression to compensate. As things stand you would think you were in the Mad Max World where everyone is an enemy. If this is what we expected out of the game it would be different. But it is supposed to have some grounding in history to give you the feel of the age.

This is the Age of Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason. The AI belongs in a Dark Age Epic.

[gollum]

Originally posted by antisocialmunky
I just want an AI that can play the game rationally and preserve itself while trying to acheive its goals...

AIs that actually have a memory and continuous cohesive plans in game time terms are quite complex and very hard to make - this is a fact. As the TW community moved on gradually from a battle centered one to one with a more SP player mentality, it has been naturally asking for a more "reasonable" campaign AI as far as the diplomatic, political and planning layers are concerned. This is very tough to do and it is no doubt to the credit of CA for finally attempting it.

What CA has done wrong though, and the reason i criticise them, is that they have systematically tried to fit a number of SP features that gave the SP game many many more layers of complexity without making alongside the effort to actually atune the AI to them. When they do try, they do it with so unrealistically high goals for the times they have to release (and they know this better than anyone), that they are faced with bugged and mediocre products everytime, in the end.

It would have been way, way better to limit themselves to what can be realistically done and re-distribute their resources that are too visual oriented around the objective of making the game well put together (have good cohesion) without one part of it antagonising the other. So if they have a one cylinder AI, make him deal with one cylinder of features - but no! - he has to deal with ALL the features the designers "thought" after consulting the sales analists, because if not, the games wont sell. the amounts they do now - they wouldn't even break into the mainstream.

The number one reason for their overambition is sales and sales alone. They know that better visuals and more complexity will make the games sell more and they also know that the AI is struggling to keep up with the complexity - but they leave it as it is, because it obviously works! The games sell - the community does not mind sub par products at the end of the day. And when it may doso, Mr Simpson's blog comes to the rescue - a mix of have-a-little faith, some sincerity, some we-did-it-all-for-you and some truths, half truths and outright lies, and problem fixed

Well what is a 'good' AI to you then?

A "good" AI, imo, is one that first and foremost works as intended upon release and is atuned to the complexity and features of the game. It doesnt have to be the most complex code edifice man set his eyes on - it has to be a code edifice that is well atuned to its objectives and gets the job in hand done.

I couldn't care less if the current AI proves excellent three releases later (and even less than that how good CA's coders are, i have paid for a game not for the services of their coders) - i am interested as a player of ETW, not a bonafide long term investor in the future of CA. If they want money for their future products they should ask them from investors or their publishers, not by scolding their current players for criticising a sub-par and hyper-hyped game.

I know for a fact that already from MTW (let alone RTW) the AI is asked to do things that are beyond him - because if they were not he would be aware of them. And by the way he plays, even short term, he is not (aware of them) - everyone in the TW community knows that. So why are these features there? Why can't they design TW games with what they realistically have in hand and build on the basic concepts, strengths and successes of their code step by step? - that is, release after release?

Incidentally, this is how things work out there in the real world where quality is required. If you ask research coders they'll tell you that things are improved step by step on the initial concept - no one attempts leaps all too often because the ability of the code to make predictions may stray too far - thus rending the code unusable. In the case of a game, the equivalent is making the game unplayable- which is exactly what happened with ETW by the looks of it.

Its true that new codes are written when a better theoretical vehicle is presented for modelling the phenomena that need modelling, however, no-one jumps from concept to concept all too often. People, teams and even whole departments specialise in order to get the most out of their efforts.

CA jumps from feature to feature and thus AI concept to AI concept by the looks of it, because sales require additional features and additional features require a better AI to handle them, but so far they have never match the two.

The result is that the game is underwhelming because all that complexity translates as abuse by the player towards the AI; in other words you win by doing things your opponent doesn't even know they exist and so can't do.

This is the so called "overambition", which they dont even regret it we are told, even when it brings frustration to the end users - that is us, the community.

Well i guess, it shouldn't come as a surprise if parts of the community do not regret their decisions not to purchase TW games henceforth then.

[antisocialmunky]

1st Part of Words

That's true and has been the problem with with a lot of games. However I don't think that people are just accepting it nor is Mr. Simpson convincing anyone.

Other Stuff

1) There is no such thing as a real "Research Coder." We design algorithms, not code. "Research Coders" are graduate students who implement stuff for researchers.
2) Methods of improvement usually mean optimization of current paradigms to shifts to other better paradigms for the current problem. That or someone finds an novel way of approaching a problem and blows it out of the water Don Knuth style.

Oh well, we haven't heard from Jack in a while. Perhaps the AI team is slaving away at NTW or we could have just scared him away.

Also, this is something I have always wondered at since MIITW. SEGA is a Japanese company, I thought the Japanese were sticklers for quality and brand image. And yet we still end up with this launch failure and near product failure after the debacle of MIITW and Kingdoms.

If you're reading this SEGA people: Way to break into Western PC Strategic Gaming market, SEGA - all talk and no polish. Lets hope Squeenix doesn't crush you attempts despite your 3 years of head start next year with Supreme Commander II. Also, stop being idiotic with Sonic. Seriously.

[gollum]

However I don't think that people are just accepting it nor is Mr. Simpson convincing anyone.

Maybe not - but eversince all these phenomena started TW got more sales, not less.

1) There is no such thing as a real "Research Coder." We design algorithms, not code. "Research Coders" are graduate students who implement stuff for researchers.

I am not sure you are arguing over substance here - more like for a term technicality, that in essence means little.

Methods of improvement usually mean optimization of current paradigms to shifts to other better paradigms for the current problem. That or someone finds an novel way of approaching a problem and blows it out of the water Don Knuth style.

Optimisation often yes, but not always; you can improve a model through other means too. "Paradigms" can be either theory driven, or technique driven; the first is down to theoreticians and the second usually to mathematicians.

Oh well, we haven't heard from Jack in a while. Perhaps the AI team is slaving away at NTW or we could have just scared him away.

Jack Lusted is a designer and not a coder - last thing he was doing was the unpopular balance stats alterations on the battlemaps, that dont directly link to the AI, particularly the campaign AI.

[antisocialmunky]

Well to be quite honest, its hard for me to understand what's beneath all that flowery language that you did up there so I'm not going go too any further on the AI front.

But last time I heard he was working on both AI and balancing as a designer: http://news.bigdownload.com/2009/02/...inpage_joystiq

I did say he was a coder, I just said the AI team might be working away at improvements for NTW.

[Fisherking]

We haven’t heard from Jack since the end of Aug. when everyone was trashing NTW and swearing never to buy another CA release.

Judging from the unloading on the Simpson Blog, I might hesitate before posting here too. Or maybe they just have some policy in place at the moment.

At any rate NTW is supposed to add content and an upgraded engine to ETW and maybe that is what they are looking at.

But there are enough bugs and glitches in the game as it stands that should be looked at if not fixed and some of the elements that were adding to the experience have gone away or gone to a previous incarnation that was not so good.

Maybe they plan some minor fixes with the Beta Multiplayer release, when ever that is, but hearing something would be nice.

[Shahed]

However overdoing the criticism (For example I think a 67% user score on Metacritic is unfair), has the opposite effect to what is intended. Gamers (and reviewers. retailers, marketeers and publishing execs) will be put off Total War. That could mean fewer sales and less money to spend on adding quality to the games.

Now that's some nerve.

[fenir]

Much more impressed with Mike's Second post.
His statement about not working on the next issue until this one is done, personally i think only a very unreasonable person would expect that.

MIke also touches on the very human essence.
No game should be Polished. It needs to have some flaws, just a few. And it needs to be developed, enough to engross the gamer. Without mass micro management.
That is a hard balance.

Shogun had it. big problems, but it had it. So did Medieval Total War I.
I actually played that a few times this year. Oh the fun. lol love the sarjeants and their Bumble bee shield.
Anyway, much more interesting post. Still probably to late now. But lets see what we get next.

Thank you Mike.


RTW, MTW II are the same engine. CA does the engine for the first game, then a second. Then another engine. So Shogun, MTW .....RTW MTW2.....

Posted by sinan
Now that's some nerve.

Yes, leaves alot to be desired, but we did warn them. good to see you still here.

Sincerely

fenir

[antisocialmunky]

MIke also touches on the very human essence.

No game should be Polished. It needs to have some flaws, just a few. And it needs to be developed, enough to engross the gamer. Without mass micro management.

He has a point that you can't completely polish a product but really? Human essense that it should be flawed? Really?

Polish is a subjective thing but I think that like pornography, we know when we see the difference between it and other things while we actually define the line rigidly.

I've always been of the opinion that its polished if you think you as the designer can't improve it anymore.

And about the AI issue, you should be able to scale its aggressiveness using difficulty level. I mean, really - that's what they are there for.

[Richard Sharpe]

50$ for Napoleon total war is a kick in the pants. Considering that I could not fully use my 50$ purchae until a couple months ago when patch 1.4 came out, there is no way I would even drop 30$ for Napoleon. I don't care if it is the best PC game to ever come out.

No more of my money, however.


I do believe, to be fair, that Empire total war had tremendous potential. And still does. However, still, as of now it is not enjoyable. Especially AI wise.

[invalidopcode]

I think what we have here are two different points of view that are never going to be reconciled.

From CA's point of view...

They are spending large amounts of time and money to update E:TW and keep their customers happy. CA cannot understand why their sacrifice is still getting so much grief.

The game has shipped. People already bought the game at the "full price". Redesigning pieces now will no way get them enough new customers to justify the cost.

The do recognize that "bad press" will hurt future sells, but they are hedging their bets that E:TW is now "good enough" to dodge the harshest criticism and *not* prevent you from buying the next TW game.


From the customers point of view...

We all expected that as time went on, the strategy and tactics part of the TW series would continual improve. We expected the gameplay to get better. We expected less bugs and issues since CA are experienced at creating this genre of games.

What happened in our eyes [rightfully so] was that CA totally dropped the ball and released a beta product that was not ready for prime time. It had game stopping bugs. They did not deliver on promised goods (e.g. MP). The strategy and tactics actually got worse. And the overall gameplay is worse than the other TW games. The only thing that did improve was the eye candy.

We think we are going out of our way by giving CA the time to redress their bad initial release. The community cannot understand why CA is not reciprocating and fixing their "broken" game. To us, CA appears to be just "polishing a turd" and not fixing the meaningful things.

Most of us are happy that they tried to add new features like the naval battles. Unfortunately the actual implementation cannot decided whether it should be a naval simulation (e.g. sailing physics implemented) or whether it should be a dumbed down pretty "boat battle" and is mostly ignored (e.g. autoresolved anyways).



As they say in the business world, "Reputation is everything. Guard it with your life." I think that with E:TW, all that goodwill and reputation that the TotalWar franchise had going for it is lost. They really need to do something special to change our minds that N:TW will not be "business as usual" for CA.



YMMV,
InvalidOpcode

[AussieGiant]

As they say in the business world, "Reputation is everything. Guard it with your life." I think that with E:TW, all that goodwill and reputation that the TotalWar franchise had going for it is lost. They really need to do something special to change our minds that N:TW will not be "business as usual" for CA.



YMMV,
InvalidOpcode

That is a 'telling' statement and something CA need to "get", and it really doesn't matter if SEGA doesn't get it, because CA will fold if their reputation takes another hammering, because sales figures will begin to tumble.

My thought;

I wonder if Simpson and his other mate who run the show have made enough money to fold and move on.

That's something for us to consider.

[al Roumi]

I continue to be amazed by this blog. The complete lack of awareness or empathy with customers is astounding.

Man I hope he's a good programmer because these are an appaling things to say to your customers.

I had 6 copies of Empire: Total War sat on my shelf intended for close gamer friends that I didn’t send out because I was too embarrassed about the flaws. Old friends are the harshest critics.

He knew it wasn't good enough for his friends, but it was still sold to their customers???

Well they’ve gone out now [the freebie games for his friends]. I think the game now meets my personal unreasonably high quality threshold - not just good but great. Hopefully my friends will agree.

This could almost be a continuation of the tone from the 1st blog where consumers who disliked or felt let down by the product were insinuated as being anti CA and the continuation of the TW series.


This blog continues to make CA look completely out of touch IMO.

[Trapped in Samsara]

Hi

It doesn't seem to have occurred to you chaps that CA-SEGA might actually WANT to lose the hardcore veteran TW players/followers 'cos you are disproportionately the ones who are (in CA_SEGA's eyes) tarnishing the good name of their product by your criticisms, observations and campaigning.

If they could only ditch you and retain the fanboys and eyecandy addicts they'd carry on coining it.

Mr Simpson's blog makes perfect sense within that logical construct - he's hoping you will all go away. I cannot otherwise comprehend how/why he could have made (and been allowed to make) the statements/admissions he has.

Let's face it: we are an inconvenient truth.

Regards
Victor