Can It Get any Worse? Yes It Can.

[TheMrBlues1]

Greetings
Having been in the gaming trenches since the beginning of the Total War fiasco, I have always lived in the hope that someday someway they would get it right.
The AI and tactics in this series has reached the pinnacle of stupidity. a child with only a batch o toy soldiers could run a battle better than the AI of NTW.

I have been playing war games since the beginning with a game called UMS the War College all of the shooter games ie Medal of Honor Battlefield and the like, but have never been so disappointed as I have been with last two Empire games.

My finest example of this is a cavalry charge. When deployed and charging a 30 mph a horse may flich but the chances are he is going to crash in to the front line of his objective and die doing it. The cavalry charge in NTW runs up to the line and stops and looks at it. The only way to get a real charge is to set the line to a point far beyond the line of attack to enable the unit to at least attempt to pass through it.

Artillery or lack of command. Set the units to NOT ire at will Give them a specific target to bombard. Don't wait for it it's not going to happen the units pick out the target they want to shoot and have at it.

Somebody please learn how to program the correct things in to the AI

[KukriKhan]

Welcome to the Org

So c'mon, no need to sugar-coat things... how do you really feel?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

...

My finest example of this is a cavalry charge. When deployed and charging a 30 mph a horse may flich but the chances are he is going to crash in to the front line of his objective and die doing it. The cavalry charge in NTW runs up to the line and stops and looks at it. The only way to get a real charge is to set the line to a point far beyond the line of attack to enable the unit to at least attempt to pass through it.

While I would be the first to concur that unmodded versions lack something -- especially on the tactical map -- I think you may be overly harsh with the above vignette.

According to Keagan (Face of Battle, 1976, Viking Press, pp. 153-159), what you describe really is a realistic result when cavalry of the day faced any line/square that remained steady. Charges breaking into a steady square were so rare as to be worthy of a lot of commentary -- and occurred as like as not because a horse got killed at just the right moment to prevent it from stopping or shying away.

Welcome to the .org.

[Shibumi]

Welcome to the Org :)

After the disappointment of M2TW I decided not to get the new titles untill I heard some good stuff about it. Have had some of my staff test it though, and they were not overly impressed. Thus I can not really comment on ETW or NTW.

I still have my hopes up about STW2 though, nevermind stupid AI, just make the maps and units work and we can at least do multiplayer. Would be enough for me :)

[Sebastian Seth]

Stupid AI seems to be standard for TW series nowdays. Not only in battles but in diplomacy and campaing too. For that I dont have too much hopes in S2TW.

As for the cavarly, artillery and unit responcivenes in general I would hope they consentraided a bit.

[A Nerd]

I think you are being too harsh. Sure the game isn't perfect, but I still think that it has it good points as well. People will buy STW2 and hopefully they have some good things to say, they will indeed have bad things to say too but the good might outweigh the bad. Aspects of perfection might be overlooked or have not enough time devoted to them, but all in all I think at least a small amount of care will go into the game and hopefully that will reveal itself in something worth spending the time and money on.

I have had my dissapointments and criticisms of all the TW games, but have never felt I was buying a total piece of poop that lacked the enjoyment of reading the back of a cereal box! No, I am not a fanboy, just an optimist.

[Skullheadhq]

I have had my dissapointments and criticisms of all the TW games, but have never felt I was buying a total piece of poop that lacked the enjoyment of reading the back of a cereal box! No, I am not a fanboy, just an optimist.

I had that with Empire: Total War.

[A Nerd]

I had that with Empire: Total War.

Ha, ha, that was funny! :) Empire had its flaws and the gunpowder age is not as entertaining as melee engagements, but it must get at least a 'C' for effort!

[Spartiate]

I have played all the titles now and find myself constantly returning to both STW and MTW! These were the pinacles of the series imho as anything that came thereafter has felt like a game made to appeal to the broader masses e.g more gimmics and features at the expense of the AI! Having said that i still enjoy the series but just not as much as it didnt improve the AI with each successive title!

[Skullheadhq]

Ha, ha, that was funny! :) Empire had its flaws and the gunpowder age is not as entertaining as melee engagements, but it must get at least a 'C' for effort!

It were just two lines of soldiers firing at eachother from a distance with few strategy whatasoever, uninstalled it within 2 hours.

[Marcus Caelius]

the tumbleweeds now blow through what used to be a thriving community. It is my opinion that the fanbase that was so spectacularly earned over the first three titles has been thrown away precisely by CA's unwillingness to try and improve AI for battle, campaign and diplomacy. Especially the last two.

Maybe that hint of panic in CAs announcements regarding stw2 is a reflection of their awareness of this - but i expect they will try and solve the problem with a revolution in graphics instead.

i can't really speak about ntw - i lost interest after etw. ETW jumped the shark with an AI that was simply indescribable. Pity, as the concepts behind the game would have made a great mp campaign -but any chance of this was terminated by an mp battle structure that must have been devised by their most retarded team members.

i started the series at the beginning with STW and ended, sadly, at ETW

[caravel]

The series may indeed be doomed, indeed everything has it's day, but instead of declining, TW seems to be gaining a larger fanbase and selling more than ever. I'm pretty sure every title has outsold it's predecessor to date?

The main thing to accept is that the fanbase for these games has radically altered. Back in around 2000-2002 the first two games attracted those whose focus was on commanding the, impressive for the time, tactical real time battles. The risk map was there only to string these battles together and give them some significance - it worked.

In the original Shogun the risk map was not really a "game" in itself - it was used to position your armies, train units/agents and contruct building. The only economics were setting the tax rate, upgrading farms and building trading posts and ports, while balancing this off against your troop support costs, etc. MTW expanded on this concept by introducing fleet and goods based trading and per province taxation. MTW was also the first time we saw v&vs (later called "traits") and the generals' loyalty, acumen, piety and dread stats, but all in all MTW was the same game as Shogun with a bit more scope for "roleplay" and increased campaign micromanagement.

STW's type of game attracted a certain type of player, MTW diluted that somewhat and also attracted a wider fanbase due to the period/setting and increase in features at the campaign level. At the same time it upset many STW players because unit rosters were imbalanced and bloated.

I think RTW was the final tipping of the scales towards a more campaign map oriented TW franchise. Despite the obvious effort put into the unit models in RTW, the battles were poor in comparison to those in the first two titles for too many reasons to list. Rosters were also bloated and unbalanced as in MTW.

Players that were used to the risk campaign map were put off by the new movement points style map. Speaking for myself - I don't want to micromanage a campaign map, I want a simple non labour intensive campaign map that organises itself. An army stack that looks like a chess piece and can be dropped into a province in one move, suits me better than an animated giant that has to be walked over terrain from province A to province B - that's not "the game", for me the battles are the game and I don't have the time to spend micromanaging every aspect. RTW and M2TW also had a lot of pointless battles and never-ending sieges, rather than the decisive battles of STW/MTW. This is the direction the series has been heading in since RTW, which is why I passed on that last two games and will probably pass on S2TW as well.

Players clearly want different things out of TW games - and this is what sets them apart from other games. Some focus on the campaign map and want a high level of historical accuracy, others prefer highly tactical battles and just basic historical representation. I doubt there are many other game franchises where such a conflict of interests between the fans, old and new, exists.

For example I think it's hard for some of the historian types to understand why us non historian types want our Yari Cavalry faster than our Cavalry Archers, with no historical basis. It's these same people that also bring up the old "well it was all sieges back then" argument when someone complains about the excessive number of sieges in the newer games.

[Gaiseric]

I agree with what you all have to say. I have been playing TW games since STW up to ETW. I am not a fan of the 3D campaign map and the AI on some of the newer TW games cannot be helped with mods. I did like the new economy and global scope of ETW, but this did not make up for the fact that the game lacked any AI and the battles, both naval and land, were tedious. I do not plan to buy anymore TW games, but instead will go back to the older TW games that were the best.

What I really cant understand is, given the sales of the TW franchise, it does not have any competitors that offer a good strategy map combined with a good 3D battle engine. There are many games that may excel in one of these areas, but very few can combine both and be successful. I hope that either CA will get its act together, or another game company will come along and take its place. In the meantime I will be playing STW and MTW + Mods, which may have dated graphics, but offer superior gameplay.

[Wytchfynder]

I'm agreeing with the Craravel and Gaiseric guys. People want and expect different things from TW games so it's a never ending comparison and up and downs type of situation, but most people seem disappointed with the etw and ntw games and I'm one of them. Too many reasons to list here really.