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.