Who's still playing?

[gollum]

One of the problems with MTW is that after having played most factions for a while, openings become very predictable. Partly its because of the player being able to read the AI, partly because of the mercenaries that allow the player to force an outcome and partly because certain regions are just too good and so much hinges on them.

The reason the AI os predictable in the strategy portion is because the AI personalities are the same for a kingdom throughout. In STW, every new ruler gets a different AI personality. This means that his faction will play differently upon him taking over the clan. This was possible and worked because changing of the Lord of a clan was a relatively rare event due to teh time scale - STW takes place within roughly 85 years with 4 turns per year, which means that you get 2 or 3 different rulers (Daimyos) at the very most usually.

In MTW on the other hand, rulers change every 25 to 40 years on average as the game covers roughly 370 years with 1 turn per year, and rulers produce progeny that is not "set" to follow historical personalities as in STW, hence it may yield several rulers and the passing of power is a common event - in a full campaign there can be litterally tens of rulers.

In that respect, MTW factions have a faction-centric AI personality, while in STW the AI personalities are person-centric. In MTW this is implausible as the very few years that are available to each ruler would have probably messed AI builds if the personality is changed too often.

On the other hand, although MTW kingdoms benefit by having the same organisation plan, they are more predictable in their actions over time.

In my view, it would have been better to keep the local character of the game with seasonal turns and economics and personal focus (focus on king/sultan/emperor); release many smaller campaigns in various theaters as add-ons; the Crusades, the Reconquista, teh Teutonic Wars, the Hundred Years War, Italian City state wars, etc etc There were very many possibiities without the need to bloat the game in scope and size and every campaign may have had only 2 to 4 factions but well done and well balanced against each other. Campaigns would have more character, better historical plausibility and better balance and so challenge as a result.

But TW went the other way : ) oh well...