PC Gamer TWR2 Preview Online

[Monk]

That political system sounds really interesting. Like taking the family-faction system from RTW and putting everyone in the same faction from the start. That sounds really cool!

“The new system remembers facts,” is how lead campaign designer Janos Gaspar explains it to me. “Deeds will be remembered, and the hatred towards the player will build. As you’re bumping into new powers, the friends of your enemies are getting hostile. A power vacuum can form around you, new empires can appear.”

Sounds a bit like an expansion on what we saw in Shogun 2. I also like the sound of a MUCH softer 'split' event. Realm Divide was fun the first time through but afterwards it quickly became tedious. The news that opposition will still build in response to a powerful player empire but will do so in less hard terms is a good one for me.

“Sometimes we’ve had people internally say that alliance behaviour is broken – ‘my ally attacked me!’” lead designer James Russell says. “Sometimes, though, that’s because the AI has decided that friendship doesn’t fit with its plans.”

Sounds like a bit sketchy to me but it depends on their implementation I guess, and how many tools are there for the player to help anticipate the betrayal. In shogun 2, each clan had a trust value that told you how likely they were to respect their deals with you. I always found it was a bit counter-intuitive to have that displayed right up front as it naturally made me want to simply destroy every clan I saw who was untrustworthy.

I think a really nice feature to have would be if the value built over time and was affected by events/diplomatic actions. You could ask trading partners what they know about other factions and if they could be trusted, or even more interesting, lie to/be lied to the AI about the same. Depending on your relation to the faction you ask, the AI might tell you the truth or lie, and it's up to you as the player to interpret their words. Over time the trust meter is built by observed behavior and diplomatic acts and adjusts accordingly on your diplomatic screen, leading you to have to choose what you want to do. It sets up a situation where you could be on peaceful terms with a faction, but you've heard from multiple sources they cannot be trusted. Do you take the chance and attack, or leave them be? Afterall, can you really trust those Parthians to be honest after you just fought a war with them?

Wishful thinking I guess.

“Each individual man is actually looking around him,” Ferguson explains. “He can see only what he can see. As a result of that you get a much more claustrophobic effect when you’re in a forest situation – and much less time to react.”

That sounds... interesting! I really like the sound of each individual trooper having their own line of sight. I just hope it doesnt bone the AI's decision making