State of the Game

[easytarget]

Anyways Im not understanding the anger over this. No mods seem to have been really broken other than a couple of renaming fixes and it allows the people who do want to play MP to play. Can you really blame the devs for putting the base game above add-ons? I mean personally if I was a game dev I would want to make sure the base game is all in working order first, then work with the modders to help them get their mods up and running.

I'm annoyed because what I had worked fine, the patch addresses issues I don't have, creates ones I didn't have before. From my perspective I don't quite see why you'd find my annoyance difficult to grasp.

I had a product till today that worked perfectly, now I don't. And I've gained nothing by the change other than the aggravation of being forced to sort out how to get myself back where I was before the patch. i.e where things worked

[easytarget]

I'll live btw, and I'll stop hijacking this thread by going back on topic: YES, agent spam drives me crazy in R2.

[edyzmedieval]

But the thing is, unless you're a big imperium in R2TW, there's no agent spam at least from your part. And I rarely experienced, if any, agent spam from the AI.

[Hooahguy]

Oh I understand your frustration, I just don't get why people are mad at CA for fixing what became a broken part of their game considering that as a game studio their #1 priority is to ensure a working base product.

And back to topic, I feel that agents is the one place where the AI works very well in, considering that you need a literal army of agents to ensure safe passage of your forces in mid-late game.

[easytarget]

Works very well in what sense? In turning the game into spy vs spy? There is no point where I should have more than 50 agents mid-game just because I wasted the money flipping the endless spam sent my way by the AI.

I'm not saying stop agents, I'm saying make the number more rational as it was in Shogun 2, where they made a difference but didn't get ridiculous, this is Total War, spies are supposed to be an aspect of the game, not hijack it.

[easytarget]

Ok, could not resist, click on MTW2 and shocker, i get the following little box of joy: Medieval II suffered a fatal error and will now exit.

[Hooahguy]

Works very well in what sense? In turning the game into spy vs spy? There is no point where I should have more than 50 agents mid-game just because I wasted the money flipping the endless spam sent my way by the AI.

I'm not saying stop agents, I'm saying make the number more rational as it was in Shogun 2, where they made a difference but didn't get ridiculous, this is Total War, spies are supposed to be an aspect of the game, not hijack it.

It works very well as in you cant simply ignore that aspect of the game. Now, if you manage your spies well you can easily hold off the agent spam from doing too much damage. In my Suebi campaign against Rome they had a lot of spies and I managed to keep them off my back.

And shame about M2TW, which mods are you running?

[Sp4]

The agent spam does become a little ridiculous, especially in the mid game, when you have to use your agents alongside your armies. It kind of restricts you to a single 'theater' as well because you only have 2-3 of each, half of which will probably be somewhere completely different, doing something entirely different as well.

Thankfully, in the late game, it is not so important because until the civil war, there tends to be no AI faction capable of outright murdering even a single of your stacks if they don't bring 3-4 of their own.

[easytarget]

It works very well as in you cant simply ignore that aspect of the game. Now, if you manage your spies well you can easily hold off the agent spam from doing too much damage. In my Suebi campaign against Rome they had a lot of spies and I managed to keep them off my back.

And shame about M2TW, which mods are you running?

I consider the money I have to spend to deal with the spam impedes the gameplay sufficiently that it hampers the central purpose of a Total War game. I can deal with it, the point remains, it could be easily tweaked such that it was still a factor, only made to be proportionate to the importance it should have as one of many factors you must weigh in managing your campaign. This isn't black and white, I've no idea why this always turns into "it works fine or it doesn't work fine". Well, other than the internet is one big giant pool of stupidity when it comes to the resolution of differing opinions and nearly always resolves down to a simplification of binary results.

As for MTW2 mods, I had retrofit and SS running on MTW2, there's no option I guess but to go through the hassle of changing directory names when I want to play them. Sigh. The real shocker though, EB1 runs fine on R1 (which was also patched today). Go figure, and thanks for small miracles!

[Hooahguy]

Fair enough. While I do think that sometimes its absurd, overall its not a deal-breaker for me. I tend to recruit a few spies anyways because of the poison garrison ability which is fantastic.

Also, if you didnt notice already, theres a new beta patch out that supposedly really helps the siege AI. Havent tried it myself but people seem to like it.

[Slaists]

Ok, could not resist, click on MTW2 and shocker, i get the following little box of joy: Medieval II suffered a fatal error and will now exit.

This could be because their multi-player server went off-line. I think, the launcher has a link to it.

They also moved Rome 1 and MTW 2 multi-player to steam today: that might explain the RTW1 update.

[Sp4]

I can't really play the game anymore. The improved stuttering the patch notes mention really is an improvement for me.. as in there is more of it now, to the point where it happens in every battle that involves more than 10 units lol.

[Hooahguy]

Wow that stinks, in a quick custom battle I had a FPS increase.

[Sp4]

It is not an actual decrease in FPS, just the animation stuttering.

[Hooahguy]

That's rather unfortunate.

[ReluctantSamurai]

These are the times I'd prefer the choice not to go along with CA and Steam on an update be presented. Some of us were just fine with the way things were when it came to playing decade old games.

Yet another reason for me to wait for the bargain bin. I hate it when ET phones home without your consent......

There is no point where I should have more than 50 agents mid-game just because I wasted the money flipping the endless spam sent my way by the AI

I'm not saying stop agents, I'm saying make the number more rational as it was in Shogun 2, where they made a difference but didn't get ridiculous, this is Total War, spies are supposed to be an aspect of the game, not hijack it.

[Hooahguy]

One of the big problems is that while there are agent limits, its not an overall agent limit, its a limit for each type. So if you have a limit of 3 of each type, thats still 9 total agents and that is a lot. I think it should be an overall limit, so if you want 3 spies or 2 spies and a champion thats fine, but 9 total agents is kinda crazy.

That or severely limit their capabilities. Like maybe only spies can assassinate and poison wells, champions can only duel and train your troops, and dignitaries can only change culture and concert enemy agents. Right now they can do a bunch of different things that when you combine them all together its crazy, but when limited its a nice feature.

[Myth]

Well there were no agent limitations in Rome 1 and Med 2 but they worked just fine.

[easytarget]

MTW2 can get pretty spammy w/ inquisitors and merchants swarming all over the place. Thing is dealing with them in MTW2 doesn't cost you money, just the time to groom the agents to handle them, same in Shogun 2. I can handle that.

In Rome 2 I was spending my entire treasury on dealing with this issue sometimes (not all the time), again, I'm not making this out to be a black and white issue. What I'm suggesting is I should never have 3 or 4x my imperium level limit of agents because the AI is sending an endless stream of them at me I have to kill or convert.

Set a limit to each AI in the campaign, you should no more have an unlimited supply of agent talent than you do armies, everyone complained about single city 3-4 stack armies and that got addressed, but say anything about the same single city joke of a nation sending a dozen agents at you a year and that's just fine. Really? Well how about a small dose of reality is all I'm suggesting. There should be a limit to this resource, make it two dozen. Make it the max you should get when you've maxed imperium times 2. The point is, make it something.

[Hooahguy]

Well there were no agent limitations in Rome 1 and Med 2 but they worked just fine.

The difference as I recall is that they couldnt do as much. They could assassinate but as I recall they couldnt stop armies in their tracks like they can in R2.

[Slaists]

CA must have done something to tune down the agent spam with the latest patches. I remember having 2-3 times my limit around patch 7 or so, but not with patch 13 (14 still needs to be played). I completed a whole Barcid (they tend to have many enemies due to a global diplo-malus so theoretically should be more subject to agent spam) legendary campaign within patch 13 span and very rarely I had more than 1-2 agents above my limit. Never during this campaign I really encountered the agent spam that I witnessed in the earlier versions.

I can't really play the game anymore. The improved stuttering the patch notes mention really is an improvement for me.. as in there is more of it now, to the point where it happens in every battle that involves more than 10 units lol.

This must be system related. you should report your issue and specs to the CA. I played numerous large battles last night: no stuttering. I have to test it on a major siege battle though. A friend of mine tested on a gaming laptop: no issues there. Another friend is having issues though.

[Sp4]

This must be system related. you should report your issue and specs to the CA. I played numerous large battles last night: no stuttering. I have to test it on a major siege battle though. A friend of mine tested on a gaming laptop: no issues there. Another friend is having issues though.

It's the same thing as before, just worse.

[Myth]

I'm playing a Legendary game as Macedon. I gotta say it has me hooked so far. I have to camp for several turns to bide my time, gather enough troops and conquer a 1 province faction which spams troops. The MCD start with a unit of Companion Cav so that coupled with the general makes them awesome versus skirmisher heavy factions.

I also have to make two 4 settlement reqcruitment provinces, one for infantry and one for cav. So I plan to get the one with Pulpudeva (which encompasses modern day Bulgaria, where I live, so I'll just call it Bulgaria ) and Brundisium for cav and infantry and then Hellas for archers.

[edyzmedieval]

Technically, Pella should have been the cavalry province - one feature I really wish it existed in R2TW, province specialties.

[Sp4]

You make province specialities yourself. I kind of like it.

[Hooahguy]

So here is a great video on siege AI in patch 14 and also mentions why some people experience "skipping" in battles, which I recall some (I think it was Sp4 notably) had issues with.

[Sp4]

It's gotten less bad with the non beta patch again. For the last two days, I've been enjoying my first co op campaign with a friend, which is pretty fun although I think starting as Egypt and Seleucids may have been a bit over the top.

[Myth]

I had to restart several times with my Macedon Legendary campaign. The early game is a challenge now, it's not a steamroll at all. And your diplomatic decisions influence the actual war on the map. If I ignore the east, Athens and Sparta crush Epirus and stay friends. If I make peace with Tylis (which gives me negative rep) then I have to attack Epirus first whcih gives me more negative rep. But Epirus has Larissa and Apolonia and both are essential for trade because of their resources.

Sparta turned on Athens and churned out huge stacks. I crushed one army with merks and made the bad decision to leave 1 general alone. That general recruited EVEN MORE MERCS and took Sparta back. Overall, those Veteran Hoplites and Thureus Spears that you can hire in Hellas are stronger than early game armies. I'm still to gauge how to have a flawless start. But I love how my troops say "For Makedon" and are generally custom voiced, instead of the bland "YARRRRRRRRRR" all the barbarians have.

Macedon is quickly going up the rankings for me as one of my top 3 factions.

[Slaists]

Yeah, those single general armies are dangerous now more than before... Had a situation last weekend where I took Carthagena from Nova Carthago and 2 turns later proceeded to wipe them off the (visible map) by taking the neighboring regions as well. I wondered why the "faction destroyed" message did not pop up.

The next turn I found out; Nova Carthago had a 1 general hiding in Averaci territory nearby. This bugger popped back into Carthagena with an army full of mercs and easily took the settlement back.

[Sp4]

I kind of hate the sudden merc armies out of nowhere. I always think it's just there to annoy you. If the AI had all that cash and used it for mercs during the actual war with the player, it could have won then and would not have had to lose its provinces.