Until the patch is released, I am playing MTW!

[Turbo]

I am really soured on RTW given the broken features, idiotic AI, and bugs. The claims that the game is still playable is really laughable when you consider that archers can beat heavy cavalry in melee. I wish that I could be optimistic with the patch, but I think the speculation is overhyped and a lot of people are going to be disappointed. Well, thats my opinion anyway.

I have rediscovered MTW and I can tell you that the MTW battle AI is vastly superior to RTW. It isn't perfect, but MTW is by a more finished product than RTW. With Mods such as BKB's Supermod, MTW was a far more moddable and enjoyable game than RTW.

My hope is that Slitherine's Legion 2 will salvage the Rome period and will be historically accurate and more challenging than RTW.

[Barbarossa82]

I'm sure everyone is very much looking forward to the patch, and yes, there are more and worse problems with RTW than we might hope for and expect in a game coming from the same people that brought us STW and MTW.
But I really can't agree that the game is "unplayable" I haven't seen archers defeat heavy cav in melee unless they hugely outnumber them. The AI is a real pain, especially suicide generals, but it doesn't take too much to get around it (leave your family members out of reinforcing stacks). I am disappointed with the bugs and problems, but it's not going to stop me playing and enjoying what is ultimately a very cool game.

Since CA have not rushed out the patch, and have delayed it to fix the missile/melee bug, I think we can at least hope that it will be quite comprehensive. At least let's not write it off before it gets here!

[Lonewarrior]

that's what I been doing. BTW is january 26, close to the end fo january

[Blitz]

Everybody just keep whining about the AI problem and all da 5 |-| ! T, i mean the CA people have been doing their best to make a better patch, so you guys should be patient. I mean you should respect someone else work. Imagine if you do something bad and people just keep on laughing and saying you "5 |_| c |

[Colovion]

RTW ruins MTW for me.

There are some things that I just love about RTW which when I try to play MTW I sorely miss; this goes both ways. RTW has shown me facets which could be possible, but steals away Total War's soul. After playing numerous campaigns with vanilla, partial mods and full mods I realized that the game actually has less depth than MTW did. Most of that depth-loss comes from the way that the arcade-theme makes for a game that doesn't feel authentic. Sure, many things about RTW are better - but there's so many things that could have been better and since they had it almost right with MTW then it seemed like a no brainer.

As many people have said before:

If MTW had RTW's engine, I would love it.

[parrrrk]

RTW ruins MTW for me.

Most of that depth-loss comes from the way that the arcade-theme makes for a game that doesn't feel authentic.

Colovion, I'm curious what are you talking about. Because I've never played MTW before, so I'm just curious what is so arcade-themed in RTW that makes this game unauthentic.

[Khorak]

I vastly prefer the strategic level of Rome: Total War, it's a truly massive and excellent leap. But I prefer the Medieval battles. Damn it's infuriating.

[Colovion]

Colovion, I'm curious what are you talking about. Because I've never played MTW before, so I'm just curious what is so arcade-themed in RTW that makes this game unauthentic.

To name a few of the most obvious:

Green arrows

Meatgrinder killing

Screeching Women, Head hurlers...

I'll stop there

[The Stranger]

maybe its your computer my game only cdt's once a month and i play it every day and it is very playable it is a game not real life the grafics are good and the 3d map is a real improvement the new units are cool and lots of other stuff and yes the game isnt perfect and if you want one go timetravel and get killed in a real battle in 400 bc

[Slaists]

i think, i'm going back to playing tic-tac-toe!

[Colovion]

maybe its your computer my game only cdt's once a month and i play it every day and it is very playable it is a game not real life the grafics are good and the 3d map is a real improvement the new units are cool and lots of other stuff and yes the game isnt perfect and if you want one go timetravel and get killed in a real battle in 400 bc

How much did you play MTW? Mine has only CTD once - that's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm talking about gameplay, not fancy dressing on a soulless product.

[The Stranger]

How much did you play MTW? Mine has only CTD once - that's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm talking about gameplay, not fancy dressing on a soulless product.

played it a lot but after a while its was just selfcreated misions for me
my tacticts whiped out every army even whent outnumbered 1:4
(ofcourse count in my passion for a perfect army)
but as example it way to easy just conquer the best trade countries put in every region an strong army upgrade everything and maintain your navy and whoila an aproximate 100,000 fl a year

[Old Celt]

Turbo,

I think you should go back to something else. I think you are part of a very vocal but also very small minority of gamers whose expectations have little acquaintance with reality. No software with thousands of lines of code is perfect. You may think that programming AI to high standards is a walk in the park, but let me assure you, it is not. RTW has gotten terrific reviews. Most strategy gamers love it and are blown away by the gaming experience. You don't like it. Okay, fine. As the routing Gauls would say: "Head for the hills."

Oh and here's a newsflash for you: CTDs might be caused by your beloved machine and it's evil OS rather than the game software. It seems like every user lives in a bubble and thinks everyone sees the same things they do. Machines vary in quality, OS, conflicting software installed, etc. etc. Don't you think if CTDs were an everyday occurence, the game wouldn't have such acclaim? But I digress. You could probably dust off the NES and play Dragon Warrior if you want a really stable platform.

[Akka]

My biggest regrets about RTW is how they had many things that worked pretty well in MTW, and that work much worse in RTW (the friendly fire is one of the most blatant).
Also, I've find that the AI, the diplomacy, the economy and the public order, were potentially great, but were somehow bad implemented, and this have a vicious tantalous effect (seeing the potential while enduring the flaws).

But the game is still great, the graphics are perhaps not all the game, but they still account for a huge part of the immersion, and many things are simply great.
Additionnally, I don't remember ever crashing to desktop more than once or twice since I've the game (which means : from the very, very beginning).

I await the patch with impatience, and though I don't think it will solve everything, I hope it will fix enough so that the game lives more up to its potential.

[Turbo]

Turbo,

I think you should go back to something else. I think you are part of a very vocal but also very small minority of gamers whose expectations have little acquaintance with reality. No software with thousands of lines of code is perfect. You may think that programming AI to high standards is a walk in the park, but let me assure you, it is not. RTW has gotten terrific reviews. Most strategy gamers love it and are blown away by the gaming experience. You don't like it. Okay, fine. As the routing Gauls would say: "Head for the hills."

Oh and here's a newsflash for you: CTDs might be caused by your beloved machine and it's evil OS rather than the game software. It seems like every user lives in a bubble and thinks everyone sees the same things they do. Machines vary in quality, OS, conflicting software installed, etc. etc. Don't you think if CTDs were an everyday occurence, the game wouldn't have such acclaim? But I digress. You could probably dust off the NES and play Dragon Warrior if you want a really stable platform.

Here is a news flash for you. I never said my PC had CTD's. Why don't you try re-reading my post then respond in an intelligent manner. I have never had any CTD's. My issue is with the broken features.

Don't attack someone because you disagree with what they say. Explain why you disagree and what your position is. Read over the other posts and you will see what I mean. The ORG is a place for discussion.

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

Well RTW is a masterpiece and far superior than MTW in anything, BUT except errors and bugs (damn) which makes everyone very unhappy. I'm not playing RTW for over a month, waiting for the patch (God and CA please let it be good!), meanwhile enjoying again MTW. Yes sir! Although graphics of MTW is no match for RTW, I find MTW quite interesting and what is most - challenging (that's the most important thing considering strategy games' levels-always to have a potential to improve playing skills, otherwise it gets boring, e.g like RTW). So I think matters will get great when the patch is released and RTW will be the most enjoyable strategy game!

[Old Celt]

There is alot of depth in RTW. Lots of people cannot even manage the Egyptian cities without cheating and using extermination on their own people. City management is challenging. Winning battles without using 15 units of uber troops can be challenging. Taking a minor faction and allowing enough time for the Romans and Egypt to grow into big threats is certainly challenging. Try winning without bribing any invaders. All of these can lead to situations that just might improve your gameplay.

[Byzantine Prince]

I enjoyed MTW a lot but RTW has amazing graphics. I mean there's no comparison. If I didn't know better I'de say that the games were made 10 years apart. But they are actually 2 years in difference. Also RTW is not as slow as one would expect for a game with it's graphics. It's actually amazing.

Those little bugs will be fixed eventually trust me. There's no way it'll last. Plus there is still the exapnsion to look forward to.

[Oaty]

As far as CTD..... well for the first few months I do'nt think I had any, then all of the sudden RTW crashed every so often, and after just recently deleting 1 GIG of spyware......... I can almost laugh

Anyways maybe some STD treatments would'nt hurt your computer

[screwtype]

Oaty, what programs did you use which found 1 gig of spyware on your PC? Just curious.

[screwtype]

Damn it I am sick and tired of fanboys like Old Celt telling us we expect too much, that we have no right to complain, and that we should get down on our knees and grovel with thanks for every little crumb the industry tosses our way.

If games development was left up to people like you, we'd all still be playing Pong on our TV sets.

I played STW and loved it. I still play and enjoy it sometimes. I also bought MTW and didn't like it at all. It didn't add anything but size to the first game, and I'm not a believer in the idea of "bigger is better". Shogun was just the right size, MTW was a bloated monster.

In addition, MTW's campaign AI sucked (building nothing but huge peasant armies) and the battle engine was clearly more sluggish than the crisp engine at the heart of STW. The lame attempt to create a challenge by having faction resurgences with uber-armies was the last straw for me.

Now I know that puts me at odds with a lot of people who love MTW but for me, STW is still by far the best game in the series, and it saddens me to see how the franchise has progressively gone backwards from that first title.

As for RTW, well I think the system has potential but it has a long way to go. The campaign AI in particular needs sharpening up - I haven't found the battle AI to be that bad, apart from suicidal generals. It's the bugs more than anything that drove me away from playing it.

But I think the greatest irony with RTW is that it was designed to be a fabulous piece of eye-candy and I think it's actually less attractive than the previous games! To me it looks very unrealistic, with the flat, largely featureless battle maps, the absurd skyscraper tall trees, the buildings that seem to be all out of proportion, and which appear to change their proportions as you move around them, and above all, those blindingly bright military units whose clothing looks backlit with neon! I mean, the whole thing looks kind of cartoony to me, and it does nothing for the immersion factor. Perhaps if they had sprays of blood when soldiers got killed - but that would hurt sales, wouldn't it? So the battlefield is not only cartoony, but antiseptic.

Not that I don't appreciate the huge effort that's gone into designing this 3D world, or the sometimes spectacular animations of the soldiers - but man, I wish they'd tone down the colours on those soldiers a bit!

Oh, while on the subject of graphics, where are the fabulous weather effects that they had in STW, those beautiful, evocative mists, the hiss of steady rain, or the spectacular bolts of lightning which light up the whole battlefield and the mighty crash of thunder which makes you JUMP in your seat?

And then there are the finicky controls, which in almost every respect are worse than in the previous games. Whatever happened to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? I mean, I could go on, but it's all been said before.

I still think the system has great potential and I look forward to refinements in future releases. I'm hoping the patch irons out those play-destroying bugs and brings the fun factor back. But please, don't tell me I don't have a right to be disappointed, or to express my opinion just because it doesn't happens to coincide with yours!

[Old Celt]

Turbo,

Being critical of someone else is not "an attack". You were simply flat out whining that you don't like the game and whining in print to let the whole world know about it. I made perfectly valid points about why what you said was whining. You're right, this is a place for discussion. If you can't stand the heat, STAY OUT OF THE KITCHEN!

The vast majority of gamers give RTW a score of 9/10. You complain that a bug allows archers to melee your cavalry to death. Well, did you know that cavalry is not designed to fight at a stand still? You can adjust your tactics to workaround the issue.

Your expectations for the game are unrealistically high. Corporations don't make money building free patches for software. Because of that fact, you can expect them to do the minimum of fixes possible to shut up their harshest (sane) critics, and not one bit more. The development team will be assigned to potentially moneymaking projects at the earliest possible moment, and probably already have finished this project.

I apologize for directing the remarks about the CTDs at you. I was responding to someone else on another forum, and somehow cut and pasted the wrong content from Notepad into the post in your thread. My mistake.

[MacBeth]

The vast vast majority of 'gamers' have just progressed from final fantasy and love the new RTW eye candy.

For those of us who have followed the series since STW we now have lots of gimmicks and less gameplay.

[Old Celt]

The vast vast majority of 'gamers' have just progressed from final fantasy and love the new RTW eye candy.

For those of us who have followed the series since STW we now have lots of gimmicks and less gameplay.

That's quite vague. Perhaps you could expand on that a bit? Do you think RTW is just unplayable because of its flaws, or what?

[Blitz]

I totally agree with Old Celt, i mean in your topic heading it says "Until the patch is released, I am playing MTW!". This already shows that you are gonna whine and say R:TW is not good and blah blah blah. It is not a discussion topic. A discussion topic will be different
i.e. Which one is better to guard the city and mantain garrison, cheap infantry or expensive infantry or others?

Thats what we call discussion. So if you say "Until the patch is released, I am playing MTW!" what are we going to discussed?

We are not going to discuss why you come out with that kind of conclusion and blah blah, so you pratically has lose the argument with Old Celt and your topic is just for people to share the feelings with you not discussing

No Hard Feelings

[Red Harvest]

Old Celt,

Take a look at the poll in the entrance hall for best TW series game. RTW is third in a field of three, pulling only 21% of the vote. Turbo is far from being in the minority on this. He is comfortably in the majority. Vanilla RTW doesn't have the staying power that vanilla MTW/STW had. I think/hope its faults can be addressed. It looks like it has potential to be the best of all three, or else I would have gone back to MTW already.

I wouldn't be playing RTW if I wasn't trying to mod it enough to understand the engine. I get hooked into troubleshooting, and RTW is ripe for troubleshooting. I've never modded stats in anything the way I've HAD to in RTW to get some satisfaction from it. I didn't do this to STW, MI, MTW, or VI.

[therother]

The Shogun has posted preliminary details about the forthcoming patch here. Looks pretty comprehensive, and addresses many issues. Hopefully it'll win over more TW veterans.

[Turbo]

Turbo,

Being critical of someone else is not "an attack". You were simply flat out whining that you don't like the game and whining in print to let the whole world know about it. I made perfectly valid points about why what you said was whining. You're right, this is a place for discussion. If you can't stand the heat, STAY OUT OF THE KITCHEN!

The vast majority of gamers give RTW a score of 9/10. You complain that a bug allows archers to melee your cavalry to death. Well, did you know that cavalry is not designed to fight at a stand still? You can adjust your tactics to workaround the issue.

Your expectations for the game are unrealistically high. Corporations don't make money building free patches for software. Because of that fact, you can expect them to do the minimum of fixes possible to shut up their harshest (sane) critics, and not one bit more. The development team will be assigned to potentially moneymaking projects at the earliest possible moment, and probably already have finished this project.

I apologize for directing the remarks about the CTDs at you. I was responding to someone else on another forum, and somehow cut and pasted the wrong content from Notepad into the post in your thread. My mistake.

Interesting how critizing RTW brings out the "whinning" accusation and the childish insults. Seriously, grow up! If you are so tired of hearing "whinning" then why are you in this thread? Sounds like you came in to whine about whinners.

[Old Celt]

Turbo,

Are you just a glutton for punishment or what? You will find no case in any of my remarks of me insulting you. If you choose to take what I say as an insult, that's your problem.

Did it occur to you that since this is a forum on RTW, that by and large the people here would really like the game? So if you don't like it, should you be surprised when people who do tell you to go poop in your hat?

You are the one who needs to show some maturity. Your post was trolling and now you don't like that someone called you on it. Too bad. If you have anything to add to this debate that actually involves game play, I'd like to hear it. If you don't, then I think you should be true to your word, stop posting here and go play MTW to console yourself.

[Turbo]

Turbo,

Are you just a glutton for punishment or what? You will find no case in any of my remarks of me insulting you. If you choose to take what I say as an insult, that's your problem.

Did it occur to you that since this is a forum on RTW, that by and large the people here would really like the game? So if you don't like it, should you be surprised when people who do tell you to go poop in your hat?

You are the one who needs to show some maturity. Your post was trolling and now you don't like that someone called you on it. Too bad. If you have anything to add to this debate that actually involves game play, I'd like to hear it. If you don't, then I think you should be true to your word, stop posting here and go play MTW to console yourself.

Whatever dude. This isn't worth my time replying to.