Why on earth is there no real fighting

**hung41584** · 02-23-2005, 02:14

I've heard how people can complain about certain aspects of the game like the ai or bugs, but seriously, all of those things can be compensated for. All the game needs to do is make the campaign a little bit more lengthier and action oriented. I mean all that happens is one major battle that decides the victor and then the losing side gets crushed. Like if you manage to defeat a major army, you can quickly run right into a city and trash(exterminate) it the following turn (or just sneak behind the army and then lay siege and make that army fight you using the main army and reinforcements and then you can take the city right away). Then just use the facilities to retrain your units and your army will be 75%-100% of its original strentgh. Then fight the other enemy large army and that faction is just about toast. Or it could be the other way around and you lose your main army and then you will just lose everything except the lands in italy or wherever. The main point of all this is how the human player spent so long building up his cities, managing them, and then training an army just so the game could be beat in a few turns of fighting. I remember reading about how italy was invaded many times and there was a lot of fighting and fort usage and stuff, but where is that in the game?? I mean fighting with forts is almost useless, there aren't frequent skirmishes(like its almost always one big battle against a huge army, either that or you are messing around with the ai and picking off the smaller armies which is cheap), and there are no "alliances against the greater opponent". The game just seems to end when you take all the cities of an opponent and then you are almost invincible because you are twice as powerful as any faction and no one is there to stop you. The game is totally decided when you manage to have 10 cities because the ai rarely ever has that many cities. Whats the use of playing if all you do is become scared of bleeding the enemy too much that they die and there is no challenge left???

**Evil_Maniac From Mars** · 02-23-2005, 02:28

Yup, its a problem I saw too. Someone (not me) should fix that.

**L`zard** · 02-23-2005, 04:23

[ Whats the use of playing if all you do is become scared of bleeding the enemy too much that they die and there is no challenge left???[/QUOTE]

You've tried it on vh/vh settings?

You've done the same using one of the mods to the game?

My own opinion is that while some aspects of R:TW are disappointing (especially compared to m:tw), I'll still end up buying anything CA wants to put out in this series, eh? Any game that uses up this many hours of my life must be doing something right.

Considering that the modders have just barely got to work on the game, there's still a while to go befor I cash out.

**Locklear** · 02-23-2005, 04:35

I think what you're getting at is the difference between the timescale of building/developing/recruiting vs. the timescale of invading/conquering/battling. I agree that they're completely out of sync in that way, but like you I have no idea of a solution; it's a very old problem.

**Red Harvest** · 02-23-2005, 04:51

I've labored away at the campaign map to strengthen all the starting positions and populations (including rebels.) Almost all faction cities are now at "large town" level with appropriate govt. building. I have selected upgrades to decent infantry barracks in key cities (with large populations) for most factions so that the AI should have a chance of building some representative armies. I added palisade walls to almost all villages that lacked them--at least ones in areas that frequently come under assault in the first 10 years.

My hope is that this will advance the build queue enough to skip the first 10 years of "development" where the player is able to rush the unprepared AI as it denudes its cities of population. If this doesn't work, then I give up.

**hung41584** · 02-23-2005, 05:49

its a really fun game, and i play it on vh/vh. I think the game developers just didn't want to go too far with the features and made it a little more simpler so it would be more attractive to new gamers. At first glance RTW looks like such a cool game and this is really all you need for 90% of the people out there to buy it. I've never played MTW but i did play STW and I've noticed how MTW seems a bit generic(as in "this is just another game") and "different"(as in "too confusing") from an outside perspective. And MTW was such a hit that it wouldn't be smart to ruin a good thing by introducing new features in RTW that might curb sales away. When I was just a newb at this game, I was so addicted to it that every once in a while in my day that I couldn't play it, I remembered how cool the game was. But now that Ive become an expert, its a little bit boring. I just hope they end up designing the expansion with more strategy in mind.

**drone** · 02-23-2005, 17:21

I think some of this stems from the lopsided battle results (which unfortunately points back to the battle AI, speed, and chain-routing). It wouldn't be so bad if the "one major battle" left the victor with only 50% of his/her troops. But when you can destroy an equal stack and lose only 5-10% of yours, it doesn't give the AI any breathing room.

Realistic battlefield attrition needs to be accounted for to solve this. If more troops are lost per battle, resupply logistics becomes a bigger factor to the game. This would drain your cities of population, cost you money, slow down the rush, and give the AI a chance to recover.