Compare all you Medieval TW fans, the old campaign map with the new campaign map.
Which, do you think is easier to use? Why the old one of course: it was much simpler.
Now pause, and think of the effect this has had on your game. Now you spend much more time than you used on the main map, trying to get everything in your favour, which doesnt really work:
- Traits appear randomly,
- Management has a marginal (and temporary) effect,
- Moving armies around, without action. Usually the action occurs around cities, leading to lots of siege battles. 2 siege battles for every 1 land battle, whereas in medieval it was more like 1 for 1.
- Ships take ages
- Spies have marginal effects
- Total war isnt about diplomacy, so why make it so in-depth. Who wanted this?
What are the advantages of all this?
- you can pick the battle spot, based on the 'real map'.
- command stars, influence, retainers and such give you extra stuff to do, sometimes rewarding, sometimes frustrating.
In conclusion, the good does not outweigh the bad for the campaign map. Add to this the difficulties the AI has with the new degrees of 3 dimensional freedom & path finding, as well as an attempt at a new hierarchy of AI decisions, and you can begin to see why old TW fans do not particularly like Rome TW...
(complaining about interface is a side effect. Rome looks stunning.)
If you know forgiveness, you can enjoy both games (campaign map and battle map) anew. Newbies to TW find this easier.
CA has willingly and knowingly sinned against Sid Meier's advice for game designer, and im paraphrasing (the interview was in 1991, when Sid became famouse with Civilization 1): "If you're going to make an action game, make a good action game. If you're making a strategy game, make a good strategy game.
Trying to make a game that offers both, but excels at neither, can be a good game, but never an all-time great."
Comments welcome.
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