Hi there,
since I consider myself as an long time Total War-Gamer (MTW since first day it came out-but never tried STW) I thgought about giving STW a serious try.
For the start, I belong the people, that believe MTW is the best TW-Game, at last considering what I expect from a TW-Game. On the other side, I'm not one of the RTW-hater veterans, since it is a fun game and looks great on my rig.
It's just that MTW delivers a greater amount of immersion (the tense battles, the hate you feel against the pope as an katholic faction, etc.).
There are however quite a couple of people (mainly in this forum), who consider STW superior to MTW and RTW.
Now what I expect from a TW-Game:
Campaign-Map: Clear structure, a lot is possible to see at glimps. Eye candy is nice of course (->RTW), but not so important after all. The AI should be aggresive, but not cheating (especially when some games "simulate" a hard to beat AI by making all AI factions concentrate on the human player). I don't care about having dozens of diplomatic possibilitys (especially if they don't play a major role in the later campaign-its a conquestgame anyway).
Battle-Mode: Balance of course, a adequate AI (smart acting, but not unfair since I can make only one order at a time, the AI can manage all units simultanously).
As you can see MTW meets most (if not all) of the points above.
Now why bothering you with this prologue?
I played STW once (maybe 1,5 years ago) at a friends computer. He had the standart low budges version (no manual :-()with the latest patch.
Everything felt different from MTW (some say that for the controls of RTW, but didn't have comparable problems). So it would need somme time for adjusting. Since I felt that STW has nothing more to offer (but had inferior graphics) than MTW I wasn't interested.
Now the only thing I dislike with MTW: Since I don't have time to play regularly, it's always some coming back and looking to tech trees and looting the map to recognize what I planed to build and do next turn when I stopped playing. This is just because of the vast variety of units and buildings spread over the high number of provinces you own in the later part of a campaign.
I read two things about STW:
1.) It's a little bit more basic and has less units. So making it easier to overlook it by still offering a enjoyable amount of complexitiy.
2.) The Mongol Invasion "patches" the vanilla game that much, that it is easier to manage, mostly because it tweaks a lot of issues in the campaign-map. And there is now sole patch to apply this to the vanilly game (and it's similar to the VI-Add on for MTW for sure; some small changes, but would never play without it any more).
Do you think that the two quotes are correct?
Since I've seen a single WE of the game at ebay (it's very rare in Germany, almost impossible to order at a reasonable price and waiting time-theres only a ton of vanilla-low-budgeds), than I'd love to try it out and fire it up from now to then.
So if anyone on this forum whould like to share his own experiences on this subject, it would be very appreciated
Salute,
Blacknek
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