disapointed with rtr, you are my last hope

[Teleklos Archelaou]

"very sorry, but EB's policy is: history before balancing."

That's the most blatantly idiotic policy anyone involved in the gaming industry could possibly have. I mean I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but to toss balancing out the window in favor of achieving some contrived semblance of historical accuracy using a game engine so limited it can't even understand the concept of an alliance is...well, idiotic.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for historical accuracy whenever possible, I just don't think that it should precendence over gameplay and general "fun". If it's pants to play, then I don't think very many people are going to care how accurate their Xzilinthapolonian Ikrithinios Guard are.

Though I'm sure we all appreciate you stating that our "policy" is the "most blatantly idiotic policy" (in your second post no less! ), the really great thing is that we are not *in* the gaming industry. We are basically making this mod for free, voluntarily, ourselves. You might find it interesting to know that a few mod members are quite adamant (not myself though) that we really should only make it for ourselves, but I'm sure lots of other people will enjoy it too when it is released.

[Ninefingers]

Well, my hat's off to you folks then. I've never before seen a mod that quite honestly doesn't even pretend to pander to the masses of casual gamers (who will arguably constitute its largest user base). If you really had a discussion about whether or not to even release the mod to the public...well, all I can say is you've got some seriously dedicated staff members and I wish you nothing but the best with this admittedly gargantuan project.

Apologies for the hasty conclusion about your policy, it just strikes me as...odd. As a veteran of strategy games, I've always found balance - be it between factions/sides or units or whatever - to be the penultimate criteria of a game's potential success. If it isn't properly balanced, it's going to be crap: that's more or less the ethos I've viewed strategy games with.

So I'm sure you can imagine why someone like myself would be relatively disappointed in what is an otherwise brilliant title like R:TW. It provides all the necessary tools to create the single greatest piece of strategy gaming in gaming history, and falls short because of some really, really elementary mistakes.

Hence I hound the mod community in search of the proverbial One. The mod that would finally deliver what the R:TW campaign and battle engines are capable of producing - a refined, intelligent and balanced strategy game. Perhaps I'll just have to wait a while longer - I'd just hoped that EB would be it, since the rest of it looks so gosh darn pretty!

Anyway. Good luck with the project, I'll look forward to trying it out upon release and posting an inordinate amount of balance suggestions on your forums.

[Mongoose]

I think you might want to check this mod:https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=50355


Probably not as big or realistic as EB. But as it is an MP mod, it should be balanced fairly well........


At least we can agree on one thing; vanilla RTW is c**p

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Anyway. Good luck with the project, I'll look forward to trying it out upon release and posting an inordinate amount of balance suggestions on your forums.

You might be surprised when you finally get it though 9. If you get the open beta, you will certainly find things that still need balancing, and I'm sure that we would seriously love to hear back on suggestions and problem areas. You're right on the money I think with what I think would be the best course of action - just hang on till we get it out and give it a try. We could all be wrong of course, but we really do think that folks will enjoy it when they finally get it (though we all know that there is no way in the world it will please everyone--some just won't like certain aspects and some probably just won't like us no matter what we do).

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I think you might want to check this mod:https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=50355


Probably not as big or realistic as EB. But as it is an MP mod, it should be balanced fairly well........

And created by an EB member too of course!

[Simetrical]

As a veteran of strategy games, I've always found balance - be it between factions/sides or units or whatever - to be the penultimate criteria of a game's potential success.

Then what're the ultimate criteria?

-Simetrical

[BobTheTerrible]

besides, "flaming war dogs"...

Flaming War Dogs? I'm sorry but there's no need to exaggerate. It just peeves me off when the realism crowd starts going on about "fantasy" units. Fantasy units would be trolls and ogres. The units in vanilla RTW are not fantasy units, if anything, most of the units have been used in history, just not as regular units as the game seems to portray. I never saw any complaining back in the M:TW days about those arab units that could hide any place, name began with an H... can't remember the name.

Look, my point is, you guys exaggerate way too much. Even with the unit names, when you say CA might as well have called them "spear guys" etc. Well in M:TW there were units called "spearmen" or "swordsmen." (if memory serves right) Yet there were not complaints then about unit's names?

I'm looking forward to EB very much, as much as anyone in this forum. It's just very annoying to go through the threads and have people refer to CA with a particular distaste and then hyperbolizing the the units in vanilla. Why did you say flaming war dogs? There is no such unit in vanilla.

[jerby]

well...wiht fanatsy units: chosen swordsmen might be a good example...
and the ENTIRE egyptian army is a:fanatsy or b: used 1000 (jndeed:thousand)before the time period...

it's not all fantasy...but most of their unit descprictions are very vague , like: well trained men, raised from villages to hack away at teh enemy.
the Desert axemen, form vanilla. are complete fiction...
the archers used by rome before the marian reforms..fantasy
Urban cohorts: no military unit
armoured hoplites: very, very vague...
schreeching women?
druids?

[Mongoose]

Look, my point is, you guys exaggerate way too much. Even with the unit names, when you say CA might as well have called them "spear guys" etc. Well in M:TW there were units called "spearmen" or "swordsmen." (if memory serves right) Yet there were not complaints then about unit's names?

ROFL
This is the best part of your post.

And you don't?! i've heard people say "If RTW was what you wanted it to be, you would just watch stuff happen and not be able to interact at all"



The best fantasy units are flaming pigs and wardogs, so i combined them. It was just an example for the love of god.............

[jerby]

ja screeching warhounds, or screeching druids, screeching axemen..those are pretty sweet two

[Ninefingers]

Then what're the ultimate criteria?

-Simetrical

I'm ashamed to admit: graphics. I just can't stand all those games with "great gameplay!" that look like garbage. When home PCs have enough power to run small cities, games should utilize their potential to the fullest.

Which, sadly, is why I haven't been able to so much as reinstall M:TW since playing R:TW, despite its infinitely superior balance.

Edit: And I just realized I'd completely borked my usage of the word "penultimate". I'd been under the impression it meant "next to first", when it actually means "next to last". English is however my fourth language so I hope I'm forgiven for this linguistic transgression.

[khelvan]

We in EB have never said "history over gameplay," or any other such contrary position. We have always felt that this is not a zero sum game, that accuracy and gameplay go hand in hand.

Look at how successful and fun M:TW proved to be. The factions were not balanced, and part of the fun (for me, at least) was playing one of the factions who were described as "Hard" or "Challenging" in the faction description, rather than one of the "Easy" ones.

As a long-time strategy and wargamer, I would simply shake my head if someone made a game about WWII and made the production capabilities, unit capabilities, economy, and so on, of America, Russia, Germany, and the rest all the same, for the sake of "balance." Balance of capabilities has no place in any game that purports to depict a period of history. Balance comes, in successful versions of these games, through differing victory conditions for the various players. If the victory conditions were the same, certain sides would most certainly win.

No one complains when even a beer & pretzels game like Axis & Allies has imbalanced units and faction capabilities. The Total War series can only lose (and has lost) in terms of gameplay by moving in this direction.

[jerby]

well. by balancing could one mean two things:
- different factions: same strength. all factions differ. but are equally strong. so someone might state the seleucids are overpowered at teh start: they get 2x as many provinces as sweboz
-all units are equally strong. in a head to head battle. the outcome of winning is 50% chance. (in this game without phalanxes) in this case seleucids are overpowered, since they have better armor (i believe i read that somewhere)
-or: nothing is extremely overpowered. units that were historically better, are better..wich is EB's take on balancing, afaik

am i wrong?

[Ninefingers]

Actually by balance I don't mean any sort of homogenous armies or factions - not at all. Strengths and weaknesses are the bread and butter of strategy games, and I whole-heartedly welcome variety in both factions and "army lists". True purists will of course claim that a real strategist will defeat an identical army with superior tactics, but I'm not quite that hardcore and prefer a little variety. I hear it's the spice of life.

What I mean by balance is a general sanity in game design. Take for instance, the Roman legions in R:TW. Sure they may have been historically superior to their contemporaries, but to make them so absurdly good that a trained monkey could become Imperator by 255 B.C. is a bit much. In R:TR, mercenaries are so good and plentiful (and cheap!) that whatever pacification of campaign pace they may have accomplished with their admittedly ingenious AoR system is made redundant as it's no problem at all to recruit full stacks of experienced mercs on the fly.

Then there are little things: is one unit so good that it can dominate the battlefield alone, making the rest of that faction's units obsolete? Does any faction begin with so much territory and/or money (a la Egypt in R:TW) that it will inevitably dominate without player intervention?

These types of issues are sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, but the disturbing thing is that very few designers actually take the time to consider their implications. It's one of the reasons why I swear by Blizzard's excellent RTS-games - they do balance right, and they certainly don't do it by making every faction/side identical.

Those are my concerns. One of your team already addressed the issue of faction dominance by citing the -ai results, and I'm relieved to hear you're conducting such tests. With such a dedicated staff and community anticipating your mod, I'm sure such issues will be hammered out in due time.

[khelvan]

The only "balancing" we do is to ensure that given an overall look at two factions' unit lists, no one faction will consistently win due to the 20-unit limit in battles. That is, unit costs may give a faction a great advantage on the campaign map, allowing them to field hordes of cheap units, but since there are artificial limitations on army sizes in battle we need to be aware of then imposing an all but insurmountable obstacle for factions that have lesser, cheaper units as their main forces.

Units will have historical strengths and weaknesses, as best we can determine them, as will army compositions, faction capabilities and economies, and so on.

We will be playing with custom battle costs to make multiplayer fun and challenging.

Edit: Ninefingers, everything we do is geared with an eye toward the game system limitations. Our goal is not to make anything absurdly powerful at all, but to have the capabilities of the faction/unit in context. We have a system for unit stats, for instance - we give ratings based on capabilities of armor and weapons, and set values to add for things like morale based on unit composition, and set bonuses for things like chemicals or noted fanatacism. The unit stats system will be impartial in this respect. Romans were not supermen, and will not be depicted this way.

Having one uber-unit in battle, or one faction that has certain capabilities that allow it to run rampant over the whole map each and every game would not be, in our opinion, historically accurate. It is our opinion that the factions that dominated the world had advantages, yes, but did so through exploiting their advantages. Good leaders, the outcomes of certain battles, weather, and many things contributed to history; in our mod you can change history. Some factions will be powerful, but not so powerful that they always win, and a good leader will change the world.

I don't consider that balance, so perhaps this is simply a semantic misunderstanding.

[GoreBag]

It's one of the reasons why I swear by Blizzard's excellent RTS-games - they do balance right, and they certainly don't do it by making every faction/side identical.

What about Warcraft II?

[jerby]

blizzard's diabloII is well balanced..at teh start.

[GoreBag]

blizzard's diabloII is well balanced..at teh start.

Ah, but the Diablo series aren't RTS games.

[Simetrical]

What about Warcraft II?

Well, the spells were different. And so were the missions. And I could've sworn that there was a five-point difference between the attack ratings of Elven Destroyers and Troll Destroyers. But pretty much, yeah . . .

-Simetrical

[GoreBag]

Well, the spells were different. And so were the missions. And I could've sworn that there was a five-point difference between the attack ratings of Elven Destroyers and Troll Destroyers. But pretty much, yeah . . .

-Simetrical

You mean the Human Destroyers? Nah, they were identical too. The Elven Rangers did have an upgrade for +3 damage, though, and the Berserker had a regeneration upgrade. The spells were different..but very similar.

[QwertyMIDX]

Warcraft II was a joke, most of the units had the exact same stats just different models. Ogres and Knights anyone? The way the Ogres ran to be the same speed as mounted Knights was hilarious.

[Big_John]

actually, wc2 wasn't balanced at all because of bloodlust. online, anyone playing human v orc was only doing so to see if they were skilled enough to break the orc player before they got ogre magi. it was a way to challenge yourself, but you had no illusions.

paladins v ogre magi was the only imbalance, iirc (there might have been a smaller one with the other casters), but it was a huge one that essentially broke the balance of the whole game.

i had to get that off my chest.

[Chester]

I had no complaints with WC2 back in the day. I loved that game. I didn't have internet connection yet so all I did was play against the cpu.

[caesar44]

How can historical accuracy could harm the gameplay ? EB moders wants a game based on history , you don't like it - don't play it ! I prefer as much accuracy as they can achieve , why ? I love history and strategy games .
Ah yes , give the greeks some aircrafts to balance the game...
If the romans had the best army in those days , let it be ! it is more challenging to beat them .

[GoreBag]

actually, wc2 wasn't balanced at all because of bloodlust. online, anyone playing human v orc was only doing so to see if they were skilled enough to break the orc player before they got ogre magi. it was a way to challenge yourself, but you had no illusions.

paladins v ogre magi was the only imbalance, iirc (there might have been a smaller one with the other casters), but it was a huge one that essentially broke the balance of the whole game.

i had to get that off my chest.

By the time you have ogre magi, Bloodlust didn't matter. Numbers did. I played a game with a friend of mine the other day - any ogre who was given bloodlust was almost immediately slain, sometimes having landed a single blow first, sometimes without an electric punch. The Runes were far more effective.

[Chester]

WC3 has good balance. The Bliz team is always hard at work to ensure balance between races.

The only aspect of WC3 I hate is the mirco managment of all the damn units. My fingers are not quick enough to make multiple commands, even with hot keys. The strategy in WC3 is also a bit retarded. No hitting from the side, having 10 units attack 1 etc... always bugged me.

Nice thing about WC2 was it took little managment.

[Simetrical]

Although the group management was a nuisance. Only nine units per grouping = teh suxxorz.

You mean the Human Destroyers?

No, Elven Destroyers, which fight on the human side. The elves joined up with Azeroth, Lordaeron, and the rest to repel the Horde, after all, just as the orcs brought allies with them from Draenor and picked up more in Azeroth. Not everyone in the Alliance was human, you racist.

-Simetrical

[GoreBag]

Although the group management was a nuisance. Only nine units per grouping = teh suxxorz.
No, Elven Destroyers, which fight on the human side. The elves joined up with Azeroth, Lordaeron, and the rest to repel the Horde, after all, just as the orcs brought allies with them from Draenor and picked up more in Azeroth. Not everyone in the Alliance was human, you racist.

-Simetrical

The same Elven Destroyer that has the English guy who is the same as the footman tell you not to rock the boat before he ralphs over the side?

Okay, fine. I hate elves. You've exposed me.

The grouping wasn't so bad once you assign numbers to the groups. Even better, tell groups 2 through 0 each to follow a different member of group 1. Your whole army is on the move and guaranteed to jam up hopelessly within seconds.

[Bavor]

Just a few points.

1. To all you people who say "RTR ignores barbarians", that is partially. True. Up to now, Barbs have been left out(the Illyrians are half-barbs). However, in 7.0 they are planning to focus more on barbs.

2. I hope either RTR or EB adds the Mauryans. They easily encompased the Indus plain, as well as were one of the most powerful empires of their times, and controlled alot of land.



Even if their ENTIRE faction isn't in the mod, I still think they need to be represented. I personally would have added them instead of Bactria/Baktria, seeing how they were much more influential.

[Steppe Merc]

It is unfair and ahistorical to add just half a faction. When you think of how much more powerful the Turks could have been in MTW, or Parthians in vanilla...