Originally Posted by Puzz3D:
Historical accuracy and realism both decined in RTW relative to the previous games.
Are you saying that seroisly?
STW, from a view of 1 Japanese history afficianado, is absurd, and I find it even insulting.
Super Ninjas, Geisha Terminators, stupid movies, wrong and wrong units.
STW, as a game, is superb but not so superb in the reallism department.
Let me tell you, IMO CA never cared much about reallism and historical accuracy.
Even in MTW, there was some obvious mistakes, although not bad as STW and RTW.
I really don't understand why peoples suddenly started screaming about historical inaccuracy with the release of RTW.
Maybe because there is much more people intrested in Ancient Rome then Medieval Japan.
Originally Posted by KSEG:
Are you saying that seroisly?
STW, from a view of 1 Japanese history afficianado, is absurd, and I find it even insulting.
Super Ninjas, Geisha Terminators, stupid movies, wrong and wrong units.
STW, as a game, is superb but not so superb in the reallism department.
Let me tell you, CA never cared much about reallism and historical accuracy.
Even in MTW, there was some obvious mistakes, although not bad as STW and RTW.
Not to mention units of Nodachi and with the introduction of the MI expansion it became even more absurd. I became bored ages ago with all the 'I hate RTW' threads and the constant bleating. Still, it's good to see this opportunity wasn't missed
.......Orda
Hurin_Rules 18:55 19/08/05
As I said, Its not the inaccuracies I mind--its trying to justify them by poor historical arguments. There is no evidence carroballistae were fired on the move. If you're speculating/inventing then just admit it, and I'm fine.
MTW had some inaccuracies, to be sure-- but it didn't have flaming pigs or screaming women. RTW does mark an important (and, to me and many others, an unwelcome) change in direction.
antisocialmunky 03:20 20/08/05
Originally Posted by Hurin_Rules:
As I said, Its not the inaccuracies I mind--its trying to justify them by poor historical arguments. There is no evidence carroballistae were fired on the move. If you're speculating/inventing then just admit it, and I'm fine.
I think, until someone gets so tired of this stupid back and forth on the part of both parties and build a freaking wagon ballista, this point is MOOT. It's not like it's impossible to fire while moving even over bumpy terran at a big target. Until someone can find an actual test or performs one, I think it's stupid to argue over this point. Just because someone said it was used this way or that, does not mean it was just used that way. So, please, it's getting old.
Originally Posted by Puzz3D:
Exploding rocks, flying horses, 5 second incineration by fire arrows, phalanx that can't stop cavalry, men being thrown 100 feet or more through the air, unrealistically fast movement, wrong weapon use by hoplites, chariots faster than cavalry, lack of downhill bonus, overly effective artillery, cavalry dominated battles, non-existant weather effects, only two speeds for infantry, only two speeds for cavalry, ranged units where either all men shoot or none shoot, unit stacking without combat penalty, factions from outside the time frame, suicide generals, excessive delay to movement orders, pikes ineffective on an upslope, ranged units that always charge into melee in cities, machine gun firing rates for city towers, all men in a unit incur fighting fatigue even if only a few are actually fighting, routers run toward the enemy on bridges, running infantry through a phalanx unit is more effective and attacking it.
I wouldn't group engine problems and gameplay changes with intentionally problems. If you don't like the engine. Why don't you learn how to program and make your own game.
Then we'll ridicule you on all the engine problems because
obviously all programmers are perfect and if something happens it's because everything was put into the engine intentionally.
Have you ever designed a game ground up? Control your passion would you?
Do you think if you yell at them and blame them for everything, that they'll be inclined to help you? It's not like they want people disliking the game.
Productivity 03:34 20/08/05
Originally Posted by antisocialmunky:
I wouldn't group engine problems and gameplay changes with intentionally problems. If you don't like the engine. Why don't you learn how to program and make your own game.
Ah hold up here - this argument is oft used but it's based upon bad logic. I through my purchase have paid CA to program the engine. I don't like the engine so I complain. CA has delivered to me a product which at best barely falls within tolerances so I complain. If you pay someone to do something and they do a sloppy job do you complain, simply because you couldn't do better?
Originally Posted by antisocialmunky:
Then we'll ridicule you on all the engine problems because obviously all programmers are perfect and if something happens it's because everything was put into the engine intentionally.
Ah no again, nobody is ridiculing them for not getting it right the first time. People ridicule them for not accepting the errors in the engine (how long/how much effort did it take before the save/load was accepted as a bug?), and for not correcting proven issues with the engine.
Originally Posted by antisocialmunky:
Have you ever designed a game ground up? Control your passion would you?
No I haven't - on the otherhand I've never designed a house from the ground up. I pay people to do that, like I pay CA to design a game from the ground up. That doesn't stop me from pointing out that none of the doors open in said house.
Originally Posted by antisocialmunky:
Do you think if you yell at them and blame them for everything, that they'll be inclined to help you? It's not like they want people disliking the game.
Well I'd be happy to be civil with them if they started actually treating us like customers, and not like their slaves - to me it seems clear that somehow it has got into their mind that we WILL buy a Total War game regardless - I'm not going to play by those rules, games get bought upon their quality.
Barbarossa82 12:18 20/08/05
It's great to see people discussing history with such dedication and passion. The only thing that disturbs me about this thread, and many others, is the level of implied certainty which is carried with many historical assertions.
History is not a particularly blind or speculative field of study when compared to other disciplines, indeed it is awash with evidence. The problem lies in the fact that the aggregate effect of this evidence is conclusive about very few things, and some of it is flat contradictory. This will come as no surprise to anyone who is interested enough to contribute to a discussion like this, but I have noticed a new and worrying tendency to upgrade what is really conjecture (sometimes very well-supported, very reasonable, very plausible conjecture) into hard fact.
This, I think, is based on two problems with the way that history has been presented, problems which are much less apparent in an academic setting but which inevitably emerge when the subject is popularised. And by popularised I don't just mean turned into trashy TV, I mean turned into the kind of history books which you and I go and buy or read, however serious and in-depth they may be. Both problems stem from a desire to arrive at a firm conclusion about what happened, not an unreasonable desire one might think but one which needs to be implemented in the right way.
The first issue is the apparent disappearance of critical analysis of primary sources. At university, I - and I'm sure many of you - was taught never to uncritically accept what any primary source says. That doesn't mean you reject its usefulness, it merely means that one must take into account the writer's background, his or her "agenda" or "bias" with respect to the content, and perhaps most importantly his or her capacity to have actually known what he or she was talking about. Sometimes, the manner in which the content is presented is more historically significant than the content itself. Many of the heated debates whch have sprung up on these boards over time spring, I think, from a tendency to regard contemporary sources as holy writ, such that the citation of a classical author's account of a certain event/person/object is regareded not merely as another interesting piece of evidence to add to the deductive process, but as conclusive. Thus, to give an exaggerated caricature: "Tacitus said the Britons fought with spears - so that chosen swordsman unit it TOTALLY UNHISTORICAL DAMMIT! GOD I HATE THIS GAME! DAMN YOU C.A.!!" What tends to get lost is the fact that Tacitus (for example) received the overwhelming bulk of his facts second-hand, without the advantages of photography or telecommunications which today's reporters and historians enjoy. And look at the number of glaring mistakes our media make about things that are happening right now, under their noses - only the other day one of our broadsheet newspapers described Iran as an "Arab state" on its front page! Now this absolutely does not mean that Tacitus (for example) is to be disregarded as a provider of historical evidence; indeed contemporary sources remain vital pieces of evidence. But we have got to re-learn how to receive and integrate his data critically. And that means accepting that sometimes he (for example) got it wrong, misinterpreted, bought a hoax, applied a gloss, and committed all the other little slips that we all do.
The second, related tendency is to be found in archaeology, again brought about as a result of the otherwise welcome popularisation of the field. This is something which has been going on for ages in the field of art history:
Stage 1: artist paints picture. It means something. He doesn't leave a handy written explanation.
Stage 2: When work exhibited, Critic sees painting. He doesn't know what it means, but, based on his experience in the field, he writes "in my opinion, it is likely that (artist) intended to allude to the horrors of fascism". This is a perfectly reasonable and plausible interpretation.
Stage 3: Author writes book about painting, reads Critic's summary and prints: "This paintng is a powerful allegory of the horrors of fascism, cunningly contrived to convey this effect." Book is then serialised on BBC4 and paiting as allegory of fascism is earnestly presented to the public as a known fact.
Substitute "ancient Briton burying broken pot in ground" for artist, archaeologist for critic and historian for author/presenter, and you see what I mean. Interpretation hardens into "fact" as it is passed from one person to another until it ends up being cited as a final, determining settlement of an argument on boards like these.
Anyway, that's my long-winded way of saying that Rome Total Realism should be replaced by Rome Total More Plausible And Better Supported Conjecture. Before anyone bites my head off, I recommend they do what I did and sit down with an old person to watch/read a historical account of something within their living memory, for example World War II. You'll quickly start to read history more critically.
antisocialmunky 19:19 20/08/05
Originally Posted by dgb:
Ah hold up here - this argument is oft used but it's based upon bad logic. I through my purchase have paid CA to program the engine. I don't like the engine so I complain. CA has delivered to me a product which at best barely falls within tolerances so I complain. If you pay someone to do something and they do a sloppy job do you complain, simply because you couldn't do better?
Ah no again, nobody is ridiculing them for not getting it right the first time. People ridicule them for not accepting the errors in the engine (how long/how much effort did it take before the save/load was accepted as a bug?), and for not correcting proven issues with the engine.
No I haven't - on the otherhand I've never designed a house from the ground up. I pay people to do that, like I pay CA to design a game from the ground up. That doesn't stop me from pointing out that none of the doors open in said house.
The bugs you point out are NOT as simple to correct as replacing the doors. These bugs is like someone buying an old house in California that won't withstand earthquakes and being angry that it isn't earthquake proof. Well poot. The only way to fix that is to rebuild the house yes? Alot of the big problems would take too much time to fix because it would require parts of the engine to be rebuilt. Plus, it's a comercial project with deadlines. If you've ever worked on comercial projects, you know that you can rarely deliver everything or go back and fix things. This is because the cost to benefit of functionality ratio is going to be too big. It's simply not practical to rip out half the engine and rebuild it if it doesn't seriously hamper the fuctionality of the final product.
If it was a few guys doing this in their spare time like the Click and Create game community or Free Game Community or the RTW modding community then you could probably get 80% of everything fixed. Even then, there would still be limits to fixing a old game and just making a game from scratch.
Basically, alot of the problems aren't worth fixing in this generation of the TW engine and is better left for TW4. If you find the game unplayable, then goto your local gameshop and trade it in for Empire Earth 3 and wait for TW4.
Originally Posted by :
I appreciate you probably spend your days frustrated and wacky, unsupported theories inspired by popular culture which have germinated in your students' heads, but with respect, you shouldn't fall back on the source as the be-all and end-all of historical inquiry.
Hey, I'm just saying to keep an open mind. Hell, look at black holes, no one thought they existed because there was no evidence, that's not to say that they were wrong in believing so. As long as there is reasonable doubt in something, there's room for positive speculation. Do you think in 2000 years if someone dug up information about the use for C4 plastic explosive, that it'll detail Marines in the Pacific Theatre in WWII using it to heat coffee? Probably not. What I'm saying is that you should keep an open mind. Just because someone says something, it doesn't the only truth.
Seriously, why doesn't someone just freaking build one and experiment with it?
What I'm saying about a potential use of a wagon with a repeating ballista is as a supressive fire unit. Yes, it's main purpose would be a fire and move weapon(which you could mod easily if it uses the HA logic), but to say it was used in every single instance as a sit and shoot weapon is silly. What if people or cav were chasing you over flat terran. Would you not have the guy on the ballista shooting at them since you have no time to stop? What if you were skirmishing?
That's where I'm coming from, I'm not saying that BI super sniping donkey wagons are right, but I'm saying it's stupid to think that just because it was meant to sit and shoot doesn't mean it wasn't capable of moving and shooting. A moving shooting penalty really needs to be a coded for horses and chariots.
On a side note from what I've seen of Replica Roman repeating ballista, their range didn't look too spectacular. They were more like crossbows than the lesser cousins of the heavy siege ballista that's seen in Gladiator. The bolts were only about 6 inches long, though this could have varied depending on model.
Productivity 04:37 21/08/05
Originally Posted by antisocialmunky:
The bugs you point out are NOT as simple to correct as replacing the doors. These bugs is like someone buying an old house in California that won't withstand earthquakes and being angry that it isn't earthquake proof. Well poot. The only way to fix that is to rebuild the house yes? Alot of the big problems would take too much time to fix because it would require parts of the engine to be rebuilt. Plus, it's a comercial project with deadlines. If you've ever worked on comercial projects, you know that you can rarely deliver everything or go back and fix things. This is because the cost to benefit of functionality ratio is going to be too big. It's simply not practical to rip out half the engine and rebuild it if it doesn't seriously hamper the fuctionality of the final product.
I know all of that, don't treat me like an idiot. However, the fundamental argument still stands. Just because I can't repair the door myself, does not meant that I can't say the door isn't workign.
You started out saying that we should not complain because we couldn
't do better. Yes I couldn't do better. That does not preclude me from complaining. I pay CA to do this because they can do better, but that does not give them a right to put out sloppy work without me complaining.
God help you if you ever contract someone who reads these forums to do work for you, they'll spend five seconds doing something, then say they are done. When you complain they will tell you that until you can do better you can't complain.
Originally Posted by antisocialmunky:
If it was a few guys doing this in their spare time like the Click and Create game community or Free Game Community or the RTW modding community then you could probably get 80% of everything fixed. Even then, there would still be limits to fixing a old game and just making a game from scratch.
How exactly does this support your orriginal argument?
Originally Posted by antisocialmunky:
Basically, alot of the problems aren't worth fixing in this generation of the TW engine and is better left for TW4. If you find the game unplayable, then goto your local gameshop and trade it in for Empire Earth 3 and wait for TW4.
Well for a start this may be true. However it is a very short sighted approach. If CA wants to treat us the way you have described, well CA can. Just when they finally realise that we are not going to buy their product due to the way they treat us, then they will start to regret us.
For a business, trust is one of the most difficult to acquire assets. I trusted CA before R:TW, now my trust measure for CA can be approximated to zero. It's their choice how to run it, I'm just telling them what the effects are.
Originally Posted by KSEG:
Are you saying that seroisly?
I really don't understand why peoples suddenly started screaming about historical inaccuracy with the release of RTW.
Exploding rocks, flying horses, 5 second incineration by fire arrows, phalanx that can't stop cavalry, men being thrown 100 feet or more through the air, unrealistically fast movement, wrong weapon use by hoplites, chariots faster than cavalry, lack of downhill bonus, overly effective artillery, cavalry dominated battles, non-existant weather effects, only two speeds for infantry, only two speeds for cavalry, ranged units where either all men shoot or none shoot, unit stacking without combat penalty, factions from outside the time frame, suicide generals, excessive delay to movement orders, pikes ineffective on an upslope, ranged units that always charge into melee in cities, machine gun firing rates for city towers, all men in a unit incur fighting fatigue even if only a few are actually fighting, routers run toward the enemy on bridges, running infantry through a phalanx unit is more effective and attacking it.
I didn't say the other games were accurate. I said RTW was worse. It's at least worse for me in the sense that whatever impression of realism the game is giving while you march into battle is dispelled as soon as the fighting starts, and that didn't happen in the previous games. We don't know the full extent of what battlefield features have been lost. Some cavalry types can shoot on the move, and that's the only thing i can think of, other than visual appearance, that's more realistic in RTW. All the games have unrealistic unit types.
Puzz3D
I am 99% in agreement with your post. But with one singular exception
Originally Posted by :
machine gun firing rates for city towers
If you are attacking Rhodes you should face machine gun like firing rates. Sorry just my perennial plug for the Democracy of Rhodes the only people who should have repeating catapults.
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