CA clarifies turns

[Butcher]

What I see is a problem is the 'Golden Horde' effect. If you played a High campaing, for example, you knew what year they would be turning up, and if you were Russia, or example, would be focussing on this year and prepare for it.
Focussing on turn 34 isn't just quite the same.

[TosaInu]

If you played a High campaing, for example, you knew what year they would be turning up, and if you were Russia, or example, would be focussing on this year and prepare for it.

While it might be authentic, it's unrealistic at the same time. Russia did not have this retrospect knowledge. Funny: more realism kills realism

[Dead Moroz]

A question for anyone who thinks CA has gone insane with this new turn system:

How come you do accept such an abstract, ahistorical, unrealistic system like techtrees, but refuse to buy M2:TW because they abstracted the flow of time?

Or are some of you just slightly hypocrite? Accepting a big old abstract game mechanism but getting furious on a new smaller one.

I guess your real question was not about new turns mechanism specifically, but about reasons of our antipathy to CA new product. My answer is late and most of the reasons I could say were already mentioned by other guys (it doesn't mean that I'm too lazy and just waited for other people to make all dirty work). So I won't bother you, myself and the rest of the company with repeating of that issues. To summarize it all in few words - recent changes destroys the aura of history and participation in epic events. It turns all gameplay into constant rush and adaptation of your mind to new "abstractions". This game will have 240 years old personages and fantasy mix of units of absolutely different eras in the same battle. This game squeeze giant period of history into only 225 turns without any separation on unique eras (imagine XVII century musketeers participating in Iraqi war or modern Americans still looking like first colonists). The map of this game will be unbalanced, unhistorical and will produce more or less predictable gameplay, because almost all factions concentrates in western part of map.

Many people hopes for high moddability of this game to improve all imperfections. What the heck this game will be if even now most of fans wants to change numerous things themselves? And who the hell did think out that a game should rather be moddable than good made? It's like to buy new car without wheels, headlights, bumper and some other stuff which you have to make and install yourself. Moreover, I don't actually think that this game will be moddable enough to make it really better. Most of the things in RTW which ya'll used to take as moddable (such as 3d models and textures) and which made all major modifications possible, were not supposed to be moddable at all. CA did not even open it for modding. Without programming skills of some community members and their kind of hacks of RTW files we would never ever get access to those files and no any real RTW modifications would be possible. But even these possibilities could not really improve RTW gameplay because many of necessary things are just hardcoded and AI (that could be actually improved only by programmers) is still poor. Btw, Duke John, I wonder how fast you forgot your own recent discontent with moddability of RTW.

Now I have to say that I don't think CA gone insane as Duke John mentioned. They made predictable and right step in their business. They are going to make their products as popular as possible and thus more profitable. What are the ways to make your product more profitable?
1. To get more income with lesser inputs. In game terms it means developing things that make more impact on customer's decision to buy product (means eye candy that produces "wow!" effect) and ignoring things that are not important for this decision (means gameplay which you cannot estimate before you play game long enough).
2. To expand the outlet. It means involving fans of other genres into playing your games. RTS is most close to TW genre so RTS fans is the most logical choice for expansion (btw, "General view" battle camera shows that CA have plans on FPS fans too). Popularize TW among RTS fans is complex task for long time. Is's much more easy to adapt TW to RTS "rules" (especially that original TW fanbase is quite small and can be easily sacrificed to new tasks). So CA doesn't actually invent anything new, they are just making M2TW more customary and comfortable for common RTS fans.

Have I right to blame CA for their decisions? No. Game development is business first of all. Just a business, nothing personal. Just making of money. And nothing else. So you cannot expect company to go on less profitable way. Though I don't think that the way CA choose is the only possible variant of development. It's just most easy and quick way to money. Development of really great TW game and popularizing this genre among masses is hard and long way and brings good money only in far perspective. I don't blame CA for their decision to step on easy way, but I'm sad that great genre is being killed by its own creators.

[doc_bean]

Ah, but you fail to see that hard gameplay is what turns the 'broad market' away. You know the 'average player' (and we all know who that is).

Actually, reading an interview with a GalCiv2 developer yesterday I came across an interesting comment:

Consider the coverage. The sales levels for first person shooters doesn't even remotely justify the coverage they get. How many magazine covers each year do first person shooters get? How many of the top 10 most popular games in terms of sales do they have? No where near the same percent.

So we make first person shooters because there is more gratification. While World of Warcraft, Civ IV and Age of Empires 3 absolutely crush the sales levels of most first person shooters, they get relatively little attention compared with their sales levels.

He might be right you know, this 'average gamer' might be something an illusion. I know people who could certainly fall into this category that play Civ. I've seen how fast CivIV sold when it first came out, based on reputation alone. Similarly, RTW sold out in most stores around here pretty quickly after release, and shortages happened until Christmas. I think this can be attributed for a large part to the reputation of the TW series (and the greatness that was MTW).

I find it ironic in this day and age when people like to talk about 'franchises' rather than games that they are still developing for this 'average gamer', who apparently likes easy and simple games. What was the biggest commercial success of the last decade apart from the Sims? Would anyone contest that it was GTA after it went 3D ? Can anyone that has played that game honestly say that it is easy ? Can anyone claim that it still looks great ? San Andreas has basically the same graphics as GTA3.
What are some other big successes ? Ninja Gaiden, God of War, both have a reputation of being hard. In the FPS genre FarCry was the most unexpected hit of the current gen, and it's bloody hard.
On the other hand, games that have focused on graphics over gameplay don't always do so well. Everyone said Doom3 looked gorgeous, but it got repriced a few months after it's release, becoming almost a budget title.

What makes great games, and great game franchises is gameplay. Pure and simple, the aw-factor last a second, great gameplay can last for years.

[Braden]

Has anyone else noted that the topics relating to CA updates have been removed from the .com?

I think CA are upset.

[Duke John]

I guess your real question was not about new turns mechanism specifically, but about reasons of our antipathy to CA new product.

No, my question is just what I wrote.

Btw, Duke John, I wonder how fast you forgot your own recent discontent with moddability of RTW.

I didn't. What I did do is accepting the poor modding support of CA (not 1 single tool released! The battle editor was locked for public use!) and try giving some atmosphere to R:TW, currently in the form of NTW2.

I think CA are upset.

Of course, they think they are creating the perfect game with fireballs flying at besiegers, introducing america, finishing moves and compressing 450 years into 225 turns. Now the public is not accepting it and screaming mayhem at every feature they thought was cool.

[Braden]

BTW Duke - once I can get Medieval & VI to work on one of my computers (darn thing not working on the laptop) I'm installing your NTW first mod (version 6.01 isn't it?).

Although I'm still having too much fun with RTW and BI to overwrite it at the moment, I'm sure I'll be ready for NTW2 when its released.....good looking product.

[Duke John]

For the record; I have done nothing for NTW1. It is largely a different team that is now doing NTW2 as the 3D engine requires different skills.

[Kraxis]

He might be right you know, this 'average gamer' might be something an illusion. I know people who could certainly fall into this category that play Civ. I've seen how fast CivIV sold when it first came out, based on reputation alone. Similarly, RTW sold out in most stores around here pretty quickly after release, and shortages happened until Christmas. I think this can be attributed for a large part to the reputation of the TW series (and the greatness that was MTW).

I find it ironic in this day and age when people like to talk about 'franchises' rather than games that they are still developing for this 'average gamer', who apparently likes easy and simple games. What was the biggest commercial success of the last decade apart from the Sims? Would anyone contest that it was GTA after it went 3D ? Can anyone that has played that game honestly say that it is easy ? Can anyone claim that it still looks great ? San Andreas has basically the same graphics as GTA3.
What are some other big successes ? Ninja Gaiden, God of War, both have a reputation of being hard. In the FPS genre FarCry was the most unexpected hit of the current gen, and it's bloody hard.
On the other hand, games that have focused on graphics over gameplay don't always do so well. Everyone said Doom3 looked gorgeous, but it got repriced a few months after it's release, becoming almost a budget title.

What makes great games, and great game franchises is gameplay. Pure and simple, the aw-factor last a second, great gameplay can last for years.

That is not hard gameplay, it is hardness! I have played of those games, God of War, GTA 3 (and San Andreas), Far Cry and I have played the Civ games until III, so I expect that my experiences can carry over he same is true for AOE (where I played the demo of the latest for quite some time). Of those only Civ has what I would consider hard gameplay. There are simply many things to consider at each corner, do this or that or a hundred other things that will hold benefits and problems. But the strength is it is straightforward.
The other games are comparably simple. They will put stress on your abilities, no doubt about that, but they are easy to get into, very easy indeed. You can't say that about MTW for instance, it took time to learn it (if you weren't an STW veteran) even the basics.

The controls of the older TW games were fairly hard to learn, but when you learned it they were superb. That changed in RTW. Now they are comparably easy to learn, but nowhere near as good (the turner is a major step down from the very effective and fast right-click hold system of previous titles).
The battlespeed was enhanced significantly, fatigue was basically removed and so were terrain features. That indicates that CA was afraid that someone might not understand these things and get annoyed when they got beaten all the time because the AI took advantage of it.

The 'average player' might not actually exist, I don't know, but it it is clear that he is continually sought out. Who knows, it could be the marketing people who are wrong. But the fact remains that we are seeing a decline from sofisticated to 'streamlined'.

DJ, about your pile of poo, I would say you are going too far. I would say you have the pile in the backyard and then someone comes along and just keeps dumping more on it. Who said you wanted more of it? Thus it is fair to tell him that you would prefer him not to dump more poo on the pile.

[Duke John]

The techtree system is a big pile of poo, while the new turn system is just a bit of poo in comparison. But let's leave the poo behind since I realize that my views are not that of the common TW fan.

I am reading a thread on .COM and there are a few good comments that I haven't read here or missed:

The reason for this 225 turn thing is obvious - it is greed. CA bit more than they are willing to chew. They wanted first crusade, but they also wanted discovery of America. Hence 1080-1530 period.

Good point. STW focused on a small period and had lots of atmosphere. The 4 seasons per year added alot to the gameplay. CA could have gone for just the early or high medieval period. Instead they seem to think the bigger the timeframe, the better the game. How good would Lord of the Rings have been if it was crammed into a single 2 hour movie?
CA realizes that 450 years of history is alot and takes too long (in their opinion) to finish with 1 or 2 turns per year. At that point they should have made the decision to divide the campaign into eras or make the eras seperate expansions. I think few of us would mind paying for the main game and 2 expansions if each of them had the atmosphere of S:TW.

[econ21]

The controls of the older TW games were fairly hard to learn, but when you learned it they were superb. That changed in RTW. Now they are comparably easy to learn, but nowhere near as good (the turner is a major step down from the very effective and fast right-click hold system of previous titles).

You may be confusing greater accessibility with dumbing down. I went back to Shogun the other day and found the controls very clunky. Even when I used to be proficient with it, I still found it a bit of a pain to manage the camera and some other stuff. RTWs controls are more accessible and I can't see why they are "no where near as good" (how hard is it to press , and . to turn?). Hard gameplay as in hard to play is a bad thing. The challenge should be working out winning strategies, not mastering the controls or the manual.

The battlespeed was enhanced significantly, fatigue was basically removed and so were terrain features. That indicates that CA was afraid that someone might not understand these things and get annoyed when they got beaten all the time because the AI took advantage of it.

The faster battlespeed in itself makes the game harder (and again, in a bad way, IMO).

Fatigue is definitely still there and may even be one factor that inhibits the AI (when attacking, it seems to be very tired by the time it arrives at my side of the map).

Similarly, I think terrain still matters. Hills still seem to be a big plus for missiles and in melee; woods are an even bigger pain; bridges are still there and seem less ridiculously constraining than in STW and MTW.

I don't think RTW was deliberately dumbed down. I think the move to a new engine was a massive design undertaking (and one well worth making, commercially and from my own perspective) and diverted some time/energies from content. Some things got lost in translation. I think you see a similar thing, for example, when Bioware went from Baldur's Gate to Neverwinters Nights. The NWN OC reminds me a lot of vanilla RTW - it has its moments, but ends up just too easy and uninspired. Bioware gradually came back to form with the NWN expansions and especially KOTOR. I see CA making similar improvements with BI - let's hope Alexander and M2TW continue the progress. Then everyone can bitch about how dumbed down the next generation of Total War games is.

[Kraxis]

The techtree system is a big pile of poo, while the new turn system is just a bit of poo in comparison. But let's leave the poo behind since I realize that my views are not that of the common TW fan.

I am reading a thread on .COM and there are a few good comments that I haven't read here or missed:


Good point. STW focused on a small period and had lots of atmosphere. The 4 seasons per year added alot to the gameplay. CA could have gone for just the early or high medieval period. Instead they seem to think the bigger the timeframe, the better the game. How good would Lord of the Rings have been if it was crammed into a single 2 hour movie?
CA realizes that 450 years of history is alot and takes too long (in their opinion) to finish with 1 or 2 turns per year. At that point they should have made the decision to divide the campaign into eras or make the eras seperate expansions. I think few of us would mind paying for the main game and 2 expansions if each of them had the atmosphere of S:TW.

Agreed. That is pretty much all I can say about that.

It is not hard to press , or . but they are inadiquate. Have you ever tried to do finetuning with them? It tends to mess up my formations. Some units turn, others don't. Sometimes it simply starts out too far in the given direction, forcing you to go a full revolution, which takes a lot of time often needed elsewhere. Also the time the turning takes is too much in general and I don't feel I can be as precise as I want to be. Your argument would be as if I installed a fingerstick as a controller for a helicopter. How hard would it be to control? Not very, but it would be inadiquate.
The old system of actually holding the cursor over the target you wanted the unit(s) to face was great! It was fast, done in a splitsecond, it didn't mess up the formation and it was accurate.
Maybe I'm strange but I used it very much. I liked to keep the troops lined up facing the enemy.

Btw, I didn't notice anything about the camera that I found to be different. At least nothing I use (such as following a unit and that). The same old + - * and / and the mousewheel.

Fatigue matters because the AI has a nasty tendency to run across the map. I don't find myself in situations where all my units are Exhausted and I'm sitting scared on a hilltop with dead enemies in piles around me. And while the features do affect battles I found it to be less (unless we are talking phalanxes, in which case we are talking a 'feature').

[Braden]

Certainly some things in Rome appear to have slipped back, weather this was deliberate or a knock on effect of different coding I don’t know. Perhaps it was due to inadequate play testing in beta form. Many were improved in the BI expansion though, AI is more challenging for a start (not ideal but a vast improvement on Vanilla Rome).

Fatigue doesn’t play as big a part in Rome as it did in Medieval as the battles are not as “Epic” due to the poor re-enforcement method (remember being able to queue up your re-enforcements….how I miss that) and the inability of the AI in Rome to match Medieval AI’s ability to combine forces into significant armies (I’ve yet to face an AI army bigger than one stack). The Fatigue I guess is just the same or even perhaps more realistic now, but the key is: when have you played a 2hr open field battle on Rome? Never. When did you play 2hr battles in Medieval? More times than I remember. Doesn’t a default 45min timer say something about what CA wanted to do?

Size of battlefield and terrain play a big part also. Whilst Rome has much smaller battlefields and a very much reduced deployment area when compared to Medieval, I think Rome has better, more realistic Terrain. Plenty of times in Medieval (an in Shogun) I was presented with near sheer cliff’s to climb and over scaled hills. Rome’s terrain is generally more representative AND you have the ability to choose your field of battle via placement on the campaign map (no more just a list of “generic” battlefields as in Medieval). However, due to Rome having far smaller battlefields we, again, loose that “epic” feel.

I never use the , & . keys. Whereas I always used the R-C-hold move, to re-angle my units in Medieval – testament to some of Rome’s controls being easier to use whilst others are worse/inadequate.

So, I feel personally that the main items “dumbed down” in Rome are Battles (too smaller scale, battlefields smaller to enable faster battles) and Campaign AI. The battle AI appears to have remained on the same par as Medieval whilst the Campaign AI has regressed somehow.

Truth is this isn’t the Sequel to Medieval we wanted but will be just good enough to encourage 70% of the TW players to buy it and get a good chunk of first-time players to buy it also. Those of us so obsessed with the TW series that we post here and on the .com only account for a small player base to be honest, an experienced player base that CA do look to for suggestions. Unfortunately, they only look to us after they’ve already hard-coded stuff – wish they’d consult us indirectly before they start things.

Things I’d like to see now in M2 is a better campaign AI causing bigger battles as well as a return to the very large battlefields of Medieval. The “turn” issue cannot be addressed now for the main release, I wait to see if there are any genuine improvements beyond this issue and that M2 isn’t just an even more “streamlined” version of Rome with slightly better graphics (which most of us won’t notice as we don’t all have Alien-Ware, top line, computers).

THEN, we’ll know if CA are serious in continuing to develop the TW series in the vein before Rome OR will continue to speed the game up at the behest of gaining new customers of lower attention span.

[Dead Moroz]

Actually your typo wasn't so far from wrong. Invading Russia in 1941 was, from a purely military standpoint, not indefensible. Choosing the Caucasus instead of Moscow as the grand objective in '42 was what really blew the campaign.

Actually Caucasus was right decision. Initial German rush through central part of Russia into Moscow had no any tactical or economical advantages, except morale impact on Russians in case of capturing our capital. After success in battle for Caucasus Germany would get access to rich oil deposits that Russians on the contrary would lost. This would certainly strengthen German economy and thus military while cause serious problems for Russians. On the other hand Germany would get base for future invasion into British-controlled Iraq and Russian-controlled Iran which had even greater deposits of oil. Such invasion could possibly involve Arabs and Iranians into war on German side as opposition to British and French control over most of muslim lands. Success in Caucasus would also lead Germany into more close contact with Turkey that would likely became its ally (it's not secret that Turkey sympathized with Germany but didn't dare to support it openly).

[Dead Moroz]

The controls of the older TW games were fairly hard to learn, but when you learned it they were superb. That changed in RTW. Now they are comparably easy to learn, but nowhere near as good (the turner is a major step down from the very effective and fast right-click hold system of previous titles).
The battlespeed was enhanced significantly, fatigue was basically removed and so were terrain features. That indicates that CA was afraid that someone might not understand these things and get annoyed when they got beaten all the time because the AI took advantage of it.

Well, those suspicions are kinda true. Strange unusual controls in STW was one of the reasons I din't played this game after trying its demo (the other reason was poor graphics). When MTW demo came out I made more effort to understand its controls and logic (don't already remember why). But when I got it I just forgot about almost all other games.

(how hard is it to press , and . to turn?).

Harder than to just turn. That's why I didn't like new RTW camera and always used old one. Though in the rest I'm satisfied enough with RTW controls (especially since 1.2) except for bugs and some minor weaknesses.

The faster battlespeed in itself makes the game harder (and again, in a bad way, IMO).

(Not in opposition to your words.) Fast battlespeed is just pure fantasy. People never used to kill each other as fast as in RTW before invention of machine gun.

[Orda Khan]

While it might be authentic, it's unrealistic at the same time. Russia did not have this retrospect knowledge. Funny: more realism kills realism

But in actual fact they did. On the march west the Mongols conquered the Volga Bulgars who had resisted them the year before, 1236. This resistance was aided by Russian forces so they would/should have been aware of the impending threat. However, I do agree that events should not necessarily happen 100% according to history otherwise we see what happened in MTW, everyone building and reinforcing ready for the event. I thought it would have been better to rely on intelligence reports from your agents rather than know regardless

........Orda

[Vladimir]

But in actual fact they did. On the march west the Mongols conquered the Volga Bulgars who had resisted them the year before, 1236. This resistance was aided by Russian forces so they would/should have been aware of the impending threat. However, I do agree that events should not necessarily happen 100% according to history otherwise we see what happened in MTW, everyone building and reinforcing ready for the event. I thought it would have been better to rely on intelligence reports from your agents rather than know regardless

........Orda

Hell I just like preparing because it's the only guaranteed castle defense you'll ever play. Max out your fort and bring pleanty of spears!

[screwtype]

Edit......

[Puzz3D]

You may be confusing greater accessibility with dumbing down. I went back to Shogun the other day and found the controls very clunky. Even when I used to be proficient with it, I still found it a bit of a pain to manage the camera and some other stuff. RTWs controls are more accessible and I can't see why they are "no where near as good" (how hard is it to press , and . to turn?).

I think the Shogun controls are quite elegant. You have two levels of grouping: groups and alternate groups on hotkeys. You could rotate an entire army, groups or individual units to a precise angle and then move it linearly before the rotation finished, and it only took two seconds to issue that command combination. You have separate buttons for hold formation and hold position. In RTW, these are combined into one button which reduces funcionality. You have a rally button in STW/MTW which acts on the currently selected units. You have custom army formations which can be maintained during movement and are tactically important. In RTW, the AI decides if your formation is disorganized, and, if it deems it so, reforms it when you move it into a basic line formation which is the least imaginative formation possible and very susceptible to being flanked. In STW/MTW, you have a fatigue indicator on each unit's icon which means you know the fatigue state of all oyur units at a glance. The is no delay of units responding to orders which for my style of play is a killer in a game with accelerated combat and movement speed.

The biggest disadvantage to the Shogun controls is the left click to select units and left click to move. The left click to select units and right click to move of RTW is a big improvement, and this suggestion was made by players many times starting back in 2000. We didn't see it incorporated in the game until 2004.

The faster battlespeed in itself makes the game harder (and again, in a bad way, IMO).

I agree. It's bad because it makes mastery of the interface the determining factor in winning when you can't or don't pause. This is especially detrimental to multiplayer because not only can't you pause the game, but human players are more aggressive than the AI.

Fatigue is definitely still there and may even be one factor that inhibits the AI (when attacking, it seems to be very tired by the time it arrives at my side of the map).

Fatigue is still there, but units move greater distance in RTW because the running speeds are 50% faster. Even so, as Kraxis points out, the AI gets exhausted because it runs everywhere. The AI has no idea how to manage fatigue.

Similarly, I think terrain still matters. Hills still seem to be a big plus for missiles and in melee; woods are an even bigger pain; bridges are still there and seem less ridiculously constraining than in STW and MTW.

CA did tell us here at the org that the effect of height on combat in RTW was reduced because new players wouldn't know how to handle it. Also, I never see the AI in RTW set ambushes on the tactical map. I played an STW battle recently and the AI split its forces into two groups. One group was hiding in trees to my front and the other group was hiding in trees to my right. When I approached the trees to the front, the AI attacked with the front group first and then attacked with the flanking force after I was engaged. I remember another battle where there were trees to the right and left. As I marched my army forward into the open space between the trees, the AI attacked from concealed positions on both sides simultaneously.

In STW, the AI will never make a frontal attacks with a weaker unit. It will always try to make indirect attacks with weaker units. This makes the AI seem smarter because it's the sensible thing to do in most cases. In RTW, I see the AI making frontal attacks with units that can't possibly win the matchup.

I don't think RTW was deliberately dumbed down.

In the case of the effect of height on combat, it was intentionally made less of an effect. In the case of the squeezed too tight penalty and the distance calculation for shooters, it appears a decision was made that these features were not worth including. No new player of RTW will ever notice that those things are missing.

In the case of fatigue in MTW, we pointed out to CA that the fatigue was a rather high for the largest maps in MTW. LongJohn posted that fatigue rates in MTW were the same as in STW, and that fatigue rate had not been optimized for the larger maps in MTW. It was still optimized for the smallest size maps. We were further told that relatively high fatigue rate made the battlefield play as though it was larger, and that this was good. He did make a concession in this case and reduced the running fatigue rate for cavalry by 10%.

We were also told before RTW was released that the maps in RTW would be larger than the maps in MTW. Not only are the maps smaller in RTW, but running movement speed is 50% higher making the battlefield play much smaller. What happened to the concept that larger scale battles were better? I see a lot of screenshots of large scale battles, but, in fact, the battles in RTW don't play as large scale battles.

[Butcher]

I remember the old 'less but more important' battles quote. Tell that to poor maximus fedupius as he goes to fight the 400th bunch of rebels who have turned up.

[doc_bean]

That is not hard gameplay, it is hardness! I have played of those games, God of War, GTA 3 (and San Andreas), Far Cry and I have played the Civ games until III, so I expect that my experiences can carry over he same is true for AOE (where I played the demo of the latest for quite some time). Of those only Civ has what I would consider hard gameplay. There are simply many things to consider at each corner, do this or that or a hundred other things that will hold benefits and problems. But the strength is it is straightforward.

Hmm, I was probably still thinking about another thread when I wrote this. I was mostly thinking about how bad the AI is on the battlefield and on the campaign map, thus providing no challenge, thus having bad gameplay.

I should have ellaborate more on complexity.

I don't think the TW concept is that complex really. Certainly campainging in MTW wasn't. I have to admit I don't know much about RTW campainging since that knowledge is never really required to win. The battles then, they're only complex because people are so used to RTS style combat by now. Surely, height and flanking effects aren't difficult to understand. Fatigue is also a pretty natural phenomena. The most difficult thing to teach new players is probably morale, and the many variables affecting that. But true understanding isn't really needed at first imho.

What made MTW such a difficult game to learn was all the different unit types (and upgrades) that were all marginal different from eachother, it takes a while to figure out what you should use when. It certainly didn't help that within a few turns you were having two-stack battles and had to figure out how to use reinforcements too.
I just played the STW tutorial, that was just hard the way GTA is hard: they give you a unit that can barely beat the opposing unit even if used right. This is not the kind of thing to do in a tutorial.

[Kraxis]

I agree, the concepts shouldn't be too hard to grasp, but aparently either they are or the dev community thinks they are. Or of course we are just that special... And it is this percieved, or real, hard gameplay that I commented on.
The learningcurve for the other TW games was rather high. It took a considerable time to learn the game. The strategic aspect has grown more complex (though some things are less complex, such as many buildings required for a unit), while the battles have grown less complex. I'm not sure that is the way to go.

The STW tutorial was more of a promotionvideo you could control. It only gave you the very basics. And I must admit I lost many many times before winning. But just because it was hard didn't make it bad. It gave me a incentive to actually play something that is usually skipped after the first time (or for that matter skipped entirely).

[Cesare diBorja]

!!!!!!!!!!!!Stupid if you ask me. The Conch of Disputatio is back. Now hear this. Now hear this. Mod. Mod. Mod. I am not some easily pleased twelve year old. it seems every step forward has a step back. Maybe..........................

diBorgia

[Keba]

!!!!!!!!!!!!Stupid if you ask me. The Conch of Disputatio is back. Now hear this. Now hear this. Mod. Mod. Mod. I am not some easily pleased twelve year old. it seems every step forward has a step back. Maybe..........................

diBorgia

One of my friends has this saying ... one step forward, two to the side. I don't think turns are a step backward ... maybe to the side, but not backwards.

It is just an experiment, to see how the consumers would react to such a change ... and to see what sort of things they can change.

[Duke John]

I doubt that they see it as an experiment. If it was wouldn't that mean they would at least wait after the game was released before saying that the next game will have normal turns again? It is just a quick and dirty fix to get a big period in a relative small amount of turns.

[screwtype]

The STW tutorial was more of a promotionvideo you could control. It only gave you the very basics. And I must admit I lost many many times before winning. But just because it was hard didn't make it bad. It gave me a incentive to actually play something that is usually skipped after the first time (or for that matter skipped entirely).

I lost my first couple of STW campaigns, but that just made me keener to try and beat it. As I recall I won the third campaign with the supposed elite unit, the heavy cav, but it was tough going.

After that, I tried out buddhist monks instead, and never bothered with heavy cav again

[Peasant Phill]

[QUOTE=Keba]One of my friends has this saying ... one step forward, two to the side. I don't think turns are a step backward ... maybe to the side, but not backwards.[QUOTE]

The procession of Echternach: a pilgrimage where you have to take one step back for every two steps you take forwards.

[Quietus]

A question for anyone who thinks CA has gone insane with this new turn system:

CA's not insane. They are the top strategy game developer.

The issue is that they are currently so way ahead of competition that they can make the "turn" changes (for example) without taking into account how the TW community would react.

How come you do accept such an abstract, ahistorical, unrealistic system like techtrees, but refuse to buy M2:TW because they abstracted the flow of time?

Or are some of you just slightly hypocrite? Accepting a big old abstract game mechanism but getting furious on a new smaller one.

1) The techtrees are still the relic of Shogun where the recruitment buildings were Dojos (or schools?). It made sense since without schools, there would be no soldiers. However, it was carried over to MTW and even RTW.

2) One of the CA reps did mentioned devising a more complicated recruitment system for RTW, but it was abandoned because it was, just that, too complicated.

[Cesare diBorja]

WHAT!

I agree with Duke John. May the Conch of Disputatio burn bright, by day and by night. . I am all for maximum immersion. So what if it takes 3months, 6months or a year to finish a game. More turns means more excitement and never a dull moment. I care not for the quick, dirty and all too easy. I want a challenge, not some kiddie game. Make a game that lasts and you have dojne something different in the history of gaming. Boost your sales. Toughen the AI without an unfair point spread. Do the right thing. The problem with gaming today is its like tv, quick, satisfying and without depth....
Live the life, gain the same attributes. Time well spent is time well earned.....

diBorgia

[Ignoramus]

Seconded.