Years to turns....

[Ignoramus]

I do not want to be restricted with hard-set historical dates. The objective of the game is to re-write history, isn't it?

Exactly. But how can you rewrite history without years? With years, instead of: The Battle of Agincourt was fought in 1415 between the English and the French, the English won, and as a result conquered much of northern France. It could be: The Battle of Milan was fought in 1365 between the Germans and the Turks, the Turks won, and as a result subdued the whole of North Italy.

That isn't being historical, but it is still a history. It's just not actual history, but your history.

Now replace it with turns: instead of: The Battle of Agincourt was fought in turn 134 between the English and the French, the English won, and as a result conquered much of northern France. It could be: The Battle of Milan was fought in turn 120 between the Germans and the Turks, the Turks won, and as a result subdued the whole of North Italy.

Which of the two sounds and looks better?

[A.Saturnus]

It seems that years are at least somehow in the game.

[doc_bean]

It seems that years are at least somehow in the game.

Based on screenshots from an alpha version ?

[maxpriest]

Even with better AI, total historical accuracy there will still be a majority of people that won't finish the campaign completely due to sheer human boredom. CA's main concern is probably that everyone will be able to finish the campaign, especially the newer players that haven't played shogun/mtw/rtw like the rest of us.

[A.Saturnus]

Based on screenshots from an alpha version ?

Well, it's not a reliable source of course, but at least it has been in the game at some point. Maybe they changed it later, maybe they didn't.

[Peasant Phill]

I thought I saw the year on some information parchment in the low res map screenshots.

It went something like (numbers not accurate): turn 3 year 1105

[A.Saturnus]

That's what we're talking about.

[caravel]

I remember the turns debate at .com... it was quite exhausting and several people argued until they were blue in the face, that turns was a bad move by CA... then the apologists, that love everything CA do, endeavoured to explain to us lesser beings as to why turns would be great and we'd all have such great fun now that the burden of remembering all those dates was gone! Who needs history anyway? Not the 10 years and above target consumerbase!

The main reason that ditching years is a "bad move" is due to the fact that many players find them immersive, and can sit there thinking to themselves: "well I conquered Constantinople in 1251...", and those same people could post something to that effect up on a messageboard like this one. Moving away from years is a move towards more simplistic action based gameplay, to capture the RTS clickfest market. In all of the marketing blurb there has never been a word about historical realism, accuracy, strategy, AI or anything of that sort. Every bit of spin has been based around graphics, the number of men and the visual realism and effects. Only the CA apologists could fail to recognise the target audience of this game.