New interview - only 5 starting factions !

[doc_bean]

An interview with Bob Smith

Not much new information. The interesting part seems to be at the very end.

when a player selects one of the five starting factions, they’ll get an introduction to their faction, including a description of likely threats from their neighbours and advice on their initial target regions to conquest.

[Ultras DVSC]

That's interesting. Maybe the 5 who are represented on the official site under the factions option? But it makes no sense...

[The_Doctor]

Why do they do such strange things?

I can't see any point in locking most of the factions.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

That's pretty stupid. I imagine they will be the English, the French, the HRE, Byzantium and possibly a Muslim one.

[Little Legioner]

What a nonsense decision! And i just wonder why? Why do they put such meaningless limits?

Ok then guys prepare your notepads. We've gotta job to do. Just open Data directory than click

[caravel]

Here we go again...

It seems like a typical kiddy oriented feature/restriction. What next, 'bonus' levels?

On a more positive note... maybe only applies to the tutorial?

[Subedei]

It is the same as in Rome: TW, where U could only play the Roman families in the beginning. So I finish first campaign & then play the rest, or I´ll wait for a "all factions mod".

[hellenes]

The next thing to expect is a port to Nintendo Wii....

[Lord Adherbal]

this is nothing new (compared to RTW), I don't understand how some of you are surprised/disappointed by it. The first thing I did when I installed RTW is unlock Carthage so I could play the faction I wanted too. I don't have a favorite in MTW2 so it doesnt really matter there. But it only takes 2 minutes to unlock all factions.

[Puzz3D]

It's one of the improvements over RTW. Now you have 5 starting factions instead of 3. Wait until you see the improvements in the battles.

[Ringeck]

That's interesting. Maybe the 5 who are represented on the official site under the factions option? But it makes no sense...

Hmmm. That would be the HRE, England, the Papacy, Egypt and Byzantium.

Well, the game is not out yet and honestly, how long do you think it's going to take before someone opens the relevant file and opens every faction? I know my first game will be with the Danes no matter what CA thinks I should play :-) It is odd that they haven't opened every faction after the experience of RTW, though.

[Afro Thunder]

Oh come on, it wasn't that bad in RTW and you know it. You didn't even have to complete a full Imperial campaign in order to unlock the unlockable factions. All you had to do was finish a short campaign and badda bing, you can now play all the (playable) factions. If there was an exceptionally bad part to it, it was that you couldn't play a few certain factions without modding the game.

[Ringeck]

Oh come on, it wasn't that bad in RTW

Of course it wasn't. But it is a bit meaningless not to open all playable factions - I mean, what are they trying to protect us from?

[CBR]

It's one of the improvements over RTW. Now you have 5 starting factions instead of 3. Wait until you see the improvements in the battles.

Well I sure hope its not more than 5 factions or its gonna be too complicated for some...


CBR

[Duke John]

Probably because CA thinks that many options confuses new players.

[Geoffrey S]

Who cares? In RTW the roman factions were the easiest to play with and were a natural introduction to the game. I certainly didn't mind starting with them, and with the more varied options in MTW2 I don't see this being a problem at all.

[Little Legioner]

Originally Posted by Puzz3D
It's one of the improvements over RTW. Now you have 5 starting factions instead of 3. Wait until you see the improvements in the battles.

Let me say you what's gonna be?! Timurid Katyusha rocket launchers may be?

Who cares realism let's have some fun! Lets make the game just more accesible right? We are just old school bunch of funs only future lies in console players.

But it only takes 2 minutes to unlock all factions.

Yes 2 minutes for factions but it's only first step. Couple of months for a realism mods and etc etc. Yeah we know rest of story well...

[Mikhal]

Great news! will read it as soon as i get the time.

and yes its really easy to unlock whatever faction you want. I always go with my favorite faction the first time as that the game gets more challenging when you dont know evrything about it and i really love to meet enemy armies with fearsome units that i diden't have a clue about that they exsisted at all.

hope that Russia will be hard to play as thats my faction.

[hoetje]

I don't see a problem with only 5 initial factions
I like to unlock other factions :P

[TB666]

No problem with this either.
I can spare 1 minute to move some stuff around in a txt-file.
It was so damn easy in RTW.

Timurid Katyusha rocket launchers may be?

Indeed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Ki_Chon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_artillery#History
damn you CA for adding a historical accurate weapon.

[x-dANGEr]

I think that is a wise decision. I don't want to start with a boring material-less campaign (Numidia), I'd rather start with a rich, feutures-full campaign. (Romans)

[doc_bean]

Wow, this thread turned out a whole lot more negative than I intended, perhaps I should have been more subtle in choosing a title ?

I'm not quite sure what to think of this, on the one hand it does make it easier for new players to choose, and it leaves the possibility for making the other factions harder. OTOH I fear the other factions might not get the same level of attention as those 5, like the generic 'barbarians' in RTW.

This really isn't a buy/no buy deal to me, battle mechanics and AI are, which might be discussed in the next interview. This might get interesting

[Darth Nihilus]

This is funny because I thought to myself last night that they'd never limit the starting factions like they did in RTW and here it is now. At least when they made you play as a roman faction it was somewhat justified in that there was a lot more work put into roman factions and the game was named after those factions. I don't under stand this, but hey whatever, I'll just change it myself. I want to play as Byzantium fisrt anyway and my guess to the five is England, France, HRE, Byzantines, and Egypt. Anyway, before I really bash the game I'll play it fisrt.

[doc_bean]

Part 2 is online.

Interesting part:

There are 21 playable and non-playable factions included in the game. Of these there’ll be 17 factions that are playable in the grand campaign.

[Geoffrey S]

Presumably non-playable factions are Aztecs, Papacy, and emerging factions such as the Mongols and Timurids?

[TB666]

Not really interesting.
It is pretty old infact that there will be 17 playable factions and 4 non-playable(Mongols, Timurids, Papal states and Aztecs)

[Nelson]

I don’t beleive faction unlocking is much of an issue at all.

[Dr_Who_Regen#4]

I agree faction unlocking is not tough...I did it in RTW and I am not somone who ever does Mods, but it was easy to figure out (Just look around until you find the right file).

Also if there are only a few factions to choose from I am sure it is part of CAs approach. For the casual gamer it provides a whole new set of challenges...Basically play the game through and now you get some other factions to play.

People like "cool" endings or bonuses for finsihing games. So this is CA's Bonus for the casual player. Those of us who are more into these games will just mod the seletcion list. Keep in mnd though we are in the minority as most people who buy games do not go to forums to learn more about them...

Most poeple will just play the main 5 factions that CA has chosen (potentially these factions have more events and uniqueness to them then the others). Bascially these are probably their showcase factions and the rest are just their to keep you interested or provide a challenge.

[Tamur]

As in Rome, this design decision is based on time constraints in building feature-rich factions versus less rich factions, in regards to graphics uniqueness, voiceovers, campaign assignments from pope/guilds, etc. They lock initial factions so that no matter what initial choice the casual gamer makes, he/she gets the "full game" effect instead of choosing a faction that has been mostly but not fully filled out. Given limited pipeline and resources, they can't do everything for every faction with an engine as complex as RTWs.

So far in this thread, people have called this a stupid, pointless, nonsense, dumbed-down, and unrealistic design decision. I'm not sure these are accurate ways to describe it.

[Randarkmaan]

On a different note I find this part of the interview very interesting...

In the second part of the Medieval II: Total War Interview, Bob Smith will talk about some of the new features in the game and the A.I. improvements. For more information on the game, visit www.totalwar.com.

Everyone has been complaining that they haven't talked about the AI too much, well, here it is!

5 starting factions is not a problem at all (as others have said), it was really simple to edit the text file so that you unlocked the locked factions...