Early TW days

[doc_bean]

More isn't necessarily better.

I said STW was more focused, that's a big plus

[Puzz3D]

I said STW was more focused, that's a big plus

I agree, and if the focus had been maintained, the series would have been better. The strategic and tactical importance of the weather system and the seasonal economics was eliminated in MTW so that the game could have a bigger tech tree by covering a longer time period. I think original STW demonstrated that you could successfully impliment a satisfactory tech tree over a shorter timespan. Now, because it's been deemed that 450 turn campaigns are too long, there is the additional distortion of character aging by the decision to go to 225 turns and still cover 450 years. Where does this development path end? Will each turn eventually cover 10 years so the game can have a tech tree spanning 1000 years?

CA had, in the Total War system, the potential to model many specific 80 to 100 year time periods keeping seasonal turns and strategic importance of weather in the game with realistic character aging. Each period could have been a saleable add-on emphasising the weapons, economic and political systems of the period. The potential was immense, but now what they've done is put themselves into a situation where they have to come up with huge expanses of history for each version of the game which means longer development time. That then requires that they capture a massive customer base and all the compromises to gameplay that implies which we now see in the Total War series. I know they made the Alexander add-on to RTW, but the system now no longer fits a short timespan.

From a multiplayer perspective, the large number of units and factions is a disaster. It's not possible to balance the game within the developmental timeframe. From a single player perspective, the game has become too complex for the AI to handle. In STW, the AI could handle most situations because the game was simpler. I remember playing a game called Lords of Conquest. You had to conquer a random map. As I recall, there were three resources: gold, iron and wood you could accumulate to build three things: a weapon, a horse or a boat. The weapon was stronger than the horse, but the horse could move two provinces in a turn while the weapon could only move one province, but you could put a weapon on a horse. You could also put a horse or weapon on a boat and sail to a province. The game was simple, but the interaction between these few elements was complex, and the AI was very good. As a result, the game was very challenging. You had an option to set the amount of uncertainty in the combat in several steps ranging from completely deterministic to highly uncertain.

[Duke John]

That was the good thing about Sengoku Jidai; it all happened on one island, inhabited by one culture. If you move to medieval Europe there would have been plenty of conflicts upon which CA could have remained focus; Wars of the Roses, Hundred Years War, Burgundian Wars, Reconquisita (?), Crusades, etc. Viking Invasion was a good move, but it was suffering from using an engine not tailored for the period.

Countless games cover WW2, a period of just a couple of years. But when a game covers the European medieval times they usually try to cover the whole period with all its conflicts and cultures. CA has gone now even further by also including the discovery of America.

I tried to keep my mods focused on small periods, but there are loads of modders (and of course players) who see more as better and the most as best. The number one modding question for M2:TW is wether the faction limit is higher or gone.


Anyway, this thread was a good read, thanks for the memories