Developer blog update: Morale & Difficulty Settings

[Puzz3D]

Do you really think that they dont want to "optimise" it? (according to their criteria of course)

They don't go through enough iterations. I've been on 4 of their beta teams. I know how they operate.

BTW, have you played BI MP?

No. It's too fast. We know it's too fast because CA has slowed down the game in M2TW. They screwed up with RTW/BI multiplayer, but all we heard from them for 2 years was how great it was. The result of that is many veterans stopped playing. My whole clan stopped playing.

It wont harm SP but it could create a nightmare in MP. Imagine everyone hosting with different morale, fatigue, ammo, reload and gamespeed setups. Different setups favour different styles which in turn favour different units. That means that one have to test and keep in mind the best style and best unit combos for each setup. It is not just nearly impossible (if you have just 3 options for each then it is 3x3x3x3x3=243 different combinations) but most players are simply not interested in that.

The upgrade system produces this nightmare you talk about. Units are individually upgraded which breaks the RPS system, and creates all kinds of imbalance between the units and weird unit combos. My suggested options would apply to all units equally. We need adjustments on morale and fatigue because CA has gotten these wrong since STW. Now it seems they have screwed up reload. Every mod made for RTW improved the gameplay. That's how easy it was to improve on the official gameplay. It's not the insurmountable task that you imply.

We can pass on the ammo setting, but they should get rid of unlimited ammo. The majority of players don't use unlimited ammo. Why is it there if, as you suggest, only the options desired by the majority should be implimented? They don't use the no morale and no fatigue settings either.

A gamespeed setting would not favor different styles of play. Despite the reduction in speed in M2TW, there are still 25% more units to control than in STW/MTW.

M2TW brings back the tax on more than 4 of one unit type. That's a red flag which suggests they haven't balanced the units well enough. If the units were well balanced in an RPS system, that crutch wouldn't be needed.

I think you are right that most players don't care about playbalance. They'd play the game no matter how bad the playbalance was.

[Dead Knight of the Living]

I think the AI blog update was more promising than this one. This sounds like all they did was give the AI a "GOD" cheat code. The AI will still do stupid stuff, but since we bumped up their morale and increased fatigue rates for the player they'll be harder to kill. I don't want an AI that is harder to beat because it's morale values have been boosted. I want an AI that does what they said that Turkish Army did in the AI blog... use it's "A" Brain.

[Tempiic]

Backtrack :) Gotta separate out SP and MP issues...

Anniep

Addendum: Start seperating Arcade and non-arcade mode more clearly. Both versions with Morale, Fatigue and Ammo on/off options. ;)

[Lusted]

Dead Knight of the Living, i think many people read the blog differently to you. I never saw it mention this would only happen to the player, all it says is that morale and faitque will change for the different difficult settings.

[Duke John]

Units are individually upgraded which breaks the RPS system, and creates all kinds of imbalance between the units and weird unit combos.

I agree completely . We removed the ability to upgrade units from Napoleonic 2: Total War and I can say it's working very well; I can't recall a single complaint about it! Not only does it improve game play (although that can debateable) it also reduces setup time as buying armies is much more intuitively.

[PROMETHEUS]

I agree completely . We removed the ability to upgrade units from Napoleonic 2: Total War and I can say it's working very well; I can't recall a single complaint about it! Not only does it improve game play (although that can debateable) it also reduces setup time as buying armies is much more intuitively.

I do not see why the unit upgradeability should break gameplay or umbalance it , infact if you pick upgraded units you pay more for them so the result is that you will have less units , I remeber it worked very well for the online battles of medieval , also the Devs stated that they will implement 10k rule as well or 5k wich was the standard on online multyplayer battles at this time ....

[Orda Khan]

All upgrades, including honour/valour should be removed from the MP side of the game, I have been advocating this since I started playing. Upgrades are fine for SP as they depict faction improvements along with the various buildings. In MP they detract from the essence of tactical play; sure, tactics are still required to win battles but with far less thought and relying on uber units. The last thing I want to see in MTW II is the boring cav/sword armies of VI.
Having selectable options would be another step forward and I don't see there being a problem here either. Just like army cost, it will not be long before a 'generally accepted' level becomes the norm

.....Orda

[Bob the Insane]

I do not see why the unit upgradeability should break gameplay or umbalance it , infact if you pick upgraded units you pay more for them so the result is that you will have less units , I remeber it worked very well for the online battles of medieval , also the Devs stated that they will implement 10k rule as well or 5k wich was the standard on online multyplayer battles at this time ....

While not a MP player I do understand the issue here... The problem is that sometimes Unit A with the right upgrades in more effective than unit B and cheaper dispte unit B being a more advanced version of unit A...

At a simple level it was not balanced sufficiently...

Of course the mechanism works beautifully in SP but that not the problem here...

[TerranAce007]

I don't see how selectable options whould harm SP, but have no fear because as soon as M2TW is released a multiplayer forum for M2TW will be created, and you won't have us around bothering you. We'll be shuffled off to a separate forum where it will be easy to ignore us.

Well, as you can tell by my post count, I'm not hugely active in the forums, so I am probably not as well versed in the forum politics as you. I have been reading the forums a lot more lately because I have been excited about M2TW, just like everyone else. You seem to be very knowledgeable about the Total War games and said you have experience with some of the beta teams, so I don't see where your opinion would be bothersome. User opinions are obviously what the programmers want, so they can improve the game...

I really don't play RTW on multiplayer a lot because I like the strategy involved in the campaign play, but that doesn't necessarily mean I don't care about what developments are being made to M2TW in the multiplayer area. I play computer games enough in general, though, to understand how factionalized the community can become, but SP and MP are two different worlds, so separate forums do make sense. Maybe I won't read the MP forum as much since I play mostly SP, but again, its personal preference on gameplay. I'm not trying to ignore anyone. As far as i'm concerned, improvements to the game are a good thing, regardless of whether they are in SP or in MP.

Mods are not a solution for multiplayer. We need multiple selectable options on morale, fatigue, ammo, reload and gamespeed. This would not delay the release of the game. What will never happen is for CA to go through all that's necessary to optimize the gameplay. They haven't even come close to doing so in the recent attempts.

I meant for in SP if the AI still sucks, but mods can be played MP as well, can't they?

Patching should really be restricted to C bugs IMO. And not everyone is willing to spend the time investigating MODS, no matter how good they most definitely are; I usually buy a game based on the contents of the box (which incidently should include a map as standard) not what I can potentially do with the contents! *says while making a paper hat out of his RTW map*

I definately agree with you that the features should be finalized upon relase, and patches should be for fixing bugs, but it doesn't seem to work out that way because of time & money constraints you mentioned. By releasing M2TW and claiming that the AI and such have been improved, but then releasing a patch a few months down the road to "fix" the AI suggests that the "improved" AI was not completed in the first place (or just sucks despite the improvements, perhaps due to what Puzz said about them not testing enough...), so I can see why everyone doubts the claims made in the blog. You should get what you pay for, not an incomplete or plain bad product.

Modability, though, is something I see as a big plus when buying a game, since the replay "potential" of the game is so much greater. That does not excuse the problems in the original game, but it keeps the game alive much longer and creates a diverse fan base. As for a game that doesn't allow mods, after you have exhausted the many scenarios from countless hours of playing, you are forced to wait (and pay for) official expansion packs, (which may improve the game greatly, or just add some new stuff to the existing game - ie. BI). Everyone gets bored of a game after a while, and mods just give more choice. Since CA seem to be supportive (or ar least not prohibitive of mods), I think mods are a good selling point. It allows the players to use their own creativity to "make their own fun," and these mods are made by people to whom the game is a hobby and not a job, so money is not an issue.

I can't say how much time everyone here spends playing *tw, but if you play even a little, you have some free time. You don't have to spend time "researching" to find the best mod, you just have to try different mods, maybe in some of the free time you would be playing the stock game. I don't know, maybe you like playing the same game over and over again, so play however you want. I just know I like to try something new every now and again.

My favorite mods, BTW, are Rome Total Realism (RTW) and Invasio Barbarorum (BI), but I have also played the stock campaigns in the original games countless times.

[Puzz3D]

I do not see why the unit upgradeability should break gameplay or umbalance it , infact if you pick upgraded units you pay more for them so the result is that you will have less units , I remeber it worked very well for the online battles of medieval , also the Devs stated that they will implement 10k rule as well or 5k wich was the standard on online multyplayer battles at this time ....

Anti-cav bonus is included in the base price of the unit. Upgrades cost a percentage of the base price, but the anti-cav bonus doesn't increase with upgrades. This means all anti-cav units pay too much for their upgrade relative to non-anti-cav units. This is part of the reason that cav/sword armies came to dominate MTW multiplayer. You have the same situation with ranged units. In MTW, LongJohn attempted to address this by giving discounted upgrades to ranged units, but all this did was transform upgraded ranged units into super melee units breaking the RPS gameplay.

Another issue is that CA insists on tying morale to the experience upgrades. This causes gameplay problems because morale determines at what point a unit will rout. The value of some units is dependent on their ability to rout enemy units using a fixed magnitude morale penalty, but this value will be eliminated if morale gets too high. The cost to purchase that unit doesn't change, but its value on the battlefield does as morale level changes.

The game doesn't work right if the morale is too low or too high, and there isn't a lot of dynamic range in the system. In MTW, you only have about a 4 point range over which it works well. It's a stretch to say it works well over a 6 point range. The engine has fixed morale penalties for all kinds of combat effects, but allows unit morale to vary all over the place via upgrades, both purchased upgrades and battlefield upgrades. You can't design a particular gameplay under such conditions. It's unclear whether morale is still tied to upgrades in M2TW because Palamedes didn't talk about morale in the conntext of multiplayer except to say that units no longer rout in less than 5 seconds.

Certainly, battlefield upgrades have no place in multiplayer. They were removed by CA in MTW/VI v2.01, and the game played better as a result. Then battlefield upgrades came back in RTW. Where is the logic in that? They had better gameplay without the battlefield upgrades, so they put them back in RTW and left them in through 3 patches and an expansion?

Good things are that the upgrades don't provide as much of a combat boost as they did in STW/MTW and are more limited, and they are pricing them so that a unit is most cost effective at its base price. This is much improved over the STW/MTW system, and means that choosing a good morale level is even more important if there isn't going to be a separate adjustment. The very fastest a unit should rout is about 30 seconds, and that's with the strongest offensive unit matched against the weakest defensive unit. The longest a unit matchup should last is probably around 2.5 to 3 minutes, and that would be with highly defensive units matched up.

[LadyAnn]

You seem to be very knowledgeable about the Total War games and said you have experience with some of the beta teams, so I don't see where your opinion would be bothersome. User opinions are obviously what the programmers want, so they can improve the game...

There are Beta and then there are Beta teams :)
What I mean is that it depends on how the Beta team is setup and how the feedback is incorporated into the design process. I can't go too much into the details here or they would kill me :)

I meant for in SP if the AI still sucks, but mods can be played MP as well, can't they?

Yes mods could be played on MP, but unless the stats are automatically downloaded (with some sort of trusted mods registry), people don't bother download mods. Switching between mods were a pain too, despite efforts to make it smoother. So, only dedicated players actually play mods, relegates it to a small minority.

Anniep

[Puzz3D]

User opinions are obviously what the programmers want, so they can improve the game...

Actually, CA has said that they make the game the way they want, and if you don't like it that's tough for you. I told them the unit speeds were too fast in August 2004, and they said they didn't see anything wrong with them. Now they have lowered the unit speeds in M2TW, and claim it's an improvement. What happened to "We don't see any problem with the speeds."?

Do you want accurate mouseover info in the unit purchase screen? You're aware it's incorrect right? Try suggesting to CA that it should be fixed, and see what they say if they even give you an answer.

Do you want the civil war bug in RTW campaign to be fixed? Sorry. You're out of luck. Tough for you. Who cares about RTW anyway?

Everyone gets bored of a game after a while, and mods just give more choice.

Interest didn't slack off with STW v1.12 MP. Participation was still increasing over a year after the game was released, and it wasn't possible to mod that game. STW/MI was released with a +12 morale added to all units in MP. MP participation rapidly dropped to 30% of what it had been. This is directly attributable to inferior gameplay. It wasn't that players were getting bored.

In STW MP, it never got boring. The tactics had many fine points that made a difference, but the really interesting thing was to master the tactics well enough that you could play the battles at a strategic level. I don't mean just anticipating what your opponent might do. I mean being able to make countermoves to what your opponent did do. You had to account for every single enemy unit because even one uncountered unit could cost you the battle if it moved into a flanking position. Units fought long enough that flanking moves could be delayed, and still be effective. You had multiple flanking and counter flanking moves being made in a single cav skirmish because there was enough time to make multiple moves.

[LadyAnn]

And all that is done under thick fog, I must add :)

hehe

[*Ringo*]

I can't say how much time everyone here spends playing *tw, but if you play even a little, you have some free time. You don't have to spend time "researching" to find the best mod, you just have to try different mods, maybe in some of the free time you would be playing the stock game. I don't know, maybe you like playing the same game over and over again, so play however you want. I just know I like to try something new every now and again.

My time is limited i'm sorry to say, my original point was merely to say I would prefer MTW2 to work out the box, to be highly enjoyable, balanced, rigorously tested, and bug-free. Without the need to mod to get a good game. I admit such a hope is astromically out of all proportions, but hey, one can hope!

As for mods, great, i fully support the whole sherbang (sp?). But for example :
RTR install instructions from their website (no disrespect meant to anyone involved)

Installation Instructions

~ Fresh Installation:

1. Uninstall all traces of Rome: Total War from your Computer. (My computer needs an upgrade, takes longer than it should)
2. Install a fresh version of Rome Total War 1.0. (Three disk installation)
3. Install the official Rome Total War 1.2 Update Patch (link unavailable, even on official site)
4. Install Rome Total Realism 6.0 Full into your Rome Total War directory. (289mb download)
5. Install the Rome Total Realism 6.2 patch. (40mb download)
6. [Optional] Install the Music Addon (recommended) (Okay optional but 125mb)
7. Installation complete! (Hurray!)

Im' sure i'll love it but what happens if i don't? Un-install - Re-install - Install BI - Patch. Great! Tomorrow in my time off i might try installing EB!

And all this is after the fact that I've read these forums to discover that these are probably two of the best mods available. I simply don't have the time! I'd prefer to spend what little time I have playing the game (which I haven't had a chance to play to death yet! ).

I think we're fighting from the same corner, and in no way did i mean any disrespect. I am glad that you have managed to take advantage of the wonderful world of modding available, I just wish i could afford to do the same.

[TerranAce007]

Im' sure i'll love it but what happens if i don't? Un-install - Re-install - Install BI - Patch. Great! Tomorrow in my time off i might try installing EB!

Yea, that is a big downside having to reinstall the game with every new mod. You can simply make a copy of your original RTW folder to restore later, but it eats twice the disk space to do so, and requires a little more manual installation. No problem for most people, but I know I would have a nightmare trying to talk my brother through it on the phone. I've read about some mod managers but never tried them. A better mod switching system would definately be a good suggestion to CA, if they'll listen...

Actually, CA has said that they make the game the way they want, and if you don't like it that's tough for you. I told them the unit speeds were too fast in August 2004, and they said they didn't see anything wrong with them. Now they have lowered the unit speeds in M2TW, and claim it's an improvement. What happened to "We don't see any problem with the speeds."?

Well, they obviously can't please everyone during beta testing, and maybe unit speed was an issue, but not high enough on the priority list, which is likely, since you say they don't do enough testing, probably due to time & budget constraints. It is their game and their prerogative, afterall, to choose what features to include, but after seeing that unit speed turned out to be a big issue, it looks like they are adressing it in M2TW. Though that still doesn't do RTW any good, at least they are addressing the issue.

Do you want accurate mouseover info in the unit purchase screen? You're aware it's incorrect right? Try suggesting to CA that it should be fixed, and see what they say if they even give you an answer.

I was aware that there were issues with it at some point, but I haven't played stock RTW in a while. Like I said earlier, I have recently gotten back into RTW due to the nearing of M2TW's release (I was more into Battlefield 2 all summer). Went from RTR to Invasio Barbarorum. I did notice errors in custom battles, but I assume those are the fault of the respective mods. It is surprising (and says a lot for their quality control) though that those issues remain after all the patches.

But to ask them to fix RTW a bit of a stretch, seeing as it is an old game now, and they seem to have enough problems to work out in M2TW as it is...

[Puzz3D]

But to ask them to fix RTW a bit of a stretch, seeing as it is an old game now, and they seem to have enough problems to work out in M2TW as it is...

The request to fix the mouseover info was made in Jan 2005 before the RTW v1.2 patch was released. Since they refused outright to fix it, no more requests were made. The civil war bug was apparently introduced by the RTW v1.5 patch, and it's unlikely there will be anymore patches for RTW. Now project this state of affairs onto M2TW.

Well, they obviously can't please everyone during beta testing, and maybe unit speed was an issue, but not high enough on the priority list, which is likely, since you say they don't do enough testing, probably due to time & budget constraints.

It wasn't an issue for CA. It was only an issue for the players, and it didn't get fixed because it wasn't an issue for CA not because it was too far down the list of things to do. It wasn't even on the list of things to do. So, I have a game that I bought that I can't use because they weren't up front about the change in direction they were taking the game. It turned out a lot more than gamespeed had been secretly changed. When I posted that CA had a new vision, MikeB responded that it was news to him, and he wasn't aware of any new vision. The gameplay was dramatically altered, but there was no new vision? What was it then, a bunch of mistakes? I'll tell you why MikeB tried to discredit my remark. It was because CA was still trying to ride the coattails of MTW, and sell the game to players who expected it to be a refinement of MTW gameplay. That's why there was a huge outburst of animosity towards CA by the veterans who bought RTW. There was even talk of suing CA for false representation. The multiplayer petition had aver 500 signatures, and because of that CA says they will no longer give petitions any consideration.

All I can say is you better hope M2TW is very good out of the box otherwise you're in for a mountain of frustration and wasted time unless you're quick to move on to something else.

[PROMETHEUS]

Thanks for the nice explanation , now I see why it could be a problem , though I am still thinking that if well balanced the upgrades can be very well used for MP , also becouse on field you will be able to see the units if they are or aren't upgraded with their armours and weapons beeing different .....

[*Ringo*]

You can simply make a copy of your original RTW folder to restore later, but it eats twice the disk space to do so, and requires a little more manual installation.

That's no problem! I'm very computer literate and i have 480gb hard drive space! Just can't afford the time .

One thing for sure though this thread definitely confirms that we all give a damn where this franchise will go?

[Cheetah]

One thing for sure though this thread definitely confirms that we all give a damn where this franchise will go?

No. How did you arrive to this conclusion?

[TerranAce007]

No. How did you arrive to this conclusion?

Maybe all the talk about how EA doesn't care about user opinions and how the TW series has gone downhill from the original STW...

Obviously, everyone here likes playing Total War, or they wouldn't be wasting their time in this fourm. That being said, I think it's safe to say that everyone here is concerned over the decisions being made in the production of M2TW -- hoping that EA doesn't turn the TW series to crap with this next release.

Additionally, all of the discontent *should* be a sign to them that they need to get it right with M2TW, or there might not be any fan interest when they start planning their next game.

I am likewise hoping for M2TW to be awesome, but there are plenty of other games out there to play...

[Orda Khan]

This is a purely MP based reply.

For what it's worth and even though I am sceptical, cynical or whatever (though this is mainly caused by RTW) I would love this new game to be truly superb. The tactical possibilities of STW married with the wonderful commands and smoothness of MTW, plus the graphic splendour and the left/select and right/command of RTW. Something like that WOULD be a step in the right direction

......Orda

[Dead Knight of the Living]

Dead Knight of the Living, i think many people read the blog differently to you. I never saw it mention this would only happen to the player, all it says is that morale and faitque will change for the different difficult settings.

I know it's not only going to affect the player. What it sounds like to me is they're going to boost the AI's morale to make it harder for the players to defeat them. That's not my idea of improved AI. THat's basically giving them a GOD cheat. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's basically what it sounded like they were doing to me.

[Lusted]

So you took:

As the difficulty ramps up, the influence of morale and fatigue become more apparent with the “Very Hard” setting giving you the most realistic battle experience possible.

to mean the ai gets morale bonuses??

That to mean means that the morale becomes more realistic, and one side getting morale boosts is not realistic so im guessing whatever changes in the morale to make it more difficult at different difficulty levels affects both the ai and player equally.

[alpaca]

Maybe all the talk about how EA doesn't care about user opinions and how the TW series has gone downhill from the original STW...

Obviously, everyone here likes playing Total War, or they wouldn't be wasting their time in this fourm. That being said, I think it's safe to say that everyone here is concerned over the decisions being made in the production of M2TW -- hoping that EA doesn't turn the TW series to crap with this next release.

Additionally, all of the discontent *should* be a sign to them that they need to get it right with M2TW, or there might not be any fan interest when they start planning their next game.

I am likewise hoping for M2TW to be awesome, but there are plenty of other games out there to play...

EA? Is there some kind of secret infiltration going on

[Martok]

EA? Is there some kind of secret infiltration going on

I'm pretty sure he meant CA, not EA.

EA only published Shogun along with its expansion pack, Mongol Invasion (plus Shogun Warlord Edition, which combines the two). It has (fortunately) not been involved in the Total War series since then.

[hoom]

EA!
Suddenly the intent of the unit variability comes clear, its so that they can use spyware to put different advertising on the units shields & on the walls of cities

[TerranAce007]

EA!
Suddenly the intent of the unit variability comes clear, its so that they can use spyware to put different advertising on the units shields & on the walls of cities

Sorry, meant CA. As for EA, I liked BF2, but wont do 2142 for that very reason...