Is the game meant to be unexplained?

[Quickening]

Every day I come onto this forum and discover a new, subtle aspect of this game from another forumites endeavours. It seems that this game has one hell of a lot to it. But none of this is conveyed in the manual at all. Is it meant to be this way or are CA just continuing the trend of substandard gaming manuals that we have suffered since the move from cardboard game boxes?
Im all for discovering things on my own in a game, but in one of this magnitude Id like a little hint at the mechanics without having to crack open some files and decipher the code within.

[ScrapTower]

We (the people who read these forums) help eachother and thus understand the game better. A lot if not the majority of MTWII players probably dont read these forums so they have only the (almost useless) manual to go by. Clearly the game was almost finished when released but not quite. IMO this game went thru very little if ANY beta testing. I think alot is unexplained because was rushed out the door, and with the minimal beta testing, even less.

[Spino]

Every Total War game is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a riddle and covered by a candy flavored shell.

[Whacker]

Every day I come onto this forum and discover a new, subtle aspect of this game from another forumites endeavours. It seems that this game has one hell of a lot to it. But none of this is conveyed in the manual at all. Is it meant to be this way or are CA just continuing the trend of substandard gaming manuals that we have suffered since the move from cardboard game boxes?
Im all for discovering things on my own in a game, but in one of this magnitude Id like a little hint at the mechanics without having to crack open some files and decipher the code within.

The .org has been crying out for that for ages. IIRC, fortunately with the shift to the RTW engine CA decided to give up the goods and gave a good deal of info on the game mechanics for the MTW engine. For RTW, we didn't get much at all officially, at least not that I can remember reading or seeing. Most of what was discovered was done by therother, ER, and many other very talented folks in the Ludus Magna, and even then sometimes it wasn't entirely evident what the answer was.

I seem to recall saying something to the same effect as what you've stated in several other posts. Econ pointed out that there was some mention by CA that giving up too much information would possibly "expose" too much of their IP to possible competitors. My response to that was bull honky, CA has had 5-6 years now head start, I can't honestly think of anything that's close to the TW titles in terms of gameplay style (No, Civ isn't even close, nor are the RTP titles), not to mention there's a number of different ways that we can arrive at the conclusions we do in terms of math mechanics, but there's no real way to determine what's correct without the official word.

CA putting up that bit on charging is exactly what we'd like to see more of, for that and for all the other game mechanics questions we can come up with. Some things are somewhat straightforward, such as the squalor and whatnaught. Others, such as the assassination success rates, begs for a good solid explanation, including the math, from the good folks at CA. Doing so would go miles to getting CA brownie points with the community in general and making us that much more likely to be continued customers down the road, imho. I know it would for me at least.

Cheers!

[SirGrotius]

That's an interesting question. I even bought the strategy guide to the game for giggles and it's basically a beefed up manual. It's funny, but the manual doesn't even list whether or not there's upkeep for agents, but the guide does say that there is no upkeep, but the forum members say there is an upkeep. I think the lack of clarify can hinder one's enjoyment of the game.

[Whacker]

That's an interesting question. I even bought the strategy guide to the game for giggles and it's basically a beefed up manual. It's funny, but the manual doesn't even list whether or not there's upkeep for agents, but the guide does say that there is no upkeep, but the forum members say there is an upkeep. I think the lack of clarify can hinder one's enjoyment of the game.

You poor bas... I mean... a rather unfortunately purchase, at least in my humble opinion. The reason I say that is because invariably the game is going to change, given the feedback we've seen so far for M2 it's probably going to change a good bit. That means that quite a bit of what you see, such as the unit stats and whatnaught, are probably not going to be that way after a patch or two. Same holds with other game mechanics. The last (and just about only, as far back as I can remember) game guide I bought was for Oblivion. Surprisingly, it's mostly accurate even after the first patch or two. The maps are pretty durn handy, which is why I bought it. Meh, some people actually get value out of those guides, I tend not to with a few exceptions. I do hope that you at least got your money's worth, or some utility value out of it.

Cheers!

[Shahed]

Every day I come onto this forum and discover a new, subtle aspect of this game from another forumites endeavours. It seems that this game has one hell of a lot to it. But none of this is conveyed in the manual at all. Is it meant to be this way or are CA just continuing the trend of substandard gaming manuals that we have suffered since the move from cardboard game boxes?
Im all for discovering things on my own in a game, but in one of this magnitude Id like a little hint at the mechanics without having to crack open some files and decipher the code within.

I'd say a bit of both, incomplete manuals and making the player find stuff for himself (playtesting at the same time).

[Zoltan]

Lol, have you ever played some japanese hardcore RPG games? about 90% of the game if "secret" or "bonus" stuff that you have to figure out for yourself from a few hints or check on gamer board or in strategy books. M2TW is almost straightforward in comparison.

It's true that the manual is barely enough to get you into it. Reasons might be:

- There's a tutorial and advisors.
- Some features were probably added or tweaked last-minute
- Some features were not set on paper cause CA wants keep room to modify or tweak them in the future.
- Some things are just more fun to discover as you go.
- For Intellectual Property reasons, CA is very shy on protective on questions regarding AI and battle mechanics.
- Writing software manuals is a boring job (did enough of that in my time)
- And finally.. feature is not working as intended. There are indeed a few of these, but not as many as you seem to think.

[Lochar]

Lol, have you ever played some japanese hardcore RPG games? about 90% of the game if "secret" or "bonus" stuff that you have to figure out for yourself from a few hints or check on gamer board or in strategy books. M2TW is almost straightforward in comparison.

It's true that the manual is barely enough to get you into it. Reasons might be:

- There's a tutorial and advisors.
- Some features were probably added or tweaked last-minute
- Some features were not set on paper cause CA wants keep room to modify or tweak them in the future.
- Some things are just more fun to discover as you go.
- For Intellectual Property reasons, CA is very shy on protective on questions regarding AI and battle mechanics.
- Writing software manuals is a boring job (did enough of that in my time)
- And finally.. feature is not working as intended. There are indeed a few of these, but not as many as you seem to think.

That last line is the one that makes me scratch my head. I think that problem exists in alot of games, and if we dont know its broke then how can we say anything?

An example would be ancillieries, the manual didnt cover them much in RTW and not until Froggy's fantastic guide and posts here did I even try to swap them. Was this intentional or a bug?

The thread about assasins, wether a nearby spy makes killing harder, speculation. All the posts I see about stats and figures with the armor. Are armor upgrades broke or intentional?

Some of these things would be prevented if the manual covered more detail.

I can understanding finding things out for ourselves to a point but there is also a need to give us some guildines to go by.

[Shahed]

There is a difference between mystery and ambiguity.

[Zoltan]

Hey lochar I can understand why this is all a bit confusing and unnerving.

Good points you raise, I didnt follow too much what's wrong with armor upgrades and my manual is sitting unopened in another country (had to move for my job). But I typically think that's something that's been fiddled with a lot for game balance, and that is now working to the developer's satisfaction, but not quite as envisioned during game design.

Anciliaries and swapping I think are working as intended in game design, they just either thought this was too insignificant a feature to make it to the manual (the infamous clause 6 in my above post), or they wanted us to figure it out for ourselves. It is after all a function that only the most hardcore micromanagers will regularly use.

The spy and assassin thingy is a combination of all. Looks like the feature (assassin hindered/helped by spies) is working in a fairly logical way, but was left out of the manual for various reasons (insignificant or tweaked after the original game design). What got broken in the process however is the success rate display I think.

[Daveybaby]

@Quickening
I think the M2TW manual is pretty good to be honest. What were you hoping for - a telephone directory sized book with every stat in the game printed in it?

And there is a difference between a manual and a strategy guide. (Or, at least there should be - pretty much all strategy guides published these days are rubbish).

A manual just tells you how to play the game, not how to beat it.