Is the game meant to be unexplained?

[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.

[Quickening]

@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?

The manual is certainly better than a lot of manuals you get nowadays (Im only 22 not 50 by the way even though I keep going on about "nowadays" ).
It covers a lot of things but not in enough detail in my opinion. Take Princesses as a random example. Sure the manual tells you they exist and what they do... but it doesn't tell you what affects their traits how to gain Charm or anything else. I had to rely on the people of this forum going blind reading the files to figure it out.
It's exactly the same with every other aspect of the game. They are covered, but not well enough. If a game is as intricate as MTW2 is, the manual should at least hint at its subtle mechanics. Most people who buy the game will not bother with forums (the Total War series is unique in that it appeals to older gamers as well, even those who never bother with games usually). It's those non forumites who will lose out I feel and to be honest, I don't think I should have to look on an internet forum to see how a game works.

EDIT: Also, the challenge in any game should lie in using what you do know about it to beat the game, not in trying to guess how the game works.

[Bob the Insane]

I was reasonably happy with the manual considering it's size. A lot of the stuff releaved in here is about how things work or the optimal strategy for building agents and so on.

I would expect this kind of stuff in a strategy guide rather than the manual.

The whle two style of charge thing annoyed me though. I think it is great that it is in there, but it should have been documented, it is not some engine sercret, it is a important instruction that governs how you use some of the interface. While I was happy for the explination it makes me wonder what other little features are in there that have not been described but would explain some of the odd stuff we see. I mean does the dual charge mechanisim apply to infantry units too? Does it explain the odd charges we see when half the units simple stops and hangs back?

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

I would expect this kind of stuff in a strategy guide rather than the manual.

Which is exactly the problem - people are becoming so used to utterly useless manuals that they are falling into the trap of assuming that *requisite* information should be paid for via a strategy guide.

The modern assumption is that *everyone has internet access* and thus can come here and elsewhere to get the information they need, without the need for a detailed manual to be produced.

Personally I think that the attitude is wrong and that every game should have the requisite play information in the manual - not "How to play the game in terms of strategy" (That's what a strategy guide SHOULD be) but what the *rules* are in the game: i.e. low piety means you may be tried for heresy by an inquisitor , raising piety is done by....XYZ

That's a game rule (condition), and one not explained in the manual - if you don't know the rules how can you play properly?

If you do not know how to raise piety how can you combat Inquisitors using that feature of the game?

You can't.

Thus a manual should always give you the *rules* of the game and a strategy guide should tell you how best to utilise those rules to your advantage.

The MTW2 manual falls very short in terms of explaining the rules and that means that you simply can not play the game to its full potential.

It's really that simple.

[Whacker]

stuff

Very well said. I remember some games that I bought in the mid 90's that came with 400+ page manuals. That's just for extremely arcade-like WWII flight sims. I remember some games also included huge poster-size foldout maps, figurines, all kinds of goodies and cool stuff that made getting the game almost like getting a happy meal. Half the fun is in the prizes and toys, not just the food. (Not that McD's really suits my tastes these days..)

Today's game manuals leave much to be desired. While I don't necessarily expect a full on mathematical equation and description of each feature, some much more in-depth information and descriptions of the various aspects and nuances of the game should be included as part of the base manual. Here's to hoping that this improves in the future. CA at least has done much better than a number of other recent PC game examples I can think of offhand, in terms of having sufficient information in the game manual.

Cheers

[madchoochter]

A lot of game manuals seem to be there just to tell you how to put the CD in the drive and click install unfortunately. The strategy guide is seen as the real manual. Why get people to fork out £30 for the game and give them a thick manual "free" that most people don't read, when you can make them pay for an extra £10-£15. TW doesn't strike me as that type of game though. I think your supposed to muck around and play with stuff if that's your thing.

Also some games come with a pdf manual on the disk with more info, but don't tell you in the paper manual. Always worth checking to see if there's something there.

[Biggus Diccus]

Just look to the HOMM V community and the support they get from Nival/Ubisoft in this aspect. The HOMM V community has made a extremely beautiful and detailed manual for HOMM V with the help and support from the developer (Nival) and publisher (Ubisoft). As the manual shipped with HOMM V was totally crap (Nival/Ubisoft admitted as much), the community-made manual is very helpful.

[aphex]

Also with the later TW games (and newer games in general), the game mechanics are becoming sufficiently detailed and complex to be comparable with our experience of Real Life(TM) in some areas.
The gamer may then become more confused with such richness if/when it breaks down in places but holds up in others. E.g. do we expect a certain strategy to work/fail because it would in real life?
Therefore it may be nice to have a guide to temper our expectations of a game that seems to promise so much, but also leave the details of implementation to be discovered through playing :)