Is the game meant to be unexplained?

[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

[Kobal2fr]

Ol' Fart stuff

Heh, I remember the first Civilization, with a manual the size of a book. I remember cause I didn't have a computer back then, and had pinched the manual from my-friend-who-had-one-and-the-game and read myself to sleep with it, dreaming of the day I would play it too *nostalgic sigh*. But agreed, flight simulations were the absolute worst. Ever played the original Falcon 4.0 ? You could stone an infidel to death with the manual. I still have it in a cardboard box somewhere, in case zee Germans try their Ardennes trick again.

It's all about the gaming industry becoming... well, an industry. Cutting down on costs everywhere. Standardizing. Becoming cost-efficient. Streamlined. Having gotten the attention of "the suits".

I remember the time when every gamebox was a different size, and they were the devil to organize and tidy up neatly in your gaming cupboard because you're anal and they just won't FIT . These days, it's just a DVD-box. They fit neatly. Dead neatly.

I remember having a pile of gaming manuals about as towering (and top-heavy. And collapsing all the time) as my pile of school books. These days, I count myself lucky when I don't throw a new game's manual out because it just happened to fall in the take-away menu and you-have-won-a-free-world-tour vouchers pile.
It used to be they printed huge paper manuals. Then they switched to paper quick-notes and huge .pdf manuals. Then they didn't even bother with the .pdf anymore... And now there's a whole parasite industry of suits making money out of selling the manual and calling it a "guide".

I blame money. And the invention of the tie, that instrument of the devil which taints the soul and turneth man into a ravening beast.

[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.

[Nestor]

They should at least have a chapter for the, more or less, experienced players explaining the changes they made.

The game is based on the RTW engine and most of us simply try to play the way we know.

I've seen worst and I've seen better manuals but, if CA and SEGA really respect the loyal fanbase for the TW series that gave CA the opportunity to release 4 games and 4 expansions, they should give at least hints about some important aspects of the game that they changed, guiding us to the right direction. And the forums would be much more helpful with people giving really solid information instead of this, walking in the dark thing, we are experiencing now.

We have a say in my country about the one-eyed man that guides the blind people. You don't expect much of him. And nobody at the moment, especially without the unpacker, can see the light!

[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 :)