What about keeping it historical?

[lars573]

From what I have read on these forums and from the screenshots I have seen it seems that the only way to play is to expand really fast and quick, otherwise you do not have a chance. The soul purpose of the campaign is to conquer 45 provinces, which seems like a large part of the known world. This is obviously made even worse by the fact that you have very large provinces and can conquer a very large area in a matter of turns.

The larger provinces are either desert or have very low population density.

So is there any interest at all for people prefering hictorical gameplay or slow expansions? I mean I want to play England and struggle against France, but not conquer half of it in a matter of turns in a rush for rebel towns. I understand that this game focuses on battles, but it seems to me that it resembles a weird boardgame rather than a historical simulator. For me a large part of the fun is in the historical accuracy and in the more or less realistic expansion of nations.

Thing is TW never was, never will be, and in fact was never designed, or intended to be a historical sim. If you want a sim from TW your expections are unreasonable. CA never set out to create historical sims, they set out to make RTS games. And they did.


Threads like these are almost as ridiculous as a person complaining that Company of Heroes is also an RTS and not a sim. When in both cases the games were marketed as RTS games.

[sapi]

Skipping to the end of this thread, i'd like to add a few notes.

- Since when have TW games been about historical accuracy? - they've always been about rewriting history. For a game to be entirely historically accurate you'd have to have no real input, and that'd just make for a boring game.

- M2 caters for a lot of different playing styles, but remember that this series is called total war, not half-hearted outlast-o-sim - you can't expect what was never intended

[redhen]

I would also love to see more historical scenarios. As it is I cannot bring myself to play some of the smaller factions, i.e. what were the historical chances of Scotland conquering all of Europe?

Like the Rome series I can see why this would take more time to code. For example, years ago I used to play boardgames from SPI, Avalon Hill, etc, where you start with historical OOB's (order of battle) and realistic reinforcements.
For WWII and Napoleonic games this worked well because these facts were well documented.

For ancient and medieval time periods this is mostly guesswork.

One more reason for the next Total War game to be Napoleonic based.

[Barry Fitzgerald]

I agree with what sapi says...from what I can see CA never really set out to have an accurate historical game...and yes total war means that...war. I don't think people expect Civilization esque depth of city management..

On the other hand I wouldn't mind some more depth to economy or diplomacy...as it stands TW can sometimes be too much of battles. I would like to see fantasy units gone that is for sure....RTW was spoilt a tad with some of those...keep it real ish....without being a slave to details..

I too would like a Napoleonic era one..but some wouldn't..I guess unit variety is more limited...but being honest it was an era that was very interesting from a military point of view....

I bet CA are working on the next one as we speak!

[Grimmy]

One thing that seems to be forgotten by many in this kind of discussion is that this is a game, not a life style or some other such.

Games are developed by folk who use as much art as science and they're made to be fun to play and to generate enough income to be profitable enough to be worth the job of making them. Those squalling about how CA abandoned some sort of ethic to become mass market aren't dealing from a full deck. The objective of any producer/developer is to sell as much of their product to as many people as they can.

What I like so much about the TW franchise is that it's both a turn based game and real time game in one and is at least loosely tied to recognizable historical periods. What I also like about the TW franchise is the fantastic modding community. I know there'll be mods that I'll enjoy playing as much or more than I enjoyed the "vanilla" game.

Take RTW for example. There's RTW and it's expansion which were both very entertaining for me for much longer than most other games I've played in my long years of playing games. Then there was RTR. It was very nearly like a whole new game, almost a RTW2. Same engine and graphics but much to explore and adapt to in game play. Now there's EB nearing completion. Same deal. Same familiar engine and graphics as RTW but much new to explore and adapt to. Both are really big "bang for buck" mulitpliers for me and many others when considering the many many hours of fun and play that we've gotten from our RTW purchase.

The same will happen for M2TW. And, I think it will only get better as it goes along. CA seems to have gotten the hint that the modding community really helps drive sales and extend market life for their games.

But to address the actual question of the OP, is M2TW as historically accurate as possible? no, of course not. Will there eventually be a mod that will be more historically accurate? I do believe so, matter of fact, I'll wager there'll be at least a couple with equally viable renditions of what is historically accurate, and, no doubt, they'll be hella fun to play. There'll also be mods for those that like fantasy, alternate realities, other periods of history or just new gimicks and widgets to mess with in game.

[Ar7]

Thank you for all the answers, I will get the game, if only for the reason that I played MTW and RTW.

I would like to explain myself a bit better regarding the historical accuracy, to answer the people who spoke of Henry V, Timurids and Mongols. I know that large scale conquests were possible and I do not deny it, but they should be hard, very hard to pull off. Reading some of the strategy guides a player is expected to triple in size at the very start, which a find rather iffy. When I speak of historical realism I mean that in most wars the gains were rather limited, there were many sieges and battles, but there was no blitzkrieg style land grabbing, that was my biggest concern.

Having said that, I believe I shall still get the game.