About The TURKS

[Bakma]

I agree with Sinan. On the other hand i claim that Turkish generals' avatars are "disaster". Beyond being a muslim nation, the Turkish tribes moved into Asia Minor and Middle east from "Middle Asia (Far East)" since second half of 11th century. They had very different culture comparing arabic nations. (More likely to look like "Chinese" or "Mongol" by phsycal appearance) Those "dark and fearsome" men in this game can not be represented as Turks to my mind. Of course CA "may" have made mistake standing Catholic nations respectivly. But... They should have studied more on Turks...

P.S: Please dont recognize my thoughts as if baiting... No one desires flame bait in this community. However everyone ought to respect other peoples' ideas. I want to admire everybody in this community for sharing their ideas

it is strange that the mongols and timurits are also arabic...

it would be cool if the turks, mongols, timurits had the same kind of avatars for their generals, leaders etc.

And the leaders should be called khan or amir? and in the late game period Sultan.

btw. the first time i klicked on an aztec warrior he also had a arabic dialect :S
and in german version you see some english words like "ivory" instead of Elfenbein :)

[Durallan]

First of all, It is just a game. Its not terribly historic because you can warp so much of history and end up with any one faction owning all of europe and anywhere else they care to fight. That isn't very realistic. That aside I don't care for the inconsistencies, there was only so much they could do about historic events because you don't know what the players are going to try and do. I keep in mind that Medieval 2 is just a game and a fun one. I love being able to build empires and with a few more tweaks M2TW could be great!

I just think this is taking things a little overboard for a game , but thats just me. Remember to have fun when getting into discussions likke this or things get nasty

[The Wizard]

First of all, It is just a game. Its not terribly historic because you can warp so much of history and end up with any one faction owning all of europe and anywhere else they care to fight. That isn't very realistic.

You base yourself on an incorrect assumption.

What matters is the outset, what is handed to you at the beginning of each scenario -- that is to say Early, High and Late. Everything at that beginning should be just like it was in real life, as far as we can reconstruct it. With those tools given to you, the choice is yours what to do... follow history, or follow loftier ambitions?

You take it from there. You are thrust into the position of kings and emperors, caliphs and sultans, and you must decide as they did.

This is the essence of a game like this, and the masters of it are Paradox Entertainment. Their advantage in this over CA, however, is that a Paradox game does not contain any direct combat. In this, for sake of simplicity, the historical military units, their equipment, and their tactics should maintain strict adherence to history, just as the starting positions in each scenario do.

Only in this way can you truly presume to have made a game in which the player is thrust before the same crossroads that the great leaders of history were thrust before.

Plus, it's hella fun.

[Slug For A Butt]

It's beginning to sound a little like Turkey vs The Rest Of The Civilised World.
One thing Bakma, since when has Cologne been a Turkish state?
Dammit, when can I start to be proud of being English? No one seems to let me.

[Durallan]

I'm not assuming anything, I'm just saying that its a game, relax and don't take it so seriously. If they said on the Medieval 2 box that this would be a politically, technically, historically correct simulation of medieval warfare and the political intrigue that went with it, then you would probably have a case to get so upset at them about it. They do the game to make money and to have fun making it and to enjoy seeing people playing the game they made. Unfortunately they don't have 30 years to spend researching each faction's history, where they came from how they arose and everything else. Thats alot to ask of a group of people who are making a game let alone any one person.

They don't make the game to be so historically correct that your eyes will water reading large pages of text about what happened before the time you have started in. I'm just playing a great game that is really entertaining except for a fair few niggles.

Now I don't really care that much about it. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to start seeing spells and mages and monsters from the underworld appearing in the next expansion but its not that important to get every single fact right when it is only a game. Plus half of history is about tales that people heard, some of it is first person evidence the rest is third person evidence.

One of the best things about Medieval 2 is its moddability, at least thats what I like calling it. If you really want to make everything absolutely historically, politically and techinally correct, make a mod! I'm not sure how far you can get with it but I'm sure its possible.

At least then it will be constructive and you can show everyone else and CA how much better an apparently historically correct game would be (because nobody knows for absolute certainty unless they lived in that time period.)

[Raziel17]

Of course this is a game, not a history book but its subject is history. We are not expecting it to be correct compeletely or play a game that is progressing just like in history books. However there are some mistakes that souldn't have been made even in a game. For example Turkish names. Everybody knows that Nuzhet ed-Devlah can not be a Turk name. Instead of this they could use names such as Kilijarslan, Alparslan, Porsuk, Alptegin etc. and finding these names doesn't take 30 years or instead of researching for these they could ask for Totalwar fans help. But they didn't do anything and now the game is full of bad mistakes. These mistakes is not only for Turkish faction, also other factions Like Mongols or Timurids have some mistakes. In my opinion they should be corrected by the producers of the game not by modders. A small patch can be acceptable.

[IPoseTheQuestionYouReturnTheAnswer]

Eh?

It took EB -- a development team made out of volunteers without pay -- about one and a half to two years to make a historically accurate game. We're talking modders, not professionally educated, spending their free time to make stuff. Sure, they started with an existing foundation, but that one was so ill-suited we had to throw tons out.

Compare that to the (well-)paid, professional, 9-to-5 Creative Assembly developers. Surely they could pump out something historically accurate and fun to play (which EB is, infinitely more so than RTW) within the deadlines demanded in the software manufacturing market if a bunch of amateurs could do it?

Yes. It took EB developers one and a half to two years to mod a game that spent 3 years or more in development just to make it mostly historically accurate. Eb didn't *make* the game, they just took a game that was already made, changed some numbers in a file, and made some new models. Of course, I'm simplifying it, but the point is they didn't build an engine, and they didn't have to build their game from the very first line of code. The metaphor doesn't work.

You think game developers work 9-5 shifts? Dang. Talk to someone who works in the industry, man. Many developers have to stay overnight, unpaid, in order to finish on time. During the closing days of development, most developers get into a crunch, where they might work for an entire day or more at a time. It's a rather inglorious existance, most of the time.

Creating an entirely historically accurate game is not an easy undertaking, and the rewards of the finished product are almost nil. First of all, a 100% historically accurate game is aiming for the same target audience that watches the History Channel and reads famous historical works on a regular basis, which is a woefully small percentage of the population. The costs of developing such a huge game would greatly outweigh the profits of selling it.

Look at Medieval 2. It took about a year and a half to two years to develop, and it was built on pre-existing engine that took another three years to make. And just look at all the "egregious" historical inaccuracies we can all come up with after 5 years of development. Seriously, I think that addressing the fact that AI-controlled armies never fight back is a much bigger issue than making sure you got the title for the 14th-century Turkish ruler correct. There are much bigger issues that need to come before historical accuracy.

Splitting factions up into cultures is necessary. Do you really expect CA to individually create 21 different factions with exact, flawless, spot-on historical accuracy? It's an absolutely absurd expectation. There's neither the time nor the money to do so. Nor is it even a real factor in the face of the many gameplay problems and bugs the game is currently facing. Seriously, when they fix the AI never fighting back, my units not responding to orders, and wanton AI stack spammage, then I might, just might, start to care about the historical implications behind the effectiveness of Sipahis versus Crusader Knights.

Even if a company does try to make a historically accurate game, you're still going to find problems with how they portrayed history, because history does not translate into a game. It's not that easy. Many units are entirely theoretical, and sometimes the military of an entire tribe or significant regional power is represented by one or two units, cases in point being Tuareg Heavy Spearmen (the Tuareg were a fairly major tribe) and, even better, the Numidian cavalry from RTW. Numidia was a fairly powerful realm, and it seems odd that that the nation's entire military power is represented by a single unit of javelin-throwing light cavalry. If you wanted to make everything historically accurate, then the game would have a thousand different units. Oh, we need to differentiate between Sipahis in the 14th century as opposed to the Sipahis that were raised by the Askljac;na98a35 system of land grants and taxation in the 13.5th century, because the latter incarnation of Sipahis wore a red uniform, while the former wore scarlet! Thus we have to create two separate units, otherwise it's historically inaccurate! Oh NOES!

My point is that historical accuracy is impractical and does not sell in the commerical world, and that is what Medieval 2 Total War is - a commercial product.

[Raziel17]

If you wanted to make everything historically accurate, then the game would have a thousand different units. Oh, we need to differentiate between Sipahis in the 14th century as opposed to the Sipahis that were raised by the Askljac;na98a35 system of land grants and taxation in the 13.5th century, because the latter incarnation of Sipahis wore a red uniform, while the former wore scarlet! Thus we have to create two separate units, otherwise it's historically inaccurate! Oh NOES!

Aren't you reading messages or aren't you able to understand them. I am writing again, read carefully:
--Of course this is a game, not a history book but its subject is history. We are not expecting it to be correct compeletely or play a game that is progressing just like in history books. However there are some mistakes that souldn't have been made even in a game. For example Turkish names. Everybody knows that Nuzhet ed-Devlah can not be a Turk name. Instead of this they could use names such as Kilijarslan, Alparslan, Porsuk, Alptegin etc. and finding these names doesn't take 30 years or instead of researching for these they could ask for Totalwar fans help. But they didn't do anything and now the game is full of bad mistakes.--
Now think again, hope you understand that we aren't talking about 100% accuracy, we are talking about the mistakes which were made obviously and can be corrected easily.