About The TURKS

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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.