Is this the worst out of the Total War series?

[Quintus Of Pompeii]

Okay, i seem to be getting the point.

I apologise for posting this thread, it was a very "N00bish" thing to do. If you are all very dedicated S:TW fans I deeply appologise. If we was in the era of the samurai and in the middle of japan i would take my own life for my shame. I have lost my honour. Sorry Again

Quintus

[Noir]

No problem Quintus.

I am well aware that we all sound a bit like... bad mothers in law, but
there are reasons for that as there are reasons why it is believed that STW is actually in many senses superior to the the newer releases.

As we've all been vague and theoretical about it well, i am happy to discuss it more in detail if you.. survive your intended harakiri.

I've been called nostalgic, wearing rose tinted glasses etc etc for liking STW and MTW more than the newer games and for saying that the newer games are inferior. But i don't do it because i am a "hardcore" - its just because i get enjoyment out of them, while its not the case with the newer ones.

Always at your service

[Puzz3D]

The battles were very good in original STW both in SP and MP. The battles were what STW was all about, and the AI was quite good in deciding how large an army to bring when attacking which really helped make the SP battles challenging. The MP battles were very interesting and very well balanced, and the MP game attracted many high quality players. I think the battles are less good in STW/MI because the guns were not adequately tested for the v1.02 patch, so they were not weakened enough to get back to original STW gameplay. The effectiveness of guns was tripled in STW/MI for no good reason because guns alone would never have been able to stop a cav charge the way they can in STW/MI, and I know for a fact that it was not intended for them to be able to do so by those who balanced the v1.02 patch. Weapon and armor upgrades were introduced, but there was a huge error in the calculation of the cost of those upgrades which meant the weakest unit in the game became the most powerful unit via those upgrades. Multiplayer participation dropped like a lead balloon from over 100 players online on weekends to less than 40. This wasn't people drifting away because they were tiring of the game. It was a precipitous and sudden drop. There were also ominous signs for the future with the introduction of gimmicky units such as the battlefield ninja and kensai. If you study the combat and morale system of STW, you'll see that it isn't suited for handling small units especially one man units, and having a unit like the ninja be invisible when there is no cover and carry 100 ammo is extreme fantasy.

With MTW, it became apparent that tactical battles were diminishing in quality in Total War, although the strategic campaign was improving. The emphasis on the battlefield changed from winning by superior strategy and tactics to winning by bringing the better units. Having a large number of unbalanced unit types had become more important than having a small number of well balanced units. MP participation gradually rose to substantially above what it had been in original STW at it's peak. At that point, it was clear that the game would never return to having a few well balanced units, and it was clear that CA was not going to be able to balanced the large number of units they were now putting into the game. In SP, the tactically important seasons were discarded, and this also adversely impacted the ecomomic strategy of having income only once every 4 turns. Artillery was introduced, but the AI wasn't improved enough to handle it well. This foreshadowed a trend of introducing features without creating and adequate AI to handle those features which was to have disastrous effect in the next Total War game.

RTW was the nadir for tactical battles in Total War. The 3D men were introduced without an adequate combat model for them. The AI used simplified tactics, no longer knew how to coordinate two armies and ran its men around until they were exhausted. On top of that, there were outlandish fantasy units in the game, and outrageous "effects" like incinerating men, exploding rocks, horses jumping high into units, elephants throwing men 100 feet or more through the air, chariots that moved faster than horses and movement speeds that were unrealistic and made it impossible to control all 20 units individually during the height of a battle. The battle engine was simplified so it lost some important features for simulating combat. The strategic AI doesn't know how to handle army movement on the new style map. There were 10x more bugs in RTW v1.0 than in any other Total War game (over 100 bugs were fixed in the RTW v1.2 patch and that didn't get all of them), and the game was finally left with a serious civil war bug that will ruin a campaign for you if you don't know about it.

M2TW, is improved over RTW, but right now it doesn't look good for the tactical gameplay. The engine is still missing important features that were in the original game, and now you have the silly game mechanic where men wait their turn to fight an opponent. CA still hasn't demonstrated that they can balance the plethora of units they are putting in the game. MP popularity is higher than ever before, but only one player in my clan is willing to purchase the game, and this is a clan that was formed in Dec 2000, played Total War MP continuously for 5 years and which has had members on many CA beta teams over the years. SP campaign has become a game of massive micromanagement, but relatively little challenge except to do all that micromanaging.

I think the customer base has been expanded by making the newer versions of Total War appeal to younger players. That means simplifying the gameplay. I don't mean in terms of the number of commands you have to issue either on the strategic map or on the tactical battlefield. I mean in terms of how many parameters you have to coordinate. In original STW, you had to coordinate 16 units to a high degree within a more complex battle system. I played enough original STW MP to see that it was the players who coordinated their units the best who won. It wasn't the players who issued commands the fastest, although speed was important as long as you also had the ability to manage all 16 units. A 12 year old is not adept at multitasking. That ability isn't well developed in a person until much later. I knew one 14 year old who was very good at original STW, but he was an exception because most players of his age would not be equal to an older STW player of average ability. Likewise on the strategic map, having lots of things to do is just "make work" if making right decisions is too easy because the gameplay doesn't require you to coordinate the relationships of multiple parameters and project that assessment accurately far into the future.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Well said Puzz3D!

[Noir]

Another great post by Puzz3D

I agree with the younger costumers comment although i think that Caravel has also a fair point regarding people that are fond of the traditional RTS format and gameplay being attracted to TW everince Rome. It just feels that they've excluded all the reasons somebody would have not to buy the game that is the steep learning curve for battles, the simple graphics, the relatively slow and action-less battle gameplay (that in the eyes of a newcomer it feels like "where's the excitement" i guess), the 2D risk map system and adding endless little jiggles of all sorts in the campaign.

Relative to the old graphics, perhaps they are perfect for a true tactical wargame as are the older controls and camera views.

It seems that most people that play the new games, play zoomed in 50% of the time - if not more - which in tactical terms is suicide. But they make up for it with "pausing" repeatedly apparetly or even stay pasued, which is simply ridiculus if one thinks that this was seldom necessary in the older engine.

[Puzz3D]

I agree with the younger costumers comment although i think that Caravel has also a fair point regarding people that are fond of the traditional RTS format and gameplay being attracted to TW ever since Rome.

I wouldn't have a problem with that if CA had been up front about the change of direction. I called it a "new vision" back in Sept 2005, and MikeB was quick to jump on that and deny it. CA apparently wanted the Total War veterans to purchase the game, and that's why the shift to RTS style gameplay was downplayed. Now they are still pushing that same line about making M2TW appeal to veterans, and yet the gameplay is still RTS. Most of the Total War veterans I know don't want RTS gameplay.

[Martok]

I wouldn't have a problem with that if CA had been up front about the change of direction. I called it a "new vision" back in Sept 2005, and MikeB was quick to jump on that and deny it. CA apparently wanted the Total War veterans to purchase the game, and that's why the shift to RTS style gameplay was downplayed. Now they are still pushing that same line about making M2TW appeal to veterans, and yet the gameplay is still RTS. Most of the Total War veterans I know don't want RTS gameplay.

Well said as always, Puzz.

Unfortunately, my then-roommate and I were two of those veterans suckered into purchasing Rome, not realizing just how fundamentally the gameplay had changed from Shogun and Medieval. While my friend and I take full responsibility for our own foolishness -- it's not like we couldn't have seen the new direction the TW series was taking had we not deluded ourselves -- I agree it would have been awfully nice if CA had simply told us what they were actually intending. Yes, we might have felt abandoned, but better that than both abandoned *and* betrayed/lied to. I realize I'm probably being a little melodramatic in saying that, yet I do feel it accurately reflects the feelings many of us had when Rome was released. We were hoodwinked, and bitterness over it still lingers, even two years later.

For as much as Medieval is my favorite of the TW games (I confess I'm a sucker for the time period), I can't deny the truth about it being inferior to Shogun in a number of ways. Whether you're referring to the AI, unit balance, atmosphere, etc., STW will probably forever remain the overall best out of the series.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

I suppose now CA has gone to the RTS format, which although I like, I came to the TW seiries from RTS, nothing will cause them to return to the classic style.

I agree with you Martok, although I have not played S:TW, that M:TW style system were much better than the new R:TW one. I cannot speak from the side of veterans, I have only being playing the TW series for a year now, yet I agree with most of what you guys have said - the TW seiries did go for flashy graphics over gameplay, yet that appeals to the younger audience and drastically increased the popularity of the seiries henceforth getting more cash and revenue from the game - I can understand their resoning for doing that, most prefer action over tactics - some, such as I, don't - in my opinion, although nice graphics are good, they never can possibly make a game what it is. What would be nice to see would be a sort of M2:TW/M:TW hybrid with the wonderful battle system of M:TW fused together with the graphics of M2:TW. That dream of mine, however, will probably never become a reality.