Differences

[Csargo]

What is the difference between STW and MI? What does MI add to the game? I got Total War Eras a while back and I've installed MI (I've played the TW series since STW), but I never got MI so what does it change in the game?

[Gregoshi]

MI added the Mongol invasion campaign and with it several Mogol and Korean (allies) units. The Hojo clan controls all of Japan and the Mongols try to take it from them. Mongols start with a large army invading Japan. They don't construct buildings to add on to their army. Instead they have to loot Japanese provinces and the better they do, the more reinforcements come from the mainland to replace combat losses. The Japanese also get a few new units: naginata cavalry and kensai (one man killing machines).

The only other aspect of the game I recall changing is that the movement rates of the units increased. I remember the feeling that it looked unnaturally fast compared to the movement rates in STW.

[Martok]

The costs and build times for structures in MI were also cut in half, so developing infrastructure doesn't take as long. In addition, there's a couple extra buildings such as the Drill Dojo (although its usefulness is pretty limited).

[caravel]

I feel that, for me anyway, MI added a few things I liked, but overall ruined gameplay balance and added a few fantasy units, as well as the Mongol campaign which I don't rate very highly. The unit movement rates were definitely increased.

[Puzz3D]

I feel that, for me anyway, MI added a few things I liked, but overall ruined gameplay balance and added a few fantasy units, as well as the Mongol campaign which I don't rate very highly.

I feel the same way. LongJohn, who designed the battlefield engine, was not with CA when MI was developed. Some unit stats were changed which had a drastic effect on MP playbalance, and the network code was changed which made the game run faster. The changes made seem to defy logic. For instance, the power of guns was increased from 4 to 16, but anything over 8 has no effect because the system saturates at power 8. Another example is that naginata cav had exactly the same stat as the warrior monk except it was faster, however, the naginata cav was cheaper than the warrior monk. Other examples are that battlefield ninja had 100 ammo, kensai could run faster than naginata cav and nearly as fast as cav archers and heavy cav and inexplicably +12 morale was added to all units in MP. There are several other examples I can think of as well. As a result, a community beta team was assembled to improve the battlefield playbalance. However, that team didn't agree on the type of gameplay desired, and didn't have control over the cost of the units or the sped up gameplay in multiplayer. As a result, the v1.02 rebalance effort fell short of what could have been achieved. LongJohn returned to CA for the development of MTW and VI, and logical choices for the unit stats returned. However, there were several problems involving fatigue rates not optimized for large maps, relatively weak ranged units and too low morale in MP which were never really corrected, and some changes made by LongJohn to spears in MTW v1.1 as a result of player requests made spears too weak for use in MP. This problem with weak spears was inexplicably not corrected by LongJohn in VI or VI v2.01 despite lots of multiplayer feedback which confirmed the problem existed. It could have been corrected with minimal effect on SP campaign.

The unit movement rates were definitely increased.

Actually the infantry unit speeds were decreased, and the cav left the same except for naginata cav which had its speed increased because it was rediculously slow. We did increase the charge speed of the units because in STW the charge speed was the same as the run speed, and the charging distance was increased from 1500 to 2000. So what you get is that cav is relatively faster than infantry than it was in STW. This was done because of that change to the network code that sped up the game. That speedup decreases the time it takes to resolve the combat between two units because the combat cycle is going faster. If we hadn't increased the relative speed between cavalry and infantry there would have been no flanking tactics at all in MP because the combat resolves too quickly. The proper fix is done in the v1.03 where the defensive stat of all units is increased to slowdown the combat resolution. However, I don't think we changed the unit speed so cav remains relatively fast compared to infantry. Also, in addition to reducing the effectiveness of guns somewhat, the v1.03 has most of the power of cav transfered to the charge bonus in an effort to increase the rock, paper, scissors gameplay since spears cancel the charge bonus. That's because there is no way to adjust the size of the anti-cav bonus in STW/MI. It's interesting because in Samurai Wars we did find from MP experience that the anti-cav bonus of infantry spears had to be increased from 8 combat points to 10 combat points for best gameplay. Part of that is because, unlike STW and MI, cav has a chance of pushing back a spearman in MTW v1.1 and VI during the charge which gives the cav a +6 combat point bonus on the next combat cycle.

[Togakure]

Regarding what MI added to the original STW: let's not forget the additional campaigns--starting scenarios--it offered: 1530, 1550, 1580, in addition to Mongol Invasion. Over time, these alternative campaigns--and commanding the rebels using .conan.--added considerable value to a great game.

Hmm ... if I were to calculate how much an hour it has cost me to thoroughly enjoy STW over the years, I would have to say I've gotten a superb deal.