Side effects of changing time scale

[Werner]

So while I'm all for players who need more time stretching the campaign out the necessary amount, I have a strong suspicion that most players doing so are simply being lazy or unnecessarily jumping onto the bandwagon, neither of which are things I intend to applaud or encourage.

The fact of the matter is the game is BUGGED. I've been playing MTW2 since release date and the mongols still cant get past the stupid province they started with, the black plague has never happend, and who are the Timurids? Who cares about the events if they dont even work right? The dev's were obviously lazy and just didn't want to include an option they didnt care about. And since everything is either turn or year based it should've been that much easier for them to include the option of how the individual wants to play. So no, I disagree with you, this has nothing to do with a "band-wagon" or people wanting the game to be easier because its already easy.

[sbroadbent]

I was contemplating posting to this thread, but I just have to say that there are as many ways to play this game, as there are people who play the game. It seems there are some who just want to blitz through the game in the shortest amount of time possible, only to get "Victory" and then move on to the next game. There are others who want to take their time, to have more opportunity to manipulate events in the game, and just enjoy a slower pace of expansion.

I got probably halfway through my English campaign (probably 125 turns), and began to look at the "victory" conditions, and realized that at the rate I was going that I'd run out of turns. I didn't like being rushed artificially to meet some goal that was decided by someone else. The game might be "total war", but even in war there are times of peace and growth. When an ally of 260 years (ie 130 turns) attacks you, well, rally the troops and have no mercy!

During my English campaign I got to the gun powder event and was like "what, already? I haven't even had much time to play around with swords and bows", so I ignored gunpowder. Due to the catholic AI factions wanting to be aggressive with me, I had to put off some more extensive plans to crusade to the holy land. So much to do, so little time to do it all in. The next biggest problem is travel time. It can take forever to send troops or agents to another location.

I've been contemplating doing a marathon campaign of 1800 turns (4 turns per year), more to have the time to enjoy the campaign, draw out some wars that I might otherwise try to end quickly because I need to rush to get the Victory conditions in time. I am pretty sure that presuming that I stay interested in the above mentioned marathon campaign, that I will experience not only gun powder, but the Mongols, Timurids and the New World long before I "win" the game.

Werner, in my English campaign, the Mongols had not only taken out the egyptians, but had developed into a super power by pushing into Anatolia and pushing the Byzantines into Greece. They also forced the Turks into becoming their Vassal. The Timurids emerged and had they had more time they probably would've caused the decline of the Mongols as they started eating up Mongol territory. Since I was playing a completly vanilla unpatched game, it clearly must be the 1.1 patch that keeps the Mongols from doing anything in your game

jbguev, in my English campaign, London hit about 50K population before it's growth levelled out and then started on a decline. In addition, squalor doesn't have as huge an effect as in RTW, so I had no particular problems with population. The problem you would get into is that unrest can certainly effect a city during it's middle stages if it takes too much time to build happy buildings, but once a city has hit it's growth limit you should have had enough time to build enough happy buildings to keep the population in line.

I've only started playing the game, but I'm assuming that if you play the game at the nomal pace, by the time you get to the fifteenth century you'll have a little light artillery, a few handgunners, a heavy cavalry contingent decked out in heavy plate armor, a few infantry units decked out in similar fashion, and a variety of things that just wouldn't have appeared on a battlefield during the time of the Crusades. You would also have a bunch of social and architectural structures that you wouldn't find in an earlier period, like big post-gothic cathedrals and a network of guildhalls.

I found this definately amusing, more to the fact that one of my offline interests is in the Harn Fantasy Roleplay setting. Here's a setting which is based (I believe) on 10th-12th century Britain, has a republic coming from Ceasar's Rome, Renaissance level tech in some parts, Vikings from the early 9th century, and ships hitting somewhere around 15-16th century. Throw in some magic, and nope, there's no gunpowder either (gunpowder rarely exists in fantasy RPG settings). With that all said, I suppose I am completly unphased by the fact that there might be technology from one era appearing much earlier than it should. It's a game, enjoy it.

My point being is that Total War games are not meant to be historical recreations of the time and place it takes place in. They are more "what if's" and alternate histories where anything can potentially happen.

To wrap this up, no I am not lazy if I want my campaign to go 900 turns (or even 1800 turns). No, having the "extra" time won't make the campaign "easier". In MTW I never started in an era other than Early because I wanted to have the most amount of time playing my faction as I could, and starting in High or Late would cut down on the amount of time I could play before I'd have to start all over again with a new (or the same faction). I want a game that will give me many hours of game play, not one that I can rush through and then get bored waiting for the next great game to come along. After all, M2's expansion won't be out for what, 7-8 months?

[Rilder]

Werner, in my English campaign, the Mongols had not only taken out the egyptians, but had developed into a super power by pushing into Anatolia and pushing the Byzantines into Greece. They also forced the Turks into becoming their Vassal. The Timurids emerged and had they had more time they probably would've caused the decline of the Mongols as they started eating up Mongol territory. Since I was playing a completly vanilla unpatched game, it clearly must be the 1.1 patch that keeps the Mongols from doing anything in your game

and were well on there way to heading into Italia, they had even defeated the turmids according

Nope it wasn't the patch, at the end of my Portugle campaign (1.1) Mongols had taken greece to toggle_fow.

[Agent Smith]

Does anyone think quadrupling the build times for a 2 turns/year game would drastically effect the AI? I want to try it, but it make takes 100's of turns to see the effects, if any. I just wanted to see if someone else has already tried it.

[candelarius]

The fact of the matter is the game is BUGGED. I've been playing MTW2 since release date and the mongols still cant get past the stupid province they started with, the black plague has never happend, and who are the Timurids? Who cares about the events if they dont even work right? The dev's were obviously lazy and just didn't want to include an option they didnt care about. And since everything is either turn or year based it should've been that much easier for them to include the option of how the individual wants to play. So no, I disagree with you, this has nothing to do with a "band-wagon" or people wanting the game to be easier because its already easy.

The Mongols trashed the Byzantines, Turks, and the Holy Land in my last campaign, the black plague occurs in every game I've played, and the Timurids also appear in all my games. Before you start pointing the figure and calling the game "bugged" and accusing the devs of being "lazy", I suggest you get your facts straight, and play a few campaigns to verify if things are bugs or if you just missed them.