Feedback on the official patch 1.02.

[Doug-Thompson]

Re: Population growth

I have to agree that the rate change is a good thing. I'm running into a lot more knights and armored sergeants than before.

[gardibolt]

Ran into a passive siege AI last night I'm afraid. Defending Acre as England against the Timurids, 1.2 M/M unmodded, not unpacked. The Tims attacked me, but then just sat there until the timer was nearly out, even though they had siege towers, rams and artillery elephants. They did shoot a few cannonballs at a wall, giving it 23% damage, but then stopped.

I finally sent some men out to get them off the dime, but time ran out before anything actually happened.

[speedofsound]

I have an AMD/Nvidia processor/video card configuration and installed 1.02 over 1.01 with no mods, and have seen no real problems except one: I no longer have tooltips on the campaign HUD, construction window, etc. Every time I want to verify the cost/time investment of a building, I need to right-click. It's a small problem, but not having them makes the game extremely tedious. Has anyone experienced this? Is there anything I can do to fix it? I never had any graphical issues with the game prior to 1.02.

As for gameplay, I echo the sentiments that this patch is a vast improvement. Much better in nearly every respect.

[madalchemist]

The patch is a vast improvement, though princesses' charm is still too low compared to other agents or the game using the princesses' triggers Olmsted gave in the .com forum.

I'll try to insert them in addition to those of the 1.2 to see if our poor girls get 3-4 charm easily.

One thing I couldn't do is to make ancillaries transferable. I went to export_descr_ancillaries and set to Transferable 1 what was Transferable 0; unfortunately no ancillary can be moved (but probably i made mistakes during the modding process), and the general whose ancillary is to be moved says "I can't go there" and such.

Edit: I forgot to tell the Pagan Magician was still bugged, had to mod it after having seen half of my gen had it

[alex9337]

I am playing my first campaign with the 1.2 patch, as the English.

Installation was a snap. Did a complete uninstall of everything, re-installed vanilla 1.0 game, then patched to 1.2, no problems whatsoever.

Love the changes, almost all of which have been noted here prior. Now, more than ever, this is my favourite game to play.

[TinCow]

I have an AMD/Nvidia processor/video card configuration and installed 1.02 over 1.01 with no mods, and have seen no real problems except one: I no longer have tooltips on the campaign HUD, construction window, etc. Every time I want to verify the cost/time investment of a building, I need to right-click. It's a small problem, but not having them makes the game extremely tedious. Has anyone experienced this? Is there anything I can do to fix it? I never had any graphical issues with the game prior to 1.02.

As for gameplay, I echo the sentiments that this patch is a vast improvement. Much better in nearly every respect.

The game has problems if you install 1.2 on top of a 1.1 patched game. Uninstall the game and reinstall a fresh copy, then apply patch 1.2 on top of it; there is no need for patch 1.1. Your saved games should still work (just make sure they don't get deleted in the uninstall!)

[andrewt]

My favourite unexpected change is how population growth in cities and castles has been reworked in 1.2. It's now much slower meaning you now actually have to upgrade farms and town houses in your settlements to prevent them from stagnating. Previously, the farm upgrades were completely unnecessary and huge cities and castles were everywhere by the mid-game. Thumbs up.

There's still a few battle-map AI idiosyncracies that CA could perfect and there's definitely some stat rebalancing required, but otherwise it's a first rate patch.

I didn't know this was a change in the patch. I was just wondering why I needed to move chivalrous generals around, especially to castles, to help them grow. I just thought it was because Turkish lands have smaller base farming levels. I did have to build farms all around and still had to do the general trick.

I think it works well in cities past 6000 population, since they grow too fast after it hits 6000 before. The 2000-6000 is still a huge bottleneck, however, and many of my cities sit idle for lots of turns having built everything. 1000-2000 is slow, but not as bad as the 2000-6000 wait.

I think castles might need a bit of adjusting as well. Hitting the last two population caps seems too slow. I had to use chivalrous governors to not have idle time with them. Though I was suppose part of my problem is I'm playing the Turks right now and the infantry line of buildings doesn't seem to be good for them. That's partly why it seemed so slow to me. I still built them when I had nothing else to build, though.

[Goofball]

Two questions:

1) Do pikes still become useless because they switch to their swords immediately upon contact with the enemy?

2) Are 2Handers fixed?

[Doug-Thompson]

Two questions:

1) Do pikes still become useless because they switch to their swords immediately upon contact with the enemy?

Don't know yet.

2) Are 2Handers fixed?

Yes, in the sense that they work correctly, but they aren't so hot for the price

Now that the shield bug is fixed, other infantry is just as good or better.

[Cheetah]

Two questions:

1) Do pikes still become useless because they switch to their swords immediately upon contact with the enemy?

If you want to fight it out vs sword and shield infantry then forget pikes as they will lose. However, pikes are far from useless as they are more or less the only inf type that can take cav charge head on with minimal casualties. (and even compared to S&S inf they had advantages such as: most the pikes are cheaper and much easier to retrain)

2) Are 2Handers fixed?

There is a difference between 2Handers and 2Handers.
2H axe units work (fight) properly and can kill cavs. Even though they wont beat DCK or perhaps even DFK but since they are cheaper (and for example for Egypt the only choice of heavy melee inf) IMO they worth their price.
On the other hand most of the 2H sword units are not cost efficient as they will lose to S&S infantry and cost more.

[Yun Dog]

I think this is a very good patch and makes some significant improvements to the game for which I am grateful.

Now we just need to get the pathfinding and unit cohesion fixed, particularly in settlements (castles/citys) where because of the game design you end up doing alot (if not the majority) of the fighting, because this is just horrible - I would even prefer having a blank square surrounded by walls. Even those little flags around the town square mess things up. GAH!!!

[Fußball]

In reply to 2hand swords. 2hand swords are neutered due to high cost and high upkeep for something that will be shredded head-on by swords. IMHO this needs serious tweaking as all zweihänder are incapable of keeping up with S&S units, mainly knights. Unfortunately now I will just use them for flavor and for flanking. By the time you get them you usually have the money to spend on anything anyway.

Tschüß!
Erich

[rookie7]

This is my first time playing the total war series, so my "senses" might not be as kean as most of you guys'. Here are some problems I see with update 2.

1. I send my calvary after the routing units, but some time, the calvary still circling about the units and not doing anything. Most of the time, though, they get the job done. Does anyone experience this? Is this normal?

2. Sometime when my general wins a battle, this window pops up:


See the discrepancy there? The title says trait decrease and feels unappreciated, but then the explanation says he's happy and his loyal has increased.

3. I haven't had much luck with diplomacy like you guys. A few turn after the above picture was taken, I took London from the English which left them with only Nottingham left. I sent a ceasefire offer their way but they turned it down. Same with the Milan. After taking Bologna, Florence, and Rome from them, they only have Ajaccio left (yeah...that tiny wooden castle south of Genoa). A ceasefire was offered but they turned it down. So, I didn't see much improvement except new features in diplomacy. I'm still at war with all of the neighboring factions. Does anyone experience this?

Something I find interesting...the Papal State was left with no home when the Milan took Rome. After I captured Rome from Milan, the Pope asked me to return Rome to him, but I declined.

[Foz]

Concerning the growth changes:

On one hand, it improves some aspects of things. Certainly as someone mentioned chivalrous generals become more desirable when previously they were not as necessary. Also, the AI will definitely build more/better troops if it is stripped of the ability to upgrade settlements because they have no upgrades left. However, with the previous growth rate I was already often having all upgrades complete and waiting for the next population level to hit. York is an example of a settlement this ALWAYS happens to, and I can tell already that the slower growth will annoy me a LOT. York is barely over 1000 pop and already nearly out of things to do in my one campaign. Not only will I be frustrated continually by my empty building queues, but I find that I too have more free cash now since it takes so much longer to get to any expensive buildings to sink my cash into. On top of that, the game will be stuck for quite sometime at a poor tech level due to the dreadful population progression castles now have. These shortcomings make me feel that slowing the growth, while obviously somewhat effective at solving the problem of AI recruitment, is the wrong answer to this problem.

The real problem, as someone earlier pointed out, is not that the AI upgrades its cities too much; it is that it has no surplus cash left after doing so to get and keep decent armies around. Slowing growth makes things better whenever the AI runs out of upgrades, but that will not happen for some time in the early portion of the game. Thus the more natural and better answer is economic in nature, since the problem is economic. Put simply, get more cash into the AI's hands.

Numerous plans have been discussed by Orgers already to accomplish just that, and generally they produce consistently good results from the AI. Included are:

- modifying king's purse to higher amounts so factions are granted more funds each turn
- using console commands to grant AI factions money
- using the game's own triggers/monitors to add money

I have played around a lot with the king's purse myself, and even granting myself the same advantage I give the AI (i.e. not cheating against myself at all) I find the AI benefits from the added cash infinitely more than I do. Presumably similar AI building is going on, but the AI is sending stacks around now that are actually sometimes capable of destroying the groups I have in the field (not saying they do so, just that they're no longer obviously inferior in quality and/or quantity). That never happened before I tweaked king's purses to higher amounts. Of the other suggestions, one that sounded good was a plan to give each non-human faction 1,000 florins per settlement it controls each turn. However, that plan promotes the bloating of an advantaged faction since it receives more aid as it conquers. It also means each settlement the human captures deprives the AI of some of its aid - also not what I want. Economic features (like trade and taxes) could be improved, but again that would cause more of the juggernaut faction phenomenon since it's settlement-based, and has the extra disadvantage of making the human even more powerful as his/her faction grows. Raising the king's purse since it's a flat rate per faction keeps the factions on more even footing, grants them the needed spending money each turn to field respectable armies, and I feel it represents the best solution to the problem CA appears to be trying to address with the growth changes.

Having said that, does anyone have a 1.0/1.1 descr_settlement_mechanics.xml file laying around? I assume the growth changes were made in there, but I think in the wipe/reinstall/patch process I wiped all my copies of files from previous versions. I don't know if I'll stick with the old version, but I at least want the option since I'm pretty sure I'll get a game I like better w/ that file and the changes I've been discussing here.

[sapi]

@rookie7

#2: Since the 'unappreciated' line of traits, which give negative loyalty bonuses decreased, the net change is actually an increase in loyalty and so the description is correct

[Jambo]

@Foz

I fail to see how there's any downside to reduced growth rate at all. In my 1.2 campaigns I'm now finding that the tech tree is a perfect fit to the 225 turn timescale of the campaign. I now find myself building early units during the early stages, mid units during the mid stage and late units and gunpowder units during the late game. Previously under 1.1. I was finding myself able to build upgraded walls long before I'd even considered building the other structures associated with the previous tech levels. When many of your units are linked to the wall structure, as is the case with castles, then this can render much of the other structures moot (e.g. stables). Not only that but farm upgrades could be completely ignored, and if built could often cause you bother later on with squalor. Antwerp for instance had such a high base level that building upgraded farms was a definite no-no.

Under 1.1 the AI of course failed to see the advantage of just teching up the castle structure, and of course would deviate into the less critical structures like markets, etc. As a result you're running around with high-end knights and dismounted knights when the AI's still got various militia types guarding their markets...

If you're having trouble knowing what to spend your money on because you've build everything you can then I suggest you up the ante a little and give the AI some of the bonuses you suggest. I use AI money scripts and a campaign AI garrison script and everything I build has to carefully weighed up and most of my settlements still have plenty of things to build...

[Daveybaby]

#2: Since the 'unappreciated' line of traits, which give negative loyalty bonuses decreased, the net change is actually an increase in loyalty and so the description is correct

So the general isnt actually not feeling less disunappreciated?

[Jambo]

So the general isnt actually not feeling less disunappreciated?

lol, double negatives are a wonderful idiosyncracy of the English language - but triple (or could even be 4 or 5!) negatives.... wow. Talk about a brain fuzz.

[sapi]

So the general isnt actually not feeling less disunappreciated?

CA should pop something like that in next update and watch the chaos

[dopp]

Two questions:

1) Do pikes still become useless because they switch to their swords immediately upon contact with the enemy?

2) Are 2Handers fixed?

1) Yes, same as before. I'm still confiscating swords post-patch.

2) The 2hand bug is fixed. Balance is another matter.

[pike master]

feudal dismounted and other sword and shield infantry are way overpowered.these units should be obsolete compared to two handed units like english dismounted knights and swiss guard.

[Vladimir]

CA should pop something like that in next update and watch the chaos

So would that prompt a message:

CA +1 Dread

[Tran]

I have question about difficulty level:
Is the medium level difficulty (both campaign map and battlefield) in 1.2 actually harder (but still logical, e.g: diplomacy AI) compared to very hard in 1.1? If that's the case, is it correct to assume that very hard in 1.2 is way much harder than very hard in 1.1?

[Jambo]

So the general isnt actually not feeling less disunappreciated?

I've been trying to work out the meaning of this one all afternoon and my brain's melted. I think we need a cryptologist in here to solve this literary puzzle...

Daveybaby... please enlighten us! ;)

[FactionHeir]

Basically means "So the general is actually feeling less appreciated"

[Moah]

So the general isnt actually not feeling less disunappreciated?

Okay.

Let's see, count up the -ves...

So the general isnt (-)actually not feeling (_) less (_)dis (-)un (-) appreciated



Two - = a + so a "quintiple negative" is actually a basic _ve (it goes _, + , _ , +, _)



So he's yes, Davy he's feeling unappreciated...

[Doug-Thompson]

Re: unappreciated

Grammatical confusion aside, this is a good a place as any to set out the basics of this trait.

A general ususally gets the "feels unappreciated" trait when he's, well, ignored. Left idle and so forth. This drives his loyalty down.

One cure is to put him in charge of a battle he can win. There's always some bandits that need killing, for instance.

Once he gets into action, he fells less neglected. The "feels unappreciated" trait is lessened and his loyalty rises back toward it's original level.

[helmeteye]

I am playing my first game on 1.2 official. I didn't use the unofficial because I played Galactic Civ2 while I waited. 1.1 was too bad for me to play.

So far I really like the 1.2 patch and have run into only one bug so far. I am playing England on vh/vh and was allied with France and Scottland when they bug appeared. I am in early game less than 15 turns. I was besieging Bruges of the Danes with about a half stack army and Scottland was with me with about a half stack army, though their stack had depleted troops, when a unit of French balista, my allies, attacked. That isn't the bug because I figured there may be a diplomatic reason for them to attack. The bug was during the actual battle. I noticed that during the battle me and the Scotts lined up our troops side by side, I sent one unit of archers or crossbows, can't remember which, to deal with the balista unit. The bug appeared after the balistas fired two or three shots at my missile unit. Balista quit firing but it said it was firing. That was the bug.

[atheotes]

I am liking the reviews ... I think it is time to go and get M2TW finally!!!

[doombringer]

overall the tweaks and changes make it a lot less annoying to play, but does anyone know where i access battle editor,
as this is (supposedly) included in the patc but not on the menu