CIV Total War

[Cowhead418]

I was playing Civ the other day and I was surprised at how much I like the Diplomacy. I was at war with the Romans when they approached me for a ceasefire after I had conquered several of their cities. Going into it I had no intention of ending the war but they offered me such a sweet deal that I had to take it. At least in Civ, your rivals can actually be reasonable in your dealings, and trading is very fun. The only way for TW Diplomacy to get up to a decent level would be lots of expansion to what could be offered. Hey, and just maybe that nation you just spent a decade destroying might actually accept a ceasefire and want to live!

[Great Est.]

Yes, I hate how the AI refuses to accept a ceasefire when you clearly have the upper hand. As the Hungarians, I took Constantinople and Nicea from the Byz the other day and left them with their islands and Trebizond. Did they accept a ceasfire? Nope. All I wanted was to keep Constantinople, but they forced me to destroy them. It's nearly impossible in MTW to wage wars with limited goals, as it is in CIV. There should be a way to negotiate peace in MTW. That would make the game much more interesting.

[The Unknown Guy]

Isn't Rome: TW pretty much like that?

Master of Magic too, for that matter, but the combat was turn based.

edit: and it already takes forever to play just a turn. Three pitched battles can eat a whole hour.

[Martok]

Isn't Rome: TW pretty much like that?

Heh. You took the words right out of my mouth.

Of course, there's at least one major difference between Rome and Civ on the empire/campaign side of the game (besides the battles), which is diplomacy. By most accounts (even not counting Cowhead418's personal experience), diplomacy in the Civ games is generally more rational than we can hope for in any of the existing Total War titles. Aside from the empire-management AI, I feel diplomacy is still the most broken/underdeveloped aspect of the TW series.

[Maloncanth]

edit: and it already takes forever to play just a turn. Three pitched battles can eat a whole hour.

An hour? Hah!

Let's just say that unlike the sun outside my window, the sun in an MTW tactical does not set.

[Great Est.]

Isn't Rome: TW pretty much like that?

Master of Magic too, for that matter, but the combat was turn based.

edit: and it already takes forever to play just a turn. Three pitched battles can eat a whole hour.

I've had RTW for months now and have yet to even install it because I'm still not "bored" or "through" with MTW. This is one of the "drawbacks" of MTW being so engrosing, I guess.
Maybe when I get back into the inevitable heavy CIV phase and come back to TW, I'll enter Rome.

[seireikhaan]

I really like both games. In fact, right now they're probably my two favorite games. However, I don't think that Total War games will ever get too in depth with diplomacy. Keep in mind, we are talking about games titled "total war".

Civilization is another favorite of mine, but for different reasons. Certainly it's got much better diplomacy. Sometimes it still makes some mind boggling decisions, though. An example was when I played the "Earth 18 civs" scenario as Japan. I put a city in southern china and defended it with a couple of archers. The Mongols actually went THROUGH Chinese territory in order to take my city. That just seems absurd to me that anyone would do that.

[The Unknown Guy]

I really like both games. In fact, right now they're probably my two favorite games. However, I don't think that Total War games will ever get too in depth with diplomacy. Keep in mind, we are talking about games titled "total war".

Yet they should. Otherwise alliances are little more than "encouragement to attack someone else", and ceasefires are a "please stop beating me" plead :(

On Rome: I don't own the game. When I bought Medieval:VI I was going to buy Rome instead, but it didn't run on my computer, and I found an awesome bargain for M:VI gold on E-bay. Thus, I am here, and not on the Rome forums. Still, I have read çuite a bit about Rome. I don't really know, of course, but many posters here have been very critical with the AI, with the tactical one, but particularily with the Campaign AI. This would make sense, as it's description fits something much more complex than the MTW:VI AI choices (I don't know how much, however, as I don't know the details (Does the exact point where opposing armies meet in a province determine the battlefield? Does the AI perform this correctly?). I´ve also heard a good deal of criticism concerning diplomacy. This could be applied to the whole saga, I guess, it's just that it becomes more evident when it is given more complexity.

My personal impression, at a glance, is that it makes the game over-complicated. As I mentioned, a MTW:VI turn can take hours to complete, depending on the number of battles you wage yourself (and remember that one battle or two can already last by themselves one hour, or hour and a half). Add to it the aditional problem of Civ-games micromanagement, and it simply becomes unfeasibly long. In fact, whereas Civ III had a mostly decent AI and gameplay, I often ended up as fed up by the middle-high terms of the game.
I had a simmilar experience with Diablo and Diablo II. Where Diablo I followed in a mostly faithful manner the essence of Roguelike games (althrough far less dynamic than games such as Slash'Em and ADOM-both freeware, and both recommended by my part), Diablo II was just a slightly more complex version of Space Invaders, with better graphics.

So, if you excuse me, for now I´ll stick to my old MTW:VI, even if the graphics aren't so good, and my old Slash'Em, even if the graphics are sprites and not hifty CGI images. More eyecandy doesn't mean "better" by default. And certain ways of making seçuels are a "gaming revisionism" of sorts, and the result doesn't really çualify as a seçuel, but as something of an entirely different genre (not necessarily bad, but certainly not following the definition of the predecessor). And whereas I like improvements (by all means. I am subscribing to Cambryses's mod, for instance), I don't like to be handled "new lamps for old"

[caravel]

I now dislike Civilisation style settlement based micromanagement games, and would vehemently oppose TW games becoming similar to that series. Unfortunately with RTW we have already seen a step in that direction.