Experiment to see how hard game is...

[Kadagar_AV]

So how hard is this game really? *Long rant, summary at the botttom*

Bugs and bad gameplay aside, the most frustrating aspect for me is the lousy AI. I mean, is it even POSSIBLE to lose a round?

Come to think of it, through medieval, rome, and now medieval 2 I dont think I ever did anything but win, most other games (all?) have some sort of learning curve to beat the game, not so here, in my oppinion.

Soooo, I decided to test it.

I took a friend who has NEVER played any Total War game, and let him play a campaign on VH/VH.

He got to read the manual before starting, but that's it.

So, conditions:

He decided to play Denmark (only cause we're swedes and somehow the idea of rampaging vikings just touch our souls).

As said, on very hard / very hard seetings.

advice OFF!

Long campaign rules.

patch 1.2

About him, 24 years old, X military, pretty smart. Admittedly he's smarter than the average player, but hey, this game is designed for these kind of players, from the look of it.

So how did it go?

* At first he built pretty damn randomly, only in the late stage of the game did he begin to steer provinces in different directions.

* He quickly took Hamburg as he thought he might need some distance between his capital and border.

* Her then followed up by taking Sweden and Norway.

* Now, a crusade to Jerusalem started, and he sent a general away, but quite some turns after the crusade was started. He had barely reached Byzantine space when France took Jerusalem. This army he then used to march through the Byzantine Empire, the Turks, the Egyptians and the Russians. He got tired of city fights as they were bugged beyond repair, so the strat he used was to siege a city, and autoattack it the next turn. Reinforcements he got from mercenaries, and the constant sacking of the cities and forts meant a HUGE and steady supply of cash for the whole kingdom.

* With these money, he simultaneosly jumped over to the brittish islands, and finished off england and scottland (france had taken englands mainland provinces). He got excommed, but it didnt bother him much.

* He then started attacking Russia, taking the coastal provinces and working his way inland... Then the golden horde showed up... He retreated, and gave all of the russian provinces to the Horde, in return for alliance and them attacking poland (then his enemy).

* As Poland and the Golden Horde happily killed eachother, he collected funds and did a crusade.... he then very swiftly took on Both poland and the Golden Horde at once, by now he found the game so easy he didnt even bother fighting them one on one.

* He did VERY little diplomacy....

* He finished game objectives in some 190 turns or so.

* About the battlemap, in the battles he had huge problem at first with moving his units orderly. He gave up on heavy cav alltogether as he just couldnt bother to work out how a charge should work.

* Cityfights, as mentioned, he gave up on playing alltogether out of boredom (in his first fight defending, the comp AI just stood there after one failed ladder attempt, so he had to wait for the time limit to end... Very frustrating!

* He won just about every battle, even the first when he didnt really know how to controll the units.

* In one of his last battles, the pre-battle-meter was clearly against him, and yet at the end he had a heroic victory, with 1300+ men killed or captured, and some 40 men lost on his side... And NO he didnt use any bugs or cheats, just pure tactics (something the computer clearly lacks).


If a total n00b can beat this game on the very hardest settings the first time he tries it, what does it say about the game? He built pretty randomly, didnt bother with heavy cav, didnt use his princess at all, nor his merchants.... only built one assassin, and two diplomats... a LOT of priests though.

So what's my point? Well, the game is just to easy. It doesnt really give you that feeling of "reward" when you win a battle or the game.... You just feel like a complete loser those very few and odd times you do lose a battle.

Next I plan to test it on my semi-retarded cousin, 12 years old...

What can be done about this? The problem, as I see it, is that the game is much more complex than the computer AI can handle. This is quite ok in a player vs player game, but not in a primarily single-player game like this.

All the variables and options means that human players just auto-win, as there are usually soooooo many ways to handle situations.

So to make the AI have even a small chance, they'd need to either make the game less comples so the AI can handle it, OR cheat even more than now and give the compuers outrageous bonuses, but that's not very fun either

Any ideas? Points? Rants?



Summary: A person who has NEVER before played a Total War game, beat it first try on the hardest settings, quite easily too I might add. He played as Denmark, and finished the long campaign in some 190 turns. He is smarter than the common man, and has been in the army.

My 2€

[Tambarskjelve]

Good post, and a fun read

Your friend had a few things going for him, his much trumpeted superior intelligence,
and more importantly, a knowledge of basic tactics, like flanking, as valid today as a 1000 years ago.
He also picked the right faction for a n00b, the Danes being in a safe starting position, with access to sweden, the holy grail of economic development. His initial strategy was also by the book.

However this only confirms what we know, it simply isn't challenging in a traditional way, so we need to add houserules and play in a certain way to have fun. And fun being the operative word, I still get tons of it from M2

[hisn00bness]

besides using mods such as lusted's; a very simple trick you can do is these two things:

- triple the kings purse value in descr_strat.txt
- don't blitz the AI for the first 30 turns or so. during this time only attack rebel settlements and excommunicated factions.

this will not improve the common sense of the AI; but it gives him the time and funds to build up quite decent armies.
As hungary I ended up getting attacked by 2 full stacks of Russians (boyar's sons; cossack musketeers and dismounted dvor; NO peasants) at kiev; another 2 full stacks of russians at halych in the east; all this in the same turn mind you; three stacks of turks are on the way through sarkel;
and in the west i'm having to defend Vienna and Zagreb against uber agressive venetians and danes.

[Didz]

Interesting test......its notable that what your friend did was effectively blitz the game rather than play it, which confirms my own theory that there is a problem with the game in that it allows this expliot to work.

My view is as expressed in another thread.

What is needed is a more realistic penalty for maintaining armies in the field and less reward for doing so.

As SunTzu warned "When an army engages in protracted campaigns, the resoruces of the state will not suffice. When your army is exhausted and its morale sinks and your treasury is spent, rulers of other states will take advantage of your distress and act. Then even though you have wise counsellors, none will be able to make good plans for the future. Thus, though we have heard of excessive haste in war, we have not seen a clever operation that was prolonged."

In fact, MTW2 completely reverses this rule and rewards players who conduct constant and prolonged hostilities, enabling their factions to survive on nothing but the proceeds of war.

In my opinion the game needs to be changed so that:

- troops are extremely expensive to maintain in the field and even more so in hostile territory.

- Armies should suffer attrition on a rising scale dependant upon their situation and location.

- Troops should steadily lose morale when employed on foreign soil. Such that unless provided with constant rewards they will become rebelious and desert.

- There should be little if any financial reward to the treasury from sacking cities.

This would force players to play the game, rather than blitzing it and increase the need to plan operations targetted at specific local objectives rather than indulging in wandering loot-fests.

[Marius Dynamite]

Next I plan to test it on my semi-retarded cousin, 12 years old...

LOL I burst into laughter when I read that line. Especially after the way you talk about the first guy.. Good one :)

[diotavelli]

It sounds to me that your test case got a bit lucky.

He didn't lose any battles. That's good - very good, in fact. I very rarely lose battles but there are occasions when, due to bad luck or bad planning, I simply find I have a force that is outnumbered and/or outclassed by an AI force. If the AI ambushed a couple of militia units with a half stack of heavy cav and generals, your friend would have lost in most circumstances, no matter how good he is: he couldn't run away and he couldn't have outfought them. So, luck was on his side some of the time, at least.

He didn't use his princesses or any merchants. Why not? Did he work out that he didn't need them? If so, how?

What I'm getting at is that, if your friend had been an economist say, rather than ex-military, he might have tried to make use of merchants and to build trade links and his economy. He'd have found the game much more of a challenge as, without knowing about high-value resources and their locations, he'd have struggled to get a good return from his merchants (to begin with, at least). In focusing on building his economy, he'd have found he had less cash in the early stages than was the case through his blitzkrieg approach.

As you say, he used very little diplomacy. Why? It's there in the game and it can make the whole thing more interesting. Two of your allies go to war: who do you support? One of your allies is threatened by a stronger neighbour: do you come to their rescue? None of these things are essential but they add flavour to the game; by ignoring diplomacy, your friend missed out on all this.

As Didz said, the game does seem to fail to hold its own when confronted with a capable blitzkrieger. Does that mean its a rubbish game or that the AI is rubbish? No. Because someone with a different approach would have found the game more interesting and challenging.

Most computer games (most games of any sort, come to think of it) have weaknesses that you can learn to exploit, should you wish. Does that mean they're all failed games? No.

[diotavelli]

So how hard is this game really? *Long rant, summary at the botttom*

Bugs and bad gameplay aside, the most frustrating aspect for me is the lousy AI. I mean, is it even POSSIBLE to lose a round?

Come to think of it, through medieval, rome, and now medieval 2 I dont think I ever did anything but win, most other games (all?) have some sort of learning curve to beat the game, not so here, in my oppinion.

Soooo, I decided to test it.

I took a friend who has NEVER played any Total War game, and let him play a campaign on VH/VH.

He got to read the manual before starting, but that's it.

Another thought occurs to me (apologies for rapid, double posting).

Why did your friend agree to play on VH/VH in his first ever game? Without any advice or practice? Are you sure you hadn't mentioned how "frustrating" the "lousy AI" is? Did he know that you'd never lost playing MTW, RTW and M2TW?

If you'd mentioned any of this, he might have been more inclined to be aggressive, to play a blitzkrieg approach, to try to bully the AI rather than interact with other factions as peers and so on. I accept he's ex-military but are you sure that earlier comments from you may not have informed his strategy that then proved so effective?

If that were the case, your "test" proves nothing other than that an intelligent newbie player can adopt a winning strategy if given sufficient hints as to what that strategy should be. That's not a fair test.

Of course, if you never mentioned your prior concerns and experiences playing TW titles to him and did not give him any suggestions (even implicit ones) as to what strategy might work, then your test was a good one and I retract all the above.

But, if the latter is the case, he must be a mighty confident person to leap straight into an entirely unknown game and play aggressively on VH/VH with no advice.......

[Corka]

I would have thought that 80% of players when first playing the game would throw diplomacy to the wind and go on a conquering spree regardless. I know I did. I mean, you're told from the get go 'You have to conquer 45 settlements to win.', which automatically puts players in the frame of mind to go a conquering.

[Garnier]

You have to mod the game or play with serious houserules.

The trouble is that blitzing is too easy and you can win if you get the jump on conquering. Also sacking cities gives too much money it seems. If the AI had a garrison script, the game could be harder.

[diotavelli]

I would have thought that 80% of players when first playing the game would throw diplomacy to the wind and go on a conquering spree regardless. I know I did. I mean, you're told from the get go 'You have to conquer 45 settlements to win.', which automatically puts players in the frame of mind to go a conquering.

This is true but the game blurb also makes much of the diplomatic and economic elements of the game. I for one didn't realise initially that I could make more money from buying troops and sacking cities than I could through building my economy.

I'd be interested to know the proportion of players who bought M2TW and simply ignored vast elements of the options for gameplay in their first few games. Ignoring diplomacy and economic development and concentrating solely on conquest is a deliberate and far from inevitable decision. The game blurb gives the impression that it will be difficult to win without handling all elements correctly (an erroneous impression but one given, nevertheless), so ignoring important elements would seem illogical without additional information to suggest the contrary.

OF COURSE someone with a different approach would look at the game with another perspective... But the point is that this playstyle is what new players learn FROM the game... New players dont learn (from playing) they need merchants to win, they learn that the micro-management needed for controlling, say, merchants isnt worth it as you can beat the game regardless... And games ARE about winning, and having fun.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Most factions start the game with a merchant: in your first game, most people would assume they'd been given this merchant for a reason and would therefore try to use him. What they "learn FROM the game" therefore is that you need to learn how to use merchants effectively, not that you don't need merchants (that's something you might realise later on).

The game throws diplomacy at you. Most factions start with a princess or diplomat and are approached throughout the early stages by the same from other factions. All of this gives the impression that diplomacy is significant in the game: I can't see how someone could think otherwise.

The idea that you'd realise diplomacy and economic development were less effective than blitzkrieg without playing the game for a considerable period or hearing from another source that this is the case is unlikely: as unlikely as guessing that the AI would be passive at sieges or that shields were bugged without fighting any battles.

If players are presented with lots of prompts from the game to develop their economies and utilise diplomacy (by the presence of diplomats, princesses, merchants and economic buildings) and yet decide, in their very first game that they don't need any of these things to win, they must be possessed of a degree of perspicacity that I don't share.

[Kadagar_AV]

Tambarskjelve>>> I do of course admit that my friend isnt the "average player", but as I mentioned, I dont believe this game is directed to the average joe.

His military experience of course helped, but c'mon, this isnt rocket science... "You mean archers should be BEHIND the spears when horses are about to charge?". You could basicly get the level of tactics needed to win from reading 3$ pocket fantasy books on sale...


hisn00bness>>> I know about houserules and modding to make game better or more enjoyable, but that wasnt the point of this thread. My next campaign, I plan to conquer almost the whole world, and then give ALL of it except the brittish islands to the only other remaining faction, and then go to war... should be massive


Didz>>> He kind of blizzed yeah, but note that almost EVERY player ever play the game in the way the game points them. Basicly you stick to what seems to be working when you first get a new game... So if he blizzed, it was because the game taught him to do so.

I do like your suggestions a lot, but they are problematic as it would make the learning curve of the game significantly steeper. Newer and younger players wouldn't touch the game (it allready takes a lot to get started).


diotavelli>>> He won just about every battle, not every battle... Of course he sometimes was simply overrun, but he rarely if ever moved anything but full stacks, and a full stack of good ol' scandinavian berserkers with 2h axes can beat pretty much anything...

Oh, and BTW... he did something I VERY rarely do, namely "withdraw from battle", that is, the option you have when you also decide to auto-attack or controll the battle...

I almost never use this option, but it didnt seem to give him many if any negative traits.

His stand on merchants and princesses was "I'll use them when I need them", and he never needed them...

And yes of COURSE someone with a different approach would look at the game with another perspective... But the point is that this playstyle is what new players learn FROM the game... New players dont learn (from playing) they need merchants to win, they learn that the micro-management needed for controlling, say, merchants isnt worth it as you can beat the game regardless... And games ARE about winning, and having fun.

At least for me.... Sure I like to have fun, but I do have fun when I win... see my point? I'm not bashing the game, I have several hundreds of hours invested in different total war games, so obviosly the game has some sort of charm

And yes, most games have tricks you can learn to win... But you can not honestly say that most games can be beaten on the hardest settings first time you give them a go.... I know it takes me a bit of time in any other game to start winning against "hard" or "brutal" AI or whatever...

My friend agreed to play on VH/VH cause I said it was an experiment, to see how a new player did against the hardest AI. We challenge each other now and then, nothing mysterious about it really...

I did not in any way before or after talk about the game at all.... Nothing about blitzing, diplomacy or anything... So I did in no way suggest "blitz through and dont care about politics", for all he knew, politics might have been the only way to beat the game, by say assassination or marrying into families (as it says on the back of the gamebox)...

He did some diplomacy, but found AI to irrational to bother (kingdoms randomly blockading your ports, anyone?).

I must admit I challenged him to do it (we often do), and therefore he probably spent more energy on doing planning and testing than most inital players... Also, as usual the winner of the challenge got a beer... So of course this means any sane person would do his very best to win!




I'm not saying test is perfect, but it at least hints towards the problems...

I mean, I dare anyone to call the game challenging without house rules... when was the last time any of you guys lost a campaign?



Thanx for all the replys! I got to say this is the best forum I've ever been on.

[Didz]

Tambarskjelve>>> I do of course admit that my friend isnt the "average player", but as I mentioned, I dont believe this game is directed to the average joe.

I don't think that was a major factor, my 15 year old son recently started playing MTW2 and he uses exactly the same tactics with exactly the same results.

Its basically a flaw in the game design that allows players to win easier by explioting the reward system.

Didz>>> He kind of blizzed yeah, but note that almost EVERY player ever play the game in the way the game points them. Basicly you stick to what seems to be working when you first get a new game... So if he blizzed, it was because the game taught him to do so.

Exactly, the problem is that as it stands the game rewards this sort of play and because it does it encourages players to expliot that approach.

If this were not the case and the rewards were removed then players would be forced to play the game as it was intended to be played and utilise all aspects of the games design.

[Flavius Merobaudes]

When I played the game for the first time (it was RTW back then), I was very careful and prepared every offensive step twice. It didn't take me long to learn that the AI was not that aggressive. So I soon started taking more risk.

If we were able to play the campaign against a human player and still employed our same old anti-AI strategies, I'm sure we'd get our a*s kicked:
Leave a town undefended for 2 turns? No problem. The AI stack nearby would never bother taking it. Sitting three miles away in the woods is far more relaxing than keeping the enemy population quiet.

[Ramses II CP]

Auto-calc'ing city battles removes a small factor of difficulty as auto-calc ignores walls.

Effectively, though, this just shows what we already know, blitzing in any way breaks the game model, and the strategic AI is grossly incompetent. That last is true of all the TW games, IMHO, I'd be surprised if there was any realistic situation a player couldn't win their way out of on the strategic map.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Auto-calc'ing city battles removes a small factor of difficulty as auto-calc ignores walls.

Effectively, though, this just shows what we already know, blitzing in any way breaks the game model, and the strategic AI is grossly incompetent. That last is true of all the TW games, IMHO, I'd be surprised if there was any realistic situation a player couldn't win their way out of on the strategic map.

Agreed entirely.

I admit, I didn't even become a decent general until my War for Independence campaign forced me to use... archers.

When one can easily field massive all infantry and cavalry armies and blitz straight through all resistance using superior strategy map positioning and recruitment... why would anyone need to learn to battle effectively? You can always simply massively outnumber or outmaneuver them.

I HAD to blitz by a certain TURN number in order to give the AI a chance. The faster I move, the weaker I am on the field, the fewer troops and funds I have, and the less advantageous my strategic positioning. Actually having to win seige battles with only a unit of cavalry is difficult.

Winning seiges with basic militia infantry and archers, while undermanned, is very difficult.

Blitzing gave me that. But only when I had the much more difficult house rules of War for Independence did I even begin to meet real resistance from the AI.

[Kobal2fr]

I don't think that was a major factor, my 15 year old son recently started playing MTW2 and he uses exactly the same tactics with exactly the same results.

Its basically a flaw in the game design that allows players to win easier by explioting the reward system.


Exactly, the problem is that as it stands the game rewards this sort of play and because it does it encourages players to expliot that approach.

If this were not the case and the rewards were removed then players would be forced to play the game as it was intended to be played and utilise all aspects of the games design.

While looking for something else entirely, I stumbled upon this little nugget in descr_campaign_db.xml :

<settlement>
      <sack_money_modifier float="0.4"/>
      <exterminate_money_modifier float="0.5"/>

Tweaking this up, or maybe down, or even sideways is probably the key to making blitzkrieg less doable/profitable. Might tank the AI's already appaling financial abilities though, especially early on in the "grab land from rebels" phase. Needs a test subject. Your son seems a perfect candidate for sneaky and unethical science

[Sentinel]

I think the point that the original poster was making is related to the difficulty setting.

The game provides easy, medium, hard and very hard setting for both campaign and battle maps. A total of 16 different levels of difficulty. In addition this can be fine tuned by choosing harder (e.g. Scotland) or easier (e.g. England) factions. This should enable a suitable level of challenge (with a risk they could loose) to any player, irrespective of their intelligence, experience or playing styles.

Easy / Easy settings should be suitable for

my semi-retarded cousin, 12 years old...

Medium / Medium settings should be challenging for most, average intelligence, players coming to the game for the first time.

Hard / Hard setting should present a challenge to players with a few campaigns experience. That have learned the how to use all the different element of the game.

Very Hard / Very Hard settings should be for skilled, experienced players that know how to effectively use all the elements of the game to achieve victory conditions.

The fact that the OPs friend (despite military training, good intelligence) was able to easily complete a VH/VH campaign, whilst ignoring the advantages that some of the main elements could give him, is proof that game gives insufficient challenge at the higher settings.

Currently the higher setting difficulties are set too low. I have played several campaigns on VH/VH and have never felt that I was about to loose this campaign. The worst situation I have experienced is that I have made a series of blunders and said to myself, this is going to set back my campaign 10 turns to recover.

I know that by turtling for 50 turns, never blitzing, adopting a host of house rules, I can make the game more of a challenge, but this seems to be the complete opposite to the principle of the game.

As a leader you are to use your skill and experience to conquer the other factions as efficiently as possible. You should be aggressive and use any weakness in the enemy’s defences to your advantage. Your enemy should be trying to do the same to you.

If you adopt the strategy that because the enemy is stupid and makes a stupid move.
E.g.
He camps a full stack army being paid to do nothing, for ten turns, next to a rebel settlement.
He charges his cavalry at your archers, sat behind a row of stakes.
He tries to siege your settlement, garrisoned with a full stack, with 4 units of peasants.
Then I should not exploit his stupidity and should likewise make equally stupid moves.
E.g.
Not take over the rebels yourself, but allow him plenty of time to attack the rebels if that’s what he eventually decides he wants to do.
Position your archers in front of your stakes to prevent his horses getting a nasty splinter.
Sally forth with only your peasants to make it a fair fight.
Is completely at odd with the principles of being a good General. Of being smarter, more skilled than your opponent.
You shouldn’t be asked to increase the challenge by matching your opponent’s stupid moves with your own stupid moves.

I accept that the AI is never going to give the same challenge as a human opponent would. No game with this level of complexity could every be cost effectively programmed to do that.
Most games of this type have to “cheat” in some way to give the computer an advantage to increase the challenge.
Most gamers accept that harder setting will give the computer advantages to compensate for the lack of AI. Most experienced gamers hope / expect that setting the difficulty to VH/VH will make the challenge very hard with a good risk that they might loose the battle / campaign, if they make too many mistakes.

CA have used some factors, but not enough, to make the game more challenging. They seem to have aimed to game too much towards the casual player and forgotten to cater for the full range of gamers.

[DesertEagle]

Didz>>> He kind of blizzed yeah, but note that almost EVERY player ever play the game in the way the game points them. Basicly you stick to what seems to be working when you first get a new game... So if he blizzed, it was because the game taught him to do so.

I disagree, as someone else mentioned, the computer gives you tools other than blitzing, they give you diplomats, princesses, and merchants at the start of your game. This seems to be the game "pointing" you in the direction of using them. It does seem to me to indicate there was something driving him to use military force to accomplish his goals as fast as possible. Whether influence from you, or his natural personality, or whatever else, I couldn't say. Maybe blitzing is just the way he does things the first time he tries something, then only moves to a slower pace if that doesn't work for him.

I do like your suggestions a lot, but they are problematic as it would make the learning curve of the game significantly steeper. Newer and younger players wouldn't touch the game (it allready takes a lot to get started).

So wait, first we're saying the game is too easy and that's bad; now we're saying the game being harder would be bad. Also you make a post illustrating how players can accomplish total victory without much effort, but yet also saying "it takes a lot to get started."

And yes of COURSE someone with a different approach would look at the game with another perspective... But the point is that this playstyle is what new players learn FROM the game... New players dont learn (from playing) they need merchants to win, they learn that the micro-management needed for controlling, say, merchants isnt worth it as you can beat the game regardless... And games ARE about winning, and having fun.

Again, I believe the game tries to teach you to use diplomacy and merchants, rather than 100% brute force.

And yes, most games have tricks you can learn to win... But you can not honestly say that most games can be beaten on the hardest settings first time you give them a go.... I know it takes me a bit of time in any other game to start winning against "hard" or "brutal" AI or whatever...

But do other games that take you a bit of time to start winning against {insert highest AI setting here} enemies have a "do this and you won't fail pretty much no matter what" strategy? If not, then you're making an apples to oranges comparison. Think about it this way, if any other game had an "unlimited lives" code you used on your first play, you could win your first time against the hardest AI. Same thing here, it's just not a "true" cheat and you don't have to manually activate it. In fact, you have to manually DEactivate it by how you choose to play.

I mean, I dare anyone to call the game challenging without house rules... when was the last time any of you guys lost a campaign?

I find the game challenging, but then I don't blitz. I don't have like "house rules" in that I do this, or don't do that. But, I develop before moving on. So like I start a game, develop my core, take what rebels I can get to first. Then I develop my core some more and the new territory I captured. I treat excommunication very seriously (usually a catholic faction) and so I obey non-agression orders, and I don't let myself be excommed.

Ultimately, I don't think anyone is going to deny that, yes, if you do things a certain way, it makes the game very easy. But equally, if you know a glitch in a shooter that lets you shoot everyone else and not be hit, you'll have a very easy time with that game also.

As you said yourself, playing games is about having fun, nothing more nothing less. It comes down to choosing the most fun way to play for you, and playing that way.

If your main source of fun is the victory itself, then using exploits in the way a game is designed to make your job as effortless as possible to beat the game quickly will maximise your fun as you'll win more often. Like the guys who can beat the game in under 20 turns. Hey if that's fun, go for it! Win 10 games between getting home from work and dinnertime.

If you enjoy the road to victory as much as the final outcome, you can do that to, it's what I always do. Choose to take it slow and have as much fun as you want. Set the game to 1/2 year turns and you have time to go like molasses and have loads of fun.

I'll repeat it. As you said yourself, playing games is about having fun. As a gamer it is up to you to decide what experiance is "most fun" for you, and give yourself that enjoyment. Whether that means blitzing in vanilla, or taking the slow simmering approach in a fully modded game that gives an entirely new experiance due to the hard work of our talented community, that's up to you.

I'll leave you with this thought:
Ultimatly, the vanilla game is relatively easy. I don't think anyone here will argue that. However, it is that way for a reason. Company's make games to make money, and that's a fact of life. What is also a (sad) fact of life, is that the games that are most likely to make money will appeal to the lowest common denominator - that is the casual gamer who wants to play for 10-15 minutes when they have free time, and feel like they accomplished something. That's why you don't see very many hardcore simulators anymore, like many of Janes sims, or Falcon 4.0, where you have to spend time learning how sonar, radar, thermal layers, and flight dynamics work.

The final word (at last )- The game is what you make of it.

[John_Longarrow]

Kadagar AV

Has your friend tried the game again as a less potent faction? Has he tried it as, say, the HRE instead? Or the Turks? From my personal experience playing as the Danes is comparable to playing the game at a lower difficulty.

[zaher]

The simple way to avoid rushing and such a strategies is to change campaighn objectives, first of all - remove hold 15 or 45 settlements objective. Also you must hold all settlements you started with, add to this some building objective, like " build Sistine chapel " for France or " discover first New World " for Spain ,etc..
I really CAN enjoy vanilla MTW2 if i play very peaceful way in game. For example, playing as Scotland i made marriage alliance with england on first turn, and got attacked by them only on turn 103. I always keeping my papal standing not lower than my enemy have. I try to get my reputation as high as possible. I attacking only if i know that some religious buildings will be built in next turn. I totally ignore game objectives, playing only for fun. Now is turn 200 and i hold only 12 provinces in long campaighn, but 2 from them are in Carribean and i gonna fight Aztecs. Played all other factions before ( except Danes and Byz ), everytime i started new game , i tried to reach objectives without blitzing in relaxing way, and, to be honest, everytime i stopped to play near turn 160-180, just after i got almost all high tech buildings and troops enought to raise whole world, i saved game under faction name and never returned to it. But now, playing as a Scotland, i enjoing every short ( if compare to factions i played before ) turn, and even dont want to stop.
And i always like peaceful decisions, thats why i like option to build rocket in Civilisation games, and thats why it always keep me from blitz and exploit decisions.

[Sgt Kelly]

How heavily do blitzers rely on mercenaries ?

I'm far from an expert since I never blitz, but if you sack a city it is unable to provide recruits for the next 2 - 3 turns. If there were no mercenaries it seems to me the blitzers would have a hard time replenishing their losses and would quickly run out of steam.

[Didz]

In my game you can start re-training units after one turn in a newly captured city so that isn't really an issue.

Mercenaries obviously help in raising powerful armies quickly but they are relatively expensive anyway and would be harder to recruit if sacking did not boost your treasury funds. They also form a pretty fundemental part of the game and so I whilst I think the whole system for how they work needs to be reviewed I would not want them removed completely from the game just to prevent an unrelated player expliot.

[Kobal2fr]

In my game you can start re-training units after one turn in a newly captured city so that isn't really an issue.

That all depends on how you capture it, the replenishment rate of the pools, and how the folks you captured it from left it. If you occupy, the existing pools are left untouched, sacking cuts them by 1/3rd and extermination empties them. If the AI has recruited everything in sight before you arrived, then even occupy will leave you with empty pools.

Meaning that if you lengthen the time needed for one new "unit" to appear in the pool, and/or reduce the maximum pool, and couple that with increased public order problems, then even a sacked city can become impossible to hold if you are to move your whole army away next turn, as witnessed in LTC.

[Kruniac]

Blah blah-blah blah-blah blah blah. Geeze guys. So many long winded posts "debating" over nothing in particular. The AI sucks, the game is too easy for MOST people, and playing a "happy merchant game" just doesnt make up for the CRAP of the AI.

The selling point of this game was supposed to be the 3d battles. Real strategic goodness. Yeah, great. The AI FAILS to battle effectively, and that causes the game to suck right there.

Add in the fact that compared to games such as Europa Universalis III, the Strategic Map area of the game is the most empty, lifeless, and generally hindering aspect of life for the next five thousand years, and you have a game that does one thing very well...


Fails.

An improved AI, a working and complex diplomacy system, a complete overhaul of the trade system (yeah my merchant is going to walk over to Yorkshire, and stand around some grapes or something. Try having merchants compete in a MARKETPLACE, not in the middle of nowhere), and a general change to the "feel" of the game is the only thing that will really fix it.

I keep installing the bugger for two reasons. One - I like the graphics, especially of Militia units and archery units. Two - I bought the game instead of warez-ing it, so I have the CDs for when I get a craving. Trust me - if this game were a download, the peice of crap would have been deleted like Space Force Rogue Universe (THAT is a horrible game. UGH)

Anyways... Add more DEPTH to the game. Add more TRADE Depth. Add more PROVINCIAL Depth. (Holy Roman Empire anyone? What, its a gigantic nation, spamming armies? No, its a political body of many nations, whom sometimes slapped each other around, and generally were very interesting.). Finally, add more COMBAT Depth.

If im recieving a charge from the enemies calvary line (which could very well be a head on charge - nothing really wrong with that, just a bit suicidal.), the calvary should NOT turn around and run off after receiving a few volleys of arrow fire. Note I am not speaking about morale - im talking about literally being given a double-move(run) order to run in the opposite direction...

Oh it gets better.

Guess what happens next?

...The calvary comes back towards my archers, full speed. After taking another volley, they turn around again(!) and head back to their own front lines. This continues until the enemy is massacred and routing.

Dont even get me started on seiges.

This lack of intelligence in the combat department is enough to bury this game forever. It isnt the ONLY thing wrong, but if you are trying to put out a game whose entire point is the "awesome 3d strategic battles!", then at least make it worth playing. Make it a challenge.

Hey, you want a good example of how to stop people from "bum rushing" the AI? MAKE A BETTER AI. No excuses, no "Well use house rules"... JUST FIX THE GAME.

Yeah, end rant.