Experiment to see how hard game is...

[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.

[SoxSexSax]

Just responding to a few individual points:

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.

I disagree. Blitzing (AKA Rushing) is a very common occurrence in any strategy game, and if the AI cannot cope with it (and let's face facts, M2TW's cannot) then the AI is, if not rubbish, very weak.

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.

This seems to be a misrepresentation of the situation. The game includes a diplomatic and economic element that is clearly intended to be significant. The fact that your playing style doesn't lend you to utilise these elements doesn't mean the game is at fault, necessarily.

I don't see this as a misrepresentation at all. The most EFFICIENT strategy is the strategy that wins the game the quickest, simple as. It is therefore entirely inefficient to build any non-military unit, as they are simply not needed to win within 50 turns with any faction.

The fact that a particular playing style makes winning it too easy is regrettable but it doesn't mean the game is flawed.

I disagree again. Actually, I don't disagree with the statement, but I disagree that it applies to M2TW. M2TW isn't just "too easy"...it is "easy to the point of worthlessness". Big difference. I just cannot lose a campaign unless I deliberately use a very unsound strategy. And frankly I don't feel like I should have to deliberately play badly to have fun.

I very much doubt they forgot experienced gamers when they made M2TW. It seems they didn't do a good job of preventing blitzkrieg from being too easy a route to victory. That's a whole different thing. Most other approaches are far less easy and so the difficulty levels work well enough.

Please provide a brief summary of a playstyle that is not deliberately weakened to give the AI a chance that will provide me with even a modicum of challenge. And I do not consider "it takes longer" to be the same as "it is harder".

Sacking is just too powerful, it should be dropped altogether or at least the AI should defend their settlements more effectively.

Totally agreed. This would SERIOUSLY help fix the problem of "Steamrollering" and would add some much needed tactical decision making to the game. (Right now the only choice is "who's next?")

[Ulstan]

Likewise, MTW2 would not be a flawed game if we could play it against 15 other human opponents, in fact it would be absolutely brilliant, the reason it is a flawed game is precisely because it lacks strategic challenge and options.

Precisely!

At the very least, people shouldn't be able to gain money from sacking or exterminating cities: it should spread mayhem and destruction and maybe keep their troops free of upkeep for a turn or two, but it's not a huge revenue getter.

Ideally, it should take a while to assimilate new cities into your empire, so that you can't just blitz your way across the map in 20 turns. You would need to tear down old buildings (which should take time) and rebuild your own, convert them to your faith, and reduce the cultural penalty. This should all take time and someone who didn't take the time should have a nice civil war on their hands :)

[Dorkus]

pretty much every TW game has been incredibly susceptible to the blitzkrieg strategy. my two biggest complaints with game design are:

1. ease of the game for aggressive players

2. imbalance of units and buildings

[Kobal2fr]

imbalance of buildings ?! What, like, "Drill_Square pwnz Fairgrounds all the time on Grassy Plain", sort of thing ?

[Malkut]

Megaman 2 is an extremely easy game if you forego the main weapon and use Metal Blades all the time, and there's no reason not to, because it throws power-ups at you like candy.

You can beat either God of War game by putting all your red orbs into your knives. They level up faster, and you can just destroy everything in the game with ease. You don’t need anything else to beat the game, anyway.

Building a character with 10 Luck, five in every other stat, and the Jinxed trait will make Fallout 2 an easy, quirky game.

There has yet to be a Final Fantasy game where you can't just power-level and completely obliterate the last boss in five seconds.

My point being, if you set out to find flaws in a game's level of difficulty, then you will find them, far more often than not. Every game ever made, regardless of complexity, can be exploited, but you have to chose to do so. Amping up the game's difficulty will never remove this choice, nor will it make it similar to playing against another human being.

[Derventio]

Well I enjoyed the generally intelligent discussion here, but it left me totally depressed.
You see I am a pretty intelligent man (IQ 149) I have an interest and understanding of military tactics. BUT I CANT WIN THIS GAME!
I'm great at CIV and I beat Shogun but stuff since I suck at.

Ah well the siege of Dublin awaits ---again.

[Jambo]

All TW games are easy. The only way to lose a TW game is if the objective is to lose. You see, TW games are unique in that it's actually harder to lose a game than to win.

I now have my game modded through scripts to give the AI money and city garrisons upon being besieged by the human, and even now I still win 95% of my battles; the ones I lose tend to be from the odd unexpected naval skirmish.

The problem is incurable. One can endeavour to make the campaign as hard as you can through modding, but ultimately you still win every tactical battle you play. In effect all you're doing is giving yourself twice the number of dough-ball AI stacks to fight. Remember the Hojo "Stack of DOom" from Shogun? The only way to nullify a human player is to bore it into submission through sheer weight of AI numbers and the enormity of time it then takes to complete each turn. ;)

I remember when CA removed the AI's ability to outspend its money in Shogun. With the Hojo hoarde removed the challenge disappeared immediately. I actually preferred Shogun with the cheating horde, and so did many others once they realised their complaints of "AI cheating" resulted in an easy game.

On the battlefield there's only ever one winner. The reason for this is the formula for winning on the battlefield is so simple. Shoot missiles as the AI approaches, engage infantry, then once engaged use cavalry to flank and initiate the chain rout. This could be made more difficult to achieve if the AI acted in a similar way. Unfortunately, it doesn't. It likes to charge its cavalry first!

So, make mental note everybody - don't buy a TW game for a challenge. Buy it for immersion (sometimes), graphics and ... um... fun...

Edit: It would seem that CA's way of introducing the challenge for Med II revolves around the greatly reduced timescale to complete the campaign. 225 turns instead of 400+ in Rome.