I somehow doubt that a new engine would reintroduce the old tactical battles and risk style map of the first two TW games. But we shall see I suppose.

Reply

Just a comment:

I had the impression that this was the case for only the two latest titles (RTW/M2), both from the interviews previews i read as well as my own experience; i mean in STW/MTW backstabbings have a certain logic behind them and they do not happen 1 turn after you make an allaince too often, as is much more frequently the case in RTW/M2. I might however be wrong.

As for ETW, my main reservation is that the TW AI so far couldn't properly handle shooters at all; i cannot imagine how it would do especially in an era where gunpowder dominates while also having to put development weight in the naval battles and in making the new engine... the idea for the game is good but i'm very little convinced regarding the implementation.

Noir

Reply

This see this as only marketing hype, I really doubt that anything (except from graphics) gonna improve...

Reply

Personally, I could handle a 3D map....if the AI could actually handle it properly. So long as the battles are truly tactical in nature, I would be okay with that. I know you doubt that such a combination is possible -- and frankly, so do I -- but I've decided I'm not automatically going to be pessimistic this time around. I'm still skeptical, but I retain a certain degree of hope (regardless of how foolish it may be to do so).


I think you're at least partially right about that. The military & diplomacy AI seemed to have done a bit better job of talking to each other in Shogun and MTW, but it still wasn't great. I would say it's really been a problem prevalent throughout the series thus far, and that it was simply that much worse in RTW & Medieval 2. That's just my impression, however -- I don't claim to be any more right than you.

Reply

I take more the stance of an observer as frankly i have given up hope that CA may produce battles as rich and deep in tactics as in the first two games; i don't think that they can't do it, i realised that they don't care to do it. They go for breadth instead of depth to catch as many fish in the net as possible.

They market now the naval battles as the next big thing as if land battles in M2 were the pinnacle of balance and gameplay; you can see though that most people clearly don't care, neither find the fact that CA aims too high suspicious, despite the RTW and M2 releases, that were full of bugs imbalances and problems of all sorts.

Jawdropping peaked with a couple of screenshots and scarcely anyone mentions that developping sea battles (totally new) with entirely new land battles (shooters that the AI is weak to handle are the main infantry) as well as a new engine may be too much to be handled in two years while keeping quality high (doing testing, bug clearing as well as balancing).

CA in a sense is innocent; had RTW been ignored and slandered for its superficiality, arcadiness and unfinished state, they would have most likely turned back to a more "niche" quality archetype and sing a very different tune altogether. Now though, that RTW brought them fame & fortune ("the best strategy game ever", "100%" etc) they'll naturally keep on the same track.

Reply

From the recent interview with PCGamer:

"We've always wanted to do naval battles," says Mike Simpson, "but we've always wanted to do them properly - that's why we haven't tackled them in previous games. It's a big chunk. If you're going to do it, you have to do it really, really, really well."

Then he says:

"The cannonballs can damage the hull, they'll damage the panels they go through, they'll kill individual men, they also knock down masts, tear sails off... that obviously affects the manoeuvrability of your ships. You can tell your ships whether you want to aim at the sails or at the hull, or at the men on the decks."

You can aim cannonballs at the men? This is Mike Simpson's idea of doing naval battles really, really, really well?

Also in that interview he says:

"It's easy to design a complicated system. Hard to design an easy system that retains flavour"

The only complicated systems that are easy to design are ones that don't work properly. The problem with using an easy system, as he is apparently trying to do in Empire Total War, is that simplistic systems don't simulate complex physical processes very well. The elegance of the original STW battle engine is how well it simulates the battles with a moderately complex system.

Also in that interview James Russell, lead designer, says:

"We will have a fire button. It's a sort of override tool so you can time your shot when you want to. And timing is critical. Let off muskets too early, and you won't do enough damage. Let off your muskets too late in the face of a cavalry charge, and you've got every chance of being crushed by a flying dead horse."

Flying Dead Horses?


BTW, I have news for James Russell and the new fire button feature. You can shoot when you want to in the original STW engine as well.

Reply

Psst. Don't tell anyone. They want to sell this new feature.

Btw, i recently had a look at the section "Tips & Tricks" at the .com.
There's such a section for all 4 titles.
If you take 5 minutes to go over there and compare the sections of STW and MTW, which are almost similar, to the sections of RTW and M2, you'll know all that's wrong with the series since MTW. At least from my point of view.

R'as

Reply

I missed that one. It's like the Beatles song in Seargent Pepper's:

"... it's getting better all the time..."

And in all the other games too... Endless the list of innovations in Empire as yet..

Reply

I would love a Shogun TW 2 all though i think the closest we will get to it is Ran No Jadai

Reply

Since when could you shoot when you wanted in RTW?

@Nobunaga: Since they have a new engine to wrok on, I do reckon AI will improve. RTW and M2TW were equally as crap as each other because they were on the same engine.

Reply

While your waiting for Shogun II, why not go retro and find and play a grreat ggame I have had on my hard drive for 15 years(!). It's a game called Sword of the Samurai and is your typical RPG/Strategy/Simulation game that Microprose came out with in the 90's - with Civilization being the best known one!

Sword of the Samurai has you playing a young Samurai with dreams of becoming Dyamo of Japan. It takes place over 300 years, so one of the things you have to do is get a wife and have sons - if you don't the game dies when you do! (Ring any bells?!) You have a large map you can travel over visiting other Samurai castles, meeting bandits for some real time pausable strategy and you have the diplomatic shenanigans that we all love in the TW series!

Of course, being a 15 year old game means you will get 256 VGA graphics and midi sounds, but the gameplay is superb and the tactical strategy engine was written by none other than Sid Meier!!

You'll probably find it cheap on ebay or even maybe on abandonware sites. Make a point to get the manual though, pdf or otherwise, as a) it's a good read, and b) it really helps with the nuances of the game!

Reply

The thing amazed us in STW is the athmosphere.

Did you guys read the STW Html manual? ts not a game manual, its like a history book taking you to these ages. The guys created STW are knows everything about Sengoku Jidai age, made lots of researches, not as a job but as a fanatics.

I see the same spirit in MTW as well, but after RTW, things get changed, become professional which kills the spirit.

Only changing everyone's voices to English is a huge gap on TW spirit...

So there is a danger in creating S2TW, it would be like M2TW. I cant stand to see Samurai talking in English.

Reply

A better implementation perhaps?

A better implementation of firing while moving would be nice too (at the moment mounted missiles fire what they think to be a target, not what the player wants to be the target).

Reply