Shogun

[Reverend Joe]

O God, my heart bursts with the feral wildness of these new things.

Whoever heard of such wild things as strategic armies, going where you please, of wars at sea, of 3-dimensional soldiers?

I wonder now, shall the old ways be forgotten?

Once, all we had was a computerized bard game, with the occasional interlude of 3-dimensional battles with 2-dimensional soldiers. It seemed simple even at the time; and yet it remains one of my favorite games of all time. I recall first playing it, while I was sick with a fever, and it was the only light in my entire day: having another day off to play Shogun: Total War.

I wonder now... has the game become too complex? and this is a serious question... did we really need to go that far beyond Shogun -- or, at a stretch, Medeival?

...Seriously, all whiskey aside, who really needs all this crap?

[Freedom Onanist]

O God, my heart bursts with the feral wildness of these new things.

Whoever heard of such wild things as strategic armies, going where you please, of wars at sea, of 3-dimensional soldiers?

I wonder now, shall the old ways be forgotten?

Once, all we had was a computerized bard game, with the occasional interlude of 3-dimensional battles with 2-dimensional soldiers. It seemed simple even at the time; and yet it remains one of my favorite games of all time. I recall first playing it, while I was sick with a fever, and it was the only light in my entire day: having another day off to play Shogun: Total War.

I wonder now... has the game become too complex? and this is a serious question... did we really need to go that far beyond Shogun -- or, at a stretch, Medeival?

...Seriously, all whiskey aside, who really needs all this crap?

I'm partially with you on that one. If you look at some of the things fans are asking for it does look like it could be a CIV-a-like. I stopped playing that game ages ago because it is little more than an excercise in micromanagement now.

The thing is, CA are fairly responsive to the community and of course they need to stay in business which implies bringing out a new product every year or so. So I don't see how they really have a choice.

What would be nice and is never done would be to take a game Shogun and completely update the graphics to today's standards but leave the gameplay completly alone.

Imagine if they did that with a game like Elite, now there was a game as well....

[Daveybaby]

Is that really all you people want? The same game repeated over and over again but with better graphics each time?

I have not the words.

[Freedom Onanist]

Is that really all you people want? The same game repeated over and over again but with better graphics each time?

I have not the words.

No it isn't all I want, it is one of the things I'd like yes, alongside the new games. Just saying that there is a classic game that would look good if it was updated (as a patch kind of thing). Of course they aren't going to do it ecasue they would have to charge for it.

[Furious Mental]

"who really needs all this crap"

Well it isn't "crap" to me. To me it is "gameplay". If you want a game minus this "crap", play Shogun.

[Vuk]

O God, my heart bursts with the feral wildness of these new things.

Whoever heard of such wild things as strategic armies, going where you please, of wars at sea, of 3-dimensional soldiers?

I wonder now, shall the old ways be forgotten?

Once, all we had was a computerized bard game, with the occasional interlude of 3-dimensional battles with 2-dimensional soldiers. It seemed simple even at the time; and yet it remains one of my favorite games of all time. I recall first playing it, while I was sick with a fever, and it was the only light in my entire day: having another day off to play Shogun: Total War.

I wonder now... has the game become too complex? and this is a serious question... did we really need to go that far beyond Shogun -- or, at a stretch, Medeival?

...Seriously, all whiskey aside, who really needs all this crap?

lol, that is like saying why play video games when you have Chess? Who needs crap like BF2?

ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Vuk

[caravel]

Is that really all you people want? The same game repeated over and over again but with better graphics each time?

I have not the words.

Well it worked for Rugby, Tennis, Football and Chess, and on a computer games level, it seems to work for FPS games. There are few original games, most borrow heavily from pervious titles, and a good formula doesn't need to continuosly evolve. It simply needs refining up to a point.

I don't think the issue is same game repeated over and over, but more so building on and enhancing the original total war games without transforming the genre to conform to the standards and consumer base of CA's Strategy/RTS making competitors - which is what has happened.

[Noir]

Its hard to say how much TW has really evolved. It feels more like playing with the same parameters in giving a different "feel" everytime rather than making a different game.

ETW is meant to deal with that i guess by introducing the naval battles. My wish is that it doesn't do that on the expense of the land battles. CA is marketing their land battles as state of the art and yet they actually are less well balanced and complex than before due to poor effort in playtesting, due to throwing in too many parameters for variety and visuals that make it more difficult to get a better gameplay, and finally due to streamlining the game and make it accessible to all ages.

I agree with Cambyses that a good formula needs not be altered, however CA has crossed over that long time ago in a way. They still keep the core of the game but strive everytime for a different flavor as they know that this will sell the games and not good gameplay.

Its clear from the posters here and elsewhere that few people want TW to be chess - it is a pc game and it has to comply to the rules of the market for pc games - as CA wisely realised and pursued.

Wisely for their own sake of course.

[Galapagos]

I could say that the "crap" is Shogun and MTW not the new games.CA is not that stupid to remake older games which are simple and shallow.This would bring their profits down.

[Noir]

CA is not that stupid to remake older games which are simple and shallow.

They definitely aren't

This would bring their profits down so what you think is NOT IMPORTANT.

Constitutional democrat eh? Nice.

[Reverend Joe]

Wow, I have no memory of posting this at all.

While I'm here...

I think my point was that even though the older games were simple on the surface, there was a lot more complexity to them than what met the eye. Shogun, for example, really was a lot like chess; it had a certain set of relatively simple rules, and a certain relatively simple setup, and yet every game was a different adventure. Plus, it was... elegant.

Also, the AI would whip your ass in style. Frankly, that's all any game in the series really needs to be good... an ass-kickin' AI. Everything else is ancillary. Hell, I would forego the new 3-d units and go back to the old 2d sprites if it meant the AI would go back to the level of intelligence it had with Shogun.

The other problem is, though, there are probably too many different units to allow the AI to be truly competent. It would take forever to program... unless, of course, the AI could "learn" how to fight better. I believe that has been done before, too.

[caravel]

I could say that the "crap" is Shogun and MTW not the new games.CA is not that stupid to remake older games which are simple and shallow.

As opposed to reworking RTW as a remake of MTW? Unfortunately it's the newer games overall that tend to be simple and shallow.

This would bring their profits down so what you think is NOT IMPORTANT.

It seems CA are doing something right, if they can get their fans more worried about CA's profits than the quality of CA's games. You see, you won't actually gain from the profit side of things as you are the consumer. As the consumer you should demand a product that is better quality overall, not just in the superficial sense. Of course graphics should have improved from the STW and MTW days, everyone expects this, but what is being argued is that graphics and visuals should not have been the main focus.

TW battles in particular do not need the focus on detail and 3D models, that the series has been biased toward since RTW, because in order to effectively play the battles and command units the player has to be zoomed out to a level where none of the visuals can really be appreciated. This was how the earlier games were designed. The sprites were not designed to be viewed at close range. If CA had wanted to work on the 3D battles, then more emphasis on the terrain, weather, buildings and vegetation would have been better, as well as on the actual physics of battles, projectiles etc as well as - needless to say - the AI and balance.

[Daveybaby]

I just think that quite often in these forums people wear rose tinted spectacles w.r.t. shogun and medieval. I'm not saying that M2 doesnt have a few significant problems (primarily the fact that it's just too easy) - but people have a tendency to forget the limitations of the older games.

Part of Shogun's appeal was that we'd never seen something quite like it before. In that respect subsequent TW games will never have that same 'wow' factor again for most of us, regardless of how good the graphics get, or what new features get added. But IMO it had very limited replayability compared to the newer games - the outcome was invariably the same whatever faction you played - you vs the hojo horde (well, unless you were playing as the hojo ).

I agree with the people that are saying that the compexity of the campaign map has increased beyond the AI's ability to compete with the player. However, I think that the solution to this is to fix the campaign AI (something CA have acknowledged was a problem for the RTW generation games) rather than simplify the engine. This is something that is difficult but it can be done.

Well it worked for Rugby, Tennis, Football and Chess, and on a computer games level, it seems to work for FPS games. There are few original games, most borrow heavily from pervious titles, and a good formula doesn't need to continuosly evolve. It simply needs refining up to a point.

Well actually, i dont think it does work for sports games. Not if what youre looking for is a competent game that plays well. EA keeps churning out the same half finished buggy crap every year with slightly better graphics. Gameplay rarely improves by much.

Ironically one of the most popular sports games in the uk in recent years is championship manager, which is, to all intents and purposes, a text based game.

W.r.t. fps games you have a point - but from the very beginning those have always been about trying to create a realistic immersive environment for the player. Also there have been improvements in enemy AI in those games. Once upon a time all they used to do was charge at you shooting, now they... occasionally run away instead.

[Martok]

I just think that quite often in these forums people wear rose tinted spectacles w.r.t. shogun and medieval. I'm not saying that M2 doesnt have a few significant problems (primarily the fact that it's just too easy) - but people have a tendency to forget the limitations of the older games.

Not for nothing; but graphics aside, exactly what limitations does Shogun & MTW suffer from that Rome & Medieval 2 doesn't as well? Honestly? Because in terms of diplomacy, AI, gameplay, internal mechanics, & overall replayability, the former are equal (if not superior) to the latter -- only in terms of visuals do RTW & M2TW have a marked edge over their predecessors.

I don't say that from the perspective of an "OMG! Shogun & MTW is da bomb!" mindset, either. I've played MTW and Shogun an awful lot over the years; and believe me, I'm painfully aware of the many flaws in both games that drive me (and many others) crazy! The quicksave bug, the overpowered Geishas & Inquisitors, the partially-broken GA mode, the unbalanced provincial incomes....I've probably seen them all. But there's certainly no more problems with those two games than there are with the two most recent.

So again, I ask: In any of the ways that actually matter, what limitations do Shogun & MTW face that RTW & Medieval don't as well?

[Mouzafphaerre]

.
You're right (as expected ) Martok-sama but I have to concede that RTW is overall more moddable than the predecessors. The scripting function if nothing else...
.

[Daveybaby]

So again, I ask: In any of the ways that actually matter, what limitations do Shogun & MTW face that RTW & Medieval don't as well?

I'm not saying that recent games are perfect, far from it - just that from some of the posts you see on here it seems that there are people that think the older games are.

Which is exactly why i questioned the point in remaking shogun. Why bother remaking the same game with better graphics?

Having said that i do think that shogun (not MTW, just shogun) lacks replayability compared to later games. The factions are all very similar and the strategic map lacks space, which means that faction expansion tends to follow the same pattern every game. I love the game and the setting, but it doesnt have the longevity of MTW, RTW, M2TW. IMO a remake of shogun would be more suited as an expansion pack for a larger TW game, than a full release in it's own right.

And i do think that there have been significant improvements to things like diplomacy - or at least, there would have been if they actually worked.

[Zenicetus]

Its hard to say how much TW has really evolved. It feels more like playing with the same parameters in giving a different "feel" everytime rather than making a different game.

ETW is meant to deal with that i guess by introducing the naval battles. My wish is that it doesn't do that on the expense of the land battles.

Well, they're adding at least two new elements to land battles that should be interesting: capturable buildings on the tactical battlefield, and capturable (or maybe just destroyable?) structures on the strategic map, so that each province doesn't have just a single strategic target like it does now. That will move the game even further away from a simple Risk-style game map. Both sound good to me, but only if the AI can handle it. One would hope that CA wouldn't attempt those changes if the AI couldn't pull it off, but given prior history.... well, we'll just have to wait and see.

[Freedom Onanist]

Which is exactly why i questioned the point in remaking shogun. Why bother remaking the same game with better graphics?

Hey, I was being facetious when I said that. Obviously it would take far too much effort to redo the 3d graphics. More importantly it would get in the way of new games. However, if someone did redo the 3d I bet there would be takers.

[caravel]

Which is exactly why i questioned the point in remaking shogun. Why bother remaking the same game with better graphics?

Well isn't M2TW just that, a remake of the same game (MTW) with better graphics? Presumably if Shogun was remade (as S2TW) then surely that would be no different?

Personally I can live with the new style campaign map and the eye candy battles, I just have but one small request: Better overall AI.

Campaign map AI in RTW was limited to them filling up stacks of units and sending them in to besiege a settlement. The AI that does this, the military unit movement part, seems to have little or no communication with the diplomacy part, which is why in RTW diplomacy counts for almost nothing. The AI can be relentless with a terminator like approach sending stack after stack against one of your settlements, or it can arrive and simply camp there and do nothing at all. I remember a particular RTW campaign as the greek cities where the thracians kept landing a large stack in Rhodes and then letting it sit there, not sieging, indefinitely. Attacking and wiping it out resulted in another stack arriving and camping there a few years later, this is just an example of countless similar scenarios. MTW had pretty poor diplomacy, I'll be the first to admit that, but RTW has all the framework for great diplomacy, but it actually fails to work because the AI is still playing a simplistic "Sengoku Jidai" free for all (like one big civil war).

In terms of battle AI, RTW 1.5 is plagued by obvious bugs such as sieges in general, pathfinding issues in cities, but also severe shortcomings in the AI. There is no real strategic deployment and the enemy reacts to your changes in position by simply changing it's facing and nothing more. The enemy units are very, very easy to manipulate, flank and exploit, cavalry and chariots charging into a phalanx head on, units routing against your forces and not away from them and this is despite having a faster overall pace to the battles which is always in favour of the AI and not the player. From what I've heard of M2TW it has improved but not really enough, and the game is still far too easy.

If the new game is to be a classic one, all of these problems will need to be addressed. If they are and the initial responses are good, I may part with my cash. M2TW has still not inspired me to do that.

[Puzz3D]

I'd like to see the tactical depth of the battle engine restored to the level of the STW/MTW engine.

[Jack Lusted]

Campaign map AI in RTW was limited to them filling up stacks of units and sending them in to besiege a settlement. The AI that does this, the military unit movement part, seems to have little or no communication with the diplomacy part, which is why in RTW diplomacy counts for almost nothing. The AI can be relentless with a terminator like approach sending stack after stack against one of your settlements, or it can arrive and simply camp there and do nothing at all. I remember a particular RTW campaign as the greek cities where the thracians kept landing a large stack in Rhodes and then letting it sit there, not sieging, indefinitely. Attacking and wiping it out resulted in another stack arriving and camping there a few years later, this is just an example of countless similar scenarios. MTW had pretty poor diplomacy, I'll be the first to admit that, but RTW has all the framework for great diplomacy, but it actually fails to work because the AI is still playing a simplistic "Sengoku Jidai" free for all (like one big civil war).

James takes up the theme. "One of the quirks of the old engine was that the diplomacy and military AI were two separate routines, developed separately by two different programmers. Those systems fought each other. The military side would say 'we need to invade' while the diplomatic side will say 'well, I just made a treaty with them.' Getting them to work together was difficult. It meant the behaviour wasn't always consistent."

Throwing out those systems should fix the quirks, while allowing for new game mechanics.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com....php?id=170570

[Mikeus Caesar]

Gonzo, beating wasps nests with a large stick since 09/03/05

[Martok]

.
You're right (as expected ) Martok-sama but I have to concede that RTW is overall more moddable than the predecessors. The scripting function if nothing else...
.

Fair enough. I've edited my previous post accordingly.

I'm not saying that recent games are perfect, far from it - just that from some of the posts you see on here it seems that there are people that think the older games are.

Nah, we don't think they're perfect. We just believe they're much, much better, that's all.

Which is exactly why i questioned the point in remaking shogun. Why bother remaking the same game with better graphics?

They did it with Medieval, so why not Shogun?

Having said that i do think that shogun (not MTW, just shogun) lacks replayability compared to later games. The factions are all very similar and the strategic map lacks space, which means that faction expansion tends to follow the same pattern every game. I love the game and the setting, but it doesnt have the longevity of MTW, RTW, M2TW. IMO a remake of shogun would be more suited as an expansion pack for a larger TW game, than a full release in it's own right.

I concede you may be right in this regard. Not that I actually agree with the reasons why -- there's plenty of material for Shogun 2 to be a separate game in its own right -- but I admit it's more likely it would appear as an expansion pack (to a China TW game, perhaps? I can hope!).

And i do think that there have been significant improvements to things like diplomacy - or at least, there would have been if they actually worked.

Precisely. The new diplomatic features of RTW and M2TW don't function as they should, ergo the diplomacy in those two games is no better than in Shogun & MTW.

[doc_bean]

Is that really all you people want? The same game repeated over and over again but with better graphics each time?

I have not the words.

Well it works for Castlevania, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, Phoenix Wright, Zelda, Mario, not too mention all those sports games.

Personally I think there should eb room for both, remakes with improvements that don't make the gameplay radically different (like say, the 3D world map with the new movement system) and games that actually do 'new' things.

[Matt_Lane]

Well it works for Castlevania, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, Phoenix Wright, Zelda, Mario, not too mention all those sports games.

Personally I think there should eb room for both, remakes with improvements that don't make the gameplay radically different (like say, the 3D world map with the new movement system) and games that actually do 'new' things.

The problem for Total War remakes is that they follow a historical plot line where as the titles you have mentioned above are free to adapt and develop their game mechanics to a variety of plot lines keeping them fresh. Do you think Medieval War could be done a third time successfully? To drop the games historical content would move it into the fantasy genre, not that I have anything against fantasy games, I know some perfectly well adjusted people who play fantasy games, it just wouldn't be my cup of tea.

[Dexter]

Hy ...
Well, i wont tell you what u should like, but for me at least graphics are not as important as the "felling" of the game.
For defence of shogun, yes every clan had the same units but the idea was to have the player think how to defeat the enemy, not just take the urban cohort and hack and slash all the enemy.
I will not write down all wich i dont like in games. It is pointless after all.
Just think about it this way >>> is it worth to buy a PC whit all the high tech gadgets just to play a game that uses high tech graphics, ... and that`s it ... ??? Well for me it is not.
In shogun the AI could make me . Maybe i`m a lame player and this post should be ignored.

P.S.: I still think of Shogun as my nr 1

[hellenes]

IMO to get "better" Programmed Oponnent (the "AI" term is a marketing trick) you have to ssimplify the game, the more you dumb it down the better the PO becomes...pick up what you like...

[Puzz3D]

.
You're right (as expected ) Martok-sama but I have to concede that RTW is overall more moddable than the predecessors. The scripting function if nothing else...
.

The MTW/VI battle engine is the pinnacle of the series in terms of tactical depth and customizable battle parameters. This is why we used MTW/VI for Samurai Wars, and didn't use RTW/BI. No matter what we do, we can never make Ran no Jidai equal the quality of Samurai Wars as a tactical simulator of field battles.