Shogun

[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]

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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.