Hello fellow .ORG compatriots,
The first part of my MTW review will deal with the castles and siege warfare, the part of STW that I had very strong opinions about. Being Medieval Total War i thought there might be a shift from the open warfare battles of STW to a greater emphasis on castle battles with siege engines. After ploughing through my first campaign I am not entirely sure this is the case, I have only be fortunate enough to participate in 3 castle assaults, one defending and 2 attacking.
From eagerly playing and for the majority of time really enjoying MTW, regarding the issue of castles and siege warfare, i have mixed feelings on whether what we have here is really a separate game or a massive upgrade from STW simply with a different setting...?
A lot of the campaign's mechanics are very different from STW, and yet, still some remain so very similar. Take for example how provinces, ownership, castles and sieges all fall into place. Bar the shouting and the massive increase in splendour the mechanics are almost identical to STW and here's why:
1. When besieging a castle it's written that neither of the two factions has ownership of the province's income, yet it seems that the besieger can access the province's tax rate and on entering their economy parchment also seem to earn the revenue from the half-owned province!? Strange, but similar to STW. From the manual it would suggest that until the province ownership has been decided, neither faction gains any of the tax revenue?!
2. Other than preventing castle tech level degradation, very little can be gained from assaulting the castle as opposed to starving them out. Normally we are only talking ~3 turns (or years) of waiting. If you are earning the income (see 1. above) then what's the point in rushing? If the AI is going to counterattack you they'll do it in the next turn thus preventing you from assaulting the castle anyway. All this is the same as STW. On top of this though we have the new improved castles, etc, making it a very dangerous job to assault the castle if unprepared. If only more castle assaults occurred and indeed were encouraged to occur then we would really have a major difference from STW, since the castle design, etc is simply amazing in MTW! It really is an advantage to defend now! Built into this though remains the option to automatically resolve a castle assault and this really doesn’t take in account the difficulty involved in taking a castle in this game. In one case my castle fortifications single handedly decimated an assaulting AI army that outnumbered mine by more than 10 fold! Had I automatically resolved this battle, the AI would’ve won easily… the same is the case if the roles are reversed, thus this brings into play a massive player advantage when trying to take a castle.
3. This brings me onto the use of siege weapons. For the human player, this represents no problem at all as they can assign the siege weapons to armies appropriately as and when they are required. In a field battle, if defending, they’ll place them is the best position beside the rest of their army wherever they’ve decide to defend. If attacking the human player will again position them accordingly. Now, in field battles, the AI really suffers when attempting to use siege weapons, especially in defence. The Ai’s initial set-up position appears fixed and therefore more often than not the AI will end up moving their army once the battle’s started to take up better defending positions on hillsides or in forests. Of course if they have siege weapons, these will be left at the original positions all on their own and will be easily mopped up by cavalry. The solution to this is not easy and my sympathy goes out to the developers, however, one possible idea would be to make many of these weapons movable, especially balistas, catapults, cannons for instance. I can understand trebuchets and mangonels being stationary and therefore would remain problematic in these circumstances. Maybe another, more complicated solution would be altering the AI’s use of some of these weapons primarily to battles involving castle assaults in preference over field battles. Or make the Ai select it’s invading armies in a more varied manner, say with only a maximum of 2 siege weapons in any one force? In one rare case, I even experienced my own catapult inside my castle taking out my own walls when trying to target the approaching enemy!
Furthermore the AI tends to set its forces on the opposite side from the gate into the castle and therefore when trying to get in had to walk its units all the way round my castle all the while taking constant damage from my castle towers! Still there really is nothing like the authentic feeling one gets from the castle battles and MTW comes very close to getting them absolutely right.
4. The similarity with STW which is most frustrating is the downgrading of the buildings when losing the province, but having not yet lost the castle. This means there is no purpose in retreating to your castle since all the damage is already done to your improvements and the invader is apparently earning the province's income. Surely the sense here would be that the improvements would remain intact until the whole province was taken, this way providing some strategy in retaining or retreating to the castle for the defender?! The castles and citadels are massive and therefore I’d imagine most of the facilities would be contained within the walls? In the bigger picture what this means is if I were to lose my province, have the buildings downgraded and then manage to retake the province, the buildings would be downgraded a second time! One of DD’s biggest reservations on MTW during his review was that he ended up fighting peasants and technologically inferior opponents as the campaign progressed. The Ai’s lack of protection over its more vital provinces, along with the mass downgrading of improvements upon the changing of province ownership is the simple reason for the inability of the AI to tech up effectively.
Although this may seem all too negative, I am purely suggesting ways for improvements and highlighting potential flaws in the AI. A lot has been added to the total war series with this entry, however, with increased complexity comes the unenviable task of programming an AI to cope with it. The issues of castles, sieges, etc in STW was my most argued and discussed part for improvement, and whilst in MTW significant progress has been made on this area, I feel there are still too many skeletons remaining from the STW cupboard. This part forms a small part of an otherwise quite splendid and enthralling gaming experience and when I touch into other areas in future parts to my MTW review, they’ll definitely be more positive.
I hope you enjoyed the summation and your feedback and opinions are most welcome.
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=MizuDoc Otomo=
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