CA blog from Mike Simpson

**Durallan** · 10-04-2009, 12:08

Well the Americans didn't sail straight to berlin in World War 2, normally you do take out less defended territories first, to weaken your enemy, but this is total war! where you can defeat the enemy and take out his capital region without one hell of a fight.

**antisocialmunky** · 10-04-2009, 16:18

Originally Posted by Durallan

Well the Americans didn't sail straight to berlin in World War 2, normally you do take out less defended territories first, to weaken your enemy, but this is total war! where you can defeat the enemy and take out his capital region without one hell of a fight.

But the did fly over it and bomb it on a fairly regular basis. :-p

I think that the main complaint about the AI that people have is that it has gotten progressively worse wince the 2d TWs while the graphics have continually improved. Its not that people think its pure crap, its that people who remember the older games are ticked off that seemingly everything has been sacrificed for the sake of THE ALL MIGHTY GRAPHICS. Graphics actually cost a fair amount of money(motion capture, tons of artists, etc) to produce while other features that would be cheaper to improve are ignored.

This is a strategy game, making it challenging should be a priority up there with making it look better.

**A Very Super Market** · 10-04-2009, 17:22

What if you aren't willing to risk your most important armies? What if the war is over a colony in the first place and you do not wish to get the home country involved?

**Owen Glyndwr** · 10-04-2009, 19:39

On most occasions, the major European nations had no interest in absorbing their mainland neighbors. Especially in the case of the French and English, war was faught over the colonies. Neither side had any real interest in taking the homelands of the other, which was simply not profitable.

**Zenicetus** · 10-04-2009, 20:43

Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

But the did fly over it and bomb it on a fairly regular basis. :-p

I think that the main complaint about the AI that people have is that it has gotten progressively worse wince the 2d TWs while the graphics have continually improved. Its not that people think its pure crap, its that people who remember the older games are ticked off that seemingly everything has been sacrificed for the sake of THE ALL MIGHTY GRAPHICS. Graphics actually cost a fair amount of money(motion capture, tons of artists, etc) to produce while other features that would be cheaper to improve are ignored.

This is a strategy game, making it challenging should be a priority up there with making it look better.

Sure, I'd rather see more time spent on the core engine and AI than unnecessary graphic enhancements. For example, those silly motion capture scenes for dueling. Who will ever watch that more than once? To be fair to CA though, they've chosen to show a depth in tactical battles that does require detailed visual representation, in order for the player to make appropriate decisions in the heat of battle. For example:

Did that cannonball do any damage, or just skip over the line of troops? How many volleys did the enemy soak up before they closed to melee range? Is my cavalry attack about to bog down, so it's time to withdraw?

In a simpler game, like a 2D hex-based strategy game, you can abstract this as simple numbers. "Unit health drops from 100 to 70, gee they must be taking damage!" But it isn't nearly as fine-grained as what you see in the TW battle engine, and I think it makes for a more challenging tactical experience. So, do you want that level of detail, or something more basic?

My personal gripe isn't that they're showing too much detail (or "fancy graphics" if you want to put it that way). It's that having chosen that path, they didn't cook it in the oven long enough before asking us to pay for it.

**Evil_Maniac From Mars** · 10-04-2009, 22:10

I've received every Total War game so far almost as soon as it came out, and I've defended CA for a long time on these forums, in public, and elsewhere on the internet. It's not going to continue. N:TW isn't the first release (Alexander) that I haven't been excited for, but it is the first one I actually don't care about. Napoleonic warfare is one of my favourite styles of the art of war, and yet right now, I couldn't care less.

Why? Not because Empire was terrible - though it had more problems than most other TW games, it also had some upsides. No, the horrendous customer service, PR, and other things that I really hope were SEGA's meddling (but probably weren't) are things that guarantee I will not buy this game on release date. I may not buy it at all.

CA gets posts like this with every release, but they should be concerned here. I'm not someone who was on the fence, I was a total fanboy. And they've lost me.

**antisocialmunky** · 10-05-2009, 00:11

I'd have to disagree: MIITW was worse. Atleast the mechanics aren't ridiculously screwed up like shields being NEGATIVE defense values, super peasant attack animations, and useless two handers.

**Evil_Maniac From Mars** · 10-05-2009, 00:50

Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

I'd have to disagree: MIITW was worse. Atleast the mechanics aren't ridiculously screwed up like shields being NEGATIVE defense values, super peasant attack animations, and useless two handers.

I quite agree, which is why I said most.

**antisocialmunky** · 10-05-2009, 01:00

Okay, I'll give you that I read that poorly. However, its still only better than one game on release. Though MIITW actually turned out quite well in the end for graphics and modding. I mean... infinite reenforcement armies? :)

**gollum** · 10-05-2009, 02:27

Originally posted by Mike Simpson

Quite simply, the quality of what we produce depends directly on how much we get to spend on developing them. How much we spend depends directly on how many people buy the games.

Quite simply, this is wrong. It is an apparent truth and not an actual truth; STW and MTW were much more quality oriented products for the simple reason that they were aimed at smaller and more quality hungry audiences. The development team for the STW prototype consisted of people that could be hand counted and yet the game was a leap forward in the graphical sector for its day and a revelation in terms of gameplay. Not only the gameplay was something relatively new, it was executed excellently and it is for this reason that the MP community still holds it as the golden standard of TW.

From RTW and onwards that quality was sacrificed for a huge amount of bells-and-whistles type features that were typically coming from other popular genres/games like the civilisation series and popular "classic" RTS games like the EoA series and Starcraft/Warcraft. The original TW community was basically ignored as were many of the gameplay and aesthetic conventions that TW had built for it self up to that time, in order to bring the TW games to the mass of the gaming public. RTW 1.0 had at least 10 fold the bugs of MTW 1.0, just look at the lists of 1.2 and 1.3 patches - the bugs fixed number in hundreds. Clearly CA was putting too much in their games; too many new 'features', too many units, too many factions, too many graphical upgrades and as it is obvious since then, neither the AI, nor their resources as a company could cope with those to provide a solid, immersive, balanced game experience. RTW became the game it should have been after 4 years of intense and continuous modding.

It seems that as long as the formula was a winning one CA was happy to further ignore all the fans, old and new, that observed all this, time and time again. With Empire the trend of putting many secondary features and breadth that the AI and company resources coudnt handle became so ambitiously greedy that even declared fanboys of the .com and twcentre simply turned away (see the notable case of Yakaspat aka Candelarius who despite being perhaps the greater fanboy in the RTW/M2TW era remarkably "gave up" (!) on ETW); also the "new" (past RTW) community has "matured" - the awe/impact factor of the novelty that RTW had, which alone could make the new fanbase "forgive" any quality shortcomings just isnt there anymore. CA thought it apparently funny releasing their games with bugs that were fixed time and time again in the past like say the suicidal generals, a bug trademark really of the company as it almost certainly appears in every v1.0 TW game release.

To be fair, ETW has a lot of potential and many of its featutes and design concepts seemed to be geared towards a more gameplay oriented, more balanced experience at least on the battlefield. Many of these decisions aesthetic or gameplay ones, simply backfired as the RTW/M2TW community was too fond of the cartooninesh of say the pre-battle speeches or the "uniqueness" (that is basically the availability of different skins) of faction rosters. In this respect CA is reaping what is has sown over the past 4 years. While i can see the irony i dont sympathise with them in the least since they were the ones that so fondly embraced the "more" concept and made it an integral(?) part of TW, quite simply because they knew it will sell.

In any case, to try to rally a community that has been fed white lies time and time again with the cheapest marketing sophistries possible (luring in with promises before release and play deaf when half of it doesnt make it to the game and the other half doesnt work) because the TW public image is in crisis and then so might be sales, is frankly pathetic.

And yes, when you are releasing sub-par products for a long time, eventually even your peers take notice
post No 4;

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...d.php?t=407726

Notice that the marketing plautitudes of Mr Bridgen in that thread could not save the day as more and more TW long term fans came out of the woodwork like Garnier, Alpaca and Yellow Mellon to basically agree, even cheer, the statement that "ETW has no AI".

If Mr Simpson and CA demostrate that they can still produce a game as well balanced, gameplay oriented, challenging, well presented, atmospheric, immerssive and respectful of the period it represents as STW/MTW did, i'll be the first to be behind CA. But i know for a fact for years now that this is not going to happen. CA has gone so far downhill that now sells expansions as "new games" while allowing the customers of the mess that was ETW to have a "graphical upgrade from NTW" - apparently the only solution that CA can implement; when people are complaining about the AI, balance and immersivness, upgrade the graphics. NapoleonTW is marketed in the same old, same old tired Hollywood tirade, far from any respect to historical reality and possibly far from any decency, and there is no reason to expect anything new than another commercially oriented venture.

CA and TW have been heading for a crash for years now and unfortunately they deserve it as they are the only ones to blame for the current situation they find themselves in. Get lots of fluffy pillows guys, the higher you jump the longer you fall.