Shogun II Total War

[gollum]

Originally posted by Asai Nagamasa
The Vikings, Mercians, Northumbrians and Saxons get super vikings that can kill pretty much anything even when well outnumbered.

Yes, Saxons, Vikings and to a lesser extent the Mercians are too easy to play with due to the Huscarles they get. Way overpowered, especially the Viking ones as they act as Bodyguards and benefit from relative v'n'vs.

The Viking Invasion had more focus and was more balanced than the main game.

Certain game mechanics detract from the strategic purity of Shogun however, like the influence mechanic which is a killer for the AI. Often he attempts to conquer provinces however he retreats when he thinks that he cannot hold them; this in STW does not have any disadvantage, but do it enough times in MTW and it can land you with a civil war pretty easily. The AI does not seem to count the consequences of his actions in terms of influence.

Originally posted by Sasaki Kojiro
I really think the size of the map and the tech tree were the main problem with medieval.

I am not so sure about the size of teh map (it had about 30 more provinces - 1/3 approx. more - than STW iirc to accomodate more than double the factions in STW which sounds about right), but the tech tree was definitely a factor.

Basically all CA could do with that engine is to give out more buildings and dependencies between them as unlocking requirements, however the AI was not really fine-tuned in what buildings he needed to get the "useful" units of his roster.

At the same time he would spent fortunes on building up especially so for certain AI personalities (like Catholic_Trader that was assigned to the Italians predictably) neglecting to even build adequate garrisons in his provinces. The "complexity" served to give the impression of complexity to the player, and not to add depth to the game as CA was clearly indifferent as to how well the AI could use/cope with all these optons.

In this way he was acting basically as a piggy bank for the player who could benefit either by razing or by conquering and using his ex-build up provinces. Again the manual pillaging option acted as an AI exlpoit and one that CA was keen on, as it was even mentioned as a "strategy" in teh MTW manual.

In addition the long campaign and the weapon/armor/morale upgades forced CA to make late era units far more powerful than early era units, introducing redundancies because the early era units were not substituted, but left floating about as possible builds, and also making the playerVSAI stack composition difference even larger as teh AI was not really competent in getting the new units without tweaking/fine tuning with the rosters, the AI preferences and teh build requirements.

In that sense MTW is like an overweight cousin of STW - CA really stuffed the engine with a multitude of features to give "depth" in the campaign - however in reality all they added was complexity and little games within the game (that the AI can't cope with) that added value to the game for SP fans that liked a Civilazation type of SP game rather than an old school well thought out and strategically challenging board game which is what STW was.

CA made no effort to hide it as they often said that "players who dont want to play the battles can lpay the campaign only". This was the beginning of a long series of compromising moves and alteration of focus from an intense and dynamic conquest oriented game that had the battles at is core to an overbloated hybrid of TW and Civilisation that was won or lost on the campaign map.

The trend culminated with Rome that was almost a re-birth, and TW has never been the same since. Although they will call all this "broadening the appeal", "taking the next step", "improving across the board" etc in actuality what they did was sell-out in cold blood, as they moved where the (commercial) wind was blowing insted of forging a following by following their own rules, gameplay and aesthetically wise, that they had set with STW.

MTW has however a perfected battle engine, by 2.01 there was no (significant) bug left as far as i know, and all intended features are working as such.