I've played every single TW game, from release. I've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on each of them.
So, introduction:
-I loved STW for being the first, for pretty much opening the genre. It was somewhat arcade comparing to the future TW titles, but it was awesome, just as every first timer is awesome.
-MTW? The religion, the multitude of cultures, factions, crusades, fleets, trade... It was great! The impredictability of campaign AI, and the true difficulty was great. Diplomacy was pretty insignificant, but it was fun fighting everyone.
-RTW? The first 3D game. I'm sure we drooled quite for a while being stunned by the graphics, and by the new things the game implemented. RTW battles were never ever surpassed, and I'm speaking about the multiplayer element. I played hundreds of those battles in LAN with friends. The AI wasn't that smart, diplomacy was non-existant with the perma-port blockade, but the game had a great feel.
-M2TW? Ok, now this is where the series started stagnating. Very few improvements from RTW. But ok, it was cool. The diplomatic backstabbing was back, and the ridiculous autoresolve was there (3x Mailed knights vs 2x Muslim archers, I win with 50% of knighst surviving), but meh, it was playable.
-ETW+Napoleon. Now, this game had bugs, and I mean bugs. What bothered me the most were the fleets, the game crashing upon their merger... The battle AI was idiotic. The campaign AI was as passive as passive gets, all it did was sending one unit stacks and perma-destroyed your minor settlements... you could annihilate the entire France by just taking 2 settlements. The trade and the size of the map were good, but the game was a clear step backwards.
-S2TW. The bright hope! Many things were fixed, and battles were playable first time from RTW. For the first time since MTW, defending a fortress was actually a pretty good thing. The realm divide, the attrition, agents. It was pretty good. A step forwards.
And now we have R2TW.
So, okay, let's ignore the obvious bugs and glitches. They alone are enough to destroy this game's rating, but let's say CA will fix them one day, no matter how the release was unacceptable.
I want to talk here about 2 things that have been haunting all the TW games.
1) The lack of diplomacy
Being a TW fan, I always thought it was quite hard to make good diplomacy. I thought CA did their best. I thought, "what the heck", it's Total War, you're supposed to bash everything and everyone. And then I met Crusader Kings 2, and in fact Paradox Interactive.
In CK2, this is how it basically works. You declare war upon someone, for say a chunk of his land. Then you both call in allies if you wish, and you fight and all. The more of his troops you kill, you get better warscore. The more regions of his you hold, you get a better warscore. If you occupy the region of interest, you get bonus warscore. Once warscore reaches 100%, you enforce your demands and sign peace. Logical, right?
What happens in R2TW? Well, let's assume AI takes 7 regions. AI is, as we all know incapable of doing that, because it is completely idiotic, but let's be generous. So you attack him, and take 5 regions from him, and decide to spare him? Nope. Unacceptable. It doesn't matter you are an empire with 80 regions. Fight on. So you're either left in an eternal war, or have to completely destroy him. Idiotic. As if he doesn't want to live!
It's also spectacular, how the AI demands 20% of your entire budget for, say, a trade agreement. Or for a ceasefire, when you have 80x more power he does.
The funniest thing is, THIS HAS BEEN GOING FOR 9 YEARS OF TW GAMES. As far as I'm amazed by CA not doing ANYTHING to fix this, I'm further amazed by fans not even addressing this. Who gives a **** about graphics, when there's no strategy in a STRATEGY game???
2) The lack of AI
And I'm not talking about battle AI. It's incredibly buggy, it's as if we played a game in the 90s, when AIs had to cheat to make balance. Having it circle around like sheep is painful to watch considering it's 2013 and it's CA.
I'm talking about campaign AI, and it's complete lack of... of ANYTHING. It doesn't use armies at all. It either suicides it on your own city walls, or keeps them at his own settlements. I have had ONE large battle, where I had my 15-20 units pitted against enemy's same number. All the other battles are like 20vs3 units. This AI is even more passive than Empire's, if that's even possible.
Playing as Macedon, I keep Illyria, Thrace, Macedonia, Hellas in Europe. I also have everything from there to Susa. So I decide, what the hell, let's just transfer 7/9 armies east, I want to follow the steps of Alexander. Yeah. I quickly realized that I don't have to keepn ANY troops on the European CONTINENT. It doesn't matter that I have 6-7 AI barbarian factions around me, that have 2-3 stacks in their single settlements dying of hunger... Why in the world would they want to take the rich, undefended fruits of the Greeks? It's unbelievable. No challenge whatsoever.
You know how they managed it in CK2? You play as the father and have 2 sons. You are old and they are in their prime, with the first son set to inherit everything. But the second one is sure not gonna sit around and watch. He plots to kill his older brother. The game is designed so that he clearly sees what's standing between him and more power. He may fail, but he's gonna try! Isn't that simple enough to implement? AI wants more power, and sees a clear way to do it. Why not just do it?
Why not just send your 3 stacks and take 5 of my unoccupied settlements?
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I am perplexed that CA have not made this game to be the first one with actual usable diplomacy, and competitive AI.
Oh and yeah. Try Crusader Kings 2. Try any other Paradox Interactive's strategy. You will laugh at your own self for ever playing the Total War franchise.
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