ravinhood
Posts: 3891
Joined: 10/23/2003
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Give the modders some time (Wes for sure) and I think some of them can come up with some changes to improve some of the gameplay features. Wes did a pretty good job creating a mod that intensified the AI performance over vanilla MTW.
The strategic game plays out much like a HOMM, there are no longer individual province movements, but, individual unit movements (each army has a certain amount of movement points based on it's makeup, much like your movement is that of the slowest unit, etc.) moves are up to 4 spaces as far as I've seen with my army makeups. There are no longer massive religious, diplomatic or spy/assassin pawns on the map, this has been reduced down to next to nothing as well. In fact there are no princess or religious icons pawns at all, they abstracted these in RTW. Costs/Upkeep of units and pawns has increased to cut down on the amount of units on the strategic map as well.
You find yourself fighting for money and "population" in the early game and in the late game you end up having to "kill" your population or suffer revolt after revolt because of a feature called "squalor". Now, I like squalor, but, without knowing about it the first time around, in the middle to end game it can kill you. You have to get ahold of it at the very beginning of the game, you have to "baby" grow your populations and income, if you try to play like "everything comes easy" type of micromanagement game, you'll find yourself putting down revolt after revolt in the middle to late game. Think of squalor like corruption in Civilization, caused by overpopulation. I feel that squalor is RTW's end game province revolts of MTW, just built around a different system. You not only have to centralize your capitol, but, you have to deal with population "explosions" as well.
Don't expect "massive" amounts of armies, they have built this game around a "few" marching armies and the rest end up just sitting in a city waiting to defend it, so that is why there are more siege battles this time around than before. The ai is horrible for defending during sieges except on the very hard/very hard difficulty and that's only because of those initial resources (cheats/handicaps/advantages) they get at the beginning. In MTW well you could have unlimited armies, but, in RTW, the income and with that squalor, you have to play a "balance" game all around. Garrisons of Peasants won't do it for you in RTW like in MTW, and that is one of the other good things. But, Peasants can kill you on very hard/very hard and that is a funny bad thing. It's quite a shame that on higher difficulties they can't tell the AI to build "better" units, nooooooo, they just give the worst units that the ai STILL builds all to often, more morale bonuses, so you end up playing against the same army composition you did on normal level, except this time the army has tweaks, bonuses and everything else that it takes a horde to defeat it.
The graphics can draw a person in easily, the strategic map is every bit as colorful as the SPARTAN map, but, only two turns per year (seasons) is to me a little out of whack, you have summer and then winter every other turn, you end up fighting one turn and resting one turn or deal with weather penalties if you fight in the winter.
Personally I'm going to wait on the first patch and read the forums afterwards, and the see what kind of AI mods hit the boards, right now people are just throwing anything and everything out there without really any "testing" of their actions. I hope that Wes makes something as useful as he did with MTW. Though a couple of useful ones are eliminating the "must play romans first" feature and a workaround the battle timer feature that this time they did not put the option in the game for, and removing the horrible looking green arrows out from under the units bases when you are moving them. In fact, someone found a whole mile long list of "options" (in one of the folders files) they had been working on for RTW and decided to leave out. This list is monsterous, but, those options would have made the game much better for many that are disappointed now.
The thing I don't like about mods, if you play a multiplayer game online (and even this is very problematic at the moment), you each have to have the same mod installed. And when you have several types of mods out there, then you start decreasing your mulitplayer population because of so many different tastes and styles of play. Already the screams of no elephants and wardogs in multiplayer games, lol, and I told them this months ago.
I'm also already seeing RTW on ebay for under $30, frustrated gamers are already trying to unload their copies, lol. But, if you're a graphics nut and don't care that much about gameplay and enjoy frustrating bugs or crashes, etc., you might like RTW. I didn't and as much as I praised MTW, RTW really left me wanting.
About RTW coming out on the X-box, this I read in one of the threads at the official forum site. Whether it's rumor or fact, well CA/Activision are so secretive (we got all of our information on release etc. from 3rd party websites) it's uncertain until it's practically upon us. But, it would definitely be an X-box type game, since it's a clicky fest, whack your mole, jerk your joystick, wheel your mouse type of game, I don't see any reason to disbelieve they won't try to X-box it.
And also, while I am very disappointed in the battle play of the game, you can "pause" the game during the battles. I never paused during battles in MTW, and there's no way to enjoy the battles of RTW without pausing, unless you are one of those click fest type people that can move your wrist around like speedy gonzales. To me the speed of giving orders in MTW without using pause was just about right for issuing orders and then the time it would take to get those orders to your units. In RTW if you miss a beat, your unit is routed and there is no longer an "army rally" command, you have to individually attempt to rally your unit. Now, try doing all this in the heat of the battle, with only seconds to spare for each of your actions, you have no time to think, no time to maneuver, just time to throw everything at everything and look for a free unit to flank with. Not much tactics to that and certainly no fun factor of maneuver.
Heh, battles that would last 45 minutes in MTW, well those might last 4 to 5 minutes in RTW, haha, totally too fast for my fun value.
Also, expect to lose your generals often that are controlled by the AI, yep, the AI now controls any "extra" armies you send into the battle, so like if you attacked with two or three of your armies, the AI is going to control TWO of them and guess what the ai loves to do? Send it's General right out in FRONT, a few seconds later, dead. What I was reduced to doing, was send several armies into a battle, but, only have one army with a General, this way you control ALL the units, but, they come in as reinforcements like in MTW instead of all at the same time. It's the only way to save your Generals. Captains aren't that bad to use anyway, all armies come with a captain, you just don't get any bonuses, but, playing against the AI, you don't need any bonuses, except on very hard/ very hard settings.
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