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Kaal posted:Super agreed. Total War is fascinating because the way it's advertised and nominally designed is often completely at odds with how it's played. Creative Assembly would do really well to spend an entire design generation focusing on gameplay development, balanced replayability, and AI competency. The graphics are beautiful and there's a wide diversity of units/buildings/tech paths, but 9/10ths of the game is spent zoomed way out, making the same obvious upgrade choices, and seeing the AI make the same stupid mistakes over and over. I think Warhammer was their attempt to do this, since its massively pared down compared to the previous entries so they could distill the mechanics into a purer form. I guess that seems to be somewhat falling to the wayside now they have to release 900 DLCs and a dozen races and also the game is extremely popular compared to the older ones. The WH AI is much more competent but kinda too cheesy, its better than Attila's completely broken AI where the AI just never ever attacks you or even tries to play the game, but in WH the AI just will never engage if they don't have the advantage. This becomes kinda absurd on Chaos who don't have ambush and ambush becomes basically the only way to manipulate the AI into making a mistake and even then you need an army as bait because the AI still knows you're there, its just not allowed to click on you so you need to put a second unit behind your ambusher so it can click on that instead. I think good AI can both play the game but also make mistakes, maybe based on the personality of the nation or whatever, its nice that in some of the old games when you declare war against a nation with an army in the field they will clash with you even if they're at a disadvantage. Actually feels kinda more real, rather than in WH where every single faction from Orcs to Vamps to Humans is constantly dancing out of move range and hunkering down in cities.
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Sep 9, 2017 12:51
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Bad AI might be an issue but good AI doesn't sell. Good graphics do sell, even if you don't see it most of the time. Not that players have a clear idea what good AI even is, most of the time.
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Sep 9, 2017 15:36
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Good AI is really hard to do in a game as complicated as Total War, while better visuals really isn't.
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Sep 9, 2017 15:53
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Fangz posted:Bad AI might be an issue but good AI doesn't sell. Good graphics do sell, even if you don't see it most of the time. Not that players have a clear idea what good AI even is, most of the time. Good AI is the one that makes me feel clever when I beat it. Bad cheating AI is the one that beats me and poor AI is the one that I beat feeling like I've made no effort. Adjust for each player.
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Sep 9, 2017 15:54
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Dukket posted:A possibility stupid question: twme2 is there any way to see a list of who you have trade rights with? Check the diplomacy screen(It#'s part of the faction summary screen) and it's part of the tooltip if you hover over the shields of the other factions. quote:Good AI is the one that makes me feel clever when I beat it. Bad cheating AI is the one that beats me and poor AI is the one that I beat feeling like I've made no effort. My metric is 'does what it's doing make sense for it?'. Like everyone remembers AI in Med2 coming round and blockading you, specifically, for no good reason when you were half the world away. People are perfectly willing to put in things like 'NEVER TRUST WHOEVER THE PLAYER IS' and 'MAKE WAR ON THE PLAYER IF THEY'RE AT PEACE TOO LONG'. but don't say 'BUILD THE ECON BUILDINGS FIRST TO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE MONEY' and instead give them extra. Bloodly fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Sep 10, 2017 |
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Sep 10, 2017 02:29
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The player has the super power of 'can declare war suddenly without any provocation no matter what the diplomatic relation is' and is usually the largest faction on the map. I wouldn't trust such a faction very much, especially since I'm not allowed to react negatively if my very good buddy decides to mass troops on my borders.
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Sep 10, 2017 04:22
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Mans posted:Also you can just murder the pope I had a master assassin parked on Rome for decades killing any popes that dared oppose mighty Hungary. When that guy dropped at a ripe old age he had killed a few dozen popes. I even think literally all of his targets in his entire career were popes. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Sep 10, 2017 |
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Sep 10, 2017 04:34
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Fangz posted:The player has the super power of 'can declare war suddenly without any provocation no matter what the diplomatic relation is' and is usually the largest faction on the map. I wouldn't trust such a faction very much, especially since I'm not allowed to react negatively if my very good buddy decides to mass troops on my borders. Sure, but this goes hand in hand with the situation where the player has never acted aggressively against a faction, has actively attempted to help that faction in wars and has gone out of his way to treat them like a friend. I think a lot of the "Conquer everything all the time gently caress the AI" is born from player's becoming jaded through the random aggresion of a faction that that player had been friends with since turn 1 and has now blockaded their main trading port and tanked their economy, or suddenly breaking every treaty with the player and besieging their capital.
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Sep 10, 2017 11:42
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Fangz posted:The player has the super power of 'can declare war suddenly without any provocation no matter what the diplomatic relation is' and is usually the largest faction on the map. I wouldn't trust such a faction very much, especially since I'm not allowed to react negatively if my very good buddy decides to mass troops on my borders. This is a great description. Whenever I play a grand strategy game against AI I don't see allies, I see future expansion potential.
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Sep 10, 2017 12:06
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Fangz posted:The player has the super power of 'can declare war suddenly without any provocation no matter what the diplomatic relation is' and is usually the largest faction on the map. I wouldn't trust such a faction very much, especially since I'm not allowed to react negatively if my very good buddy decides to mass troops on my borders. But in Med 2 the AI also had that power. 200 years of peaceful relations, an alliance bound by marriage and trade rights lost because the AI sent a ship to blockade your port. I'm really glad they made the AI a little less trigger happy since then.
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Sep 10, 2017 21:22
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Carcer posted:Sure, but this goes hand in hand with the situation where the player has never acted aggressively against a faction, has actively attempted to help that faction in wars and has gone out of his way to treat them like a friend. This is what's up. I will add though that the fact that there are basically no methods by which a player can reliably expand their power except through conquest is another problem. For example, Warhammer introduced Confederation which was great. But the issue is that the player reaches a point where he has like 50x the power of an enemy, and the enemy knows it. Then I ask for confederation and I just get refused. Okay, gently caress it, I'll burn the whole place down and take it anyways, it's just a hassle now. There should be a more viable and funner way to interact with them, like shows of force or something-- maybe scripted battles. In fact, the most recent DLC had it to where a faction will confederate if you beat their faction leader in battle. That was great. It's not like kingdoms have been forged solely by a conquering army showing up and razing every single city owned by the enemy. Sometimes the fact that it's been done before by the conqueror is enough.
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Sep 11, 2017 06:54
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Confederation was added in Rome 2, I believe.
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Sep 11, 2017 13:52
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NTW system of allowing the garrison to surrender and leave was pretty cool.
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Sep 11, 2017 15:44
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ZearothK posted:Confederation was added in Rome 2, I believe. It was, but it was barely in the game compared to how it's implemented in Total Warham. It was only available to barbarians and you could typically only confederate with the small handful of minor factions that started on your borders. This meant that the feature accidentally worked like the way the Norscan confederation does intentionally, where you beat the enemy army in the field and then the balance of power is enough in your favor that they'll confederate. canyoneer posted:NTW system of allowing the garrison to surrender and leave was pretty cool. I don't think any garrison ever actually surrendered, though. No matter how bad the odds were.
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Sep 11, 2017 17:49
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It worked a dream for me with the Spanish DLC.
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Sep 11, 2017 17:50
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SeanBeansShako posted:It worked a dream for me with the Spanish DLC. Yep. Peninsula French were skittering away the first time you rolled in with a full stack rather than throw their 3-4 units away in a hopeless battle.
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Sep 11, 2017 17:54
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You also had to do it every now and then too, especially if you are British and left a good few decent units to garrison one of the regions in the middle.
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Sep 11, 2017 18:01
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Mans posted:As a other people said, the Huns are portrayed in-game as these exelent horse archers. However their big secret is that they have equally good foot archers, infantry and shock cavalry. Apparently it was lots of structural and balance stuff. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd stick with it. Around Tier 4, you see the old-school Wargaming grind and premium crap really start to show in the game. I just don't have the patience for another game where I have to win 30 battles just to get helmets on my guys that are nominally better, yet optimally necessary.
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Sep 11, 2017 20:40
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The strangest part of Arena for me is that I have very little drive to grind past t5, because nothing really changes higher up. By tier 5 all the major unit types (heavy cav, light cav, slingers, archers, siege, pikes, hoplites, war dogs etc.) are in play so all that changes as you go past tier 5 is the units stats increase. But as your units are stronger so are everyone else's that you are matched with. I mean it's actually a good thing because if you don't give a poo poo about grinding to higher tiers you don't get burned out on it. Doesn't seem like the best way for devs to maximize cash in a f2p game but I enjoy the matches themselves so it works for me. I'll just sit in T5 having fun killing dudes and drawing wangs on the map with the marker tool.
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Sep 11, 2017 23:53
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Kinda wish they went whole hog and had Tier 7-8 be Napoleonic era stuff and 9-10 being crazy Warhammer bullshit. That'd just be the best. I'd also love occasional 2-3 Napolenic era players up against 7-10 tier 3-5 players. Those 'boss battle' matchups kinda suck in most free to play games, but would be really drat cool with the historical leanings.
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Sep 12, 2017 00:55
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After browsing the thread I've installed DEI with 12tpy and faster battles mod. So far it really scratches this RTR itch for me. How fast does pop replenish? Can I grind Rome down in a war of attrition assuming I do supply runs with fleet?
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Sep 12, 2017 10:57
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New Butt Order posted:It was, but it was barely in the game compared to how it's implemented in Total Warham. It was only available to barbarians and you could typically only confederate with the small handful of minor factions that started on your borders. This meant that the feature accidentally worked like the way the Norscan confederation does intentionally, where you beat the enemy army in the field and then the balance of power is enough in your favor that they'll confederate. It was exactly the same. factions of the same culture could confederate, which means nothing to Rome but made it super powerful for german, nomads and specially greeks since the greeks were like the orks in and were everywhere stinking up the places. It was kind of broken though since it was just a traditional diplomatic option with no "cooldown" like in Warhammer. If you made enough cash you could straight up buy entire same faction empires if they liked you.
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Sep 12, 2017 18:56
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WrightOfWay posted:Good AI is really hard to do in a game as complicated as Total War, while better visuals really isn't. Good AI is definitely tricky to do, but I think that Creative Assembly has also been hamstringing itself by putting in mechanics that the AI just has no idea how to use. A perfect example would be the building tiers, where the AI just can't handle the variety of buildings and so ends up tanking their own economy. The solution is to clarify the benefits of each building path, and scripting the AI to prioritize its economy. Another example is the army stances or general bonuses, where the AI lands itself in a lot of trouble by making the same mistakes over and over. If you can't get the AI to use a feature correctly, then either allow them to not use it or remove it from the game. Improving the AI is very tricky, it's true, but removing gameplay traps means they don't have to meet such a high bar.
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Sep 12, 2017 21:27
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Kaal posted:Good AI is definitely tricky to do, but I think that Creative Assembly has also been hamstringing itself by putting in mechanics that the AI just has no idea how to use. A perfect example would be the building tiers, where the AI just can't handle the variety of buildings and so ends up tanking their own economy. The solution is to clarify the benefits of each building path, and scripting the AI to prioritize its economy. Another example is the army stances or general bonuses, where the AI lands itself in a lot of trouble by making the same mistakes over and over. If you can't get the AI to use a feature correctly, then either allow them to not use it or remove it from the game. Improving the AI is very tricky, it's true, but removing gameplay traps means they don't have to meet such a high bar. The problem with bad AI is less that it makes bad decisions and more that the cheats used to cover for their bad decisions are often arbitrary and unfair and negate the usefulness of otherwise viable strategic options. Like what's the point of giving players abilities that cause extra unrest or destabilize an opponents economy if they just get a huge arbitrary boost that more than counters anything you can do to hurt them? Or trying to play a faction that ignores attrition on certain terrain types and luring enemy armies through the snow or desert to soften them up, only to discover that the AI suffers a fraction of the attrition a player does, to the point where they can spend a half dozen turns wandering in the desert and still be at 90% strength. It basically restricts your strategic options not because they are intrinsically flawed, but because things that SHOULD work just don't, for no reason other than the AI wouldn't know how to handle it if it did. As you mentioned, if the AI can't handle it, they should just remove it from the game rather than leave it in as a "trap" option for the player. I mean I guess part of the problem is that the Total War series is really two different games and AI improvements for the tactical layer, which is where most of their focus goes, don't carry over to the strategic layer.
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Sep 12, 2017 22:16
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I will say that the tactical AI is actually pretty decent, the only real issues I see are predictability (which I can live with) and a bad tendency to attack in detail when armies are reinforcing each other
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Sep 13, 2017 00:51
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StashAugustine posted:I will say that the tactical AI is actually pretty decent, the only real issues I see are predictability (which I can live with) and a bad tendency to attack in detail when armies are reinforcing each other Yeah the tactical AI has definitely gotten better as the series progressed. The issue with it now isn't so much that it's "stupid" as it is that it's predictable, as you mention. It basically always just attacks with its full force right away, so you don't really get much of a skirmish cat and mouse phase like you would with a human opponent. It might be interesting in future games if they started working on tactical AI "personalities" - e.g. different factions having different favoured approaches, or even different generals within the same faction, so that even if the fights aren't any more difficult, they're at least more varied (this might also help make for more interesting AI army compositions since they'd recruit troops that suit their tactics rather than just the same dudes every time).
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Sep 13, 2017 03:14
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Mans posted:It was exactly the same. factions of the same culture could confederate, which means nothing to Rome but made it super powerful for german, nomads and specially greeks since the greeks were like the orks in and were everywhere stinking up the places. Unless they patched it into the game real late, the only way you were confederating the Greeks was with a mod. It wasn't available to any the "civilized" cultures (Hellenic, Latin, Punic, or Persian) just the barbarian ones. Wrt campaign AI, I'm really surprised they didn't get the AI building correctly in Total Warhammer. The number of buildings has been so pared down that it should be easy enough to have a handful of province templates to swap between (economic, recruitment, defensive, mixed) based on conditions. This is what the player is already doing so it wouldn't look weird. It's not at all surprising that they couldn't handle Attila where you had a million variables to balance. I'm pretty sure that both Romes would collapse even if the entire map refused to declare war on them.
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Sep 14, 2017 01:38
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Maybe I have Dresden's "all diplomatic options" mod for so long I've considered it part of the main game 
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Sep 14, 2017 14:43
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Playing some Rome 2 with DeI again, and my it is actually really engaging (though I do kind of miss the improvements to family trees from Attila and the display of faction leader names from Attila and Warhammer). At the moment fighting 2 full Epirote armies + a city garrison with the goal of taking and looting Appolonia to gather funds to build a fleet to contest Carthage. I'm in kind of a deadlock war with them at the moment and lost an army on Sardinia because those drat Carthaginian fleets prevented me from being secure that a relief army would make it across (the first one, grabbed both Corsica and Sardinia and held the islands for a while, but I've lost them now). Roman formations. Pretty cool. I've decided that a Polybian legion is 4 Hastati, 4 Principes, 3 Triari, 2-3 cavalry and 1-2 skirmish infantry. Roughly half being socii.  I really like how the Epiotes have deployed, an unbroken phalanx line basically.  From the centre and to their left left flank its entirely macedonian phalanx, yikes.  Well. I've looked long enough at this battle and the nice soldiers. Tactic is to place my strongest legion on my left to face and destroy the hoplite phalanx on their right and then hopefully envelop and destroy the rest of the army with few enough losses to beat the garrison army as well when it takes the field. drat.. that was a quite an intense one (did not manage to beat the main armies before the garrison army arrived). Will have to look at the replay sometime to look more closely at the carnage.  It helps that Roman heavy infantry is amazing, but I really like how effective the triplex acies is. Use the lighter and more expendable hastati to engage as much of the enemy as possible when the lines meet, then use the principes to exploit any holes and gaps that appear as well as flank if it's possible without having to move too far. Keep the triarii as a kind of emergency reserve to step onto the line if the hastati start to break and to deal with cavalry threats that your own cavalry couldn't stop. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Sep 20, 2017 18:47
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Not to crap on your tactics but you'd probably get more mileage from engaging head on with your triarii and principes while hastati flank to unload javelins in the rear of the phalanx. The triarii will get a bit more damaged but the massive damage javelins hitting people in the back will inflict will shorten overall battle.
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Sep 22, 2017 10:10
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Carcer posted:Not to crap on your tactics but you'd probably get more mileage from engaging head on with your triarii and principes while hastati flank to unload javelins in the rear of the phalanx. The triarii will get a bit more damaged but the massive damage javelins hitting people in the back will inflict will shorten overall battle. but he's roleplaying the romans
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Sep 22, 2017 11:19
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To show that DEI is still TW underneath my story from Carthaginian side: Took Sicily, Epirus asked for being vassal, surprise attacked Tarrentum (or whatever that southern Italy capital is called) since Romans were playing naval attrition with Epirus and land war with barbarians. Fleet sailed north to block another port while armies licked wounds and prepared. Romans attacked my blocking fleet with 3 legions! I've gamed the poo poo out of autoresolve since I suck at naval battles and wiped most of them.. 
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Sep 22, 2017 13:31
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Carcer posted:Not to crap on your tactics but you'd probably get more mileage from engaging head on with your triarii and principes while hastati flank to unload javelins in the rear of the phalanx. The triarii will get a bit more damaged but the massive damage javelins hitting people in the back will inflict will shorten overall battle. Yes. But as the other dude says I'm totally roleplaying as Romans rather than playing completely optimally. And really I find that more fun. Though in more dire circumstances I'll partially or completely throw the RP tactics out (though I think they work pretty well all things considered). As of the last time I played a couple of days ago I have foolishly trapped a veteran legion in Africa (Carthaginian naval supremacy renders me unable to extract them safely) and I've had a series of 3 really desperate battles against Carthage's desert nomad clients. All victories but its not looking good and close to half the Romans have been replaced with local mercenaries.
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Sep 23, 2017 15:48
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I find myself desperately checking Mod DB for that long awaited Imperial Splendour update 
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Sep 23, 2017 15:50
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I personally can't stand Empire's map, it's "big" but Jesus Christ the tiny amount of settlements for each country in Europe is pitiful. Spain has like 1 province in it and UK has like 3. I get why they did it but man... it feels so tiny and depressing when you invade France and you barely see any towns in it. Rome 2 did some stuff wrong but god drat, each region feels dense and full of settlements, you actually feel like you're on a long war path conquering Gaul. edit: I just looked at the Empire map, France has only ONE province too, so even less than I thought.
BillBear fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Sep 23, 2017 |
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Sep 23, 2017 16:38
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Yeah, matchbox europe in Empire is just depressing and actually kills the pace in mid game and makes long campaigns incredibly boring. I'd like to know really what circumstances forced them to honestly roll with it because I want to believe they weren't satisified with the end result but had to ship it. Because christ, It's terrible.
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Sep 23, 2017 16:46
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It's also too easy to just spit new units in recently conquered territories.I don't miss EB 20-something turns of building a colony/federation/whatever, but one turn for most new units and two for reinforcing is too low when far away.
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Sep 23, 2017 17:02
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SeanBeansShako posted:I find myself desperately checking Mod DB for that long awaited Imperial Splendour update Same. I messed around with morocco and raiding egypt with small, stealthy cavalry raider groups is stupidly fun. A shame all the new minor european powers seem to have wierd empty artillery units that make recruiting a pain or id still be playing it.
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Sep 23, 2017 17:14
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Randarkman posted:Yes. But as the other dude says I'm totally roleplaying as Romans rather than playing completely optimally. And really I find that more fun. Though in more dire circumstances I'll partially or completely throw the RP tactics out (though I think they work pretty well all things considered). As of the last time I played a couple of days ago I have foolishly trapped a veteran legion in Africa (Carthaginian naval supremacy renders me unable to extract them safely) and I've had a series of 3 really desperate battles against Carthage's desert nomad clients. All victories but its not looking good and close to half the Romans have been replaced with local mercenaries. Fair enough, I wasn't sure if you were roleplaying or new to the game and using historic tactics because you were unsure how to handle roman armies 
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Sep 25, 2017 10:19
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Randarkman posted:
One of the cool things about DeI is how you need to rotate your line infantry or have multiple lines and THE AI DOES IT TOO the battle AI of DeI is pretty great, its much tougher to fight a large army when they wear you out by attrition and hold men back rather than thermopylae erry day, although the cavalry AI isnt as good as it is in Warhammer, it tends to get stuck into stupid fights rather than flank your skirmishers. alex314 posted:After browsing the thread I've installed DEI with 12tpy and faster battles mod. So far it really scratches this RTR itch for me. Having lots of surplus global food and max public order seems to be the best way to grow your population apart from just buildnig + pop buildings. Which pop you want depends on who you're playing as, Rome's great strength is that their elite infantry are all 2nd class proles rather than 1st class nobility like most factions. If you're playing as Sparta it does a good job of simulating spartan apartheid cause the number of spartan citizens is absolutely miniscule compared to your vassals and your huge population of slaves you refuse to arm, so all spartan units require 1st class pop which grows sloooowly. When taking cities the easiest time you'll have is if they're your culture, in which case you Occupy and get to keep half the population, so you can usually immediately start replenishing. If you're not their culture you're gonna be in for 4-5 turn wait for replenishment whatever happens so I often just loot or raze the place, razing is surprisingly good for public order which i suppose makes sense, nobody left to complain. Looting makes you crazy money in DeI. You can also disband units in a new province to transfer population to it, iirc. I don't -think- you can do a lot to the AI supply and population, apparently they are effected somewhat by it but can ignore population mostly and only seem to run out of supplies if they gently caress up badly. (Sometimes the guy you want to invade will helpfully stack 3 armies in his single province and you can invade while they starve.
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Sep 27, 2017 18:46
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