Empire Total War Interview

[Guard Dog]

You gotta check out the screenshots. Awesome! I'm taking a week vaction when this one comes out!

 

http://pc.ign.com/articles/866/866990p1.html

[Pidesco]

No Africa? What's up with that?

[Kaftan Barlast]

It will be the most awesome game ever. I mean, you can play SWEDEN!!! :D

[Xard]

...I find it a bit scary I actually agree with Kaftan - getting to play as Sweden is awesome. Though blood will be spilled if I don't get hakkapeliitat as mercenary units or as trainable cavalry

Edited April 19, 2008 by Xard

[Nick_i_am]

In AoE3 you could build Hackapells, which I assume are the same thing.

[Xard]

Read it. Great Stuff. Can't Wait. Hope it works on my computer.

 

No Africa? What's up with that?

 

You have to remember Africa ended up under serious colonization only afterr 1850's or so which is time period this game doesn't cover. I guess we get some coastal cities to fight for (realistic enough). And I'm sure ppl at CA have thought Africa would be perfect choice for expansion pack

 

You could make point for loss of East Asia but that's yet another potential expansion pack territory

 

edit:

In AoE3 you could build Hackapells, which I assume are the same thing.

 

Yeah, the much feared finnish cavalry men (whose horses weren't much though ). I didn't know they actually had english name as I've seen "hakkapeliitta" used for them in english language

Edited April 19, 2008 by Xard

[Morgoth]

Not interested if Austria isn't playable.

[Tigranes]

Well... I'm definitely not buying another Total War game until they fix the stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid AI. Ugh. I love the sound of a tech-tree, but the fact is, they sound like they are still only concerned with making the scale bigger and bigger and adding new features, without making the AI understand any of it. Another resource-hog, crap-and-unplayably-stupid/boring-AI TW in the works.

 

But you can't help but be excited when you look at that game.

[Xard]

You read the article? At least 1/3 of it was hyping the AI

[Kaftan Barlast]

And TW are still, even with an imperfect AI, the most entertaining strategy games in existance.

[Gorth]

Bleh, give me Europa Universalis any day

 

Ok, so I only ever tried the original Shogun: Total War.

[Tigranes]

I read the article Xard, but CA gave a huge middle-finger to the community and their own reputation when they hyped up AI and stuff in M:TW2 and the AI was basically just as stupid (or even worse) as in RTW. You were playing, essentially, the same game with a few extra features added on like a boil on a skin and lots of re-texturising. The AI was an amazing disaster and until I see improved AI with my own eyes CA won't get nothing from me. It's a pity, I put a lot of hours into TW and they would be fantastic games without that caveat.

[Guard Dog]

I know how everyone feels about modders having to fix the broken games developers throw over the fence. But I would point out in both Rome and MTW2 there are a number of mods that tweak the worst of the battle AI (like cavalry not charging in to phalanxes, which is really annoying when it is your AI reinforcements) and Campaign AI (like not building legions of ranged units). RTR, Europa Barborum, and MTW Retrofit come to mind as the most popular. You guys should check these out.

[Leferd]

How does the final release of Europa Barbarorum compare to RTR? Based on their earlier releases, EB seemed a little too concentrated on "realism" at the expense of fun gameplay.

 

I feel like the main campaign of M2 benefited greatly from the Retrofit and/or Custom Campaign Mod, both made by the same guy - a CA programmer.

[Tigranes]

Yeah, I was still around when both mods were going full steam. EB was a lot more ambitious, but I actually preferred RTR, mainly because EB was like at 0.6v after 3 years or something, and it was too ambitious for my computer - it couldn't handle having 3000 provinces and the map stretching all the way to India or something (and I didn't even WANT that, either). As Leferd says, too, I felt they were more concerned about making it *the* historical simulation rather than making a fun game on some points, and at that time it really had to be a labour of love to play it.

 

I saw that they rae finally up to 1.0 now, I wonder how it is.

[Guard Dog]

Yeah, I was still around when both mods were going full steam. EB was a lot more ambitious, but I actually preferred RTR, mainly because EB was like at 0.6v after 3 years or something, and it was too ambitious for my computer - it couldn't handle having 3000 provinces and the map stretching all the way to India or something (and I didn't even WANT that, either). As Leferd says, too, I felt they were more concerned about making it *the* historical simulation rather than making a fun game on some points, and at that time it really had to be a labour of love to play it.

 

I saw that they rae finally up to 1.0 now, I wonder how it is.

Dunno. I've been using RTR for a long time now. I've downloaded EB 1.1 the other night and I've been toying with a reinstall to give it a look. I LOVE the music they used though. All period instruments.

[Musopticon?]

I've played EB since 0.82 and frankly, it is the more robust total conversion. Played RTR until the wait for 8.0 became overburdening and I got enough of the superstar attitudes some of the mod members had and I haven't been to Total War forums in ages, but I reckon they are still in Platinum edition, right? It's a great mod, but I wouldn't play it without Metropolis and Naval mods("metronaval" affectionally), since Platinum offers only very stock features, nothing you could not find in other mods nowadays. Kind of ironic, since it was RTR which originally introduced those ideas, like the large map, cultures having an effect, area of recrutment and auxiliaries. However, Europa Barbarorum not only reworks the game visually and aurally(like RTR Platinum), but it also adds a host of interesting features to the gameplay. A lot of these personalize the game further, making your leaders more important and prioritizing planned conquest and cultural improvement over blitzing the whole map. Then again, it's a very slow game and that's not everyone's thing.

 

I'd play both and see which one you prefer. Just remember, a lot of mod devs have a dream of closing the boundaries between TW and Civ games and that's not something that is going to happen with such a hard-coded engine as RTW. It's a military conquest game, the AI just can't take diplomacy or any other option.

 

Edit: MOLOSSON AGEMA! MARCH! KATAPRAKTOI! CHARGE!

Edited April 21, 2008 by Musopticon?