M2TW: Kingdoms

[DrSpike]

Then maybe I made the right choice.

[appleciders]

Originally posted by Gamecube64
They released one, in December

Yet shields are still detrimental to melee!

I'm not questioning the veracity of your claim, but how does anyone prove these things?

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by appleciders
I'm not questioning the veracity of your claim, but how does anyone prove these things?

I don't own the game, but having browsed forums concerned with the matter, it seems that it takes a fair amount of in-game observation and statistics compilation. This is usually done by starting a custom battle on reasonably neutral ground between two units, and observing how they actually fight, and then either comparing these to other units or editing unit attributes and retrying the engagement. If a unit with a shield does poorly in such an experiment, but starts performing well once its shield bonus has been edited out, it suggests that there is something odd at work.

[Qilue]

I experienced CA's patching back while playing MTW (the original) and it seems an outcry is the only way to get them to fix glaring bugs in their games. Bugs likemonarchs always dying at 56 to name just one. On the totalwar.org forums, there were even threats of non-purchase of RTW or any other product if a patch for MTW:VI wasn't forthcoming.

My experiences with MTW and MTW:VI taught me that Creative Assembly and their publisher couldn't be trusted to support their games.

Their game design concepts were great, their execution and after market support sucked.

[DrSpike]

Yeah, STW was the simplest game so it wasn't so noticeable early on, but they have been consistently bad over a range of games and expansions. I hardly played RTW and haven't played MTW2 at all because of it.

[El_Cid]

Well I received the Kingdoms expansion for free, but it's really hard for me to know what to do with it. If I open it I wont be able to sell it for as much on ebay(and that shouldn't even be a concern with a new game you might like!).

I loved the Viking invasion expansion for the original MTW - playing as wales or scotland was a lot of fun.

Sadly with MTW2 i've had a very mixed playing experience.

Pluses:

Amazing graphics - you can easily just watch someone else play. The battle scene graphics are like being there in real life; from the crosbowman winding his crank to draw and arm the crossbow, to the board spearman scratching his arse. All the animations for the units are light years ahead of the other TW games.
The maps/cities/towns all look amazing and you can get some great 'wow!' moments.

Negatives:

2 steps forward, 2 steps back. For each new and improved feature(like having a civ type strategic map as opposed to one that is made up of counties) they either don't realize it properly by making actual tactical/strategic use of the map a very hit+miss affair: which part of that river can i cross?/click to travel as far as an army will go only to find if it decides to pass near an enemy you lose all the rest of your movement etc, or they add a bunch of less interesting features(like not being able to properly control the characters in your game to produce good city managers etc - something you could do in MTW).

Crashes - many people have reported problems with the last patch(1.2), and I also started to get them after having no problems with the original patch.

So if this expansion works like an non-crashing 1.2 patch, plus fixes stuff that needed fixing then I might give it a go and break the plastic wrapper.

If not(and i'll wait for player feedback for a month or so) then I think I'll just have to go back to the original MTW and the Shogun games - they are actually pretty decent now with all the patching+mods etc, more so than MTW2 currently.....unless this Kingdoms expansion is that super magic bullet we all were hoping for?

[Stuie]

Did you ever get around to breaking the seal El_Cid? I'm still on the fence about this one; I was hoping it would go on sale for some insane price (like when I got the BtS for $15 the second week it was out) but I've only seen it for $30.

[El_Cid]

Sadly not yet Stuie, which is a rather crushing indicator on how MTWII has lowered my opinion on this series(I didn't play RTW). I'm still waiting to hear what others are saying about it, and as yet I haven't heard enough to make up my mind as yet. So it's currently still more valuable to me brand new and sealed

[DrSpike]

Their reputation does seem to be worse these days. I guess you can only keep up poor patch support for so long without annoying people.

[Stuie]

Well, beat me with a fish - I actually am enjoying M2TW. I think some people get too hung up on details in these games - as long as there is consistency, I'm happy. The game doesn't have to be a slave to history as long as it 1) entertains and 2) doesn't CTD or anything of the sort.

which part of that river can i cross?/click to travel as far as an army will go only to find if it decides to pass near an enemy you lose all the rest of your movement etc

That's part of the game - you need to either send out spies or move you army only to the edge of the FOW and then see where else you can move.

I recently spent a lot of time playing Shogun: Total War, and the series really has come a long way. I think people remember the stuff we used to play a little more fondly than any of those old games deserve.

[El_Cid]

Well I'm glad it's still being enjoyed by people. I did play it almost continualy for about 2 months, then after the latest patch started to introduce crashes it got too frustrating. Also it took that long for the lushness of the graphics to wear off on me

Then I started to notice all the stuff that made me give up on the game:

1. poorer managment control over your cities using generals compared to the first game(maybe due to most of the char traits that a general can develope being negative, and effecting their ability to manage well?)

2. really bad AI in the battles - this was a game breaker for me. It IS amazing to watch these battles, but when you know you will win eveytime(unless incredibly outnumbered) because you can actualy manipulate your army to fight effectively, and the AI can't; well the game becomes kind of tedious and repetative.

The first Medieval did a much better job of this.

3. monetary imbalance over the choices given when taking a town/fort - you will pretty much always end up sacking a city for that extra cash injection.

And a few other biggies in my book. Still it was an ok game for sure, but actually what it made me do was go back to the first medieval and try some mods on that.
I run WesW's med-mod(he did some mod work on the Call To Power game forum here on poly a few years back):

http://wes.apolyton.net/

And in terms of a doing what the TW series are about for me, this makes the best game in the series by far.
Ok so i dont get the amazing graphics, but these kind of games are never about that for me. It's about making a believable experience of being able to control and manage the rise(or fall) of one of the nations from this time period.

Sadly when one of the main founders of the TW games left a few years back(can't remember his name), I think it meant the end of the attempt to focus on produceing a serious(ish) historic simulation and a move more into the current mainstream where graphics sell. And whenever I relook at MTW2 I just can't shake that impression sadly.

Maybe some cool stuff has been fixed with this Kingdoms expansion, but i'm fed up with these kind of dissapointments in games today, so unless I hear really positve stuff about kingdoms and the future of the TW series, the wrapper will stay on the pack and I'll keep looking at selling the game.

Modded Medieval might be the high point of this series now(well it is for me)? time will tell.

[Stuie]

Hey El_Cid - having seen your reaction in the Bioshock thread, you should probably be aware that Kingdoms comes with SecuRom as its copy protection.

[El_Cid]

Oh really? well I didn't know that but that is the nail in the coffin so to speak for me then with this game. Thanks for the heads up

I found an interesting thread about it on the .org:

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=90997

This post on the first page kind of sums it up for me really on these kind of issues:

Post by Daveybaby

"Quote:
Originally Posted by nameless
Plus I suspect a large number of the people who post and complain here want to pirate the game instead of buying it."


"Way to miss the entire point. If i wanted to pirate the game the copy protection wouldnt be causing any problems because then it will have been removed from the game entirely. It wont have caused any inconvenience to the pirates because the game will have been cracked within a few hours of release, if not before release.

The whole point is that the copy protection only hurts the paying customers. In other words: THE PIRATED VERSION IS A BETTER PRODUCT. More likely to work, less hassle, less intrusive crap on your hard drive. Publishers should be giving us incentives to buy their products, or at the very least not putting us off buying them.

I preordered kingdoms and its sitting on my desk next to my PC as i type this. If i'd known about the securom issues i'd certainly have thought twice about ordering the game. I'm holding off installing it until i've checked out the situation more (meh, i dont have time to play it this week anyway ). I'm definitely not buying bioshock - but i hear the pirated version doesnt have the 2 install limit (not saying i'm going to download it, just illustrating my point).

If somebody buys a game and it wont work on their machine because of the copy protection - or it stops something else working - or they upgrade one too many times and it wont install any more - or the company goes bust and the license server goes down and thus they cant play it any more - thats basically going to drive that person into the arms of the pirates. They'll download a crack to get the game they paid for working. And next time maybe they'll think "why bother buying the game if all its going to do is give me hassle - i'll just download the cracked version, at least i know it'll work"

Note: none of the above is an endorsement of piracy - i just think the game publishers are shooting themselves - and us - in the foot."

End Quote.


I(El_Cid) have never downloaded a cracked version of a game I could have bought, ever in over 20 years of gaming. I do have a few examples of really old and difficult to get games that I have got from those sites many know of - but if I could have bought those games I would have. I've always been on the side of wanting to reward good games by giving their creators the money they deserve. I've always understood that that will ensure I get more good games, so it was in my interest. Still in recent years we have seen increasingly draconian methods of copy protection and whenever I find out about it, it always 100% of the time stops a sale.

Does SecurRom actualy harm your PC, probably not, but in the same way hackers can exploit holes in your browser security i'm sure having a perfect vector for a security breach is something some are looking at(if they havent exploited it already). And I just don't see the value of paying someone for that potential problem to appear.

Part of the problem is that the games industry isn't being run by games people any more, it's all just a business exercise with most of the decision makers coming from 'normal' non game related business, and any empathy that a games creator might have with their audience gets over ridden by the suits that decide what happens to the game.

It's this thinking/attitude that will eventualy turn around and bite these big game companies in the arse, it may take a while but these kind of business methods are really going no where.

I can understand PC game producers distress at the undoubted harm pirated software has done over the years, and I do believe it has alot to do with the current state of the PC games market(poor ports/excessively buggy/second tier to console version), especialy compared to the console market.

Still punishing an honest paying customer, who are probably still in the vast majority of those going to play the game, for the poor attitude of the pirate really is self defeating.

As for MTW2 - well this hidden extra in Kingdoms(it does not tell you anywhere on the packet it contains SecurRom) has meant the end of this series as one of my yealry purchases. Well done Sega/CA, good job

[Verrucosus]

I am sorry to bring up this unpleasant topic again.

If you have an old version of Securom already on your computer through Civ3 PtW, do you already have any problems you can get or would installing the Kingdoms expansion make things worse?