M2TW: Kingdoms

[Stuie]

I must have missed this because my son was in the hospital when it was announced. It actually looks like a lot of stuff for a CA expansion; usually they only give us one more campaign and this has four.

· Four new, epic campaigns – The Americas, Britannia, The Crusades, and The Teutonic Wars.
· 23 playable factions including Aztec and Native Americans.
· Over 150 new units, including the devastating Greek Firethrower
· Control multiple armies in battle – command reinforcement armies.
· New hero characters with powerful new battlefield abilities
· A huge array of historical characters and events.
· Build permanent forts to garrison troops or seize control of key strategic points
· New technology trees influenced by Religion and Prestige
· New Mission types
· 6 New Multiplayer scenarios and 20 new Custom Battle maps
· Compatible with the new Hotseat multiplayer mode

Of course, the Britain one is the only one that really interests me... and I wish it were set a couple hundred years earlier... but I'll probably end up buying it.

More info and screens at http://www.totalwar.com

[DrSpike]

Worth keeping an eye on, for when I get around to MTW2.

[dannubis]

Well, maybe they should just release a patch first no ?

[Asmodean]

Originally posted by dannubis
Well, maybe they should just release a patch first no ?

Exactly...I have actually shelved this game, waiting for a patch.

Asmodean

[DrSpike]

Buy the expansion. We'll patch that later. Honest.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Buy the expansion patch.

Fixed.

Seriously - they have released a couple patches, haven't they? I really don't know because I've been experiencing the joys of playing paper and pencil games with my kids.

[Gamecube64]

They released one, in December

Yet shields are still detrimental to melee!

[Ned]

I play the with m2litemod which fixes a lot of the bugs, e.g., the shield, two handed and other well known bugs. I don't think the patch will fix much more.

The most annoying thing about the game, IMHO, is the diplomacy. Allies will attack you and your relatiionships worsen even if you are helping them if you happen to trespass on their territory. IMO, allies should always grant military access and should not be able to attack you. If you or they choose to break an alliance, former allied forces should be redeployed outside of the ally's territory. This would solve the problem's inherent in granting military access.

Unfortunately, the patch is not going to fix alliances in this manner.

[Zero]

i played this game like 6 months ago... and shield bug was a serious issue back then... are you telling me there hasnt been a patch yet that fixes this?

[DrSpike]

Sounds that way. A good reason not to buy the x-pack imo.

[dannubis]

well, there is a patch in the works but it sounds like it is a Chinese 5 year plan...

Currently I play the game with the LtC mod based on the official 1.1 patch. It is playable that way but it still pisses me off they are working on an X-pack before they fix the core game.

[Asmodean]

This game is becoming like MoO3 for me. I wanted to like it, but the way it is, I just can't.

It has way more potential than MoO3 ever had though. But for crying out loud!! It's one hell of a let down that they announce an x-pack for a game that isn't even finished yet

Asmodean

[Kassiopeia]

I'm happy I didn't buy this. I already got taught a lesson with Rome: Total War, when "AI falls asleep after you save" bug wasn't fixed until an expansion pack. The developer's/publisher's support for the TW games has been dreadful, which is a shame. If you ship games that are as broken as Paradox's are but don't support them the way they do, you aren't getting my money.

[Ned]

Kassiopeia, IIRC, some of the RTW patches made things a lot worse. Diplomacy got screwed and the Roman AI did nothing.

Later patches fixes all this. The game now is very playable and very enjoyable.

But, on the whole, I think M2TW is a bit better when you play with the lite mod that fixes some of the more critical bugs.

That said, the second major patch is long overdue.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by Ned
Kassiopeia, IIRC, some of the RTW patches made things a lot worse. Diplomacy got screwed and the Roman AI did nothing.

Later patches fixes all this. The game now is very playable and very enjoyable.

Not really. Diplomacy is still screwed, and it remains screwed in BI as well - they "hang up" after only one proposal. The last RTW patch also has a bug where phalanxes don't hold together properly and tend to drop their spears when they make moving contact. It's really a matter of deciding which bug you hate more; Save-Load, or the Diplomacy bug. It turns out I hate the Diplomacy bug more, so I still play version 1.2.

I have a love-hate relationship with RTW - I still play it, but I will never buy anything from that series again. Their bug-testing, support, and customer relations are absolutely abysmal. They have seemingly no regard for the poor saps who buy their half-finished games, who are promptly ignored and often informed that the bug they've experienced does not, in fact, exist. It took months of complaining before CA would actually admit that the Save-Load bug was real, and even more time before they actually fixed it - and in the process, introduced more game-crippling flaws.

I strongly urge everyone to not buy into this **** anymore and not purchase M2TW or any other title in the series until they get their act together and stop producing garbage and treating their customers the same way.