GuppyShark wrote:I personally don't see the point, RTW is essentially the same game as MTW2. I'd rather see STW2.
For starters, you could make a Legend of the Five Rings mod out of it.
Also, they need a longer difficulty scale, VH/VH isn't hard enough.
So you're in the 'AI that isn't completely worthless' camp then?
The sandbox player in me would like to see true historical variation in units and cultures. It's been repeatedly noted that while the game is 'start in year x and do whatever crazy shit you want', the unit trees are very historically conservative (and usually wrong). I'd like to have more control over what kind of units I get, beyond 'oh you started in Scotland you get Scot units even though your king hasn't been there in a hundred years and you never, ever build units there' and 'oh you're still alive after your culture was historically destroyed? Too bad, no modern units for you!'
Playing Rome earlier, a few more thoughts struck me:
- Let me choose my goddamn faction heir. At least give me one turn wherein it does not automatically designate some shitty 63-year-old fart the next heir so I can pick a decent 16-year-old rising star instead without getting that crap Disinhereited trait.
- More complex internal faction politics. Bring back Medieval 1's features: Titles, offices, princesses, loyalty (instead of just tacking it on as an afterthought). And not BI's wannabe "oh this general got a special retinue item that says he's this dude lol". If I could specifically designate so-and-so as Chancellor and what's-his-face as Duke of Aquitane in M1TW, I want to do it in R2TW too (see below).
- On the same line of reasoning... the traditional style of faction family management worked fine in M1TW and M2TW, but in Rome it kind of falls apart. Vanilla had the somewhat contrived system of families (just talking about the Romans here, not the other factions), so it sort of makes sense that you have a faction leader and hereditary heirs who hold those positions for life. What would make more sense is just having a single Roman faction, but using a family system that made sense in that context. Instead of being the metagame arbiter of a "royal family" it might be more appropriate to be a metagame arbiter of the Senate - in the same way that you "invisibly" pull the strings by designating royal heirs, marrying so and so, killing off this general, etc.; you could do the same with the politics of the Senate: appointing consuls, pro-consuls, tribunes, legates, etc. It would take some playbalancing, but enforcing some term limits where appropriate would be cool too. It'd be nice to play with a different family system rather than the same old one jury-rigged into Roman culture.
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
What I'm most struck by is the polls that come up when you play. Weren't they floating the idea of "Fantasy Total War"? I guess most people gave that the thumbs down... I'd buy it though.
Also, I was heartened to see naval combat in the list of "What should we add to our next game" poll options.
I would like to see if they could apply the Total War engine to modern warfare involving armored divisions and air power, but resupply would be a royal headache, to say nothing of issues like beyond horizon fire.
The Three Kingdoms or Warring States would be pretty neat. Or how about playing from the perspective of Genghis Khan or the Ottomans?
Turns out that a five way cross over between It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Ali G Show, Fargo, Idiocracy and Veep is a lot less funny when you're actually living in it.
Brother-Captain Gaius wrote:Playing Rome earlier, a few more thoughts struck me:
- Let me choose my goddamn faction heir.
- More complex internal faction politics. Bring back Medieval 1's features: Titles, offices, princesses, loyalty (instead of just tacking it on as an afterthought). And not BI's wannabe "oh this general got a special retinue item that says he's this dude lol". If I could specifically designate so-and-so as Chancellor and what's-his-face as Duke of Aquitane in M1TW, I want to do it in R2TW too (see below).
hell yes.....this was one of the things I yhink the original did better. I want the abilty to dispense titles, it'll be a lot of help vis a vis loyalty.
also isnt there like a whole 5500 years of recorded history that TW could use ? India, CHina, the Mongols , the Middle East.,
Middle Eastern history actually ties into Western history pretty well - e.g. Achaemenid invasion of Greece, Alexander and the successors (Seleucids and Greco-Bactrians), Sassanid/Rome/Byzantine wars (where Romans captured sites in modern Iraq), Arab invasion, Crusades, the Turks and all the subsequent wars etc etc..
East Asian history is another story. At many points in history there is a gross imbalance of power - a huge China, isolationist Japan, and fledging Korea. It was nowhere as dynamic as European/Middle East history. The Mongol era did see more interaction though.
True enough. The famous periods of turmoil would include:
Warring States: Many splinter nations fight after the collapse of the Zhou dynasty, concurrent to many events in the pre-Roman Empire European world. Three Kingdoms: The fall of the Han dynasty resulted in three main kingdoms and many legends about this era. ~220+AD Mongol Invasion: By this time Korea and Japan had emerged as distinct nations. Still, to properly present the Mongols' world would require a massive change of scale, with both Europe and Asia represented.
As I understand it, Chinese writers kept less records on fighting techniques and equipment, and court politics were better recorded than wars due to Confucian scholar veneration. This presents problems when making units types, tactics, etc...
