The dumbest thing was being unable to create a "real" Roman army because you needed a top tier building to recruit Triarii, and if you were waging a particularly tough war, you might not have the funds. Hearing that you can recruit full armies means that could be fixed.
Played FotS all evening, I am quite taken. A civil war era Total War would work quite effectively. All the year1850+ game mechanics work quite well. The ability for navies to support ground invasions is most welcome, and finally having breech loading artillery is just nasty. Apparently there are breech loading infantry, according to the internal database, but I haven't gotten that far. I recommend FotS, and this is from someone who never really liked Shogun 2.
Total War.com's shireknight posted an exciting preview of PC Gamer UK's latest article on Rome II:
I had to stop off at Tesco's on the way home to do a bit of shopping and walking past the magazine rack I was brought to a halt by a huge A4 sized Rome II Golden Eagle box staring at me...................... yes it was this months PC Gamer magazine
I don't buy magazines so I had a sneaky look in the box expecting to see a copy of the article we have already read online but as soon as I spotted it had new previously unseen screenshots, in the shopping basket it went.
The article includes the naval screenshot we have already seen plus a few new ones which are obviously from the Carthage invasion battle demo.
A nice close up of the street battle showing the Elephants leading a unit of Carthaginian's against a Roman Cohort however this isn't the most striking thing, if you look at the rooftops you can see that on the roofs of all the buildings there are archers and on one of them there is a scuffle taking place between a couple of legionaries and some archers so in Rome II it looks like CA have introduced true street by street combat and you can storm each building one by one. On this building in particular a Legionnaire has just shoved a poor Archer off the edge of the roof and he is falling to his death lol.
Another picture shows the Roman advance towards towards the city wall, there are a couple of burning siege towers, the city looks huge and really detailed and I can see at least 15 separate Roman units in the picture and this is just one side of the city. There is a lot of smoke effects and again the detail and atmosphere looks incredible.
The last picture is from the naval part of the battle and shows a fully loaded Tireme ploughing it's way straight through the middle of another ship sending splinters of wood and men flying all over the place I don't know if this is something they do or if this soldier just happened to be in an odd position when the picture was taken but I swear it looks like one of the Carthaginian men is attempting to hold onto the side of the ship to stop himself being flung overboard
So the player’s choices become consequences that they will have to live with – and the trait system will make a return, too. But instead of focusing on the individual, here it’s being used to tie you more to your armies. Rather than a simple grouping of units with an attached general, armies will be Legions, and Legions can gain traits, depending on how they fight.
This is something that is extremely exciting for me. I really enjoyed Shogun 2's trait system for generals/agents, and with these guys making it accessable for literally every unit in the game is awesome.
That's definitely very cool. I hope they include the dynasty/family tree system like in Rome too but this would be a welcome addition
I recommend FotS, and this is from someone who never really liked Shogun 2.
I enjoyed Shogun 2, for the most part. The real time battles are still very much my weak point, but I always feel like I might get better someday. How would you say that FotS is worth recommending if you didn't like Shogun 2?
How much did you like Empire and Napoleon? For all its flaws, I loved Empire and have 270+ hours on it, but never really liked Shogun 2. FotS is a lot of musket gameplay with traditional Japanese units alongside them. I never really got in to Shogun 2's combat, it was too fast and 'decisive' in a bad way. I just find myself enjoying FotS more. If you mostly enjoyed Shogun 2 you'll find stuff to like here. I recommend it. Perhaps wait for a sale, though. Although good, there is no rush to get it now.
I bet the naval battles will be better than the ones in Napoleon - somehow the wind driven ships behaved more as though they had motors.
What exactly is your complaint?
A sailing ship can go in pretty much any direction except directly into the wind. You don't need the wind behind you to make good speed, that's not how they work.
Well, for 18th-century square-rigged sailing ships, they do need the wind mostly behind them. They generally weren't particularly weatherly.
But how realistic do you need it to be?
I'd wager that the same people complaining now would be complaining more if their prized fleet got blown to pieces because they got caught in irons, or they tried to tack at the wrong time and their masts disintegrated.
You shouldn't need to learn the finer points of sailing to play a grand strategy game IMO.
I see you already immediately backed away from the assertion that NTW's ship moving mechanics were realistic. That's my complaint: that they aren't realistic.
Most of the land combat (with appropriate mods) can be made very realistic.
However the ships in NTW are basically sailing ships run by motors. They can go anywhere at basically the same speeds and can turn completely in place as much as desired : this could only be accomplished in real life by a lengthy and dangerous process of dropping anchors and running cables back and forth. That's an underlying engine issue that I don't think can be saved by a couple mods.
Managing the weather guage, tacking vs wearing, that's the kind of stuff that SHOULD be in any good naval combat system for 18th century warfare. The TW series isn't just a 'grand strategy game' it's a grand strategy game married to an (optional) very detailed tactical level. If you don't want to screw about with complicated naval combat in your grand strategy game you just auto resolve (as I do currently). Getting the mechanics of 18th century naval battles correct is far more important than getting the # of guns on each ship correct or the right number of marines on a ship or the right number of stripes on a sailors shirt.
I am quite willing to play an 18th century naval battle with an abstract made up ship that never really existed as long as it plays like an 18th century naval battle - but that's not what we have right now. Instead we have fairly accurately rendered and researched ships that don't behave at all as they would in real life - as a result naval battles dont' really unfold as they did.
Oar driven ships, as used by Rome and her enemies, get to ignore the whole 'wind' aspect that makes things so complicated. Thus, the RTW2 naval combats are most likely going to be far, far more realistic than the NTW ones. That said, even if the naval combat model is terrible, I doubt it will stop me from enjoying the game. I enjoyed MTW, RTW, MTW2, and NTW.
Also 18th century sailing ships actually sailed fastest with the wind on their quarter: if it was dead astern only the rearmost sail would be of use. On the quarter all the sails could catch the wind
I bet the naval battles will be better than the ones in Napoleon - somehow the wind driven ships behaved more as though they had motors.
What exactly is your complaint?
A sailing ship can go in pretty much any direction except directly into the wind. You don't need the wind behind you to make good speed, that's not how they work.
Well, for 18th-century square-rigged sailing ships, they do need the wind mostly behind them. They generally weren't particularly weatherly.
But how realistic do you need it to be?
I'd wager that the same people complaining now would be complaining more if their prized fleet got blown to pieces because they got caught in irons, or they tried to tack at the wrong time and their masts disintegrated.
You shouldn't need to learn the finer points of sailing to play a grand strategy game IMO.
I see you already immediately backed away from the assertion that NTW's ship moving mechanics were realistic. That's my complaint: that they aren't realistic.
Most of the land combat (with appropriate mods) can be made very realistic.
And by "very realistic" I guess you mean "not at all even close to the correct number of troops."
Eh, I don't see number of troops being a critical factor in determining "realism." Historically accurate numbers of troops would bring the most powerful computers to their knees. What matters more is if the equipment, tactics, etc. are true-to-life.
I probably wouldn't play Medieval III either, unless the game went all the way to China (and why would it?).
Yes, we all want a Total War game with China in it. They already had the opportunity with Shogun II, but used that second expansion for a war that wasn't really much of a war at all. I think it would be cool if Medieval 3 went East at least to India, though. Scrap the new world, that campaign was never fun -nor was fighting the doom stacks of rabble- and use the map space for the East.
Plus the new world battles were always inherently silly because only Spain had an early modern unit roster. If you went there with England, for example, you'd have bowmen and medieval knights.
This is a bit of false equivalency--Warring States Japan is not a great analog for, say, Ming China. Even the overworld mechanic--particularly terrain and city management mchanics. They needed some tweaking for FotS, they would have needed a lot more, close to a new game, to do a decent job in the popular Chinese dynasties.
The Boshin Rebellion was a logical step (based on RotS). "Series of rebellions" are perfectly fine for a TW game, especially when you consider how incredibly small scale all TW games have been so far anyway. So I don't mind the expansion (especially given it was TW's careful attempt to enter into a much late period before).
Really, you'd need to create a whole new game. You could re-use the Shogun 2 engine, but that's about it--the biggest expansion TW could come out with really couldn't cover China too well, I'd say.
So, if anything, they passed on it with the decision to retread Rome. Which is fine--in fact, it was probably the wisest decision, given the fan base. Better to reinvent the wheel then attempt to create anti-gravity or something.
I bet the naval battles will be better than the ones in Napoleon - somehow the wind driven ships behaved more as though they had motors.
What exactly is your complaint?
A sailing ship can go in pretty much any direction except directly into the wind. You don't need the wind behind you to make good speed, that's not how they work.
Well, for 18th-century square-rigged sailing ships, they do need the wind mostly behind them. They generally weren't particularly weatherly.
But how realistic do you need it to be?
I'd wager that the same people complaining now would be complaining more if their prized fleet got blown to pieces because they got caught in irons, or they tried to tack at the wrong time and their masts disintegrated.
You shouldn't need to learn the finer points of sailing to play a grand strategy game IMO.
I see you already immediately backed away from the assertion that NTW's ship moving mechanics were realistic. That's my complaint: that they aren't realistic.
Most of the land combat (with appropriate mods) can be made very realistic.
Oh here we go, an internet argument.
Yeah, I backed down, whatever.
From what I remember, the ships slowed to a crawl if you tried to sail into the wind. Basically, upwind: slow, downwind: fast. This is what's known as "abstraction".
Realistic in this case would not be all that much fun, not in the context of a grand strategy game. You need to tell your ships to go somewhere without worrying about the minutiae of exactly how they'll manoeuvre to get there... that's what captains are for.
Unless you actually want to do that, in which case that Age of Sail simulator would be right up your alley.[/quote]
I probably wouldn't play Medieval III either, unless the game went all the way to China (and why would it?).
Yes, we all want a Total War game with China in it. They already had the opportunity with Shogun II, but used that second expansion for a war that wasn't really much of a war at all. I think it would be cool if Medieval 3 went East at least to India, though. Scrap the new world, that campaign was never fun -nor was fighting the doom stacks of rabble- "and use the map space for the East.
Plus the new world battles were always inherently silly because only Spain had an early modern unit roster. If you went there with England, for example, you'd have bowmen and medieval knights.
This is a bit of false equivalency--Warring States Japan is not a great analog for, say, Ming China. Even the overworld mechanic--particularly terrain and city management mchanics. They needed some tweaking for FotS, they would have needed a lot more, close to a new game, to do a decent job in the popular Chinese dynasties.
The Boshin Rebellion was a logical step (based on RotS). "Series of rebellions" are perfectly fine for a TW game, especially when you consider how incredibly small scale all TW games have been so far anyway. So I don't mind the expansion (especially given it was TW's careful attempt to enter into a much late period before).
Really, you'd need to create a whole new game. You could re-use the Shogun 2 engine, but that's about it--the biggest expansion TW could come out with really couldn't cover China too well, I'd say.
So, if anything, they passed on it with the decision to retread Rome. Which is fine--in fact, it was probably the wisest decision, given the fan base. Better to reinvent the wheel then attempt to create anti-gravity or something.
Is the Fall of the Samurai war the Boshin war or the Besso war?
Not sure of the specific wars (my Japanese history isn't the best), but I know it takes place during the Meiji Restoration
Mostly Boshin, I think.
The japanese invasion of korea immediately followed the events of shogun 2. Wouldn't even need to model china as the war was fought in korea. Perfect sequel.
A game based on china would need its own release obviously.
Total War: Ming would be impossible to implement by scale. At least, if you wanted to resemble reality. I mostly like it as an example because the period has literally everything a TW game could have (and more), every kind of event, every kind of faction warfare, every kind of diplomatic mission, without getting too modern.
I would suggest the Han or, as you mentioned, the Three Kingdoms or general Disunity period.
The Korean Peninsula could totally work. I think you could also employ the Xinhai Rebellion as the absolutely most modern event you could possibly do (TM), with some significant overhauls and concession made to scale, but earlier periods would be better.
For a TW: China, it would be a tossup between the Spring and Autumn Period, the Warring States Period, or the Three Kingdoms. The first two would be obscure, but present much more interesting strategic and tactical gameplay experiences, and actually allow for dynastic play (the entirety of the Zhou Dynasty lasted around 800 years, compared to the 60 years of the Three Kingdoms). The latter carries more name recognition in the west however.
The Korean Peninsula could totally work. I think you could also employ the Xinhai Rebellion as the absolutely most modern event you could possibly do (TM), with some significant overhauls and concession made to scale, but earlier periods would be better.
The Korean Peninsula could totally work. I think you could also employ the Xinhai Rebellion as the absolutely most modern event you could possibly do (TM), with some significant overhauls and concession made to scale, but earlier periods would be better.
"Our aim," said Russell, "is for Rome 2 to deliver some of the most spectacular sights you've ever seen in a video game, and I really believe that we can deliver that - I'm not being hyperbolic there."
"We're not planning to drop campaign multiplayer," said Simpson. "It's reasonably popular. Actually, more people play that than I thought would. I thought it would be a fairly niche thing, but it's not."
The Creative Assembly team has been "pecking away" at Rome 2 for "more than a year", Simpson said. The majority of the team moved over from Shogun 2 expansion Fall of the Samurai four to six months ago, apparently. The team is now 100 people strong.
"Generally, though, we're always pushing towards higher and higher quality, but we've got to bounce that against the fact that we have to have lots and lots of guys on screen, which the console games don't do, because they can't, generally."
But don't panic if you have a relatively old - or old - PC. Mike Simpson revealed that the minimum specifications for what sounds like the entire Total War series have been permanently frozen, which sounds like witchcraft to us.
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Fleebhas all of the fleeb juiceRegistered Userregular
Realistic in this case would not be all that much fun, not in the context of a grand strategy game. You need to tell your ships to go somewhere without worrying about the minutiae of exactly how they'll manoeuvre to get there... that's what captains are for.
I don't know how familiar you are with 18 century naval battles, but this is entirely wrong. First of all, as I've mentioned, the TW series is not just a grand strategy game. It's also a tactical game. If you just want a grand strategy game, you auto resolve all battles. Therefore saying some particular tactical level of complexity is beyond the scope of a 'grand strategy game' is a strawman argument. This game keeps tracks of the number of rounds individual soldiers have yet to fire. That's way way way below the level of what you expect to deal with in a 'grand strategy game'. That's the beauty of the TW system. It's basically two games in one: turn based grand strategy game paired with a visually impressive real time tactical battles game. If you don't really like the battles, you can just stick with the grand strategy side of things. I know some people who do this and enjoy it. I don't know why youd' do this instead of play something like crusader kings 2, but to each his own
Now, let's go back to your assertion that 18th century admirals told their ships where to go without worrying about how they would get there: completely incorrect. By far the most important facet of period naval battles was the jockeying for position, taking into account the winds strength and direction, current, shoals, lee shores, etc. This is because the movement of sailing ships was incredibly restrictive. The entire naval combat doctrine was built around this fact: you learned to take advantage of your opponent's movement restrictions: that's why the tactics of raking and crossing the T, etc, were so effective. If ships could just spin on a dime (as they can in the game) then none of those tactics would have been successful or appropriate. Fleets spent a LOT of time carefully maneuvering to get into an advantageous position and if they felt they weren't in a good position, they would often decline battle. There were only a handful of big naval battles during the Napoleonic wars, compared to how many major land battles there were. Maneuvering their fleet to be on the correct side of the wind and in the correct formation was the primary focus of the admirals: the actual ship to ship combat they left entirely to captains. In essence, you have it backward: the admirals handled the ship positions and the captains handled the ship firing. One of the most common naval formations was line astern or line abreast: in which the admirals ships maneuvers, ordered by the admiral were executed by the entire rest of the fleet to stay in position. The admiral did not (and could not) direct the gunnery of each ship in the fleet, but they could (and did) direct where and how the ships of the fleet would sail.
Sacrificing some complexities to abstraction in the name of gameplay fun is expected. In this case however, they sacrificed the entire essence and meaning behind those naval battles. It's not just minor inaccuracies: the battles in game don't play out anything like they did historically.
It would be like having a WWII fighter plane game, only all the planes could hover and rotate in place like helicopters because that is more fun. Sure, it might be more fun, but what you have no longer bears even any passing resemblance to what it purports to represent.
That said, trying to model sailing ships and wind correctly is a really really hard task to solve. I'm not surprised they didn't manage it and instead went with something that, while completely unrealistic, was at least fairly simple. The advantage of an equally simple system in RTW2 is, in my eyes, that it will be vastly more realistic: galleys go basically the same speed in any direction they choose. There's no complicated set of rigging and sails and wind force and direction factors to solve, just how many oars you have and how tired your rowers are.
I'm totally okay with Rome II being the next game, because by the time Medieval III launches it's going to be absolutely bonkers with combat details.
It's going to have dwarf fortress levels of detail. You'll track the injuries and wounds on each soldier individually, and will be personally responsible for making sure they are appropriately bandaged after each engagement.
"We're not planning to drop campaign multiplayer," said Simpson. "It's reasonably popular. Actually, more people play that than I thought would. I thought it would be a fairly niche thing, but it's not."
Whoah, which games have campaign multiplayer? Way back in the day my brothers and I were very sad that MTW and RTW didn't have campaign multiplayer (it would have worked fine for hotseat as long as all the battles between player powers were auto resolved) but searching around on the forums led to decrees that campaign multiplayer was impossible and would never feature in any TW game. Since then I've kept much less well informed about the multiplayer aspects of the games, and just focused on enjoying the single player side of things.
And by "very realistic" I guess you mean "not at all even close to the correct number of troops."
The number of troops present has nothing to do with the realism behind the combat mechanics.
Well, I think it impacts how much the game reflects reality. Which is "not very much" when you consider how large and how long the real battles were compared to the battles in the game. I guess maybe you mean to say that the game displays realistic battle tactics even at an unrealistic scale, which I guess is maybe right (I don't know much about the era and I suspect things didn't really wrap up in 15-20 minutes like many Total War battles but whatever).
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Rome 2 is going to be so great.
If they're going to have Legions which gain traits as like, cohesive units, if you play other factions will they still be called "Legions" or will they have other names I wonder.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
And by "very realistic" I guess you mean "not at all even close to the correct number of troops."
It's going to have dwarf fortress levels of detail. You'll track the injuries and wounds on each soldier individually, and will be personally responsible for making sure they are appropriately bandaged after each engagement.
If you zoom in close before a real-time battle begins, you can always find at least one soldier speaking about how when he returns home, he's going to marry the girl of his dreams. This soldier will never survive an engagement, ever.
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
And by "very realistic" I guess you mean "not at all even close to the correct number of troops."
It's going to have dwarf fortress levels of detail. You'll track the injuries and wounds on each soldier individually, and will be personally responsible for making sure they are appropriately bandaged after each engagement.
If you zoom in close before a real-time battle begins, you can always find at least one soldier speaking about how when he returns home, he's going to marry the girl of his dreams. This soldier will never survive an engagement, ever.
Might be just as well, times being what they were the girl of his dreams might be like, 14.
Of course, times being what they were he might be like 15 so, you know.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
I bet the naval battles will be better than the ones in Napoleon - somehow the wind driven ships behaved more as though they had motors.
What exactly is your complaint?
A sailing ship can go in pretty much any direction except directly into the wind. You don't need the wind behind you to make good speed, that's not how they work.
Well, for 18th-century square-rigged sailing ships, they do need the wind mostly behind them. They generally weren't particularly weatherly.
But how realistic do you need it to be?
I'd wager that the same people complaining now would be complaining more if their prized fleet got blown to pieces because they got caught in irons, or they tried to tack at the wrong time and their masts disintegrated.
You shouldn't need to learn the finer points of sailing to play a grand strategy game IMO.
I really wish someone would release a wooden sailing ship sim where you do, though
Set it during the Napoleonic era, sail around the world fightin' pirates and raiding whalers and whatever else you wanna do
Manage your stores and crew discipline and everything. It'd be tons of fun.
Course I'm a MASSIVE Napoleonic era nerd.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Were there any Roman teenage generals? That would be...
Richard the Lionheart took command of his forces by age 16 so I don't see it as something impossible.
Scipio wasn't a teenager, but he was only like 20 or 21
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Wasn't Pompey, very, very young when he got his start?
There were age requirements for the political positions that would be likely to lead to being a general in republican Rome so I'm guessing there are more examples outside of Rome itself.
lowlylowlycook on
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
So I didn't want to revive the Shogun 2 thread just for my one question (maybe I should've?) so I figured I'd throw it in here. I bought Fall of the Samurai when it was on sale on amazon and I was wondering does the penalty for modernizing ever go away? I mean the penalty to population happiness cause I figured I would blitz modernization and crush the old ways but my provinces are constantly revolting now. If it doesn't ever fall off (like resistance to foreign invaders and such do) than I will proably need to re start.
The penalty should go away over time. The game tries to discourage you from modernising too quickly, therefore you'd have to exempt taxes, increase the garrion, or build police stations/inns in specific provinces to prevent rebellions.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
In the traditional Roman system, consuls led the armies. In order to become consul, you first had to hold the lesser offices. All of this meant that generals were fairly aged.
Scipio Africanus was one of the first to "cheat" and skip the constitutional requirements to consulship. This led to all sorts of problems.
Posts
Not sure of the specific wars (my Japanese history isn't the best), but I know it takes place during the Meiji Restoration
Especially at $8. What a steal.
http://www.amazon.com/Total-War-Shogun-Samurai-Download/dp/B006WD9H9Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1341434209&sr=8-2&keywords=fall+of+the+samurai
Wow, that is a good deal. Thanks for the heads up!
Edit: Amazon.com, why can't you work in Canada!
That's definitely very cool. I hope they include the dynasty/family tree system like in Rome too but this would be a welcome addition
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I enjoyed Shogun 2, for the most part. The real time battles are still very much my weak point, but I always feel like I might get better someday. How would you say that FotS is worth recommending if you didn't like Shogun 2?
I see you already immediately backed away from the assertion that NTW's ship moving mechanics were realistic. That's my complaint: that they aren't realistic.
Most of the land combat (with appropriate mods) can be made very realistic.
However the ships in NTW are basically sailing ships run by motors. They can go anywhere at basically the same speeds and can turn completely in place as much as desired : this could only be accomplished in real life by a lengthy and dangerous process of dropping anchors and running cables back and forth. That's an underlying engine issue that I don't think can be saved by a couple mods.
Managing the weather guage, tacking vs wearing, that's the kind of stuff that SHOULD be in any good naval combat system for 18th century warfare. The TW series isn't just a 'grand strategy game' it's a grand strategy game married to an (optional) very detailed tactical level. If you don't want to screw about with complicated naval combat in your grand strategy game you just auto resolve (as I do currently). Getting the mechanics of 18th century naval battles correct is far more important than getting the # of guns on each ship correct or the right number of marines on a ship or the right number of stripes on a sailors shirt.
I am quite willing to play an 18th century naval battle with an abstract made up ship that never really existed as long as it plays like an 18th century naval battle - but that's not what we have right now. Instead we have fairly accurately rendered and researched ships that don't behave at all as they would in real life - as a result naval battles dont' really unfold as they did.
Oar driven ships, as used by Rome and her enemies, get to ignore the whole 'wind' aspect that makes things so complicated. Thus, the RTW2 naval combats are most likely going to be far, far more realistic than the NTW ones. That said, even if the naval combat model is terrible, I doubt it will stop me from enjoying the game. I enjoyed MTW, RTW, MTW2, and NTW.
Also 18th century sailing ships actually sailed fastest with the wind on their quarter: if it was dead astern only the rearmost sail would be of use. On the quarter all the sails could catch the wind
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
This is a bit of false equivalency--Warring States Japan is not a great analog for, say, Ming China. Even the overworld mechanic--particularly terrain and city management mchanics. They needed some tweaking for FotS, they would have needed a lot more, close to a new game, to do a decent job in the popular Chinese dynasties.
The Boshin Rebellion was a logical step (based on RotS). "Series of rebellions" are perfectly fine for a TW game, especially when you consider how incredibly small scale all TW games have been so far anyway. So I don't mind the expansion (especially given it was TW's careful attempt to enter into a much late period before).
Really, you'd need to create a whole new game. You could re-use the Shogun 2 engine, but that's about it--the biggest expansion TW could come out with really couldn't cover China too well, I'd say.
So, if anything, they passed on it with the decision to retread Rome. Which is fine--in fact, it was probably the wisest decision, given the fan base. Better to reinvent the wheel then attempt to create anti-gravity or something.
Mostly Boshin, I think.
Yeah, I backed down, whatever.
From what I remember, the ships slowed to a crawl if you tried to sail into the wind. Basically, upwind: slow, downwind: fast. This is what's known as "abstraction".
Realistic in this case would not be all that much fun, not in the context of a grand strategy game. You need to tell your ships to go somewhere without worrying about the minutiae of exactly how they'll manoeuvre to get there... that's what captains are for.
Unless you actually want to do that, in which case that Age of Sail simulator would be right up your alley.[/quote]
The japanese invasion of korea immediately followed the events of shogun 2. Wouldn't even need to model china as the war was fought in korea. Perfect sequel.
A game based on china would need its own release obviously.
I would suggest the Han or, as you mentioned, the Three Kingdoms or general Disunity period.
The Korean Peninsula could totally work. I think you could also employ the Xinhai Rebellion as the absolutely most modern event you could possibly do (TM), with some significant overhauls and concession made to scale, but earlier periods would be better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imjin_war
That's what I was hoping for instead of what we got (though Rise of the Samurai was the best Total War expansion I've played).
Japan vs. Korea and Ming China. An actual war based around siege battles and naval battles. Exactly what the Shogun 2 engine does.
Shogun 2: Invasion of the Samurai
Rome 2 will deliver a darker vision of war
CA reveals new Rome 2 information
The number of troops present has nothing to do with the realism behind the combat mechanics.
I don't know how familiar you are with 18 century naval battles, but this is entirely wrong. First of all, as I've mentioned, the TW series is not just a grand strategy game. It's also a tactical game. If you just want a grand strategy game, you auto resolve all battles. Therefore saying some particular tactical level of complexity is beyond the scope of a 'grand strategy game' is a strawman argument. This game keeps tracks of the number of rounds individual soldiers have yet to fire. That's way way way below the level of what you expect to deal with in a 'grand strategy game'. That's the beauty of the TW system. It's basically two games in one: turn based grand strategy game paired with a visually impressive real time tactical battles game. If you don't really like the battles, you can just stick with the grand strategy side of things. I know some people who do this and enjoy it. I don't know why youd' do this instead of play something like crusader kings 2, but to each his own
Now, let's go back to your assertion that 18th century admirals told their ships where to go without worrying about how they would get there: completely incorrect. By far the most important facet of period naval battles was the jockeying for position, taking into account the winds strength and direction, current, shoals, lee shores, etc. This is because the movement of sailing ships was incredibly restrictive. The entire naval combat doctrine was built around this fact: you learned to take advantage of your opponent's movement restrictions: that's why the tactics of raking and crossing the T, etc, were so effective. If ships could just spin on a dime (as they can in the game) then none of those tactics would have been successful or appropriate. Fleets spent a LOT of time carefully maneuvering to get into an advantageous position and if they felt they weren't in a good position, they would often decline battle. There were only a handful of big naval battles during the Napoleonic wars, compared to how many major land battles there were. Maneuvering their fleet to be on the correct side of the wind and in the correct formation was the primary focus of the admirals: the actual ship to ship combat they left entirely to captains. In essence, you have it backward: the admirals handled the ship positions and the captains handled the ship firing. One of the most common naval formations was line astern or line abreast: in which the admirals ships maneuvers, ordered by the admiral were executed by the entire rest of the fleet to stay in position. The admiral did not (and could not) direct the gunnery of each ship in the fleet, but they could (and did) direct where and how the ships of the fleet would sail.
Sacrificing some complexities to abstraction in the name of gameplay fun is expected. In this case however, they sacrificed the entire essence and meaning behind those naval battles. It's not just minor inaccuracies: the battles in game don't play out anything like they did historically.
It would be like having a WWII fighter plane game, only all the planes could hover and rotate in place like helicopters because that is more fun. Sure, it might be more fun, but what you have no longer bears even any passing resemblance to what it purports to represent.
That said, trying to model sailing ships and wind correctly is a really really hard task to solve. I'm not surprised they didn't manage it and instead went with something that, while completely unrealistic, was at least fairly simple. The advantage of an equally simple system in RTW2 is, in my eyes, that it will be vastly more realistic: galleys go basically the same speed in any direction they choose. There's no complicated set of rigging and sails and wind force and direction factors to solve, just how many oars you have and how tired your rowers are.
It's going to have dwarf fortress levels of detail. You'll track the injuries and wounds on each soldier individually, and will be personally responsible for making sure they are appropriately bandaged after each engagement.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
Whoah, which games have campaign multiplayer? Way back in the day my brothers and I were very sad that MTW and RTW didn't have campaign multiplayer (it would have worked fine for hotseat as long as all the battles between player powers were auto resolved) but searching around on the forums led to decrees that campaign multiplayer was impossible and would never feature in any TW game. Since then I've kept much less well informed about the multiplayer aspects of the games, and just focused on enjoying the single player side of things.
PSN: Vorpallion Twitch: Vorpallion
If they're going to have Legions which gain traits as like, cohesive units, if you play other factions will they still be called "Legions" or will they have other names I wonder.
If you zoom in close before a real-time battle begins, you can always find at least one soldier speaking about how when he returns home, he's going to marry the girl of his dreams. This soldier will never survive an engagement, ever.
Might be just as well, times being what they were the girl of his dreams might be like, 14.
Of course, times being what they were he might be like 15 so, you know.
Richard the Lionheart took command of his forces by age 16 so I don't see it as something impossible.
I really wish someone would release a wooden sailing ship sim where you do, though
Set it during the Napoleonic era, sail around the world fightin' pirates and raiding whalers and whatever else you wanna do
Manage your stores and crew discipline and everything. It'd be tons of fun.
Course I'm a MASSIVE Napoleonic era nerd.
Scipio wasn't a teenager, but he was only like 20 or 21
There were age requirements for the political positions that would be likely to lead to being a general in republican Rome so I'm guessing there are more examples outside of Rome itself.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Most Triumphant.
Scipio Africanus was one of the first to "cheat" and skip the constitutional requirements to consulship. This led to all sorts of problems.