I loathe playing this game as factions that don't either get horse archers or muskets. Needless to say, my favourite factions are Spain and the Mongols.
If anyone is interested in the latter, its fairly easy to manually enable them in Kindoms: Teutonic. Just go to the text file and move them to playable. They start off weak and slow, but hey, a small price to pay for the best cavalry in the world. And matches between the light/medium fast mongol forces and the armed to the teeth, but slow, Teutonic Knights, are great fun.
As for wars: certain faction hate other factions. Sometimes you can get lasting alliances going, you just need to know who will likely betray you and who won't. I really don't know the specifics myself, though.
I loathe playing this game as factions that don't either get horse archers or muskets. Needless to say, my favourite factions are Spain and the Mongols.
If anyone is interested in the latter, its fairly easy to manually enable them in Kindoms: Teutonic. Just go to the text file and move them to playable. They start off weak and slow, but hey, a small price to pay for the best cavalry in the world. And matches between the light/medium fast mongol forces and the armed to the teeth, but slow, Teutonic Knights, are great fun.
As for wars: certain faction hate other factions. Sometimes you can get lasting alliances going, you just need to know who will likely betray you and who won't. I really don't know the specifics myself, though.
Oh yeah!!! I completely forgot about that. Each country is supposed to have a list of countries that historically didn't like them (England & France for example). Relations with that country will slowly degrade over time, and the easier the difficulty, the slower it degrades. The game is also coded in such a way that neighbouring countries will become aggressive as you get larger.
I've always had fun if I remembered to almost completely discount diplomacy. I'm at war with everybody, and diplomacy is simply another weapon to use. ie Pay a country 1000 bucks every 5 - 10 turns to ensure that they don't declare war until I finish an existing war/preparing my invasion.
Story Time: One of my favorite wars was against Spain when I was England. I owned the entire UK and was midway through my conquest of France. Needless to say, all of my forces were on the mainland of Europe. Spain was largely unchanged - they had conquered Portugal early on, but were deadlocked with the Moors. To help break this deadlock, they sailed a fleet up to London, and promptly attacked it (successfully). Honestly, it was a good idea, but poorly implemented. I still had Nottingham (a castle), and it took 5 turns for me to create an army, and take back London. My response to a naval invasion from Spain was lovely - I took every single northern coastal city from them (4 provinces IIRC). I then sued for peace (they agreed), and used my new southern states to hit France from 2 sides at once. With France gone, I turned all of my attention upon Spain, and the resultant war was brief.
I think they should implement some kind of diplomacy setting that acknowledges the fact that if I'm the biggest kid on the map it's a really stupid idea to start a war with me.
Tube on
0
Options
mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
I think they should implement some kind of diplomacy setting that acknowledges the fact that if I'm the biggest kid on the map it's a really stupid idea to start a war with me.
Unless they convince a certain amount of other people to go whole hog with them
I was thinking about that as well.... but in a game that's all about war, I think that'd get a bit boring. Everybody attacking the shit outta you is the only thing that keeps the game from turning into:
pick country -> steamroll -> repeat.
Evyl on
0
Options
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
Like I said last page, I would love (read: kill someone in front of their own momma) for a game that combines Europa Universalis' diplomacy (and bigass fucking world) along with Total War's combat.
I mean really, IMO, the only good thing about the Total War games has been the combat. Everything else is fairly "meh" (well, I like the graphics, but that's more of a recent thing for Total War).
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
I was thinking about that as well.... but in a game that's all about war, I think that'd get a bit boring. Everybody attacking the shit outta you is the only thing that keeps the game from turning into:
pick country -> steamroll -> repeat.
Incidentally, thats exactly what Empire Total War was like on release, they have a very hard time balancing it. Of course, I would rather have easy diplomacy than bad battlefield AI.
Aslo: the Papal States. Anyone else tried playing as them? They get some really cool guard units and have a nice color scheme. Last year I rebuilt most of the Roman Empire before getting sidetracked by something else and abandoning the campaign. Easy faction, but still fun.
Technically, if you root around in the med2 campaign AI scripts you'll see that the AI does take into account factors like the target nation's strength, the number of allies that target has, how many nations it's at war with, how often the target makes peace and declares war and so forth, as well as how all this applies to the AI itself. In practice, the AI acts like a suicidal retard.
This is the reason diplomacy mods can make the AI do stuff like form huge coalitions and intelligently declare war in defence of allies/satellite states (outside of Crusades), have vassal states focus primarily on economic infrastructure instead of building up armies of crossbowmen to throw themselves at their Imperial masters, and more. All this stuff exists in the vanilla game files, it's just A: geared towards ensuring the player is constantly at war and B: unrefined.
I honestly don't quite get why CA doesn't do a better job on AI. Empire is even worse than MTW 2, as MTW 2 armies fight decently in the field. The tools are there, CA has actually even helped modders make their AI mods.... Why don't they just put them in the basic game?
As for MTW 2 specifically, there's competing AIs coordinating diplomacy and declaring war, hence peace treaties followed by the ever present declaration of war via port blockade.
Technically, if you root around in the med2 campaign AI scripts you'll see that the AI does take into account factors like the target nation's strength, the number of allies that target has, how many nations it's at war with, how often the target makes peace and declares war and so forth, as well as how all this applies to the AI itself. In practice, the AI acts like a suicidal retard.
This is the reason diplomacy mods can make the AI do stuff like form huge coalitions and intelligently declare war in defence of allies/satellite states (outside of Crusades), have vassal states focus primarily on economic infrastructure instead of building up armies of crossbowmen to throw themselves at their Imperial masters, and more. All this stuff exists in the vanilla game files, it's just A: geared towards ensuring the player is constantly at war and B: unrefined.
It's impressive that diplomacy is so bad when it takes so many things into account.... like you said, the end result of all that desicion making is war. When player is weaker -> attack. When player is stronger -> attack. When sharing border with player -> attack. Besides bribery, my use of diplomacy is simply an early warning radar. In both SS & Vanilla, a neighbouring country offering trade rights = they will attack within 5 - 10 turns.
Evyl on
0
Options
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
Like DisruptorX2 said, the Diplo and War AIs are separate. It's really a case of one hand not knowing what the other one is doing.
Though I am pretty sure they are the same AI in Empire, so I guess CA just sucks at it. :P
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Though I am pretty sure they are the same AI in Empire, so I guess CA just sucks at it. :P
Campaign AI in Empire is very predictable. I'd even say it works. Declaration of War is based on the territory requirements each faction has, as well as reputation. If you have a good reputation, and no territories they need (or can access), you won't have a war. Its the battle AI which sucks in that one.
-Charge horsemen at enemy lines, one regiment at a time.
-Move in infantry in a muddled formation that makes no sense at all.
They don't even attempt to keep a formation and get torn apart every battle.
So I've been a big fan of the Total War series since Shogun (which I really would like for them to remake in a broader way.) I have to say that Rome pissed me off way more than this one though. As annoying as the Pope is in this one, the Senate in Rome was way worse. The most fickle group of silly geese that ever existed.
Generally, I was able to fool the pope by just putting a general in charge of the weakest group of guys I could muster and just wait for another Catholic nation to do what the Pope wanted.
TW games are great. My only nitpicks about Medieval 2 is that the pope is bloody annoying, and the dice are ridiculously stacked. What's that? My assassin with 60-80% chance of success has never managed to kill anyone, after fifteen or so attempts(without save scumming). Game, fuck you.
It seems that the math is somewhat creative. 50% chance really means 10% chance, and 90% chance is like 40%. 40% and under? Never gonna succeed.
Due to the magic of some guy telling me, I figured out that the seed for the RNG doesn't change when you reload. So that assassin was always going to fail. If you tried on the next turn he would have had a chance again.
Even without save cheating it seemed like the chances were way lower than than advertised, but I didn't keep track so that could just be confirmation bias
Once I got my assassins going I found my chances were pretty good. It's annoying that the chances to kill say, the pope, top out at 10%, but I think otherwise assassins would be too powerful. In the original Shogun, the first faction to build a Legendary Geisha won.
Maybe it's a deliberate thing to prevent save scumming
That is indeed what is happening. The traditional workaround is to have mutiple agents ready to do actions. Several you don't care about and then your assassin.
As the RNG seed is fixed you can keep reloading and then try different number of agent actions before the critical assassin to basically get a 100% guaranteed assassin every time.
Then you post on the Total War forums about assassins being overpowered and boring.
Meh, the Senate was supposed to be a pain in the arse, as the endgame of any Roman campaign is always civil war (c'mon like I'm going to spoiler that).
Shogun Geisha were indeed incredibly overpowered, especially when combined with the fact that using them didn't count as an act of war and that when a faction was destroyed with land still in its possession, some of it was divided up between its allies. So even on the hardest difficulty level all you needed to do was turtle up and maintain as many alliances as possible, then wipe out the families of each ally with geishas.
That said, I did like the fact that A: running out of family members was a real threat in Medieval and Shogun and B: political marriages gave you a claim to a dead faction's land, as it meant you had to take marriages (or specifically your baby factories) more seriously.
In Medieval 1? There's a tab that lists your main man and his heirs.
Med 2 has a family tree but it's a bit more confusing than the Med1 version if you just want to see how many male family members there are still kicking around late-game. Then again the chance of your faction naturally dying out are practically zero in Med 2, so I guess it's irrelevent.
Oh I know there are ways, I just don't bother. Most of my family are all holed up in the same city. I have a couple of generals with lots of stars and dread and that's about it. During a seige last night there were a couple of full units mooning about in my walls so I sent my high dread general after them. They routed before he even reached them. It was awesome. I've noticed the Papal units are surprisingly good.
Tube on
0
Options
SirUltimosDon't talk, Rusty. Just paint.Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
In Rome I had a few games where I had an army of assassins at my command. I had enough that any time I went to war I'd wipe out most of the command structure beforehand. Not that it was really necessary, though.
I don't think I ever used assassins in Rome, just spies to ferment discord. Even in Med2 I tended to only bother with merchant/agent micromanagement when everyone was immortal
I don't think I ever used assassins in Rome, just spies to ferment discord. Even in Med2 I tended to only bother with merchant/agent micromanagement when everyone was immortal
Can spies ferment revolt in med2? I just use them to sit in the city and open the gates.
Tube on
0
Options
Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
edited February 2010
Did anyone ever make a good A Song of Ice and Fire mod for M2:TW?
I don't think I ever used assassins in Rome, just spies to ferment discord. Even in Med2 I tended to only bother with merchant/agent micromanagement when everyone was immortal
Can spies ferment revolt in med2? I just use them to sit in the city and open the gates.
I'm pretty sure leaving them in a city has a very minor effect on disorder. Or at least it used to.
Did anyone ever make a good A Song of Ice and Fire mod for M2:TW?
Not that I'm aware of. The Third Age and Warhammer: "Total-ly-ripping-assets-from-Mark of Chaos-and somehow-not-being-shut-down-yet War" fantasy mods are the only ones that got off the ground, sadly.
Maybe it's a deliberate thing to prevent save scumming
That is indeed what is happening. The traditional workaround is to have mutiple agents ready to do actions. Several you don't care about and then your assassin.
As the RNG seed is fixed you can keep reloading and then try different number of agent actions before the critical assassin to basically get a 100% guaranteed assassin every time.
Then you post on the Total War forums about assassins being overpowered and boring.
Ctrl + S to quicksave, then load that quicksave. It generates a new seed for every character when you do that.
Posts
If anyone is interested in the latter, its fairly easy to manually enable them in Kindoms: Teutonic. Just go to the text file and move them to playable. They start off weak and slow, but hey, a small price to pay for the best cavalry in the world. And matches between the light/medium fast mongol forces and the armed to the teeth, but slow, Teutonic Knights, are great fun.
As for wars: certain faction hate other factions. Sometimes you can get lasting alliances going, you just need to know who will likely betray you and who won't. I really don't know the specifics myself, though.
Oh yeah!!! I completely forgot about that. Each country is supposed to have a list of countries that historically didn't like them (England & France for example). Relations with that country will slowly degrade over time, and the easier the difficulty, the slower it degrades. The game is also coded in such a way that neighbouring countries will become aggressive as you get larger.
I've always had fun if I remembered to almost completely discount diplomacy. I'm at war with everybody, and diplomacy is simply another weapon to use. ie Pay a country 1000 bucks every 5 - 10 turns to ensure that they don't declare war until I finish an existing war/preparing my invasion.
Story Time: One of my favorite wars was against Spain when I was England. I owned the entire UK and was midway through my conquest of France. Needless to say, all of my forces were on the mainland of Europe. Spain was largely unchanged - they had conquered Portugal early on, but were deadlocked with the Moors. To help break this deadlock, they sailed a fleet up to London, and promptly attacked it (successfully). Honestly, it was a good idea, but poorly implemented. I still had Nottingham (a castle), and it took 5 turns for me to create an army, and take back London. My response to a naval invasion from Spain was lovely - I took every single northern coastal city from them (4 provinces IIRC). I then sued for peace (they agreed), and used my new southern states to hit France from 2 sides at once. With France gone, I turned all of my attention upon Spain, and the resultant war was brief.
Unless they convince a certain amount of other people to go whole hog with them
pick country -> steamroll -> repeat.
I mean really, IMO, the only good thing about the Total War games has been the combat. Everything else is fairly "meh" (well, I like the graphics, but that's more of a recent thing for Total War).
Incidentally, thats exactly what Empire Total War was like on release, they have a very hard time balancing it. Of course, I would rather have easy diplomacy than bad battlefield AI.
Aslo: the Papal States. Anyone else tried playing as them? They get some really cool guard units and have a nice color scheme. Last year I rebuilt most of the Roman Empire before getting sidetracked by something else and abandoning the campaign. Easy faction, but still fun.
This is the reason diplomacy mods can make the AI do stuff like form huge coalitions and intelligently declare war in defence of allies/satellite states (outside of Crusades), have vassal states focus primarily on economic infrastructure instead of building up armies of crossbowmen to throw themselves at their Imperial masters, and more. All this stuff exists in the vanilla game files, it's just A: geared towards ensuring the player is constantly at war and B: unrefined.
As for MTW 2 specifically, there's competing AIs coordinating diplomacy and declaring war, hence peace treaties followed by the ever present declaration of war via port blockade.
It's impressive that diplomacy is so bad when it takes so many things into account.... like you said, the end result of all that desicion making is war. When player is weaker -> attack. When player is stronger -> attack. When sharing border with player -> attack. Besides bribery, my use of diplomacy is simply an early warning radar. In both SS & Vanilla, a neighbouring country offering trade rights = they will attack within 5 - 10 turns.
Though I am pretty sure they are the same AI in Empire, so I guess CA just sucks at it. :P
Campaign AI in Empire is very predictable. I'd even say it works. Declaration of War is based on the territory requirements each faction has, as well as reputation. If you have a good reputation, and no territories they need (or can access), you won't have a war. Its the battle AI which sucks in that one.
-Charge horsemen at enemy lines, one regiment at a time.
-Move in infantry in a muddled formation that makes no sense at all.
They don't even attempt to keep a formation and get torn apart every battle.
Generally, I was able to fool the pope by just putting a general in charge of the weakest group of guys I could muster and just wait for another Catholic nation to do what the Pope wanted.
SteamID: devCharles
twitter: https://twitter.com/charlesewise
i'd consider them a bigger baddie than even the invading eastern hordes
It seems that the math is somewhat creative. 50% chance really means 10% chance, and 90% chance is like 40%. 40% and under? Never gonna succeed.
kpop appreciation station i also like to tweet some
That is indeed what is happening. The traditional workaround is to have mutiple agents ready to do actions. Several you don't care about and then your assassin.
As the RNG seed is fixed you can keep reloading and then try different number of agent actions before the critical assassin to basically get a 100% guaranteed assassin every time.
Then you post on the Total War forums about assassins being overpowered and boring.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Shogun Geisha were indeed incredibly overpowered, especially when combined with the fact that using them didn't count as an act of war and that when a faction was destroyed with land still in its possession, some of it was divided up between its allies. So even on the hardest difficulty level all you needed to do was turtle up and maintain as many alliances as possible, then wipe out the families of each ally with geishas.
That said, I did like the fact that A: running out of family members was a real threat in Medieval and Shogun and B: political marriages gave you a claim to a dead faction's land, as it meant you had to take marriages (or specifically your baby factories) more seriously.
In Medieval 1? There's a tab that lists your main man and his heirs.
Med 2 has a family tree but it's a bit more confusing than the Med1 version if you just want to see how many male family members there are still kicking around late-game. Then again the chance of your faction naturally dying out are practically zero in Med 2, so I guess it's irrelevent.
Medieval.
Not the way I play it
Can spies ferment revolt in med2? I just use them to sit in the city and open the gates.
I'm pretty sure leaving them in a city has a very minor effect on disorder. Or at least it used to.
Not that I'm aware of. The Third Age and Warhammer: "Total-ly-ripping-assets-from-Mark of Chaos-and somehow-not-being-shut-down-yet War" fantasy mods are the only ones that got off the ground, sadly.
Ctrl + S to quicksave, then load that quicksave. It generates a new seed for every character when you do that.