Sega/CA, Please focus on BAI & CAI for NTW!

[hellas1]

Hi Sega/CA,

3 things I'd like to bring to your attention as a long time CA customer:

I. Please focus on the BAI & CAI for land battles!

II. Please continue including real time naval battles, Don't neglect them!

III. Please include ALL of Napoleon's major engagements, not just a hypothetical Waterloo.

Thanks,
hellas1

P.S. I'll be reading up & listening to BAI & CAI info. quite particularly

[Thomas_Kenobi]

The day CA decides to produce a quality BAI, I'll go and buy all of their games since Shogun and all the expansions. Including the ones I already have. I'll just buy them again.

Of course the chance of that coming to pass is about the same as the chance of me growing wings...
[Natural pessimist here, if you couldn't tell...]

When a gaming company's flagship product creates so much revenue, there are two things you can do. You can go the way of Blizzard and say, we made money, we know you'll buy whatever we make, so now we'll sit down and make our next game -SC2- exactly as we like it. No compromises. Alternatively, you can go the way of CA and say, we made money, we know you'll buy whatever we make, so now we'll milk our fat cow and do nothing, except the absolutely necessary. Of course the second business model works only as long as you don't have any competition. Some other studio will decide to go the way of Total War, at some point, and then we might actually see a worthwhile game.

[Anibal at portas]

is necessary a campaign with historical scrips,events and historical events.

[Verminaard]

The day CA decides to produce a quality BAI, I'll go and buy all of their games since Shogun and all the expansions. Including the ones I already have. I'll just buy them again.

Of course the chance of that coming to pass is about the same as the chance of me growing wings...
[Natural pessimist here, if you couldn't tell...]

When a gaming company's flagship product creates so much revenue, there are two things you can do. You can go the way of Blizzard and say, we made money, we know you'll buy whatever we make, so now we'll sit down and make our next game -SC2- exactly as we like it. No compromises. Alternatively, you can go the way of CA and say, we made money, we know you'll buy whatever we make, so now we'll milk our fat cow and do nothing, except the absolutely necessary. Of course the second business model works only as long as you don't have any competition. Some other studio will decide to go the way of Total War, at some point, and then we might actually see a worthwhile game.

Good point there, but Blizzard arent the only company that takes their time with their games, Bioware in my opinion is also pretty good at this. But CA has virtually no competition, i might think that the modders are the closest thing to competition hehe.

Dont know what it is with the total war games, but as far as i can see there seems to be a lack of an overall objective and game planning strategy, its like these guys actually really want to make the perfect game but as they go they realise that whenever the make a new feature new problems arise and so on and then they run out of time (money), and have to release and then half assing the patches because they know they cant spend too much time fixing the game because game fixes doesnt really sell that many games compared to a new expansion or in this case an entirely new game.

Again Competition would probably bring us a more complete bug free game, but then i think that the downside might be that future total war games would be more mainstream games and they might be shifting the target customer group to 14-16 year olds rather than us old fooks in the late 20s

[Thomas_Kenobi]

Dont know what it is with the total war games, but as far as i can see there seems to be a lack of an overall objective and game planning strategy,...

Again Competition would probably bring us a more complete bug free game, but then i think that the downside might be that future total war games would be more mainstream games and they might be shifting the target customer group to 14-16 year olds rather than us old fooks in the late 20s

I would argue that what CA is missing is not a lack of overall objective, but rather a lack of incentive. The only reason you might work on improving an already hugely successful game, would be to satisfy one's inner perfectionism and love of one's work, but that force does not seem to be at work here.

About your concern that the target group might shift to 14-16 year olds. Well, what would you call what CA has been doing since RTW? If the dogs, the druids and the head throwers were any indication, that is precisely the direction they intended to take and even though ETW is undoubtedly more mature, I don't think CA has decided to seriously stray from that path.
When I was referring to competition in my previous post, I had in mind more of an independent new gaming studio, with fresh ideas, rather than something like EA, who would have nothing to offer the adult crowd.

PS: I couldn't agree more about Bioware.

[userstupidname]

I had the greatest moments with med2 and rome, so am not really in for saying ''milk cow''

I think they failed with this game plainly.

Of course they FAILED horribly.
I mean even if ntw is a utter failure i will check out rome 2 if it comes around.

[Lockhard]

For me, the only way for CA to fix BAI is to replace it with "natural" one, which means concentrating on multiplayer. They failed to improve AI for 6+ months, and I doubt they will be able to fix it in future.

[nameless]

To OP:

Well they are introducing an "AI DIRECTOR" which tells the AI what to do in different circumstances (Short-term objectives) so that takes care of the CAI.

For the BAI I don't know. Though if they can make an AI DIRECTOR for the BAI that would be interesting and may solve most of the problems.

[arcsquad12]

AI director is hardly a new feature, Valve has already done it with L4D, and I'm sure itll still be a lot better than whatever CA and Sega put out. Cus you know, Valve actually puts an effort into making their games what we want them to be.

[2-D Ron]

I'd like to see a Formations aspect to the AI For France, as well as an accurate Recruitment for French Units (The Way Napoleon would of started a Battle)

[Thomas_Kenobi]

Again, I think the issue is not what specific algorithms the CA coders would use to improve BAI (e.g. AI Director), but rather whether they will make a concentrated effort towards said improvement. The techniques for the job exist, what lacks is incentive.

Considering that NTW will use the ETW engine and taking into account the very short development time, we should not expect anything more than tweaks, of the kind one might see in a patch. BAI is a core issue with the series and it would take a lot more time to tackle effectively.

[nameless]

AI director is hardly a new feature, Valve has already done it with L4D, and I'm sure itll still be a lot better than whatever CA and Sega put out. Cus you know, Valve actually puts an effort into making their games what we want them to be.

Well your're talking about a director for a first person shooter and a director for a turn-based game. Those are two different directors.

But it worked for VALVE on their ends so hopefully CA gets it working on their end. They had posted several months about this new AI.

Funny you mention the VALVE part because people were complaining about why they were releasing a sequel so soon when the first one still has bugs to fix.

[Lockhard]

Short-term objectives, eh? I can predict in 99% how AI will react:
You got cannons, enemy have no artillery.
In ETW when your artillery is firing with cannonballs - enemy approaces, when you switch cannons to canister shot with much shorter range - AI immediatley retreats back. If some of his units is within canister shot radius - he will continue his approack.
Every damn time the same behaviour.

[nameless]

Uh we're talking about the CAI, nothing on BAI yet.

Though I don't think that would be the case, the AI already will attempt to flank your forces or send a squad far behind your lines to attack your artillery so I don't see why it wouldn't do the same if it was run by a director.

[arcsquad12]

Well your're talking about a director for a first person shooter and a director for a turn-based game. Those are two different directors.

But it worked for VALVE on their ends so hopefully CA gets it working on their end. They had posted several months about this new AI.

Funny you mention the VALVE part because people were complaining about why they were releasing a sequel so soon when the first one still has bugs to fix.

the difference is that Valve listened to the fans and they will continually patch their Source games even after the sequel is out. Hell, they even gave the boycotters a tour of their studios, to show how much they value the communities opinion.

[nameless]

the difference is that Valve listened to the fans and they will continually patch their Source games even after the sequel is out. Hell, they even gave the boycotters a tour of their studios, to show how much they value the communities opinion.

The only thing the boycott achieved was getting a chance to go and play L4D2 early to show them everything was on track. Valve didn't do anything different. The boycott didn't do anything to Valve to make them continue to support it when they said prior to the whole fiasco they would continue to support it anyways. Note though they only did this because of the size of the boycott.

CA already stated that they would continue to support ETW so now we gotta set up a boycott so we can go and take a look into NTW

[RuleBritannia]

The day CA decides to produce a quality BAI, I'll go and buy all of their games since Shogun and all the expansions. Including the ones I already have. I'll just buy them again.

Of course the chance of that coming to pass is about the same as the chance of me growing wings...
[Natural pessimist here, if you couldn't tell...]

When a gaming company's flagship product creates so much revenue, there are two things you can do. You can go the way of Blizzard and say, we made money, we know you'll buy whatever we make, so now we'll sit down and make our next game -SC2- exactly as we like it. No compromises. Alternatively, you can go the way of CA and say, we made money, we know you'll buy whatever we make, so now we'll milk our fat cow and do nothing, except the absolutely necessary. Of course the second business model works only as long as you don't have any competition. Some other studio will decide to go the way of Total War, at some point, and then we might actually see a worthwhile game.

Rome: Total War and the Barbarian Invasion expansion pack (especially Barbarian Invasion) had fairly good AI. The AI was competent at defeating you in R:TW, and in RTW:BI the AI can easily wipe you out if you're not careful.

[Abspara]

CA has no incentive to improve. To them, the current model is just fine.

Give CA some competition and perhaps they'll stop sleepwalking.

[RuleBritannia]

I agree. CA has been a bit monopolistic in the TBSG (turn-based strategy game) industry, simply because not many TBSGs currently can match the quality of their games. However, they don't see any need to make drastic improvements considering how successful their games are now.

[Richard Sharpe]

Every single European milita unit was the same unit. Every single line unit was the same thing. The factions are basically carbon copies of each other. The sound basically blows. The game finally works good now, the AI stinks as usual but the main issue is ATMOSPHERE. I just downloaded BC for MTW2 (sorry, I'm lame I lent my copy out for the past 9 months and did not have my desktop with me for a couple months before that so serious MTW2 playing hasnt happened for me in over a year and a half.) and it is absolutely fantastic. The music. The experience. The sound.

For example, having faction specific marches may have taken literally another 5% of the total working time and yet hearing bagpipes or the Der Hohenfriederger march would have totally helped in immerse, at least for myself in my experience.

And modding is needed. I play BI and BC. Coincidentially both mods?

Workmanship and detail IS appreciated.

I can say that I enjoy Rome, and MTW2 and will continue to play them and their mods for another couple of years at least. Empire is already gathering dusk (figuratively, gave my copy to a friend.....)