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Thread: First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

  1. #1
    Laetus
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    Default First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

    I'm playing the English in my current game and have had some pretty cool events. This game is crazy.:

    It started with the usual declaration of war between me and some rebel towns. I quickly trounced on them and showed them what a true ruler was. I had my sights set on some French vineyards though so the rebels didn't quite satisfy me that much. Planning for a nice war with them, I decided to make an alliance with the Scottish. They only held a town and a castle, what harm could they be up there. They eagerly took the alliance. Then it was off to war with France.

    I had a few skirmishes with the French before finally catching one of their generals out in the open. Leaving his nearby castle wide open, I quickly seized the opportunity to grab it. The Pope, well funded by the French, stepped in and asked me to cease hostile actions. I relented ... for a time. Then i carefully crafted an assassination of a French governor before invading his town.

    At this point the Pope stepped in again in an indirect way, calling for a Crusade. Feeling that the French were pretty weak, I signed a cease fire with them and asked for 500 gold/turn in tribute. To my astonishment they accepted. I loaded up my Prince and a large amount of troops and he went off toward Antioch while the King ran London.

    After a long journey he did indeed make it to Antioch and ran off the Egyptian Muslims there. He gained considerable chivalry, piety, and gold, and every unit with him gained veteran status. Nice! The next turn my King died, and he was named the new King. That put me with a King faaaaar away from home, and a huge and very expensive stack of units. Not to mention the upkeep was extremely expensive.

    Thinking the troops were worth shipping back due to veteran status, I loaded up a couple of cogs with them and set sail for England. In the meantime I was pinching pennies back home and had to ditch a lot of troops that had been sitting around at expensive upkeep.

    The next turn Scotland breaks treaty and attacks me (due to the limited threat I now caused to them.) That same turn my cogs with veterans were ganged up on by Egyptian ships and taken out (and the troops with it.) I thought, "it can't get any worse." It did. France attacked next turn and took the town I had taken back.

    So I went from rags to riches and now back to rags. This game is so damned cool. I never know what to expect next.

  2. #2
    selenius4tsd's Avatar Happiness Is A Warm Gun
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    Default Re: First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

    ... not the nicest way to be introduced to total war games i will admit! But i guess appropriate never the less.

    Something I always wanted to ask a newby (sry mate ) to the series - how do you find the learning curve? Does it take you long to get used to everything? lol.. such a long time ago for me..

    And btw.
    Under the patronage of vikrant
    Patron of Ramtha, Alletun, finneys13, SirPaladin and GrnEyedDvl

  3. #3
    Ieuano's Avatar Decanus
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    Default Re: First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

    only 7 days for my first TW game aswell

    tick tock see two whole seconds have passed, 6 days 23 hours...

  4. #4
    Zenith Darksea's Avatar Ορθοδοξία ή θάνατος!
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    Default Re: First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

    Well, I've been playing since Shogun (though I never got around to the Viking Invasion), and I find that with each new TW game there is a certain amount of learning curve, though from what I hear M2TW is quite like Rome in its game mechanics.

  5. #5

    Default Re: First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

    I think in ME2 TW, the pope plays a huge role and getting pity to the generals, otherwise you have to watch out for the inquisititors.

    Think, the AI is a tad better then Rome and I bet after the patch is released it will only get better.

    I am playing as Venice Republic ad having a blast.

    Also it is advisable, for suspected enemies, that you keep a good garrison on your border towns, otherwise the AI will see you as "weak" and attack.

  6. #6
    Faelan's Avatar Libertus
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    Default Re: First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

    Quote Originally Posted by selenius4tsd View Post

    Something I always wanted to ask a newby (sry mate ) to the series - how do you find the learning curve? Does it take you long to get used to everything? lol.. such a long time ago for me..
    I'd like to answer this question as well. I bought RTW and played a few custom battles and then moved onto something else that caught my interest (never was a fan of the Roman stuff). I then bought M2TW on release day as I had been waiting for it (anything from about 800 to 1500 AD really intrigues me). So I consider myself pretty much a noob.

    I am playing a scots campaign currently and I'm around 200 turns in on a 1.00 timescale. (I caught on to the modding really quickly =P), and have struggled almost the entire time up until the last 40 turns or so. I still havn't really figured out the best way to use merchants or diplomats, or to make a decent amount of money at all (maybe havn't learned the best budgeting techniques).

    Nevertheless, I am finally making progress and have control of the British isles and most of the northern regions in france.

    After all this long winded typing, I'd say the learning curve to be comfortable playing the game is short. To master the game, for me so far has been ongoing.
    - Faelan




    Knowledge is a weapon, and I intend to be formidably armed.

  7. #7

    Default Re: First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

    Another Total War newbie here - found Rome in the bargain bin a few weeks back, and realised it wasn't just a straight RTS and decided to give it a go.. Apart from work, I think the only contact I've had with the outside world since then has been to buy a copy of Medieval 2..

    Regarding learning curve, I'm a longtime Civ player, so the campaign mode was very easy to pick up, the only thing that threw me was how high the unit upkeep is, but after strangling my economy once it was easy to avoid.

    Battle mode took longer as you might expect - I think the worst problems I had were bad habits picked up from things like Age of Empires - playing Rome fighting the Greeks, I naturally assumed that my legions should be able to chop through any spearmen with ease.. sword infantry beats spear infantry right? That took me a little longer to figure out.

    I've come to love that aspect of the game(s), believable battles rather than totally simplistic "this unit type beats that unit type" stuff, and the battle AI is leaps above anything else I've played. It did take me a while to feel confident in battle mode, but the learning curve was fine, and I took something out of every battle - often learning from the AI which is about the highest compliment I can pay the developers.

  8. #8
    philip augustus's Avatar Decanus
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    Default Re: First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

    Quote Originally Posted by mike2R View Post
    Another Total War newbie here - found Rome in the bargain bin a few weeks back, and realised it wasn't just a straight RTS and decided to give it a go.. Apart from work, I think the only contact I've had with the outside world since then has been to buy a copy of Medieval 2..

    Regarding learning curve, I'm a longtime Civ player, so the campaign mode was very easy to pick up, the only thing that threw me was how high the unit upkeep is, but after strangling my economy once it was easy to avoid.

    Battle mode took longer as you might expect - I think the worst problems I had were bad habits picked up from things like Age of Empires - playing Rome fighting the Greeks, I naturally assumed that my legions should be able to chop through any spearmen with ease.. sword infantry beats spear infantry right? That took me a little longer to figure out.

    I've come to love that aspect of the game(s), believable battles rather than totally simplistic "this unit type beats that unit type" stuff, and the battle AI is leaps above anything else I've played. It did take me a while to feel confident in battle mode, but the learning curve was fine, and I took something out of every battle - often learning from the AI which is about the highest compliment I can pay the developers.
    same thing happend to me but back about a year ago I picked it up b just because it had spartans in it having no idea what the game was about I just assumed that it was a standerd rts game, boy was I wrong it was hard but for some reason the learning curve was pretty easy to me after playing a few camgpains, and to twc
    Fat cats will rule the world.

  9. #9

    Default Re: First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

    Quote Originally Posted by Faelan View Post
    I still havn't really figured out the best way to use merchants or diplomats, or to make a decent amount of money at all (maybe havn't learned the best budgeting techniques).
    What to do? secure the boarders, it shood be simple as the scots as they only have one threat (England).

    the first you shod do is to take as many rebel setlements as posible.
    then position an army near the boarder to England. Make garison in your towns. It is a free up keep within towns, (betwen two and six units, depends on how big the city/town is), no free up keep in castlels. So my recomendation as the scots or any nation is to have few castles and many towns. when your country become bigger try to have strategic castles. Why? mainly becous most factions make ther best units in castles.

    Then why do you talk about armys insted of economy?

    It's wery importent to have a good defence before you start with economy, if not your neighbour countrys will start an attack.

    Now when your boarders are secure start to make as many trading and food upgrades as posible (food upgrades is wery importent). after a while you will see that your economy become stronger. and don't forget to send out diplomates for trade rights directly.

    as the Scots i whod make two diplomates to start with: send one to france, spain, portugal, the muslims in southerns spain, milan, venice, sicily, papal, byzantin, turks and egypt.
    the outher one to: denmark, hre, poland and russia. If the english start a war agains you, beat of there assault and send a diplomat to them and demand to get one of there citys for a casefire, many factions accept this demand.

    hope this will help you.
    Last edited by DragoMaster; November 23, 2006 at 05:39 AM.

  10. #10
    Civis
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    Default Re: First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

    God I remember getting a copy of Shogun off my mate (I know...naughty) years back, having never heard anything about the game and only wanting to play it because of a great screen sho I had seen of the battle scales.
    Wow...talk about a learning curve!
    Now we've got religion, crusades, merchants, priests etc to worry about.

    Ahhh...I love my first memories of the TW series...when I realised there was more to games then death and destuction; not that TW is void of that
    AVOID EMPIRE TW LIKE THE PLAGUE
    SAVE YOUR MONEY, BUY SOMETHING BETTER


  11. #11
    freekyjason's Avatar Civis
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    Default Re: First time TW player and I'm in total immersion.

    i remember getting hooked on shogun. i also remember thinking the game looked bad before trying it.

    shogun to medieval to rome to medieval 2. medieval i loved, rome was great, and medieval 2 is shaping up to great things. but shogun being the first just got me addicted so bad.

    cant wait for the unpacker to get in and mod this game but that was the good thing about rome, the mods that came after its release. and although this game is already good, well mods are there to make it better yeah?

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