The Secret of RTW and its mods ...

[DaVinci]

... or: How is it possible, that RTW(-BI) mods survive that long, and as well still today people start to create new RTW mods, after M2TW was released incl. a lot M2TW mods in the meantime?

I'm curious to hear your guys opinions.

Perhaps don't write long essays, but short statements. I start with one ...

For me, RTW mods own and transport a certain kind of atmosphere, that M2TW cannot transport ... and i cannot explain, what exactly it is, i only know it is complete different :hmmm:

Do you have explanations?

[Erwin Rommel]

SMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTH Gameplay

[icydawgfish]

Well, RTW is simply more fun to play. Most of the European factions and most of the Muslim factions are almost identical. Who wants that? I'd rather play with professional armies in the classical world.

[Juvenal]

Chivalry runs smoothly and quickly on my PC. The unit types all seem to have clear strengths and purposes. I also quite like the more "classical" look of RTW-BI.

Problems I have with M2TW:

• My machine can't handle large siege battles.
• I find M2TW infantry seem to disappear into the terrain, probably because my video card can't handle the subtleties of M2TW lighting.
• Low Unit cohesion turns battles into mobs where I can't disengage and reform, I just have to wait to see whether my side wins.
• Pathfinding in settlements is inept.
• M2TW cavalry feel too strong (even though it is difficult to get them to charge properly), who needs tactics when you can just trample the enemy into the dust?

Of course mods will eventually address most of these problems (although they can't yet mod buildings on the battlemap), and I will eventually have a machine that can run M2TW smoothly. But by that time Empire:TW will be out so and we don't know how moddable it will be.

[Jingles]

I suppose there are a few things really. One of which I'd say is that many people don't have PCs that can support M2TW at all/effectively, including me.
Also, the Classical period is perhaps regarded by many as more interesting than the middle ages. This of course is a matter of opinion. Lastly, I think RTW's battles somehow 'flow' better, if that makes any sense?

[Jingles]

M2TW cavalry feel too strong (even though it is difficult to get them to charge properly), who needs tactics when you can just trample the enemy into the dust?

I'm assuming you mean in melee? One reason for that is the invention of the stirrup, which allowed mounted horsemen to engage in close combat more effectively, which is what made Knights the tanks of the medieval world. Actually I've found that in M2TW knights get killed TOO quickly. For odd balance reasons, a peasant with a long pointy stick and a shield can bring down a Gothic Knight, in full plate armour. imo thats just wrong...

[MasterOfNone]

I must say I was pleasantly surprised to a surge in new RTW modders soon after the release of M2TW.

I got M2TW when it came out - and Kingdoms too a little later. But I found them not as "playable" as RTW and its expansions and soon stopped playing them. It is hard to say why exactly - perhaps the smoother and crisper nature of RTW? Perhaps the feeling that M2TW was less real, more "heavy", and heavy on the visuals with no deep underlying change? There's something else, but I cannot put my finger on it.

I think M2TW modding is being sandwiched between the RTW modding resurgence/continuance and the imminent Empire release...it may struggle unless Empire is really bad...I do hope we see some good original mods released for it though.

Though M2TW may not come out tops when compared in all things to RTW, the TW series - and thus M2TW - is one of the best strategy game series out there.

Hmm..that wasn't a few sentences

[DaVinci]

I'm modding M2 (in the meantime incl. Kingdoms) now since i bought it to apply the SV mod v.1.0 of my Chiv modding compagnon SicilianVespers, since then, i'm also a fan of M2 ... no, of M2 mods (M2 vanilla is pretty boring), but actually i played only SV ( where i'm the second modder of two in the whole ), Broken Crescent, KingdomoftheScots (what i also modded a bit) ... yes, can't think of more, and a little personal mod of the Americas campaign.

I liked and still like all these M2 games, but also after expiriencing the super-updated M2 engine with all its expanded modding options, i still like to play and mod RTW (not vanilla, but mods where i participate/d and other), and this with no feeling that i miss something of M2TW, rather it feels, as you, MoN, say, M2 feels heavy, RTW vice versa feels "lighter" ... eventually more "gravitation-less" ... perhaps it indeed feels better? Those special associations which come to the mind are the fascinating thing for me.

[beatoangelico]

I think the key difference in feeling between RTW e M2TW is the lag and the total lack of cohesion of units in the latter (which has nearly killed the mp community). There's nothing worse in a videogame when the thing you are controlling (be a single character or an army) don't follow what you tell it to do...maybe this is part of the "heaviness" of M2TW. The other big thing is probably related to the derivative vanilla campaign, that basically feel like a big mod of RTW with loads of eye candy and few real innovations: the mods have done great steps forward, but maybe the first impression still remains in the eyes of many.

[rageallday]

I'm assuming you mean in melee? One reason for that is the invention of the stirrup, which allowed mounted horsemen to engage in close combat more effectively, which is what made Knights the tanks of the medieval world. Actually I've found that in M2TW knights get killed TOO quickly. For odd balance reasons, a peasant with a long pointy stick and a shield can bring down a Gothic Knight, in full plate armour. imo thats just wrong...

some peasants did actually use long halberds to knock knights off horses. while the knight was stunned(if all was successful) the peasant would poke around for a gap in the armour where he could find a nice fleshy area and then hopefully be able to steal some parts of the armour after the man was dead.

[hammy the hamster]

knights were rarely actually killed in battle, so long as they were wearing full armour that was in good condition only a longbow, crossbow or lance had the force to penetrate their armour reliably. Usually a knight would be unhorsed and captured, unless he was able to get up again and continue fighting. Even in one on one fights between knights the loser would often be taken prisoner and ransomed later, obviously due to gameplay balance this would be impossible to recreate in a total war game.

[Ataegina]

well rtw its more funny and had a very own "charm" wich mtw2 don't ....

so i use mtw2 to modding, and rtw to play/fun

also CTW its part of the answer for this question

[Erwin Rommel]

but sometimes you will lament in RTW how they dont move like in idle in M2tw and those cavalry movements of M2tw is gorgeous not unlike in RTW. ahh those simple pleasures

[Jingles]

Agreed, M2TW has much better animations, especially on the horses.

[Halie Satanus]

For all it's lack of flashy lights and knobs RTW has become an old friend, steady, loyal, dependable. Ok the diplomacy is , and the animations are a bit tired. But! (here comes the science) .. RTW is a game which didn't pretend to be anything else, it didn't try to be realistic, it didn't try to be next generation, it didn't try to force you to suspend your imagination. In fact the lower quality invites you in, makes you lose yourself, it makes you work that little bit harder. Which is why the mods for RTW work so well, they could only improve on the vanilla, make it better. The restrictions still let you know it's a game but that's not necessarily a bad thing, people want to stretch their imaginations.

MTW2 just tried a bit to hard and imo, missed the point of playing a game by making it to complicated and leaving little to the imagination.

Oh and the unit models are all hunchbacks, and have ugly faces...

Oh, one more thing, Ca doesn't give TWC enough credit for what it does for it's games, without TWC the community wouldn't be anywhere near as vibrant.

[Juvenal]

... RTW is a game which didn't pretend to be anything else, it didn't try to be realistic, it didn't try to be next generation, it didn't try to force you to suspend your imagination. In fact the lower quality invites you in, makes you lose yourself, it makes you work that little bit harder...

I think this view is dependent on when you first encountered the Total War series. I started with Shogun, and began getting glimpses of the RTW engine on Time Commanders a full year (I think) before RTW was released. RTW was truly groundbreaking, allowing battles of 8000 fully 3D soldiers with morale, fatigue, missile modelling and quite reasonable battlefield AI. Rendering the campaign terrain around the borders of the battlemap was inspirational. Compare this to Age of Empires with a 50 unit cap and fixed viewpoint.

I have been playing RTW for 3 and a half years now! I still haven't got tired of it. I think that M2TW was just too small an advance on RTW to be quite as exciting.

Although I can't now go back to the sprites of MTW and STW, I do wish that they hadn't discarded the Risk-style province map. The grating discrepency between turn-length and movement rates could have easily been solved with a 3-level game keeping MTW-style provinces at the top level, and using RTW campaign maps for province-invasion mini-games. Each map would cover just two adjacent provinces and you could have campaign turns of just a couple of days, fitting nicely with the battles taking 1 day. With auto-resolve available for both battles and campaigns, RTW could have been the perfect game.

[Muizer]

I never really got into modding M2TW. It seems to me that it is easier to transform RTW into something different and better. Being so heavily visually oriented, transforming M2TW into something different would be an immense task or you might up with something that actually looks worse than the original.

[MasterOfNone]

I'd like to congratulate DaVinci on setting up a thread in his forum that has pulled us all in lol

Mak, Aradan and others...feel free to post too

I do agree with Halie's comments.

I first saw the RTW engine on Time Commanders too, and a year later or so when it was released I forever left behind Age of Empires.

[Jingles]

Hell yeah, Time commanders is what convinced me to buy RTW. If you think about it, could M2TW have been used for time commanders? I don't think so. RTW's slightly simplistic graphics were perfect for the TV. Viewers would just have been totally lost in M2TW's over embellished visuals.

[Aradan]

Oh, that's indeed an interesting topic!

Short answer is very simple: RTW has that certain indescribable something that M2 lacks.
Long answer: Read Halie's reply.
It's exactly the fact that RTW isn't supposed to be as good as M2 that makes it better. I find that "lower quality" allows more immersion and increases the ways you can fiddle with a game and make it better (sort of like what happens with Morrowind and Oblivion). RTW is less complicated, more robust, less demanding, less 'realistic' but eventually has the same capabilities as M2 (if not more) and can be modded to 1000% of it's vanilla status, while M2 only allows 80% perhaps.
M2 improved aspects of the game with very limited importance and made important ones worse or kept them unchanged. It actually pains you more to see a fully animated, glossed, super-cool multi-modeled unit disobeying your orders, losing cohesion and getting stuck on the battlefield than it does to see the same thing happening to a unit of stick-guys.
When you increase graphics and wow-factor by 100% and you keep the same AI, make battlemap AI and pathfinding worse, screw the balance, destroy the gameplay, add only half-baked features, avoid to beta-test (I can't believe the shield bug would have survived if the game was tested even for two days), add just a pinch of real improvements and then you demand the same computer-power that would be able to support a NASA application, then you make it a really easy choice for players and modders.

On a side-note, if Empires follows M2's example, we're in for a major disappointment... Until CA realises that it's the AI that ultimately makes or breaks a strategy game (and also moddability), things ain't gonna improve a lot.