Intimidation turns to roflcopters. Imbalance for balance!
Well so i recently reinstalled M2TW:K, after being bored with ETW and its flickering campaign map, awful naval combat and tiny world map..
(i cant wait until you modders figure out how to make a SS-style world map in ETW, medieval timeperiod too plz?!)
And of course the first thing i did was to download SS and all latest patches as well as the RR+RC compilation.
After a day of doing nothing but reading changelogs and forum replies about "OMIGOD NOE! ITS SO HARRD WHAT...... I DONT.. CHANGE IT!", i was kinda intimidated.
I was never a pro at the Total War games, i usually just play them from time to time to kill boredom, i hardly even know what most units stats are like. I dont even think i've used all units or seen all buildings in vanilla m2tw!
All the mod topics just went on and on and made it sound more like a omg-serious-business game, than an actual, game for fun.
But then i just started a new campaign on Hard/Hard as Aragon and went on with it.
And its prolly the most fun i've had ever in a Total War game. Not too hard at all, not unfair, not overly serious.
I mean its just natural, your general sieges a castle for 6 turns, his men looses morale, big deal.
An AI enemy gets a few "unfair" bonuses that enables them to heal their armies (since they cant retrain). Big deal.
The end result is a far more FUN game than vanilla, and than all these feature lists and changenotes portray.
Reading them, it sounds even more boring than the Europa Universalis games. But playing it is more fun than most other games.
I guess my point just is that for anyone intimidated by the constant talk of how "Suddenly more ULTRA UBER DIFFICULT IT IS, even EXPERTS have a hard time!!", its just a bunch of nonsense. Try it, play it.
Also, those obsessed with game AI's having NO unfair bonuses need to check out the game called AI War http://arcengames.com/aiwar_features.php
Its based on a pretty unusual concept. Imbalance for balance. The AI is a completely different faction, playing by completely different rules than the human players. This enables fine-tuning of balance with simple things such as ai-economy tweaks, without messing up the entire gameplay aspect of individual units or buildings (amagad the AI doesnt build enough churches! buff churches! o wait that affects humans too)
I pretty much hated imbalance in rts games and turn based games before, but after that game (and now SS) i see the point.
Single player games that try to be balanced vs AI factions have a flaw in their very nature, that an AI can never be balanced with a human, not in anything other than chess or grid-based games.
We arent fighting against other humans, we're fighting against the game. So lets just make it as fun as possible, because thats what matters. There is no balance without imbalanced AI's.
I think we remained for far too long in the pong or boardgame mindset. Of two exactly equal opponents.
The problem is, that doesnt work as games become more complex. It just doesnt.
Unless you want the game to be on a 10x10 grid with just green grass, no terrain, no difference, no variety, you can't have perfect balance vs AI's.
Its just time for the games industry to grasp this as well.
And as for talk of realism.. Real life is the most unbalanced piece ofever!
Old school games, Tank Armor research lvl 1 = +5 armor, -5 speed.
Real life, Tank Armor composite materials research = armor that cant even be penetrated by an rpg, that can withstand dozens of anti-tank shells, AND that is lighter AND thereby making the vehicle faster!
The Tiger tank is a good example of imbalance in real life, that thing has NEVER been represented the proper way in any WW2 game i know of, it would just be a win button.
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Originally Posted by RuleBritannia
