First Official TWC NTW Teaser is out.

Hey guys, we content staff will be looking into all the information out there regarding Napoleon Total War. The first preview is out and has highlighted some interesting issues with the game as well as some predictions on how good it will be. Continue reading the Eagle Standard and you'll find much total war news about mods and other games.

The second preview will be out soon and will probably focus on the multiplayer aspect of the game. I hope you enjoy it guys.


You can find it here ->

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=333260

A very.... opinionated preview, with a highly optimistic conclusion. An interesting read, thank you .

Doesnt sound too hopeful. Sounds like it hasnt changed from Empire that much. And no word on uniform editor/capital city changing/royal family etc ¬_¬

"Empire Total War for one was a slight disappointment when it came to AI for me; I played it for a few weeks and then archived it. Then came 1.5 which was the Empire everyone wanted."


I mean, is this guy serious? The Ai can´t form a line, rushes into melee, because it permanently regroups and is miles away what 18th century warfare looks like. And I´m talking about 1.5! So I don´t think thats the "Empire everyone wanted".

Did he played another game? Or why he simple ignores the fact that the vanilla AI IS broken. And yes, playing according to the AI limitations is ok, but the problem is, if there´s no AI at all. It´s not about blitzing tactics... thats CAI, baby!
I´m talking about a BAI that looses , if I simply put my troops on the map and then leave the room to get something to drink, and when I´m back it´s "Heroic Victory".
And I don´t ask for "a computer as smart as a human". I´m just asking for AI that isn´t as stupid as described above!

Shut up fanboy! Shut up CA-hater! I don´t want any Kindergarten-smalltalk discussions. But PLEASE be honest about the crap we faced with Empire. There is NO BAI.
The one and only thing why I´m still playing this game is because of Darthmod and DMUC. It took a modder from TWC (with the some tips from CA) and about 8 months time to get it done.

And it will be no difference with this "new" Total War. the modders are the ones who will save it.

The Empire everyone wanted from the beginning...
And how can you say that you just battle with your troops and achieve heroic victory? I'm 100% sure I played much more TW than you and I can assure you, play on VH/VH and then we'll talk. Facing against the odds is something to enjoy, and trust me, play as Britain and try to attack Maratha or even France.

If you manage to do a full stack vs full stack Britain vs France on VH/VH, you either win with great dificulty or you get defeated. The AI in Empire can fight, not always, but most of the times it can.

Originally Posted by Basileos Leandros I

The Empire everyone wanted from the beginning...
And how can you say that you just battle with your troops and achieve heroic victory? I'm 100% sure I played much more TW than you and I can assure you, play on VH/VH and then we'll talk. Facing against the odds is something to enjoy, and trust me, play as Britain and try to attack Maratha or even France.

If you manage to do a full stack vs full stack Britain vs France on VH/VH, you either win with great dificulty or you get defeated. The AI in Empire can fight, not always, but most of the times it can.

that's because of stat bonuses not the AI. to prove it, start a custom battle with all the same settings (except you can't tweak the difficulty). Start the battle, go get a cup of coffee, come back and the AI will have lost.

Hoho!
The gentleman is "100% shure he played much more TW than me"! Im deeply impressed!
I started with Shogun and I´m 33 now, so what should we do? Count the hours we played?
And even if you played "much more" than me, it has NOTHING to do with the discussion about the AI.

And you´re best advice to test how "challenging" the AI is, is to try a campaign on VH/VH with BRITAIN? ...now thats really a challenge.

I never lost any game in Empire (on normal, hard, very hard or whatever) before I played Darthmod.
And I even won games with a ratio of 1:3 or some 1:4!
You know why? Because the BAI can´t even form a line, and they chickendance an run left/right infront of my line, and my brave guys hammering volley after volley into this stupid bastards.


My advice to you:
- install DarthModUltimate
- start a campaign with Prussia on VH/VH
- watch how your empire falls... and have fun with it!

...but maybe this is a little to hard for you, because as far as I see, you already quite on your limit with a VH/VH Britain vanilla campaign.

To be serious:
The vanilla BAI in Empire is an insult to every serious strategy player.
Thank the devil for DMUC.
Amen.

I would just like to say, i didnt tell anyone to shut up and rather was going for more of a "take a step back" approach.

And you´re best advice to test how "challenging" the AI is, is to try a campaign on VH/VH with BRITAIN?

Indeed Britain, my first full one was Britain so for Objectivity it was the best one to compare vanilla AI with. As for Austria, I personally found the Dutch to be more challenging.

And I even won games with a ratio of 1:3 or some 1:4!

If the AI would rush and melee like you say it would be pretty hard to win unless the difference in experience or troops was significant.

The gentleman is "100% shure he played much more TW than me"! Im deeply impressed!
I started with Shogun and I´m 33 now, so what should we do? Count the hours we played?
And even if you played "much more" than me, it has NOTHING to do with the discussion about the AI.

I think you took my, "hey i havnt written anything since rome but have still been a tw player as some sort of insult, it was not intended as such.

Because the BAI can´t even form a line, and they chickendance an run left/right infront of my line, and my brave guys hammering volley after volley into this stupid bastards.

I experienced that in 1.0 especially if you skirmish them however i found that it hardly happens in 1.5 and oddly enough I noticed it happened more early game. For more challenging battles I found that giving the AI players my "fire by rank" technology normally stopped the melee rush in 1.0 and in 1.5 I did not find the need to do it. True its a "cheat" but once you have better firing capability the AI seems to automatically resort to melee. So the best thing to do is remove that advantage.

The AI has always chicken danced in most TW games and generally the pattern i noticed was that multiple variables were in play and the AI would change its mind on which variable to engage and thus you'd see that characteristic "chicken dance". APPARENTLY CA noticed this two and the NTW Ai is supposed to be able to now address many variables (flank and center attack) at the same time. Hence my optimism.

- install DarthModUltimate
- start a campaign with Prussia on VH/VH

I will take you up on that offer sir.

Hi belarius,

thanks for the answers, old chap!
But all the points you were answering to, were some statments I gave to the post from Basileos Leandros I!
He was the one who told me "he is 100% shure he played more TW than me".
His whole post was a little like: "you too stupid to see how amazingly smart this AI is"! And he gave me the advice to try BRITAIN to see how challanging the game could be. and this is, ähem, just ridiculous!

you are right that there were always chickenrun in TW, but it is the death to 18th century warfare! but even in MTW2 I haven´t seen this form of complete stupidity. Ok, the "stay on one place and take thousands of arrows till you´re dead"-show wasn´t a bad move either...

all I critized in your small review was, that you said with 1.5 they gave us the "Empire we all wanted"! (see my first post).
Darth gave us the Empire we all wanted!
At least the AI can form a line and is even flanking (even if there if there are still some flaws). but thats the point: this are flaws I can accept. Thats the kind of game I expected from CA. Nobody is asking for a "perfect" AI, but at least one that entertains and challenges a little bit.

And with the "Shut up fanboys, shut up CA-haters!", I meant all the people with almost religious diligence to defend "their" side. it wasn´t directed to you. but, ahhh the dangers of internet discussions...

you are right that there were always chickenrun in TW, but it is the death to 18th century warfare! but even in MTW2 I haven´t seen this form of complete stupidity. Ok, the "stay on one place and take thousands of arrows till you´re dead"-show wasn´t a bad move either...

I personally saw it coming, if you still have Med 2 installed try a custom battle with just firearm units and note how hopeless the computer is at doing anything. I actually went back and tested Empire again and tried adding as many variables as I could, I moved cavalry around and changed my artillery fire and so on and the more I added, the worse the AI got. I still think there is a significant improvement to the game that makes it better now, so after this move from medieval to a new fighting style I fully expected this. The real improvement in 1.5 is actually the campaign ai, I think I did not make it clear that I was generally talking about both at the same time one seems to overcompensate for the other in actual campaigns.

Dont worry about it, I just thought I would weigh in, and seeing your interest in the role modders have I think you'll find the next teaser very interesting.

So we're clear on one point: If Darthmod can 'fix' the AI, then it was never actually 'broken', just handled improperly. Since Darthmod is not a C++ extension of the core engine, it is just tweaking values which control the AI. All that means is CA intentionally or unintentionally was unable to achieve the same AI efficiency in tweaking those values, which they created. As we can recall, they did help Darth with those values, thereby facilitating what some seem to feel is a vast improvement in the AI; I can't comment on that since I don't play Empire. Not saying they should be absolved of all responsibility for how their AI worked out of the box, which was shoddy, but the actual AI Programmers, who wrote the AI itself, clearly didn't do anything wrong if it can be fixed by tweaking and not a core rewrite.

Originally Posted by Augustus Lucifer

So we're clear on one point: If Darthmod can 'fix' the AI, then it was never actually 'broken', just handled improperly. Since Darthmod is not a C++ extension of the core engine, it is just tweaking values which control the AI. All that means is CA intentionally or unintentionally was unable to achieve the same AI efficiency in tweaking those values, which they created. As we can recall, they did help Darth with those values, thereby facilitating what some seem to feel is a vast improvement in the AI; I can't comment on that since I don't play Empire. Not saying they should be absolved of all responsibility for how their AI worked out of the box, which was shoddy, but the actual AI Programmers, who wrote the AI itself, clearly didn't do anything wrong if it can be fixed by tweaking and not a core rewrite.

If a fan can make a better AI within months, it seems stupid for the developers to not make an AI that can fight.

In vanilla empire I always wonder why the AI sends me pieces of its army instead of the whole thing.

Also since the AI units get bonuses on Hard/VH I play in normal. I just wish for a TW game that Hard = better tactics instead of better units.

Originally Posted by Augustus Lucifer

So we're clear on one point: If Darthmod can 'fix' the AI, then it was never actually 'broken', just handled improperly. Since Darthmod is not a C++ extension of the core engine, it is just tweaking values which control the AI. All that means is CA intentionally or unintentionally was unable to achieve the same AI efficiency in tweaking those values, which they created. As we can recall, they did help Darth with those values, thereby facilitating what some seem to feel is a vast improvement in the AI; I can't comment on that since I don't play Empire. Not saying they should be absolved of all responsibility for how their AI worked out of the box, which was shoddy, but the actual AI Programmers, who wrote the AI itself, clearly didn't do anything wrong if it can be fixed by tweaking and not a core rewrite.

Well, the truth is even with Darth the BAI is just performing at the bare minimum, and if anything goes wrong it's the same crisscrossing chicken dancing as usual. I expect the upcoming ETW patch to take it to somewhere similar to Darth's level, but the core problems that cause undecisive behavior with BAI will probably have to wait until NTW.

Originally Posted by aeoleron9

Well, the truth is even with Darth the BAI is just performing at the bare minimum, and if anything goes wrong it's the same crisscrossing chicken dancing as usual. I expect the upcoming ETW patch to take it to somewhere similar to Darth's level, but the core problems that cause undecisive behavior with BAI will probably have to wait until NTW.

Darth was best what I played for RTW. I don't know the problems here, but it almost doesn't work. Just now I had a cavalry unit that never attacked, just stood in place untill it was shot, for a long time.

Hopefully NTW will be better in BAI, which I however doubt.

Originally Posted by aeoleron9

Well, the truth is even with Darth the BAI is just performing at the bare minimum, and if anything goes wrong it's the same crisscrossing chicken dancing as usual. I expect the upcoming ETW patch to take it to somewhere similar to Darth's level, but the core problems that cause undecisive behavior with BAI will probably have to wait until NTW.

This is true, add a few variables and the AI clusters up even in Darth and it seems to me that the AI is confused as to what unit to shoot at. With the improvements in shooting and volleys this means they are shot to pieces.

Sorry Patch 1.5 was a step back from 1.4. I found the AI in patch 1.4 was a great improvement, but still needed some more tweaks. Patch 1.5 comes and turns the AI back to vanilla if not worse. Patch 1.5 is not "Empire I wanted." So I don’t know where this person comes up with it. Just read the Reviews on this form about this game today. Still has many problems with the AI. Darthmod is the only reason I play ETW right now. Darthmod=THE EMPIRE I WANTED. CA has stated over and over again that they are trying to make an AI that does not Challenge the player=Sandbox effect. They have stated this is their goal and it’s to appeal to the casual gamer... Sorry I don’t buy strategy games for the Eye Candy, I buy them for the strategy part. If I wanted to play a sandbox game I would play Super Mario Brothers, Zelda, Sonic, or some other child game...

you know, not buying NTW will send a clear message about the quality of their previous product. Which is fine, I don't care if they release a craptastic skeleton of a game, so long as they give the modders the tools they need to fix their screw ups. Which hasn't been the case. Punish them commercially I say.