Was NTW a bad idea?

I don't mean the age or anything. I love this period but its seems the CA does a bad job with historical accuracy and scripted stories. Hence the Road to Independence crap in ETW, umm George Washington was not a General in the Seven Years War and he did not Conquer the colonies from the British.

But this is not a big surprise CA has never been one for accuracy, Rome had three family factions in RTW, which was not right and Flaming pigs? Need I say more... The thing was that we overlooked that for two reason, easy to mod and because it was the greatest sandbox ever. Yeah I am playing as the Juli family but I can make friends with Carthage or take over the med with the Greeks. England can conquer North Africa and become a 10th century superpower. This scripted stuff seems like a bad idea because CA has never been good at and its coming at the expense of the free style game play we have all come to love.

Originally Posted by aggie_john

I don't mean the age or anything. I love this period but its seems the CA does a bad job with historical accuracy and scripted stories. Hence the Road to Independence crap in ETW, umm George Washington was not a General in the Seven Years War and he did not Conquer the colonies from the British.

But this is not a big surprise CA has never been one for accuracy, Rome had three family factions in RTW, which was not right and Flaming pigs? Need I say more... The thing was that we overlooked that for two reason, easy to mod and because it was the greatest sandbox ever. Yeah I am playing as the Juli family but I can make friends with Carthage or take over the med with the Greeks. England can conquer North Africa and become a 10th century superpower. This scripted stuff seems like a bad idea because CA has never been good at and its coming at the expense of the free style game play we have all come to love.

Doesn't seem like a bad idea. You have to take risks in business. My guess is that CA wanted to reach out to the large RTS market. Many RTSs follow a strict narrative with no sandbox elements.

Maybe, but then again kids to day like Rap and soda drinks and what not I hope CA doesn't include a music video in there next game to appeal to a large crowd

All jokes aside its a huge risk. Do the causal gamers want to play early 19th combat? With CoH and the C&C games having mastered the scripted RTS I wonder if the TW series could really expect to muscle in on them?

Originally Posted by aggie_john

Maybe, but then again kids to day like Rap and soda drinks and what not I hope CA doesn't include a music video in there next game to appeal to a large crowd

All jokes aside its a huge risk. Do the causal gamers want to play early 19th combat? With CoH and the C&C games having mastered the scripted RTS I wonder if the TW series could really expect to muscle in on them?

I'm not sure why CoH and C&C would be a competition as they are completely different games and audience and I hear that the new C&C isn't that great either.

TW series is a game that combines both turn-based and real-time maps which not many companies have done or ventured.

i think NTW was a great idea. Gives the game more character and there is still sandbox element. In my current Brit campaign I plan to become a republic, join forces with France and invade Prussia.

I wish people would stop using the "flaming pigs" as an example of a historical inaccurracy in RTW. The Romans actually used flaming pigs. THEY REALLY DID.
They were a desperate anti elephant measure, along with carts with swinging booms and long scythes and spears. They were abandoned once they had built up some experience using light troops (velites, slingers) and tactical formations ( maniples deployed directly behind one another rather than the standard checkerboard deployment) to take down or avoid elephants.

There are plenty of other, more ridiculous anachronisms and fantasy units to complain about in RTW ( the "Olipahunts" that appear in slave rebellions, the German "phalanxes" and the entire Egyptian unit roster being 1500 years out of date spring to mind ) without mislabelling the flaming pigs.

Phew!......Sorry about that...Rant over......Carrying on....

I agree that CA has tended to err on the side of "playbility" rather than "accuracy" and has included a lot of "what if" units such as ironclads. I don't have a problem with that, as long as mods are available to cater to those that want a more historic flavour to their game.

RTW for example has many mods that cater to these players, myself included. I'd rage quit RTW once I found the "Oliphaunts" and had been avoiding going anywhere near Egypt and Germany as their units just aggravated me. It would have been the end of the TW series for me until I stumbled across XGM in this very forum.

I played ETW for a solid 5 or 6 months but in the end I gave up. The lack of world changing comprehensive mods means ETW is essentially a vanilla CA game. Even after all the tweaking around the edges we're still left with a game that isn't a very accurate depiction of 18th century combat. I avoided the scripted stuff as much as possible, playing RTI once. For me NTW is not appealing because the modders are essentially only able to tweak a little and essentially it seemes to be a much more linear game.

I'm afraid CA have lost me, but I'm sure they are doing it for a what they see is a good reason. I can imagine their market research has pointed them in this direction and along with DLC, steam and limited abiltiy to mod games, more scripted and historically dubious games are on the way from CA.

I loved the old sandbox, and the toys the other kids brought to the sandbox and left there for me to play with. So, here I am, in the old sandboxes called RTW and M2TW, waiting for the "Ran no Jidai" campaign and spending a few months with each of the mods I find appealling in M2TW (now I'm still playing "For King or Country").