Rome 2 and alternate history - a bit of an essay
Hello, TWCers.
As a long time (and, by long time, I mean since the release of Rome in 2004) lurker, but the recent behavior of some members in particular have driven me to gather my thoughts and write a little ditty on Rome II - and the alternate history aspect of the Total War series in general.
Alright, on to the meat:
0.Intro
0.1 About the author
The author is a long time gamer, owning all titles of the TW series and clocking in for over 700 hours in Empire and S2 alone. I did not count the hours I spent on MII or Rome (and I am not sure if I should, because it would probably cause me to abandon gaming, because the number would probably make me feel I have wasted my youth). But Rome cost me at least one exam. Some say, I like games a little bit too much. Could be true. Currently, I am a student and I deal with computers, software development and software deployment on a daily basis.
0.2 The phases
The term of pre-alpha gets slung around the forums a lot. It has incensed quite a bit that people would get it so terribly wrong. There are two things to remember about the development phases:
1) They can be different (length, proportion and content may vary) in each company.
2) They are a yardstick with the precision of PI = 3
A protoypical model looks like this:
1) Pitch - You create a proof-of-concept and pitch it to the publisher to get monies. CA does not need to do this any longer, since the basic formula of each TW game is the same.
2) Pre-Alpha - You get all you cool ideas. You fool around in the concept. Can you go through walls? What sort of agents are there? Do you have a political model? Also: Concept art + first modeling. (needless to say, this phase can be rather long, since you can't paralellize/automate the work very well)
3) Feature lock - It is decided what goes in the game. This is the moment you get the feature list. Boarding is in! *whoohoo*
4) Alpha - You implement said features. After this phase, the game logic works, but it may have hickups and so on.
5) Beta - You go hunting for bugs, polish and balance the game. At the end of this phase it should run on most computers and is said to have "gone gold"
Of course, these phases may iterate, overlap and do various other nasty things with each other. So if CA tells you it is pre-alpha, it means they show you what could be. It is like showing someone a disc of bronze with a few leather straps at the back and telling him "This could be your shield one day.". The pre-alpha can be rather long in some projects, since it includes the step of "working out what works with each other" - some consume up to two thirds of their whole project runtime with it. As a question of interest, I would like to know: Is CA on an iterative model of software development.
0.3 The Demo
Regarding the above, the code base for the demo could very well be out of the early pre-alpha phase. It is not likely that the binaries of the demo have been compiled recently, since working on a demo is rather involved. It needs snipping, clipping and debugging which ties up developers and other resources. I'll say again: Demo making is not something you do on a jiffy. It is involved and expensive. It could be that the binaries of the teutoburg and the nile demo are one and the same and they just exchanged a few tables and added a map. This theory is strengthend by the fact that the flying height has been changed - probably by a value in a table (that means, CA is modding their own game - spells good things for mod support). The only way to find for sure would be CA publishing the compile date and time.
So, no. The demo is NOT the finished product. Not even close. If it would be, the product would have long been released. The demo is just that. A demonstration - like the blacksmith who makes a little knife as a demonstration of forging techniques - you wouldn't claim that that is a mishapen sword?
1. It's a game, folks!
Rome II is a game. Not the simulator "Empires of the Acient World XVII" (fictional title) that makes you follow the steps of the Roman Republic and in which you loose if you win a battle without using the original tactics from history.
I will repeat for extra impact: Rome II is not a historical simulator. Mistake is as such at your own peril.
On the technical side, it is also constrained that it needs to run on PCs and may not need more that the Shogun 2 minspecs.
1.1 Representation
These things mean games need to abstract things. If you want to know how a game without abstraction feels, go play unmodded MOO 3 - or go to your local city hall and have them give you a bunch of spreadsheets. That is about the level of level of fun you will get out of a game without abstraction.
This means you get such things as The Balls Of Hay standing in for various hill-down-rollable items like logs, big stones, more logs, barrels full of naptha and so on. They probably choose the Balls because they look cool - and they are visible on battlefield from far above. If it annoys you so much, make a mod which replaces them with rolling boulders.
Now, if you ask, why aren't the other types of HDRIs in? Answer is that each would need to be balanced seperately, need its own physics and so on. Would consume a lot of resources which probably were needed elsewhere. Representation is also visible on the stratmap, where single (wo)men represent armies or agents including their entourage, supersized so you can see them form your map (same goes for cities). If you are so insistent on "realistic" size, go to google maps and look at e.g. Sicily and try to make out single persons from far above. Armies turn into horse riders as a fast visual clue that they are quick-marching (according to CA, this effect is not final and subject to change). You need to convey a lot of information fast - which is why you represent a rainstorm as dark clouds on the map and not in the sub-sub menu "Enviromental effects affecting the army" of the army inspection panel. A thing mods always have done was to adjust that representation. I am sure they will do so this time again.
1.2 Limiations
Rome II and all other games run on your PC - which is a physically limited machine. It does not have the power to render a game in the quality of Avatar interactive and in real-time. It makes boundaries for the amount of logic your PC can run. So, yes, you could have devilishly good AI - and 0.5 fps on a high end machine. This limit also explains why Paradox games tend to have rather non-existant graphics and real-time battle. The amount of numbers they need to crunch in the background takes up all the machines processing power. A rough formula for is:
basic game logic (i.e. SAI, BAI, GUI, etc) + bad graphics (red blobs ;-) = minimum specs
This means, that many of these fancy proposals from the forums not only fail from the economic standpoint but also from the spec standpoint. If you implement them all, you could walk your dog during turn. A compromise is needed - there is a lousy triangle there, but I won't draw it.
1.3 CA is a company
Repeat that sentence. CA makes a game according to economic principles. They cannot make "labors of love" like EB or the Sekigahara. They have to sell it and produce it economically.
This means: If you find the authenticity lacking, make a mod. If you don't want to make a mod, shut up! Thank you. That said, they are rather nice for a company. This economic consideration also means that gameplay always will take preference over threadcounting. You'll have to mod that in (example: Evocatii callup als an event or tech instead of a recruitable unit).
2. Rome II (and Total War in general) is alternate history
If you know what alternate history is, continue reading. If not, Wikipedia is your friend. After reading the article return here. The basic thesis is, that as soon as you start a Total War game, you write alternate history. You can (and probably will) go completely against the history books. Maybe Cesar never was important in your history. Maybe the Parthians conquered the whole east including India. Your imagination is the limit.
2.1 Accuracy until 272 BC
The game starts in 272 BC. Until then, one may call for accuracy and historical figures with justifcation. The correct people should be alive, the cities included on the correct spots, the coastlines rather clear. The initially available units should be from history and so on and so forth. But even then, according to the above, it may be "adjusted" for better gameplay. For example, limiting the places where an army can land and marking them with sand beaches instead of
cliffs.
So far, so good. But now, what is accurate? Just the stuff that was found and is provable with hard material? If so, one must ask the question: How much of it has been lost or destroyed? Especially with regard to organic materials, I am quite certain some things which were in common use 2000 years ago did not survive the passing of time. Therefore, especially for a game, include everything that was probable - experimental archeology offers great insight in this and I would take their results over finds in most cases. You should (and indeed I think it is only possible to) gun for historical authenticity not historical accuracy - stop counting the threads in other words. Include what probably was, not only what you can prove. This is especially true for entities for which there are not many sources and those sources are probably biased (e.g. Tacitus "Germania").
2.2 After 272 BC start asking "What if?"
Ask what would have happened if Rome was sacked in 260 BC by Carthage and burned to the ground? What if the germanic tribes had unified under a royal family, who was advised by romans-in-exile? And so on, and so forth.
In this case, avoid the single-great-man theory - this means, do not think:
It was invented in Rome in our history. Therefore it can only be invented in Rome in any history! And nowhere else. Under no circumstances.
For the game, this means CA has to extrapolate. What if the gallic tribes had taken up wearing segmented armour looted from the Romans?Who would wear it? What would it look like? Would you get pseudo-knights?
You need mechanisms to cover those ahistorical developments. Advanced germanic boats available after annexing/subjugating the tribe, and reseraching a tech. If you cannot stand that and demand that the members of german tribes always have to run around in trousers, with naked chests, a cloak and armed with a little wooden shield and a short wooden spear, despite being members of an empire which spans most of northern Europe and a good deal of the Mediterranean, go play "Empires of the Ancient World XVII" - it will be a much more rewarding experience for you. But please, don't try to bully the rest of us into your opinion.
Discussion of another member removed. Ybbon
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Originally Posted by omzdog
ing long ass time to make a mod i mean RS 2 came out what 3 years ago??? and there still working on a patch same for EB 2 that thing is what 8 years underway and its still not released so what do you expect that some magical modder appear that can make a third age mod in what 6 months?
