Few questions & feedback --- Also: "Is there a lite version?"

[effeTW]

Hi - I havent posted here before so I definitely dont want to start out by being controversial or anything....

"However!" --- I am really trying to like SS, but it just seems so poorly designed in a few specific ways. Bad game design choices. I'm actually very surprised this mod is so popular.
My reason for posting is not to complain - but to ask if there are different ways to tweak SS and remove some of these "game design flaws" as I see them.

First of all - this mod has ALLOT of AMAZING work in it, that much is clear.
I am VERY impressed by allot of the improvements - definitely!
Superb. Well done.
Everyone knows what these are.
They are so obvious.

However there's a few outstanding game design flaws (imo) that make the mod really unenjoyable:

* Clutter --- there is simply way too many added units / buildings **that make no sense**. Adding CONTENT simply to say "there's lots of content!" is a game design flaw. If an extra unit doesnt need to be added to a roster? Adding it = game design flaw.

* Unit imbalance --- the units are completely imbalanced. I ran a script to output all the unit data per faction and statistically there are literally factions with units 3 times stronger than other factions. I ran the numbers. Counting attack, defense, unit cost, and categorizing into unit types. It appears that different people created the unit rosters to different factions - and didnt communicate much with eachother.

* Names of units --- this is of course I am sure personal flavour, however to 99% of people on earth who speak only a few languages at most, having "native" names of units where it becomes a HUGE amount of senseless information to remember (and learn) just to play a game --- its a real game design flaw.
There is nothing wrong with "Byzantine Heavy Swordsman" rather than Scoutatoui - or something of this nature.
What is being traded here is: [Ease of playability] vs [immersion] --- however the immersion is minimal (the names are ugly anyway), and the reduction in ease of playability is quite significant and noticeable.


These are the main things that really ruin the game for me.
I have tried and tried to play a few games here - but the fact that there are a HUGE roster of new units in each faction with STRANGE names that dont tell me anything by their name - and the unit roster itself is not only imbalanced but cluttered like crazy - just makes the game no fun.

So --- I am wondering.

IS THERE any submod or "lite" version of SS that does any of the following:
1) Doesnt add as many units
2) Has normal names of units
3) Better balances the unit stats

If there is please let me know and thank you for the help in advance.

Again - the work put into this mod is amazing, its just the few choices of implementation --- you guys just went crazy. Add add add more more more..... no no, less is more guys, less is more.

[Pherion]

Everyone loves SS because of how it is, you seem to go against it's core features, so you might as well leave. And for Power seekers like myself, More is better! In my opinion I wish there were way more units, factions and regions, it's still too small for me. But because of the hardcoded limits in the engine itself it won't be possible unfortunately.

Better look for another mod my friend. This isn't for you. Try Deus Lo Vult or Regions to Conquer or even Kingdoms Grand Campaign Mod.


EDIT: I forgot to answer your question. And no, there isn't a Lite version and there is a big chance that will never be, because the dev team is away as of now, and if they return, I really doubt they wanna do two different versions just to appease you or a select few. Doing just the main version is already hard enough!

[effeTW]

Alright thanks - yep! I understand allot of people like it. I just cant imagine why.
It seems many people simply want to have army stacks where no unit is the same and they have all a bunch of wild fantasy names.

I understand that allot of players actually spend most of their time gawking at their "really cool looking" units --- I dont, I actually play the game and dont really look at my units that much.

What throws me off from SS is that the entire game design and unit roster is of course completely inaccurate historically - and even worse it throws gameplay out the window.
A) There were much fewer "unit types" in that era, actually. You could basically categorize "unit types" into a very few units, as building diverse weapons of war was too costly at scale.
B) As far as gameplay goes: Everytime you add a unit to a roster, you further destroy faction diversity and you further ruin balance. Game design 101. (Starcraft is the world's #1 competition game because it still has plenty of diverse units and achieves balance) The best games offer enough choice + diversity + balance. SS offers none. This is a mathematically true statement not an opinion (I scraped all the unit data, there are factions with 3:1 unit strength vs others - at same unit costs)

I like factions that are actually different. They have strengths, and they have weaknesses. Weaknesses being the key thing here. Without weaknesses, your faction is the same as every other faction - just wearing a different color.
SS seems like "ok lets just give every faction 5 of every kind of unit and make up some crazy name we read off wikipedia".
I just saw the same thing now in Rome II with DeI --- basically same nonsense there all over again. Probably even worse in that mod.

This is not at all historically accurate nor is it good gameplay and I see no reason any actual *gamer* would play this.
Eye candy kiddies? Sure - but they make no sense anyway, could never understand kids who actually reap enjoyment out of hours of looking at pretty pixels.
But regardless if thats what they enjoy then thats fine for them.

KGCM is already my #1 goto mod for historically accurate + good gameplay + balance in MII:TW -- always has been.
I just thought I'd give this a shot, but its obviously not for me!
To each his own!
Enjoy!

[jurcek1987]

Unfortunately, like Pherion said, SS just isn't for you. Although the logic of some of your points you presented is bewildering.
You complain about units having native names, but then you call units completely historically inaccurate with wild fantasy names .

Everytime you add a unit to a roster, you further destroy faction diversity and you further ruin balance.

Sorry, but this makes no sense to me.

And mathematically comparing unit stats of different factions is pointless, of course some factions will have stronger units than others. Don't you realize than some states are militarily stronger, or even much stronger than others? A insignificant backwater state like Scotland for example will naturally have far weaker units than a superpower that can field fully professional troops. Though I love StarCraft (Wings of Liberty is probably my all-time favourite game), the comparison makes no sense. These are two completely different strategy games.

There were much fewer "unit types" in that era, actually.

Ehm, no.

This is not at all historically accurate nor is it good gameplay and I see no reason any actual *gamer* would play this.
Eye candy kiddies? Sure - but they make no sense anyway, could never understand kids who actually reap enjoyment out of hours of looking at pretty pixels.
But regardless if thats what they enjoy then thats fine for them.

Both the historical accuracy and the actual gameplay are light years ahead of vanilla M2TW.

And funny, I always thought that "eye candy kiddies" wouldn't have the patience or understanding to play a complex and historical mod like SS and would much rather stick to vanilla and that actual gamers prefer the mods, for the depth and historical accuracy.

[Pherion]

Alright thanks - yep! I understand allot of people like it. I just cant imagine why.
It seems many people simply want to have army stacks where no unit is the same and they have all a bunch of wild fantasy names.

I understand that allot of players actually spend most of their time gawking at their "really cool looking" units --- I dont, I actually play the game and dont really look at my units that much.

What throws me off from SS is that the entire game design and unit roster is of course completely inaccurate historically - and even worse it throws gameplay out the window.
A) There were much fewer "unit types" in that era, actually. You could basically categorize "unit types" into a very few units, as building diverse weapons of war was too costly at scale.
B) As far as gameplay goes: Everytime you add a unit to a roster, you further destroy faction diversity and you further ruin balance. Game design 101. (Starcraft is the world's #1 competition game because it still has plenty of diverse units and achieves balance) The best games offer enough choice + diversity + balance. SS offers none. This is a mathematically true statement not an opinion (I scraped all the unit data, there are factions with 3:1 unit strength vs others - at same unit costs)

I like factions that are actually different. They have strengths, and they have weaknesses. Weaknesses being the key thing here. Without weaknesses, your faction is the same as every other faction - just wearing a different color.
SS seems like "ok lets just give every faction 5 of every kind of unit and make up some crazy name we read off wikipedia".
I just saw the same thing now in Rome II with DeI --- basically same nonsense there all over again. Probably even worse in that mod.

This is not at all historically accurate nor is it good gameplay and I see no reason any actual *gamer* would play this.
Eye candy kiddies? Sure - but they make no sense anyway, could never understand kids who actually reap enjoyment out of hours of looking at pretty pixels.
But regardless if thats what they enjoy then thats fine for them.

KGCM is already my #1 goto mod for historically accurate + good gameplay + balance in MII:TW -- always has been.
I just thought I'd give this a shot, but its obviously not for me!
To each his own!
Enjoy!

Dude, I got no quarrel with people not liking what I like. Everyone has their own tastes. But please, stop the .
Comparing Games is always non productive. Sadly it has become a trend in gaming for whatever reason. Every game/mod is he's own. Stop Comparing, it causes nothing but friction.

Just leave man. It's really simple. Do the Mature thing and leave without bothering others. When someone doesn't like something, they leave without bothering those that do.
There are many mods outhere for everyone to enjoy.

[Deepstrike101]

That's funny, effeTW... because no offense, but from your post you sound to me like the exact kind of eye-candy gamer you appear to resent. Let's take a look.

... no unit is the same and they have all a bunch of wild fantasy names.

Not a single name I've seen would indicate fantasy in any sense of the word. How are druzhina, boyars, Nubian spearmen, zweihander, contaratoi, etc. fantasy names? These are what these men were called historically. There's a reason most of these names exist. Druzhina were not called heavy one-handed axemen. Boyars were not called Russian Sword Nobles. Zweihander were not called guys with giant swords. These names come from history, and in most cases are what those people would have identified themselves as.

What throws me off from SS is that the entire game design and unit roster is of course completely inaccurate historically

Would you mind explaining which units exactly you have gripes with? Also, as has been mentioned, it's light years ahead of vanilla in terms of accuracy. What the hell are vanilla's dvor archers? Boyar sons? Why in the world are they wearing barbarian steppe people/Mongol masks? What exactly are Kazaks doing in 1,000 AD in Northern Russia, and what is the difference between them and Cossacks? WHERE ARE THE RUSSIANS IN THE VANILLA RUSSIAN ROSTER?

Now compare that ludicrous BS in vanilla to Stainless Steel's Novgorod and Kiev rosters. No more dvor or T'sar's guard. Now we have boyars and junior druzhina (terms which were used historically). We have junior and senior spear militias wearing Russian lamellar, chain, and leather armor instead of west European chain hauberks. Luchniki (archers) and dismounted junior druzhina, but also crossbow militia. Pecheneg mercenaries instead of "kazaks." The Russian heavy infantry and cavalry now look slightly viking like in appearance rather than like those pseudo-Mongolic bastards from vanilla. Unfortunately Stainless Steel still hasn't done away completely with those dumb face masks that vanilla has, but at least now many of the men in the units have historically accurate headgear.

I've done some research on the way Russians fought warfare in the early medieval times in preparation for writing an AAR on a Russian campaign, and I am so, so glad that Stainless Steel's team looked at historic Russian artwork rather than make things up like CA did. The Russian roster in particular deserves attention because many of the units (ie, pikemen, gunpowder units, some others) still use western textures (my Russian pikemen look Spanish...) but that's a different story.

Stainless Steel has the most historically accurate rosters I've ever seen in a game, only bettered by its submods. So I don't know what in the world you are talking about.

A) There were much fewer "unit types" in that era, actually. You could basically categorize "unit types" into a very few units, as building diverse weapons of war was too costly at scale.

Not really, no. You can make the argument that certain units fought in a combined formation (ie, pikemen/halberdiers/arquebusiers fought as a single pike and shot block) but that is beyond the M2TW engine. Otherwise, there are many units to depict the different kinds of people who could find themselves on the field of battle. There are rural levies which tend to be hardier and more aggressive and urban levies which are better equipped but not as prepared mentally. There are local mercenaries such as Mourtatoi or Pechenegs who you would not find in Iberia. Poorer knights such as mailled knights and richer ones who own significant estates, such as feudal knights. Eastern European noblemen, like Boyars, and bodyguards/professional non-nobles such as druzhinas. Professional archers and levy archers. The list goes on. The Stainless Steel list is reflective of the different people medieval states could draw from for warfare, not some kind of arbitrary classification that states made up and then funded for the sake of "diversity" (by the way, why would diversity increase cost?).

All the finesse and research that went into this system seems to fly way over your head.

B) As far as gameplay goes: Everytime you add a unit to a roster, you further destroy faction diversity and you further ruin balance. Game design 101. (Starcraft is the world's #1 competition game because it still has plenty of diverse units and achieves balance) The best games offer enough choice + diversity + balance. SS offers none. This is a mathematically true statement not an opinion (I scraped all the unit data, there are factions with 3:1 unit strength vs others - at same unit costs)

Your starcraft comment deserves no response, save that it shows you value an arcade-style game over realism.

I am at a loss for words at your logic. Let's recap:
A) DIVERSITY BAD. Stainless Steel has too much!
B) DIVERSITY GOOD. Stainless Steel doesn't have it!

Stainless Steel has a huge range of choices and diversity, so I'm really not sure what you're saying. I've been playing the game for years and years and even with the same roster you can create very different armies which fight in very different ways.

History was not balanced either. I prefer historical accuracy to your "all factions should be the same" assertion. Some nations were stronger than others, sometimes significantly. I'm not sure what calculations you used, but if you calculated it the same way auto-resolve does, it's useless. Heavy infantry and heavy cavalry have higher stats. That doesn't mean they realistically win.

I like factions that are actually different. They have strengths, and they have weaknesses. Weaknesses being the key thing here. Without weaknesses, your faction is the same as every other faction - just wearing a different color.

The Stainless Steel factions all have their strengths and weaknesses. Western factions have strong shock cavalry, able to annihilate infantry. Eastern European factions have strong melee cavalry, able to often defeat knights despite having superficially inferior stats. Middle Eastern factions have a good set of light cavalry, though they don't get heavy cavalry until later... their bodyguards are some of the best in the early game though. Some factions have better access to heavy infantry than others. Some, such as England or Russia, have excellent archers while Genoa must rely on crossbowmen... and Norway can't trust its archers at all.

It doesn't look like you've bothered putting in any effort to figure this out... so again, it just flies over your head.

SS seems like "ok lets just give every faction 5 of every kind of unit and make up some crazy name we read off wikipedia".
I just saw the same thing now in Rome II with DeI --- basically same nonsense there all over again. Probably even worse in that mod.

Have you only been doing custom battles? In the campaign your access to certain units is heavily restricted by real recruitment. As for the names, see above. All real.

I will, however, agree with you about DeI. I am getting into that mod and they have maybe a bit too many names which make it hard to distinguish units. Not all bad though.

This is not at all historically accurate nor is it good gameplay and I see no reason any actual *gamer* would play this.
Eye candy kiddies? Sure - but they make no sense anyway, could never understand kids who actually reap enjoyment out of hours of looking at pretty pixels.
But regardless if thats what they enjoy then thats fine for them.

See, the thing about gamers is that they try to understand a game and how it works and why, rather than downloading it, superficially playing a few custom battles, running some kind of vague and meaningless calculation, and then going to the forums to complain about it.

Stainless Steel was confusing to me at first. Lots of new things, and I didn't know what they all were or meant. But I spent the time and learned and then it all started to make sense. All the design decisions and unit rosters came into place. I took the time, like a *gamer* should and explored the mod and found that it was one of the best gaming experiences I could find all around- not because of "eye candy." If I wanted eye candy, I would be playing vanilla Empire.

KGCM is already my #1 goto mod for historically accurate + good gameplay + balance in MII:TW -- always has been.
I just thought I'd give this a shot, but its obviously not for me!
To each his own!
Enjoy!

Yes, many people indeed prefer shallow and historically inaccurate or outright arcade game such as vanilla Total War or Starcraft over deep, complex, accurate mods like Stainless Steel.

I must apologize if I've been unforgiving in my analysis of your post, but you really should do some reading, playing, and analyzing before coming to the forums with a complaint.

EDIT: I must add, I haven't played previous versions of Stanless Steel, but it seems that the old ones (version 4?) were what you may describe as "LITE."

[Riva]

Maybe you want to try out the "Titanium" or "SSHIP" submods that are further developing SS by adding more historical accuracy and other gameplay features. Just a few comments to your post:

1. I do not think there are too many units/buldings that are making no snese, sure there are some but i am more concerned about the varity of mercanaries that are taking away unit slots.

2. There is actually a lot of balance that you will notice especially in late era campaigns, you just have to see it from a different perspective: Faction rosters are balanced against their neighbours / potentially enemies and the faction size, not wholly against all others. If you play as Poland for example, you dont lack any of the crucial units of factions around you (Denmark, TO, Hungary, Kiev, Novgorod) but you also dont have anything outstandig (maybe polish guard but they are rare). Only the HRE roster would outperform yours (sooner or later) but i think thats what the devs wanted, because it is a large faction and far more important. The HRE has to compete against france and/or england and probably will be at war with smaller nations at the same time.

3. If you ask me there could be much more "native" names. First, i was a little bit confused too while playing as the ERE but then i became interested in their units / character traits / titles and started to read about them on wikipedia. After that the ERE became one of my favourite factions, as you will relaize the devs put alot effort into details (hope every faction would have received that much love).

[MWY]

Okay sorry for going offtopic here a little bit, but: Starcraft is a whole different genre, you can't even compare the two games. In MTW2, you can't simply look at stats. You have to respect the culture, the kind of unit, the equipment, the structure of the state it was in as well as the economy of the region. In SSHIP for example, I programmed an auto-calculator to derive unit costs from unit stats. Still there will be overall faction imbalance (which I included there), since some units are just a different kind than other uits. F.E. some tribal units like cumans are obviously much cheaper than professional units in medieval arabia. Cities were bigger and wealthier, guard duties had to be paid more than people living like hunters/archers in a tribal structure anyways in the steppes. Oh and how exactly do you want to achieve diversity when you state above that there was little difference in units? Fact is, there was little difference between france and the hre at the time the game starts. Another fact is that f.e. medieval middle-european armies and medieval turkish armies were (almost) completely different. So there is diversity, but more culturewise than factionwise, atleast in the beginning.

Coming to starcraft: This game only is alive because there is no competition in the genre. You got 3 factions, which are completely different, but in no way is every unit even close to being useful. They actually balance the game so it mostly fits the 50-50 winrates, but overall the game is far from balanced. Some factions are just overpowered in different times of the game (Z can instapool without being punished, P wrecks T when they got AOE before T can counter it). Also you got completely useless mechanics and upgrades in there, actually killing the amount of strategic choices. As a protoss, do you ever not upgrade warpgate? Is there a strategic tradeoff? No, there is not. There are a lot of things you will absolutely always need, and a lot of things you only build when you win anyways. Which is pretty terrible for a strategy game. I played SC2 for a long time, but once those flaws become obvious to you, as well as the complete ignorance of those issues by the game developers, you just cannot state that this is a good game.

[Dekhatres]

yes they added most of the units in SS 6.3, so try either SS 6.1 or 6.2

[Point Blank]

* Unit imbalance --- the units are completely imbalanced. I ran a script to output all the unit data per faction and statistically there are literally factions with units 3 times stronger than other factions. I ran the numbers. Counting attack, defense, unit cost, and categorizing into unit types. It appears that different people created the unit rosters to different factions - and didnt communicate much with eachother.

Just a comment on this. Though I cannot remember the details of how 6.4 handles recruitment, there are sub-mods that take this into account (RR/RC does for example). Specifically, factions with less variety of units will have more of them available to recruit. That is, the same (or close to the same - the AOR system can cause some variation) combined number at any given level of castle/city and year as another faction with more unit variety.

As far as the unit stats themselves, there was in general no specific attempt to 'balance' the units of one faction against those of the others. Units are armed and armored as depicted graphically. All stats are generated according to a documented system. Have you ever played historical simulations? I'm not saying that SS is super-historical (how could it be, given it covers around 500 years?) but the unit rosters are an attempt at being at least reasonably so - looked at in that light 500 units is not really so many.

Anyway, simulations are not 'balanced'. They reflect/represent reality as best they can, or try to. WW2 flight simulators, for example, do not attempt to balance a Mustang vs a Bf109, in the same way as ground combat simulators do not try a balance a Panther's sloped glacis plate vs a Sherman's.

* Names of units --- this is of course I am sure personal flavour, however to 99% of people on earth who speak only a few languages at most, having "native" names of units where it becomes a HUGE amount of senseless information to remember (and learn) just to play a game --- its a real game design flaw.
There is nothing wrong with "Byzantine Heavy Swordsman" rather than Scoutatoui - or something of this nature.
What is being traded here is: [Ease of playability] vs [immersion] --- however the immersion is minimal (the names are ugly anyway), and the reduction in ease of playability is quite significant and noticeable.

Again, as has been said above, those are the names that such units were commonly known by historically. Your personal difficulty with them is not really an argument to name them more generically. It's not that hard to pull up the unit descriptions.

[effeTW]

Wow well thanks for all the replies first of all, folks.

I'll just make a few reply points:

#############
1. All the replies suggesting counter-logic to my original post, or suggesting that my argument lacked logic --- failed to actually understand my argument to begin with. You took your counter argument out of context, or even replied as a completely different topic which had nothing to do with my statement. Will explain the point again below.

2. I am not saying I am right/wrong or any of you are right/wrong. Actually - we are all right, because this is a matter of preference.

3. I am not at all saying this mod is bad either. In fact I've said its really good, it just has a few flaws IMO that ruin gameplay which are very common "game design flaws" that I see very often in modding as modders very often lack professional game design skills ---- game design skill is not a trivial skill either. I've shipped a few games. For example the #2 mod in half-life that became a stand-alone (Day of Defeat) was one of my games. What did I learn from that experience? I learned that I'm an amateur in game design compared to the real experts. Some of whom I was lucky enough to work with on that project and others.

4. My post was requesting some info on 2 questions: 1) Is there a "lite" version that doesnt impose such heavy information-hurdle into enjoying the mod? 2) Is there anyway to rebalance the troop trees so they are competitive across the board?
#############

Regarding #4 --- points were made that to focus on realism vs gameplay -- SS actually makes troop trees unbalanced purposefully in order to make each faction realistic in their own setting.
I like this point actually.
It makes perfect sense, and its not what I thought about at first.
Its not to my taste however, as I like to play M2TW in a way where I can play the smaller/underdog factions, and still conquer the world.
Given this scenario it seems that this kind of game will statistically never happen in SS. Because that wouldnt have happened in reality, according to the mod.
While I understand this concept and understand some people may like it (different gameplay / challenge etc which is cool) - I dont like it personally.
This is a common example of too much focus on realism in a GAME --- which is #1 way to destroy GAMEPLAY, actually.
When devs use the excuse "its realistic" in their game, they are sacrificing gameplay in order to achieve this ficticious thing called realism - which unless it is a virtual reality simulator to begin with - doesnt serve any purpose.
I can list a dozen games that destroyed themselves in pursuit of realism.
DayZ:SA anyone?


Regarding #3 --- the mod is beautiful work for sure.
Great diversity in everything.
I never said I didnt want diversity. (This is where some replies above failed to get my point).
What I said was, diversity requires balance.
IE: If I want to pursue diversity in my game in order to sell it as "this game is super diverse!" I can just add 10,000 different units.
It would then be diverse as hell. No?
But it would be impossible to create any kind of gameplay or balance with that much "diversity". It would just be a dumb game with tons of units that serve no purpose. No purpose other than looking at a bunch of pretty different units I guess, since no other purpose could possibly be argued.
Again - amateur game devs / modders fall into this trap very very very often: "lets pursue diversity! diversity at all cost! oooh i want to make another unit type!" ---> gameplay and balance is destroyed completely.
I used the example of starcraft only as a leading example of strategy games on the market that has quite a diversity of units (20+ per faction in competition mode; 50+ in campaign mode) -- while it still near perfectly achieves balance and gameplay.


Regarding #2 --- this mod is still great. Those who enjoy it I am sure really enjoy it.
The thing that throws me off is that right up-front, just in order to play this mod, it requires a good 50 hours of learning the unit roster and "diversity" before I can even decide if its good or not.
Why would I invest 50 hours of my time just to be able to figure out if the game is even good?
Maybe thats exaggerating - but its obviously a very steep curve in having to learn all the unit rosters, unit uses, and how they compare to eachother. Then learning all the other diverse things it adds - traits, etc.
Now - I understand that this is something about my gaming style and personality: I used to be a pro gamer.
(I'm too old now, after 26-30 years old you cant compete with hand/eye coordination and APM anymore)
Because of this - I simply cannot enjoy a game until I _KNOW EVERYTHING_ otherwise I cant be competitive at it.
So I concede that this maybe isnt a problem for other people, and I am a crybaby about something that maybe shouldnt matter.
For me it does though --- I wouldnt be able to enjoy a game until I learned and understood EVERY unit type in my faction - and EVERY unit type in every other faction so that I know what I am fighting against.

Well that also proves another point though: If, in the end, this mod actually is really good / extremely well balanced / offering unique faction-historical-challenge? ...and all I need to do to enjoy it is learn everything and then it will be awesome?
Well I agree that this would be awesome.
However I currently dont want to risk spending so much time just to learn the mod because what I already see, doesnt convince me that it is infact that great game design / gameplay which would be worth putting in so much effort to enjoy.
I could be completely wrong though - even for my own preferences.
I could be missing out on the perfect mod.
I very well could be.
Oh well. My loss.


Regarding #1 ---
Actually to be historically accurate - there wouldnt be so many units.
Population of planet earth was very small back then. An entire kingdom might be a mere 100,000 people TOTAL!
Diversity simply wasnt possible. Economically - socially - or statistically.
The HRE itself had less than 5m total inhabitants at its PEAK - in 1200 CE!
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires)
Many of those tribes, nations, etc we have allot of interesting history about - were a mere few thousand people in total.
So how is it possible to have 20 unit TYPES - that means entire disciplines + equipment setups + styles of fighting - in a small nation of 50k to 100k total people?
Do the math. Even if you count 1/3rd of their population as "fighting men" you simply wouldnt even have enough population to make that many different units (and 1/3rd is insane - its average 1/5th for the best warrior states like Vikings, Sparta or the Teutonic Knights).
Something to understand about history is that there were many different names for the same unit or fighting force.
That didnt make it a different type of unit.
Economically they also didnt have the means to create that many diverse weapons of war.
Units were not so organized like you might think.
It was basically "lets use the tools at our disposal - ah, we got a few long sticks? lets make a few pikes to carry with us - oh and bring those axes too in case they have a shield line".


Regarding #1 --- The entire point I was making about unit naming styles was that: "if you make unit names in 20 different languages in a GAME - it becomes 1 more entire 'dictionary of information' that a player is required to LEARN before he can enjoy the game".
Its very simple: if unit types were called something logical rather than by native names - it would allow us to focus on learning how they work and all the other diverse elements of the mod.
The fact that this mod pursues diversity and quantity over everything else === destroys the gameplay.
Game design (that is = "how to make good games that are enjoyable") is about balancing things like immersion vs playability; realism vs mechanics; diversity vs balance.
SS goes extremely way too far in one end of diversity and immersion and realism and forgets all about making the game ENJOYABLE and EASY TO PLAY.
If I have to keep a spreadsheet of unit names - or memorize 250 different unit names - in order to play effectively?
Then the game design failed.
Period.


These things obviously dont bother many many people - and you enjoy the mod just fine.
I'm too picky I guess.
So i cant enjoy this mod.
Thanks anyway.

(I will try the suggestion though about 6.1 which didnt add the 1000 extra units --- that might be the answer I was looking for --- I am using 6.4 with the unofficial bugfix/patch thing on top --- which might have also added more stuff too --- ill check out 6.1)

[Dekhatres]

Regarding #2 --- this mod is still great. Those who enjoy it I am sure really enjoy it.
The thing that throws me off is that right up-front, just in order to play this mod, it requires a good 50 hours of learning the unit roster and "diversity" before I can even decide if its good or not.
Why would I invest 50 hours of my time just to be able to figure out if the game is even good?
Maybe thats exaggerating - but its obviously a very steep curve in having to learn all the unit rosters, unit uses, and how they compare to eachother. Then learning all the other diverse things it adds - traits, etc.
Now - I understand that this is something about my gaming style and personality: I used to be a pro gamer.
(I'm too old now, after 26-30 years old you cant compete with hand/eye coordination and APM anymore)
Because of this - I simply cannot enjoy a game until I _KNOW EVERYTHING_ otherwise I cant be competitive at it.
So I concede that this maybe isnt a problem for other people, and I am a crybaby about something that maybe shouldnt matter.
For me it does though --- I wouldnt be able to enjoy a game until I learned and understood EVERY unit type in my faction - and EVERY unit type in every other faction so that I know what I am fighting against.

Well that also proves another point though: If, in the end, this mod actually is really good / extremely well balanced / offering unique faction-historical-challenge? ...and all I need to do to enjoy it is learn everything and then it will be awesome?
Well I agree that this would be awesome.
However I currently dont want to risk spending so much time just to learn the mod because what I already see, doesnt convince me that it is infact that great game design / gameplay which would be worth putting in so much effort to enjoy.
I could be completely wrong though - even for my own preferences.
I could be missing out on the perfect mod.
I very well could be.
Oh well. My loss.

it really is a diferent mindset you have, exploring the mod, unlocking new units, making new strategies and just not knowing what future will bring is prob the best part for me

also you need more posts to be able to edit

[effeTW]

Funny it wont let me edit post?

Anyway I was adding a line then hit submit accidentally.

And that was:
I know allot of you disagree with me - thats super cool and you are not wrong and you are probably even right because I have less info on this mod than you do.
In fact - I'm jealous of you guys that enjoy this mod because you already know everything (or enough) about it and you are enjoying it.
I dont want to risk spending so much time to learn it though and then find out I dont like it.
Thats why I asked for a "lite" version so I could try it out before investing time into it.

I'm downloading 6.1 though and maybe that answers my question.

[+Marius+]

= game design flaw.

No, you see it as a game design flaw while everyone else does not.

Thus, it is not a game design flaw.

If anything, most people here want even more things, more complications and more complexity, because most people here want to play a complex strategy game as they do not come from the line of mobile game gamers who are used to clicking cute buttons and watching shiny animations.

(Starcraft is the world's #1 competition game because it still has plenty of diverse units and achieves balance)

This is not a RTS, if you want simplistic shiny gameplay then SS is not for you, or total war in general for that matter.

This is a mathematically true statement not an opinion

Population of planet earth was very small back then. An entire kingdom might be a mere 100,000 people TOTAL!

...and which kingdom would that be?

Because Paris alone had 200 000 people by 1200.

Diversity simply wasnt possible. Economically - socially - or statistically. The HRE itself had less than 5m total inhabitants at its PEAK - in 1200 CE!

Nonsense, diversity has little to do with the total amount of population.

The Byzantine Empire had a detachment of over 800 Alans in their army during the late 13th/ early 14th century and yet there were less than a few thousands of them(meaning total, with women and children) in the Empire.

Also Germany alone had over 7 million people by 1200, the HRE in total probably capped around 12-15 million.

[Grabbin_Megroin]

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to +Marius+ again."

Sorry OP, just stick with vanilla, this mod trys to make the game as realistic as possible and therefore things are unbalanced, some of the names are foreign, and there is a lot of content.

Maybe even try playing Total War Battles: Kingdom for mobile platforms, I think you would like that a lot.