Bonuses, bonuses, bonuses everywhere

[Jurand of Cracow]

Guys,
one of the issues I've got with Troy is that any action you take, you get one or several bonuses. You win a battle - you get point in experience of your hero and you need to assign it. You make an action with an agent - he gets a point. You win a slightly bigger battle - you gain more bonuses. You make anything, and you get plenty of bonuses. No need for any major effort. If there's one, there'll be 5 bonuses, and you need to think again what to do with them. It's booooooring.
It's at Hard difficulty, but I doubt you get fewer at Veteran.
Do I miss something?
JoC

[Daruwind]

So you basically say you would prefer older system where traits and stuff were acquired semi randomly and automatically and having less RPG elements...

[Abdülmecid I]

Most definitely! I hate the new system ever since it was implemented in Shogun II. In my opinion, it has rendered generals and agents completely soulless, they nowadays look more like robots, which you upgrade with each successful action, almost always choosing the same traits. Even the retinues suffer from the same rationale. Of course, the character feature was previously severely downgraded in Empire and Napoleon, which offered a very limited and uninspiring selection of traits and retinues. I really long for the days of Medieval II and Rome I, where every figure developed his own personality, according to his deeds (but without the divinely-powered player deciding for them), upbringing and randomness.

Much more realistic, rewarding and funny. In my last British campaign (the Kingdoms expansion, of course, not Throb), Gustav began his career as a mediocre royal prince of the Norwegian dynasty. Achieving some suprising victories and indiscriminately massacring the English captives that resulted from them gradually transformed him into a rather competent commander and an extremely dreadful, bloodthirsty and sadistic tyrant. And then the war ended, the plague arrived and Gustav married an Irish princess of questionable morality. As a consequence, he lost much of his notoriety, his wife was cheating on him all the time, his authority experienced a free-fall and captains and slightly disloyal family members started to rebel. All the above, literally all of it, is completely impossible in the more recent games. It's one of my hugest gripes with the franchise and together with some other personal issues I have (limited building slots, effective abolishment of campaign skirmishing, no more separate taxation and distance from capital) is one of the main reasons I am no longer excited for the newer products.

[Daruwind]

I envy you guys for your roleplaying ability to enjoy such random stuff however I hate it when I have to run around and pray to gods to get certain stuff. I just admit I love min/maxing and stacking right stuff. :-) Gaming the system just because ...game.

So the best system would be combination of both. Traits gained via random events while having ability to select certain path for my characters...

[Flying Fox]

So you basically say you would prefer older system where traits and stuff were acquired semi randomly and automatically and having less RPG elements...

Basically, yes.
While I quite enjoyed the skill trees in Warhammer, that is only for the first time. After a while, you have all these generals and agents you have to micromanage skills for, and it becomes routine. On top of that I don't even like the skill trees in Troy in the first place.

It's like the comment above said: the characters feel soulless because of things like this. They get skills because I pressed a button, not because of things they did or through random chance.
But it isn't just this. A lack of any sort of population system makes the regions feel empty. They are spots where you press mostly predetermined icons to gain more resource, nothing more. I can't really put my finger on precisely what the problem is, but in Rome I (though I played mostly with Europa Barbarorum), the campaign map felt alive.

I also agree with the OP here: too many bonuses. Every single thing I do, my general gets some buff to something. On top of that, so many other things give buffs. Stacking buffs is a good way to pull you out of the game world and remind you it's just a game. I think buffs to units and income should be modest, even when all stacked together. Sure, give units a bit better charge when Ares is celebrated, I imagine they fight with a bit of extra zeal, but don't overdo it. Only experience should make units more skilled, and by that I don't mean giving them extra ranks on recruitment.


edit: just one extra remark about the old system of traits from Rome I and Medieval II. I'm not certain about that either, there is room for improvement. The UI for starters. It was just a long list, you can't really get the big picture by eyeballing it, you had to hover over each trait to know what it did, and by the time you read them all, you'd have forgotten half of them. At least the skill tree from WH gives you a very quick, rough idea what kind of stuff the character is good at.

[Daruwind]

I haven´t played Troy (no steam,no play )so I can comment on those just from look, from videos and pictures. I think the issue is system which is working for highly fantasy stuff, thus allowing crazy things...like mounts. Foot-horse stuff-dragon stuff.. while for Troy all options, all bonuses must be toned down. And yes I noticed as well how many bonuses are there, for example whole religion system is something quite different from what I was expecting. In current form it is the lowest easiest possible system "spend resources/get gonuses..spend more/get more" while I was expecting some dilemmas, events. Something scripted without direct numerical advantage.

[Gromovnik]

Pro tip: Actually playing the game before commenting is always useful.

[Daruwind]

It is However as I own, played all TWs so far and as I watched a quite enough video footage...it is not rocket science. Army composition, building slots. It is based upon Wh2... ;-)

[Irishmafia2020]

I really long for the days of Medieval II and Rome I, where every figure developed his own personality, according to his deeds (but without the divinely-powered player deciding for them), upbringing and randomness.

Much more realistic, rewarding and funny. In my last British campaign (the Kingdoms expansion, of course, not Throb), Gustav began his career as a mediocre royal prince of the Norwegian dynasty. Achieving some suprising victories and indiscriminately massacring the English captives that resulted from them gradually transformed him into a rather competent commander and an extremely dreadful, bloodthirsty and sadistic tyrant. And then the war ended, the plague arrived and Gustav married an Irish princess of questionable morality. As a consequence, he lost much of his notoriety, his wife was cheating on him all the time, his authority experienced a free-fall and captains and slightly disloyal family members started to rebel. All the above, literally all of it, is completely impossible in the more recent games. .

Exactly!!! My favorite character of all of my total war games was an insane genius I had in Rome I!!! He got all of the insane traits and all of the military genius traits - and ended up becoming faction leader by 25 and dying in a weird ambush at 32 after 1/2 the family had rebelled and been crushed. I hate just picking the same traits over and over as if my character was just "leveling up". In the old system, your character's behavior and innate tendencies actually mattered - and it made for a fun rpg addition to the gameplay.