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Please Be Frank

I hope we can engage in a frank and honest discussion which compare the upcoming Medieval Total War game with CK, with a view to looking to improve CK or add scope to CK that will make it a game that has something significantly different to offer.

CK will be in competition with Medieval Total War. The sway and scope of that game is far and away beyond what CK can deliver, particularly in the linking of the strategic and tactical elements. If you know about MTW you know what I mean.

Therefore, CK must offer something more than MTW does, at least in those aspects where it can. The timeframe is one. If CK timeframe extends from around 650-700 to 1419, it will offer much more in historical scope than MTW does.

You may now commence flaming, locking, or removal of this thread.
 
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You're on drugs. Medieval: Total War uses the engine from Shogun. Crusader Kings uses the engine from Europa Universalis. It is the same difference between a RTS game and a Turn Based Strategy game. Am I the only one who thought that Shogun was a shooter/rts game?

--Avenger
 
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Thank you for your attention.
 
Comparing Total War and CK is about the same as comparing Command & Conquer with Civilization. Not alike. Not alike at all. Might as well compare Doom with chess. Pointless.

Total War focuses on battles, but in CK, battles is just a small part of grand scheme. If you fail politically or economically, you have lost the war already. Point.
 
Originally posted by hjarg
Comparing Total War and CK is about the same as comparing Command & Conquer with Civilization. Not alike. Not alike at all. Might as well compare Doom with chess. Pointless.

Total War focuses on battles, but in CK, battles is just a small part of grand scheme. If you fail politically or economically, you have lost the war already. Point.

You may think the comparison is moot. I think that indicates you don't know much about the competition.

"There are no time pressures on your strategic decisions in Medieval: Total War. You are not committed to a course of action until the end of a year. At that point, orders are carried out and plans, for good or ill, are set in motion.
You’ll also be informed of important events as they occur, such as the completion of a castle or building, a miraculous happening, or even the discovery of gunpowder. Historical events that changed the middle ages occur in the game at (approximately) the right time, but don’t bank on something unfolding just as it did in reality.

There are 12 playable factions in the game, along with some non-playable factions (these vary, depending on the start date you choose). Each faction has its own strengths, weaknesses and potential for European dominance. You’ll see that not all factions are the same by any means, and the game of Medieval: Total War you experience will be different each time you play a different faction. Some factions are particularly suited to all-out military conquest, others need to use a combination of military force and subtler methods to achieve their goals, and some are particularly well positioned to become trading nations and use wealth to achieve political dominance. Just to make it all even more interesting, the different start positions for 1087, 1205 and 1321 reflect historical reality - the relative power of a faction can shift remarkably, even in a hundred years!

Heirs: princesses and Generals When an heir is born it is an important event for a faction. It secures the future of the nation beyond the life of the current faction leader. However, heirs must come of age before they can inherit their father’s lands and, once old enough to be active, they can be as vulnerable as any other general to the twists and turns of fate. There are no Muslim princesses in Medieval: Total War. All princesses are valuable assets in the diplomatic process, and marrying them to a member of a rival faction can cement an alliance. If there is no heir, the line of succession passes to a general with royal blood. It’s possible for there to be more than one claimant, and this can cause the faction to split apart in a civil war. There’s also the possibility that other factions will have claims on your lands. If a faction leader dies without heirs (or his heirs are too young, or his family only has daughters) and there are no generals of royal blood, things are more serious. All the provinces that made up his kingdom become independent, under the control of local rebel warlords. This is the end of the game, as your faction has fallen victim to destiny and is no more.

Provinces and income Provinces are the places where you earn money and train troops. Without land, your faction will not last long in the face of harsh competition from other peoples. You’ll need to decide which provinces are important to your faction and hang onto them, and which provinces are ripe targets for your armies! Sooner or later final victory or ignominious defeat will depend on the number of provinces that your faction controls.

As Cicero wrote in Roman times, Nervos belli, pecuniam infinitam (The sinews of war, unlimited money), so goes warfare in Medieval: Total War. You’ll never have unlimited money, but making sure that you do have a strong treasury is very, very important in bringing your plans of conquest to a successful conclusion. Once you run out of money you won’t be able to construct new buildings, train more soldiers, bribe people or pay ransoms for your captured generals. All factions in the game use the same currency in their treasuries: the florin, a type of coin first minted in the Italian city of Florence. In the middle ages, providing a coin contained the correct amount of gold or silver no-one cared where it had been minted (some kings were not above ‘cheating’ when minting coins by putting cheaper metals into the mix).

Death and taxes
Taxes are your faction’s only guaranteed income, and tax rates are set on a province-by-province basis. Taxes come from farming, trade and mines. Constructing buildings in a province always improves it in some way for your faction. This can be by raising income (by improving farmland, for example), by making the defences stronger (by building or improving a castle) or by allowing you to train military units and agents there. No building in the game makes a province weaker or damages its potential in any way.

Trade can be an extremely profitable activity, but you can only trade where there are goods available. These are distributed across the map to accurately reflect the pattern of medieval trade. Some provinces have no trade goods at all (which doesn’t mean that there’s no business being done, just that it isn’t significant enough to bother the King!). The larger and grander the Merchant involved in trade from a province, the greater the potential profits. To sell goods overseas, you need a Port and a Trading Post or Merchant of some kind in a coastal province. You then have to create a chain or network of sea regions with one of your fleets in each linking your port with a foreign port in another province. This is a trade route.

Loyalty and Revolts
Despite the real power in Medieval Europe being the iron fist in the plate-mailed glove, few rulers survived for long without the support of the people and the Church or Mosque. If the people withdrew their support for a ruler, his days would be numbered - and fearful. In general, the people were loyal where they experienced strong -yet fair - rulers. There were many peasants’ revolts, but these usually occurred because a leader showed weakness, incredible cruelty or rank stupidity.

Armies are the tools of conquest you need to take over the world! But aside from such dreams of glory, you also need armies to defend your provinces, intimidate the locals to keep them loyal and make other factions consider attacking someone else instead. Before you can train agents and units you’ll need to construct a basic castle and some sort of training facility. Some units need the skills inherent in more than one building, such as Feudal Knights who will need a Horse Breeder, an Armourer’s Workshop and Royal Estates in a province before they can be trained there.

Generals Every unit in the game has a named commander, but not all of these commanders are equal in ability. When an army is created, a general is automatically picked to lead it. Generals are not simply identical leaders. Some are feared as bloodthirsty and ruthless, while others are renowned as being highly devout, good as provincial rulers, or particularly chivalrous. These differences are represented through a set of personality traits and their vices and virtues. Traits are used to determine how provinces and troops react to each general. The higher the value in a particular trait the greater ‘skill’ the general has in that area. Faction Leaders have these traits as well, but with influence instead of loyalty.

Vices and Virtues
Many leaders and generals have quirks of personality that affect their behaviour for good or ill. Vices and virtues are gained as a result of events that occur during a game. If a general gets into the thick of combat, he might become a Fine Leader or be a Good Runner, depending on how his battles turned out. And, for example, if a general is the victim of repeated assassination attempts, he’s likely to become a little paranoid!"

Game Feature Comparison :

Game Type
CK : RTS
MTW : Turn-Based

Multiplayer
CK : yes
MTW : yes, but only for battles

Economics
CK : highly developed model, army size limited by income, ability to pay, etc.
MTW : less advanced, but has income, trade, taxes, etc, which vary according to wealth of area. Very similar in many ways to CK. Also has maintenance.

Special Tasks
CK : Dynamically generated including "crusader" type tasks
MTW : Static tasks per nation / culture including "crusading".

Number of Players
CK : probably alot
MTW : up to 12 players

Feudal Loyalties
CK : central aspect of the game
MTW : central aspect of the game

Named Characters
CK : some
MTW : central aspect

Church
CK : central aspect
MTW : less developed than CK, but special characters and decisions of the player affect things like Piety rating, etc.

Tactical Battles
CK : none
MTW : central aspect.


I say again : CK will be in direct competition with MTW whether you realize it or not.

CK had then best look at ways to offer something far and above MTW is at least some aspects. This could be easily done by expanding the playable historical timeframe.
 
They may have similar features but the way they are presented is very different. The target audience for MTW will be the Shogun buyers. Shogun did not have any strategic element to speak of (unless you counte risk as strategic:D )

CK will draw on EU2 of course.

I suspect that the overlap will actually be very small as RTS players will be attracted to MTW and strategy players to EU2 - irrespective of the features of the game
 
You may think the comparison is moot. I think that indicates you don't know much about the competition.

I snipped off the features list that you provided because, quite honestly, I don't feel that it is at all relevant. The game can have more features than you've listed and I still wouldn't buy it. Why? Because I've played "Shogun: Total War." The game is using the same engine. The same method of play. I hated it. You list it as being turn based, but you are wrong. The battles are very fast (pausable) and confusing to me. They are roughly similar to Age of Empires, but with many more units. Picture the battles in Legion with more units and a 3d (first person) view. Very fast. Very confusing. Camera gets all fubared as you move around. (Shudder). Most importantly, it has the feel of real time strategy.

The outside of battle portion of the game is turn based, but extremely simple. It is very similar to RISK. You move pieces on the tactical map and when armies meet (*groan*) more real time strategy battles.

Go buy Shogun: Total War and see this yourself.
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Crusader Kings uses the EU engine. What more can I say? I love this style. I play EU2 often. Every time there is nothing NEW to play, I go back to EU2. (I have about 500+ games here. Many genres interest me, but I wish that RTS would hurry up and die). A friend of mine thinks I should stop calling the games I hate RTS and start calling them "basecraft." A term that encompasses the Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires sub-genre that sprang up like a cancer in the mid 90's. Mostly because there are games, great games, that are real time that are not like that. I however persist in treating EU2 as a turn based game. A game that still appeals to grognards.

--Avenger
 
The objective in MTW will be to conquer the world, un-historically of course.:eek: , But in CK you control a dynasty and want to make your dynasty surpreme. MTW has shiner graphics but is that what is important in a game?:confused: NO!

P.S. We don't know about the battles in CK yet.:rolleyes: Thank You:)
 
Originally posted by Avenger



Go buy Shogun: Total War and see this yourself.
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Crusader Kings uses the EU engine. What more can I say? I love this style. I play EU2 often. Every time there is nothing NEW to play, I go back to EU2. (I have about 500+ games here. Many genres interest me, but I wish that RTS would hurry up and die). A friend of mine thinks I should stop calling the games I hate RTS and start calling them "basecraft." A term that encompasses the Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires sub-genre that sprang up like a cancer in the mid 90's. Mostly because there are games, great games, that are real time that are not like that. I however persist in treating EU2 as a turn based game. A game that still appeals to grognards.

--Avenger

I have bought Shogun TW and the Shogun Mongol invasion games, and spent many hours playing both. I wonder if you and I are talking about the same game.

The strat level is turn based, four turns to a year. If you choose to move an army, then you get into a real time battle. Thats immensely more complex than what you get with the EU engine. The troops you move to attack another province are the ones you built and created in the strat map. They gain experience from battle to battle and you can get quite attached to them.

Your description of your experience with the tactical battle leaves me with the impression you had trouble controlling your camera. That's too bad. You can't move the camera around the entire battlefield. You are limited to the perspective of a man among your troops. You can't see around a hill if you don't have men in position to do that. Thats called "realism".

The battles in STW could last up to an hour, most lasted less than half that. Against a human player, if you didn't know what you were doing, they would last about 2 minutes.

Your comparison of the strat level of STW to Risk is simply laughable. It bears no further comment other than to say that this type of statement clearly indicates you didn't explore that game at all. It is NOTHING like Age of Empires. AOE units don't have any "morale" factors, line of sight factors. AOE battles are highly abstracted representations, STW battles are very good simulations of period battles with realistic movements, ranges, and collateral factors.


The "pieces" as you put them, are just markers representing your armies, but you the player exclusively determine the content of those markers, just like you do with the EU engine. You can have 1000 cavalry, 1000 infantry, a mix of both, and much more or much less of each. Its up to you. The units, unlike those in EU, gain experience along the way, and at the higher levels can be quite elite troops indeed. If you provide them with high quality armor and weapons, which takes many years of careful management and economic investment, they can be almost (but not quite) unstoppable.

Simply put, STW / MTW is a highly strategic game that has an advanced and impressive tactical battle layer built in. The EU engine beats STW on the level of detail in the economic and political arenas. In fact, I would say my main criticism of the STW engine was the somewhat simplistic relationships between clans. MTW promises a much greater level of detail in both these arenas.

MTW is NOT a conquer the world game anymore than CK will be. Each nation will have different goals, meeting most or all of them will mean "victory", but almost none of the nations have world domination as the main path to victory.
 
Originally posted by Derek Pullem
Shogun did not have any strategic element to speak of (unless you counte risk as strategic:D )


I cannot understand this kind of comment. I've spent thousands of hours playing BOTH engines. STW had a great strategic element.

In STW you collect taxes. You use taxes to maintain armies, or build new units. Guess what you do in EU?

In STW you collected taxes to build infrastructure in the provinces, like mines, barracks, ports, diplomatic centers, even arms factories, weapons manufactories, training centers for certain kinds of troops, etc. Guess what you do in EU? Use taxes to build infrastructure in provinces?

How well you managed all these econ factors in large measure determined the size and quality of your army. Guess what your econ skill does in EU. If you guessed determined the size and quality of your military forces, you guessed right.

I'm not saying STW was BETTER than EU in the econ and political aspects. EU is superb at this. STW comes in second, no question. But that is light years away from saying STW had "no strategic aspect" or that it was like "Risk". Its not. If you believe that, you either haven't played Risk or STW, probably both.
 
I wonder if you and I are talking about the same game.
Yes, we are indeed talking about the same game.

Your comparison of the strat level of STW to Risk is simply laughable. It bears no further comment other than to say that this type of statement clearly indicates you didn't explore that game at all.
I am probably more familiar than you are with the strat portion of the game, simply because I probably played more full games than you did. The reason is that I hardly ever played the tactical battles. I completed many games by just letting the computer resolve battles. Your "seeing" more complexity in the simplistic strategic game is just your view.

The "pieces" as you put them, are just markers representing your armies, but you the player exclusively determine the content of those markers, just like you do with the EU engine. You can have 1000 cavalry, 1000 infantry, a mix of both, and much more or much less of each.
Exactly! Exactly like RISK! I move the pieces and let the computer resolve the outcome. My pieces do have experience and my units are of differing types, but my god man, look at the map. It is just like risk. If you play the game as I do then it really becomes RISK.

I have no interest whatsoever in playing the real-time battles on the battlefield. What does that leave?

Simply put, STW / MTW is a highly strategic game that has an advanced and impressive tactical battle layer built in. The EU engine beats STW on the level of detail in the economic and political arenas. In fact, I would say my main criticism of the STW engine was the somewhat simplistic relationships between clans. MTW promises a much greater level of detail in both these arenas.
STW is two games in one. it is a RTS game very similar to Braveheart. (I hate this). And it is a Strategy game very similar to RISK. (Too simple for my taste. But I hate HOMM too for its simplicity).

--Avenger
 
I think I'll wait until MTW comes out to see how it compares to CK when that comes out. I'll also wait to see how much the economic/strategic hoopla the producers are claiming will be in MTW will actually be there...they certainly made some rather impressive claims on STW that didn't quite hold up (fully-developed economic model and fully authentic historical battles were promised but not delivered).

Chef Boyard, of course there are some base elements in STW that are similar in EU(which are the only two games we've got to compare with at the moment), but it's still like comparing checkers to chess...the EU complexity level is simply far more advanced and far more historical that STW even attempted to be. STW was a tremendously funny game, but it _was_ a quasi-historical tactical battle sim with a strategic module attached(the strat model was _very_ loosely based on the MB boardgame from which they bought the title) whereas EU was an attempt to create a fairly historical grand-strategic simulation.

As for MTW, well, from what I can see on their webpages, despite what they promise, it's the same old thing as what they did in STW. The promise list is endless but so was Shogun's. Their attention to graphic historical artwork is laughable: fantasy armour and weapons abound(christ, look at the catapult, or the infantry greek fire thrower!), and it looks like a castle is a castle and a spearman is a spearman no matter if it's 1100 or 1400. The tactical mode will still have the telepathic commander, obviously, and though a lot of breath is spent on the strategic mode, I haven't found any really impressive improvements in the quite large amount of screenshots, previews and interviews I've been looking through.

It does look like MTW is going to be infinitely better than Shogun, a game that held my attention for a few weeks(after I'd bought it for the reduced price of 4.50 quid - three months after release) and is probably going to be much more interesting to play. However, I seriously doubt CK is going to be too much competition for a game that, in the final equation, is a battle sim with a strat mode attached. And who cares, really? I'll end up buying both!

EF
 
Originally posted by Chef Boyard
Reasons to Lock or Remove this thread :

1. The topic has already been discussed. God forbid we should discuss the same thing again. That could lead to new perspectives or ideas that weren't discovered or brought up before. Very dangerous.

2. A very narrow group of people read these forums right now, and they don't want or need their minds cluttered with information that may change how they think.

3. There really isn't anything that can be changed anyway, conceptually or programatically, so why bother.

Even afer this little rant, there's no real reason to lock or remove this thread, as it contains a very interesting discussion comparing two games of the same genre covering the same period. Perhaps, however, you could change the subject to better reflect the topic - maybe to "CK vs. MTW", just so that people seeing the title of the thread will know what the real subject of it is...
 
Originally posted by Demetrios


Even afer this little rant, there's no real reason to lock or remove this thread, as it contains a very interesting discussion comparing two games of the same genre covering the same period. Perhaps, however, you could change the subject to better reflect the topic - maybe to "CK vs. MTW", just so that people seeing the title of the thread will know what the real subject of it is...

I thought this would get more attention, and bring more people into the discussion. There aren't that many people who regularly haunt this forum, and my guess is those who do will read this thread. My last thread was locked, anyway, because "the topic has already been discussed." Its a win-win situation for the community : if the thread is locked, at least we know what is acceptable and what isn't. If the thread isn't locked, its a credit to the community to be frank and honest about how well CK stacks up against the market.

Of the total CK / MTW potential market, buyers fall into the following general categories :

1. People who will buy only MTW
2. People who will buy MTW and MAY buy CK if there is sufficient differences to justify the interest.
3. People who will buy CK and may buy MTW if there is sufficient difference to justify the interest.
4. People who will buy only CK.
5. People who will buy both, regardless.

I believe that MTW will sell many more copies than CK. I have no figures to justify this assumption. Be that as it may, this thread is ultimately directed at discussions which will increase the market potential of category #2. We must focus on enhancements to CK that add sufficient difference in scope and gameplay to increase that particular market segment.

I don't believe I can now change the title of the thread, unfortunately.
 
Originally posted by Avenger




Exactly! Exactly like RISK! I move the pieces and let the computer resolve the outcome. My pieces do have experience and my units are of differing types, but my god man, look at the map. It is just like risk. If you play the game as I do then it really becomes RISK.


--Avenger

Its also EXACTLY like EU, where you move "pieces" that contain a variable number of soldiers. Comparing it to Risk is laughable.

A significant difference between EU and STW is that, while there are technology paths that are quite interesting in both games (and in STW you see directly the results of your technological differences on the battlefield in real time), STW, for example, had nothing like "attrition". You could have virtually an unlimited number of troops in a single province and not lose one to attrition. However, since the largest number of soldiers you could actually use at one time in the tactical mode was 16x200, the number of soldiers in a particular province rarely needed to be over 5000.
 
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Its also EXACTLY like EU, where you move "pieces" that contain a variable number of soldiers. Comparing it to Risk is laughable.
Using your criteria, Checkers and Chess are identicle. Both games start with 24 pieces. The board is the same in both games. You move one piece at a time. The differences are very minor. Checkers must, of course, be equally challenging because sometimes a single piece can move more than once in a turn - both backwards and forwards.

Sorry to be so sarcastic, but I play the Strat portion of STW and it feels like RISK. It doesn't feel fun. It doesn't even feel challenging. It feels simplistic. Then I play the Tactical portion of STW and I am overwhelmed. It feels the same as Age of Empires. It doesn't look the same, but I feel no rush if I win. I feel exhausted from clicking my units and jumping all over the battlefield.

Much of it is personal preference, I admit. I enjoy plotting and planning, sometimes for hours. I hate being rushed. Quick decisions are never the best decisions. The politics of Crusader Kings intrigues me. I get the impression that the game will be like EU2 with much less combat and much more diplomacy. Intrigues, Religion, Machivellian backstabbing. I can hardly wait.

--Avenger
 
*nitpick*

EU1,2, HoI, CK and Svea Rike3(all Pdox Games) aren't RTS'. They're Continuous Time Tactic. ;) Because of the pause feature.

*nitpick*
 
Originally posted by Carolus Rex
*nitpick*

EU1,2, HoI, CK and Svea Rike3(all Pdox Games) aren't RTS'. They're Continuous Time Tactic. ;) Because of the pause feature.

*nitpick*

[nitpick]

your last 'nitpick' should be '/nitpick'

[/nitpick]

:D