To start things off, I'm new to these types of games. I actually picked up Civ4 when it first came out, but was put off from being completely lost...(sad I know). I recently reinstalled it, and I'm starting to grasp it, and am really enjoying the game...I wish I gave it more of a chance before. I also picked up Gal Civ2 and I'm starting to get into that as well.

With that said, I'm torn right now. I'm debating between picking up BTS, or Medieval II Total War. I realize that they are completely different games, but in some ways they look loosely similar. I realize this is a Civ forum, but I'm very impressed with the community here, and I'm just looking for some opinions from those that may have played both games.

Thanks in advance for any info or opinions, it is appreciated.

like u said thay are very difrent, but i whould go with rome total war gold pack, or total war:war chest. if ur put off by playing as rome, ect, then go for m2tw.
i whould get bts later on once u fully grasp civ 4..
a word of warning, u play on the map in turns, and battles in real time in total war. allso, units will route, turning and running from battle if thay are not well trained or battle hardend.

I never liked Rome TW, but the pack with Medieval and Shogun is really good. Those two are worth getting. I got both when they originally came out, but the pack is good because you can play Shogun on XP now, original doesn't run, or doesn't run without patch in a stable way.

I own both games :) . If I had to choose between the two, I would... die, I think. I cannot live without both of them.

They are more different than it looks at first. While you can construct buildings and conduct diplomacy etc. in MTW/RTW, it is not *really* needed to put too much effort into it ( and it is not that rewarding, either... in the end, you end up conquering half of the map anyway and the AI generally attacks you as soon as you share a common border) . The Total War series is really focusing on the tactical battles. I tend to think of the world map there as a kind of battle generator :D . But it is a very good game nonetheless! It comes down to personal preference I think - MTW is good when I want to have strategy with a bit of action ( it is not as deep as Civ or GalCiv imho ) and the rest of the time I play Civ. I think you should try MTW2 out, as Civ and GalCiv supply you with enough "deep" strategy and with MTW you can get a bit of variety in your gaming :D .

Medieval 2 Total War basically requires a user-made AI mod to be fun and challenging, but with said mod it is VERY fun. If you're in a hurry, I'd buy Medieval 2 and get the Ultimate AI Mod. If you are patient, I'd wait for the next BTS patch and buy it instead.

For me, I would purchase the following in the order listed:
1. Europa Universalis 3 (Paradox Games)
2. Medieval Total War 2
3. Beyond the Sword
Each have their own style and each are excellent games......

If you haven't played Total War series before I could go for M2TW right off and wait for M2TW: Kingdoms.

The thing I always advice people if they want to try out the Total War series; download the demo from somewhere.. I downloaded the Rome: Total War demo some time ago and was completely blown away (and immediately addicted).. The Medieval II: Total War demo is very nice as well..

As for BtS, if you've just started playing CivIV it might be a little overwhelming, but I think, in the end, BtS is going to be vital to your enjoyment of the series.. (I know I already love it!)

I've got all the games mentioned above and I have to say that Civ BtS is the most polished of all of them.

I know, I know.... all the whinging "it's broken" crew probably just had to be admitted to hospital, but the fact remains that ALL of the listed games have a lot of problems.

M2TW is a fantastic game for the battle elements - so far above and beyond civ that I always laugh at warmongers here - civ doesnt hold even an unlit candle to it..... however, M2TW doesnt have any of the excellent empire building that Civ offers.

Galciv2 is a fantastic game with a lot of diversity and original material. It's a game you can keep going back to - if nothing else just to design your ships!

Europa Universalis 2 plays like a board game - it's only for the hardcore strategist..... there's very little empire building and very little in the way of controlled war - it's all abstracted. It can keep you occupied for many hours though due to its ongoing time (rather than turn based, where you can say STOP now!).... but really, it's a pretty shallow game compared to the others mentioned, no matter how much I enjoy it.

I haven't played M2TW but I played all the rest of the Total war series. This series is all about real time tactical battles with a civ-lite empire building. So the strategy part of the TW game is weak which is the whole focus of Civs games ( no tactical battles). I would go for now the cheaper Rome TW or the first MTW to see if you get hooked on TW battle system then later get M2TW.

Get a Total War title first, before getting BTS. Though RTW and MTW2 are both very buggy, and diplomacy is non existent. Still excellent game, and the tactical warring is awesome. My dream game would be CIV economic engine, with the RTW (or MTW2) war engine. Anyway, since you haven't played the total war games yet, and already own CIV, you should check out MTW2 or RTW. They are strategy gamer crack, much like CIV. BTS though is far more polished, and improves CIV alot, so get it definatly, but if it's an either or thing right now, I'd say check out the total war series, hell download the demo, I'm sure it'll be enough to hook you to buy it.

I know, I know.... all the whinging "it's broken" crew probably just had to be admitted to hospital, but the fact remains that ALL of the listed games have a lot of problems.It is broken for some people. It's not unplayable for me, personally, but it was annoying enough under 3.03 that I rolled back to 3.02. My wonder movies still didn't work under 3.03 anyway, and I still can't complete one of my games because it crashes at the same spot every time. Plus, if you're a Marathon-speed player, you can just forget about getting BTS until the spy actions are fixed (fortunately I play Epic).
Europa Universalis 2 plays like a board game - it's only for the hardcore strategist..... there's very little empire building and very little in the way of controlled war - it's all abstracted. It can keep you occupied for many hours though due to its ongoing time (rather than turn based, where you can say STOP now!).... but really, it's a pretty shallow game compared to the others mentioned, no matter how much I enjoy it.EU2? Shallow? You must not have been playing it right. :p

I would go for Medieval first, but it's kinda hard to learn initially, just like civ.

I think I'll repeat somewhat what others have said, but I'll say it!!:p

I think MTW and Civ are completely different games. The only thing they have in common is the are strategical/tactic games.

Civ, well you know, is more empire-building oriented. I think there are many warmongers who think Civ is a wargame but it is not. Wars and units are pretty simplified and only superficial planning/strategy is required. Wars in Civ is just something that happen because Civs didn't evolve without wars.

MTW ( and the like ) is a real wargame. Your ONLY focus is war and everything you do will impact how your wars will be fought. There is effectively a empire-managing task in the main screen, but only war-oriented. ( well some diplomamcy... that'll end in wars!! ). Your only goal is to conquer the world. On a tactical level, (when you decide to launch an offensive ), you'll have to place and move your men. Think about how the fights are in BraveHeart, this is the same thing in MTW.

If you love wargames, MTW is a definitively a must and will offer a far different play than Civ. As other people said, you can try a less expensive version and try the genre.

It is broken for some people.

Software can't be broken for some (unless you genuinely have a bad disk) - it must be for all. What CAN be broken is people's computers, be it hardware or software conflicts.... of course, they'll ignore their responsibilities and blame something else because whining on fan forums is the internets favourite pasttime! ;)



EU2? Shallow? You must not have been playing it right. :p

:lol:

Please do enlighten me!

:lol:

I've managed to create empires with S.E. Asian and African nations.... I've even got a 200 territory Aztec empire..... please do instruct me on what I am doing wrong!

Especially in a game without any victory conditions, I'd really like to know.

The reason it is shallow is because of the lack of human interaction with it. You basically get to tweak around your government over the course of years, you build armies which you then move into a territory and watch as the numbers move down, you occasionally build stuff in your territories.

C'mon, are you really going to argue that it's deep? Maybe for the strategically challenged! :p

I've played both Rome Total War and all versions of civilization.

I really liked Rome Total War, but it's the type of game that blows you away the first two weeks that you play it and then starts to diminish in appeal. Once you learn the mistakes of the battle AI and AI in general, you'll go searching for AI mods to get some challenge. After a while the battles also got a bit repetitive for me. But I must say, there are few games that are as appealing in the first 2 weeks of play.

The civ games series has a more long lasting appeal (for me). It is not the type of game that you'll master in 2 weeks if you haven't had experience with the civ series. But it is the type of game that you might still be playing in 2 years and still find new tactics to beat your opponents.

The total war games series are war games. The diplomacy system and empire building system is not very important and doesn't have a lot of depth. The war system is very detailed and you will personally command your armies. The strategy in this game is more as a strategic commander of armies on the world map and as a tactical commander of those same armies on the battlefield.

The civilization series is an empire building game. As empires have borders, there might be some wars if those borders meet, but the game is not centred around those wars and you will typically spend far more time thinking about the strategy to develop the economy and technological development of your empire than the strategy to conquer an enemy. The war element isn't very deep at all if you compare it with the Total War series.

In the end, I prefer the civilization series, but the Total War series is also nice and I'm happy that I've played it.

If you get some of the mods you mentioned and also tweak settings in game (larger unit sizes), then you can have some truly epic battles.

I had a couple of great gaming moments with Rome:Total War...... the setting? 200 Spartan hoplites taking on a VAST army from Rome :D and crushing them.

There are some really professional mods out now for R:TW, they'll keep you going for months - for the easy tactical battles, just use Auto fight and save your interest for the harder ones.

If you get some of the mods you mentioned and also tweak settings in game (larger unit sizes), then you can have some truly epic battles.

I had a couple of great gaming moments with Rome:Total War...... the setting? 200 Spartan hoplites taking on a VAST army from Rome :D and crushing them.

There are some really professional mods out now for R:TW, they'll keep you going for months - for the easy tactical battles, just use Auto fight and save your interest for the harder ones.

Is this post directed at me? It seems to be as it has to do with what I wrote, but you didn't quote me, so I'm not sure.

I've played RTW with some mods, especially the Total Realism mod in various incarnations. In the normal game and the total Realism mod, the AI doesn't handle huge unit sizes well because they will totally drain their lands of citizens for their armies and thus drain their economy of money and future manpower for their armies. This will happen even faster if you set the difficulty slider at a higher level so the AI has more money for creating armies. It also happens the fastest to the barbarian nations which have small provinces with low growth rates to replenish the citizens.

The Spartan hoplites were really ridiculously strong in the unmodded version of Rome Total War. That while Sparta was already way beyond their prime in the time period of RTW. It's still fun to slaughter a huge army with a small elite one of course. At least, it is fun to do it once, but in the end, I will go for challenge instead of the 'cool' factor.

Software can't be broken for some (unless you genuinely have a bad disk) - it must be for all. What CAN be broken is people's computers, be it hardware or software conflicts.... of course, they'll ignore their responsibilities and blame something else because whining on fan forums is the internets favourite pasttime! ;)If a developer makes a game that doesn't operate properly on video cards it claims to support, it's the developer's fault for claiming to support that video card when they really don't.
I've managed to create empires with S.E. Asian and African nations.... I've even got a 200 territory Aztec empire..... please do instruct me on what I am doing wrong!You're not playing multiplayer. You're relying on an AI that simply isn't up to the task of managing such a complex game making mistakes. Honestly, Civ is way simpler, especially if you compare EU2 to Civ3 (which came out the same year), in which a friend of mine makes a regular practice of simply founding cities almost adjacent to enemies and taking over their entire empire by culture. I mean, what makes Civ3 so complicated? Convoluted rules that are easy to take advantage of? Wars that essentially boil down to spamming your best offensive and your best defensive units with some siege thrown in depending on which patch you're on? Europa Universalis forces you to manage actual diplomatic relations and stability, which is simple enough against the nigh-braindead AI but becomes much more complex when you need to worry about actual human opponents.

Also, the Aztecs are one of the easiest nations to play as since they have no competition at all for a few hundred years. You're a lot more hard-pressed as a small European nation next to a behemoth.

I own both and have been an enormous fan of both franchises for a while.

What I found as I played the newer total war games (Medieval 2 & Rome) is that they tend to get unsatisfying and repetitive. This is especially true of Medieval which contains a number of what I think are very crippling bugs: your units don't charge right, don't scale walls right, and don't move around in cities right.

The campaign mode is also rather flawed especially if you're used to Civ: rivals will attack you for no reason even with good relations and are usually totally unprepared for war when they do so, offer ridiculous terms for any type of agreement, move small armies through your territory and sometimes park themselves near your cities for no reason. There are some other things I can't think of from the top of my head.

Basically the game makes it really hard to suspend disbelief and prevent you from getting annoyed at it. If you're set on trying a Total War game (which you defiantly should!) pick up a copy of Rome, which if it's patched has far fewer of the bugs mentioned above, especially pathfinding related ones, and it's probably a great deal cheaper now. You can also probably get it in a pack with the old Total War game like Medieval I and Shogun, which I still believe are the cream of the franchise.

Hope that helped.

If you get some of the mods you mentioned and also tweak settings in game (larger unit sizes), then you can have some truly epic battles.

I had a couple of great gaming moments with Rome:Total War...... the setting? 200 Spartan hoplites taking on a VAST army from Rome :D and crushing them.

There are some really professional mods out now for R:TW, they'll keep you going for months - for the easy tactical battles, just use Auto fight and save your interest for the harder ones.


Unit size does NOT affect gameplay since enemy's units will increase as well. It only lets each unit get higher cap. Siege weapons do the same damage even though there are more ppl supporting them. In the end, increasing unit size is only for looks.

Software can't be broken for some (unless you genuinely have a bad disk) - it must be for all. What CAN be broken is people's computers, be it hardware or software conflicts.... of course, they'll ignore their responsibilities and blame something else because whining on fan forums is the internets favourite pasttime! ;)

Are you complete nuts? There are endless bugs in Medieval II: Total war. Getting close to 1 year since they launch and I sometimes think the game is still unplayable. CTD has been problem since it first came out and they are not planning to fix it. Hardware or software conflicts, eh? How come there are thousands of people's posts on TW forum complaining about game crash while they've never had such instance with any other games?
Obvious bugs in battlefield make a battle endless and inefficient as well.

There....if that game is not broken, what is broken?....fanboy....:lol:

Unit size does NOT affect gameplay since enemy's units will increase as well. It only lets each unit get higher cap. Siege weapons do the same damage even though there are more ppl supporting them. In the end, increasing unit size is only for looks.

This is completely false. Large and Huge size criples the AI economies, especially the barbarian factions, since every troop you put in your army draws from the population pool of the settlement you are building in. And population is the main source of income, next to sea trade.

I own both and have been an enormous fan of both franchises for a while.

What I found as I played the newer total war games (Medieval 2 & Rome) is that they tend to get unsatisfying and repetitive. This is especially true of Medieval which contains a number of what I think are very crippling bugs: your units don't charge right, don't scale walls right, and don't move around in cities right.

The campaign mode is also rather flawed especially if you're used to Civ: rivals will attack you for no reason even with good relations and are usually totally unprepared for war when they do so, offer ridiculous terms for any type of agreement, move small armies through your territory and sometimes park themselves near your cities for no reason. There are some other things I can't think of from the top of my head.And this (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=97025) fixes almost all of those issues.

Is this post directed at me? It seems to be as it has to do with what I wrote, but you didn't quote me, so I'm not sure.......

The Spartan hoplites were really ridiculously strong in the unmodded version of Rome Total War. That while Sparta was already way beyond their prime in the time period of RTW. It's still fun to slaughter a huge army with a small elite one of course. At least, it is fun to do it once, but in the end, I will go for challenge instead of the 'cool' factor.

Yeah sorry, it was immediately after you posted, so I assumed you'd know.

Personally, I played for epic battles and I actually found Greece really quite challenging on V Hard / V Hard with huge size units.

The Romans would be in your face on about turn 2 and it would be an endless war from then on. Spartans would die horribly in the field, but in a settlement or in a nice area of the map, you could really punish an attacking army.


I beat the game with all the civs on V hard / V hard - so I really got my money's worth long before mods were released. I definitely had more than 2 weeks worth of fun out of it!! ;)



If a developer makes a game that doesn't operate properly on video cards it claims to support, it's the developer's fault for claiming to support that video card when they really don't.

When it works on a large number of people's pcs with that exact card but doesnt work on other people's pcs with that card.... yep, I would call that a user problem. Firaxis will still try their best to address it, just as all games companies do.... but customers are such a pain in the ass in the pc software business! :lol:



You're not playing multiplayer. You're relying on an AI that simply isn't up to the task of managing such a complex game making mistakes. Honestly, Civ is way simpler, especially if you compare EU2 to Civ3 (which came out the same year), in which a friend of mine makes a regular practice of simply founding cities almost adjacent to enemies and taking over their entire empire by culture. I mean, what makes Civ3 so complicated? Convoluted rules that are easy to take advantage of? Wars that essentially boil down to spamming your best offensive and your best defensive units with some siege thrown in depending on which patch you're on? Europa Universalis forces you to manage actual diplomatic relations and stability, which is simple enough against the nigh-braindead AI but becomes much more complex when you need to worry about actual human opponents.

Also, the Aztecs are one of the easiest nations to play as since they have no competition at all for a few hundred years. You're a lot more hard-pressed as a small European nation next to a behemoth.

:lol:

Hold on here, your argument is very dodgy!

You are saying that playing MP makes Europa Universalis challenging and that I shouldnt judge the game by its SP play.... and then turning round and judging Civ by its SP game!! :mischief: That's hardly fair is it?

And any game against a human is always going to be more challenging if they are capable... again, that's not really the point we were talking about and is more than a little of a non-sequiter.

Of course I was talking about SP - they are both predominantly SP games and I only play SP due to time differences and problems getting people to play for extended periods of time.

In SP, EUIII is only challenging if you play an underdog and really - I'm still not sure that you have outlined any actual complexities involved in the game.... managing diplomacy? What, you mean sending diplomats every now and then? Hardly complex or deep.... all you do is click a button and select from a very limited list. And actually claiming that Civ is more simple for the AI?? I dont know where to begin but you are most assuredly wrong, there's very tight restraints on what can and cant be done in EUIII, while in civ, the board is very open and the AI has to forge an empire out of it, specialising or acclimatising to what they find.... EU has a fixed map with fixed provinces and fixed relations and fixed fixed fixed EVERYTHING..... if you really wish to insist that it is more complex, then you're going to have to accept an "agree to disagree" because there's no way on heaven or earth that you are going to convince me of this!! :D

Furthermore, Aztecs are one of the easiest nations!!!???? :lol: That's hilarious! There are 2000 people on the official forum complaining that any non european civ is incredibly difficult to play (as it should be given the name of the game) and here you are telling me that everyone's wrong. There are at least 30 nations vastly more powerful than the Aztecs.... the Aztecs probably are top of the 3rd division if you set the types of nations up into leagues.

Any non-European civ is more of a challenge due to the incredibly poor government, the slow tech speed (wait 100 years for stab and govt increases) please dont even compare them to European civs and in the same breath tell me I dont know how to play the game - that's comical!! :lol:

Add to that the fact that the Aztecs have plenty of challenges with the surrounding native civs and immediate invasions from Portugal and Spain and later from France and England.... while having vastly inferior troops, land, manpower, tech and of course, no boats.


As I said, I personally find EUIII to play like a board game and it's about as deep as most board games too (naturally playing against good human players makes it more difficult) - its scope is much larger of course, but the depths of it is mostly due to the inherent RPG qualities - your imagination fills the vast gaping blanks.

Unit size does NOT affect gameplay since enemy's units will increase as well. It only lets each unit get higher cap. Siege weapons do the same damage even though there are more ppl supporting them. In the end, increasing unit size is only for looks.

:rolleyes: What the hell is going on in this thread, clueless people telling me the opposite of things I know perfectly well. Of course unit size makes a huge difference to the game! What does the fact that enemy units increase in size too have to do with it? Of course they increase in size too, but the point is that all aspects of the battle change with larger unit sizes - routing takes a lot more time, flanking and breaking your enemy is more controlled, archers do a lot more damage. Unit creation is a lot more important and you need to pay a lot more attention to your economy..... from the sounds of it, you've never tried and don't know but are still commenting! :rolleyes:



Are you complete nuts? There are endless bugs in Medieval II: Total war. Getting close to 1 year since they launch and I sometimes think the game is still unplayable. CTD has been problem since it first came out and they are not planning to fix it. Hardware or software conflicts, eh? How come there are thousands of people's posts on TW forum complaining about game crash while they've never had such instance with any other games?
Obvious bugs in battlefield make a battle endless and inefficient as well.

There....if that game is not broken, what is broken?....fanboy....:lol:

Duh..... :crazyeye:

Reading comprehension for the win!

How about you go back and read again what I said... I said

I've got all the games mentioned above and I have to say that Civ BtS is the most polished of all of them.

I know, I know.... all the whinging "it's broken" crew probably just had to be admitted to hospital, but the fact remains that ALL of the listed games have a lot of problems.

Where exactly do you read in that me saying that M2TW doesnt have bugs? Where in that do you see me defending it? So why, oh foot in mouth one, did you call me a fanboy? Actually, all I said was the Civ is the most polished of them all... i.e. M2TW is MORE buggy than Civ..... you really should try reading a little more carefully before trying to make someone look foolish, otherwise it just comes back on you.

You are saying that playing MP makes Europa Universalis challenging and that I shouldnt judge the game by its SP play.... and then turning round and judging Civ by its SP game!! :mischief: That's hardly fair is it?No, you may wish to reread what I said. I said: "Firstly, EU's AI isn't up to the task of giving a human opponent any real challenge. And what's so hard about Civ 3, anyway? It's just as simple." That's a totally fair statement.
And any game against a human is always going to be more challenging if they are capable... again, that's not really the point we were talking about and is more than a little of a non-sequiter.No, it's not. If a game seems simple in single-player but isn't in multiplayer, then it's not a simple game; it's just that the AI is bad. I mean, early chess programs had AWFUL AI and were incredibly easy in single-player. Does that make chess a simple game?
Of course I was talking about SP - they are both predominantly SP games and I only play SP due to time differences and problems getting people to play for extended periods of time.And Civ3's single-player experience was easy as pie as well, and the only way to get any challenge from the AI was to let it cheat like a madman.
In SP, EUIII is only challenging if you play an underdog and really - I'm still not sure that you have outlined any actual complexities involved in the game.... managing diplomacy? What, you mean sending diplomats every now and then? Hardly complex or deep.... all you do is click a button and select from a very limited list.You obviously haven't really played it that much. When do you spend money on improving relations and when do you spend it on armies or improvements? Should you mint and incur inflation for your current goal or is the inflation not worth the increased speed at which you'd get it?
And actually claiming that Civ is more simple for the AI?? I dont know where to begin but you are most assuredly wrong, there's very tight restraints on what can and cant be done in EUIII, while in civ, the board is very open and the AI has to forge an empire out of it, specialising or acclimatising to what they find.... EU has a fixed map with fixed provinces and fixed relations and fixed fixed fixed EVERYTHING..... if you really wish to insist that it is more complex, then you're going to have to accept an "agree to disagree" because there's no way on heaven or earth that you are going to convince me of this!!I didn't have much hope of convincing you at all, I was just defending the game so that other posters didn't get the wrong impression of it. The AI in EU3 is incredibly dynamic. In fact, it even automatically detects the changes you make in mods and adapts accordingly! For example, if you modify a national idea or unit to make it overpowered, the AI will almost always pick it.
Furthermore, Aztecs are one of the easiest nations!!!???? :lol: That's hilarious! There are 2000 people on the official forum complaining that any non european civ is incredibly difficult to play (as it should be given the name of the game) and here you are telling me that everyone's wrong. There are at least 30 nations vastly more powerful than the Aztecs.... the Aztecs probably are top of the 3rd division if you set the types of nations up into leagues.You might wanna go over to the forum again. I've never seen anyone say that the Aztecs were anything but easy until the latest patch for EU3, and even then only a few people are claiming it. The Aztecs were one of the easiest nations in the entire game to play until the 1.02 patch. They're still incredibly easy in EU2.
Any non-European civ is more of a challenge due to the incredibly poor government, the slow tech speed (wait 100 years for stab and govt increases) please dont even compare them to European civs and in the same breath tell me I dont know how to play the game - that's comical!!You obviously don't. The only civs that are particularly difficult in EU3 are small ones that start next to very large ones that have bad relations with them. Try playing as Athens from the Grand Campaign. That's far harder than the Aztecs, since the Ottomans will probably come and crush you in short order. Sure, it's not that hard, but neither is any Civ3 scenario I've ever played where my first city wasn't on a tiny island isolated from the world.
Add to that the fact that the Aztecs have plenty of challenges with the surrounding native civs and immediate invasions from Portugal and Spain and later from France and England.... while having vastly inferior troops, land, manpower, tech and of course, no boats.Immediate? You must be playing a different game than I am. Most Aztec players just eat their neighbors in the first 10 years or so, then make friends with Portugal and Spain so they can westernize.

Quality, I would have been polite to you if you didn't keep inferring that I am stupid and incapable of playing the game.

But as it stands....

If you like to make complexities out of a simple game, by all means enjoy, but please - I've played it enough times to know for myself whether it is complex or not and I find it very simplistic - the actual human interaction with the game is simplistic, the economic models are simplistic, the battles are simplistic. Does that make it not fun? No - Did I say it's a bad game? No - you are defending the game sure but the problem is that I am not attacking it. Instead, you are instead misleading people into considering it a complex game when in fact it is very superficial and simplistic. That's cool - it's still fun.

Connect 4 is a very simple game, but when you play against someone who knows how to play it, it gets much harder! Your arguments are non-sequiters, if you find it a complex game and then tell me that because I find it easy I dont understand it - who's really having the trouble with the game? You or me?

I'm not crazy about it, but I would guess I've played it for around 200 hours? I've got several AAR's up on the official forums... you may even know me over there..... you can either keep repeating that I dont know how to play, or accept that perhaps people find different things challenging, for as far as I'm concerned, EU is a simplistic, but fun game.

Well, I`ve been reading the discussion above and I have to say that the EU# fan is rigth. I personally play all the games quoted above, and them all, despite the fact that civ is more addictive. The EU is more difficult simply because is historically based, although history is chaged(it´s all the fun), so you are compelled to changed historic difficulties in order to win. If you get Netherland, you gotta go aggainst a very strong Spain, not forggeting about France, tough, which is just besides you. While in Civ you get everybody starting at more or less the same status and then developing. About the TW series, it lacks a better AI. I never played the MODs, I´ll try to see what is like, but the normal version is easy after some games. In the RTW I could beat the computer with a army half the size of it`s, but always thought that a well designed AI allied with the Civ`s gameplay would make a hell of a game.

And this (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=97025) fixes almost all of those issues.

I have it downloaded and no it doesn't. Battlefield pathfinding is still horrible and the AI has all the diplomatic grace of an autistic child.

Quality, I would have been polite to you if you didn't keep inferring that I am stupid and incapable of playing the game.

But as it stands....

If you like to make complexities out of a simple game, by all means enjoy, but please - I've played it enough times to know for myself whether it is complex or not and I find it very simplistic - the actual human interaction with the game is simplistic, the economic models are simplistic, the battles are simplistic. Does that make it not fun? No - Did I say it's a bad game? No - you are defending the game sure but the problem is that I am not attacking it. Instead, you are instead misleading people into considering it a complex game when in fact it is very superficial and simplistic. That's cool - it's still fun.

Connect 4 is a very simple game, but when you play against someone who knows how to play it, it gets much harder! Your arguments are non-sequiters, if you find it a complex game and then tell me that because I find it easy I dont understand it - who's really having the trouble with the game? You or me?

I'm not crazy about it, but I would guess I've played it for around 200 hours? I've got several AAR's up on the official forums... you may even know me over there..... you can either keep repeating that I dont know how to play, or accept that perhaps people find different things challenging, for as far as I'm concerned, EU is a simplistic, but fun game.


fanboys.....sigh.

fanboys.....sigh.


Trolls....sigh


Great come-back for totally failing to read earlier posts, for posting wrong information and being called on it.... real quality!

Nice back track, didnt work though.

Trolls....sigh


Great come-back for totally failing to read earlier posts, for posting wrong information and being called on it.... real quality!

Nice back track, didnt work though.

so what, fanboy?

so what, fanboy?

Keep going, you'll soon have enough of a post count to escape the appellation of obvious trollery! ;)


Vacuous posting is clearly a winner here.... cant express yourself by logic? Call someone some names! :D

Keep going, you'll soon have enough of a post count to escape the appellation of obvious trollery! ;)

fanboy...can you go whine in TW forum or something? won't read this post again. whine as much as u can here but I ain't read another worthless post of yours. ur dirty, fanboy. he kept pm'ing me with dirty jokes....jeez.....ok. you win. TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules. Satisfied, FANBOY?

Sad sad boy..... you tried to pull my points down and was proven wrong, not just by me but by others too. When that didnt work, you started on personal slurs - trying to get the thread closed to hide your errors?

You first called me a fanboy about M2TW when I was the first one on the page to say that it had bugs.... so it was clear to all that you had some reading difficulty.

Never mind, we didnt hold it against you....

Now you are calling me a fanboy for what exactly? About M2TW? Or about Civ? Sorry, you need to work on your communication skills a little......

And also, why am I dirty? Even if I was a "fanboy" (which incidentally at my age, I'd be quite proud of), what exactly is wrong with that on a fan site?

Trolling aint going to get you far son.



Edit: As you edited your post to claim that I had "pm'ed you with dirty jokes"

fanboy...can you go whine in TW forum or something? won't read this post again. whine as much as u can here but I ain't read another worthless post of yours. ur dirty, fanboy. he kept pm'ing me with dirty jokes....jeez.....ok. you win. TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules TW rules. Satisfied, FANBOY?

when I wouldn't even stoop to talking with children with such bad manners as yourself, I should point out that one more accusation like that and I will ask the mods to look into it instead.

It's obvious you are looking for a flame war reaction and I aint about to give it to you sonny boy, so run along now and work it out for yourself.

Especially as you still cant read between the lines that I am not that much of a fan of M2TW - it's just much better for battles than Civ.... if you want to discuss that with me, please feel free.... but calling me names is not really helping your communication nor your standing here.

Yeah sorry, it was immediately after you posted, so I assumed you'd know.

Personally, I played for epic battles and I actually found Greece really quite challenging on V Hard / V Hard with huge size units.

The Romans would be in your face on about turn 2 and it would be an endless war from then on. Spartans would die horribly in the field, but in a settlement or in a nice area of the map, you could really punish an attacking army.


I beat the game with all the civs on V hard / V hard - so I really got my money's worth long before mods were released. I definitely had more than 2 weeks worth of fun out of it!! ;)

Sometimes threads move very quickly and what seems to be a reply to your own post happens to be a reply to someone else. So I had to make sure. :)

I also played RTW for more than 2 weeks. In my post, I mentioned that it blew me away for 2 weeks and then started to diminish in appeal, but that doesn't mean that I only played it for 2 weeks. I just mentioned that to compare it with civilization that has a more long lasting appeal for me. I tried to give the OP some insight into the differences between the games and one of them is that RTW is the type of game that is great at the start and Civ is the type of game that is great after 2 weeks of playing.

Yeah I have to agree - my first few hours of R:TW left me absolutely gobsmacked!

I couldn't believe the technical jump it had made over so many games. Personally, I hate RTS's but this was something new and interesting.

Also, I love the ancient world - much more than medieval or japanese setting, so they call came together nicely in one package for me.

haven't tried medieval but i've played a fair amount of shogun and rome.....and while i love the battles...the actualy strategy portion of the game bores me after a while. Civ definitely has 10000times more replay value for me....but like someone else said, if you're still wrapping your head around civ4 then it's a bit premature to jump into bts

I would recommend BtS over MTW2. While the original MTW was a very good game, I've found the later Total War games to be rather weaker. The problem I've always found with them is lack of replay value. The strategy map is very crude compared to Civ, and is little more than a vehicle to serve up the battle sequences, which I think is the main problem. Fun though the battle sequences are, they haven't significantly changed, with the result that once you've seen one, you've seen them all. Rome I got bored with after a few weeks. MTW2 needed a mod to get my interest to last past the first game.

Bug wise, while BtS has many issues, it is nowhere near as bad as I found RTW and MTW2 to be. Never mind game play issues and general polish, they both required serious effort to get them functioning at all.

Unless you're a serious fan of the RTS style battles of the Total War series, you'll be better off with BtS.

In my games of the first MTW it seems that 10% of the game is build up a decent army and 90% is mopping up the AI. Who needs strategy when you can easily beat the AI on the battlefield even when I'm totally outnumbered. Rome Total War at least tried to make the game more interesting to have Rome turn on you during the mopping up part of the game.