Lords of the Realm vs CTP1/2

[child of Thor]

Lords of the Realm(Impressions circa1990's) was a great little game.
It had a decent AI, fun diplomacy, and well designed kingdom management screens.
Also i liked the population growth model which took into account lots of factors and never left you feeling that unrealistic numbers were being used.
The army combat screen was not great but did the job well enough.
You could design and build your own castles.
You had to learn about crop rotation to keep your land fertile(educational)and decide how to best use your land.
All in all it left you feeling like you really were a medieval Lord of the realm and in charge of the peasents of your counties. It did simple things right for the most part and just felt well designed and well finished.
So if any of you also played this game how do you think CTP compares.

 

[hexagonian]

Two words
Tech Tree

I stopped playing LOTR as soon as I got CTP1 because of it.

 

[child of Thor]

true Hexagonian
It didn't cover the scope of the ctp games(or civ for that matter).
It would have added a bit more depth to the main game if there was some kinda tech tree, although how best to do this in a game that covers a few hundred years might be tricky.
I think it was the combat screen that i found the worst aspect of the game.

The Ai was really bad at moving troops around(made CTP2 vanilla look like einstein!). You just had to put a swamp between you and the enemy, wait for them to flounder through it and kill them as they struggled out the other side of it. It really was pitifull!

BUT the rest of the game was really nice. I especially liked the way diplomacy actually made the computer feel like a real personality.

I also realy liked the way it handled population numbers - it seems much more realistic than the CTP model. You always had a believable ammount taking into account what events might have happened and the birth/death rate.

I fired up my amiga about a month back and spent a good few hours being quite impressed with its charm. I never did play the second one, which i sometimes wonder about trying to find.

(And for a momment i thought when you said LOTR, you were meaning your Lord Of The Rings mod for CTP2!! )

 

[Dale]

Lords 2 was much better than 1 I felt. Ahhh..... I can remember many a day building up my dairy cattle numbers only to get the rabid wolves event.

The tactical sieges weren't the best, just ended up as a mass of milling archers and a couple of swords.

 

[child of Thor]

Well, i might get LOTR2, to see how it compared to the first. I'm pretty sure it was not released on the Amiga(which is a shame - i find the amiga versions of games to be so much more challanging, don't know why?), and i think i've seen it bundled with some other old(and mostly rubbish) PC titles.

Another thing i liked in LOTR was the crop rotation thing - it was a strange thing to add, but added strategy where not expected(my mate hated it though, and he had a point when you owned alot of territories). I guess the only modern game i can think of that has a tribute to farming is the 'harvest moon' games on nintendo.

I never did get to grips with designing and building my castles - it seemed to take forever to get enough stone/timber/labour to build anything of decent size(which i guess is realistic - it took sometimes over a hundred years to finish the bigger norman castles).

It could have been better, but overall it was a very nice game to while away the hours on.
I might be wrong but wasn't it the same designers that went on to do the 'Stronghold' games. I got the first one, but IMHO it didn't quite have the magic feeling of the LOTR game?

 

[Dale]

I grabbed Stronghold deluxe, and I thought it was fantastic. My missus and I usually play LAN games, and try to destroy each other. We have a house rule that we have 30 minutes to build our castle before we can attack. If we play against any AI's we ally and work together to take them out first, and then when it gets to the 30 minute mark it's all on for young 'n old.

As for getting enough stone for castles in LOTR(2), it's easy. Concentrate your population to make as much as possible of other resources, sell them to a merchant, and then buy the stone and wood you need. Easy as pie. Also, when building a castle, use every man available (without killing your cows) and import wheet from other provs. My first step is to conquer neutral provs with at least 8 fields. Then I have 5 cows, 3 wheet fields running.

 

[child of Thor]

Ah yes Dale, i would expect the guy responsible for my first view of the 'You've been destroyed' screen in CTP2 to enjoy Stronghold more than me
I just found it too 'fighty' as i was kinda expecting a more sedate castle building experience(I only did try the single player campaign mode, and haven't really been back since).
It wasn't a bad game at all, just not quite what i was expecting.
Stronghold was the kind of game companies should be making more of. It was definately a well crafted game and not the usual shovelware.

Back to Lords, I was wondering about the diplo system it used.
In many ways it was inferior to CTPs, except it actually seemed to work!
You set a tone for your diplo(like in CTP) and then could use the default mesage or type your own(which could be fun in a multiplayer mode(which it didn't have)). Lords had a much more believable response to your actions than CTP(maybe even now after the mods).
The Ai's actually came across with alot of character - they looked a bit cartoonish but they were big and bold.
I think CTP suffers from using the boxed-out menu system in this respect, rather than a seperate screen for its diplomacy.
It makes the diplo screen look rather the same no matter who your conducting your diplomacy with(?).
Of course in CTP(1+2) you get alot of options to play around with. I can't quite put my finger on it, but you just never feel like your dealing with 'real' living characters. In Lords you do get that.
In part i think that using a menu over the main screen in CTP just makes it look and feel more like your playing a computer game, on-screen menus are computerish.

I guess with the potential release of the source code(and permission from Activision to let the modders do their thing), i was just thinking of some fundemantal things that could be improved. It seemed to me that LOTR was an old game that while not great had some aspects that it did very well, more so than in the CTPs.
Still nice to know Hex and yourself have played this classic
And thanks for the tips - i'm going to kickstart the old beast to try them out

 

[hexagonian]

It was the first game I had when I got my computer - I bought the LOTR1/LOTR2 combo packet.

The sad thing is that I can't track down the CD. I have a feeling that my son lent it out to one of his friends. The packet also had a Mac version of the game - something that I also gave away, but later regretted, because it would of been a nice game to play on my office computer when the boss was gone (and if I was not busy )

'Stronghold' is a great game too - though I can't get past mission 15. (based on reports on the official forum, I'm not the only one either...) I like the defensive/builder missions better. I may get the expansion pack down the road when it is in the bargin bin.

I'm currently plugging 'Chariots of War' (and still playing EU2 on the side)

 

[child of Thor]

yeah i know what it's like trying to replace older software
I'm trying to track down the 'Castle' games(by interplay).
IMHO there haven't been enough good titles that cover the ancient/medieval periods, so i'm trying to get my hands on all the decent(originals) examples i can.

Whats 'Chariots of War'? got a link/info . I must admit i've not played a pc game since getting 'Morrowind' for my xbox(i got the xbox to see what all the console fuss was about). I hope i'm not 'dumbing down' as i get older

hmmm either of you played 'King of Dragon Pass'? link
Ive played it a bit on a Mac and am likely to get it on PC, its a very interesting game(quite tricky to get into though), got some very unique idea's and ways of doing the typical rpg/historic theme. Hex you might like it for the art work It does have a few flaws in the design(at least on the mac version i played) that can get you into a no-way out trap, but i played it unpatched so....

Another game like Lords of The Realms, that gets the right atmosphere for the period it represents?

 

[hexagonian]

Here is the Paradox Forum link - it seems to be better than the official 'Chariots of War' site...

'Chariots of War' has a simpler model than a civ-style game, (build large armies and conquer everyone), but is is a lot of fun. Ian MacNeill is the lead developer - I hear he is a gaming champion of some sort in England.

All things considered, I still end up preferring EU2 to either CoW or CTP2.

I did manage to get through mission 15 in 'Stronghold' this past weekend, but I ended up doing a complete reinstall and not using the 1.2 patch. It was a piece of cake.

 

[child of Thor]

Most of the sites seem to be down for CoW, still i did get a look at some screen-shots and an online review.
Looks very nice, your not involved with the menu-screens/art are you?
When the sites are back-up i'll see how to get hold of it(it might be too war orientated for me, but i'm interested in any game that covers ancient history).

As for EU2, its a great game - I just find it hard(Impossible) to play as the nations i would like to(Ireland,Scotland or Wales), which annoys me a little bit.
I just can't bring myself to play as England and have to crush the poor celts

 

[hexagonian]

I played England a month ago and the Scots were the first to go... but I ended up peacefully diploannexing Ireland.

 

[child of Thor]

The Valleys will be revolting as soon as you turn your gaze towards the continent

 

[Dale]

I remember Castles!!!!! What a game back in those days. Castles2 was better.

CoT try http://www.the-underdogs.org I believe there's a copy of Castles2 there.

 

[child of Thor]

And there i was trying to disguise my link!!!!!
I bet they don't have an amiga version of Castles 2