What games are you waiting for in 2006?

[PrinzMegaherz]

Boron said:

May i ask what you disliked about RTW?
I found RTW a major improvement over the old Shogun/Medieval system.

The new province system with traveling armies is imho better than the old system Medieval and Shogun had

Maybe it's a matter of taste. I liked the old system better, mainly it took less time to move your troops where they were needed. Rome feels a way slower, at least for me.

and RTW was the first of the total war games with really good graphics.

Indeed, but as someone who plays dom 2, graphics aren't that important to me. Some of the "advantages" of the 3D engine were even ridiculous. I remember my cavalery jumping over my infantry units while charging. In Medieval, your cavalery would get stuck in your troops and not charge right trough them.

Finally RTW had more modding possibilities and was easier to mod than Medieval.

I'm glad to hear that, I'll have a look at those mods.

So what was better in Medieval than in Rome in your opinion?

Maybe it's the setting. I prefer the variety of troops you have available in Medieval. In Rome you have... well... you have guys with spears, stronger guys with spears, horses that magically fly over your troops, and did I mention those guys with spears? In addition, the fact that all of your troops have javelins makes the battles a trough mikromanagment hell, at least for me. I even found diplomacy more tedious because it takes your ambassador so long to get somewhere, and I miss selling my daughters in exchange for alliances. Sieges are very boring. When you decide to assault a village, the enemy runs to it's centers, making you move your army a painfully long way through that city/village. Then there is the matter of sound... again, it's a matter of taste, but I loved that bombastic battle sound islamic nations got in medieval

For me it has been the other way round, though i liked Medieval i think RTW was better, i liked RTWs new features like the new Province Map

Well, everything is a matter of taste. Rome is not a bad game. But I prefered the old one.

[WraithLord]

First and foremost dominions III - the awakening.
Then there's the mark of chaos. A blend of RTW and the fantasy genre, something I have for a long time wanted to see. The screens look awesome.

NWN-II.

I once had high expectations from HOMM-V but by now they are all but gone.

Warlords-V seems to have taken a good direction, discarding the awful direction they took with the fourth installment, instead basing the game on the warlords-III DLR.

[Fate]

I am liking the look of Dom III, of course.


I am also watching, though now doubting it will ever come to america, Great Battles of Rome, (http://celtickings.net/forum/viewforum.phtml?f=14). It came out in spain and Italy around a year ago, and the rest of the world has been waiting ever since.

[Boron]

@ PrinzMegaherz

I c, your complaints are good ones .
Looks as it is a matter of taste indeed.

Rome plays slower than Shogun or Medieval, that's also true.
I liked Medieval a lot too but my main gripe with Medieval was that if you conquered a province most of the province's infrastructure was looted. And buildings took too long to be built, in RTW this is a bit faster and buildings get only damaged but not completely looted when the enemy captures them.
This lead to more dynamic campaigns in RTW imho. Border Cities changing possession every 5-10 turns was nothing uncommon.
In Medieval you always had to play more methodically, if a province exchanged 5 times ownership there the province's infrastructure was totally razed from all the looting.

And finally with RTW's new province system you could use the terrain to your advantage, i.e. wait in the woods for the attacker if you played barbarians, hide beyond brigdes if you had good artillery etc..

Your complaint about Rome's troops is also only partially correct:
1st only the roman troops had all javelins, most other nations had only 1 or no javelin throwing troop type at all.
2nd the spear thing is also only partially true:
Only the Phalanx-heavy nations have many speartroops, especially the greek successor states.
But there were also many factions with no spear units at all or only crappy ones like the gaul warband.
The troop variety in RTW is imho as great as in Medieval.
Ok maybe 10% less great since medieval also had x-bows and cannons, but apart from that the variety in RTW is the same.

But to each his own, your points were really good PrinzMegaherz .
And the Medieval AI was much better than the RTW-AI too.

If you want to try a mod, try
http://www.rometotalrealism.org/

It's imho the best RTW-Mod. Beware though, it largely increases the province map to the maximum (=200 provinces iirc), so a RTR-Game lasts even longer than a vanilla game.

[shovah]

just like to thank wraithlord for reminding me to add Mark of Chaos to my list

[NTJedi]

yes... thanks wraithlord... this "mark of chaos" game has many sweet features. I'll keep my eye on this one.

[Saber Cherry]

It's been mentioned, but Supreme Commander is looking... insane.





You can even zoom out:

[Endoperez]

Now, why did you have to go and do that! How much free time do you think I have!

[shovah]

i would just like to point out (as far as my limited memory can remember) that the last picture saber posted was not a campain map but an actual game LEVEL. so you should be able to zoom in to any part of it just as much (maybe more so) that the first picture sabre posted. SC games (according to the devs) will often have many minor skirmishes going on simultaniously with the larger offensives (although they say it shouldnt be a problem as far as management goes)

overall it looks like a great game

ps: why in the name of **** do i use so many brackets?

[OG_Gleep]

Yeah, I can't wait for Supreme commander. And I sat thinking about one particular game for this list and I just couldn't recall it. That game is Mark of Chaos. I am probably more excited about MoC then any other game has been mentioned.

I am biased towards all things Warhammer, but that looks like a killer app regardless of what you know about the Warhammer universe.

As far as RTW goes, I missed the Religion aspect of MTW, and right from the start I was turned off by RTW when I saw "Flaming Pigs". I am not a realism nut but that is just silly. The Dogs also totally ruined any kind of balance, even though I loved the damn mutts. I def like the era more, and the emphisis on infantry rather then missle units was a plus.