Calax said:
I just wanted to note that in order to understand everything about the game you're going to have to filter through some internet forums. Formations, special abilities, why one troop is more expensive than another but has less infantry in it, explanation of trade... every one of these is unexplained in the documentation or the game itself. The game has some really interesting WTF? questions. Like WTF? Why won't anyone invade over sea's when they're the AI... I'm being totally serious here, if you're Britan, you could set the damn thing on extremely hard, declare war on everything with a pulse, and not win a SINGLE military engagement, and still survive until the end because nobody'd cross the channel to attack London, much less Ireland and Scotland.
You think Total War is that complicated cause you need to mess around forums to see which units is stronger? Then what you say of games like Europa Universalis that you need a 3 hour walkthrõugh movie just to understand half of the game.
Anyway I explained the AI not doing naval assaults in another thread I'll do it again.
One of the MANY! complaints about MEdieval 2 was that the AI spent more time playing D-Day around the map (that is naval invasions) then taking care of their own provinces and expanding first into the logical places that is the closests regions. So the campaign map was flooded with boats filled with armies of mythic proportions.
Also around this time in the 17th,18th Europeans stoped sending armies across the sea to their colonies unless really needed. It was to expensive and too risky. One storm and you could lose all of your armies. Why do you thing GB lost the 13 colonies? GB had the power to squash them, but lacked the means. Most of the armies stationed in the Americas were unhappy and most of them were mercenaries. When war happened mobelizing an army to take on the rebels would be more expensive, then having the colonies in the first place. That and they thought they were awesome.
Even Napoleon didnt bother crossing the channel to take on Britain. Britains advantge was always the fact that it was on an island, not many can say they conquered that island. The ones that did were the Romans and they didnt even hold most of it. The Great Napoleon struggled with it the same way that Germany would later. Say what you want to say but Great Britain is a fortress just cause its an Island.
So you can declare historical accurate. But naval invasion was a feature that got removed. And that is being re-introduced later via-AI fixing patch, just so that some factions arent that powerfull or invencible, like BG.
But the game is much more fun picking up the Prussians or those Indian dudes.
