New Patch and save games?

[eatonpye]

I'm seeing a lot of stuff about the new DLC, and I'm wondering how they affect games in progress. I assume that you'll be playing against all that stuff next time you start a game, but does any of it affect the campaign you're already playing if you don't buy the DLC?

[Tricks]

New patches generally break old saves.

[THE_RaBiD_CanuK]

It may or may not break the save. I got some old saves that still work (so far), but there's no guarantee, especially if it's a major overall like greenskins upddate.

[Unknown Helldiver]

There is a (f***ing small) chance that the saves work fine, even with some mods... praise Gork/ Mork!

[eatonpye]

Great. Just great. Finally had a campaign I wanted to play out, at least 100 turns or so. And since it's a von Carstein campaign, now the whole situation with greenies will be different. Thanks, CA.

[Elitewrecker PT]

The new factions and map changes won't occur. Units, not sure, maybe.

[Inardesco]

If you have mods, expect them to break.
But you still have 13 days before it arrives

[RCMidas]

Yes and no. You simply opt into the earlier build-beta which is released at the same time as the patch lands. Essentially, you can play up to when the patch lands no problem. Once it does, before you start the game, check the beta options available and opt into the most recent one. That will keep your copy of the game "stuck" at its pre-DLC version and prevent any breaking of saves.

You must opt out of said beta if you wish to play any of the new content, of course, since your beta version will not actually have it. I recommend you keep a written log of which version of the game is associated with which saves if you wish to switch between them safely.

So, yes, in fact. You may thank CA for providing this option, since they are under no compulsion to do so.

[ArchAnge1LT]

You can finish the campaign in a few days if you really want to.

[Notoko]

Game patches and/or Mods break a lot with new game updates that comes along with new DLC.

[eatonpye]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

Yes and no. You simply opt into the earlier build-beta which is released at the same time as the patch lands. Essentially, you can play up to when the patch lands no problem. Once it does, before you start the game, check the beta options available and opt into the most recent one. That will keep your copy of the game "stuck" at its pre-DLC version and prevent any breaking of saves.

You must opt out of said beta if you wish to play any of the new content, of course, since your beta version will not actually have it. I recommend you keep a written log of which version of the game is associated with which saves if you wish to switch between them safely.

So, yes, in fact. You may thank CA for providing this option, since they are under no compulsion to do so.

Ah, this is good! Thanks.

Maybe they are not under a 'compulsion' but it would be rude to change a game while people are in the middle of playing it, without their consent. After all, I bought TWW2 as it was at the time, and am playing it as such, and didn't ask for this patch. The patches really should be entirely optional.

To say they are under 'no' compulsion is to suggest that they could remove all the mechanics you like and turn the game into Shogun 1 in fantasy drag if they wanted to.

[RCMidas]

...legally speaking, they kinda can. The thing with digital downloads is that you're more renting a player's license as opposed to actually owning the game. Take a look at how companies like EA and Paradox either do nothing or way too much to change up their games as time goes by for an example of how NOT to do it. CA's update model really is one of the better versions out there.

That's neither here nor there though.

[Walrus Clan (Wally)]

Originally posted by eatonpye:

Great. Just great. Finally had a campaign I wanted to play out, at least 100 turns or so. And since it's a von Carstein campaign, now the whole situation with greenies will be different. Thanks, CA.

You can tell your game to not update and then keep playing what you have. If you are wanting all of the new changes while playing the old game thats not how code like this works. Think about it this way, there are different starting positions and the map itself will be different. Factions will now build different units and have different ideas for how to act.

In general if you are making fundamental changes to a game rather than small ones like "change melee defense by 2" then it would be more effort than its worth to make both work at the same time. They would then have 2 different builds that they need to maintain and any updates would have to be tested against both game states. That problem compounds as times goes on.

So if you dont want the new stuff then dont update. If you do then have fun starting a new campaign with all of the new fun features. :D

[eatonpye]

Originally posted by King Midas:

Originally posted by eatonpye:

Great. Just great. Finally had a campaign I wanted to play out, at least 100 turns or so. And since it's a von Carstein campaign, now the whole situation with greenies will be different. Thanks, CA.

You can tell your game to not update and then keep playing what you have. If you are wanting all of the new changes while playing the old game thats not how code like this works. Think about it this way, there are different starting positions and the map itself will be different. Factions will now build different units and have different ideas for how to act.

In general if you are making fundamental changes to a game rather than small ones like "change melee defense by 2" then it would be more effort than its worth to make both work at the same time. They would then have 2 different builds that they need to maintain and any updates would have to be tested against both game states. That problem compounds as times goes on.

So if you dont want the new stuff then dont update. If you do then have fun starting a new campaign with all of the new fun features. :D

Yeah, at the moment I don't want any changes at all- so how do I go about preventing the patch from taking hold? Also, I assume that later I can just activate it, and abandon the current set up?

As for different builds- I do see your point, but to be frank, from what I can see the game is highly modularized anyway, so the main issues would be in terms of start positions, maps and global interactions like diplomacy. Properly modularized, most of those should be relatively small- and some really don't work anyway, like diplomacy.

Any way, I'm not advocating for CA to 'maintain' a bunch of different builds for every conceivable combination of DLC, but a sequential system would be nice- if you could just arrest development for awhile at a stage you liked.

It seems from what I've read that CA's general approach is to release patches that break the game- green tide, order tide, etc- and then 'balance' the system by releasing more patches that break the game differently. This seems to be about getting more lore elements, more factions, and more special units in, which is fine, but since there's relatively little global mechanics impact, it really shouldn't be too hard to make the patches optional. (Separating bug fixes and global mechanics patches from content patches would do most of the work right there.)

While there are definitely some limitations in TWW1, one thing I like is that it's pretty stable- I can mod it if I want to, but CA is unlikely to go back and wreak major changes on it.