No Tiles

[Kings Hand]

This is one of the improvements mentioned in relation to the campaign map for empires.
How do you think this will effect both the campaign as a whole and the battle map?
I'm not very knowledgable conscerning the mechanics of the campaign map, in the last 2 games was the campaign map infact hundreds of individual battlefields - tiles? I was under the impression that tiles didn't really matter as i have fought multple battles on the same tile, with the same feature (ruin, outcrop etc) in following battles, but i have noticed momentum moving forward, for example: 1st battle begins with your starting area ontop of a hill but after continuous battles your starting area slips down the hill further each time. Does this mean that the battlefield is infact only a fraction of the tile and your position dictates which section is used? So if in my example you move too far towards the edge of the tile you are transported to the next tile as there is not enough room to set up both armies.
And if this is the case then will the new system mean that the campaign map is one big battlefield with no magical teleportation to the next tile because of space restrictions.
I cant say I have noticed this so if i completely wrong could someone set me straight.

[Geoffrey S]

I thought this mainly referred to the campaign map. RTW and I think MTW2 worked on the basis of lots of small squares making the map, probably a leftover from the older AI. Perhaps now everything is fluid, which should make for a tighter AI.

[pevergreen]

Tiles were locations, the battle maps were randomly generated.

[Warluster]

Wait a second, what are these tiles? I don't get it.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

In Rome and Medieval 2, the strategy map was composed of tiles. Every city was 1 tile, every army took up 1 tile and had it's movement in tiles. CA is saying they are getting rid of them, which sounds good to me.

[Zenicetus]

Here's how the tiles currently work. There's a game exploit in M2TW, where you can kill off an agent by surrounding him with individual military units, and dropping one more unit right on top -- "poof" he's dead. Very useful for eliminating pesky Inquisitors and heretics if you've tried everything else, and just need that agent GONE from the map.

You have to put three units across the top, one to the left side, one to the right side, and three across the bottom (if I'm remembering this correctly). The agent is occupying the tile in the middle, so it's a 3x3 grid of 9 tiles where only one army or agent can be at the same time. The whole campaign map is overlaid (or underlaid?) with that grid, and it's how movement and blocking is determined.

So if they're getting rid of that grid, it might mean more fluid movement. Although I'm assuming there will still be some kind of "zone of control" so you can't just sneak past (or through) an enemy army blocking a strategic choke point on the map. Ideally that zone of control should be much smaller for fleets at sea than for land armies. Visibility is just line of sight on the ocean, so you don't block or control much area. On land, it's more determined by geography (i.e. one single mountain pass or bridge can "control" a huge area if it's the only way through geographic obstacles). There might also be spies and such that would let you know if an army was passing nearby, which isn't the case for ships at sea. I don't know if that's what they're actually doing with this game, but getting rid of the tile grid would allow that flexibility.

[hoom]

Well, Shogun & Medieval didn't use tiles either.
You could place your armies/agents anywhere within each province.

Part of the dumbness of the RTW/M2TW military campaign AI is that it clearly at least sometimes still thinks its working with the Shogun/MTW style drag & drop campaign map.

Could it be that we are returning to something like that? Drag & drop between provinces but with auto-generated terrain based on where you dropped.

[pevergreen]

The mistake with that is that so many people like the new campaign map.

My personal view on what they will do is have a map like RTW/M2TW but no tiles, just blocked areas you cant go on. Kind of like a big battle map.

[Zarky]

"big battle map" sounds good when there´s naval battles coming up ahead.
Drag & drop would be bad since tiles give us change to choose where and when to battle.

[LadyAnn]

Well, Shogun & Medieval didn't use tiles either.
You could place your armies/agents anywhere within each province.

Part of the dumbness of the RTW/M2TW military campaign AI is that it clearly at least sometimes still thinks its working with the Shogun/MTW style drag & drop campaign map.

Could it be that we are returning to something like that? Drag & drop between provinces but with auto-generated terrain based on where you dropped.


Not true! Each province in STW and MTW is an ugly big fat tile (and who said tiles must be squared?)

Annie

[caravel]

Well, Shogun & Medieval didn't use tiles either.
You could place your armies/agents anywhere within each province.
You could place your armies anywhere in the province but that the positioning of a stack within the province was irrelevant to the resulting battle map terrain, which was always determined by the origin of the invader.

Not true! Each province in STW and MTW is an ugly big fat tile (and who said tiles must be squared?)
This is true in a sense. Every province in STW/MTW had a predetermined set of random maps for the castles, the terrain types for border crossings and for battles within a province such as revolts or civil wars.

[sassbarman]

This is a much needed improvement to the campaign map if it works the way i think it's going to.
If armies can some how slip past each other on the campaign map especially allied or neutral armies it would eliminate those annoying detours you often see in the game right now.
You guys have all seen what happens when you try and send an army from nicea to constantinople and the paths are blocked, your army decides it would be better to go all the way around the black sea instead.
The ai often suffers from this behaviour hampering it's ability to properly marshel it's forces, continually sending its' armies off on crazy roadtrips instead of to where they are needed.

[Hellenic_Hoplite]

How would this work though without getting rid of the free movement campaign map? I have never had a problem with the free movement, they just need to make the AI better able to handle it.

[Slyspy]

The AI couldn't handle RTW's system anyway since it was basicaly STW's AI forced to play a different set of rules. I don't see how it can cope without some sort of structure without a complete rebuild, which would be good because the AI is currently the weakest aspect of the series.