Implamentations in Shogun to consider

[High Voltage]

I've thought of a few things Shogun can add to add more realism and control for the user. If I'm lucky maybe this list would go to CA if everyone agreed...

1. To add to the wedge, close, and loose formations, there should be a crescent/half-circle formation. Hannibal used this when fighting Rome, outnumbered 2 to 1, and suceeded. It helped him with the double envelopement tactic. I can think of many strategies to use this for.

2. As said before, a formation editor. Not as useful before battle, but what about after the armies collide, then reform. Instead of taking forever to get my original unlisted formation back, one pre-defigned hotkey should access this custom formation. It's like in real battle, where generals would design there own strategies, and the formations to back them up, and be able to form these whenever needed.

3. Fallback command. This is very helpful if sending the enemy into a trap. Think about it. If they charge your center, the center falls back, then the wings and the center charge, encircling the enemy. There's also other purposes, like if you have high ground behind you, falling back, then counter marching. You can do the alt+left-click, but a command would be much quicker and ensure that they fall back in a straight path.

4. Pre-defigned battle plan before fighting. This would be where you have a formation designed, then "give orders" as to what to do when x distance away from the enemy. How is this helpful? Less micromanagement. It would be as if you gave orders to your generals and they carry them out for you. But you still have control over all the units. You can do complex manuevers more easily too, like have your army wheel left, then wheel right, then left again, confusing them.

5. Finally, seige weapons! I know they were almost never used at the time, but at least have an option to enable/disable them. And make them expensive. So if I want a more historically accurate battle, I would just disable them. If I want some all out blood bath pure fun battle, then enable them http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

Keep on adding to this list! What are your thoughts/comments?

[This message has been edited by High Voltage (edited 05-11-2001).]

[Catiline]

1- it's an army formation, not a unit one. the idea is the centre gives, the flanks envelope, no good on a small scale.

2- good, htough I'd not use it to reform in battles, then you have to react to circumstance and terrain. Before the battle it'd make drawing up basic formation easier

3- presumably you mean implementing for hth units the archers skirmish mode. would be very useful for cavalry to keep them away from spears, but i wouldn't want my foot slogers breaking up theuir formation doing this. The AI might fall into the trap, human generals wouldn't, not after a few nasty defeats anyway.

4- this i do want for realisms sake. firstly to coordinate attacks in mP, in Sp you've got pause so it's not nearly so necessary. However, waht I'd like to see at leaast as an option is you having to give the basic battle orders before the start of combat, and then have a certain amount of initiative 'points' to send in the battle, or a corps of staff officers to deliver your orders to units, send them all off too early and you have to wait for them to return at critical points etc. However this requires much brighter AI on a unit level, and will be very frustrating, though realistic when a command gets misinterpretted, or the wrong initiative gets taken.

5- go play command and conquer http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

------------------
It's not a bug, it's a feature

[Alastair]

My only suggestion is NAVAL.

[CaPeFeAr]

1. although there is no hot key for it there is a way to make it happen with one click of the mouse...but thats not what your talking about....u mean unit level right? when u start deploying your army u can "bend" a unit around the deployment fence but it is a slight bend. cool idea though

2.make sure your units are ungrouped..draw a new formation and get all your troops reforming...do not wait..hit the group button and use alt left click...they will get into formation on the way to their new location.

3. there is one...its called withdraw..units do not suffer moral penelities from seeing a unit withdraw...but they will defend themselves at the rear of the unit while falling back..to get them to stop withdrawing simply give them new orders.. i do not suggest this tactic.

4. i agree with the premise...i would rather have the ability to give 1 or more units to the ai to control and be able to reclaim them at will....also if a player drops from a game i wish the ai would take over their army.

5. the last thing i want to see is campers with seige weapons... it is hard enough to get them down from there mountains without them having catapults and such or would you limit them to attackers only? then i couldnt attack as a defender and i like doing that....magy once said it was a mistake to label one side attackers and one side defenders...it makes for static play and i happen to agree 100%... sry but IMHO i dont want to see seige weapons.

------------------
do you have a comment to make, a question to ask, or a concern about a current fearful ways member? plz feel free to stop by Fearful Ways @ezboard.com (http://pub24.ezboard.com/bfearfulways)

[High Voltage]

Capefear:
Having to redo a formation with more than one click takes too much time. Pre-defined is much more quicker and realistic. If you want realism, then just having more control over the game is it. Real generals had plans already laid out along with formations. Of course there situations were way different than in STW, but we should at least have this flexibility.

Catiline:
I see what you mean about the center evelope, but it would be nice to do it on a unit scale, maybe it would work with something other than the envelope.

[Alastair]

Obviously only attackers would get them, and only in sieges. (this would be for killing walls, nothing else) Otherwise, we'd start getting into artillery which, IMHO, is too far of a departure from Japanese warfare.

[Kraellin]

this is another of those threads that shows up once a month or so and i'll answer it this time the same way i did last time.

scripting and macros. this game begs for it. almost everything you mentioned could be handled in that fashion with the exception of the siege stuff.

i always liked napoleon's square formation for muskets too. i forget the battle in the middle east where he used it so effectively, but he held off something like 10,000 enemy with his 4000 troops by using it. he arranged his men in groups of 50 or 100 or something like that all in squares of men. the enemy could move through and around these groups but would take devastating losses from the crossfire.

more formations, more troop manuevering commands, scripts and macros and perhaps even a 'formation editor' would be nice, but you could even do that with good scripting and wouldnt even need a special editor for it.

the way to implement it would be to make another hot key like the T key used for talking. only in this one you would be 'shouting commands' to your troops. let's say we used the C key (for commands). you hit the C key and a window like the current talk key opens up. you type in your one or two word command and hit 'enter'. this command or phrase is then parsed to your script file which interprets it and sends out the execution of the thing. simple.

this would make for a TON of variety in play and allow for all those fancy auto-moves i keep hearing about. it would allow for making new unit formations easily, facings, pre-set attack and defense postures, charges, retreats and a lot of other stuff as well. the game really does scream for this sort of overall control feature.

(btw, ca, i am for hire ;)

siege weapons are fun, but i tend to think they more belong in the european sequel. of course, there i'd also add battlements and hot oil and all the rest of the siege scenario stuff.

K.

[High Voltage]

Nice idea Kraellin, that would be cool!