Further game suggestions

[Ironfist]

As a newbie I made a post on the newcomers forum about some ideas to improve the game which were well recieved and got some good comments from one of the creative assembly guys.

Here are some others that could be added via a patch or in a new version of the game.

1. historygram
I used to play Civilisation 3 a lot. At the end of the game you could play back a recording showing the territorial spread of your civ. It occured to me that it would be neat if you could play back your territorial spread in MTW too, starting at the beginning of the campaign and finishing where you end up.

2. trading
Also borrowed but adapted from Civ3 I'd like to be able to trade with the other Kings. It doesnt seem like it would be a big jump to drop a merchant from my side onto a merchant from another country and then trade with him.

It would add another dimension and of course assinating a key merchant would be a highly effective way of hurting an enemy without declaring open war.

Like with cardinals it should be possible to 'upgrade the merchants' so that powerful (fat? :-) merchants could trade more (since they have more cash to invest in deals).

I have some other ideas but I dont want the post to be too long, regards

Ironfirst

[LadyAnn]

Maybe I don't understand your post, but.... we can trade in MTW, can't we? Build a merchant house, build a port, build a shipwright and build some boats. And you are looking at a NAVEL power and a lot of SHEEPS to increase your income.

Annie

[Foreign Devil]

Naval battles Yeah Now thats what i'd like to see, in 3-D, of course.

[71-hour Ahmed]

What I really, really want is vices and virtues for daughters/wives and more of a role for them.

If the female v & v's interact with their husbands you can use a daughter to strengthen or weaken those they marry, but they may not know this (as they will mostly be secret).The wifes properties will appear on the husbands thing.

If the generals lost their royalty over time and you could marry several princesses to the same generals (since each general is really meant to be a family line) then it would make this more practical.

examples:
secret lesbianism - She secretly prefers other women. (give to other factions - makes them have less kids)

sweet innocent - softens your hard ass generals, -3 dread, + 1 acumen

horrifically ugly - + 2 command, + 2 acumen, - 2 loyalty
("He spends so much time out the house, his talents have improved considerably. However, he hates the man who made him marry his wife.")
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[rpasell]

Quote[/b] (Foreign_Devil @ Dec. 17 2002,15:00)]Naval battles Yeah Now thats what i'd like to see, in 3-D, of course.
Wasn't there a pretty good real time naval battle game for the PC put out in the last couple years? I remember seeing it somewhere, but I can't recall the name.

[MizuKokami]

Quote[/b] (LadyAnn @ Dec. 17 2002,12:49)]Maybe I don't understand your post, but.... we can trade in MTW, can't we? Build a merchant house, build a port, build a shipwright and build some boats. And you are looking at a NAVEL power and a lot of SHEEPS to increase your income.

Annie
currently, you can only trade via sea routes. what i guess he means is over land trade routs. in other words, building a rode from poland to bavaria would establish trade between the two nations in spite of the fact they are land locked. i allways liked the idea of trade routs, wouldn't it be great to be able to build a rode between poland and hungry to get access to the iron that's available there? has anyone ever played pharoah? the industry system for that game rocks. gather resouces and either sale the raw materials, or make things with them and sale the finished products. that would be great to add to this game. instead of detroying province upgrades, you can pillage and loot warehouses and granaries. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

[LadyAnn]

I think the economic system of MTW is not really good. Looks like it is an after thought (AI as well, etc.). I think it was ported over from older games without much modification.

If the trade-route means both land and sea, then I am all for it.

1. You, as the monarch, gain resources from taxation. Tax comes from two sources: tax on individuals (as replacement for being conscripted) and tax on goods (localtrade/import/export). Fiscal policy was as important then as now. It's the means for the monarch to pay for what he wants to achieve.

2. There are several types of commodities:
- basic commodities: food, cloth and woods (shelter). Most basic commodity are self-provided locally, except in cases such as natural disaster, war or desease. Basic commodity has to be satisfied, usually by importing goods, before the province will import luxurious commodities. Availability of basic commodities affect loyalty of the population. Basic commodities are never satisfied by import alone: it's rare to see wheat send from one region to another, due to limitted transportation at the time. It may be not necessary to break down the goods into specific commodities. A few broad categories are good enough.

[EDIT: what I mean here is that if food is scarce, your population will be in famine. Some food will be imported into the province from neighboring provinces, but you still lose your tax base]

- manufactured and scarce commodities: salt, spice, household and farming products, etc. could be region specific and are sought after by more affluent population. Broad availability of these products will increase productivity, and in turn, increase individuals' ability to pay tax. Same as above, a few broad categories are usually good enough.

- warfare related goods: stone/wood to construct castles, weapon and armour purchases.

- gold, silver, gem and other "universal trade money". These allows the trader to exchange one good with another and since it is very difficult to make fake gold, and they are compact enough to carry around, the "money" are used in international trade. Countries that happen to have these in abundant may benefit.

3. Price of commodities depends on availability. Price goes up when goods are scarced. Goes down when there is no demand. If you want to produce many heavily armoured units and you don't have enough armour makers, you will pay more.

4. Trade routes move manufactured and scarced goods from one place to another. The trade-route is geographically dictated, so they are pre-determined. The monarch in control of the trade-route or in partial control of the trade route may impose tax on the goods. Trade is demand driven, if tax is too high, the merchants may decide to trade different products or with different faction. Of course, set too low will not yield much tax for the monarch.

A monarch may order shutting down the trade-route by ordering confiscation of goods from a particular faction. So diplomacy may not simply by means of declaring war and such. Trade war is possible.

With trade routes, one may see one of the basic reason for people to make war: your economy depends on it and controlling it will brush you with another faction who is also vying for it. You don't want trade plummet because the other guy imposed hefty taxes on your trade route. And why share the tax base if you could get it for yourself?

I don't want to get into the click-click-click-you-forget-to-click-you-lose of these real-time strategy games such as Pharaoh or Caesar III. But some more realism into the game is perhaps good, as this game is clearly marketted as a single-player game, de-emphasizing the good battle-field features.

Do away the tech tree could be good also. What I mean is that if you have enough spear makers in a province and after a certain number of years, you can have some of these turned into expert spear makers. You can give incentives to people to become spear makers by ordering more spears. Order suddenly more spears means the price will jump up, but it certainly attract more people to join the trade.

Capture a province where you have expert spear makers will accelerate spearmaking expertise in other provinces. They will become expert faster.

These are little things that may help make an evolution leap from this already good game. Not all these ideas are good or implementable. But it would make playing the game in SP more challenging and enjoyable.

Annie

[71-hour Ahmed]

Whoah - monster post....
Cant see getting rid of the tech tree working as it makes it hard for small nations to get good at something and adds to complexity. nah

However, trade ideas are very good. I like the suggestion of taxing others trade, would be good for land or sea.

question on how you see this working...
how would you show the land based trade routes?

[Exile]

I appreciate not having to spend five minutes every turn managing the economy. A few tweaks would be nice, but I like that it is a background event to the real entree..battle

I'd like to be able to do a bit more with allies - send or request aid - florins or troops, request they attack another faction, etc. basic things that are in some other games.

for now, I'd just like to have the post-patch crashes stop Last night I fought a two hour battle with 2900 Byz against 4000 horde. It was a long fought but great victory. Then the game crashed right after the battle ended http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif