AI Generals.................

[Swoosh So]

Why oh why dont ca see that the game is currently handicapped with the 900 men or 16 unit limit in single player http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif It means that hardly any of the battles are epic, well very rarely your allies crusade happens to be attacking at the same time u are, Why havent they included an option to allocate 900 men to one of your generals , It would be just like a custom game anyway, wouldent take too much changing, that way say i invade france with 3000 men i would allocate 2000 or so to my generals and france who have 3000 men say would have 3 armies also. Even as an option this would be nice. When i got giljay talking on the subject we discussed battle commands too like defend attack that you could give your generals, what do u guys think? I think the current reinforcement system is pretty poor, even when its updated in vi it still wont simulate battles of a large scale, I ask for this because it would be fun and improve the game greatly


Swooooooooooooooosh

In thoughtful mode http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Plaxx]

I agree with you Swoosh, but I think that CA is probably devoting most of their time and resources to Rome:TW, and will hopefully include this and other requested features in that release.

That is not to say that VI will not be worth buying, at least for me http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

[Swoosh So]

No doubt ill buy vi, are there any other games besides totalwar ones? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif Certainly none worth playing http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[trader/warrior]

to make it a little better turn up the unit size. then the limit will be 1900 men.

[Exile]

An interesting battle happended last night. My 3000 English troops were attacked by a combined alleid Danish-Frence force of 3000.

As I'm watching them approach, I'm thinking this is not going to be good - they have twice as many troops on the field as I do.

The worst happened, my troops were quickly overpowered and started to rout en masse. Bringing reinforcments into the meat grinder would have been folly.

So I retreated and took the prov back the next turn because only the French were there.

My story is only mildly related to the topic, but unworthy of it's own thread http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Kraxis]

You could actually have lost to say 2000 enemies because of the double number of units initially... a defender outnumbering the attackers and has both better troops and generals lose a battle... Interesting.

[Brutal DLX]

Yes, it's a good idea, but I think you should only be given one additional AI general, more would just add to the confusion and spoil your tactics as well waste your forces, because I think those attack/defend commands for your AI general would be too hard to implement...

[Swoosh So]

Why would they be too hard to impliment? it was giljays idea for the onscreen commands like in unreal tournament, even if you could pause the game and select the armies formation and strategy on some mini map or something, higher star generals could have more advanced strategys available or alternitavly the ai could control it totally (although i know the ai is poor) when they finally teach the ai to charge all at once and flank and for missle troops to stop when in range i think it would work fine on its own. All the ai guys have to do is play a few mp games to realise the ai should stop have a missle fight then charge and try to outmaneuver its opponent with regards to flanks (very simple concept). After all i dont think medieval battles would have been that complicated ie charge and maybe a few nice tactics but not many.

[A.Saturnus]

I definitely like the idea. With huge units setting you can avoid the reinforcement problem most of the time, but more units and some controlled by the AI would be better and wouldn`t need much more processor resources. The 16-units-restriction is a bit lame anyway. It should be optional to boost performance.

[solypsist]

while the SP game limits to 16 units per player, there have been plenty of "epic" battles when several factions are involved. I've been fairly lucky in that at least a few times per campaign, allies have joined in in both defense and attack. I think the biggest was three factions per side (a civil war had just caused a valuable province to go rebel late in the game) and it included several full banners per side.

[econ21]

Thanks, Saturnus, I never realised huge units would go along way to alleviate the reinforcement problem. Doh Sounds worth trying... Maybe it reduces micromanagement of builds a little too?

[Brutal DLX]

Quote[/b] (Swoosh So @ Feb. 18 2003,16:02)]Why would they be too hard to impliment? it was giljays idea for the onscreen commands like in unreal tournament, even if you could pause the game and select the armies formation and strategy on some mini map or something, higher star generals could have more advanced strategys available or alternitavly the ai could control it totally (although i know the ai is poor) when they finally teach the ai to charge all at once and flank and for missle troops to stop when in range i think it would work fine on its own. All the ai guys have to do is play a few mp games to realise the ai should stop have a missle fight then charge and try to outmaneuver its opponent with regards to flanks (very simple concept). After all i dont think medieval battles would have been that complicated ie charge and maybe a few nice tactics but not many.
Swoosh,

I didn't express myself clearly on that, sorry. I meant it would be hard to implement at this stage, the VI is coming out soon, and even when the devs asked for the community's suggestions they stated that they didn't have time to make major changes, and introducing battle commands would neccessitate new AI scripts to be written and then don't forget about implementing the menus into the tactical battle code and then betatesting the whole thing. Maybe if they had though of this at the beginning of development, then yes, no problem.
I like the idea, for sure