Campaign MP

[MrNiceGuy]

The current MP aspects of the game are very enjoyable, but I'd still like to see a way to play the campaign MP as well. Yes it would be very slow, an online bandwidth hog and a subject that would give fits even to the most dedicated programmer, however, for turn-based strategy fans this would be a big hit.

A dedicated server, as for current MP, is unfeasible. Could CA incorporate coding for hotseat and PBM games, which may prove easier to code than a LAN option.

Any ideas?

[ShadesPanther]

Well it could be set up that its a constant thing hosted except it could be divided up into seperate games running at once. And for example a turn lasts a day and you add everything you want to do during that day.

[Shahed]

Difficuly it may be but Yep It's needed.

It would be nice to have an ally who actually has a brain. Imagine being England, and ganging up on Frenchie with Spainish Ally, then going into battle HE HE http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

[Knight_Yellow]

i hope for it but i dont demand it.


god have mercy on any man assigned to work on that 1.

[pilot]

It would be great to play the campaign game with a human player(s). The single-player game only lets you offer a ceasfire or alliance., but with human players there would be many more diplomatic options, including non-aggression pacts and strategizing against a common enemy.

But it seems almost impossible. You would have to wait while the other player(s) takes his turn.

[MrNiceGuy]

That's why I mentioned PBM and hotseat options. It would take less manpower and less gameplay modification, and to get a functional MP campaign going I'd give up an arm and a leg.

[Fragony]

It sounds like fun, but they would have to strip the gameplay to much to get it to work IMO, some things just wouldn't work in MP. Call some friends, get some beer, and play RISK.

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

PBM wouldn't work. How would you fight battles? Unless you auto-resolved every one, and that's boring.

[MrNiceGuy]

Any way for MP to work without comprising too much would involve additional steps in turn resolution.

As it stands now turns are divided into 3 phases: player moves, computer moves and tactical battles. Player turn order would have to be introduced, other than that the phases wouldn't change much.

Although I do like risk http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif, especially the 2010 variant, my original reason for purchasing STW was the game's resemblence to the AH boardgame 'Shogun'. I'd like some input from CA as to their stance on campaign MP or links to old threads where this was discussed.

[ShadesWolf]

For some ideas look at out forum over at OOOO

WE have a section on MP campaign that we are currently running

http://pub158.ezboard.com/bonerorderofomissions

[baz]

personally i think this is a feature that CA will not be able to provide .. i hope they prove me wrong http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[MrNiceGuy]

Nice work Shades, looks like you've found a good working variant for now. I like the shots of the MTW tool from the wolves as well.

[LadyAnn]

I think PBEM (Play By E-Mail) would work. Battle will resolve over MP, but the diplomacy and map could be done via email or a website.

However, the difficulties are to schedule players. It is quite difficult to schedule CWC, which requires to play only 4 games within 2 weeks or so.

Anyways, CA need not provide any special code so we could play campaign via email or website. Several people already are working on it (including myself) but I think progress is slow for various reasons.

Annie

[GilJaysmith]

Quote[/b] (MrNiceGuy @ April 21 2003,00:58)]I'd like some input from CA as to their stance on campaign MP or links to old threads where this was discussed.
Search for multiplayer campaign or campaign multiplayer here or at the totalwar.com forums for previous discussions.

What it boils down to is:

- Shogun (and therefore Medieval, which uses the same core engine) wasn't designed for C-MP. There's never been enough time to redesign it for what has hitherto been perceived as a minor feature. C-MP was in fact supposed to go into Shogun but it was too challenging to debug it given the way the game was written at the time.

- This is not necessarily true of Rome, so if you want C-MP in Rome then you need to agitate for it - politely

- However, don't get your hopes up, as the market is still seen as comparatively small. If anyone can prove that the equivalent feature in another game has drastically increased its sales, that would make interesting reading.

Last time I asked for feedback about multiplayer modes in epic strategy games, I got exactly one response. So I'll try again: tell me about how you've played Civ3PTW, or Emperor, or MOO3, or EU2, or whatever. Prove to us that this feature sells games...

[Demon of Light]

For myself, I always play these sorts of games with a desire to see how it would work if a human player opposed me. I would likely be more interested in buying Rome: Total War if it were multiplayer. In fact, I think that between my brother and myself, we would buy two copies so that we could play each other.

[Knight_Yellow]

Gill i think i can safely say that i know if there was a C-MP then i would beat my freinds and family till they all got a copy and then i would camp outside my local game store and beat people up till they buy it too.


realy though in my opinion Mp is currently only small due to there being only deathmatches in MP, whilst great it gets boring after a while like quake 3 or UT 2003, but by adding a C-MP i reckon a lot more people would be playing it.


only example i can think of where MP wasnt the issue but has gone through the roof is GTA3, a small hardcore group modded the game so people can drive about ramming eachother (they aint got it to work outside the cars yet) but i read sumwhere that Rockstar are looking into a MP version of the GTA series since this mod has proven so syuccsesful.

[Kongamato]

Quote[/b] (GilJaysmith @ April 21 2003,14:51)]- This is not necessarily true of Rome, so if you want C-MP in Rome then you need to agitate for it - politely
Hopefully, a campaign MP can be created that will not feature build orders and rush plans. Already most RTS games suffer from a lack of MP tactics due to superior logistical formulas.

We should agitate - politely, as Gil said. I have an idea. We who are in favor of an MP campaign in RTW should put
I wish for a multiplayer campaign in Rome: Total War

in their signature. It should be the most politely agitating thing we can possibly do.

Here is a guide to how I was able to change the size and color of the font.

Ikon Code (http://cultforums.netfirms.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/misc.cgi?action=ikoncode)

[Elwe]

Something like this, you mean? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

Cheers http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif

[Knight_Yellow]

woohooo new sig cuming up

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[budlight]

The only reason me an a fried on mine got Axis and Allies pc version of the game was so we could play each other online.

[Gregoshi]

Gil, the only good reason I can think of for justifying a C-MP for RTW is that it would shut us up about wanting a C-MP. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

Of course, then everyone would complain about the details you screwed up in implementing the C-MP. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif So you can't win either way.

I can't think of anyone who's ever said they didn't want a C-MP, so the vast majority of the folks that hang out here (and .com I imagine) want a C-MP. However, the vast majority of these same people would buy RTW anyway, so the C-MP won't increase sales in this group of gamers.

Now that I've made two points and managed to neutralize both of them, my job here is done. I'm off My senses tell me there is someone in need of a http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif ...nope, I was wrong about that too. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

[Shahed]

Gil thanks very much to you and your collegues from CA for your continued presence on these boards. I'm sure you all know how much we love your work, and appreciate the opportunity to converse with you http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Unfortunately, before I can add constructively to this discussion, I have yet more questions than answers. I'd very much appreciate if you guys at CA would share your knowledge on the following.

1. The CA marketing team in a joint goal with programmers must have discussed the most important aspects of the game, with regards to the sales success of the title.

What were the findings of this project ?

2. What were the primary motivations for creating STW ?

3. What is the official CA marketing concept ?
Push or pull oriented ? i.e do you wish to supply features that are wanted, or make features that in turn will be wanted ?

4. The CA team must have researched the marketability of a C-MP feature and how much this would add in revenues. Would you be so kind as to share the findings with us ?

Perhaps Richie could shed some light on the more marketing oriented questions.
I appreciate that to some these questions may be detracting, but they are precisely to the point.

Wish you all success with RTW.
Whatever you do keep it profitable.

Thanks

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[baz]

changed my sig and will make a post in the jousting fields to gain support http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Nikodil]

I see only one reason to do a C-MP: The AI is utterly stupid OK, as a programmer who has written my share of AI code, I admit, it's pretty clever and sofisticated (You've really done a good job there). But its gameplay can't be compared to a human. And the debug time for MP must have been insignificant compared to the AI code.

Simply put, when I slaugther noobs i want to know there's a human at the other end cursing me. Even if the AI would be so good it's unbeatable, you won't be able to make it understand the T and Y commands.

[Puzz3D]

I played in a WE/MI multiplayer campaign with the Elmark Uglies which was a test to see how well it would work. We made our strategy moves by email, and then went online to play the battles. Elmark kept track of all the economics, buildings and armies manually, and he would update a map on a web site so we could see who owned each province after each turn. We could see info on all provinces we owned and adjacent provinces we could see into on private wed pages at the site. We didn't finish the campaign because MTW was released soon after we started, but we played enough turns to see that the diplomacy which was carried out via email between the 7 players was just amazing.

So this is one way to do a multiplayer campaign which would work with a server machine keeping track of the strategy moves in a turn based fashion as it is now in the SP campaign with each turn taking place over several days to allow for diplomatic negotiations. The battles would be played online pretty much as they are now once all players had made their move except that the army would have to upload from the player's MP campaign data, and the result of the battle would have to update that MP campaign data afterwards. You could have one player for each faction acting as king/emperor who makes the strategy moves, and other players could be involved as generals to play the battles. These generals could even turncoat during a battle. When you bring the human element to the diplomacy side of the game, it's a whole new experience just like playing a human in battle is nothing like playing the AI.

The pace of our test multiplayer campaign did not put undue time demands on anyone involved except for Elmark who was keeping track of the map and economics manually. The battles which I played took on immense importance in the context of the strategic game, and alliances and secret deals had to be re-evaluated after every turn. Loyalty was put to the test, and trust was a big issue as well. It was quite an experience even though we didn't get very far into the campaign since we were limited to one turn a week so that Elmark would have time to update all the strategic info. A multiplayer RTW campaign would be a chance to bring together strategy minded people and tactically minded people in the same game, and I don't think that's ever been done before in a computer game. It could have a snowball effect and get a huge number of people involved in playing. I think it's uncharted territory.

[Shahed]

Very valid, good and well written post Puzz.

[Knight_Yellow]

Yes excellent post.

[ErikJansen]

I would love to see the MP Campaign come to life in Rome. All my gaming is online these days, and it would be a blast to try out a campaign modus with combined tactical/strategic elements.

Regards,

[Kongamato]

To make your sigs red and bigger, follow the instructions in this link:

The link (http://cultforums.netfirms.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/misc.cgi?action=ikoncode)

[MrNiceGuy]

Thanks for all the input and hope that we can make this a reality http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[chilling]

However, don't get your hopes up, as the market is still seen as comparatively small. If anyone can prove that the equivalent feature in another game has drastically increased its sales, that would make interesting reading.



Well it hasn't really been done has it? We were counting on CA blazing a trail into the unknown.


I can't see why it can't be done though. All the battles could be played on the current MP system with a passworded 1v1 game. Even if you can't get every faction being played by a human, a 1v1 game incoroprating C-MP should be possible via PBM, with the two players hooking up online for any battles that they are both involved in.

Not ideal but a step in the right direction.


Come on CA If you put the feature in you're not going to turn any players away and you could increase your sales dramatically (your not going to know unless you try though).

There are plenty of games that do the campaign bit as a play by mail option. All you have to do is tie in the result from the multiplayer battle.

[GilJaysmith]

Quote[/b] (chilling @ April 23 2003,13:10)]Well it hasn't really been done has it? We were counting on CA blazing a trail into the unknown.
But it isn't the unknown, which is why I listed those games... Civ3, EU2, Emperor, and now MOO3 - all these games offer epic-ish campaigns for a multiplayer audience, but reviews for all of them have been negative. (Conversely, reviews for TW games are starting to mark us down for *not* including a multiplayer campaign.)

What did anyone think of MOO3, by the way? Meet your expectations after so long as vapourware?

[Shahed]

I'm afraid what is really relevant here is how well it would work with RTW, not how well or how bad it works with other games. It would be wise to focus on developing a working, bug free, and enjoyable MP campaign for RTW. A CMP that would be better than that of any of the other games. Judgement on the performance of other games in a so called CMP mode is not a benchmark for CA, surely.

Shogun Total War broke new ground in strategy games, MTW takes it a step further, Rome Total War should once again break totally new ground. It already does so in the game engine. The game engine by itself is all new, that is great.

Let's add more features that would make the game a milestone.

Anyway Gil I will get a hold of those games and let you know, may take some time. I have been playing STW and MTW almost exclusively.
¨

[Obex]

In addition to a c-mp option for rtw, i would love to see a co-op mp option against ai controlled armies. I play mp with many of my friends on line, but we only play co-op. co-op play promotes team work and harmony.

i am convinced that a direct increase in co-op game play will decrease domestic violence, international conflict, and social injustices. CA sales will increase during this new utopia of peace and cooperation, and CA employees will be honored as the saviors of mankind.

[Knight_Yellow]

excellent post Chilling worthy of some attention.

[Swoosh So]

If i remember right kraellin had great ideas for the multiplayer campaign, maybe being a mod he can dig up that old post.

so has anyone played mooo whatever that is?
I think some feed back for what gil asked for would be nice.

[kataphraktoi]

I will change my siggy later......

Anyway if a CMP does come into existence would people be willing to sacrifice the time???

Lets suppose you want to fight out the battle instead of auto-resolve do other people in this CMP get to watch it too? perhaps they can observe future allies/enemies when they get onto the battlefield?

Sure it might take a whole day to make one turn but did wars end in a 45 minute battle of longer, total war is categorised under real time strategy for an obvious reason - to simulate the military, economic and diplomatic structures in the particular timeframe - would the length of one turn add to that real time feeling???

GilJay points out the negative reviews of CMP on games like Civ 3, etc but lets put apples with apples and oranges with oranges.

- TW has a ground breaking engine that whips all other rts engines into the ground so as to render them as yesterday's news.

- TW and Civ3, etc are totally different capabilities

- TW has already been lauded over the rts games and their CMP capabilities is not relative to the negative towards multiplayer systems at all - it all depends on where u put it at the right place.

- Principles of Civ 3, etc don;t necessarily imply it is the same with TW under the same circumstances.

- BETA test it if u do decide to do it.

It seems two aspects of CMP are the main reasons for opposing it:

- time and length of the campaign, is it that bad thing?
its only a matter of time management really rather than bad gameplay. people will get use to it, they will realise their life is nothing but a wastebin of time heading nowhere and spend it playing CMP.

- the enormous work going into making it work in TW
CA will be lauded as kings if they incorporate it
every year people (sans me) will sacrifice goats and cows before the altar of CA in gratitude. Chiks will offer them a pint everywhere they go. they will be famous and retire on immense revenues alone.

[Shahed]

Master of Orion 3 = MOO3
never heard of it, but will try to get a copy.

[Nikodil]

Quote[/b] (GilJaysmith @ April 23 2003,11:14)]Civ3, EU2, Emperor, and now MOO3 - all these games offer epic-ish campaigns for a multiplayer audience, but reviews for all of them have been negative.
Have you ever thought of marketing an MP-only version (Total War Arena)? That would focus on the MP market and open the possibility of subscription revenues.

Regarding CMP, i don't think the current turn-based system would fit well for MP. But its possible to start small, say like support for tournaments, that would be like mini-campains. The focus would be on the battles, using the strategic map only to select the next battle to be fought.

[Knight_Yellow]

i vowed never to pay a monthly fee for paying anygame ANY

i see monthly fees as a cash in for greedy b******** who only ever have 1 good idea so they gotta milk the s*** out of it.


if TW whent C-MP then u wouldnt need monthly fees cos every1 would buy the sequal addon etc. since there is so muth potential for it.

[Nikodil]

Quote[/b] (Knight_Yellow @ April 23 2003,14:48)]i see monthly fees as a cash in for greedy b******** who only ever have 1 good idea so they gotta milk the s*** out of it.
Do you feel the same about television? Or telephones? Or news? or music? I'm not saying monthly fees are ideal, but they are not inherently evil. And don't forget that there's a cost for maintaining the servers. GameSpy/AE are doing that now (subscription is optional). Their quality of service hasn't always been what you'd wish for. I would definitely pay a certain fee if it would guarantee an improved MP experience.

And i really hope CA is greedy. Greedy enough to make money. After all, that's what keeps the Total War series evolving.

[Knight_Yellow]

telivision has an eternal shelf life so does music news etc.

Games dont.

i want to pay 30 pound and not have to worry about wether or not ill be able to pay £10 more every month.

only fools would want to pay more for something when they dont have to.

[Nikodil]

I dont understand what you mean about shelf life. News has limited shelf life (very limited for say stock quotes). If you want to see a film you may buy a dvd, rent it, go to the movies, view it on the television (with pay-per-view unless you're lucky). There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these methods. Depends on what you need for the moment. Im hinting that perhaps the needs are different when you play SP and MP.

GameSpy is clearly trying this subscription business model ($5/month or $20/year). I have no clue about their profits, or how much comes from subscriptions vs advertisments vs licence fees. The GameSpy lobby is far superior to the one built into MTW. But it sadly fails for one simple reason. It's not smoothly integrated with the game. There's much room for improvement here. But maybe that's another topic.

[Knight_Yellow]

u can watch a news channel for ur life http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

u can watch the tv all ur life

u can listen to music all ur life


but u cant play the same game all ur life or ud be odd.


what im saying is that paying 30 pound right away then another 10 pound every month is not worth a computer game.

in under 1 year u have given a company 150 pound for a game u might only play on the weekends or very rarely.


plus theres the poor factor not every1 can afford a monthly subscription and the greedy b****** factor where the company is trying to squeez as mutch out of a product as it can.

Star wars galixies announced it was going to be pay per play and i and several thousand others said we werent gonna bother buying it then.

[Elwe]

Quote[/b] (Knight_Yellow @ April 23 2003,18:05)]what im saying is that paying 30 pound right away then another 10 pound every month is not worth a computer game.

in under 1 year u have given a company 150 pound for a game u might only play on the weekends or very rarely.

Thats entirely a matter of personal opinion, isn't it? I played EverQuest for over two years:
AU$90 for the original game; 3x AU$60 for three expansions over the course of that 2 years; approx AU$50 every three months to play. I don't want to add that up, but I have no regrets about spending it whatsoever. I enjoyed the game thoroughly, and when I had had enough, I stopped playing and stopped paying. Simple.


Quote[/b] ]plus theres the poor factor not every1 can afford a monthly subscription [...]

Then they can still play the single player mode. That wasn't even a possibility with EQ. You HAD to pay to play. At least R:TW would allow you the choice. If you don't want to pay for a C-MP, then play the solo campaign. Simple.

In the end, it HAS to be economically viable for CA to implement such a feature.

Cheers http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif

[Nikodil]

You're comparing different things. You dont want to watch the same movie, listen to the same song, or get the same news on the same iraq war forever. Soon enough, you want another movie, another song, and another iraq war. You are talking about the *service* of being connected to a certain source of information, not the information itself. Same with games.

Actually, any software with frequent enough releases of upgrades/add-ons are similar to subscriptions. But you're right that the total cost of ownership shouldn't be much higher on average. A subscription scheme would instead focus on alternative distribution and marketing efforts.

[Knight_Yellow]

well all in all CA would never make a mp campaign pay per play cos they would get a lot less people paying for it.

30 quid a pop was more than enough for half life and theres thousands of servers for that.

same with quake 3 and bf1942 and starcraft

theyve all had servers running for ages and they dont make u pay monthly


likewise gamespy doesnt make u pay either all u have to do is close two adverts when u want to start it up and u save $5 a month.

[GilJaysmith]

Quote[/b] (Elwe @ April 24 2003,00:38)]In the end, it HAS to be economically viable for CA to implement such a feature.
I'll steer you gently back from the side-issue of subscription fees by highlighting that point...

Adding a new feature means either old features get dropped or the project takes longer and costs more. Dropping single-player features is usually not an option, since in practice the only game feature which is genuinely SP-only is AI. The additional features for MP-only play therefore *have* to be justified by foreseeable extra sales.

What that boils down to is - and I need to be careful how I word this - how many people will *not* buy Rome unless it has a multiplayer campaign? I hope you won't mind my observing the obvious difficulty with assessing the genuine demand; bluntly, any number of people could say Well I won't, just because it might sway the decision. It costs them nothing to say that, and it might get them the feature, but they've every intention of buying it anyway ;-)

I also want to revisit a point made by a couple of people further up, where they suggest that the success of other games' multiplayer campaigns is irrelevant. On the contrary, commercially it's extremely relevant. So far, several games with a much lower hardcore strategy content have failed to provide a satisfying multiplayer campaign experience. That colours industry - and specifically publisher - perceptions. Any proposal for a multiplayer campaign, or a multiplayer anything, has to be commercially viable as well as technically feasible. Sometimes you have to implement a feature just because it's part of the market's expectations - who would dare do an RTS without formations and waypoints nowadays? But multiplayer strategy is arguably not yet at that point.

Now I hope that Total War keeps pushing forward so that in the future everyone has to stump up a multiplayer campaign or sink without a trace... but I amn't sure how to get that to happen, not without a lot more information about who would play it. Based on attempts thusfar, it seems that the non-build-and-rush strategy games which have tried multiplayer have not persuaded their core market that multiplayer strategy can be fun. We need to be sure that the core Rome gameplay is still fun when extended across multiple players. That needs extra work, and *that* most likely needs a guaranteed boost in review scores or sales. Finding out how much it counts for, in reasonably objective terms, is what I'm trying to do here.

On which note, I should point out that my posts in this thread are not CA policy, nor should they be read as such. Normally, of course, I speak with the Voice of Power, but this is not one of those times...

[Crandaeolon]

Quote[/b] ]What did anyone think of MOO3, by the way? Meet your expectations after so long as vapourware?

Gil, it certainly fell very short of my expectations. There's an appalling amount of bugs and interface glitches. In the retail version, the AI is weak beyond belief; I think I've never lost a world to the AI in the 3 campaigns I've played since I bought the game, certainly not because of a ground troops invasion.

The presentation and interface are somewhat chaotic and not consistent. The real-time combat misses several important features. There should be a mini-map of the action, I should be able to see at a glance what my task forces are doing and what their primary mission is, there should be some kind of waiting and/or deployment period prior to battle et cetera.

Until the code patch arrives, I don't consider the SP portion of the game to be worth further playing. I've only played one MP game and it wasn't much of an experience; however, I feel that if the major problems are fixed, the MP mode will probably be the most interesting way to play MOO3, at least if the players are somewhat mature. The pace of MOO3 is relatively fast and timed turns bring some of the you can do anything, but not everything -concept back into the game. Human opponents could also bring some more soul back into the game.

Edit: I'd buy Rome even if it didn't support campaign MP. Time is an issue for me, and I believe the current TW format would result in very long campaign games.

The following is a bit of an insider joke for MOO3'ers, I moved it to the end of the post. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Commander Skoodge Why did you deploy your Troop Transports in front of the fleet when you attacked the Psilon homeworld? The defenseless transports were instantly wiped out by the planetary missile bases

Admiral, sir, have you noticed the amount of transports our Viceroys keep building for us?

Charges dismissed.

[Knight_Yellow]

so CA doesnt want to take the risk of being the first comp to revolusionalise sp? the gaming industry with the first proper C-MP.


forgive me but wasnt shoguns entirety a big risk for CA?

ok so rome will rock and ill buy it for sure so will just about every other TW fan but think of how great it would be with a MP campaign.

it would be a sure way to bring in that mutch needed $$$.

after rome what ground breaking aspect will there be left to implement apart from C-MP? whilst still keeping the TW fanbase happy.

[TosaInu]

Interesting discussion,

A company may see enough risk to not make a MP campaign for this genre. How about a 'try-out' first?

STW and MTW already offer means for a MP campaign, there have been a few webbased ones in the past. Battles were solved in regular MP games. Problem was that they required a lot of manual labour by the game masters, were quite basic, did not allow some important things in MP that could have been there (fractions of units) and required some do's and don'ts from the players.

MP campaigns made by fans would be more viable if the gamemaster had tools to automate accepting and processing of moves and updating the stratmap. The tool could compose ADF like files (allows fractionated units) and send them to all combatants (each has a copy with an ID only known to that player and the tool, to avoid irregularities). The players then go to the battle server and just select the battle they want to play.

The battleresults will then be sent to the URL listed in the ADF (the tool should allow a few 'replays' in case of drops, allowing for more replays would have to be granted by the gamemaster).

This system would even allow to play historical battles/scenarios online; human vs human.

The gamemaster would just have to supply a reliable virtual server (fine PHP/Perl servers can be found for

[KukriKhan]

Not to put too fine a point on it, Knight Yellow, but: I don't think it's that CA is risk-averse, they just need to be at least 75% assured that c-MP would be a money-maker, not a money-breaker. If they implemented it (after TONS of coding work & dedicated server hardware) and it failed to be both ground-breaking with reviewers and gamers, AND at least break-even economically, the project could sink the company - and nobody wants that.

All that said: I agree with your new sig; I want to play you and our m8s in a realtime campaign.

[chilling]

Firstly thanks Gil for taking the time and effort to read these boards and giving us some insight into the development of the next installment. I think we all understand that you're not acting as a spokesperson for CA and are just giving us a little of your personal time.

I'm not sure that comparing a turn based only MP campaign against what could be done with the TW engine is fair really. I'd play Civ3 online if I thought I could affect the outcome of a battle by my generalship. As it stands you're limited to waiting for the sums to be done and then you get your result. Not very involving and down to luck and weight of numbers when it comes down to it.

TW has the opportunity to be the first game to that lets you use your skill not only as a steward/builder/diplomat but as a general too, something that hasn't been done effectively up until now.

I'm sure an online campaign would be riven by problems, with getting every player online at the same time, but it's not a problem that can't be solved. I play CS and we regularly manage to get 6/8 of the clan online for a number of hours whilst we are playing a match. An online campaign would be just the same.

how many people will *not* buy Rome unless it has a multiplayer campaign? I hope you won't mind my observing the obvious difficulty with assessing the genuine demand Your problem is you'll never be able to quantify how many people didn't buy it because you didn't include a CMP mode, those people walked out of the shop without the game tucked under their arm.

To be honest I'd not expect Rome to have anything more than a 1v1 play by mail option, if anything. The engine is new and will probably need the full attention of the CA team, I'd rather that be right without a CMP mode, than both are tried and both end up half finished. But from the replies you can tell that there is a lot of interested in the idea from people already in a community. That can only be a spur for CA to seriously consider what its public want.

That needs extra work, and *that* most likely needs a guaranteed boost in review scores or sales. Can you imagine the review scores if you pulled it off. Your playing an online campaign against someone. When you get to the stage that you play a battle against each other a window pops up saying do you want to play now or wait, you play now and the 3D engine kicks in, your army is there and you get to fight it out with the outcome effecting the campaign. It would be gold stars and awards all round (We all know that if the Rome engine plays anything like as good as it looks you'll have more gongs than you know what to do with anyway).

What you really need to do is a bit of market research of your core market and the online playing community, see me.



Oh, here's one to think about. TW-MMORPG. You take the role of a general in an continuous online world. You rise through the ranks with the experinence you gain, until maybe you become a faction leader, recruiting generals to your cause to go out and do battle on your behalf. Now that would be a dream.

[Knight_Yellow]

im just gonna moan till we get a C-MP

itll happen one day

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Swoosh So]

To whomever said people dont have time thats just nonsence, The org already hosted a single player (multi) campaign that worked very well and every move in that campaign was co-ordinated by many members. Also tournaments like the war belt seem very popular now, with many players working together and fighting fixed battles, i dont see that the multi player campaign would be much more time consuming than an ongoing clan war belt tournament, theres also the aspect of lan games that will keep many peeps happy. Maybe some kind of toned down campaign would be better as a first step, like a historical campaign with 4 or 5 battles that players could play one after the other, but with an option for it in the foyer. Players might then be able to create their own mini historical campaign.

[Jabberwock]

MP must be the way of the future, now this interweb jobby is being used by more and more people. Even Sony and Nintendo are bringing out MP games for the net. What next?

The correct answer is, of course, a MP campaign for TW http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Al Shama'ar]

hi,

just finished reading this thread and it's a damn interesting one. really, it is

kudos chilling for pointing out the obvious: The missing of a more direct influence of the player on a campaign MP by beeing able to change the outcome of a battle through his/her skills as a general. Nicely done http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/pat.gif

One thing is bothering me though. the time and the sync needed between players when it gets to fighting the battles. or do u suppose the AI should take over whenever a player is not available, cannot or will not fight a battle? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

just a minor point, maybe, but....

Al Shama'ar

PS: Anymay a properly working CMP would be a ground breaking feature, no doubt. Please consider it thnx

[MrNiceGuy]

Wow I am humbled by your post Chilling, clear and concise http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

I'd like to review a few points in regards to market demands and product development:
First- There are positive reviews about MP features in current strategy games, see links for details. In general the online gaming market is going to grow and remain lucrative for quite some time, the argument of quality v. quantity is appropriate here. I was enthralled with STW at first glance, I even purchased Kessen(PS2) based on its similar appearance to STW and experience with KOIE games.

C3:PTW Link (http://www.ugo.com/channels/games/features/eleven/strategy_e3/)
C3:PTW Link (http://www.khabal.com/articles/showarticle.php?id=421)
MOO3 Link (http://www.gamespy.com/reviews/february03/moo3pc/index3.shtml)
MTW Link (http://www.wargamer.com/reviews/medieval_total_war/page5.asp)

However, I believe that CMP should enhance the gameplay. If this means either delaying product release or sacrificing current development then sales would suffer accordingly, as demonstrated by the review link below. CIV3 is a great example of a product coming to market based on MP alone, the others mentioned all had MP in the intial product release and their sales figures are not as indicative of sales based on MP features.
MOO3 Link (http://www.gamers.com/game/258937/reviews)

Although most consumers want the moon for nothing the link below is a good discussion on current demands within the wargaming community:
Gamer's perspective (http://www.wargamer.com/forum/wargamer/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=827)

To reiterate, I want the moon for... errr... please find a way to give us CMP but without sacrificing gameplay.

[Asus]

Actually Multiplayer Virtual War is the Future... think about it, You suit up in sensor laden virtual reality wear and goggles. You step up from your computer chair and climb up on to your virtual war horse... The battle begins. No longer are you sitting in front of a screen looking at a map, you are actually in the Map Virtually on the field of battle swinging your virtual sword against virtual ememies and shouting commands to your virtual army

Multiplayer Virtual Diplomacy. You hold virtual court with your allies. When you walk out to the balconey of your palace you don't just get a pop dialog box telling you that your people have undying devotion to you, you actually see the Masses shouting long live .... Just becareful to watch out for those virtual assassins http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/eek.gif

Wait a minute... was that my alarm? Ah well guess it's time to wake up to reality http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif

Yes Me & All My Friends Wish To Buy A Copy of Rome Totalwar that Includes a Multiplayer Campaign http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Swoosh So]

I think most of us were willing to accept the multiplayer campaign as some sort of addonn pack, maybe this is worth considering.

[baz]

a lot of dedicated TW players have spent time and effort playing and managing TW campaigns in the past, they would prove very popular but for the work outside of the the 3d battles that is needed .. this has been the determining factor in their failure, i think the first step for CA in this process would be to make some simply tools for us to use that have the ability to reduce the workload of ppl in these campaigns

take a look at This Link (http://home-4.tiscali.nl/~t543201/web-campaign/campaign-index.htm) it is the most recent attempt to make a MP campaign but the workload required for such a task was too much on the administrators side http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif i hope that you can take a look at this link and read about the development of the MP Campaign, then maybe you will be able to get an idea of the tools that would be required .. and ultimately let us know what you will be able to do for us http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Knight_Yellow]

id be up for a C-MP addon for RTW or another TW title.

[Brutal DLX]

Quote[/b] (GilJaysmith @ April 23 2003,16:14)]What did anyone think of MOO3, by the way? Meet your expectations after so long as vapourware?
Gil, I haven't played MOO3 for over a month now, I'm waiting for the code patch to come out, as it will fix several big bugs which couldn't be corrected by just changing/modding stats files. I think once those have been addressed, MOO3 is actually a great game. The MP aspect still works pre-patch, as people know the weaknesses and can avoid them, or many already modded their games to some extent.
With the patch working, I expect a lot more people to start online MP campaigns.
As for RTW, I would appreciate an online campaign, if it isn't too taxing technically, if it's too time/cost intensive, then perhaps at least design the game such that it could be added later on (like an add-on module) without too much trouble, so even modders could implement it when there's no official support.
Just an idea though...

[Sir Black Raven]

It's time they gaive us a candy Yes i want a multiplayer campaign. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif Count me in.... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wave.gif

[Popeye]

I'd love a multiplayer campaign game.

The problem is that it won't work, unless you take out the tactical battles.

If the MP campaign simply resolved all tactical combat with the AI and players were limited to deciding whether to proceed or retreat, it might work. Otherwise, you're going to have to figure out how to get people to commit to a daily schedule that allows for the possibility of many simultaneous battles, some of which might have three or more human controllers, and some of which may have to be resolved in a specific order (because of retreat considerations.)

I know I play without a schedule. If I want to play, I play, and when I want to stop, I stop. I don't finish a campaign in one sitting. I don't play at the same time every day. I doubt anyone else does, either. It's a game, and real world things tend to take priority.

The problem is that you aren't going to be likely to find several people who can commit to the same schedule for an indefinite number of days or weeks. You also aren't going to be able to maintain that commitment if it involves waiting for others to resolve tactical battles that don't affect you.

Those that want tactical combat will get bored with it, and go off to MP tactical non-campaign games. Those that enjoy the strategic game more than tactical will get bored with it, and go back to single play.

The only way I see a MP campaign working is to make it all strategic, and let the computer resolve all battles, limiting players to only deciding whether to retreat or fight, or possibly going as far as controlling deployment.

I sure know I'm not going to be interested long if I'm playing Denmark, and have to wait after every turn in the first few years while Spain and the Almohads battle it out. It would be even worse if I have to wait while one faction resolves tactical battles on two fronts.

I'd like it to work, but I just don't see it happening, because of human tendencies that are beyond the ability of coders to deal with.

[Shahed]

Whether the campaign works techincally and what people do with the working campaign are two different things.

There are many, many people who are organised and are willing to spend time playing this game around their schedules. All the fansites (e.g this one) are testament to the ability of fans to devote time to this game successfully.

Please don't forget the PBM option that allows play by mail, and thus your own individual time management.

[TosaInu]

Hello Popeye,

There are actually people, who will ONLY play MPC if they can do the battles. And there are people, who'll ONLY play MPC if they can skip them. One, the other or both.

[Puzz3D]

Popeye,

It doesn't have to be implemented that way. My impression is that strategic minded players want to sit and think about their moves at their leisure. So, you could play the strategic turn-based game offline, but it would be against human players instead of the AI. Once all the turns are submitted to the game server, the players who had to fight a battle would schedule a time to go online and resolve those battles. If they didn't want to actually fight the battle, I suppose an auto-resolve feature could be used. After that, each player in the game would receive the strategy map update, and begin contemplating his next move. A single turn would probably take several days to complete. This would give a strategic context to the online battles, although, many of those battles would probably be unbalanced.

Implementing a multiplayer campaign with just auto-resolved battles would allow the game to proceed at a much faster pace, and you could envision it being played online with a time limit on each move. With a 10 minute time limit, you could play 30 moves in 5 hrs. You could probably finish a campaign in about 50 hrs. This type of implementation doesn't meld the strategic and tactical parts of the game. It's purely a strategic game then, and not really any different from the online strategic games that already exist except for the setting.

[Kongamato]

Do not forget that RTW will feature many new, short campaigns with set objectives i.e. win the war, take 3 of 4 cities, destroy the enemy capital. These campaigns can be shortened to fun, playable lengths. This would make for a great variety of scenarios.

[Kraellin]

ok, first off, everyone go back and re-read what gil asked you for. we've actually already covered HOW to make an mpc work just fine. it's simplicity itself, so that isnt the issue, nor is it what gil is asking for. gil wants us to justify their time and effort and resources being put into this thing and getting enough beans back to have made the effort worthwhile.

now, we all know that a lot of us here on the boards would like the thing. that's a given. we also know that a few dont care a hoot about it. and that leads us to a speculative assumption that this would be true for the rest of the gaming community worldwide. but, that's assumption and a lot of companies have gone bust on assuming too much.

so, how do we prove to CA that they would get enough return on their investment to make an mpc worthwhile to them. just saying that you would buy it or that you'd get your friends to also buy it isnt enough.

MOO3 is an horrible example. that game is so badly bolluxed up as to be a joke. and yes, i have it, so i'm speaking from the empirical here. civ3 multi is also reported to be pretty buggy and sluggish as well. so, if we want examples of poorly done mp games as our criteria, then there ya go...and those both did have fairly good sales. so, right there you can say that even poorly, buggy-as-hell, mp games will sell. if you want more 'proof' all you have to do is look at the quake community, unreal, wolfenstein3d and other shooters for examples online gaming sales and how they draw.

ok, so you argue that those are shooters and shooters always do better than rts. i agree, they do tend to. but the TW games arent just rts. they are half battlefield games and half strat games, so they arent pure rts. TW games are actually hybrids, tactical and strategy combined. and all the shooters are are tactical first person games for the most part. you (CA) can also look at your growing sales of TW games. stw did ok. we/mi did pretty good also. mtw was a complete hit and the expansion for that is going to do well also. rtw is most likely going to blow the socks off the sales (if mtw didnt already). add to this the additional new sales of the old games that CA's reputation is now creating, and you've got a little cushion here as far as resources go....or shld have.

but, all of that still doesnt justify going out and creating a new attempt that one thinks is doomed to failure. add in the past failed attempts at an mpc and this adds even more reservation on CA's part. so, how do WE show CA that an mpc would work and at least not sink the company into oblivion and thus allay some of this reservation?

well, we could cite the pay games like everquest, asheron's call, ultima online, wwii online and so on, but again, all of those are first person tactical, so what examples can we cite; what proof to offer?

now, there is one other type of game that somewhat approximates the TW games and these are the 'builders'. games like total annihilation and the sequels, starcraft, warcraft and others of that ilk. these have done very well online and without question have stimulated sales over above single player sales. no question. command and conquer and all those forced into existence the entire battlenet network. total annihilation was also somewhat forced to put up a network for a time. and there are prolly a number of other games that did this as well.

the trouble with the above method is that these games dont generate any revenue after the initial sale, not directly anyway. one sells the game, which has multiplayer, so one puts up a server somewhere but there is no additional income from that player, yet one has to maintain the server for free. yet, if you charge for a multi server service, you do tend to lose some of your sales. a lot of folks just wont pay an ongoing charge to play a game. some do, and there are again, a lot of very successful games that do do this.

and yet, this still doesnt really answer the original question, would an mpc justify itself in a return. and to tell you the truth, i dont know. i think it would, but that's just a guess. i also dont think it would be a barn-burning success, at least not like the current games are, but i do think it do ok. but that's just my opinion, and so far i havent had any emails from CA asking for my opinion ;)

so, what i think it boils down to is fairly simple. do a pilot. take a small team and mock up a pilot mpc, either from mtw, or rtw. then, either make it part of a future game package, or offer it as a stand-alone expansion. i do think this would work and generate enough sales to warrant it. hell, i'd even buy two copies just to play myself online (you think i'm kidding? :)

in this wise, you give folks a taste, somewhat fullfill current demand, somewhat alleviate that old bugaboo of having not delivered what was promised in the past, and you test the waters and find out if this really is an area you can expand into and make a profit. it's a pilot program, a test. you wont lose your shirts. at worst, i'd say you'd break even, and at best it might be a raving hit and take you into a whole new unexplored area with raging revenues and fame beyond belief ;) (never hurts to hit the greed button ;)

during all this, you keep the main money makers going, the main crew focused on the bottom line, and let the pilot crew test things out. CA really is known for breaking new ground and doing a pretty stellar job of it. i'd like to think that they're going to continue this trend, and truly do hope they make an mpc ala' the method i've posted in here before about. it's really quite workable.

K.

[Swoosh So]

Lets face it mtw is the best (strategy,tasctical) whatever single player game theres ever been, now playing against a human opponent would be just absolutely groundbreaking I dont think any game would even come close, the only reason imho mtw isent the be all and end all of games is the ai, now if you have human opponents that solves the problem, Time i would feel is the enemy here, but what ca have to realise is that mtw isent a game for its fans its a hobby

[BDC]

Maybe we need special CMP stratigic maps, much smaller and more basic, with far fewer areas. Maybe it could be played through in a few hours, only needing 2 players with no ai. So you get a few turns to upgrade then you have to attack.

[Knight_Yellow]

Quote[/b] (BDC @ April 26 2003,16:00)]Maybe we need special CMP stratigic maps, much smaller and more basic, with far fewer areas. Maybe it could be played through in a few hours, only needing 2 players with no ai. So you get a few turns to upgrade then you have to attack.
good pount like britian but with just wales and the english provinces.


or frances provinces etc.


but making large scale campaigns like two whole countrys fighting eachother ie. russia vs hungary etc. should also be considered as i would definately make time to play a massive campaign.

kudos to BDC

[Popeye]

A single turn would probably take several days to complete.

That was precisely my point.

All I'm saying is that I am interested in a strategic MP game, and if the problems associated with coordinating the resolution of tactical battles get too great, I'm going to stick to SP.

On one hand, I'd want a bit of flexibility in the time to get them resolved to allow for my own real world commitments, but on the other hand, if I have surprised a puny garrison with overwhelming force, I don't want to wait a week.

[Lord Romulous]

Kraelin makes some very good points.

the idea of making c-mp a pilot project that is sold as a add on to test the waters could work.
It could be sold on your website to minimize publishing costs. If the intial sales turn out to be good you can then mass market it to the computer stores.

website distribution and sales work. eg the online publisher battlefront.com which has had good succuss and reviews on the close combat series.

This is going to sound like a silly idea but how about letting some talented members of the community help you with some areas of a c-mp pilot project

As shown in the many mods for many diferent games there are some very talented people who are prepared to work for free to enhance their favorite game.

You could enlist 4 or 5 of the most talented and dedicated modders and graphic design people in the TW community to help you with the c-mp pilot project. CA would still do the main work themselves but graphics and other appropriate areas could be developed by the community team.

using a community team would help keep costs down , providing it was managed properly, and be a good publicity spin for CA.

finaly i tend to also agree with Kraelin when he says that
the C-MP i dont think it would be a barn-burning success, at least not like the current games are, but i do think it do ok.

why?
because the campaign takes a long time to finish and i dont think their are enough people who would be willing to devote this much time to a C-MP.

likes someone else said, you play games at a time that suits you, you dont want to have to keep to a defined schedule for a couple of weeks.

of course dedicated hard core TW fans and hard core strat fans will spend their enitre life online playing the c-MP and the C-MP should sell well to these markets but i dont think it can be succusful in the mass market of rts/hybrid strat games for a while to come.

one possible solution, (and people are going to hate me for this) , is not to have a full campaign in mp but just have a shorter scenario based MP strat play.

i dont have eu2, or moo or civ 3 so i cant comment. but others who do should take up gils request for feedback on the mp experience they offer

[Kraellin]

ok, there are still a lot of folks stuck in the old mold of non-simultaneous moves for strat games. or in having timed turns and so on. this is NOT the way to do this game. it's too tedious, takes too much time, and even if you save games to take them up later with the folks that were originally in it, you can never get them all back together to finish the thing. this is the WRONG way to do a cmp.

so, i'm going to briefly re-iterate my ideas on this thing again. this is the third time, and since i cant find the other two posts, well....

the first thing is, one person does NOT play all his general's fights. you ONLY directly fight the tactical battles in which your character, your king unit is involved with. all other battles of your generals are handled by the AI. it doesnt matter if another human player is fighting them in real time tactical; you ONLY fight as yourself. this doesnt mean you dont have other generals working for you, but if they are in another unit/army, then they fight their own battles for you. YOU dont control that battle or fight in it yourself.

that is the single most key point. and what this does is remove all the waiting for other battles to take place before the moves can progress on the strat map. you DO order those other generals around on the strat map, but you DONT fight their battles for them. period

and, if you really want to do it up right, you remove 'turns' altogether by introducing simulated time progression on the strat map as well as the tactical. that means the entire game is progressing through time always. and, if you do remove turns, then you need to alter the way armies and other units move around on the board. they wouldnt, naturally enough, move province by province in one single giant teleporting move. they would progress across the map more naturally, like pixel by pixel. you'd issue an order for an army to move from point A to point B and it wouldnt just suddenly be at point B; it would have to progress there through time and space on a point by point basis. if an army encountered another army or something on the way, then you'd take up a new battle as it occurred, or the AI would handle it if it's not your king army.

this adds a tremendous number of possibilities. for instance, you could introduce couriers. your army is somewhere in france, but you, as the king are sitting in england. you've already issued orders to your france army and it's moving somewhere, say to spain. but you suddenly decide you need it to go to germany. rather than having instantaneous communication with that army, you'd have to send a courier with new orders to get that army to turn around. this adds the real look and feel of the times. couriers could be intercepted, assassinated, captured, ransomed, false couriers, bribes, and so forth. lots of fun stuff there to do.

additionally, another huge bonus from a system like this is that you can use humans as generals of another player who is a king. in other words, a clan, for instance, with a clan leader, could play as one country. the clan leader might play the king unit, and the other clan members might all be princes, or even princesses, or emissaries, or ship captains, or whatever.

in fact, taking this a bit further, you make the game an ongoing thing, where players can come and go as they please, taking up the standard for a while and then retiring to come back the next day and continue on. the wealth of possibilites here is mind boggling.

what all this does is allow for fluidity. the game never stops. players can come and go without ruining things. a player comes in and picks up his old army from the day before. the AI has been running it for him, and maybe even the king has given the AI orders, so this army is no longer sitting in its castle but is out on the field somewhere, raping, pillaging and plundering, or being raped, pillaged and plundered :)

it's not the same thing as if you were playing a single player game. it shldnt be. it also shldnt take 2 hours to consumate a turn. that's just too tedious. you could do it that way, but it just doesnt get my juices flowing the way this alternate system does.

another advantage here is ranks and a real ongoing conquest of the world. let's say joe blow newbie wants to join a game. great. he makes a plea to various factions to see if anyone needs a new general. and let's say the english faction king says, great, i need some new blood here. so, he takes on joe newbie as a rank 1 general. now, let's say joe newbie does good but has to leave for the day. and let's say he made it to rank 2 before he did. but, when he comes back the next day his army has been defeated, and in fact, wiped out. well, that sucks. but joe newbie is still alive, and is still rank 2. so, with the next available army, he's put in charge of it and retains his rank and the new army gets a bit of a bonus from this because of his elevated rank.

now, what happens if you are playing a tactical battle and you die wow. that sucks, but hey, that's life, and there are penalties in life and one of them is death ;) so, that character is dead. you're dead. ok, so you're not really personally dead, so what do you do? is the game over for you now? nah. you simply start over with a new army as a rank 0 or 1. or, if you wish to consider this too harsh, you get a new army with a reduced rank from what you had. i mean, there's got to be some penalty for dying.

you could also even divide these ranks up. one could be a cav officer, or a siege engine expert or a missile general, or infantry and get bonuses to those types of units as your rank indicated.

ok, so the only reason i've gone over a lot of this again, is that in the above posts i see a lot of folks who assume that you have to have turns in a strat game. you dont. it doesnt have to take 2 hours to make a move. it doesnt have to be tedious or complicated. one of the best games i ever played was air warrior on the old genie network. they had 3 countries that were constantly at war with each other. the game was in real time. you could come and go as you pleased. you joined up with a certain country and helped that country try to beat the others. the map was large enough that it took some time to capture another countries possessions and thus, over a 24 hour period, with players coming and going, very little would actually change in the long run. you might make some inroads and capture a few bases, but it would almost always balance out and that same country would suddenly get an influx of players and take all their own stuff back and make inroads into an opposing country. the game was just continuous and the further you moved into enemy territory, the more difficult it became to hold onto things.

a cmp for TW games wouldnt necessarily never end, but it also wouldnt just become a giant rout because one or two players had to go for the day either. and timing would become an art form. moving your armies around in a real time mode and not being able to recall them instantly, would mean a lot of 'thunkin' to keep those armies from being ambushed or cut off and so on. it would actually be MORE strategic than the current single player game and then multiplied even more so by having multiple human players onboard.

now, this is not the easiest thing to implement. it would mean a fairly large re-work of the current mtw engine, and i dont know about the rtw engine, but it's my belief that it would be worth it.

also, just as a final note here. armies on the field that gained or lost bonuses would retain those gained or lost bonuses. there would be more buying valor at the start of every tactical battle. you could still do weapon and armor upgrades by returning an army to an owned castle, but anything gained or lost on the field would remain. likewise you could replenish units or not.

so, that's the game i'm thinking about whenever i talk about a cmp. something to think about :)

K.

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

Brilliant post and ideas, Krae. I paticularly liked the thought of a 'team' of human generals. I hope someone from CA reads this.

[GilJaysmith]

Quote[/b] (Big King Sanctaphrax @ May 01 2003,18:33)]I hope someone from CA reads this.
We read everything (eventually...). Krae has posted his thoughts before, but getting new feedback on them is always good.

Krae's ideas pretty much match my own personal preference for a reasonably massively-multiplayer campaign, with the addition of not-totally-competent AI running the parts of the faction which players aren't currently running themselves. As you do well, the AI rewards you: do badly and the AI sends you to do all the crap work. You might perhaps be allowed to govern a small province, perhaps. As you do better, the AI, representing the political leadership of the country, gives you more political power, allowing you to control more of the faction's strategic policy (i.e. the game you currently play on the campaign map), until eventually you are the faction leader. At any point you can still fight battles, but the point is to become and stay leader - the eminence grise if not actually the King.

When there are several players within the same faction, the AI judges their comparative performance, and depending on which faction it is, the players might be individually rewarded for backstabbing their faction-mates, or collectively rewarded for cooperating with them. When someone acquires seniority, they take over the AI's responsibility for controlling part of the team as well as part of the empire. However, the AI continues to assess what it would do, and if the leader's actions vary too much from the AI's assessment of the situation, political instability ensues, and the other players have the chance of picking up support from rebellions - a multiplayer baronial revolt, in effect.

The nice thing about this approach, in my technical view, is that this could be coded so that the player can start playing as the leader of the faction, and the AI allows them to remain there - at which point there is absolutely no difference in play from the current power behind the throne single-player campaign in Medieval.

Anyway, keep talking, it's all interesting.

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

Quote[/b] ]We read everything (eventually...).

CA is watching YOU

[Kraellin]

interesting ideas, gil. i hadnt even considered the whole baronial thing that much. dukes, marquees, princes, the royal line, earls, the whole ball of wax. some interesting potential there. it might be a bit tricky to implement in an on-going c-mp, but i like it. i was only thinking in ranks of generals, but this adds a whole new facet that doesnt exist in the current game as well. plots, rebellions, backstabbing, undercurrents, trust and loyalties, diplomacy WITHING the faction as well as without. interesting, and nobody's ever really done it. add in mercenary players, outlaws, pirates, and you've got the makings of a real feudal system of olde. sweet.

and since you mentioned massive multiplayer... that is one of the things that i mentioned in some of my earlier posts as well. a dedicated server hosting up a game like this in an ongoing, everlasting fuedal middle ages, would be extremely attractive. i can see the t-shirts now... I went medieval on MEDIEVAL, or My trebuchet is bigger than yours, or I came, I paid, I conquered Europe :) i'm sure there are more :)

and, if you really want to get imaginative, do like wwii online and just make the entire map of europe and the middle east as one continous map in real time. ride from syria to brussels in one continuous epic crossing. it's an interesting idea, though i think at this time i'd prefer the former combo of strat and tactical maps.

i really shld quit giving this stuff away for free. in fact, i actually end up paying for my own ideas, so i'm not even giving it away, i'm paying someone to take it. gamers are such odd folk ;)

K.

[GilJaysmith]

It appeals to my technical senses for another reason: it actively exploits the two most annoying things about game AI:
- it's very hard to write good human-responsive AI
- it's very easy to accidentally write the opposite

The faction AI's strengths become the fact that it can check whether each baron is behaving 'fairly' (i.e. all his decisions are appropriate to the people under his control), and its weaknesses become an incitement for at least one player to rise through the ranks and stop the AI taking strategic decisions which are bad for the faction Once there's a player in charge of every faction, the world becomes a more stable place :)

If someone challenges another player for the running of a faction, it destabilises the faction, and an interim period ensues in which the AI starts to operate some of the barons again and *everyone* in the faction is affected by its decisions. So getting a solid power base is essential. Being friendly with neighbouring factions is also important at this point, so that the AI doesn't conclude that it would be a good time to invade Poland.

[Brutal DLX]

That would really be a massive MP game, and I'm afraid such a game will get so big you won't be able to keep up with what's going on, especially if you, say, joined in at a later time.
I suppose one should look at how World of Warcraft will be developing, as it should be comparative in scope to the design you guys outlined...

I still would prefer a smaller MP campaign like in MoO3, but as far as I know, there aren't going to be turns anymore in RTW.
As far as never getting all the players together again, when resuming such a campaign, it should be allowed to let another player continue with that faction, or give it to the AI.
Also, any players who would like to join a game already running, that should be possible, just by taking over an AI faction, by permission of the host, of course. (Or a voting system, if there's no real host)

[Kraellin]

gil,

there is one thing i'm missing here in your concept. in mine, every unit is controled by a human player, but in yours i get that some might be controlled by the AI. yes, no? not quite sure how that would work. elaborate. now, i can see that the AI vs the humans might well be the peasantry vs the nobility, and i understand that, but why the need for the AI to run various units? or am i missing something here? now, that's within one faction that i'm talking about. if there's no human playing within a given faction, then yes, i see the use of the AI also, but what i was thinking about was that if there is even one human in a given faction then he controls all units within that faction unless there are also additional humans within that faction, who would then control various other units based on rank, loyalty, etc, etc.

now, i'm just trying to get your concept here, so please dont take this as 'mine is right, your's is wrong', cause i think i'm missing something yet about yours. i get that you're starting smaller than i was thinking about; that player A comes in and joins the english faction, let's say. it's early in the game and the english faction was totally being controlled by the AI. player A would then take only one unit or one army as his own? and he's not the king to start with? that's how i'm currently reading your method. is that correct? that means the AI is currently still being the king of the english and players are subordinate to this AI? or is it more fuedal, and that players start with say one fiefdom (sp) as a baron and must work up to uniting an entire group of players, human and AI and thus becoming king?

i know there's lots of ways to do all this, and i also get that in your system the AI seems to play more of a part in being 'the people' in that it monitors the human decisions as to how 'the people' are affected. that's an interesting concept also. and i liked the idea of the peasantry being upset by the actions of a given human and thus causing revolts or discontent which other humans could take advantage of from within a given faction and without. this adds a lot of drama to the game and a lot of variety. the drawback, or the potential drawback, anyways, is forcing the human players into a given behavior and that if this is too tight, the game becomes too predictable as the humans will have to behave within certain parameters dictated by the AI and this part would have to be engineered and tested pretty thoroughly to keep this from becoming a forced pattern of action or inaction. still, i do understand that we've actually already got this within the current game; i'm just trying to get a handle on your concept here, and prolly got something wrong.

i do enjoy these discussions. i've seen the potential in this game for a long while. and it's quite nice to have a dev guy here willing to talk design theory. also, those of you who see gil here talking about this shld realize this is NOT an official acknowledgement on CA's part that there is going to be a c-mp or that any part of this discussion will actually come to fruition. we're just talkin.

brutal dlx,

this:
Quote[/b] ]As far as never getting all the players together again, when resuming such a campaign, it should be allowed to let another player continue with that faction, or give it to the AI.
Also, any players who would like to join a game already running, that should be possible, just by taking over an AI faction, by permission of the host, of course.

has actually been covered under the system i proposed. there is no need to stop and save a campaign. it simply keeps going and players come and go from it as they wish. since you, the human are only truly BEING one person in the game, the game simply removes you, your piece, whenever you leave, and adds you, your piece, back in when you come back. the ai would take over all the other units under your command (if you had any).

now, you do raise one point that i didnt cover in this thread; and that is, the current TW games are all player-hosted games. that means that there has to be a player who is serving as the host. the game is running on his machine and others are logged into the host through gamespy. gamespy is not the host machine. there are two ways to do this for the proposed system, a dedicated server run by CA/Activision/Gamespy, where their server IS the host machine, or, for players to run dedicated machines as host machines. the latter is common method for non-pay-to-play games. go on mech warrior, bf 1942, or any of a number of multiplayer games and you'll see options for hosting games in both dedicated mode and temporary mode. this is quite workable in the TW games as well. so, there is a precedent here for this being a workable system without having to make it into a pay-to-play type game. wolfenstein 3d was a great example of this. i could go into that environment at any time of the day or night and find the exact same game/host/server and join up again in the exact same ongoing game as when i'd left 24 hours earlier.

also, aside from taking the time to do it, there's no reason that all hosted games have to be of the same size and on the same scale as all others. one could have simply a map of England and make that the entire map for a shorter game, or do a full scale one of all europe and the middle east or anything in between. that would be one of the options. so, it might be quite conceivable to play an entire c-mp all in one sitting. we might even convince CA to make and give us a full campaign editor :)

one of the other ideas i had in my earlier posts was the idea of using the gamespy foyer and rooms off the foyer to display information for a given game. instead of the current backdrops for rooms, one might have the backdrop of the map currently being played and even updated information about what's going on. heck, you could even periodically transfer info from the game directly onto web pages, like when the scores from games were being transferred in stw.

who knows, maybe gil and i will start a new company and... ;)

K.

[Brutal DLX]

Quote[/b] (Kraellin @ May 02 2003,15:02)]who knows, maybe gil and i will start a new company and... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

K.
yes, Kraellin, it's allowed to dream. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif)

Generally, I agree with many of your visions concerning the MP campaign, but it sounds very large as I said before. I'd like a smaller game too, with fixed number of players, and that should have a possibility to save, but not necessarily on a central dedicated host. Just imagine that machine crashing and no backup... Anyway, I guess just one variant will get realised, if at all.

And as for leaving the game, you have to be replaced either by AI or by another human, those troops you command cannot simply vanish in the midst of an ongoing simulation (and neither can their general with all his specific command ratings and vices/virtues)

[Teutonic Knight]

I WISH FOR A MULTIPLAYER CAMPAING IN ROME:TOTAL WAR

[squippy]

Very good discussion. I support the bulk of Kraellin and Gils thoughts.

I also like the idea of a CMP which can, essentially, be left to the AI to run itself. Thgen even if everyone but 1 player dropped out, the campaign would still complete. This is important becuase it is very unsatisfying to fight a battle you have no hope of winning.

As for good experiences... anyone ever see VGA planets? This was a pretty cruddy PBM game with poor graphics and no ability to control the fights, the computer just calculated them. But it has to be said: it ROCKED in its day and my mates and hours spend ludicrous amounts of time playing it, even though it was substantially inferior to many single player games. That was not the point, the MP was the point.

Secondly, Counter-Strike, which although a FPS is I think an interesting comparator. I've bought HalfLife twice now just to play CS; I've played a few levels of HL1 but frankly SP FPS bores me. Bushwhacking a real player really is Different to playing against an AI, and I think there are many, many people who have similar experiences. CS has a rather elderly engine these days, but the fans enjoy the game play rather than the bells and whistles.

TW is a very different beast by comparison to CS, but I think both those cases demonstrate that a properly conceptualised MP game can an attraction qualitatively distinct from that of SP games.

A TW CMP would need to be shorter than the uber-campaign in MTW, maybe something more like VI. I also strongly endorse the idea of automatic turn progression and having the AI resolve battles for No Show generals and so forth; this way the game can proceded even when the chain breaks down.

Is it possible to automatically output the battle replays? Then, even those players not directly involved with a battle can watch the outcome, and I feel that would add a great deal to the sense that things happen outside of your personal sphere of experience. As I would see it, a round of strat turns generates battles, and these are automaticall scheduled and run; if you don't show to take command personally, the AI takes over for you. This also means a king-player can keep an eye on the performance of a general-player.

Similarly, strat turns run to a fixed calendar and if you have not submitted orders by 'x', the AI acts on your behalf.

I think it could be done. I think it should be done. I think it stands a serious chance of being a truly spectacular developement of the online genre - it is in fact precisely the Dynastic elements of TW qhich make that more, rather than less, accessible than it is in other games. In Civ, who is the Player? In TW, we know who that is, a general or a king; therefore we can structure the game around personal perspective and direct lines of command.

One Game to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.

[Sjakihata]

I played EU and EU2. It was ONLY multiplayer campaign, hence people had to meet up. Still we were about 20-40 people on the server.

When you add the tactical battle to it, it is just perfect. EU2 is too much risk style, dont let you control the battle it self.

At some point you HAVE to make a MP-C to throughly investigate the market, why not make it another outstanding feature to the RTW? I am sure you would get high score in reviews. If it fails, then you know it and can focus on other stuff (balancing and stuff like that + ladders etc).

All in all, you are better of including it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Nikodil]

MP-C would be nice. But OTOH, i rather take RTW without it *NOW*, than wait another year for it to have MP-C. And just maybe it's a completely different game (like redesigned for real time for starters).

[Nowake]

Well, no need for more arguments, but ... I'm all for it.

[Pellinor]

Just going for the demand for MP campaigns, I have a circle of friends who play a lot of EU, Empire of the Fading Suns, and Moo2/3. All these take a lot of time to complete a game, but with a bit of patience and regular scheduling it works very well (until someone forgets that it's their turn on EFS).

The fact that EFS is still played after so long suggests to me that there is a reasonable market for MP campaigns where the gameplay is good.

Moo is probably the closest to TW in this regard: TBS with RT battles (OK, TB for Moo2). IME the wait for Moo2 battles is irritating but not a killer. The Moo3 option of only allowing a certain number of battles, and limiting the time for them, alleviates this, although I'm not sure how well a 5-minute time limit would work for a TW game. Kraellin's Only if the King is there idea is along these lines: if no player is in more than one battle per turn then the maximum wait is the maximum battle length. One could perhaps add the option of having idle players spectate, so they don't get bored.

Speaking of Moo3, I was disappointed by the released product, but it was a) a couple of simple-but-serious bugs (AI building priorities and PD weapons) that are apparently to be fixed in the patch (delayed nearly as much as the original game&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif, and b) the redesign last Spring, which simplified many elements while leaving too amy remnants round the place. I liked the depth the game originally seemed to have, especially the way you couldn't directly affect most of the micro stuff and could only ocus on the macro (though I see why that irritated a lot of people). the final version is a bit too much of a half-way house. The problems are not related to the MP campaign, IMO.

I very much hope the patch fixes it up. TBS with RT battles satisfies both the boardgamer and the wargamer in me at the same time; when it looked like MTW and Moo3 were both coming out at the same time (Autumn 2002), I was considering asking for a career break for a month or two :-)

Summary: People play MP TBS, but they don't have a good one ATM so are stuck with older ones - which they do play. Build it and they will come.

Having said that, how much of this is an increase in the market is questionable. Several of the people I mentioned aren't too keen on MTW in general, but I think would be drawn by a good MP campaign, so there could be an increase in the market there.

Pell.R.

[Kraellin]

bubba pellinor,

way too many abbreviations with no explanation of what any of them mean. had to quit reading.

also, this:
Quote[/b] ]Kraellin's Only if the King is there idea is along these lines: if no player is in more than one battle per turn then the maximum wait is the maximum battle length. is not what i meant. in mine, if you, your unit goes into battle, everything else keeps running on the campaign map. it's real time. there is NO waiting. that's why you, the player, only plays one specific unit or army, not all of them on the map. this eliminates ALL the waiting crap. life goes on, even if you're in the middle of a battle.

technically, this is easily handled by having more than one server. the campaign runs on one and when you enter battle mode, you are simply switched off to another server. you campaign map icons are still there, but you're off on another server playing out your battle. when it's over, you return to the campaign map. simple.

K.

[Nikodil]

Yes, making a Turn-Based MP-C is definitely the wrong way to go. It's a legacy from the time when we had to keep track of the rules ourselves. Now we have the Computer.

Real-time takes the game to a whole new dimension, where it's not only important to have a strategy, you got to have timing as well.

[YunDog]

I was definetly one of the turn based - I cant imagine how this could work people

but listening to Kraelins and Gils ideas I can see how it would work and be great.

The parts I would like to see - from Kraelins perspective where with only two players you could still play two factions opens the game up to LANS and would allow you and a couple of mates to get together for a LAN with a few beers and play a private game - maybe not essetial but nice if your still on crap lines like much of Australia and the rest of the third world.


I dont think this should be attempted with RTW but an addon made for MTW which I would certainly buy. The thing with MPC is it does encourage more people to buy the game so they can play the same game as their mates.

Finally with all MMPOG the temptation will be pay to play to maintain servers - but if you look at NWN and CS you see that alot of ISP will host servers to gain the download traffic and dollars and many host servers for popular mp games or interest groups and clans could host servers - this goes back to my TCP/IP LAN feature about allowing the players to host servers would be critical. Please try and stay away from pay to play as some people myself included have seen the degenerative effects of this on our friends lives and the parallel to gambling and other life debilatating addictions is frietening. I dont think any game is worth 1000s of dollars out of a young persons purse and years from their life. While the $$$ may appeal to the finance managers of CA - I plead with you to consider any alternatives to make a profit.

well that my 5c great discussion

cheers

[Kraellin]

Quote[/b] ]I dont think this should be attempted with RTW but an addon made for MTW which I would certainly buy.

i dont mind if they also included it for rtw, but i certainly agree that mtw is the perfect game for this and would love to see it for that. i'd even pay for a shogun mpc, but my first choice would be mtw.

and as well as the LAN part, i'd love to see it as a direct play type setup also. there are just times where all you want to do is play with a specific person(s) on a private connection.

K.

[Pellinor]

Sorry Kraellin: I was taking the first party of your detailed post above, where you talked about only having the player involved in the battles his king was at.

It was only after that point that you developed it to the each-player-is-a-single-general seamless strategic/tactical realtime model.

I think that would have serious issues: obviously time is to be accelerated in the battles, so a day of fighting can be compressed into half an hour, but one cannot really use the same rate strategically if anything is ever to be done on the strategic map. If the strategic map has a different timescale, however, a small battle will take months or years of strategic time.

This would allow huge scope for reinforcements, which would have great ramifications. It would be nice to be able to send a small force in to the battle to recce it before bringing in the appropriate main force (although that might turn into a protracted game of chicken, as neither side wants to commit until they know which enemy they'll face) but once battle is joined, I think it would end up being decided by who could throw most reinforcements in. A battle could end up being a black hole, sucking in all troops in the region. That detracts from strategy in favour of the big battalions.

The alternative is to isolate the battle until it finishes so no reinforcements can get in except those originally committed. That is probably worse: a single light horseman running around the map could effectively tie up several stacks worth of invading army for years.

Sticking to a turn-based strategic level avoids the interaction of tactical and strategic time rates.

Command and Conquer style RTSs, I feel, try to have the tactical and the strategic happening at the same time on the same map, and fail dismally. Being able to build and crew a tank (on the strategic level) quicker than another tank can destroy it (on the tactical level) is just so fundamentally unsatisfactory to me that I lose all sense of involvement with the game. It also means that the game is so divorced from real life that you have to evolve new tactics specially for it. If I play a war game based in mediaeval times, I want to have vaguely mediaeval tactics. MTW does that; Age of Empires II fails spectacularly (in my opinion). That's why I play MTW, and haven't played a normal RTS since I gave up on Red Alert half way through, except for occasional demos which only confirm my opinion of them. Other people like them, which is fair enough, but I don't.

Sorry about all the abbreviations in the previous post: I thought I was only using ones that had cropped up so far in the thread, or were pretty much standard. If it helps:

RT = real time
TB = turn based
TS = turn based strategy
RTS = tactical game not particularly bound to real time :-p
EFS= Empire of the Fading Suns, an old science fiction (vaguely Dune-like universe) strategy game
EU = Europa Universalis
Moo = Master of Orion
IMO = in my opinion
IME = in my experience

Cheers,

Pell.R.

[The_Emperor]

Quote[/b] (VKC_Blutzeit @ May 23 2003,01:20)]Yes, making a Turn-Based MP-C is definitely the wrong way to go. It's a legacy from the time when we had to keep track of the rules ourselves. Now we have the Computer.

Real-time takes the game to a whole new dimension, where it's not only important to have a strategy, you got to have timing as well.
In online play though that would cause huge problems, whereby the fastest clicker wins.

Every traditional multiplayer RTS out there at the moment that involves base-building and combat in real time, is all about rushing as early as you can and the twitchiest player winning.

Thankfully there's more to Total War than that, since you choose your units first. A turn based campaign would be cool, but we should be given less to do in a turn for the player, otherwise it would be ages til your turn comes around

A Multiplayer campaign similar to what we have now in single player would rock...

[MrNiceGuy]

Another possible solution to the extremes of RTS and turn based would be 'action points': you can only do so much in a given time period. This would allow RTS flow within Krae's CMP model and prevent the 'twitchy early rush' crowd while keeping the historical flavor of series.

BTW how does the market for multiplayer campaigns look now?

[Pellinor]

There should be no waiting in a turn-based system, unless you play hot-seat. Every player can make his moves at the same time, but they don't go into effect until everyone has hit the end of turn button. This is like the boardgame Diplomacy, and works beautifully there.

Action points to reflect only being able to do so much in a given time seem odd in an real-time context, given that you have such contraints in real life anyway (although some more than others, hence click-fests). You could perhaps use something like EU's diplomats system: to give a command you need to send a courier, and you only accumulate those at a certain rate.

The original Master of Orion 3 model to control game pacing was that you had a limited number of Imperial focus points to use each turn. Each one allowed you to make changes in one screen, like a particular planet's economy. The idea was that as you could only do a little bit each turn you would have to macro-manage and prioritise.

It was dropped because the actual effect was to make you check every screen twice, and some three times, instead of once. As you had to prioritise, you first checked each screen to find out what your options were, then double-checked to make sure you have picked the right six actions to take, then took those actions. If you could change any number of things on any screen straight away, you'd only go through stuff once. The action points therefore make turns longer instead of shorter.

Couriers might have a similar effect: you don't want to spend them in case you need them, so you hoard them and only spend one when you reach the limit of your stockpile, to make way for a new one.

The final MoO3 model is to give turns a time limit, and penalise players who go over it (only in MP). You therefore have to know exactly what your plan is if you are to act efficiently; conversely, if you really want some more time you can get it, but only at a cost. Are the benefits of opening a second front enough to off-set the impact of the penalties you'll suffer from having to take longer on each turn?

It also means that bigger isn't always better: you have to neglect parts of sparwling empires, whereas you have time to keep a tight grip on the whole of a small one.

In Multiplayer: Total War, you could give say three minutes per turn (adjustable in game set-up). Anyone who goes over in time is penalised: say his effective tax rate goes down, or his king's influence decreases, or he gets a vice, for example. All moves are resolved simultaneously, including AI players, after the last person hits turn. Battles are then resolved: either a player can only take part in a battle if his king is present, or (like in MoO3)he gets a list of battles his forces are involved in and can pick one to play.

Battles go on simultaneously, each player only having one to do at most. The time limits would have to be shorter, of course. Players with no battles to fight can watch another one, or start planning their next turn: if you allow people to look but not change then they can't do more next turn, but are better prepared.

Commanding a battle personally therefore gives you a tactical advantage, but this has to be weighed against the strategic advantage of not doing so, but reviewing your empire instead. To technobabble: if your king is not and burdened with tactical concerns, he can spend more time on matters of state.

You could also let people do a look-not-touch review in the time between hitting turn themselves and the actual end of the turn.

Pell.R.

[squippy]

Had some thoughts, how about this for a model.

First things first: MTW has two distinct modes of play, as we all know. I have reason to suspect that not all players have the same balance of interests, i.e. that some will favour one and not the other to differing degrees.

Somebody else already touched on the of the synergetic game in which generals and kings hand off to one another. Lets try to make that work, something like this.

The campaign game runs liuke a PBM; you get a turn file froo a server and extract it, carry out your instructions, and click 'compile' or something and goes off and does its thing, producing an output file to be returned to a server. The server receives everyones turn file and crunches the output; it will later produces one turn file for each active player and mail them out.

Observation: the campaign game is a micro-set of the overall game audience. I think its likely that many players will game with friends, but that also many will seek outside players, and player may be in different time zones. Conversely, even the micro-set may have a tough time making a regular schedule. A PBM structure provides for all of them, at least at the campaign level.

So much for Kings, what about Generals? So hows this: a campaign server as described above generates 'battle appointments' which need to be completed before the turn can be resolved and the PBM output generated. The battle appointments are sent to a server hosting MP battles and advertises for generals. The resources available to generals are pre-determined by the troops committed by the kings, but the generals handle the actual fighting. You CAN make it your business to be both King and General, but the goal here would be to capture both sets of interests (I know someone who only plays the campaign game and autoresolves all battles, frex).

Bonus: multiple combatant battles are introduced into the campaign game. It somewhat frustrates me that I can only deploy 16 units, but if I have an ally, there might be 32 units facing the enemy (or me&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif. This structure would allow three generals to assume command of three stacks (rather than treating the second and third as reserves) and fight a big battle. Even better, if the king deploys, you might want to fight that yourself but to bring on allied generals to command the wings/whatever. You might just want more than one command for a proper encirclement action even with a small force; then you would be able to concentrate on doing your bit and let your allied general do theirs.

All battle appointments have a deadline, and they expire; this deadline is agreed by the campaign players. If general slots are not filled, the AI plays it. Ideally even a battle entirely executed by the AI produces a replay; I say this on the basis of my experience of VGA planets. VGA-P had a primitive battled system, by any standards not just modern. But it produced a graphic display of the combat, and sometimes a late swing in the averages would produce a surprise result, so it was interesting to watch. It produced an effect a lot like watching a football game you had money on. Therefore, I think it would be worth producing movies even for autoresolved battles, I think even my friend who autoresolves everything would enjoy it. Autoresolve: no replay should also be an option though, to save time and effort.

The battle results log files are interesting but fairly simple; clearly the logic generating virtues and vices and so forth from battle results, checking whether a faction has been eliminated, is done in the campaign level. So the battle output is sent frm the battle server back to the campaign server for processing, and the finished turn compiled for each player position and mailed out to each campaign client.

It should be mentioned that there doesn't have to be one big campaign server; each individual game installation can, of course, already crunch a whole turn, the only functionality it would need would be to create multiple output files from multiple perspectives, for which a tool already exists. The only other thing it would need is systems for talking to a battle server, and it could advertise and have battles executed on more than one server. It might need a few other thingsb aout comms protocol and scheduling and stuff but thats too far ahead.

What you end up with is a whole group of local machines acting as servers for a small group of PBM kings, feeding up appointments to the battle servers which are avilable to prospective generals. One hope is that such a system would encourage contact across the game audience, in that generals may wish to advise on troop choice and kings may wish to cultivate acclaimed generals.

[Shahed]

BUMP

[Kraellin]

this topic re-surfaces from time to time, so i'm bumping it up once again since there are now two new topics related to it in the entrance hall.

to the entrance hall moderators, you may wanna pin this thing if it keeps happening and feel free to merge the other new topics to this one :)

K.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Quote[/b] (Sjakihata Akechi @ May 21 2003,17:50)]I played EU and EU2. It was ONLY multiplayer campaign, hence people had to meet up. Still we were about 20-40 people on the server.

When you add the tactical battle to it, it is just perfect. EU2 is too much risk style, dont let you control the battle it self.

At some point you HAVE to make a MP-C to throughly investigate the market, why not make it another outstanding feature to the RTW? I am sure you would get high score in reviews. If it fails, then you know it and can focus on other stuff (balancing and stuff like that + ladders etc).

All in all, you are better of including it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
EU2 is IMO a very worthy comparison when it comes to strategic MP games, not turn based but still wih strategic depth and not turning into a click fest. I'm surprised Kraellin did not mention it in its very worthy typology of MP games http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

My dream would be EU2 campaign and TW battles.

The main problem being, for a 8 person campaigns, when 2 are battling what are the other doing? Battles can be hour long... You can't make 6 persons wait for an hour.

Maybe there would not be that many battles after all... MP battle are so bloody that war would be a considerable drain on a country...

Louis,

[Kraellin]

louis,

that's one of the beauties of my idea; you are the king. you're in a battle. you are ONLY the king. you are one person in real life, and you are one person in the game and you're represented by only one piece in the game. if that piece gets engaged in battle, then it's just like real life, time goes on for everyone else. things keep going on elsewhere in the world, or in the case of the game, on the campaign map. you ONLY enter tactical mode yourself if your representative piece gets entangled in a battle. you dont go into battle every time one of your other armies are engaged.

so, like richard the lion hearted, who went off to the crusades, life goes on in the other parts of thw world, including your homelands. either your AI runs the other units or your other human generals run the other units. all depends on how you want to set up the parameters of the game. the main point is that you, as a game piece, can only do tactical battles that you, as the game piece, engage upon. you arent every game piece in the game. you are only one game piece in the game. you might have an army with you and natuarally that army would go into battle under your command, but while you personally are engaged in that battle, the action on the campaign map continues onward. there is no waiting. that's the main different, and thus there is no reason to have 'turns'.

movement of armys and units ON THE CAMPAIGN MAP would be very similar to EU and EU2. you might have regular roads or something that armies moved on, but it would be a progressive, incremental movement, not just you automatically jump from one province to another in a single move. that's kind of silly and very limiting in game play.

there's really a lot of ways to do all the extras and fine details; the main points are no more turns, no more waiting, no need to stack everyone up waiting for their turn to fight a tactical battle and you are you and represented by only one piece in the game. what that piece does determines if you fight in a tactical battle or not.

so, do you risk you king in battle and thereby go blind to what's going on in the rest of the world, or do you attend your kingly responsibilities of running your kingdom and stay out of the tactical side of things? it could make for some very interesting games.

K.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

The main problem I see with that solution is the time difference betwen a battle and a campaign. In EU2, one can play 1 mn = 1 month, and a battle will take 30 sec entirely automatic.

In MTW
A tactical battle may last hum 20 minutes? Representing one day?

While you are focusing on the battle, how much time would that be in the campaign? 5 years? 2 years? What if important events are happening at the same time?

There is a time compression issue with different rythmn in battle and campaign. One starts the battle (battle time 1 day), but after some time (campaign time 1 month) other troops which has been recruited and built during the fight are passing by and coming as reinforcement? And even if they don't come as reinforcement, they can just wait for the battle to be over, and here is a new battle again.

But I like the idea of several humans managing a faction; 1/ would give some interest to the title thing
2/ would help manage while some are away fighting
3/ would be nice for MP clans http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

But still there is this time compression thing, with time difference and the fact that strategic map can affect tactical map (see above).

Louis,

[Kraellin]

louis,

a valid question. there are 3 'times' associated with the game. there's real time, the time you and i are functioning within, campaign time and tactical battle time. this does tend to make an mpc a bit weird in places. but, the campaign is already a bit weird as far as time. one can go from egypt to flanders in one move, a year, but it also takes a year to go from flanders to wales or any other adjoining province. so we tend to overlook time quite a bit. one of the contentions made when mtw came out was exactly about the move from seasonal turns to yearly turns. some didnt like it and thought it skewed things up. well, ok, maybe it did.

like EU and EU2, my mpc would deal with that somewhat by making campaign moves take a while to get where yer going. in fact, it's something of a rip-off from EU. i'd do it a bit differently, but the idea of moving around and it taking some time is the same. depending on how you wanted to make it, this would compensate somewhat for the difference between tactical and campaign time. the rest you simply disregard for game play's sake. it might not always make sense or be that logical, but there's just so much you can make 'real' and still play the game. nobody would argue for a real time 3 month march to the holy lands, i'm sure. you just have to abstract and forgive a certain amount of 'un-real'.

as for important events going on on the campaign map while yer in a tactical battle, yes, that would happen and that's one of the risks you face for personally going into battle. stuff does occur. the world moves on. you have the current mp game which is only tactical. that's fine. the mpc wouldnt needed to focus as much on the tactical. we already have that game if we want to play it. so, the mpc is mainly about the campaign game, the campaign map and the moves there. in fact, if you really wanted to shorten things and deal with the time compression differences, you just make the mpc battles all auto-resolve. that's extremely quick and you'd never lose focus of the campaign map by personally being in battle. it would also make making an mpc easier since you dont have to deal with all the network handoffs and such for tactical. i could easily live with that if that was the only way we could get an mpc.

'time' is not the problem, in my view. the real problem is convincing CA that this would be a good project to do. i seem to recall that giljaysmith started a topic in the main hall, or maybe it was in the EH, where he asked folks for input into the justification of an mpc. heck, it may have even been earlier in this thread :)

K.