How to reduce the tedium of long battles?

[econ21]

Am I alone in finding MTW a little hard going? Towards the mid-game (1200 or so), when you hold half the map, it can take enormous amounts of time. Fighting three large battles a year can take 4 hours of real life - particularly a problem given the quick save bug. I was wondering if RTW will improve on this?

A couple of ideas:
1) If they could do away with reinforcements (deploy all the army on the map), that would be great. I find them gamey and frustrating, especially as the attacker. If it meant smaller armies, so be it.
2) Allow the difficulty level to be customised (or altered during the game), so that auto-calc could be biased in favour of the player. Autoresolving is an obvious solution to burning out on battles, but it is hard to take when you can do so much better manually.

[ziphnor]

Or 3)
Make an "auto-resolve rest of battle" button in the battle itself, so you could just take care of the initial (by far most important) fighting, and then auto-resolve when the enemy appears to be beaten.

[jLan]

They posted in an FAQ that you will be able to have 20 units on the battlefield under your personal control, and another 20 of your troops being controlled by a general (works like with allies in MTW).. So that should limit the problem a bit.

[Nelson]

I enjoy big, prolonged battles in Medieval. Granted, several in a turn can be time consuming but that's what the between battle save is for. Does it not work properly? I don't think I've ever loaded a pre-battle save.

[RangerLee]

I have yet to have an allied army in a battle beside me...have you guys had this happen? I figured I would see it when I broke a seige that the Holy Roman Army was under in their province..but alas it did not happen.

[FesterShinetop]

Quote[/b] (ziphnor @ July 15 2003,16:15)]Or 3)
Make an "auto-resolve rest of battle" button in the battle itself, so you could just take care of the initial (by far most important) fighting, and then auto-resolve when the enemy appears to be beaten.
Yes, I like this one. As soon as you have tipped the scales in your favor you can let your officers take care of the rest. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[The_Emperor]

Quote[/b] (RangerLee @ July 19 2003,05:39)]I have yet to have an allied army in a battle beside me...have you guys had this happen? I figured I would see it when I broke a seige that the Holy Roman Army was under in their province..but alas it did not happen.
You haven't had one? I had a 4 sided battle invading french Rebels in Tulouse... The HRE and Aragon sent small invading armies in to help.

Such battles do lag a lot with so many men on the field at once. I can only wish that RTW runs ok no matter how many troops are on the field.

[Nelson]

Quote[/b] (RangerLee @ July 18 2003,23:39)]I have yet to have an allied army in a battle beside me...have you guys had this happen? I figured I would see it when I broke a seige that the Holy Roman Army was under in their province..but alas it did not happen.
Yes but it's rare.

[clovenhoof]

Simon, I totaly agree that super long battles can be terribly tedious. After the first few waves have come and been routed, waiting for the next wave (which will route) and the one after that and the one after that too. The idea of "autoresolve rest of battle" is excellent. Actually, it seems to me that its a flaw in the game- the fact that an army will run as soon as they see you. As soon as the factors combine to make troops run as soon as they see you (-9 morale and you have more than a few units left) the battle should end.

An in-battle save would be great too. It is these battles which sometimes makes MTW little fun to play. I REALLY hate it when I want to sit and play the game for an hour- knowing I have stuff to do soon and my live in girlfriend wants on the computer after me- and in a single turn I am hit with like five meaningless battles of huge enemy armies doing nothing but retreating. I;ve never heard of a between battle save but if it works I am all for it.

[jLan]

The between battle save is included in Viking Invasion. I'd strongly discourage an in-battle save... would just have people doing maneuvers over and over again to perfect em. I like the idea of "auto-resolve rest of battle" though, excellent idea

In any event - I expect we'll see a lot less of these (unless we want to see them) in RTW, for two reason: You can have 40 units on the field at once... that's a lot. Secondly, there are no provinces, so troops are likely to be spread around more along the borders, to guard the ways into the empire/country. If you dislike big battles you could just send 5 different invasion forces. And I can't see the computer sending more than 40 units at me http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

Lastly, you also need to bear in mind that there will be a population system, limiting the max number of units you can acquire.

[deejayvee]

Quote[/b] (The_Emperor @ July 19 2003,08:39)]Such battles do lag a lot with so many men on the field at once. I can only wish that RTW runs ok no matter how many troops are on the field.
I believe that the move to 3d helps here. As I understand it, up until a certain point the 2d bitmaps are more resource efficient, but eventually you get to the point where large numbers of 3d objects are actually quicker than the same number of 2d bitmaps. This is mostly to do with 3d video cards doing the processing instead of the CPU.

[Mr Frost]

My longest battle to date was 6 hours , 40 min .
It was one of three large battles I had that turn {the others all were less than two hours} .

There was a lot of dead bodies left on the feild afterwards .

It was an unusually long battle , the second longest was around 4 hours and mostly the long ones only last an hour or two and usually settle into a point where the result is a foregone conclusion unless you do something rather silly .

I would have found a "calculate rest of battle" {perhaps which takes you tatics at the moment into account somehow} or in battle save function useful had I had pressing business that day .


Jtan : If someone would want to use such a during-the-battle save to "game the game" I see no probelem given it is single player {they only "cheat" themselves which is any free mans'/womans' perogative} and their money which purchased it .

[Hurin_Rules]

Its not the long battles I dislike, its the long campaigns. Micromanaging sucks. I do hope that RTW has some shorter campaigns with less than 16 other factions They should do it like in Civ3, where you can pick the number of opponents. That would also cut down on the battles I would think.

[Maedhros]

Hail Hurin,

tragic character, with everything he was made to watch.


as for long tedius battles...keep timers on and if you think them tedious you aren't doing it right.

[lonewolf371]

All I want is two things:

1)For the AI reinforcements to work and...

2)For the AI to be able to win a battle without using uber units (AKA on a hard difficulty you might attack some Crossbowmen with some knights, and your knights would lose). Instead, have it so that the knights would beat the crossbowmen, but the AI would sandwitch the knights with spearmen in an ambush if they dared to do so.

EDIT: 3 things
3)For armies to cost enough gold in late-game so that they are scaled down for battles. The fact that lancers cost about 800 doesn't off-set the fact that you're earning 10,000 florins per year.

[ziphnor]

"as for long tedius battles...keep timers on and if you think them tedious you aren't doing it right. "

With large armies attacking, timers are 1-2 hours, and the actual fighting only takes perhaps 15-25 minutes, sitting another hour after that doing nothing but waiting for the AI reinforcements to arrive and then run away is a bit dull.

[econ21]

I played many epic battles in a VI campaign as Almohads (there are some write-ups in Entrance Hall) and they were anything but tedious. When you are outnumbered by the AI and under real threat, the whole waiting for reinforcement thing can be incredibly tense.

But generally I agree with Ziphnor - most encounters are determined by the outcome of the first waves: if you kill the general and enough AI troops, the later waves - which are typically inferior - can't win. And the outcome of the attack of the first wave - if it is in earnest - can be over in ten to fifteen minutes of real life.

I find the waiting for reinforcements most irritating when attacking - your reinforcements take so long to arrive and the AIs can pop up in the most implausible places so close to you.

But I was pleased to hear about the proposed limit of 20 own + 20 allied units (rather than 16 units) deployed. With this and maybe some tweaking of the economy to limit number of units, the problem would be greatly alleviated.