The Naval & Crusade problem

[Durruti]

While playing Danish-early-hard, I was going fine-even bought rebel controlled Switzerland for some mountain defense & Swiss Halberds.

The French began an early Crusade. They passed Swabia, which was now part of the Danish empire. Their crusade went south on the way to Tripoli. Next turn their crusade turned NORTH-away from Tripoli-(something a human player would not be allowed to do) & entered Swabia, where my best troops were based.

I said no way they are going to steal my soldiers & proceeded to slaughter the crusade. Of course I was excommunicated. War with France began. French troops numbered in the millions; France controlled half of England, & everything in West Europe-north of Spain to Poland & Italy. They attacked Swabia & Switzerland (which was surrounded by the French).

To make a short story long, I handily defeated the numerous French armies. Incidentally, you could tell the French were the bad guys, because their troops didn't shave & mine did.

I was having a good tough war & enjoying it; it was fun trying to overcome vast numbers of French Orcish troops. However, there is a weak spot in the MTW combat system (a fly in the ointment); That is the Naval combat simulation.

My navy consisted of fine Viking Longships; the French had Barcks. We had roughly the same number of warships. My Danish longboats had extra honor. Nevertheless, their navy sank most of my Navy. It made no difference whether I attacked, or was attacked. Without my navy-at least holding its own-I stood little chance of resisting the French or of maintaining enough income to continue to replace my troops and combat the French Hojo Hoard. I quit in disgust.

A nice game was ruined by 2 game weaklinks; unfair Crusade routes allowed the a1 nations, and what appears to be unfair naval combat results.

If the results are random bad luck (a dice roll) then I vote for tightening up the naval combat system in RTW TO MAKE NAVAL COMBAT FAIR. The reason naval combat must be FAIR is that as it is not tactical, there is no way for the human to make for fair results through adroit handling of his boats during the battle.

In other words, on land, humans can through intelligent handling of their armies ensure a fair combat result. The land combat is the sin qua non-sp?-ie strong suit of the Total War series. In STW, as there was no Naval simulation, the game results were not skewered by weakly rendered naval combat & sea control. MTW suffers because of the weakness of the naval-sea control simulation.

One hopes that RTW will deal with naval combat-sea control in a fairer way so as not to hurt the rest of the game.

[motorhead]

Naval Combat
- without knowing all the specifics, i'd have to give an edge to barques over longboats since barques have 2-defense while longboats have 1-defense, all other stats being identical.
- sure, a better naval combat system would have been nice. but, i recall a dev posted that CA estimated a good system would have taken 6 months to develop. Economic reality rears it's ugly head. That extra time costs money and means no new revenues.

Crusades
- granted, crusades can sometimes take odd routes. However, they often plot a route using shipping routes, and will head to the nearest port that has a chain of ships close to where they're headed. Rather than march south for 10-15 turns, the pathfinding routine says "march north to this port, take sea route to prov XYZ, then march a few more years and we'll be there in half the time". It's the shortest route time-wise
- sometimes, especially when the AI uses sea routes of other AI factions, the route will appear and disappear every other turn as ships move about. This often accounts for spastic crusades that: 1) see a shorter sea route, march towards port, 2) sea route is broken by ship movement, crusade moves away, 3) ships move, sea route exits, crusades heads back to port, etc., etc., etc. Maddening but it happens.

edit: If I've got a large trade network, and I see a crusade start, I'll often break my own trade routes to deter a crusade from marching towards my ports.

[nick_maxell]

Your crusade - ship-movement explanation makes a lot of sense but it isn t always true. I saw crusades moving eratically although the searoute they eventually used was made of my own (unmoving) ships. Sometimes I think the crusade "hunts" for big stacks and will go out of its way to get them (eg the French crusade hitting Wessex then Sweden before going to its target Egypt as it happened to me recently. And don t forget that the AI can run more than one crusade at a time too http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif

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

nick

[lancelot]

dont get me started on crusades I hate them, regardless of sea routes they just cheat.

EG:- I have seen a spanish crusade ship over to my flanders then into freisland BACK to flanders then up to Finland???? It then proceeded to march overland all the way to Tripoli????

Sorry but sea routes or not that is just rubbish

I have also seen crusades spawn swabian swordsmen even though the province itself wasnt teched up enough to produce them by the owners?

They always seem to move to your province where your best troops are, even if it then means going out of its way.

And another thing-I have had crusades move through my territory even though I was at war with the crusading faction?? With no option to refuse them passage. As if any general would let a hostile army into their province, regardless of their 'mission'

Phew as you guessed-crusades arnt my friends.

[katank]

Yep, AI crusades can go any direction they choose as long as total number of moves is shorter than longest path.

BTW, there's also always an option to switch to a shorter route.

thuse, if province A is shorter by sea and B is shorter by land, then the crusade can flip back and forth between these two.

also, the AI can launch 2 crusades at once and they definitely cheat

BTW, longboats get 2 attack 1 defense while barques get 1 attack 2 defense IIRC

technically, they should be evenly matched.

however, the naval system is so random this is a moot point.

As a friend of mine noted, the naval combat does favor the loser on land for "balance" just as you get hit by massive, unexplainable loyalty drops once you get big enough.

Thus, key to success is to send half dead unit of peasants against elite rebel army, the same turn as you try to take out 3 viking snekjjas with 3 star commanding with a lone curragh with 0 stars. autocalc battle, get your miserable peasants slaughtered.

lo and behold, your pitiful curragh which could barely float sank all those snekjjas he gains stars. rinse, repeat.

losing half dead peasant is far more economical than losing a ship.

moral of the story? lose thy battles and thy shall prosper on sea.

you were doing too well in the battles, hence the game engine hates you

[Durruti]

MTW is like life-beautiful but at times unfair. My hope is that the RTW developers, besides going all 3D & adding lots of eye-candy, & improving the castle siege section, etc., will improve the game mechanics-with an eye to making all aspects fairer.

With RTW,s action taking place all around the Mediterranean, a sloppily programmed naval power & transport could kill the game.

The crusades should not be an item in RTW. However, war simulation games should be fair. Cheats should be limited as much as possible. Obviously, the more programming work-input by the developers, the less cheats will be needed to balance the superior human mind; (I can't believe I wrote "superior" in the same sentence with "human mind.")

I have long felt that pc games are underpriced. I would pay much more for a well programmed game. However, along with the higher price, ($100?) would have to come the absolute right of all customers to return the game for a full CASH refund$$$ if they-we are unsatisfied.

I would pay at least $100 for a properly programmed Talonsoft West or East Front - for example. The Total War producers-developers are a classy bunch, much like the AOE Bruce Shelley gang. Unfortunately all too many pc games are released in a completely unusable state. I am sure the forumers can name numerous examples of this fraud.

All we consumers want is games that work & work well enough to be enjoyable. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-computer.gif

[andrewt]

The biggest frustration for me in MTW is that the developers added a lot of mechanisms in the endgame to make the game artificially harder when you go stronger. Governors suddenly get nasty vices, all other factions refuse to have a ceasefire or alliance with you and nations all refuse to marry their princesses to you, etc., etc.

It always annoys me when that happen. It annoyed me in Mario Kart when the computer gets speed boosts when you are far in first place, it annoyed me in many basketball sims when the AI gets hot when you have a big lead and it annoys me in MTW. I want a clean win when I am beating the snot out of the AI, not for the game to become artificially close because the AI starts cheating when it's far behind.

That said, barques are supposed to be more powerful than longboats. Look at the stats again. As for command stars, I have no idea how that affects things. One of the worst battles for me was when 2 barques with 2-3 rank each attacked a galley with no rank and lost. I was really pissed. I also agree that the AI cheats on crusades. What I do is remove all troops from the province where the AI goes through then bring them back after the crusade passes. I usually save after I see a crusade created. A lot of times, I just refuse and beat the crap out of the crusade. They're rarely lead by a ranked general anyway.

[PseRamesses]

No one ever said it was going to be easy to build an empire.
Isn´t this challenge the very reason we love this game?

[Durruti]

A challenge is one thing; Absolute unfairness is another. As an anology, Gore had a tough election v Bush (who outspent him 2 to 1). Gore received 500,000 MORE VOTES than Bush & stilllll lost. I know electoral college-an undemocratic impediment (check of the checks & balances) put in by the founding fathers who didn,t trust the people to vote properly.

The point is that there is no democracy where the winner (by a sizeable margin) is denied office, and there is no STRATEGIC-TACTICAL game where an MTW player, who plays well, can be denied a victory because of a poorly arranged election-er crusade setup & a poorly arranged naval combat setup.

I am not flaming the MTW developers who (whom?) I admire; I am talking about the future. My dream for the future is for a great RTW that will define pc gaming for the next decade-at least. I hope my dream is not tooo far from reality. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif

[PseRamesses]

Quote[/b] (Durruti @ April 10 2004,09:46)]My dream for the future is for a great RTW that will define pc gaming for the next decade-at least. I hope my dream is not tooo far from reality. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cool.gif
...then we dream the same dream you and I.

[son of spam]

I tell you, Katank is absolutely correct. In my HRE (medmod/early/hard) game, I had 2 barques in the adriatic. The Italians and Scilians, both my enemies, had one galley and one barque (i think) respectively. Next turn, I defended Poland against a Polish counterattack consisting of hordes of woodsmen (incidentally I modded medmod to give woodsmen 4 charge and a small shield) and spearmen, with a couple of retainers. I won, since they had no archers, and I put all of mine on a steep mountain http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif. Result: 700+ polish dead. Me: 5 killed. However, the Italian galley in the adriatic then proceeded to sink 2 of my barques. So I reloaded, and this time sent a heerban to attack pomerania. Of course I lost, but my barques destroyed both the Italian and Scilian fleets. Follow Katank's advice: you'll never go wrong.

[katank]

thanx for the endorsement.

the game engine does seem to pity losers though.

maybe that's why the AI likes to lose

ie. withdraw and later counterattack.

BTW, on unrelated note.

anyone actually use spies to end sieges? I did that in one VI campaign and it worked really well. The AI loves to withdraw and my spies made short work of the besieged forces.

funny how it's in the manual but at least I never used it until now.

[gaijinalways]

Haven't noticed that, but usually my navy is too big to sink

[PseRamesses]

Quote[/b] (gaijinalways @ April 11 2004,10:21)]Haven't noticed that, but usually my navy is too big to sink
But it´s sound advice since it´s usually 4+4+8+4+3= 23 years until your first boat hit the water if you don´t start with upgrades.

[katank]

that is quite true. it costs a lot (time and florins) to launch the initial boat and hurts a lot to lose it.

[SwordsMaster]

Hey, i tried to use spies to end sieges, but never succeeded. My spies were never good enough.Coz everything is fine til they get to 5 star, then i send them to a suicidal mission and they die...poor bastards.


Quote[/b] ]...then we dream the same dream you and I.

oooh, that is sweet.. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-jester.gif

I surely expect a lot of improvement for RTW.

[PseRamesses]

Quote[/b] (SwordsMaster @ April 11 2004,18:09)]
Quote[/b] ]...then we dream the same dream you and I.

oooh, that is sweet.. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-jester.gif
...and I do sleep like a log with those dreams, he he

[katank]

@ swordsmaster. I actually played through a viking campaign with liberal use of spies to end sieges and must have ended some 20 of them and killed thousands of enemies this way.

I used them in packs of 10+ and they worked well.

[PseRamesses]

Like Swordmaster I don´t have much luck with assasins. Can usually get them up to 5-7 stars then I go and try to kill a king with some 75%-85% probability of success... and they fail, hmmm.

[katank]

it's really funny how the displayed low probability ones are actually quite good odds but high ones will get your assasins killed.

I swear I had higher success rates slicing uppity popes than emissaries.

[PseRamesses]

Quote[/b] (katank @ April 12 2004,11:14)]it's really funny how the displayed low probability ones are actually quite good odds but high ones will get your assasins killed.
I swear I had higher success rates slicing uppity popes than emissaries.
That could be worth a try. Just massproduce the buggers and send them in packs after the target. Thanks Katank

[katank]

no problem. I've yet to see any target survive my horde of 20 Syrian 5* assasins http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif