Rome Total War

[mercian billman]

I was just wondering what you guys think will happen when with MP when Rome eventually comes out. The current TW community is better behaved than the MP communities of most games. In the 6 months or so I've been playing online, there were only two games where I felt my opponent was clearly fighting dishonarably.

In my first game I played a opponent who used all Cav Mongol army, and he played a map which clearly gave advantage to the defender. If I were hosting a map which clearly gave an advantage to the defender, I would allow be the attacker, or at least allow the guy to defend in a rematch.

A few days ago I played someone he was the defender, and I was the attacker. He spread his cavalry into units 1 deep, used a peasent gen, and set up his army to rush. I was pretty angry about it but, decided to play anyway I ended up losing a close battle but, thats not what angered me.

When I enter a MP game I expect people to play with honor, use a decent unit as gen, spread cavalry no more than 2 deep, and to stick to their assigned role in the intial melee. Thus far my expectations have been justified, the vast majority of people (even noobs) fight with honor. Rome is supposed to attract all the people who've played AOE, C&C, and such where the MP enviroment is different from TW.

Do you huys think with the possible influx of new players, Romes lobby will come to resemble those of lesser RTS games or will those people better assimilate themselves into the TW community?

[Kongamato]

Well, so far the TW series has been able to weed out the average teenage ego-tripping clickmasters(except me) with its structure-demanding gameplay, average graphics, and lack of MP options for the serious player. However, there's still going to be a massive influx of new players for Rome. It's a great game to watch, and the eye candy alone will drag many in. The deciding factor about the game will be whether the learning curve will be steep enough to weed out the people unwilling to learn basic tactical thinking. A great deal of your obnoxious people will fall into this category. The potential for an Arcade mode along with the many new Total War fansites and forums could change the very style of online Total War. The veteran community may not be able to make the habits of proportioned florins, proper morale levels and RPS balance as popular as they are at present. Artillery will probably be seen en masse. However, such balancing interests tend to evolve by themselves anyway if the gameplay has the potential for proper balance and the new people welcome the traditional concepts of Total War, like morale and RPS. The decision on what kind of gameplay will come from Rome probably falls in the hands of the beta testers. Will current MP veterans be consulted about the stats during the beta phase, and what help will they be when dealing with such a new engine? As far as I know, nobody's got a clue as to how Rome's morale and combat system is supposed to work. Only basic, conceptual suggestions can be made now.

Rome's a brand new game, and by all looks of it, Rome seems to be built to sell in large numbers, which is nothing wrong. What I hope for is that the developers do not skimp on the tactical aspects of the game. I feel that a "thumb candy" game would attract the wrong type of player and would make many lose interest very quickly.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

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

Or in other word, we are fortunate that the interface is difficult to master http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

I am kidding a bit, but I also think Kongamato makes some good point. Right now it takes time and effort to play MP, it's very rewarding, but probably too demanding for many players.

The one attitude I don't like much in MP is that right now, if you put aside Swoosh post, no MPers is baiting for information in the Coliseum or trying to push new ideas.

So you give very little input to CA... but as soon as the game will be out, we'll all be whining around that they did not listen to us. Hardly a proactive attitude.

Louis,

[Vanya]

GAH

Vanya wonders... can youz play "arcade-style" battles in RTW MP? And, can youz choose to play against somebody where youz play normal and they play arcade-style?

Vanya sez... MP will have spammers just the same as it does now.

Maybe there be little campaigny thingies... but Vanya not hold breath. Vanya expects same basic thing we have now, only with jazzier interface, cooler graphics and hopefully mo' balance and variability.

Vanya sez... Vanya cut heads off just the same when He run amok in Roman breastplates (or boob-plates?), togas or sandals. Though Vanya will definitely feel the urge to "strike a pose" when He charges forth into "la chiraquerie" of the Gauls armed with nothing more than a wooden fork and a plastic, toothless butter knife. And despite this, the Gauls will certainly feel overwhelmed by Vanya's mastery of these paltry cutlery utensils... and they will prostrate themselves before Vanya and offer Him their finest womenz and escargot. And Vanya will drink much wine and be merry, though He cannot marry 'cause priests think Vanya too fiendish to let into their little churches...

GAH

[eds]

Quote[/b] (mercian billman @ June 29 2004,18:01)]When I enter a MP game I expect people to play with honor, use a decent unit as gen, spread cavalry no more than 2 deep, and to stick to their assigned role in the intial melee.
WIth a list like that, you'd better lay out what it is you find "dishonorable" to people before you play them. Must have a decent general unit? Restrictions on how shallow you can form your men? Defender not allowed to attack?

What's dishonorable or illegitimate about any of that?

[CBR]

Since swiping was removed in the 2.01 patch I dont have any problems with 1 rank cavalry. They are not easy to maneuver with and even with swipe you could defeat it with cav in 2+ ranks.

If Im going to hit an enemy pav unit I want my cav to be as wide as the pav unit to maximise my kills, and that sometimes mean the cav unit will be in 1 1/2 ranks.

If a player want to take a peasant general that means he has one less maneuver element so I can easier outflank him. If he want to try that tactic thats fine with me
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif


CBR

[Puzz3D]

Louis,

CA has had tons of input from the community. If they don't understand by now what we want for multiplayer gameplay, they never will. We've been posting ideas for 3 years now.

[mercian billman]

Quote[/b] (eds @ July 01 2004,08:55)]
Quote[/b] (mercian billman @ June 29 2004,18:01)]When I enter a MP game I expect people to play with honor, use a decent unit as gen, spread cavalry no more than 2 deep, and to stick to their assigned role in the intial melee.
WIth a list like that, you'd better lay out what it is you find "dishonorable" to people before you play them. Must have a decent general unit? Restrictions on how shallow you can form your men? Defender not allowed to attack?

What's dishonorable or illegitimate about any of that?
For the most part I've never had to deal with stuff like that. I really don't have a huge problem with people spreading their cav most people keep them in 3 ranks, 2 ranks is okay by me.

By decent unit as gen, I mean no peasent gen or withdrawing their general before the start of melee. A peasent unit only costs 50 florins meaning those 200-600 florins saved can be used to improve other units.
15 units vs 16 units isn't really a huge disparity. For me decent means pretty much any cav unit.

By sticking to your assigned role in the initial melee I mean the defender shouldn't rush. It takes the fun out of the intial skirmish of trying to manuever troops around. Sometimes a defender will be forced to iniate melee because he lost (or is losing) the skirmish and, thats fine.

It doesn't take skill to use a peasent gen and then withdraw him so your men can't lose morale in case your gen dies. Not to mention it's not very realistic.

Deciding before a battle that your going to rush (especially if your the defender) and bringing no missle units, and setting up as close as possible is cheap.

[The_Emperor]

Actually spreading your Cav 1 row deep in MTW is exploiting a flaw in the game engine.

In reality any formation of Cavalry that is this thin would certainly have their formation broken up by a deeper more solid formation which would have a lot more pushback... But in the MTW game engine Cavalry 1 row deep can halt a charge of anything (even Pikemen), and then it wraps around that unit to come in on the flanks.

In addition in a 3v3 steppe Game, should all players on one team spread their cav that wide all the space would be used up preventing any possibility of flanking.

Fortunately from what we have seen so far of RTW, this flaw may have been corrected.

other things that really get on my nerves in Multiplayer are...

1: Artillery.

2: Massed Byz inf Armies.

3: Withdrawing your general so you don't gain any penalty for his loss on the field.

[econ21]

Rather off-topic, but I've noticed the AI regularly withdrawing its general from battles in solo campaigns. When I see a lone kataphract that's an 8 star general hot footing it from the field before the commencement of battle to avoid losing the morale penalty (but presumably keeping the 8 star bonus for the army), I am not pleased. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif

I'd be interested in how they handle formation depth in RTW. I remember the historian Nusbacher on the TV show Time Commanders saying that you needed thick formations in ancient battles. I thought this would probably be bad game advice in MTW and wondered what was the case in RTW. MTW improved over STW in allowing the rank bonus for spears (and reducing the chance of a "push-back" if you have supporting ranks?) - I hope RTW does even better.

[Sulla]

Well at least we know for sure there won't be a MP campaign.

other then that, Im not expecting that much difference from MTW style MP, except from perfecting the TW morale and combat system. In multi games, withdrawing your gen isnt the most brilliant system. Sure, you wont have to suffer the morale penalty on general's death, but you only got 15 units vs enemy 16.

It could be possible they'll introduce different battle "difficulty's". One system where the comp takes care of a lot of things, and a vet room where you do all the work yourself.

We'll just have to wait and see anyway :), not that long anymore.

Sulla

[CBR]

Yes having a general retreat before combat starts or make him a peasant is hardly historical and a bit strange.

But I do not consider that to give him any special advantage. You cant get many upgrades for those few hundred florins saved and you still lose one unit..that one unit is all one needs to start outflanking.

---


Yes I would say that CA has got lots of input from us but they dont seem to respond much to our MP comments/threads regarding RTW. And they wont give any details on what they change, so its difficult for the community to give any specific comments on it before the game is out.


CBR

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Quote[/b] (Puzz3D @ July 01 2004,23:41)]Louis,

CA has had tonbs of input from the community. If they don't understand by now what we want for multiplayer gameplay, they never will. We've been posting ideas for 3 years now.
Let me rephrase it... Yes, individually some have posted about MP gameplay and improvements and feature.

If I were a CA developers and had a look at the Coliseum topics, I guess I would not see the point in changing anything at all in MP. There are very few MP related topics, and most of the time they just roll on second page very fast.
There are ideas and feedback provided to CA, but those ideas seems to be far less important for the RTW fans (people going to the Coliseum) than, for example, units accuracy or historical relevance.

If I were to read the Coliseum to figure out what matters for players, obviously MP would not make it to the top of the list.

Is the MP community (whatever that is) to blame? Partly; not many MPers go to the Coliseum, and I am afraid the MP community will be way more vocal when the game will be out. Hardly a proactive attitude.

Louis,

[Puzz3D]

The multiplayer community isn't to blame. If CA cares to see how multiplayer stats should be done, all they have to do is download CBR's Community Mod and try it. It's all right there, and if it needs any adjustments they are relatively minor. The gameplay in the Community Mod runs circles around the regular game.

[mercian billman]

Thanks for all the great replies http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/bigthumb.gif

Hopefully when Rome comes out the AOE, and C&C players will accept the time honored rules of conduct we've used in Medieval and Shogun...If not we can always come back to MTW and play veterans.

[Sulla]

o dear o dear o dear http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-anxious.gif

Dont we all love a good fight http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-argue.gif

let it go guys, it ain't that important

Sulla

[mercian billman]

Someitmes I think we all lose sight of the fact it's just a game http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/frown.gif

[Rob The Bastard]

Some members will notice that their posts have been deleted. I intervened on what I saw as a breach of the forum rules... sadly the PM system didn't want to send my PM out to the members that were involved.

I'll try and get that out to them as soon as posible.

To those involved... do not continue with that converstation until my PM has reached you, it contains posts/information that is no longer veiwable here.

[Puzz3D]

Rob,

What is the nature of the disagreement?

[firingsquad]

I don't care. I know this community is touchy about any sort of confrontation whatsoever. It looked like Billman gave some sort of apology anyway. The disagreement was that I was the player he was reffering to in his original post. It doesn't matter anymore.

[spacecadet]

What else do the developers need to be told regarding multiplayer?

Theres the game balance(posted and fought about many many times).

Well we have said a user friendly registration procedure is essential - how many people try to play online MTW but cant get it working? (a lot)

Stable multiplayer code and a foyer with user definable rooms to allow things like tourneys to be done easily. A foyer which was solid and bug free would be nice too.

Theres much more that has been said by others but if the basic stuff like what ive said above is achieved then CA will have exceeded my expectations for online RTW.

Ever hopeful Space.

[firingsquad]

We can't even agree on little things like what unit can be a general. How is CA going to know how to design multiplayer for an entire game? No matter what, there will be people who have problems. People said the 20% unit penalty would solve the more than 4 unit thing, but then CA made a billion different units that were all similiar, so you just got around the 20% penalty by picking a similiar unit. There was only 1 possible spear unit in STW (ashigaru didnt really count atleast in STW, dont know about WE) so you could only pick 4 spears. Throw in order foot, italian infantry, feudal sergeants, spearmen, and ten million other spear types, and we're back to the drawing board. Not that I had a problem with this, but most people did. RTW will have all the same problems STW and MTW has, just perhaps in a different new and improved form. And there will always be those people that think anything is cheap. The only thing we know for sure is that whatever CA does, they will do more of everything. There is something that people need to learn. And that's that a game designers job isn't to balance the game, it's their job to make it. It will have it's flaws and maybe a patch will improve things. Even then we'll get people accusing other people of rushing just because they brought archers instead of pavs.

[Puzz3D]

I think it is the designer's job to balance the game, and they do try to balance it. However, they are only going to balance it to a certain degree, and unofficially they are on record as saying 25% is pretty good balance. With players able to exploit imbalances on the order of 10%, 25% is really insufficient for the best multiplayer gameplay. So, I think RTW is going to fall considerably short of it's potential in terms of multiplayer gameplay. Since most of the online players won't use a mod, the community can't fix it except by using rules which are limited in what kinds of problems they can correct.

Private chat and play rooms would seem to be essential if a large number of people are going to be playing RTW online. We had private rooms in STW, but lost them in MTW because GameSpy doesn't provide any server side support. That means multiplay chat and play rooms must be built into the game itself which CA tried to do for MTW but failed to get working correctly. I hope they can get them working correctly in RTW. We were also supposed to have access to the database of battle results, but that's something else that didn't work. Maybe RTW will have more time and resources devoted to multiplayer than did MTW. However, I haven't seen any indication that will happen.

[firingsquad]

I think people expect too much from a designer. The designer has so much on their hands that they have to deal with. Listening to the multiplayer community can be disastrous as half the players dont even know what they're talking about, as evidenced by some thinking a non cav general is cheap, or bringing archers and forcing the other player into a panic is considered rushing. If the designers can balance the game, great, but my point is that that's being unrealistic. If a game is balanced, that has more to do with luck it seems. Some of the geatest games have a lot of strategy to them, but not because the developers had any idea what they were doing. If RTW is balanced it won't be because they took time to listen to this community, it will be dumb luck. BLizzard is considered one of the best game play balancers out there, and even they have a near impossible time balancing War3. Their best game, War2, was a complete mistake, and they ruined it later. Even Starcraft was considered a lot more balanced on their first try, but then that was primarily luck as their first try they had nothing to go on.
It's not about multiplayer, it's about singleplayer. Did anyone buy STW/MTW because of the multiplayer? We all originally bought this game for reasons other than multiplayer. It's the SP that caught us, the MP that kept us. THat's how CA wants to bring in more palyers, SP and MP alike. THey're going to market this as a SP game, and so it's not realistic that they will take their "job" of multiplayer seriously, especially not in this point in time.

[Aelwyn]

Quote[/b] (mercian billman @ July 02 2004,02:01)]By sticking to your assigned role in the initial melee I mean the defender shouldn't rush. It takes the fun out of the intial skirmish of trying to manuever troops around. Sometimes a defender will be forced to iniate melee because he lost (or is losing) the skirmish and, thats fine.
I never "rush" but I also try to never sit around and wait for someone to come to me. I don't defend. I like to attack, so I dunno if I agree with that, but everyone can have their opinion.

And as far as RTW goes, there will be a lot more people playing at the beginning. But just like MTW, the number will become smaller in a few months. People will either not like the game, have technical problems, or just give up because they don't dominate easily. Then a lot of the "problem" people will be gone. And, as long as they still include some sort of ignore feature, I won't really mind.

[Sulla]

Yeah man Aelwyn, if I dont "own" in RTW MP, I won't play it anymore cause I wouldnt find that kewl. So you all let me win k?

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

Sulla

[Blodrast]

i have my own dislikes of the actual state of MP in MTW.
some of them you can find in this thread (http://www.totalwar.org/cgi-bin/forum/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=7;t=20048) in the Main Hall.

I also fear that the quality may go down what with all the new eye-candy producing units, and the kind of people they will attract.
It has been difficult enough to impose a non-spoken rule about not bringing arty in MP games, but it will be a lot more difficult to impose it with respect to: arty, flaming pigs, head-hurlers, and who knows what else will be in there

Besides, what I am afraid of is that these kind of units, while fun to look at and throw against the poor AI (yes, I think it would be fun, at least for a while; then I can simply stop using them), as well as the rest of eye-candy improvements and the modification of the interface such that it is "easier to use", will attract a bunch of kids with a different purpose than most people on these forums.

Now before you flame me, please read through: I am not against kids (duh ), and I don't have anything against (as if it would make a difference) the game reaching to all kinds of people. But this was so far a series meant for more "serious" gamers, and what I fear is that all the stuff I mentioned above will bring in a lot of people who don't necessarily play the game for a good battle, who don't get their fun from a nice balanced and challenging team game, or from some weird-never-thought-of-before tactic, but are in it for a quick rush, or some silly exploit which will allow them to boast they have 246 wins and only 5 losses in MP...
yes, the interface does currently have quite a steep learning curve; but it makes you get all the more involved in the battle, which is only realistic. How many of you would be still playing the game if all you had to do is use your mouse occasionally and select from some predefined formations, all the while watching oprah/jerry springer/whatever on tv, and taking a glance now and then to see if the overbloated, superintelligent AI has won the battle for you ?
I think that manually controlling the armies, by yourself, and all that involvement, is a big part of the whole thing. You get involved, you get immersed, and that's what there is to like about it. That's why you wanna play the game, to be as much a part of it as possible. Otherwise I'll just go with Solitaire...

[eds]

I don't know. Coming from a hardcore wargaming background, TW always seemed like kiddie stuff to me. It's fun and I enjoy it, but I don't really consider it a simulation at all. There are endless ways they could make it more realistic, but they chose playability in most cases - which is great because it works.

Either way, I don't consider tradition to be a very good reason for anything.

[LordTed]

it better change it

[LittleGrizzly]

when mtw first came out (if i remember correctly) there was plenty of annoying people came along seen as the community generally doesnt take to well to these people they for the most part just go away.

im guessing it will be the same with except just with even more annoying people of course the advantage with the influx of new players is we also get alot more nice guys who are fun to play with/against

[Lord Rom]

I come from a hardcore wargaming background myself and I never felt Totalwar was anything but a masterpiece. Shogun was simply stunning. The ai of course after a short while turned out to be not much of a challenge...but the game itself was the first game that really brought the boardgame of war to life imho. The tactics of chess pumped up with steroids. My only fear is that Rome will be such a thrill that I may not leave my pc ever again. And I'm only half kidding http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif The game looks awesome

[CrackedAxe]

Hats off to Lord Rom for a positive response and outlook for RTW. Personally, I've always been more than happy with the MP apsect of MTW and have never had ANY gripes. Maybe I'm easily pleased, but if CA just give us more of the same with RTW, I'll be ecsatic.