[Rome;TW] Worries about conversion from campaign to battle maps...

[Soulflame]

Hello all,

I think I read in a review or saw in a trailer that in Rome you have the ability to zoom in from the campaign (overview) map right into the battlefield.
Now this sounds nice, but brings some questions as well. On many screenshots you can see cities on the battlefield, with its surrounding wall. Now what if the settlement grows? Do only the houses inside the wall change and are upgraded into homes with larger spaces? Or is the wall moved (this hardly seems realistic).. or will there be a second wall, creating an inner-city part? This last looks the most realistic and most fun, but I have yet to come across a screenshot of a city with 2 walls. So what are your thoughts on this?

Secondly, armies can also presumably be zoomed in upon from the campaign map then. So do you need to put your soldiers in formation before actually going to battle? It seems not very realistic if your whole army is just dumped in one spot, and the next moment you have a fight where you can choose to magically transform your army into battle formations. But it will probably be like this because of simplicity.

Any other thoughts about this conversion from campaign to battlemap?

[Maeda Toshiie]

Hello all,

I think I read in a review or saw in a trailer that in Rome you have the ability to zoom in from the campaign (overview) map right into the battlefield.
Now this sounds nice, but brings some questions as well. On many screenshots you can see cities on the battlefield, with its surrounding wall. Now what if the settlement grows? Do only the houses inside the wall change and are upgraded into homes with larger spaces? Or is the wall moved (this hardly seems realistic).. or will there be a second wall, creating an inner-city part? This last looks the most realistic and most fun, but I have yet to come across a screenshot of a city with 2 walls. So what are your thoughts on this?

Secondly, armies can also presumably be zoomed in upon from the campaign map then. So do you need to put your soldiers in formation before actually going to battle? It seems not very realistic if your whole army is just dumped in one spot, and the next moment you have a fight where you can choose to magically transform your army into battle formations. But it will probably be like this because of simplicity.

Any other thoughts about this conversion from campaign to battlemap?

I dont think at those times cities are that elaborate enough to have multiple walls, unless very major cities.

Very good question about the strategic map zoming down to the battlefield.

Possibly you start with your army in marching formations. That would be more realistic, but the inexperienced would hate it. Plus it is a hassle to bring everything into formation everytime.

Now what about strategic ambushes? A marching column is very vulnerable to attacks.

[Nobody You'd Know]

I believe I saw in a video on one of the gaming sites that the "zoom in" just brings you closer to the location on the campaign map. I assume it's going to do that, and then you'll go to the battle loading page, and then move into battle map. One of the reasons for my assumption is that you can choose different screen resolutions for the battle map and campaign map.

I think the reason that everyone thinks you will zoom directly in is that CA has said the battle map is exactly like the campaign map, just zoomed in. I think they were speaking somewhat metaphorically - the battle map will have all of the roads, hills, forests, forts, cities, etc, exactly in the same places as they were on the campaign map - but I doubt it will be a seamless zoom. We've already seen in the demo that it takes some time to gather all of the information for the map and units when starting a battle.

As for starting positions in a battle, I figure that you'll be able to deploy at the beginning, just as in MTW and STW. This may be slightly less than realistic, but I think for time considerations it will be used. What CA can assume is that these armies have scouts, they've seen that another army is nearby, and they've already set up their battlefield formations by the time we get into the realtime play on the battlefield.

However, it does sound like a really nice idea to allow for the possibility of an ambush, where you could attack an enemy army in marchings formations. But to really make this work well (and keep everyone thinking it's realistic and not just annoying), they'd have to allow you to set marching formations (so you can keep cavalry in back, siege equipment, the general, and archers in the center - maybe march in three lines, with archers in center and infantry on either side, etc, etc), and allow you to set out scouts or guards (and some of these options might slow your movement, but would result in fewer ambushes). I kind of doubt that CA will build this into the system, because it might just be too much micromanagement.

Ambushes can happen though - there's a Vice and Virtue for a general's ambush skills - so the question is whether it's an ambush in the campaign map or if it gives some benefits in the battle map (like it's easier to hide units, and you could even hide your general for example - otherwise you can never hide your general). I guess I'd like at least the minimal ambush even if CA determined for me what my marching formation was.

[Soulflame]

Hi,

The subject of ambush got me thinking about the extra info in the shockwave page included with the demo. In the 'historical battles', the second part, they talk about The Battle of Teutoburg Forest, where 3 Roman legions were ambushed by Germans. Wonder how that is worked out.. seems like marching columns to me... could be another heavily scripted battle...
I really hope they don't destroy the ambush effect by allowing you to always form formation, even if you didn't see an army attack you and are suddenly summoned to the battefield for no apparent reason. Marching column would definately enlarge realism and give nicer amubushes.


About the cities so if the battefield and campaign map are different, it still pose the question whether city walls will miracuously widen through time or if they add new wall layers. Would be odd to attack a city 2 years after you attacked it for the first time to see the wall totally different. Hmm

[Nobody You'd Know]

True that, about the wall.

But historically, any city that grew too fast for its walls would develop a "suburb" outside of the main city walls - huts, houses, shops, farms. I haven't seen anything like that in any of the videos, so I figure they won't have included that. It also looks like the physical size of the city may not change much over time (or maybe it expands when they put up a new type of wall), but the barbarian cities I've seen in screenshots look really big, they're just very spacious. Maybe they just fill in more space as you develop your city.

[Soulflame]

Would be a bit odd "allright guys.. let's make a new settlement.. mark out a square area of 5 miles, that should give us enough space if the settlement grows" :/
I agree about the suburbs thing. That would be a nice inclusion as well.. then you can raid the unportected suburbs unless they make a new wall or something like that.

[Sociopsychoactive]

Actually, for low stone and deinately for wooden walls they would be torn down and moved. As the city grows it, inevitably, runs out of space. Then a suburb or shanty town builds up outside the city walls, but the city continues to grow and they are faced with two choices. Build a new wall around the suburb, or even slightly bigger to allow room for expantion, or tear down the current wall and re-use the stone to build a wall around the outside of the whole lot.

Most cities went with the later, you have to buy alot less stone for a start, but those that built exra walls often ended up with a 'noble' part of te city inside the inner wall, and a 'common' part of the city outside.

Some tore down and rebuilt their walls so many times viewed from above they looked like a particularly mouldy onion...

[Nobody You'd Know]

I saw this in a review on firingsquad ( http://www.firingsquad.com/games/rome_total_war_hands_on/ ):

"Now to understand an ambush, you need to know that the strategic map has been completely changed. It's now fully 3D, and the forests, mountains, hills, rivers and roads you see on it will appear in your battle maps. Units like armies, diplomats and spies have limited freedom of movement, depending on terrain, on this map. Each unit has a set number of movement points and you are no longer guaranteed to cross an entire province in one turn, never mind get to the enemy city. Not only that, but armies can lie in ambush on the map, stopping their movement early and preparing an attack on their enemies. Should you blindly set a long marching order into unknown ground, it's quite possible to stumble into one of these surprise attacks."

"An ambush is a nightmare of a tactical battle. The enemy starts off prepared to the player's forces and very close. There's no possibility of deployment and, to make matters worse, the player's formations are in marching columns rather than battle order. Thus, they are long, thin, facing the wrong way and with their flanks completely exposed. Combine this with the fast pace of combat in Rome, and you are truly lucky to survive one of these attacks."

[Soulflame]

@ Sociopsychoactive:
I agree that it was actually done like that, but could a wall section be remade in a year? 2 years? I do not have such a deep knowledge of this in this time period... Then again, if entire castle walls in Medieval took 2 years to build, a section could be changed within a year maybe. But in Medieval ages it did not contain the entire city.. so hmm..
Interesting to see how they do this is the game.

@ Nobody You'd Know:
That's some nice info you dug up! Nice work! I'm glad they put the marching columns in for ambushes... Now the question is: can you prevent ambushes in some way (spies? It does seem to hint at that with 'unknown ground') ? ~:)

[kchickenlord]

Depends on the type of wall, wooden palisade walls, wattle and daub and dry stone walls can be put up quickly, elaborate masonry to a height with arched entrances and the like are a completely different ball game.