patch wishlist [Archive]

frogbeastegg

11-13-2006, 23:19

"Get off my land!" diplomatic option, or a reduction in the AI's tendency to stand armies about in your lands. Having sizeable allied armies plonked next to many my settlements is not pleasant.

Improved path finding for units on walls. NB: So far I've only had units on the second tier wooden walls, so the issue may be unique to this wall kind. Attacking Caernarvon I had no end of trouble getting my units to move anywhere when they were on the wall; they stood stock still, or started going back down their ladders whenever I asked them to advance along the wall or attack remaining enemies on the wall. In the end I had to mass select all my infantry and order them to run to the ground inside the gate to get them up the wall, along to capture the gatehouse, and then down to the ground, killing Welshmen along the way. My casualties were hideous because so many of my units refused to engage, or ran about getting shot instead of moving a little along the wall to kill the longbowmen. :furious3:

When preparing for the same siege, I build 3 siege towers. I wasn’t allowed to attack because the game said I had no units capable of attacking walls. Eh? What else is the point of the siege towers? Admiring the view? I had to build some ladders and a ram before it would let me attack.

I'm having issues with my mailed knights and hobilars (probably carries over to more advanced mounted units too; I haven't played with any yet) using their lances. Sometimes they will use them when charging, others they won't. I'm still investigating, but it appears they don't like to use their lances if fighting in trees or a settlement. Is that working according to design?

Reduction in pirate ship stats so early ships are not so out classed. Later on I can afford to mob the pirate ships and rely on numbers to drag them down. By that point I have stronger ships and don't necessarily need to gang up on them. Early on I don't have good ships and I can't afford mobs. Perhaps having several pirate ship types? A weaker one which is there for the first X turns, a stronger one for the next X turns, and a stronger one still for the rest of the game.

Rebels early in the game spawn with advanced units. Chivalric knights when I still struggle to build mailed knights?! Armoured swordsmen when I'm considering myself lucky to have levy spearmen!? Gah! Either I have to leave them to wander my lands damaging my income, or I must build a sizeable army and watch most of it get minced killing them with weight of numbers. Again, in the early game neither is a good option as the resources to do either are not there. I'd like it if rebel spawns were somehow linked to the buildings present in nearby provinces, so rebel armies would become more advanced in step with the player, never far ahead and never left behind and so always (hopefully) a bit of a challenge.

Would love to be able to dismount knights again as per MTW. :sigh: Big change for a patch, I know, but I hate building foot knights separately and sorely miss the tactical flexibility granted by dismountable knights. Really hate. My suggestion would be to implement it in exactly the same way as in MTW: have the player select whether the knights fight on foot or on horse in the deployment phase and then remove the choice the instant battle begins. No animation is needed; have the unit fade out and the other style fade in to replace it.

Movement on the campaign map sometimes seems much too short. Currently my English diplomat is slogging his way across Germany at the fantastic rate of one inch per turn, and I'm zoomed quite close in so it's a short inch. It’s taking him many turns to cross one province; I despair of getting him back home before he dies of old age.

Some buildings do not produce the little faded non-flashing icon on the relevant section of the economy section of the detailed city overview screen when you put them in the build queue. For example if I put a farm in the queue a little faded icon will appear next to the farm income, and the tooltip will tell me what my new income will be once the building is completed. Ports don’t give it, or second and third level market buildings, or the merchant’s wharf. There are probably others I haven’t encountered yet.

Monarch

11-13-2006, 23:44

Less lag in mp
Betetr replays
Weaken the uber Spanish musketeers in mp

screwtype

11-14-2006, 06:06

Movement on the campaign map sometimes seems much too short. Currently my English diplomat is slogging his way across Germany at the fantastic rate of one inch per turn, and I'm zoomed quite close in so it's a short inch. It’s taking him many turns to cross one province

That should be moddable shouldn't it?

Orda Khan

11-14-2006, 11:23

Battle replays desync, I can confirm that. This is a must fix in the case of MP tournaments.
Do something that enables team battles in MP. Surely lag should be consigned to the past by now.
Improve the tactical AI. For all the hype, the AI even on VH is no real challenge

........Orda

Daveybaby

11-14-2006, 11:50

Bearing in mind all of the modding going on in order to bodge the game turn rate back down to 2 turns per year, i'd like to see this actually built into the game as an option when starting a game, with building build speeds etc balanced properly and everything. So, when starting a new game, you'd get a tickbox to switch between a 'normal' speed game (i.e. what it is now) and a 'slow' speed game (for those of us that like to take their time).

Maybe even have 3 options:

Fast Game : 2 years / turn
Medium Game : 1 year / turn
Slow Game : 2 turns / year

One other thing i'd love to see back in the game is the option to start a campaign in the Early/High/Late eras. It'd be really nice to be able to start a game in High or Late with their different initial layouts providing different challenges for each faction. That was one of the things that really increased playability for me in MTW.

46852

11-14-2006, 12:01

Many points on my wishlist have already been brought out, but I'll emphasize them, wishing that we get the message through to CA :)

Fix These!

1: Cavalry charges:
- Knights sometimes don't take out their lances, even if they have plenty of ground to prepare the charge
- Sometimes they brace the lance for the charge, but then take out swords and halt to get butchered in melee
- Seems like head-on charges are most often succesful, flank charges or charging a moving formation seem to be quite impossible

2: Unit Cohesion:
- Lots of soldiers stay out of melee and wander around the field, even if there are plenty of enemies nearby to bash. There's a workaround for this: run the men through the enemy formation and engage when you're in the middle of the fight, but I'm sure this isn't intended to work this way
- When marching through small obstacles, the formations break and stay broken when the unit reaches destination
- Cavalry units wander around when charging or chasing routers instead of trying a disciplined charge. We've seen screenshots of cavalry being wandered hundreds of meters away from their formation

3: Diplomacy glitches:
- AI does not accept ceasefire even if they're on the verge of destruction and totally weaker than the player, vassalage is apparently not an option for the AI either.
- Defending yourself on your land shouldn't cause reputation hits or reactions from the Pope if you're already at war with the nation you're defending against
- Glitches in the negotiation AI, sometimes the AI gives strange counter-offers that are profitable to the player

4: Strange Campaign AI
- Sometimes some nations are very passive, not a big problem as mostly it plays OK. Some nations don't seem too keen on taking bordering rebel provinces, but that's quite random too, occasionally they're VERY aggressive :)
- AI doesn't defend cities well enough sometimes, makes things too easy for the player

Things that should be fixed by CA but probably can be modded (mostly minor stuff):

1: Trigger-happy unkillable inquisitors
- They seem a bit too powerful, but only a small nerf to their unkillability should be enough
- They aren't supposed to hunt down whole family lines, or are they? :)

2: Merchants a bit weak
- All my merchants have vanished when they've lost to a enemy merchant, is there even a chance they can survive?
- At early game merchants are useless, and in end-game they generate very little portion of your total income

3: Unit balance (minor thing really)
- Some strange stuff there, like trained soldiers having lower defense than peasants
- It feels like some factions have less units at use than they had in MTW1

4: Strange Rebels
- High tech units on early stages of game
- They seem quite passive, I've yet to see a rebel army attack my armies or towns

Stuff to add (these shouldn't be too hard to implement):

1: Titles! Come on they were already in MTW1! In MTW2 I feel like I can't really control my generals' loyalty too much

2: Dismounting. Like Froggie said, it was simple in MTW1, there shouldn't be any animation problems or stuff like that if it is implented? Dismounted Knights is a stupid name for a unit that doesn't ever ride a horse. And as it has been said, mounted knights are terrible in siege situations, why can't they get off their horses?

Furious Mental

11-14-2006, 12:01

A huge unit size that is actually huge. Seriously if I wanted to play with unit sizes of 80-150 I wouldn't set the unit size to HUGE!!!

Solo

11-14-2006, 13:11

Simple diplomacy fix :

- makes it possible to get a ceasefire when you share a border with a faction. Right now its close to impossible (hence the confused reviews about diplomacy, I got confused myself at beggining but now I simply give away regions to make peace) even if they are being kicked in the ass/inactive for many turns (had portugal not attacking me for close to 100 turns and yet not accepting a truce)/busy with other nations.
Twice harder than not sharing would be fair, 100x is simply not.

- makes it more difficult to get a ceasefire when you dont share a border with a faction. The opposite as they would sometimes even give you their leader head on a silver plate.

For example by exchanging Antioch for Cyprus I managed to get three ceasefires in the next turn (hell they even gave me money). Sounds like an exploit to me (and the borders thing like a bug).
Also, AI doesnt even respect those rules right now. You can get neighbours to attack each others by suggesting crusades but they wont stay at war for more than a few turns.

Willbreaker

11-14-2006, 13:27

Able to resist inqusitors, they are way overpowered!

46852

11-14-2006, 13:46

Able to resist inqusitors, they are way overpowered!

Lets not cry too loud so they don't get overnerfed ;)

It's interesting to have them ingame, they are just a bit too eager to burn everyone on sight. Maybe randomize the inquisitors' targeting AI a bit and make the inquisitors return to Rome and move around more and make the trials a bit less frequent, they don't need to trial EVERYONE in sight... or something like that.

Assassins should be buffed up a bit, at least against inquisitors, they're way too hard to kill if a level 10 assassin has only 12% chance to kill an inquisitor.

Orda Khan

11-14-2006, 13:55

Matty

11-14-2006, 14:32

When the AI punches a hole in your wall it should actually go through it, not head for the gate.
AI can't handle siege equipment and ends up standing at the bottom of the wall, thinking. And dying.
Boiling oil anyone?

Little Legioner

11-14-2006, 14:51

I want my old "city view" feature back. :book: It was good to see your advanced strongholds, buildings and temples. I know that it's not so necessary but it's good. Especially with this great game engine. :book:

angelviper

11-14-2006, 15:07

of missile units such as musketeer, and Arquibus, AI improvment. From MTW1, the missile unit has been made to shrewd on the flank of formation too much, so being shot from another line of missile units, it so much frequently chooses loose formation or change its direction much more than necessary, just when it's ok to take a counter shot for enemy firing. it comes from too sensitive response of this AI unit's to a threat on its flank. so it moves so much around that that can look shaken or disarray while it taking reponse to enemy shot.

just play custom battle with set all arquibus or musketeer on both side of player and AI enemy, then u can see only 6-7 arquibus lines able to crash down 20 the same AI unit lines in defence as well as attacking. i don't much expect this missle units AI improvment much though. But it can set to ignore some degree a threat on the flank of this sort of units. and it's better to show battle experience and game play. But they don't know that, just continuing to set this AI unit so much sensitve to the threat on the fiank.

the only available solution of this be 'guard mode' most of time so that it can't change the formation or moving direction so much frequently. but that they don't know is more problem.

swell

11-14-2006, 15:23

- Bring back movements points remaining when right clicking on agents/army.
Very annoying to check everytime if unit has moved already or not.

- Of course, fix battle AI (hire Darth and Sinehuet :laugh4: ) and campaign AI.
After 40 turns playing Denmark, Scotland hasn't moved AT ALL. York and Dublin have not even walls... Entire nations just stall.

- Remove the crusade AI cheating : with a crusade army, you are supposed to rush towards the targetted town. In fact, I saw HRE take Antwerp, and France take Bruges with their crusade army. :furious3: Disgusting.
If you attack anything else than the target, instant excommunication !!

Daveybaby

11-14-2006, 15:47

- Bring back movements points remaining when right clicking on agents/army.
Very annoying to check everytime if unit has moved already or not.
When a unit has used all of its movement for the turn it will change its posture. But i guess it would be nice to be able to see which units you havent yet moved that turn. Maybe holding the shift key or something could put a nice big glowing marker on any units you havent moved yet.

I want my old "city view" feature back.
I agree - it wasnt something i used much in rome, but it was kinda cool to see people milling around your city that werent actually trying to kill each other once in a while.

Seems weird to me that they'd cut it, since the game is basically running on the RTW engine, probably all that would be needed would be the UI button to display the view. Wonder why they took it out?

the Black Prince

11-14-2006, 17:07

simply fixing all the Bugs in the Org, TWC and .com bug threads would be a major start. the game might actually be playable then

Lusted

11-14-2006, 17:12

simply fixing all the Bugs in the Org, TWC and .com bug threads would be a major start. the game might actually be playable then

It's hardly unplayable atm is it?

Orda Khan

11-14-2006, 17:19

It's hardly unplayable atm is it?
That depends on whether you would like to play MP

.......Orda

frogbeastegg

11-14-2006, 18:03

Forgot one.

Let's say you are allied to faction A, and at war with faction B. If faction B forms an alliance with faction A then you are automatically forced into a truce with faction B. Please add in a full diplomacy pop up telling you "A truce has been formed with Faction B at the request of our new mutual ally, faction A." when this happens! Right now the only notification of the truce is contained in the diplomacy overview pop up at the start of each turn; it's easy to miss in there and it doesn't explain clearly what has happened.

Information is vital. I don't like it when my war suddenly stops with no warning or given reason, mucking up my cunning plans.

Taking this point one step further, add in an option to keep the alliance and accept the truce (should then be very bad for your reputation if you attack faction B again within X number of turns, and there should be a boost in relations with faction A for sticking with them) or to let the alliance lapse and continue the war. This is important IMO. Control of important aspects like diplomacy should not be taken away from the player, especially when Catholic factions are in a risky position Pope-wise when attacking other Catholics. You shouldn't have your war halted, then need to take a hit to reopen it.

Daveybaby

11-15-2006, 13:26

Someone should sticky this thread IMO.

Quin

11-15-2006, 13:46

Introduce moats with water to protect castle walls and custom map for the city of Venice so it won't stand on a plain anymore

Quin

11-15-2006, 13:58

Oh, and lower aggression of European nations. It is not very realistic to be embroiled in constant wars on a big scale with 3 powers simultaneously from 1100 on since nations didn't really evolve yet so there was a bunch of small fights on a far smaller scale than whole nations against each the other. rebel spawn rate can be upped though...Besides, AI tends to attack even if it is way weaker than you and don't accept ceasfire even if you are hammering them hard and pope is warning with excommunication.

It would be great if some sort of warscore (like in Paradox games) would be introduced. Every battle and every captured town (during war) would influence that WS and it should determine the peacetalks. Only with really high WS you could hold a captured town for good. It was extremly rare for one sie to occupy 3 big towns per war as it is now...

PorT_Lobo

11-16-2006, 03:05

Please CA! Take a good look at Campaign AI!!!

AI don't garrison settlements making to easy to human to conquer it!! And AI is few agressive and almost no attack our bigger armys!!

Valpo

11-16-2006, 03:36

Anyone else notice the bug with the time.

My second king who was in his 20's at the start of the game is about 60 years old now and the game says the year is 1222. (Remember we start in 1080) It seems like the guys age on a 6 month turn and the game runs on a 2 year turn.

Also the faction leader switching to the King's son after his son comes of age would be nice. Sure make it easier to marry princesses.

Daveybaby

11-16-2006, 09:51

Rothe

11-16-2006, 10:03

"Few" things:

Inquisition is broken, it needs a major fix.

- More ways to protect generals, why not including priests in armies/cities. This may already be helping, but not nearly enough. I would also include option for voluntary excommunication instead of getting burned for faction leader and faction heir.

- Less randomness in the actions of the inquisiotion, and maybe less activity as well. I understand it is a fun part in the game and needs to be a bit threathening, but now it is a major pain and detracts from a good gaming atmosphere.

- Maybe even make it work so that it does not enter lands that have over < X % catholics >, if at all possible. The % could be high, like 95%+. On the same note, it could ignore characters over a certain piety level (generals / priests) and ignore merchants alltogether (could already be so).

Battles are a bit weird still:

- The freeze effect when AI is faced with certain type of armies (mostly I guess archer heavy armies) needs to be removed.

- Cavalry charges need to be more intuitive to work properly. I mean that if you select cavalry and double click an enemy unit, it should mostly work out OK. And with this I mean that the lances should come out, which now is a bit random and too much dependent on the distance to the enemy.

- Archer targeting needs to be fixed. They should be able to consistently fire over the first rank of enemy troops at a selected target. Now they fire at rank 1 and that is it. Even if rank 1 has 2 men, all the archers fire at them ever if ordered to fire units behind the 2 men...

- Movement in formation needs to be more consistent. I had trouble with moving a formation of 2 crossbowmen forward so that they are level with each other. Breaking firing sequence when ordered to move could help with it.

- Taking walls in sieges is lagged somehow, not sure what is the problem exactly. Also, AI sometimes tries to take settlements with hopeless siege equipment.

Campaign AI:

- The AI needs to be less agressive in attacking player with small stacks.

- The AI needs to keep some armies back to protect lands adjacent to peaceful nations. Otherwise the player can take a settlement with very little trouble and recover from losses before the AI can strike back. Each settlement does not need a big army, but at least castles could be defended better.

Unit stats:

- Only some weirdness here. Why do billmen have default defence value that is lower/ equal to peasants. Even with armor it was not much above 15 attack / 3 defense. Or, is this just some oddity in the game mechanics? I still felt the billmen performed reasonably well, but the stat card says the defense is low.

Agents:

- merchants could maybe have a bit higher income boost. Maybe just add a static sum to the level1 merchants that stays the same regardless of the exp. Something like +10 for each of them. Now they are not worth the trouble in the beginning because of the cost and the possibility of losing them to foreign merchants (not so small possibility either); later they are not significant anymore. Also, if possible, merchants could act as emissaries that can _only_ make trade right deals (including money compensation).

Years/Turns:

- I would prefer a simple 1 year / one turn system so that I see the actual year listed on the campaign screen. Also, some aging bugs are there I think.

All in all, I have to say that MTW2 seems like a great game. Actually that is just why I am keen to want even more from it because of the awesome potential.

SoxSexSax

11-16-2006, 11:31

1) MP lag. It's horrendous. 2v2s are barely playable...I don't even want to think about how bad a 3v3 would be. Serious work needed here.

2) Movement speed on campaign map is too short. It does not take 6 months to travel from York to London!

3) Kill speed in battle feels too quick (again). Most melees are decided in seconds.

4) AI far too willing to stand still under archer fire. This is true even in battles where the "passive AI" bug does not seem to be in effect.

Fearless

11-16-2006, 17:12

Troop deployment in Castles/towns before battle commences. Many times its impossible to drag a unit for positioning as the pink markers fail to show and when on occassions they do the unit doesn't appear. Been playing since Shogun so I know the limitations on unit placement in cities. But this is really bad now!!

Whacker

11-16-2006, 17:20

I didn't see this thread until a bit ago. :idea2: Here's a slightly modified version from my original review thread of stuff I'd like to see.

- 2 years per turn? Ugh. 2 turns per year is much better. At least it's modable. Better yet, someone else in this thread suggested making it a game option from the menu. :2thumbsup:

- Please un-encrypt the pack files/use a COMMON compression mechanism that we can all use to open it, aka 7z, rar, zip, etc. Having and "unpacker" tool is completely overkill and pointless, in my humble opinion.

- Dismounting units aren't in the game?!?? Please fix this CA, pronto!

- Titles. This was another great part of the original MTW and RTW:BI, and in my humble opinion it should be back in. Given that they were in BI, this should not be hard to implement. I would further like to see them implemented in some fashion like the risk style drag-and-drop on the generals, rather than fiddling with ancillaries like in BI. Also give us the ability to strip a general of his titles, a la MTW.

- I'm not really sold on the whole city/castle difference. I can understand it's purpose but I don't unnecessarily like it, nor do I feel it's very useful.

- The building browser is not the least bit intuitive. One of the mods said in another post, "RTW's was perfect, why change it?" I couldn't agree more.

- In terms of "building cards" when selecting buildings to be built, or showing what is built in a settlement on the campaign map, I can't help but feel that they are graphically not as good looking as in RTW. It's not very easy for me to establish what the various buildings are.. In other words it's not always obvious, at least to me. I can't really think of a good way to describe this, but I just feel that a better job could have been done on the images to make them sharper or more distinct.

- There really needs to be an easier way to remove excommunication (recommunicate) with the Pope for catholic factions besides the pope dying or your faction leader dying. I know this wasn't in the original MTW and can appreciate that it's in M2TW. Excommunication was a very big factor in the middle ages, "recommunicating" with the catholic church was also a very real deal and a natural counterpart to the removal process, in fact if I remember correctly part of the process of excommunicating someone is extending the olive branch and stating how they can be recommunicated, a "penance" if you will. In other words, the papacy should automatically send a recommunication mission that doesn't expire after a few turns which you can ignore or complete, imo. The way for resolving diplomacy shouldn't be terribly difficult, but it shouldn't be mind-numbingly easy either. For example, an open-ended (no time limit) quest with several line items would be a great idea, imo. For example, 1. join/start a crusade, 2. build several churches, 3. recruit x priests. At the very least it should put you back to neutral status with 5 crosses on the Pope-o-matic-chart. :)

- Likewise, I would still like to see the option for a catholic faction to change it's faith, this would have been an outstanding idea in the original MTW. For example, to go "protestant" and sever ties with Rome, on the premise that you'd be vulnerable to crusades, reduced diplomacy with other catholic factions, lots and lots of unrest for a transition period, other factions catholic priests could make your life hell, etc. I understand that the probability of this making it in is near zero, but it's still a great and entirely logical idea, and can probably be done without too much trouble. Also going with my above statement, it should be possible to reestablish ties with Rome, but in this case it should be *very* difficult to do. One of my main reasons for wanting this is avoiding those damn Inquisitors. Speaking of which...

- Give us back inquisitors for all the catholic factions. :)

- Give us back the ability to assassinate our own named characters!

- Give us the ability to gracefully retire unwanted/unused characters, such as diplomats/priests/assassins, who are otherwise just sucking up cash flow. SORELY missed in RTW/BI/A, which was my most recent memory.

- Move rates and move distances for units on the campaign map are woefully inadequate. I'd like to see them increased by at *least* another 50% across the board, even for crusading/jihad armies. After all, crusade/jihad is pretty much a race and a special condition.

- Just fought a custom siege battle for poops and giggles. Set myself up as the french, 1 late commander, 6 dismounted chivalric knights, and 10 trebuchets vs a single unit of polish peasants in an unwalled village. After expending ALL trebuchet ammo (flaming), including dead cows, with the city in flaming ruins dripping with cow chunks all around them, I calmly marched my army into the mess, and when in range I charged with the knights followed closely by the general. The poor bone-stock unbuffed peasants, after spending a good deal of time having large, ugly, smell, demoralizing unpleasantries lobbed at them, were able to kill ***25*** knights and 3 general's horsemen. Something just does *not* feel right about that.

- I ... don't unnecessarily like the new damage models for city structures during sieges. I think there's a happy medium somewhere between RTW where buildings collapse into a generic featureless "rubble pile" and M2TW's "it's got a few holes in it". Just my 2 cents. For one thing, I think it'd look much better and it'd be easier to tell what buildings you've demolished already. Also, structures that catch on fire tend to stay on fire and smoke, which imo isn't a good idea, especially for frame rates, and might be one of the reasons they made this so. The best possible solution I can think of is simply to limit how long destroyed structures remain on fire, say maybe 3-5 minutes max. Perhaps this is modable? Irregardless, I'd like to see this addressed in the base campaign by CA.

- I don't like the fact that huge cities cannot be converted into citadels, but citadels can be made into 3rd level cities with no going back. This goes hand in hand with my above comment about the castles/cities system.

- The routing-unit-kill-rate feels far too slow for my tastes. I actually liked RTW's routing-kill-rate, in fact if anything I would have preferred that cavalry chasing down routers would kill them faster. I do understand that CA wanted to make routing units harder to do, and for them to recover earlier, which is fine, but if kept on and after by chasers, they should be mopped up in short order. After all, it's been well noted during large battles in the past that quite often the vast majority of the slaughter occurs when the losing army routes. If a unit routes and I let them go due to negligence or I have other pressing issues like the rest of the enemy army, fine, let them go, and then when they recover with what should be very reduced moral, let them come back to haunt me. This is perfectly logical in my view. If I make a unit route, I need to keep on them and either kill them all or chase them off the map. If I can't expend forces to do this or I just forget/whatever, then the opponent should be able to recover them and send them back into the melee.

- Cavalry not being able to move through troop formations, friendly or foe, is really annoying. I liked RTW's cavalry movement implementations for this issue with horses being able to "pass through" lines of units who would make way for them. Even when not standing still, cavalry should still be able to pass through units much easier than they can in M2TW. /shrug I still liked RTW's implementation of this. If the complaint was being able to charge THROUGH infantry formations, that I can understand, to me the fix is just removing the charge bonuses if you choose to have cavalry attack through already-engaged troops.

- I tend not to use archers so this took a bit of using them to come to this conclusion; they don't always shoot cohesively. I don't know whether to list this as a bug or a suggestion, so I listed it here, because I almost get the feeling CA designed it this way. I don't unnecessarily like it, if that was the intent. If it is a bug, then great let's get it fixed. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect them all to shoot at the EXACT same instant, but a trained group of medieval archers should fire as a single cohesive group with VERY little margin of difference in release time. Like maybe half a second on the far outside, imo.

- Someone else made this comment and I can't agree more, this was also badly missed in RTW. We need the ability to tell enemy army stacks to get the #@$!@# off our land or else, and if they don't then THEY started the war, not us. I can't count how many times I was held as responsible for starting a war in RTW just by parking some army stacks on a neighbors land, then not removing them when warned. That's fine and dandy, but the same thing needs to hold true for the cpu players.

- Only named characters with above a certain size stack can go on crusades? Tripe. Give me the ability to send just a big stack w/out one of my characters on a crusade!

Cheers!

kyllerbuzcut

11-16-2006, 23:15

It would be very helpful for a lot of people if there were loads of options we could switch on or off or move a slider up or down in an advanced section of the options menu.

For example- you don't like the speed- normal is too fast. Have an option to have the speed halved- or if you think it's too slow you can have it sped up a bit. similarly for kill rates.
Another one would be an option to choose whether we want merchants to be automatic or to be micromanged.
For me, I'd like the ability to change the battle minimap so there aren't those stupid arrows, and instead we can see the displacement of the troops as they actually are all the time on the minimap. You just can't tell what units are doing currently unless you are looking right at them, the minimap is almost useless. Lots of people complained about it when it became so in RTW and it's still there now in M2TW.
I think about 3/4 of the little niggles people have been experience that aren't die to actual bugs could be solved right away with the addition of some simple options. So, instead of keeping everything hidden away in burried files deep within the hard drive, pleaase put loads of options we can interact with on the screen by ticking or sliding or selecting which one we want.

Thank you for a great game so far:)

Valpo

11-17-2006, 01:23

I dont think its a bug, so much as a 'design compromise'. :dizzy2:
Note that the seasons only advance 6 months per turn also. I think there was a decision at some point to increase the number of years per turn to 2, hence the counter only showing turns instead of years so as not to highlight the discrepancy.

There are already mods around to change this back to 6 months per turn.

Actually I found out how to do it, its in the desrc-stat file or whatever its called. Anyways I went in there to unlock all the factions and saw the time scale thing and I was like . . . hmm I'll bet thats it. . .

Now if they would just fix the stupid faction heir thing so princesses actually have a use.

Whacker

11-17-2006, 06:16

Something else I forgot, that would have been perfect in MTW and esp. RTW. Give us the ability to "change" a settlement's structures to the player's culture. For example, in RTW I would occasionally get to Egypt after they had made one of the 3 big cities into full sized towns, with the max size governor's palace and possibly walls, and I'd be stuck with those as the Egyptian culture as Roman/Greek/whatever. For perhaps half the cost and a single turn or two, give us the ability to switch them over to our culture so we don't have the cultural penalty. I guess this really applies mainly to max size cities and structures, but I think the basic premise is a great idea.

Cheers!

hoom

11-17-2006, 11:45

Pathfinding for ladders on both stone castle & wooden is broken.
Units going up seem to most of the time get stuck trying to go up the right most ladder but fail.
Probably this is whats causing the AI ladder wierdness too.
Also they fail trying to go back down that ladder.

Spendius

11-17-2006, 14:44

All mentioned AI issues, with in addition the algorithm used to choose which troops should be recruited (no more siege machines-only osts please !)

I also would like a couple of features:
- the possibility to access the family tree when a "suitable husband" is found
- the possibility to access a general's stats when having to choose the fate of a city/prisonners

It's just annoying not being able to know whether it's a princess or a normal girl getting married, and having to remember whether your current general is on the light or dark path...

Whacker

11-17-2006, 15:56

More spam.

- Give us back the ability to select our faction heir! Also, when our faction leader dies, bring up the family tree and let us pick the faction heir from there! Also let the game "recommend" who to pick, for those of us who just want to be lazy. :yes:

- I've seen this mentioned a few other places. Bring back the fatigue bars and the moral indicators on the unit cards! The quick visual reference there was utterly invaluable in MTW, and was missed greatly in RTW. Yes I know that one can mouse over to see these things, but being able to see these by just looking at the unit cards is very handy, I'd imagine even moreso for multiplayers.

- When saving/loading, the game should save our settings for the campaign map, specifically I'm referring to "sped up" animations. Whenever I quickload/load the game, it forgets that I had pressed space to speed up unit movement speeds. Please make it so the game remembers this!

Spendius

11-17-2006, 16:09

Whacker

11-17-2006, 16:21

I don't agree with heir selection. There should be a defined rule: eldest son, if this one dies before having a heir, then is oldest brother takes over.
For specific cases (underage heir), being able to choose a regent, until the heir's majority, leading to possible civil wars for regency... Or bastard heirs appearing if a king has a mistress, leading to even more civil wars!

While I think people would generally agree with this statement for European (and other cultures possibly, but I'm not a historian there) cultures that the general concept of "eldest son" holds, I think you'll find in reading that it was hardly the hard and fast rule and certainly not universal.

There were many instances in the English successions, both pre- and post-norman where a son other than the eldest inherited, either due to preference, intrigue, or ability. Look at the Holy Roman Empire, while I am not well versed on it's history, iirc the "Emperor" was actually elected by the nobility, and the eldest sons did not always obtain the crown. I'm also positive that in Poland, the nobles elected a King from their ranks, and this king in effect had very little power and his sons most certainly did *not* inherit the throne. Also take for example the Mongols, which were a very strong meritocracy-based society. I'd look for someone who knows more about that such as Orda to give a better answer but I believe that on the ruling individual's death, the ruling class reconvened to elect a new ruler. I have zero knowledge of how the Islamic nations handled inheritance.

The bottom line is that while in general eldest son inherits is true, it was far and away not a hard and fast rule, with plenty of examples of where it did not hold true or was simply not the way the ruling body worked at the time.

Cheers!

Spendius

11-17-2006, 16:36

Agreed, it should be faction specific (as it was in MTW with the HRE at least...)
I wouldn't mind the "classical" eldest heir rule, if it were properly implemented, but it is a bit erratic for now.

Sir Robin

11-17-2006, 16:37

Get rid of dismounted versions and add the option to dismount during the deployment phase or battle.

While I know dismounted knights were used often to reinforce the line it seems silly to have them as seperately buildable units. Just as it seems sill to not have the option to dismount them during the deployment phase or battle itself. A little getting off a horse animation and weapon swap.

How about no option to re-mount after dismounting during the battle. Honestly, I never really believed that M2TW didn't include it until I played retail. It just seems like such an obvious feature.

Whacker

11-17-2006, 16:38

Agreed, it should be faction specific (as it was in MTW with the HRE at least...)
I wouldn't mind the "classical" eldest heir rule, if it were properly implemented, but it is a bit erratic for now.

That I could live with. Even better, make it modable! For example a config line in the desc_strat file, or something else easily changed. :yes:

Akka

11-17-2006, 17:40

My patch wishlist :

Bring life back to the fight :
- Make units more responsive. They take ages to actually do what they are told.
- Make units more cohesive. They scatter too much.
- Bring back (larger) physics influence. Units seems barely affected by push and charge right now.
- Fix charges. Half the time they just stop when closing in and cavalrymen draw their swords rather than charge.
- Fix the spacing. For now, there is only a handful of men fighting, and the majority of the unit just stay here observing the combat.
- Make units a bit more resilient. Losing tens of knights to peasants in mélée is silly.

- Remove adoption. Make it "promotion" instead, and make it give a general rather than a family member. The birth of a new heir should be as important as it was before, for now it's irrelevant considering the crapload of people being adopted.

- Give a "huge" setting that is really "huge". 1,5x or 2x the actual "huge" setting, thanks.

- Tone down Inquisitors.

- An option to eliminate brigands and pirates. Really. Please.

- Titles ! Please !

- Dismounting during battle.

- More mobility on the world map. Too few movement points for now, really.

- Make the AI sensible in diplomacy. Peace is better than being beaten. Vassalage is better than being utterly destroyed.

Djurre

11-17-2006, 18:08

The missing balance in Cavalry charges.
A light cavalry unit charging into the front of my elite infantry causes half the unit to die insantly, while my cavalry charges have no effect.
on higher difficulty this makes the game unplayable.

MSB

11-17-2006, 18:23

For the intelligent trait to be spelt with two l's instead of three.

itsme

11-17-2006, 18:55

1. Ability to change the time of the battle from infinite to time-limited from withing real-time battle.
Yesterday I got the game and run a campaign where I choose to be able to play the real-time battles for unlimited time... what happened was that one of my towns was besieged by at least 3 times bigger army, so far so good I was defending it ;). Now the enemy had ram and 3-ladders, during the attack I destroyed his ram and repelled the ppl claiming over the ladders destroying 40-45% of his army..after this he retreated and the cavalry and infantry left were just sitting outside doing nothing..
I could not go out and attack 'cause his force was still overwhelming...
(something like ~7 cavalry units plus some infantry left from previous attack against my depleted from defence 4 unit strong /1 archers,1 peasant,1 spear, 1 cav/)
So I could not go out and attack and he doesn't attack...
If I was able to go and modify the battle to time limited !?!
Otherwise I will lose a battle which If I fought from inside my fortress I think I could easily win, but going out will definitely not win..
So how do you solve this problem.

2. Next time either make a larger book (would be better with more detailed pictures) or don't make the background of the book so dark-greyish, because with these small letters is not comfortable to read...

PS. Why I can't play in campaign mode with Byzantee, but only with 4-5 factions ???
Now one idea come to my mind i.e. I could tried to just pop-out outside the fortress so that he charge, but still !!!

Djurre

11-17-2006, 19:10

PS. Why I can't play in campaign mode with Byzantee, but only with 4-5 factions ???
Now one idea come to my mind i.e. I could tried to just pop-out outside the fortress so that he charge, but still !!!

que?

Sir Robin

11-17-2006, 22:14

PS. Why I can't play in campaign mode with Byzantee, but only with 4-5 factions ???
Its a way of trying to make sure players are familiar with the game by completing one campaign with the standard factions before unlocking the others. Check the M2TW Guides forum for how to unlock the other factions if you don't want to complete a campaign with one of them first.

Now one idea come to my mind i.e. I could tried to just pop-out outside the fortress so that he charge, but still !!!
Probably still wouldn't work or you would have to do it a lot to wear down an enemy with such a big quantity advantage.

Whacker

11-17-2006, 23:30

Spam spam spam spam spam eggs bacon sausage and spam!

- I get the feeling I could get jumped for this one, but I am a HUGE fan of the way arrow/ballista towers were implemented in RTW/BI, and do not like the new style in M2TW. I would like to either see 1. an option in the game menu to switch between RTW/M2TW style city defenses, or 2. at least make it easily modable in the game. I guess we'll still have to wait and see about option 2.

jibosan

11-18-2006, 05:09

hi all,

just got m2tw, but am experiencing major problems of game/computer freeze during gameplay, random and often. much more often that ocurred with BI w/ patch. any patches out there to fix this, or video card related advice i can follow? all help is appreciated, thanks!

Joshwa

11-18-2006, 20:31

I want Glorious Achievement mode back! I know the council of elders missions are a bit like them, and they are good, but I liked it in MTW 1 when you could just sit back and do your objectives to win the game and not neccassarily conquer the whole map.

I also think there arn't enough 'tower' bowmen in seiges. In the first medieval, even without bowmen actually firing from inside the castle, it was a bloodbath for the attackers. At the moment i can have four units of archers on the walls of my castle, all pumping arrows into one unit of dismounted feudal knights who are carrying some ladders, and only about five of them will actually die. This is a siege, I want Somme levels of blood and death here!!

Koval

11-19-2006, 06:51

Maybe I'm just stupid, but i think that the whole 'upgrading armor' of units with the Blacksmiths, Armorers etc. is a bit jumbled. You can't seem to upgrade the armor of all units, and some can only upgraded once. It isn't really clear what type of armor a unit is currently wearing, and whether or not it will be able to be upgraded. This seems especially unclear with units which are already built with some sort of armor, and some units don't seem to be able to get upgraded at all.

When i first heard about this feature, i expected to be able to get peasants in plate armor. Or am i missing something here?

Burns

11-19-2006, 07:34

This design feature feels a bit helter skelter to me.

ULT255

11-19-2006, 08:35

- Let us click through princess/diplomat bowing animations. Especially the AI agents. Especially if theyre not even offering my faction anything.

- The GUI feels kinda generic. Maybe a nice banner related to my faction. . .

- Make it easier to get to the "list" scroll. Now I have to click the faction shield, then the tiny list button at the bottom, then the tab for generals/agents, etc. Unless Im missing it, it'd be nice to have a button in an agent or generals profile that linked to "list of all agents/generals"

- More ranking options in the list thing for generals/agents. I want to be able to list by EVERY characteristic. Highest piety, lowest loyalty, whatever.

Kobal2fr

11-19-2006, 13:50

- Titles. Titles. TITLES DANGIT ! I *know* my best general is not that "Gunter the Dreaded" pansy. Surely he has to be Teutonic Grandmaster Gunter von Berchtesgaden the Dreaded, Lord High Chamberlain, Protector of Jerusalem, Margrave of Liebermädchen and Count Elector of Küssensiemich !

Seriously, though. I don't care if they have actual game purpose or not, titles are cool and everybody knows it.

- Dismounting would be nice, but I do believe it's already been asked for about 10.000 times (Yes, titles too, I know. Shaddap, wiseguy.)

- Keep those fellas in close formation ! No more milling about a hundred paces from the carnage ! No more charges cut off abrutly because *one* knight is being attacked by one peasant halfway across the map ! No more of that "three guys split from the unit midcharge, reach the target first, the rest of the unit abruptly stops and watches as their heroes get butchered in a variety of nasty ways" nonsense !

- Have skirmish override firing animations. As of now, missile units always skirmish too late because they finish their sloooow firing sequence before turning about. Legendary bravery, that which legends are made of and all that, but low survival factor. Leave that to the generals, my dear crossbow militiamen. They're payed more than you are.

- Change city income display from "grand total" into "agriculture/trade" on the campaign map. I have to know wether it's worth building farms there or not, and I don't care to open city menu, open city details, hover the mouse over the wheat icon for 3 seconds to know it. And no, I don't remember that stuff from one turn to another either.

- Solve the invisible siege equipment bug. Yes, I know how to make it go away, but I also want my platemail to *sparkle*.

- Agents have different sets of probabilities depending on campaign difficulty. On medium, a newbie assassin will have about 50% chance to kill a nameless captain. On VH, it's now 35ish. Factor that kind of difference in actions that are already dang hard to carry out in medium... Now that's an easy way to make the game harder innit, a nice sporting handicap, what ? Yeah, well, I's don't like it. Try harder. Think of sumtink else.

- Which segues nicely to : SPIES ! Why is it so frigging hard to assassinate revealed spies even with experienced assassins ?!
"Oi, Gunnar the Terminator, could you kill a general ?"
"Sure, easy peasy"
"A Prince ?"
"HA ! Small pickings !"
"A King ?"
"He wouldn't stand a chance."
"What, the Pope ?!"
"Done it before. Explosives in his favorite funny hat. Got reconciliated too."
"That shifty fella over there, who's being escorted out of the city by the City Watch and thrown into a ditch as we speak ?"
"... No way man, that's, like, hardcore assassination y'know ? Grandmaster of the guild contract only."

- The image of the Baghallah ship info card for the Turkish factions is... a Roman peasant ?! I knew those heretic pigdogs were abject monsters, but using archeologicaly valuable corpses for boats ? That's the lowest.

Aaaand that's all I can think of right now.

cfc_kev

11-19-2006, 15:34

When you right click on agents and get the full list I'd really like an option to filter them out by type rather than just sort them.

grinningman

11-19-2006, 18:14

I would like to be able to cycle separately through my

(a) agents (diplomats/spies/assassins/priests/princesses/merchants)
(b) fleets
(c) armies

using a hotkey. At the moment I can cycle through my settlements by selecting one and then using [ and ]. However, if I select an agent, army or fleet and use ] or [, the game cycles through my all my agents, armies and fleets. I want to be able to select, say, a merchant, and then use [ to cycle through all my agents only (not armies or fleets). Cycling would work similarly for armies and fleets.

I'd enjoy playing the strategic game a lot more with this change!

Jinnigan

11-19-2006, 18:18

In screen resolution 1024x768, in the deployment stage, the "Start Battle" box covers the attack stats of your units. V. annoying, as I do not go about memorizing the specific numbers of all my units.

Lycan

11-19-2006, 23:58

Bringing the "view settlement option" back. Whats the point of building a mighty city if you can't ever view it?
And of course dismounting units, better charges\combat, titles, and by the gods a simpler way of switching between units\agents on the campaign map that still have move points. Can't be that hard.

Oh and most importantly.. easier acsess to Berdiche Axemen. Making them that hard to get is just cruel.

chilling

11-20-2006, 01:34

If we could use our assassins on our own characters, that would solve a lot of problems, including who is heir to the throne.

Singleton Mosby

11-20-2006, 10:47

I would like to see the return of the 'view city' button.

Ibn Munqidh

11-20-2006, 22:17

CA, PLEASE HEAR US!!! REDUCE TROOP DESERTION RATES FROM CRUSADING ARMIES!!!

it makes crusading pointless at this current rate.

Flavius Gonzo

11-21-2006, 00:57

The lists scroll: can we have it show the green bar with movement points again? I really miss that, it made it so easy to figure out which of my armies/agents I hadn't yet dealt with in a given turn. It made such a difference in getting through the late game.

PROMETHEUS

11-21-2006, 01:21

Venice has to be an Island , so far AI conquers it so fast that 's totally unhistorical , also You wast e lot of time defending the city that is actually very hard to defend when instead it should be nearly unespugneable , also in the faction description says that Venice is an island and for that reason very hard to take so why they made it just a land city? And if someone points out of a bridge , you all know it is completely useless couse AI skips it smply and just besieges the city .... So Lets give back Venice the Island ....Rodhi too is why not Venice?

IrishArmenian

11-21-2006, 01:27

Great idea. Venice would be a mixed bridge battle/ siege.

beauchamp

11-21-2006, 01:37

The only Thing I really want is just a faster gameplay, I don't know all of the technical mumbo-jumbo, but I just want to have a more crisp and quick game.

beauchamp

11-21-2006, 01:37

Sry, double post

Senta

11-21-2006, 03:49

Whacker

11-21-2006, 06:04

I can't seem to find a way to view a named character general's bodyguard stats when he's parked in a city. I have to move them outside the city for the "view bodyguard" button to come up on the right click stats page. Please fix.

angelviper

11-21-2006, 06:58

i've got the experience the other night that system couldn't run over next turn maybe because of ma 15 thousand mem and its slots. it's much less than RTW.

someone says it's from the historical facts that medieval ages did't need such number in a battle. But i don't mean battle with more than 10thousand fighting at once. le'ts make it precise. i meant the system need more slots can carry more than 15 thousand in campaign map.

this game is strategical war game with turn base campaign and real time battle. the graphic development increase the taste of playing it, which simulates that expressed period. but it's war game in the first place. so we need a number of men we can bring over the map to conquer. why decrease the slots less than rtw? why kind of problem would happen then?

BeeSting

11-22-2006, 01:56

On Diplomacy: I would like the "Stop attacking our friend _______ (faction name)" option.

On City Management Screen: bring back the battlefield view of a city as in RTW.

On AI:

1. It is too passive, even with a larger, superior army. If the player has more range than the AI's army and AI has more melee units, it should not exchange volleys with the player but rather make contact to fight hand to hand ASAP.

2. During a settlement assault, although it has lost all its foot units to scale the walls or ram through the gates, it will not withdraw from the battle with its remaining mounted units.

Sarge

11-22-2006, 09:02

When sending an Army on a Crusade, if you send the army by sea, the units shouldn't be able to desert. Why? I'll tell you why.

If I have my Crusaders en-rout from England to Jerusalem via the Sea, that means they have to go around the Iberian Peninsula (that's Spain for those of you who are geographical impaired). Hey, guess what happens when they're half-way around the peninsula? That's right, they start to desert... even though their destination was Jerusalem. :thumbsdown: Are they on their way to the Crusades? Yes. Are they headed directly their? No. So they desert, but if you know of a faster way to row from England to Jerusalem I'd like to hear it.
I can't believe CA didn't think of this.

sapi

11-22-2006, 09:19

More to the point, where the #### are they going? They must be pretty good swimmers :P

FrauGloer

11-22-2006, 11:00

Several things for me, too:

Siege Battles:
- you should be able to permanently stop towers from shooting once your troops are in control of the wall (as in RTW). Right now, once an enemy unit (however small it may be) comes even close to the wall, the towers start shooting again, even though you have troops ON the walls while your enemy does not. They don't have to shoot at the enemy, IMO, but once you've taken the towers, they shouldn't be able to fire at you until your enemy has retaken the walls.

- Archers/crossbowmen hold out waaay to long in melee on the walls. I attacked one unit of 65 crossbowmen with 2 units of upgraded Highlanders (112 men each) from both sides and lost all but 45 men! :furious3: They are bloody ranged troops for Christ's sake - they shouldn't be able to wipe the floor with dedicated melee fighters!

- sometimes, fleeing enemy units get stuck near buildings and can't be reached by your troops.

Combat in General:
- One word: COHESION! It's impossible to order spearmen (or any troops for that matter) to hold formation while fighting. They charge in, but then all but the first line gradually drift back from the fight. It's really annoying.

- The one-click-charge system sucks. Period. I tried it in custom battle: One unit of Knights Hospitaler is ordered to charge one unit of peasants. They march toward the enemy, then about 30 feet/10 meters (!) away, they stop to prepare for the charge. After about 1 second, they begin to charge. by this time, the peasant unit has closed in to about 10 feet, which means that the knights don't get nearly enough momentum for an effective charge. Result: Peasants routed, knights lost 35 out of 60 - against bloody PEASANTS!!! Gimme a break! If nothing more, cavalry should start the charge waaay earlier.

- Allied battle AI is broken. As soon as your ally is outnumbered, he begins marching around, away from the enemy, even if you are coming up with your own force and you'd be easily capable of dealing with the threat together.

- Cavalry is totally incapable of holding formation when charging down routers. This has been sufficiently elaborated already so I won't go into it. The one thing that strikes me as odd is that infantry does not loose formation when charging routers... :inquisitive:

Campaign Map:
- Please please change the province names. It's just atmosphere-killing to me that Ireland is called "Dublin Province", Denmark "Arhus Province", or Switzerland "Berne Province". It worked in RTW, why change it in M2TW?

- Crusades shouldn't be blocked by allied armies'/towns' red zones

- make the crusade desertion rate depending on turns-to-target, not distance-to-target. E.g. a ship that moves around the Iberian peninsula is getting closer to the target turn-wise, even though not distance-wise.:idea2:

- I like the idea of inquisitors, but as of now they are way too powerful. The main reason for this, IMO that it's virtually impossible for my generals to get higher than 3 piety. Most of them are 0 piety. I build churches everywhere, I have priests in every province AND army, most of my provinces are 98%+ catholic, and still the inquisitors kill characters left, right and center. They even kill my priests who, due to lack of heretics, can't aquire any more piety. Some changes are needed here...

- I like titles, too. :yes:

- please register my vote for the return of the city view. :2thumbsup:

Campaign Map AI:

- as others have said, an intelligent Pope who doesn't give you a warning if you attack an army on your own land.

- I'd hoped they'd fix the "never-ever-accept-a-ceasefire-even-though-we-are-about-to-kick-the-bucket" glitch in the initial release, but my hopes have been thwarted before. Oh well... pretty please? ~;)

- sometimes, right after angrily declining a proposed alliance/ceasefire/whatever, the AI offers exactly that in it's own turn, sometimes even with additional monetary offers. Can't seem to make up their mind, huh?

- occasionaly, it seems that noone want's to be your ally: I play as the scots, am at war with the HRE and share no borders with Poland. Poland is at war with the HRE, too and is taking some heavy pounding. I want to make alliance with them, but they decline every offer. Heck I even offered them 20k, but still they refused. This just doesn't make sense.

- more often than not, there are very wierd alliances, such as Spain and Moors, HRE and Papacy, England and Scotland, etc. I know that you can predefine faction attitudes in the descr_stat file, but as the Scots, I can't ally with France even though there is a positive mutual attitude there.

Erm... yeah that's about it... for now! :sweatdrop:

Little Legioner

11-22-2006, 11:47

I would like to see the return of the 'view city' button.

Me too... With this awesome graphics engine it'd be a very nice thing to see your cities from smaller stages to vast establishments.

Please CA give us it back :2thumbsup:

Rothe

11-22-2006, 12:54

Just to mention the English infantry bug that is also discussed in the forum thread here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=72875).

The thing seems to be that billmen and english knights do not attack at all after charging which seems to work though. This seems to be tested and true at least if the opposing unit is a cavalry unit.

Pretty bad bug I'd say.

PorT_Lobo

11-22-2006, 13:36

To take control over the Papacy is easy in late game.....

Human has more cardinals that all AI factions!!

That should be changed, or if human was excomunity, Human should not vote for the new pope, being reconciliated is already a good bonus, pass from excomunotion to be the Pope favourite is a great prize for human imo!

Lord Leonard

11-22-2006, 15:39

I have a few wishlist items to add:

1) When a city is plagued, characters and units do not individually get a plague marker on their details sheet, just the city gets a very small rat. Makes it hard to remember who has got the plague and who hasn't. A more noticeable icon (like the RTW skull) would be helpful too.

2) Nice design on the new graphics and all, but the scrollbars for the details pages and lists are getting smaller, i.e. the top and bottom arrows and the scrollbar slider are very small (at hi-res) and the need to constantly grab them and shuttle them up and down becomes quite cumbersome. If you have over 50 or more cities/armies/agents it does also become very sensitive to scroll. The addition of either a PgUp/PgDn ability using the keyboard would be good, or does anyone not have a wheel-mouse in 2006??? It can't be that hard to add some easy form of scrolling to the lists. (I know the wheelmouse is for zoom in/out on campaign map, but what if you wheel whilst over the details page it scrolls and then if you wheel over the map it zooms)

3) On the lists again, remembering which character/fleet/agent you were up to would be handy. For example, each time I use an Agent, I have to go back into the list and sort by Type and then (manually) scroll the list to try and find the agent I last used so I can go onto selecting the next appropriate man for the job. I would like it so that if I just had the Agents list open and sorted, with a character highlighted, I then use that character and return to the list to find it remembered the exact position and sorting preference, along with the character I last used highlighted.

4) Removal of the movement-level indicators (as in RTW1.5) was a big no-no! How can CA remove such a useful and user-efficient feature as that. Got me stumped! How do I know which fleets have moved, which haven't. Which agents have kicked or kissed butt and which haven't.

5) On the lists again (last time I promise), some indication if there is an army loaded on a fleet would be good. An icon like the "units training" icon used on the City scroll would be good, so you know there's some dudes in those ships. I discovered after about 10 turns of my armies getting hammered around Antioch that I actually had a fleet with some catapults blockading Gaza's port during a Pope mission. By time I moved them off the ships my last army was cactus and there was no need for them to land.

6) Diplomats should be able to bribe Merchants over to your faction. If it fails the Merchant could rip off some cash from the Diplomat. Likewise, Merchants could request a permit to trade in a Diplomat's region/s. Also, Diplomats should be able to tell opposing priests/imams to get off my turf, as others have requested Diplomats can do for armies. I get upset with Imams rolling back my conversions of my regions in the middle east and I'm sure they do with my retaliation of the 8 priest circus rolling into their towns. Could be an excuse for Jihad/Crusade if you tell the wrong one to get out. Diplomats should also be able to talk their butts off to anyone within their movement range. Limiting Diplomats to one chat per turn must be making them go crazy. That's what Diplomats are supposed to do ... talk to as many that will listen.

7) Priests/Cardinals have Piety, Orthodoxy, Purity and Violence ratings (maybe some more too). Like the Generals now list 4 types of ratings, it'd be helpful to have these 4 listed for priests as well. Then you could easily see who are the witch killers, who are the inquisitor/heretic bait and who is likely to get the cardinal promotion.

8) This is my only sense of disappointment about M2TW ... the unit sizes are ridiculously small in SP. After the great RTW (BI too) and reading all the marketing hype about M2TW, play epic battles ... ra ra, I was so upset to find the epic battles were nothing more than Roman skirmishes. I had bigger battles cleaning out rebels near my cities in RTW than M2TW offers in a full confrontation. If CA has turned it down for the MP benefit, turn up the aggro on the AI armies in campaign mode to send more at me or I'll timewarp back to Rome 220BC for some true epic battles. My PC will handle it at double the size they are now and if others cannot run it like that, there's always the option for smaller unit sizes, but I don't have the option for bigger than RTW. Poor form really. CA concentrated so hard on birds in trees whistling and flowers on grass, they missed the whole realism of how many men were typically deployed to battle.

Spendius

11-22-2006, 16:57

I also would like the possibility to take 2 clicks to move a unit on the strategic map. I like to see the estimated time of travel before choosing between 2 long itineraries.

mattep74

11-22-2006, 18:23

The avalibility to turn off videosequenses for popelections etc. My computer cant handle that and thats the only trouble it has with the game.

I want bigger battles. As it is now i had bigger battles in every TW game i played:)

PickledGecko

11-22-2006, 23:24

Make it easier to get to the "list" scroll. Now I have to click the faction shield, then the tiny list button at the bottom, then the tab for generals/agents, etc. Unless Im missing it, it'd be nice to have a button in an agent or generals profile that linked to "list of all agents/generals"
Tip: Right click on Army, City or Agents tab next to your faction shield to open the corresponding page on the list scroll.

And while we’re on the subject of the list scroll; I would like it if selecting an agent and moving him, didn’t cause the list scroll to jump to the top and I would like the agent I selected to stay highlighted.

Cennyan

11-23-2006, 00:23

And while we’re on the subject of the list scroll; I would like it if selecting an agent and moving him, didn’t cause the list scroll to jump to the top and I would like the agent I selected to stay highlighted.

Amen...and furthermore....why don't the agents and generals show their movement points in a bar as they do in Rome TW??

The biggest problem with inquisitors isn't just that they are "overpowered" but moreso that they come in massive droves. I had 12 Inquis in my borders and finally got whittled down to 2 generals and finally restarted the game.

magnum

11-23-2006, 02:42

Really really really REALLY would like to see skirmish fixed, both for cav and for foot. I just sat and watched (wanted to see if it would actually happen) 4 units of cav archers sit there while 4 units of infantry WALKED up and engaged them. The cav archers never even moved. Code it to break firing animation, extend skirmish range, whatever, but when infantry can engage skirmishing cavalry by walkng up to them some thing is very wrong.

Whacker

11-23-2006, 02:46

More thoughts. If these are already the case in the game, then please ignore this. I haven't seen them during my gaming sessions so I'm going based on that.

- I'd like to see castles like in the original M2TW, where there are true, separate, concentric rings of walls that do not physically connect in any way. As it stands with the largest size castle, one can simply get on the walls and run all the way back to where the keep is, then come back down and potentially come in behind the enemy. I do remember there were castles shaped like this in the original MTW, but I prefered the big ones with concentric walls that didn't touch. Like I said, if these are in the game, then please just ignore this.

- Likewise, I don't recall ever seeing the keep structure shooting arrows or projectiles in M2TW. I *want* to say this was in MTW. Even if it wasn't, I still like the idea.

Cheers!

The_Pope

11-23-2006, 07:17

I said this in another thread, and Whacker (cheers) suggested i might put it in here. It seems you guys have touched on it, with the whole "get of my land" suggestions. I think it coud go a bit further.

I think a new feature should be an ability to inform other nations not only to get off my my land but also that their relations have worsened with me because of their transgressions.

E.G. In the case of a French blockade. A button on the relations scroll, to inform France of worsening relations. A warning if you will, that war may be coming if they continue.

The diplomacy has increased so much but as always a little bit further would be even better. Its one of the best games out.

Rothe

11-23-2006, 07:56

I have to repeat this as I tested this yeaterday with disturbing results:

Fix English infantry stats, particularly Dismounted English knights. It seems that Dismounted English Knights lose to any rabble, and furthermore it seems that they do not attack at all after they have ended their charge attack.

So once more, Dismounted English Knights do not seem to cause any casualties to enemies after they stop their charge.

Please, someone else test this too.

I also checked casualties caused after a battle. The DEK caused only 10-15 casualties and they were immersed in a huge melee, I had 3 units of them and they all performed extremely poorly.

Now, I did not check this for billmen yesterday, but I suspect that there is a similar bug on them. Not sure if it is just about the stats, or has something to do with the type of weapon they use (short poleaxe for DEK and bill for the billmen).

Also, do something about the fact that Feudal knights lose to militia in melee... I understand they can be mobbed, but not quite so easily as they die very fast as it is now.

Quin

11-23-2006, 10:08

These are just few I haven't noticed before:

1. Fix the spearman fighting cavalry bug. Spearmen's (billmen and DEK) weapon animation is somehow bugged so they don't fight cavalry at all.

2. Agents (army's and city's tab too, but they are used less frequently) tab is clumsy to say the least. When I'm using the menu to find my agents I tend to find one after another and then give orders. But as soon as I'm finished giving orders to an agent in the middle of the list the scroll bar jumps at the begining so I have to manualy search the list to find an agent whose turn it is... And after I find him and give him orders the scroll bar jumps at the top again, etc.
Also, movement points left from RTW would help. Why they were removed is beyond me.

3. Less micromanagement of agents. If I send a priest from Rennes to Jerusalem he will never get there unless I manually chek on him and move him every other turn, since he stops as soon as someone is blocking his path. Agents shouldn't block each other paths as this is HIGHLY unrealistic (maybe but just maybe only a highly skilled assasin could have a slight chance to block other agents). Roads and passes werent half a meter wide back then you know. And even if you must keep this silly path blocking issue, make it so, that my agent will automatically continue his travel as soon as path is free.

Fearless

11-23-2006, 14:47

Billmen definetly bugged rather fight mounted units with peasants :thumbsdown:

anders

11-23-2006, 16:10

yep, the english "cavalry-killers" dont work against cavalry. pretty weird fo units which istorical forte was to drag the knights down from their mounts and make holes in their armour, or just chop the horses legs of.

billmen sem to be pretty weak against infantry too.

oh, and not having units available in SP is plain irritating, especially the french dismounted archers, who as AFAIK rode to battle, but always battled on foot.

Spendius

11-23-2006, 16:48

An agent "pushed" by another unit (which IS silly, as has been stated), should at least be able to go back to his original location by himself. I'm luck I saw this merchant pushed away from his resource.

geala

11-23-2006, 16:52

Something rather special:

- change Hamburg port from the Baltic Sea to the North Sea, please!
- create a new rebel province, Frisia or something like that, using a little bit of the two rebel provinces with Hamburg and Antwerpen; MTW had this much better done

ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88

11-24-2006, 05:06

Make a Ladder for MTW2 like they had for STW, that be a good MP Incertive. Mabye even offer a full suit of armour for the first person to actualyl get #1 in a fair way :) :)

Bugout

11-24-2006, 18:03

Just want to say that I am thoroughly enjoying the game and with that in mind I have a couple of suggestions for improvement.

I would suggest making blockading of ports only a decrease to relations instead of an act of war. As it is the AI kingdoms are more likely to declare war on you by blockading than by using an army to attack. They often blockade a port without having any army prepared to attack you which just leads to the person getting the jump on the computer, since many people play with house rules of not starting wars just finishing them:viking: .

The other suggestion is in regards to sieges, it is slighly frustrating to have cavalry inside the walls turn on the firing of the towers just by being close even when you have infantry on the walls or inside the tower in question. I for one would appreciate having the towers becoming inactive once you have captured one with infantry.

The last suggestion is, as it seems that guilds are randomly offered but that the thieves guild is always offered first, please change it so that other guilds are offered initially as well. I have found a thieves guild in almost every city I have seen either with spies or by conquering.

Thanks again to CA for giving me an excellent reason to sit at my computer for inordinate lengths of time.:yes:

Grifman

11-25-2006, 02:40

I think all treaties should have a time limit that is set in the negotiations, whether it be 5, 10, or 20 turns. And maybe the side desiring a longer timeframe might have to pay some money to the other side to get it. It could not be broken by either the AI or the player during that time whatsoever. What that limits you, at least then you know how long it will last, and you understand that it might not be renewed when it is over. I think that would take a lot of the mystery of what is happening. You get attacked and you know it is because the AI chose not to renew your ceasefire or alliance. That brings a bit of reason/logic into diplomacy. Now it just seems too random.

ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88

11-25-2006, 04:22

Make a Ladder for MTW2 like they had for STW, that be a good MP Incertive. Mabye even offer a full suit of armour for the first person to actualyl get #1 in a fair way :) :)

Also, Fix the Musketeers issues. They are way Way to Strong, just like the handgunners and such..

de la fere

11-27-2006, 00:37

I want Glorious Achievement mode back! ...

Yes, me too. Absolutely.

---Loki---

11-27-2006, 12:49

Hi folks,

since shogun i played all games of the total war series. despite i liked the game from the very beginning, there are also some flaws in the game:

FIRST OF ALL THE AI:
the ai is on the strategic map as well as in battle itself just too stupid.
ill give here just one example i experienced just a couple of days ago in medieval 2. i play battles on level hard while i play the campaign on level medium.
i had an HRE army in scandinavia, which was pretty much versatile in terms of units. i had catapults some bowmen, LITTLE infantry and strong cavalry. this already implies that this is not a defenisive army as my infantry line is just too weak. well, the danes brought up an strong army of only heavy infantry(huscarles and feudal foot knights) without any missile units, which is definitely an offensive army. Alltogether he shouls just overrran me. when he attacked me the ai waited just in range of all my missile units till they were depleted and half of his army shattered. just when my catapults ran out of ammo he started with the little rests of his army to attack me.....i easily routed the rest of his armay and won a battle i could have never win against even a reasonable acting ai.

on the campaign map it behaves unfortunately not very different.
alltough the ai waits to put up a strong army before a first attack, it beginns to annoy you with ridiculous small armies "sieging" your cities after you destroyed his first "real" army. you easily crush those little armies, so there no sense in this at all. it also leaves his cities unprotected and puts his family members to risk. a reasonable behavior would be, unless you attack him, to wait and to set up again a big army and give it a try again, but no that seems to be too compicated for the ai. this is a major downfall. as the ai weakens its elf. this is during all the games noticeable, as well as the first issue i described here.
some stated that the ai in battles would have improved, i can not say that. i dont see a major difference.

apart from that, i agrre on several issues already mentioned here:
its impossible for me to agree on a cease fire with a faction weaker than me and which began the conflict....i even offered mailand, which was nearly wiped out, its capital. YES i offered the faction, its own capital i occupied earlier, to get a cease fire...it rejected.
but still most of the problems lie in the definitely very stupid ai in battles as well as on the strategic map. i hope a patch or the next game in the series will fix that..........well, until then have a good battle.

Lochar

11-27-2006, 12:58

Other than the bugs, the one thing I would like to see is more diplomatic options.

For instances, giving missions to nations. Assasinate, Spy, Blockade,etc.

Possibly even giving troops to allied nations and asking for troops.

Kraxis

11-28-2006, 00:06

The game is a definitive step up from RTW... But I have my own list of things.

I have to say that most of what I want has been mentioned already, if not all. But I have to say it anyway.

- Fix the ladder lag (+ indecisiveness). It is terribly annoying and I have lost two cities to this (after waiting a couple hours I couldn't stand it any more and Esc'ed out). Seems the AI's best tactic to win my cities is to do this.

- Fix the deployment of troops in cities/castles. I know streets are confined and all, but it is terribly annoying to find that the order you just gave your troops is ignored because you can stretch the pink lines too far. Well, it should be simple enough as in RTW. Do not allow the player to stretch the phantom unit further than it is allowed.
Also in this department, a single line of archer/xbows is important on walls for accuracy, but at times when you relocate them they bunch up and refuse to spread out... several times until you move them. Takes a lot of time, and can be highly infuriating.

- Inquisitors less powerful or aggressive, or less numbers. One of these is enough, a little of each is enough. Please don't do all and nerf them too much. I like them, but at the same time I fear them killing my entire family in a swift blow. And I can't really do anything about them (can't kill them and can't get higher piety fast enough, which is with the good inquisitors not even enough).

- Remove the Elite training. PLEASE!!!! I feared the return of this as much as any other of the less stellar RTW features, yet it still arrived. I'm running around with a huge load of Golden units. How? Well, it is after all extremely easy to get it with knights if you get the enemy to rout. Even better if you have decimated them in the battle, then they will level up even faster. Then when you get them to a place of training, just retrain them... Voila! You have a three golden chevron knights unit.
For heaven's sake make every single replacement in the units be at the level of a fresh unit. Meaning a unit of two bronze at half size beign retrained in a province of no experience will end up with a SINGLE bronze chevron.
I'm surprised nobody else has noticed this.

- Diplomacy:
"Get off our lands!"
"Thank you for that kind ceasefire, we heartily accept. And no, we won't backstab you right away, we do care about our international relations." (I hope that was clear enough)
Relations to be more easily obtained. I'm pretty tried of being the HRE and nobody likes me at all. Even my 'best' friend England with Reasonable relations (cost me a load of money to get) ended up pulling a 'Blockade War Declaration'. And my only ally the Byzantines hates my guts, and have hated me ever since we became allies.

- Merchants to get a bit more income in trading, and get less from driving other merchats out of business. Say, level 1 Merchant gets 20 florins from trading a low comodity ware like lumber, and 'killing' other merchants gets you at best 500. Right now my merchants are hunting other merchants with a greater profit than actually trading. That should only really be for getting access to a particularly good ware (with 20 for lumber, silk and amber would be somewhere around 150 for a nicely experienced merchant).

- Diplomats to engage more targets each year... Including Merchants (for Trade Rights, in case of war no talk) and Priests (get out of here!).
And they should be able to bribe besieged garrisons... Hopefully more easily if the siege has lasted a while. Perhaps only to open the gates and surrender (not buying the units) for a lesser price.

- Be able to assassinate Spies. It is rather hard to get AI spies killed. You can't really use assassins, and pumping a city full of your own spies doesn't always work if he is experienced (which the AI spies tend to be since it moves them in and out all the time). Spies should be terribly vulnerable if they are visible. The easiest targets on the map.

-Be able to assassinate own characters, not captains of course. That lousy no-good Diplomat that has failed everything and is now -3 experience should suffer his lord's wrath for his bad work (he is after all expensive to keep going). Perhaps doing this will get the Faction Leader a Trait with Dread and penalty to agent recruitingcosts and morale for the troops. The same for generals...
Either this or some option to dismiss the worst agents (those who fail all the time... who would after all keep them on the payroll?), though the assassination would be best in my mind.

- I like the more complicated cavalrycharges. It makes you more attentive towards the cavalry. However like many others it is just not terribly great to see the perfectly formed unit of Teutonic Knights halt and do a little dance while two-three knights carry on with little effect until the main unit arrives and get half butchered in the process. Please make heavy cavalry lancers carry through with their charges if the bugle has sounded. If they arrive helterskelter and in a bad formation then the bonus will be diminished. And make it so that single-click charges are PERFECT if the unit has the distance and time to set it up. Also heavy cavalry should still use their lances if the enemy unit turns tail and tries to move away (like skirmishers). It is ok to use swords mainly for routers.
Otherwise I'm happy to see the removal of the 1 meter charges of RTW. So for me it is a step in the right direction, just a bit too far.

- Skirmishing to be improved. It seems like crossbowmen and archers just have to shoot one last time.
"Time to go lads... those knights are getting awfully close."
"Yes SIR! Just a moment, I'm almost finished loading my crossbow."
"Dammit, I said NOW!"
"Yes... In a moment, I'm aiming."
"Just let loose with it!!!!"
"Holy cow! They are really close! We better leg it..."
*choppity chop chop* *squish smash gurgle*
"Urghh... I told you to run... arrrrghhh....."
"But I had a perfect shot... had to take it.... gurrr......"

- I have also noted that something seem to be wrong with certain units in melee. Dismounted Feudal Knights (DFK) have a really hard time clearing walls of defenders. Their stats says they should rip any Spear Militia to shreds, yet both my own and the AI's Spear Militia have managed to get 2:1 lossrates against them, while both were fully on the walls.
As it is it seems that defenders get some kind of hidden bonus on walls so that the attackers don't use their entire strength. At least what I noticed was a general lethargy by the knights, in that they acted like they were 'Fighting to the Death' as in RTW. They would just stand there and get mobbed one at a time. The same with Armoured Seargeants against Flemish Pikemen on the same walls.
On the ground they dish out the proper amount of damage.

- On the topic of Dismounted knights... Do keep the Dismounted Knights as units, but also let us dismount knights just prior to battles. This is not only historical it also lets us use knights better. And the AI too. If I saw five units of dismounted knights coming at me after my walls had been knocked down, backed up by countless spearunits. GAH! And that is just the possibility the AI would have had many times.

- Make Morale visible in the unit cards. Since the descr files aren't terribly accessable we should be able to see how much punishment our units going to be able to stand.

- Fix the redeployment disruption.
Once I marched out of a city to face a single unit of Spear Militia and two units of Ballista. Well, my own three Spear Militia kept going and standing in 10-11 rows, and I suffered huge losses to the Ballistas as they knocked 7-8 guys out with each hit (I kept waiting for them to spread out into formation). I had dragged nice lines for my units, but somehow they refused the formation but kept the positions... Since there was but the gate as an obstacle I can't figure out when this happens.

- Make the buildingbrowser more intuitive. When the AI quickly popped up with DFKs at Bologna, I was surprised (kudos to the AI training and building priorities). I wanted my own DFKs, and since I had noticed that knights in general were dismountable and that the Sicilian DFKs were 90 strong as opposed to the 60 mounted knights, I was convinced they were trained as infantry. So I looked at the buildingbrowser. However, I couldn't find them. It was only when I built a Fortress that I noticed. There I could have directed my effort to building a Fortress right away had I known, but I thought I couldn't train them (this of course also comes from a lack of a techtree in paper).

- Make rebels less elite. I don't think facing Imperial/Chivalric Knights with Town Militia and Peasant Archers is terribly fun. Especially when they come in the particularly large rebel armies. Make rebels slaved to the local tech, with a minimum above Peasants (Peasant Archers, Town Militia ect).

- Make towers and gates change control as per troops on the walls. Who is on the walls near them. Not who is near them on the ground or walls. Capturing the gate because you are standing under the arch is rather less impressive gameplay.

- AI should not try to knock down the entire wall around the city/castle with artillery, it is long, tedious and not fun. One, two, three holes should be more than enough with no siege equipment. With it, a single hole is enough.

- Give generals less bodyguards. 20 is enough for the Large setting. And it is 20 for all save the leader who gets more according to his command/whatever determiens that. Generals are themselves far too powerful right now. They shouldn't be the prime shockunit since they replenish and are tougher than any other cavalryunit (but let those traits stay with them). They should be there to save the general in a tight situation, or add that little weight that tips the scales. Currently they are the best frontline unit.

- Make a return of the moneylending for ransoms. Yes, I know that it can be exploited but the player in a bad financial spot, but that is hardly gamebreaking, while it allows the AI (and the player) to buy back troops AFTER all other actions are taken (which is normally also the time for making the battledecisions). Often you earn enough money the next turn to recover the lost money for ransoms, the AI must be presumed to do the same (with the armies I'm continually facing they must).

- It can't be said enough... TITLES!!!! And as has been mentioned before by others, I don't care if it just for show. Handed out as in MTW or 'earned' as in BI... well I would prefer the first but the latter is fine as well (stay 3/5/7/whatever turns in settlement to get local title) for instance.

- Pope to allow you to take offensive action on own soil when engaged in a defensive war (one the enemy started). On enemy soil it is ok he gets tipsy.

- A new wish. Make devastating the enemy lands give you a cashback, lowering of upkeep or similar for the army doing it. Devastation is after all the abstraction of the army foraging for food and other things (loot and equipment is also counted in). So at least some of the troubles with paying the army would be solved (getting them food and perishable equipment/supplies) if only to an extent. Of course only enemy lands would be subject to this, and location would be important. Good farmland would give better results than wilderness (if at all).

- Of course I have join in on the unit cohesion. It is just terrible. While I can handle cavalry most of the time, it is a tough job for infantry.

- Be able to lock castle gates. At times enemies can chase routers all the way to the square (routers open the gates and enemies follow through, capturing said gates), thus negating the advantage of several walls. However if the wish about being on the gates and walls to capture gates and towers was implemented, then this could actually be fun, capturing enemy units on the inside.

Phiew.... *wipes forehead* That was a lot of stuff.

---Loki---

11-28-2006, 12:08

Cesare diBorja

11-28-2006, 19:58

Nice one, Kraxis! I laughedfor about five minutes before reading this to my lady........

- Skirmishing to be improved. It seems like crossbowmen and archers just have to shoot one last time.
"Time to go lads... those knights are getting awfully close."
"Yes SIR! Just a moment, I'm almost finished loading my crossbow."
"Dammit, I said NOW!"
"Yes... In a moment, I'm aiming."
"Just let loose with it!!!!"
"Holy cow! They are really close! We better leg it..."
*choppity chop chop* *squish smash gurgle*
"Urghh... I told you to run... arrrrghhh....."
"But I had a perfect shot... had to take it.... gurrr......"

I have also noticed this as well as a wishy-washy hesitancy of missile troops to engage in battle, even with 'Skirmish' off.

Kraxis

11-28-2006, 21:00

@Kraxis

well, i agree on several topics u mentionend but NOT all:

-do not remove elite training, i think its quite reasonable. if you have a rest of seasoned soldiers which are filled up by young soldiers this unit definitely benefits from being training by veterans and being in the same unit with those. apart from that it is really not easy to fill up units, especially if it is a unit u cant train everywhere.
e.g. it is a hussle to retrain your experienced gothic knights as they can only be trained in some cities and still u have to get them there and pay for it. i think this aspect of game is fine as it is.
Agreed, it is indeed rather hard to find places for certain elites to be retrained. But does that mean we should be 'compensated'? Personally I think not.
First of all, experience is experience. You need to have a reason for it other than that one man you formed the unit around was very experienced. It is a wellknown fact that experienced units that get green replacements in the real world suffer heavily for it. And yes green units suffer even more, but that is where the evening out comes into play. The experienced troops don't vanish, they are still very good, they just have a lot of lousy troops around them to soak up the arrows and the like.
Also, it removes the specialness of high experience units. You don't really want to take care of them, you don't wait for the perfect opening to use them ect. They are just that much better cannonfodder.
Besides, The AI factions never use this. Which in turn creates unbeatable player armies (as if we aren't good enough already). Why the AI factions don't do I can guess at, but the fact remains that their armies have extremely seldomly silver units. I have it all the time without doing this contiously.

- enemy spies: i disagree on that as well. i had no problems to assasinate detected enemy spies. of course youll need an assasine who knows what a knife is. apart from it is rather easy to get rid of spies in cities. just place your own spy in this city as well and wait for a couple of turns...normally the enemy spy will be detected and executed. same accounts for inquisitors despite they are indeed pretty tough to kill. despite my realtions with the pope are fucked up all the time i dont see my privinces swarmed by b erserker-like-inqs.
We all know how hard Inquisitors are to kill, well it seems spies are equally hard or harder still. My super assassin Fritz (level 10) had 27% chance of killing a 2 subterfuge spy. Now add to that that the AI spies continually upgrade themselveas, have guilds backing them and come in waves (it is not unusual for me to have three-four spies in my Italian cities and three of my own to kick them out). Generally they survive reentry, and at best I can hope for them being kicked out (and then they just enter once more).
A spy is a person who relies on his skills at hiding. When that is gone he is an easy target. As should our spies. Assassins would have all the chances to kill a spy in the open.
I don't think it should be 95% all the time, just more reasonable than 1% for a level 4 assassin against a similar spy.

- i also dont agree on the generals bodyguard topic. its fine as it is. id never send my in my general at first, cause sometimes he just dies by chance even he has numerous guards(20+). so i hold him back unitl im able to attack his general or i might dont need him at all in battle if everything is going well. and still i think in middle age some genrals where indeed dreadful experienced veterans which didnt avoid combating themselves. apart from that its an advantage to you and the ai.
The generals often didn't have any sort of bodyguard. Princes and kings did of course (I allowed the king to have a larger bodyguard, perhaps his heir as well). Generals weren't really always supermen in melee, they were generally the guys that could think and plan. Leading from the front was not a dead fact, far from it. As has been noted by many historians, Alexander was the last great commander that got into the thick of it all the time.
20 bodyguards are plenty strong for tactical maneuvers and that last push to get the enemy to break. But getting some 58, where regular cavlary has 60 is downright silly. 2 HP and stats that beat any cavalry they are likely to face.
Trust me, such knights wouldn't be riding around with a general... They would be owning their own contingents of knights.
Bodyguards give too much power in battles, and they make it far too easy to get all those nice HP upgrades and Dread increases for the general.
I had a Mad prince I wanted to get rid of. So I sent him to die against the Hungarians. Well, he and his 27 bodygaurds ended up killing 90 Dismounted Feudals, 180 crossbowmen (including pavises), a few town militia units and 224 armoured spearmen. Of those they captured perhaps 100 troops, mainly the militia. That was crazy.
He got so many traits and new members of the retinue that he was suddenly worth keeping. He even got the Dread Knight of all people... That should just not be possible. And that was just 28 men in all... almost 60 should be able to crush much larger armies.

Oh and I would like to this:

- Fix the abandon-rejoin-abandon-rejoin 'feature' of Crusades. Generals/family members can gain an unlimited number of Piety this way (by getting the traits and retinues for being crusaders) for no penalty. Make the second abandonment of a Crusade for a character cost him some penalties to various thing (piety, morale and authority is my choice).

Bullethead

11-29-2006, 00:32

I just wish for a patch in the very near future. I don't care if it doesn't fix everything, so long as it fixes some of the more serious problems.

Whacker

11-29-2006, 03:11

User interface nitpicking:

- The multiplayer screen does not give the option to save one's Lamespy password. Please give us a check box that allows us to select if we want it to do so or not.

- When attempting to connect to Lamespy without putting in one's password, the error message "Data not entered" or something roughly like that appears. The error message should be specific to which field(s) have not been filled out. Further, the error messages displayed when login failed should indicate what caused the failure.

- In the options menu, when clicking "back" to return to the previous menu level after having made changes but without saving, the dialog box should ask if changes should be saved or not. Irregardless of answer, the game should them go back to the previous menu screen and not remain at the current one.

(Sorry, I had an entire course in college on program usability and designing proper user interfaces where this was all hammered into me. :sweatdrop: )

Barry Fitzgerald

11-29-2006, 03:18

Being honest for the gameplay/units to be balanced well is going to take a few patches.

Ist one will likely deal with major issues...but we will have to wait..(as with RTW) to get the game up to par in most areas.

Some of the issues are pretty minor..like titles and years rather than turns, but these do add to the overall experience.

As far as I can see so far the A.I needs a major rework at all levels...I just tear it to bits on the map and on the battlefield. Flanking enemy units just seems so easy, they don't react at all most of the time. And an army full or crossbowmen isnt going to last long against knights...bit daft really.

Units need a big tweak too...already mentioned about peasants being too good, and billmen being weedy.

MTW2 is good, could be great and awesome...I hope CA do the work needed to get it there.

---Loki---

11-29-2006, 13:21

@Kraxis

most of the points we discussed may be subject to personla opinion and attititude...i just like it when my prince is able to fight......most of the other stuff is also of minor importance.

Barry Fitzgerald points out correctly that its majorly the ai, which has to improve a lot. if the ai does not use elite training that does not mean to remove it but to make the ai use it(i know this is the tiniest problems with the ai unfortunately).
the different difficulty levels, as far as i can see, dont work as well. it just increases numbers of units, money and other stuff for the NP factions, while it dimishes eg your chances for assasinating a spy with a certain level.
the ai does not get better.......just the numbers are changed.
and its really frustrating when the ai isnt even able to pick the high ground on a battle map when defending...........

i really like this game(thats why i played all predecessors) but im very unhappy to see the ai as bad as it ever was.............the developers have to put more effort into this than into anything else.........unfortunately i dont see this coming , as it didnt come yet despite its a well known problem ......

Whacker

11-29-2006, 17:07

Agreed, it is indeed rather hard to find places for certain elites to be retrained. But does that mean we should be 'compensated'? Personally I think not.
First of all, experience is experience. You need to have a reason for it other than that one man you formed the unit around was very experienced. It is a wellknown fact that experienced units that get green replacements in the real world suffer heavily for it. And yes green units suffer even more, but that is where the evening out comes into play. The experienced troops don't vanish, they are still very good, they just have a lot of lousy troops around them to soak up the arrows and the like.
Also, it removes the specialness of high experience units. You don't really want to take care of them, you don't wait for the perfect opening to use them ect. They are just that much better cannonfodder.
Besides, The AI factions never use this. Which in turn creates unbeatable player armies (as if we aren't good enough already). Why the AI factions don't do I can guess at, but the fact remains that their armies have extremely seldomly silver units. I have it all the time without doing this contiously.

My humble opinion gentlemen is the middle ground of your discussion. I think that retraining a unit at the same level chevrons is probably excessive, but putting in fresh newbies is not a good idea either. The middle ground would (to me at least) be giving the new men half the chevrons that already exist for the unit, probably rounding up for odd #'s. Full 3 gold would give you 2 silver chevron replacements. They aren't so new that they'll get slaughtered and be useless, but they aren't gods either. To me this makes sense, in that the new recruits aren't going to be vets right off the bad, but their more experienced counterparts should rub off on them.

Cheers!

Vlad Tzepes

11-29-2006, 17:54

Good news ahead, lads, patch is on it's way and getting closer, as announced by the Shogun at the .com ("Right just a quickie to say there should be some news shortly regarding the Medieval 2: Total War update. Thanks for being patient but expect some proper news by the end of this week or the beginning of next. I can't promise any thing but we will do our best!" - Shogun) - so hopefuly it will take into account the feedback expressed here.

Kraxis

11-29-2006, 17:55

So a single man (3 gold) will be able to create out of the blue a 2 silver chevron unit? It only a bit less silly...

I can't really see any good in free experience. Especially not when the AI doesn't get a similar benefit out of it. Why should we get it? Give me a good reason? The survivors have earned their experience, the new men have not.

What people used to do in STW and MTW was to cycle troops back and forth. Jealously saving up those veterans for combining. Even a single Valour was often enough for people to begin saving them. And trust me, it felt good to send in a full unit of quite experienced units when they were created that way.
You didn't have a lot of them. Right now half my troops are silver chevrons, facing green AI troops. And there is actually little I can do about it as I do need retraining, but even with combining there are usually a few units left over. Besides, the system seems to pull the greenest troops into the combining, leaving the best troops in the old unit. Meaning if I combine, I usually end up with a high experience unit to retrain.

So, even if I try to not to use this totally outrageous feature, I can't.

Whacker

11-29-2006, 19:42

So a single man (3 gold) will be able to create out of the blue a 2 silver chevron unit? It only a bit less silly...

Fair point, I didn't think about that. My thoughts were mainly towards maybe a 1/2 to 1/4 full unit being retrained. I can see both sides of this issue, positives and negatives, and I do agree that full chevron retraining is a bit excessive and would prefer half-chevron results. I still just choose to think of it as the experienced vets training and influence rubbing off on the newbies.

I can't really see any good in free experience. Especially not when the AI doesn't get a similar benefit out of it. Why should we get it? Give me a good reason? The survivors have earned their experience, the new men have not.

Keep in mind not all of us are that terribly good against the AI, and some of us need all the help we can get. :laugh4: :sweatdrop:

Kraxis

11-30-2006, 01:48

Whacker

11-30-2006, 02:50

I can sympathise with you/those that do need it. I really can... But when it is an obvious benefit for only one side (the player), I don't want it crammed down my throat. And that is sadly the case right now. I can't avoid it.

Fair points all. In the spirit of respect for differences and to create a win-win situation for all sides, the best solution is.... make it modable. :grin:

And for that matter, I would like to put forth a suggestion that's been in mind mind for a long time, years now, and I'm sure other orgahs and probably even CA have thought about this, as they almost seem to be going in this direction. I think CA should make their engine much more generic, almost akin to ID's Quake engines. The executable would be basically a front-end that handles the mechanics of talking to the PC hardware and OS, etc, and makes use of pluggable dlls and files to handle content and game mechanics. Thus, it's possible to have extremely wide varieties of gameplay and whatnaught through the use of the same executable, as a glance at the Quake series will show. My apologies if I'm not using the exact right software terms here, it's been a long time since my programming days. The idea is sound though, and I think it'd add quite a bit of leeway and flexibility in terms of what modders and the community in general can do with the game. I do think that CA is somewhat heading in this direction already, from what the honorable-yet-not-around Epistolary Richard reported from his Brisbane visits, there are a larger number of configs and scripts that we can muck with to mess with game mechanics, a big step up from the RTW days. One could also argue this is a step up from MTW as well, even though in the MTW to RTW shift we lost the ability to change a hefty number of variables. If CA truly wants to great a game that has a good core, and also has truly vast possibilities for community involvement and addons, this is the route to go imo. (and open source your tools, dangit!)

Cheers!

sapi

12-01-2006, 11:24

A small thing, but i'd like to stop agents moving into towns when getting out of the way for other agents - it's a pain when the town comes under siege that turn and you can't get them out.

R'as al Ghul

12-01-2006, 12:13

Three small minor things:
1. I'd like to have the savegame name default back. Whenever I save in Medieval 1 the older game gives a default like "Venice - 1154".
2. Where are the birds?
In Medieval 1 you had flocks of crows circling above the field. Why aren't they in Med2? I was actually looking forward to see them in improved graphics.
3. In sieges, probably mentioned before, when the AI manages to make a breach, all his units, even those on ladders and towers, climb back down and try to make it through the breach. Often that's not a good decision.

R'as

Barry Fitzgerald

12-01-2006, 13:08

As of now..I just wish there was a patch...nailing the AI would at least make the game playable...

I am so tempted to just unistall it and put MTW on or even RTW...least you could play at that.

Very little challenge so far...this patch is taking too long. Suggests some serious issues are present and taking time to correct

Frantz

12-01-2006, 15:12

the AI makes an excellent us of ladders ... so more more ladders and less rams ( one is enough ...the others are usually unused ) AND the AI should garrison more his castles .
just a bit less missiles for everyone ....

and of course the AI doing something during battles ...

Whacker

12-01-2006, 19:17

JFC

12-02-2006, 17:58

Create the 'Choose Order of New Units' like in MTW when you have a battle with a full stack and have reserves.

Bijo

12-02-2006, 19:31

I've seen many suggestions I'd make myself. Here's some of my own :)

General Camera

What I don't like is the fact that the General Camera view is poorly done. For instance when going through a forest with your general in the back of the army as I lower the view a bit to see in front of me, those banners/flags/etcetera are in the way.
One could argue that's okay and that's just how it is or should be, but it's annoying to play the game like that. I always prefer the General Camera view because it makes it more personal and more difficult. Having those flags and such in the way MAKES it more difficult, but in a bad way. In RTW these banners could be seen through or disappeared when close enough.

Another thing about this General Camera....
After the speech before a battle you choose to deploy and you can take care of the initial positions of your troops. I zoom out for an overview and see if my units are placed the way I want them to be placed. But when I choose to start the battle the view doesn't go back to the General Camera, but it stays the way I had it during deployment. This means I need to go into the menu every time to choose the General Camera again. ANNOYING!

Optimization

Sometimes the thing just lags. I don't have the best computer (it's mediocre at best) but I've made sure I've tuned the settings so the performance is as high as possible. But even then there are times the game just lags annoyingly.
For instance in one battle I had one small army facing a same-sized enemy army and another small allied AI reinforcements army coming into their flanks. I played as Spain by the way, and the thing just lagged every few seconds.
With bigger battles playing other factions I never had this problem.

Diplomacy

I like the idea presented by Whacker. Maybe limit these embassies to only one per faction, and only to their capital. Or just as many as you want.

Mr Frost

12-03-2006, 11:40

A cool little idea that I had regarding diplomats.

- Give us the ability to "sacrifice" a diplomat near another faction's city to create a permanent "embassy" in that city to that faction. For example, I just build a single diplomat, then traipse him off to another faction's capital. When he's near the capital, I can click on him and select "create embassy". He then disappears (as well as upkeep), and you now have the ability to enter dialog at any time with the other faction through your interface somehow. Diplomats would still be useful for direct work on the campaign map, but being able to talk to another faction without having a diplomat close would be great, such as to make an alliance before you attack, bribe them, etc. Perhaps if you or someone else captures the city that you created the embassy at, then that ability disappears. I kinda dislike this though, I'd prefer for it to stay open somehow. Also now that I think about it, the embassy as a building itself on the build screen isn't a good idea, more as just an abstract idea.
Interesting idea , but to be realistic , it would have to have an upkeep cost (the diplomat will still want to be paid} .
It would also need to be an available target for sabotage and destruction by the faction that owns that city {just like today , a host nation/faction should be able to eject an embassy} ie : a building .
It would have to require the Faction owning the city targeted to give permission for it to be created .
An act of war by you or the host faction would have a high probability of the Host Faction choosing to eject your embassy from their city , and that would give you then a fresh new diplomat outside their city {perhaps with some traits and ancillaries related to say , the dialogues and results thereof over the last 10 turns ?}
The Embassy would still need its' own Diplomat type traits and ancillaries {at first based on those of the founding diplomat , but later changing as he dies and others replace him behind the scenes} .

On a related note , it would be nice if armies could have an option to attack foreign agents , but I imagine the A.I. isn't mature enough yet to manage the complexities that would surround that {would either kill everything in sight starting wars etc or ignore them when it shouldn't} .
It would be more realistic ; how long would an imam really have lasted openly preaching in Il de France in 1250 or a Catholic bishop in Egypt in 1100 ? The local lords would simply have chopped their heads off or physically thrown them out of the country if they were lucky !

Hotspur

12-04-2006, 02:37

Kraxis

12-04-2006, 14:51

Is there a secondary weapon bug with missile troops? They seem to be able to chop my melee troops up with ease - particularly on city walls. Billman vs Crossbowmen should be 1 nil to the billmen not 3 nil to the crossbowmen.
Well, their stats are actually pretty even, unless you speak of Peasant or Militia crossbows.
However my test in Custom Battle even had the Billmen get off a nice charge while my crossbows didn't. Nearly 20 of my men died in the charge, but afterwards they more than made up for it, and lost just about 40 in all, while the Billmen lost almost 70 of their 90.

Aelwyn

12-05-2006, 02:20

Has anything been said by CA about toning down the Inquisitors yet? They have not failed once, and just executed my King.

Its getting very annoying, as assassinating them is next to impossible. I don't have enough troops or patience to encircle them either.

Mazoch

12-05-2006, 07:10

Seeing a lot of the same issues already raised:

- Units have a VERY though time holding and getting in formation.
This tends to lead to battles often being more of random mobs running around than formations of soldiers.

- Units seem to react very slowly to orders.
It seems (at least much of the time) that a unit often hesitates for quite a while before reacting to an order. This, combined with the high movement rate of a unit in full speed often makes it very hard to react to an approaching unit in an organized fashion. It seem like it takes units longer to take the first couple of steps than it takes a unit already moving to cover fairly large distances.

- Cavalry charges
Been brought up quite a few times already, it tend to be very hard to get cavalry to effectively charge. It seems that in order to charge a hostile unit they not only have to be in near perfect formation (something that tends to be difficult, see above). But they also insists on 'walking' most of the distance to their target, then slowly start accelerating.. If the unit hasn’t moved during all this, then you got a charge. In reality it very rarely seems to work like that. I would prefer to see the cavalry get at least a decent attack bonus if they engage a unit while moving at run speed when colliding with the unit. The full bonus could still be reserved for the 'perfect charge' system, but right now I just don’t have the time in the heat of the battle to wait for the knights to get their act together.. by the time the do the fight the unit they are trying to charge has usually already won or lost.

- Path finding in cities
The path finding in cities really doesn’t seem to work very well. I find that it's generally very difficult to get your unit to go where you want them to with one or two single commands. Instead I find myself having to micro manage them through the streets. For example I often find myself having to send multiple units up a narrow street. The front unit will be slow to start moving, this leads the second unit to consider the path blocked and instead it'll often start moving the opposite direction (presumably to find an alternate route by going though have the city..) all I want is for several units to walk down the street.

- Hibernating AI
Often the enemy AI seems to go into some kind of hibernation and simply just stand there. This issue has been brought up a lot in regards to using missile units to slaughter the AI without the AI charging. But the AI also tends to ignore obvious things like several units riding around their army to take position behind their army.

- Stagnant siege combat
Sometimes you get stuck in a situation where the AI is unable or just unwilling to try to attack in a siege battle, unless you are using the battle timer there is no way of really fighting the battle short of a suicidal frontal attack out of the gates. If the UI is unwilling to assault the walls, it should withdraw.

- Crusades
It's much to easy to loose units when moving across the map. Unless you’re able to take something close to a bird flights route to your destination you will loose units. This often makes little sense. A typical example is sailing around Spain. I've also lost several units trying to cross from northern France to the Mediterranean to get on a ship, natural features, blocking units and other terrain often makes it very hard to not kick off the 'moving in the wrong direction' penalty.

Agents:
- Too much micro management
Currently I feel it takes way to much time to manage your agents. Too much time is spent getting them from A to B. I would suggest two changes to agents in general:
1) Drastically increase their movement rate (I would suggest double or triple movement rate). They are not an army trying to cross the land, but rather a few individuals. They should be able to move much much faster than a full sized army. In addition, the game play challenge of agents should not be in getting them to their destination. That’s relevant for armies on a campaign but the game play of diplomats should be centered on negotiations with other factions. not spending two decades getting across the map.
2) Allow agents to move through units blocking their path. I can understand the potential tactical element in being able to block agents at chokepoints but the negative impact on the flow of the game play far outweigh this. All it general accomplishes is that you have to spend more time micro managing the agents to get around random obstacles.

Assassins
Personally I'd prefer to see assassins do better against other agents and worse against generals. Killing off merchants, spy’s and generally unwanted, undefended individuals should be heir specialty, not infiltrating a heavily defended camp or castle to kill the leader of an army. Currently the opposite seems to be the case. Assassins generally fair better against generals than against other agents.

Spies
Enemy spy’s that has been revealed on the map should be all but doomed. They are spies; their strength should be to avoid being seen. Once seen they should be easy pickings for other spies, assassins or even army units

Priests
I would LOVE to be able to denounce the priests of other religions if they are in my territory. After all a Muslim Imam IS a heretic in the eyes of the Catholic Church. The way I would prefer to have it work is that in a territory owned by a faction of your religion, priests of your religion can attempt to denounce priests of other religions in the same way you can denounce heretic units.

Inquisition
This is a point that’s been brought up a lot. I'd like to see the option to disallow inquisitorial trials in your territory at the cost a drop in your favor with the pope. For example, if the inquisitor shows up and wants to try to put your general on trial you'll have the option of a) Deny the trial. This would prevent the inquisitor from performing the trial but cost you a lot of favor with the pope, potentially leading to excommunication. b) Allow the trial, potentially loosing your general, possibly getting a small boost of pope favor for not getting in the way of the popes blood hounds. This would also have the side effect of kingdoms being excommunicated being able to simply tell the inquisition to buzz off.. Why would a faction that has already been excommunicated allow the popes inquisitors to burn them at the stake at will?

IrishArmenian

12-06-2006, 01:04

Please, more turns! I cannot stand it when I have 20 provinces when I have about 125 turns left. I feel rushed. Could you release a patch to make it two turns per year? (I know about modding it, but my incursion into modding R:TW made the game unplayable)

kublikhan3

12-06-2006, 22:49

I would like to see a customizable difficulty level. Even if it's only a half-dozen or less options exposed in a UI that would be a good start.

Trithemius

12-07-2006, 08:55

I would like to see a global count added to the swordsman recruitment event that is used to determine the chance of obtaining a Swordsmith Guild.

I would also like to see the Turks have some more units that count towards this event. I think that most primary melee troops should count (so knights, non missile cavalry, spears, bill/halberd/voluge infantry, and swordsmen). As it stands the Turks cannot obtain one of the guilds without some serious armoury construction efforts.

Kraxis

12-07-2006, 14:53

I would like if pavises doesn't count in melee... Currently they do, making pavises crossbowmen terribly powerful in melee as well as in ranged fights.

Bijo

12-08-2006, 13:07

More in-game text would be nice. Like when you right-click a unit in your recruitment tab. I always liked reading the longer texts they put there in RTW.

The option to assassinate your family members. Ain't I cruel? XD

Option to "disband" agents like with army units. I don't know exactly, but I couldn't do this with one of my assassins whom I didn't use anyway. I'd gotten short on money so I had to economize here and there.

- Units seem to react very slowly to orders.
I actually like this (but not all the way).
I'd think that the commander gives the order, who gives it to the commander of the unit somehow and then they react. Whatever the case, I bet it'd be difficult on a battlefield to order issues and have them carried out exactly and perfectly fast the way you'd want them to.
When the battle hasn't started yet and things are more organized following orders must be quicker and more effective. But the more distance or disorganization there is on the field (due to battle conditions and whatever else following orders should be slower and such. Just imagine your general being at one side fighting off infantry and another unit all the way on the other side fighting off cavalry or infantry. I think it'd be very difficult for them to respond quickly.

playboytaxi

12-08-2006, 18:24

Why is not posible to build more then one Castle or city i each provice? Lets say in Constantinople province can be also castle of Edrine (Adrianopol). Or we need more provinces then.

And hey where is Bulgaria?
This province Sofia(today Bulgarian capital) have noting to do with the old Bulgarian capital Preslav which is more East .The name of Sofia in 900 was Sredets.

Kraxis

12-08-2006, 22:14

I wish for cavalry not to be so powerful... I wish that Khazaks can't defeat JHI and Dismounted Gothic Knights by charging them.... Or dedicated anti-cavalry units such as Armoured Spearmen. They are after all the weakest sort of cavalry there is. Yet it is farily easy to do this in custom battle.

Bijo

12-09-2006, 14:29

Overview
When my lands spread far out as I conquer more and more, I start using the Overview screen, and then the Settlements tab. I click on this Settlements tab which will be on the left, and then I check this scroll and right-click a settlements to check it out as this information comes on the right side.
Now, I always have Show Settlement Details on, so when I right-click a settlement (in that list) these details appear on the left on top of the Overview scroll. No: not on top; it just takes away the Overview scroll. This means if I want to continue checking the Overview I've got to again press 'O' to get there, and this is going on all the time.
So what I'd like is to be able to press Escape and then I'd go back to the previous Settlement Overview scroll, just like I can press Escape after right-clicking a building/unit as this information appeared on TOP of the Settlement Details then going back. Same with Trade Details; these also just go back to the Settlement Details scroll.
If this is not fixed/done, it'll take more time to effectively and quickly manage an empire's settlements.

Retinue
I think it's been said already, but the ability to exchange retinues between characters (generals, spies, assassins, princesses, and so forth). Maybe these retinues' ages should be shown and their deaths too so you can't use them infinitely.

Optimization
I said it already, but I'll say it again. OPTIMIZATION of the whole shebang. In this day and age companies, programmers, and the likes, should be able to produce good code, if not very good or perfect. It's as if they all become less and less skilled (or they don't care that much) and rely on available new hardware too much or something like that.
But I respect CA still for being able to pull off a game like this, for its big size and all that comes with it. It's pretty difficult, and they haven't done a bad job, but not a terribly good one either.
For instance, there are many times the game starts lagging in sieges. This especially happens when I have shadows on, even if in non-siege battles it works smoothly. It's not the ladder thing or whatever. It already starts when the screen is paused, nothing's moving, and I'm deploying my troops.

With the optimization goes the Auto-Detect. This must be fixed because as it is now it's almost useless. Sure, we know it's difficult to take into account all the possible existing hardware on PCs but still. CA can pull off so much, why not this? Maybe I want too much perfection :P

Army control, Shift + #
I really hardly use the Shift + # because I don't really need it. When I play I almost micro-manage my units (and use grouping a lot) instead of using this overall way to organize them. But when I DO use the Shift + # I hardly ever works efficiently. Maybe it's because I don't know how to use it, but when I select a group of infantrymen and a group of archer/crossbowmen and want to have the infantry in front and the missiles behind, shouldn't they move close to each other in neat rows? Well, they DON'T. And not just that, as they don't do it efficiently, they don't face the enemy army in a proper way, so I need to order that separately too. Arrrgh.

Moving sideways
I haven't seen an option to move your entire army to the left or to the right totally horizontally and just that, but if it's there somebody please tell me. Sometimes my army is facing the opposing army wrongly. For instance: our infantry lines would not clash rightly but one unit might flank their line and one of theirs could flank mine. It's not always a problem, but the option to move sideways would be GREAT :)

dopp

12-09-2006, 17:56

I would like if pavises doesn't count in melee... Currently they do, making pavises crossbowmen terribly powerful in melee as well as in ranged fights.

If the armor system was working properly they'd have separate values vs ranged and melee...

Would like diplomats stationed in a region to improve relations between the owning faction and the diplomat's, based on the skill of the diplomat. A sort of conversion effect to counter the strange deterioration of relations on VH in place of constantly giving away freebies to the computer to keep it happy.

Would like "empire bloat" eliminated from the game. The game starts handing out bad traits like new toys at Christmas once your treasury hits 50k.

Would like cavalry to be a bit more resilient, particularly against archery. Right now peasant archers rip through advanced plate. The loss of the shield is particularly unbalancing.

I want gunpowder and pikes as Byz. I remember using arquebusiers in MTW as Byz but they were hopeless (I modded them a bit). Now they are good but Byz don't get them... what a way to go.

Would like movement speed in friendly territory to be increased somewhat so that it doesn't take me 3 turns to march reinforcements from one city to the next.

Would like princesses to be able to seal alliances by marrying lesser lords instead of only the crown prince. Would like marrying a lesser lord to seal an alliance rather than switch him over to your side and get your neighbor upset with you for trespassing. Would like a panel to pop up listing available foreign suitors for each unmarried princess that you can use to initiate diplomacy and negotiate for her marriage, or some way of telling who's available other than walking over to check. The way it is now your princesses wander all over the map hoping against hope that someone actually wants to marry them in the next city they visit, then spend the rest of their lives with their newfound husbands trying to flee the country.

Would like the princesses to have a CharmStarter trait that gives them 3 base charm so they don't always give bad traits when married off.

Kraxis

12-10-2006, 01:26

If the armor system was working properly they'd have separate values vs ranged and melee...
Yes, the special _ex line that can't be used. That would be able to do that. But if you fight regular Crossbowmen and Pavises you will notice a difference in their capability in melee. That shouldn't really happen.

At best the pavise should protect the back, but it seems it protects the front in melee.

dopp

12-10-2006, 03:52

Maybe they cower on the ground until the knight gets tired of banging on their shield, then jump up and finish him off.

Slicendice

12-10-2006, 15:23

Princesses born with no charm and difficult to make more charm. They've had 16 years to become charming now I need them to do the work of the crown!

Only been able to marry the first princess and only been able to marry 1 princess from another faction for a total of 2 marriages at once. I've got a lot of princesses and I'd like to be able to use them. Is there a limit on marriages?

Inquisitors are a great new feature and I don't think they should be nerfed. But I think you should only be attacked by them if you have low Christianity rates in a province or are excommunicated. There should be a reason for them to come other than random slaughter. Otherwise I need a way to boost the piety of my generals to protect them. (Anyone know if putting a spy or priest in with my armies will protect them from Inquisitioner?)

I need to be able to pick my heir. I can't do that now and some adoptee or some Dutch general takes my thrown.

Billman don't stand well against calvalry. That's not how I remember them last time.

I can't place troops in front of my gates in a full U shape. I can only put them on the right and directly in front. The left side is impossible to put anything there.

Some cities don't give free support to militia units or don't get the full amount according to Wall type. (too many to mention here)

Merchants are not a significant feature of the game and that's unfortunate. Could you make it so that you need a merchant on a resource, ie. iron, tin, sulfur etc. in order to produce certain units? Make it so your friends and trading partners sell you these things but any faction that is warring against you doesn't. Which means you need a merchant in their territory on their resource so you can make those units. You could even be selective in what you sell another faction. This way it's worth it to cultivate and nurture merchants until they become strong. Even when I was getting 150 to 260 florens for controlling the amber in Russia and Poland my trade from merchants was dwarfed by my total trade.

Acquisitions of merchants should give a reward equivalent to the value and skill of the merchant being seized. Right now I only get 500 Florens for any merchant bought out. What is this Socialism? This alone could boost the power and love of merchants.

No option to ransom, release, or execute captured rebel prisoners. This seems like a good opportunity to boost the dread or chivalry of my patrols.

When taking a city and the battle ends with all enemy routing they should automatically become prisoners. Where they gonna go?

Missile troops shoot all crazy.

Troops don't engage or run all crazy.

Cavalry won't smash into the enemy sometimes and when chasing routers they run all crazy.

Path finding on walls and in cities is all crazy.

I can't transfer ancillaries to my generals.

Definitely would like a "get off my land" feature.

I think the Pope should stop warring Christian faction whenever they fight and regardless of who started it. (like it is right now) This means when you attack a faction you better make it quick and make it count. Plus the Pope orders both factions to stop. So I like it when the enemy attacks anyway and gets excommunicated. Then I can do a quick Crusade on their arses.

Could we armor up our mercenaries and give them any experience bonus' to be had in a castle?

If we are going to get in trouble for crossing our neighbors property then pathfinding for troops and characters should be more careful not to enter that territory.

I get the impression that having spies and assassins in neighbors territory ruins my reputation even if they aren't infiltrating. I dont' think having those units in enemy lands should get you in trouble even if they bump into someone or are seen by their spies or watchtowers. I should only be penalized by infiltration into cities and characters and only when I get caught.

My reputation is dubious but I've never been caught with my spies and assassins and never broken an alliance. I should be golden by now. What's up with that?

My assassins should be able to kill inept diplomats and merchants and even princesses. I don't want to pay 100 florens until some inept diplomat dies. Right now I have to put them all on a ship with 1 boat in the fleet and go attack the rebels.

Bijo

12-10-2006, 16:29

About diplomacy:
The suggested "Get off my land" option mentioned several times sounds great to me. They should REALLY add this. Should've done it as a standard option long ago anyway.

But I have more about this thing. There's this option where you can 'declare a cancellation of Trade Rights' or to 'declare a cancellation of an Alliance'. But it'd be good to see them used in more ways. For instance if you can THREATEN to break an alliance or to cancel trade rights.
What if a faction is your ally and supposedly depending on your military power to assist them? You want something, they want something: demand something and threaten to break the alliance and with that your military assistance.

Same thing for economically weak factions or factions depending on trade (as they all do of course): if there is much trade between yours and theirs true your ports and/or roads you can threaten to cancel the trade.

Example:
You and a faction are neutral and engaging in trade rights, but you're planning to conquer them sooner or later. But to avoid war for some time you'll prepare to weaken them by canceling your trade rights. You do this because maybe you have enough trading connections established anyway or whatever, making lots of money each turn, and you could deal well with it as they'd actually lose a big chunk of their income. Just imagine the possibilities.
Even more! What about pressuring OTHER factions to cancel trade rights with your neutral but soon-to-be foes? When I think of it...... oooooo :beam:
Of course when you would force or convince other factions to cancel trade rights or even alliances with them, your relations might worsen with one and improve with the other. Also the reputation should be handled carefully.

Many possibilities :yes:

Bijo

12-11-2006, 00:06

I have more wishes/suggestions:

In the Overview, then the Agents tab, you can roughly see their positions and their skills and whatever. When I checked this while FINALLY using Merchants, I saw the information saying he was busy trading some kind of good and how much he was making a turn. Now, wouldn't it be nice if there was more information here? I'm talking about other Agents and Military Forces.
Example: you quickly need a Diplomat but your empire's so BIG you can't find one. So you go to Overview and Agents to check it out. Some of these Diplomats already have designations as you pointed them to certain locations. It'd be handy if you could see information here saying that they are underway somewhere already, so you know you don't have to check them out.
Another example would be one of your armies already on the march on you see what destination you chose for them.

During a battle I can't give a number to one single unit. They must be a group to get a number! That sucks.
I use the minimal interface: no radar and time, and the cards are set to slide, and the commands are also set to slide. So the screen is basically free from all the interface things and I'd be more glad if I could also just totally hide the cards. But then I'd have to constantly scroll my view to this particular one unit to select him if I'm organizing a battle all the way up there. I don't feel like pointing my cursor down all the time to select just ONE unit making these cards appear. It costs time.
So in order for me to enjoy it to the most, yeah I put 'em cards to slide so the screen is nice and clean and only use it when selecting one specific unit. Beh.

Kraxis

12-11-2006, 03:41

Only been able to marry the first princess and only been able to marry 1 princess from another faction for a total of 2 marriages at once. I've got a lot of princesses and I'd like to be able to use them. Is there a limit on marriages?

Only heirs can marry... Otherwise your princess will find a suitor and he will become part of the family (like Man of the Hour events), or she can be actively used to make generals defect if they are not married. See a French general? Use the princess to look at him, then there will be a little text that says if there are potential suitors or not in the stack. You can also do the same with your own generals (unmarried of course). That makes them more loyal.

Acquisitions of merchants should give a reward equivalent to the value and skill of the merchant being seized. Right now I only get 500 Florens for any merchant bought out. What is this Socialism? This alone could boost the power and love of merchants.

And I make a lot more most of the time, and generally better enemy merchants give a whole lot. I believe my best is somewhere just below 3000.

I can't transfer ancillaries to my generals.
Some you can (generally objects) most you can't. Seems fitting that you can't just get id of bad ones by giving them to a general you are going to charge into a full stack alone. We can argue on the ancilliaries themselves and their rate of appearance, but that is something else.

My reputation is dubious but I've never been caught with my spies and assassins and never broken an alliance. I should be golden by now. What's up with that?
Feature. When you are playing hard and very hard your diplomatic relations simply have a baseline somewhere pretty low. Your relations will automatically drop to that. You can try to gift yourself onto better terms but it will not last.

dopp

12-11-2006, 11:36

He means reputation, not relations. Never could figure out how to raise it... I'm always very untrustworthy for no apparent reason (never start wars).

hellas1

12-12-2006, 16:35

Hi everyone,

I bought MTW2 and like it. There are obvious bugs though.

Does anyone know the status of the patch?

CA said it would be days, not weeks. Well, where is it? :help:

hellas1-Go Byzantium!

IRPhydeaux

12-12-2006, 16:55

Bijo

12-12-2006, 21:25

I'm sure this has been mentioned before by people, but here it is just in case.

I often receive Missions to do things that have already been accomplished. E.G. I receive a mission to establish diplomatic relations with a country i've allready got trade rights with, I'm asked to blockade a port I am already blockading.
Yep. I confirm if not done already. But this should be posted in the bug list I think.

Furthermore, the option to drag cards of your army on the campaign map to organize them and also it's nice if it's possible just before a battle starts. Even during a battle. Suppose you compose an army of scattered units, wouldn't it be good if you can organize their cards so it looks more clear?
Either that or when assembling armies unit types should be automatically organized properly so it's clear right away. It would save time reading an army's variety and strength, especially the enemy's. At least in your own armies you should be able to drag cards.

Overall with that part I'm saying this game should be more WYSIWYG. Dragging cards is such a simple and obvious task. It's possible before custom battles, why not in the campaign, or did I miss it? If so, give me that bullet right now, lol :P

More options in the options menu:
video:
--options for campaign map graphics:
-animation of trees
-amount of general animation
-animation of water
-low/med/high quality shadows
-etc.
-etc.

--advice levels:
-option to turn off information when you hover cursor over something
AND/OR
-option to set amount of information when hovering cursor over something

What's the use of reading that an army belongs to another faction if you already read in that same pop-up that they have [faction name/description] (different than YOURS, or you have some kind of problem in your brain like short-term memory loss) and that you already see that they are (neutral/allied/at war) with you? Waste of valuable screen space, I tell you.

Furthermore, I wish the programming code of the game to be perfect and optimized XD

Lord Leonard

12-13-2006, 02:05

Furthermore, the option to drag cards of your army on the campaign map to organize them and also it's nice if it's possible just before a battle starts. Even during a battle. Suppose you compose an army of scattered units, wouldn't it be good if you can organize their cards so it looks more clear?
Either that or when assembling armies unit types should be automatically organized properly so it's clear right away. It would save time reading an army's variety and strength, especially the enemy's. At least in your own armies you should be able to drag cards.

Overall with that part I'm saying this game should be more WYSIWYG. Dragging cards is such a simple and obvious task. It's possible before custom battles, why not in the campaign, or did I miss it? If so, give me that bullet right now, lol :P

To visually sort your units on the battle map, highlight all archers for example, hit G to group them and hit G again to ungroup them. You will notice they are pushed to the last slots and are all together. Do the same for cav, artillery, infantry, etc, etc ... and your unit cards are now quite neat. You may then still use groups Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2 and so forth, but it's a nice way to start a battle/deployment.

Ars Moriendi

12-14-2006, 11:58

A bit late for a first patch wishlist since the modifications have already been made public, but here it is :

I'd like the one action per turn not to be counted for diplomats when all I do is enter the negociations screen but not make any offer and just close the scroll - because it happened to me more than once to click the wrong target (especially when the agents/armies stay clustered around a city) and waste a turn. Sometimes it's very annoying as some of the actions are time critical, for example I recently lost a lot of cash when I failed to sell a city due to clicking the wrong agent - the very next turn the settlement rebelled.

fenir

12-17-2006, 03:31

The game in many respects has many improvements over previous, TW game series.

*bows gracefully in Mr R.T. Smith direction* .........."we are not worthy".

But room for improvement, well to improve upon our gaming experiance, is always there.

Please Add and/or fix list....No order just as i have listed them as i have played the game.

1. Titles.....come on guys, you know we were jumping up and down about this one.
Adding titiles gave the general in question the ability to have good trait life.
Doesn't have to be a drop, box, can be a faction sheet addition, and titles adder.

2. What would have been a really added feature...titiles that passed down a family. but the monarch could take away. This allows a role play in several levels.

3. Son's taking over from Fathers, like in MTW - 1. makes the micro managment less a task.

4. We need a base level acumen that is easily seen by the player, the ai has the advantage of quick check looking, we can't all the time, as it would take a week for 20 turns.
Ok we have piety, chivarly, cammand, et cetera... but a base acumen, then with affecting traits, were the general only picks up traits of say 8 to 10 is good, but that we can see the effect of these, and is effected by building, or farm improvements.

5 Roman Empire, cannons and so forth, if they survive in game, then we have to be able to access gunpowder weapons.

6. If you are defending your lands, from a nation, you should gain respect of other nations/pontifex maximus, not lose face.

7 I will add with the other voices over this, as this is a basic over sight.
.........."GET OFF MY LAND".
And when some attacks your ally, we need the ablilty to threaten the attacker that we will join in.

8 It is not right that a friendly or foreign power/nation can sit it's army stack out side of your city.
if it occurs we and AI should be able to order off, or ask to be removed, and/or pay a small sum in respect of the transgression. In the case of chasing a rebel or opposing army, opp's sorry there mate here's a package for you my apolegies. This happening, and resistution / apolegy is forth coming, should not affect relations, unless happens to often.

9. Spy's and assisians. Can we have an option to click maintain subterfurge level for auto building units as they die in the city?
again micro management.

10. Now i know this is wrong, so must be a bug, English Billmen.
Cavalry should be almost eaten alive. We know their history as eater's of all things. Billman are heavy armoured!!!!
That is why the English, and swiss with the early halbariers were such a force.

11. In game there is relationship issues, where by relations are affected by actions. but it does seem that no one, espeically the AI, maintains these.
Relations, need to be more a tune to effecting trade, income, territory and maintenance of relations between parties.
At presant, i have been paying small sums of 1000 florins, ( I think we are still using florins, really should be the soldius), to maintain relations in good order.

In this same vice, would be the defence of lands, prestige should not go down if you have not started the war, if should be enhanced for the defence of.

12. Merchants, great idea....concept is fantastic. But...micro mangement again. for the worth of the merchant, and the chance of losing them in hostile merchant action, for what they bring in, surely doesn't warrant them in any way shape or form.

13. Roman Empire, (byzantines), unit descritpions, Please people, Things like old fashioned in repect of it's units. Lets give credit where it's due, and atleast make the descriptions some what accurate.
Up until the 1300's the byzantine infantry as we call them where some of the best in the medieval world.
Lamellar armour we know today was far in advance of mail armour, and the roman empire was the exponant of this armour.
there was no old fashion about it, or it's units until the late high period and late medieval period.
Prof Dawson in New england university, NSW is the man u need to speak to.
Not far from Brisbane, Mr Smith. I am sure he would be happy to answer any questions, and he has a working lamellar armour set which they have down testing on.

14. Cities and Castles, If we are going to have two types of building levels, then lets atleast give the castle's as pure military level establishments a 2nd level of defence that has a working 2nd gate?
It's far to easy to bust the first and just crack the castle. If we must have two types, then make the castle a castle, make it hard to crack.

15. Castle walls and setting men up.....people....this is not working as i think you intended.
the units using the centre to draw out is not the best, lets get back to what worked well, and draw from the end of a placement unit, and fix the unit settings for wall defence better. RTW was far surperoir in this respect.

16. AI does not like cease fire...why, i have had nearly every nation down on the ropes and still they presist with very demanding bugger off.

17. When fighting, why do 90% of the men in a unit, wander around shaking hands?

18. Unit cohesion....there is none! Please revisit this urgently. Units break and stay broken. It takes them an enternaly to reform.

19. Units that won't draw out in a city/castle road, thats annoying.
You try and draw a unit out to block a access only to find you cannot cover the area needed, and when the attackers come they go around the edges??
Not good.

20. Period starts, they where a great hit in MTW.
You could say, well...early on this and that where strong, and they where weak.
Like starting the Roman Empire in late, when it's units were not so great and it was in a difficult position.
Or high period when england was coming to it's period of power, or HRE in high period, with good units.

21. Crusading armies, taking towns of non enemies, or enemy towns. If there is a crusade, then send it to where it has to go.
And slow down the speed, the fast rush is really over the top. There is no collection of unit's no big stack. this really needs to be revisited.

22. power and prestige, should affect diplomcy talks.

23. The Ai is not protecting it's cities and castles., leaving 1 unit, usually a general in them is not protecting them, had it with the french doing it, and the hungarians, and the HRE.

24. Bishops for the Orthodox factions. I had one with Russia and 1 with Roman empire, and when they died, i never got another.

25. As Constantinople is the Leader/ Emporer is leader of the Orthodox Religon, why is the relationship between Russia and Roman Empire not effecting relations with others?
Also, why isn't there a Georgian or Armenian Faction? Of for that reason a Romanian/ wallachian.

26. Please Change the Regions names back to there proper names. It is so annoying to re - learn "new Names" that a " New personal opinon has put upon them".
Remember, Normandy? Wessux? Bavaia?
A little real honest history in game would go a long way to teaching people, real names of real regions in real history, just like you use to do with .....Eg: there was never a nation called Byzantine/Byzantium.
Rennes Region?? you mean Brittany? or the Duchy of Brittany if we still had titiles? Or the Count of Flanders.
Sounds much better, is true, and please marketing people, we can comprehend. :wall:

27. ok for the love of god (tm) please revisit unit stacks, i just played Roman empire, agains tthe mongols, and seriously, ....i mean seriously......*throws hands in the air*, I beat them in open combat, east of aleppo. But come on.

27b. Inquistors.........WTF........super men in cloaks???? :furious3:

28. Slow the game down. you are over exciting, everything and making things out of context. 4 years to build a 15k building, and 3 years to build a 1.2k building?

Just a few observations.
Unit cards do not seem to be of the same quailty as RTW, nor do the building cards.

Where is our right of getting rid of our useless units? once we spawn them, we can't get rid of them????

Moping up after battles......why don't my light cavalry clean up??
I have yet not once, been able to mop up an entire army?? why, i have light cavalry chasing and back turned army running like mad, crying for mummy, and i can't take them??? now thats a first io don't like.

Unit's seem to have problems moving up between each other.

Need to include a change battle from unlimited to time limited while in battle mode, why???? because i get sick of defending a castle and haivng a 1000 enemy troops sitting around the other side of the gate thats destoryed and not being able to get out with out losing my town/castle.
I have a business to run and cannot sit here for 4 hours as each little fool unit wanders around by itself to be utterly destoryed by my archers and swordsman.

Glorious Achievement !!!!!!! Taking the map is easy, inf act i only get a few missions from my council, i think it's because they can't keep up.
Glorious Achievement are much more fun.

PLease.................. If you have a unit on such armour, and yuou build a better armourer.........then you have upgraded!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
man get sick of finding a unit won't upgrade because someone in front of the computer said no! thats it for them.
If i build a better armourer, why can't i upgrade my men????

AGAIN.....please desciption, taking venice as Hungary......Description says an island, i start my seige, get to battle map....IT'S NOT AND ISLAND!
in fact it says it's hard to take. Rubbish! one of the easiest.

Plague.......where are the markers????????? Unit and City, this is simple stuff.

For diplomcy.......if we are going to have pope elections then include this in diplomacy for the electoral college.....it makes no sense to not have it. Give us the ability to talk to the factions about the popal election......one without the other is just unreal.

Agent pathfinding, micro management, really needs fixing. I am getting sick of having to check on units travel.

ok i need a drink.........

fenir
*going to play MTW 1*