Four Seasons [Archive]

Papewaio

07-12-2002, 10:06

Quote Originally posted by Grifman:
Duh, the game isn't shorter, it has more years than Shogun, almost 400. Quarters would mean a game with 1600 turns! So what difference does it really make?

Grifman[/QUOTE]

Shogun can last up to 120 years. Some peoples Daimyo die of old age in their one hundreds. That is a campaign with 480 turns.

The MTW turns are one per year. This combined with 3 eras spread over 360 years. Means the typical MTW campaign will be 120 turns. A quarter the length of shogun.

It also means you only get a quarter of the battles out of your generals before they depart the mortal coil. This puts more emphasis back onto making high valour units. Which in turn dimishes the RPG aspects of the game.

Also by having seasons you have different battlefield tactics in each season and hence different army configurations to take advantage of these seasonal changes. These different configurations then lead to strategic choices in defense and offensive army compostion, and to when to attack and what can defend in which season. Spring rains, gunners no!!!!!

Example (I play with timer as it forces speedier play and is more of a overall benefit to the AI);

Highly weighted gun armies are easier to defeat across a bridge offense in the spring rain with a heavy armoured melee units (naginata), in winter naginata may be too slow by themselves to take the bridge. In summer you need to cross quickly before the gunners decimate you so a one or two Calvary Archer units need to be deployed to sweep across and then behind the enemy defender. However in winter those calvary would get bogged down so I don't use them in offense against a bridge.

In defending I will use gunners in summer as the amount of ammo is large enough and the seasonal (likely) lack of rain makes them to more effective. But use archers in winter and spring as the timer means they will not be at such a disadvantage with respect to ammo.

Dark Phoenix

07-12-2002, 10:09

My only concern is what choice do they have in fighting conditions as you can have as many turns in Shogun pretty much or until the Giesha comes along.

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"DP is correct" - Shiro

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We may have years, we may have hours,
but sooner or later, we push up flowers

Khan7

07-12-2002, 10:46

The game doesn't have to be too long.

There should be several options. One option to play the full-scale game with season turns. And others to play one specific era, or cut-scene scenario, with the shorter turns.

This way, the uber-hardcore junkies can play the whoooole bigass thing out in 1600 season turns, and for those with less time, they can play the whoole thing out in 400 year-turns, or play, for instance, just a single era, say, 400-500 season turns.

Matt

Thane Talain MacDonald

07-12-2002, 11:05

1600 season turns.....now that would be beyond epic, that'd be breaking new ground!

AvramL

07-12-2002, 11:38

my vote for seasonal turns

LittleGrizzly

07-12-2002, 12:15

if we had monthly turns http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
1600 x 3 = 4800
that sound nice to anyone else ?

oZoNeLaYeR

07-12-2002, 14:18

agreed... let's make it seasonal...

DrNo

07-12-2002, 15:26

I say lets play the game first before judging it.
Darkmoor as already posted that turns can take much longer than in STW due to increased complexity. I know most of us wouldn't mind if the game required say 100 hours play to complete a campaign, but for some this is just too long to keep their interest.
CA have probably done what they thought best to suit, so we should at least wait until we have tried what is on offer before requesting changes.

Mithrandir

07-12-2002, 16:16

yes

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untouchable, unbreakable,elven spirit,Elven soul

TosaInu

07-12-2002, 17:59

Konnichiwa,

Optional 1, 3 or 12 months a turn. Leave it to the user. I don't think it will be hard to implement it, or even just add it to the current game. They already have the thing balanced for 12 months a turn, all that's needed is an increase of resolution http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000509.html.

Note: a building time that is expressed in 5 years (a simple castle) would just be shifted to 60 months, a peasant that has the minimal available trainingtime of 1 year should get the minimal 1 respectively 3 months and still be 1 year in the 1 year/turn.

As construction/building times are in editable text files a user can always fine tune it.

As you only have say 1,000 gold in 1 year/turn, you'll also only have the same 1,000 gold when you have 12 turns a year: it'll be impossible to perform rushings (and then, if that is what a certain gamer seeks in an offline game, so what?). But 12 turns a year or 4 (seasonal) add a lot of tactic and strategical options for those who want that.

The second sad thing is that the walls of a castle under siege gets repaired: bullshit.
Save the map after leaving the battle, and update the game so that it uses this map the next turn and not the default map. You can deploy immobile trebuchets closer to the keep every month/3 months. And each turn you run the risk that a relieve force will show up. What's the use of 100 units, 12 fractions and 400 years if you even can't properly do these obvious things?

Please, forgive my disappointment.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

Saki

07-12-2002, 18:07

was also a little dissapointed to see a 1 turn =1 year. For me personally ,the longer it takes to complete a campaign the better.

Darkmoor_Dragon

07-12-2002, 18:40

Sorry folks but i think you're being too presumptuous assuming that the move to years is "bad" without having played anything of the campaign game.

Im a strat fan and i wouldn't want to play the game AS MUCH if it used seasons: It would be too much time spent doing nothing waiting for build queues etc and be too sprawling.

It is impossible to compare seasonsal gaming on the STW map with that in MTW - its a FAR different strategy game not simply relegated to size. THe economics and management is far more detailed and requiring of attention (unless you go for the "auto-queues" and even then...).

The useage of years is the right one imo - the removal of seasonal choices for attacks however is another matter.

It allready takes 100's of hours to finish a long campaign, different era campaigns do "not" end at 120 years and 120 turns is not some mythical "average game", half the point of the introduction of the glorious achievements was to break up the SHEER size of the game into something that can give "stage post" goals to achieve in a vast game.

A stirct comparison to experiences in STW simply is not valid.

[This message has been edited by Darkmoor_Dragon (edited 07-12-2002).]

Nelson

07-12-2002, 18:47

Monthly turns would over do it. Think how many times you would advance through a turn doing nothing at all while you wait for things to get produced. What is now a two turn unit would take 24 turns. Totally impractical IMO.

The trouble with time scales is movement. However, even yearly turns can be rationalized somewhat. It will take more years to reach the Holy Land from Western Europe than it indeed took. On arrival though, you may conquer it in one or two turns which is much faster than the Crusaders managed. So it all comes out in the wash after a fashion.

I might miss seasons I’ll admit but I need to play the game. We may need to rethink our expectations concerning total conquest. Tokugawa Ieyasu did eventually control all of Japan. Nobody controlled the whole map in Medieval. 120 turns should (had better be) enough time to meet one’s victory conditions in the new game no matter the time scale. That for me is the paramount issue.

TosaInu

07-12-2002, 20:24

Konnichiwa,

It's fine if you want years for whatever reason, I want seasons and maybe even months. Points is, that this should be choice of the individual gamer.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

Nelson

07-12-2002, 20:33

I agree that an option wouldn't hurt so long as one year = 4 seasons = 12 months. The game would play differently but so what. I'd be the last person to say no to an option.

There are so many aspects of the game to be curious about. Sieges, trade, navies. I think we all pretty much know what to do tactically. It's the strategy that will demand study.

Kraxis

07-12-2002, 20:42

YES!

I see some problems with the Crusades. If I launch a Crusade from Wessex or worse still from Scotland, it can take enough years for my leader of the Crusade to die en route... So I'm forced to take the sea route and not gather as much support.

I seriously thought they had made those three periods, because it might have been too much with seasonal turns over 366 years. That would have made each period comparable to a long Shogun game...

Wavesword

07-12-2002, 23:29

I'm all in favour of slow timescales, tho' I understand that in Medieval times things did take years to plan when they involved multiple kingdoms. I just can't imagine myself relating very well to a game that goes at anything approaching Civ speed.

JRock

07-13-2002, 03:24

SEASONAL. PUT IT BACK TO SEASONAL, CA.

and fix the siege engine soldiers so they can fill in for under-manned siege engines. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/tongue.gif

JRock

07-13-2002, 03:30

Here's the link for the .com forum thread!
http://pub24.ezboard.com/fshoguntotalwarfrm5.showMessage?topicID=634.topic

Thane Talain MacDonald

07-13-2002, 04:06

I think the general agreement is that we'd prefer it as an option than not having it at all. Indeed, I bet many in the community would be willing to wait and extra week or two so they could implement it, eh?

TosaInu

07-13-2002, 04:22

Konnichiwa,

6 months if necessary.

But also get rid of autorepair castle walls and update the map for the province accordingly after knocking down some sections.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

hunkypex

07-13-2002, 04:44

Id have to really see how it plays with the one turn one year option. But id like their to be a 4 seasons or bi yearly option. Ive got the time if ca have the game.

Kraxis

07-13-2002, 16:09

I don't know, but it seems Darkmoore has been scared away... UPS! I actually have a question for him now. Damn!

Well, I wanted to know if it wasn't a pain in the *** that you loaded up your army with heavy cav and heavy infantry for an attack and it turned out to be a blizzard. Bye bye army (if the enemy is a light army).

tootee

07-13-2002, 16:21

seasons are good.

Stuie

07-13-2002, 18:02

I think we should play the game, give it a chance, see how it works, and then roast the devs alive.

However, obviously not having played the game, I think 6-month turns would be best. That wouldn't increase the number of turns to the point that casual gamers would be scared off from buying the product (this is about sales, remember) while giving the player some control over the weather to be faced in battle. Also, Darkmoor mentioned that each turn takes A LOT longer to finish than in Shogun, because there is so much going on. While a lot of us wouldn't mind an epic game that requires months to finish one campaign, you're again losing the casual gamer.

As for movement, and I don't think Darkmoor ever answered this, are we sure that land movement is still limited to one province per turn? Maybe the turn is one year, but you can move four times on land? I don't know...

TosaInu

07-13-2002, 19:42

Konnichiwa,

1 optional 1 month/turn, 3 months/turn 12 months/turn.

Players who are scared from playing 1,600 turns can also choose to play only one of the eras (there'll be three of them I believe, so only about 100 years each).

The true reason seems this: making seasons add an immense load of strategic and tactic options, exactely what many of us want, but the stategic AI must be made aware of this. A lot of work that's bypassed by using a year/turn and having a dice decide about all those difficult things. Adding more sprites seems to be more important than making the basics good.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

JRock

07-13-2002, 20:18

Quote Originally posted by Stuie:
I think we should play the game, give it a chance, see how it works, and then roast the devs alive.[/QUOTE]

No, see, that's what they want - once they've gotten you to buy the game, they will just ignore you. They won't care because they have your money and that's all that matters.

Darkmoor_Dragon

07-13-2002, 20:56

nah im still here - just chuckling at all the assumptions and various "urban legends" about what you can and cant do in MTW because there arent any seasons.

TosaInu

07-13-2002, 21:13

Konnchiwa Darkmoor Dragon,

Please prove use wrong.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

Dark Phoenix

07-13-2002, 21:14

Darkmoor how are seasons done in the battles ? do they give you an option on what time of the year that you can attack?

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"DP is correct" - Shiro

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We may have years, we may have hours,
but sooner or later, we push up flowers

Darkmoor_Dragon

07-13-2002, 21:22

DP - not atm no - which i think is a loss.

On attacking you get a wider choice of days than you did in STW.

Weather is generated in terms of "Likely weather" by what province you are attacking - thus more likely to get rain in scotland than the sahara.

Its also worth bearing in mind that the "weatherman" gets it wrong at times also.... "clear day" may well turn into rain.

Darkmoor_Dragon

07-13-2002, 21:29

Quote Originally posted by TosaInu:
Konnchiwa Darkmoor Dragon,

Please prove use wrong.
[/QUOTE]

Quote Players who are scared from playing 1,600 turns can also choose to play only one of the eras (there'll be three of them I believe, so only about 100 years each).[/QUOTE]

Era's dont work like that.

The Era only really dictates the starting point of the technology tree and which factions start with what provinces.

If you play "Early Era" you aren't restricting yourself to some short game - simply starting where there are no developed provinces and at the bottom of the tech tree... you still play all the way through the game (if you want).

Same applies to Glorious Achievements - game doesnt end at the dates and you dont "fail" if youd ont achieve them - you just dont score any points for them... you can still go on to conquer the world.

Hardly something to use to "justify" seasons imo.

TosaInu

07-13-2002, 21:53

Konnichiwa,

How about all those other points raised?

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

Puzz3D

07-13-2002, 22:02

However, the tech tree ends and all your people die of old age right? In Shogun, you loose if it goes on too long. It's not open ended.

Darkmoor_Dragon

07-13-2002, 22:08

A game which you lose if you run out of time to win it in?

Never...

Sorrya bout being facitious but im struggling to see the point and im still wandering about the reference to Monsta?

JRock

07-13-2002, 22:12

Quote Originally posted by Darkmoor_Dragon:

Hardly something to use to "justify" seasons imo.[/QUOTE]

Erm, not quite what the point was. We were saying that if they WERE to implement 4 turns per year (aka Seasons), people who didn't want to play it all the way through could just choose to play one Era.

BUT since you say Eras don't work that way, the conclusion THEN is that the BEST course of action would be to allow the PLAYER to choose how many months each turn equals.

Darkmoor_Dragon

07-13-2002, 22:19

the number of months PER turn radically alters both gameplay and how the game would need to be balanced.

It is not as simple as changing years into months and everything else works the same way.

By doing that you wuld need a completely new set of glorious achievements er faction for starters as those achievements are based on the number of TURNS needed to achieve them. THe same applies to conquering the whole map - its TURN-based... as are production queues, building times and so forth - this really cant be that hard to understand.

To change to seasons in itself would require major re-working and re-balancing - to allow a user-defined range would require the same for EVERY possible option.

And that is a massive undertaking.

JRock

07-13-2002, 22:40

Quote Originally posted by Darkmoor_Dragon:
By doing that you wuld need a completely new set of glorious achievements er faction for starters as those achievements are based on the number of TURNS needed to achieve them.

Well, gee, whose fault is that? LOL. Perhaps they shouldn't have made those things turn-based, but year based instead? That way more turns per year would automatically work into the framework just fine.

THe same applies to conquering the whole map - its TURN-based...

Erm, I would think conquering the whole map would be determined by who has defeated everyone else and taken the territories, not the number of turns that have elapsed.

To change to seasons in itself would require major re-working and re-balancing

They could have just left it in from Shogun...
[/QUOTE]

Kraellin

07-13-2002, 23:26

darkmoor,

since you seem to have become the CA liason of late, could you find out why the move to yearly turns as opposed to seasonal was done? i mean, i simply dont get why this was done. i can fill in the blanks on my own, but that tends to be somewhat inaccurate at times.

the things i see here that are going to be a problem reconciling in my own mind are things like, it takes a year for a ship to move from one sea zone to another, winter is gone, massing troops on one's own border to attack an adjacent country/province and then walking across the border takes a year, sieging a castle MUST be done all in the same year or the castle is miraculously rebuilt while under siege, trade will be ultra slow, diplomatic couriers take forever, only one battle per year can be fought in any given province/country/sea zone, only 1 revolt per year can occur in any given province/country, horse armies become turtle armies, and so on. there's prolly others as well, but i think you get the point...reality gets a bit screwed in time here. i just quite understand the justification here for yearly turns as opposed to seasonal or monthly.

someone posted that making turns monthly would be too boring because you'd always be waiting for things to happen, but isnt that why there's a 'next turn' button? the tw series lends itself better to historical re-creation than perhaps any other game out there, yet this move condenses time making these recreations less accurate and perhaps even impossible. timing is everything in war...and diplomacy, and, even in trade. by condensing time like this, arent we making more of a generic, sort of squashed-in-together universe?

my observations of threads here in the dojo show that a lot of folks have a keen interest in history and historical re-enactments and what ifs. the tw series has provided the best venue to date for doing this. your customers (notice how i've moved you into the CA camp here, darkmoor :) are, at least in part, the kind of folks that would find tabletop battles interesting. and tabletop folks are, in my experience, ummm, what's the word here...fanat, er, dedicated to their hobby ;) the cry from the forums has as a common theme, over time, give us detail. give us options. give us control. give us the ability to re-create or to simply create anew. and CA/DT have done much to provide this and we hope will continue to do so. so, rather than a rant, which as you point out, would be rather unfair, not having the actual game yet, i simply pose it as a question; how is the game better for having gone to a yearly turn rather than seasonal? how does this satisfy the customer more so than the seasonal turns?

i would also point out that since there is no demo, nor one forthcoming, for the campaign portion of the game, it does warrant asking these questions, since folks will have to buy to try and we all know how difficult it is to return software. so whereas i would normally say to folks, try the demo and see for yourself before you complain, i obviously cant, in this case.

as for myself, i'll buy the thing anyways, if for no other reason than to make maps ;) most of the games i buy these days have an editor or one can be downloaded, so i'm easy, but we've got some real fanatics running around here that arent quite as easy ;)

K.

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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

Black Prince

07-13-2002, 23:31

This is the first time I have registered to go on one of these discussion groups - and only because I was so suprised about the change from seasons to years. Personally I'm not too bothered about the weather and battles thing, although this does help increase the realism, but what really concerns me is the turn based realism of only being able to move one province every year - but maybe this is not the case - could someone who has played it please let us know how many provinces you can move by land in one turn.

I know it's not a total simulation of reality, but if you want to believe that you can only move one province by land in one year then you might as well have a fantasy game rather than a game supposedly based on history.

Some other people have mentioned about the effect on RPG elements - I think these would be effected, I was looking forward to my generals being more interesting characters and developing during the game - but doesn't seem there will be much chance of this.

Regarding time taken to play - most of the 1600 turns will probably be very quick, especially early on when you don't have a lot of provinces, and also because you can't fight battles every turn - at least I don't I always run out of troops quickly if I do this. I find that one of the things about Shogun is that it doesn't take too long to play and actually I wish the strategy bit was a bit more involved and took a bit longer - so I'm not worried about spending longer on each turn, anyway if it's such a great game then the longer each game lasts the better - just makes the whole experience richer.

It would be much better if they had kept the seasons in I think, but if they thought it would be unmanageable then just reduce it so that it started in say 1200ish.

Darkmoor_Dragon

07-14-2002, 00:05

Has to be a quick reply Krael b4 i go out:

This is all my opinion - nothing to do with CA.

1: The game was thought to be "too big" so they switched to years. I agree with them on that.

Next "general" point is that most folks seem to still be in a STW frame of mind (totally unsurprisingly and its not a criticism) in terms of what you can and cannot do in "any given move".

In MTW you are doing a LOT more than in STW - LOTS LOTS more. You arent fielding 2 or 3 armies but 20 or 30. You have dozens and dozens and dozens of agents, dozens and dozens of priests, dozens and dozens of assassins, dozens and dozens of spies, inquistors etc etc and hundreds of ships in dozens and dozens of fleets.

The scale is far different to the easy management in STW of a few border armies and some docile provinces behind the frontlines.

This in itself makes the game far more "intensive" in terms of monitoring what is going on and how to react to it - it also, obviously, requires more player time.

The overall "objective" of the game is a medieval conquest (if you like) set over 400 years or so but on playing in the new scale of complexity it is clear that 4 moves per year made the game "too big" a sprawling leviathon that no longer fulfilled its (maybe) primary role of providing a "framework" in which the individual battles "mean something".

Now the seasonal weather effects on battles is really another issue and hopefully CA will change that...but in "real terms" "a move is a move" on the campaign map and they've just happned to call those moves a year and base their set targets on xyears in history.

Now i can and do understand why people would want to play seasons (or even months) but, to try to do so in MTW would make it majorly boring and majorly sprawling.

When you have the potential to be easily playing half a dozen 1 hour+ battles PER move you begin to realise how 2slowly" the campaign game can move - make that 4x as much or 12x as much and the game is monumental.

Now - the point has been made that "you can just play one era" or even "limit the scope to just the 1200's".

Well - that's fine but thent he arguement is "why so few unit types?" - because we're back to a STW-esque environment now and a limited time period with limited variations in tech and unit types.

I DO see how such a game would be appealing and I DO see how such a sub-game of 400 moves per century and just play Early could be good - but, as stated, you're adding in another entire sub-game that requires balancing and adjusting for itself that is different to that in the overal game.

It's shouting add-on/mod - but how much time do yo add to a game before it comes out to get it all in in one shot? Is MTW "No good" without such an option?

My answer, having played and played it is: No way Jose...its allready BIG (caps,bold,exclamation mark) and teh "constant" change in tech keeps the player on their toes needing to pay attention to building and tech trees, chaning out units, upgrading units and changing dozens and dozens of ACTIVE campaigning armies across 100 provinces.

(going in 3 minutes wife on my shoulder as i type)

so - from experiene what they've produced isnt STW, and you play it somewhat differently and it plays itself differently (not to forget the way the factions play against you arent as simple as the STW dominate everything - remember some factions play to maintian a status-quo).

ITs a different game - the strict comparisons to STW dont always apply to MTW but its those strict comparisons that are generating the flak.

Its impossible for me to "pass-over" the differences here - and my intial reaction was similar "Wot no seasons" - having had time to play it however seasons on the campaign game weren't even a consideration but remained on the battle section.

(got to go sorry)

The overal pont is: It isnt STW, it doenst play like STW and is FAR "grander" in player involvement than STW - and these things count and change the players perspective on "seasonal moves".

/em shrugs

Food time...

JRock

07-14-2002, 01:31

Quote In MTW you are doing a LOT more than in STW - LOTS LOTS more. You arent fielding 2 or 3 armies but 20 or 30. You have dozens and dozens and dozens of agents, dozens and dozens of priests, dozens and dozens of assassins, dozens and dozens of spies, inquistors etc etc and hundreds of ships in dozens and dozens of fleets.
[/QUOTE]

Exactly why we want more than one turn per year so we can better make use of all those things.

I don't know about you but my goal is not to rush through the game and conquer the known world within 400 turns in some sort of "race against time". My goal is to take my time and enjoy it and conquer the enemy bit by bit and sort of slowly bleed them to death. I want to ENJOY the game not rush through it just to say I beat it.

By not giving us the option to choose which manner we'd like to play the game in, it seems like it's CA's way or the highway. And maybe that is fine, but I would just think they would have done well to leave it more in line with Shogun's seasonal style of turns instead of one turn per year which is sort of silly considering you're moving an army only once a year and it can only one province a year. Bleh.

[This message has been edited by JRock (edited 07-13-2002).]

[This message has been edited by JRock (edited 07-13-2002).]

Action

07-14-2002, 02:49

While my gut feeling is that seasonal turns would be better, I think that 1 year turns could work too if they made some changes from STW.

If it takes a full year for some light cavalry to move from normandy to brittany, I won't be happy though.

But, if they let us move two provinces per turn through friendly territory, make most minor structures finish in a turn, let us train multiple units per turn (especially shinobi type units, not so much military units) then 1 year turns could work, and could work well. After all, the scale of the MTW map is much much larger than the scale of the STW map. So you should be able to cross a smaller percentage of the map in a year. But 1 province per year seems too slow to me. We will just have to wait and see what they did with it.

[This message has been edited by Action (edited 07-13-2002).]

Gregoshi

07-14-2002, 06:23

I did a quick look up of medieval battles, mostly from the Hundred Years War. Of 24 battles, all but 4 were fought between March and September, and two of those four were fought in September. It seems that winter (in colder climes) was not the time to fight battles. Therefore, one of the four seasons is eliminated as not being practical for fighting battles during that time period.

A question for the Europeans in this forum: does the weather in Europe (overall) vary significantly between March and September? Or is where you are in Europe a bigger factor during these months? If I understood D_D, it sounds like where you fight impacts the weather (Scotland vs Spain). As for having seasons for differing weather in MP battles, it seems to me like you need to be more concerned with where the battle is in MTW instead of the season in STW, i.e., you don't take a gun army to Scotland. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

The only question/concern I have about yearly turns was that expressed earlier regarding moving long distances - taking a decade to just march across the map. Perhaps D_D can tell us a little more about this.

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Gregoshi
A Member of Clan Doragon

Darkmoor_Dragon

07-14-2002, 06:36

That why ya want to have a navy ;-)

Seriously - if you look at the map you'll see there are only a relative few that you cant reach within a move or 2 from the sea.

There's also the point that "why would you be marching an army across europe?" (and, yes, im serious) - you cant march armies through friendly, neutral or enemy lands without fighting - so its not that. Its not crusades as they work differently. If its building up an army and moving them to a border toa ttack: then you should be moving them by sea if you want to rapid-deploy, if you haven't got a fleet or open sea routes ..well tough luck, thats why you build fleets and sea routes in MTW, they aren't just for trading (seea bove point on most inland provinces not being far from the sea).

As to the weather - Blimmey, the weather changes significantly in one day in Britain, the only consistent thing in March-Spetember is that it WILL rain..as it does from September to March also.

The Summer of '76 is still famous in Britian - because we actually had one (a summer).

Gregoshi - your points about weather and army-types is very good.. that's an excellent way of putting things.

If you take super-heavy infantry to the desert expect them to get tired fast because its going to be hot... hot n dry, hot n wet, or hot n sandy...but it will be hot.

If you take a gun army to scotland hope you get a sunny day - dont rely on one.

(But at the same time i still think we should get the Season of attack -> Day of Attack actions entering battles - it upsets little and seems simple to achieve without removing the strategies of above - it wll still be risky to take a gun army into a wet province and expect to get good weather /em shrugs)

Darkmoor_Dragon

07-14-2002, 06:40

Quote I would just think they would have done well to leave it more in line with Shogun's seasonal style of turns instead of one turn per year which is sort of silly considering you're moving an army only once a year and it can only one province a year. [/QUOTE]

And it can only .... one province a year?

Isnt there a word or two missing there jrock?

Wavesword

07-14-2002, 06:53

I posted a message earlier that didn't come up, so I'm paraphrasing. Basically I talked about how CA has apparently provided lots of modding capability for the tactical map, and this is involved with the fact that hardcore players are likely to head straight for MP, and there is no MP strategy map. Unless the AI has come on in leaps and bounds (snicker) most modders in our community are going to be thinking of MP applications. Perhaps understandably CA didn't want to bother with all the work of making the strategy map severely moddable when the very people who'll use those tools will likely be playing MP more than anything. I personally play SP only and mod things but I'm a minority.

MJDore

07-14-2002, 07:23

I agree with making it years, but i liked the seasons in STW.

They could make a timer which, lets say, every 5 mins, changed season. So during your year it would cycle through the seasons.

Summer --> Spring --> Winter --> Autumn --> Summer etc...

And the weather would change accordingly

MJDoré

Thane Talain MacDonald

07-14-2002, 09:34

Darkmoor: You seem to think that we can only have one choice! NONE of us are arguing that we should make it seasons only, but rather that it should be an option. Major undertaking or not, if the people on forums, which represent the more dedicated fans of the series, are going to be less willing to purchase it because of this, and I've seen quite a few folks say this has negatively impacted their opinion of the game to a serious extent, then it would make good business sense to integrate an option for seasonal turns even if game balance is a little off and it delays release by a month or two. All you have to say is that the game is designed to be played in a yearly mode and seasons are a 'beta' addition not supported by EA Support, much like the toolsets in modern games like Warcraft III.

Thane Talain MacDonald

07-14-2002, 09:49

If all else fails they could release the game without it and create an patch that put the option in. The people who wanted it would wait to purchase, but at least they would purchase.

JRock

07-14-2002, 10:32

Quote Originally posted by Darkmoor_Dragon:
And it can only .... one province a year?

Isnt there a word or two missing there jrock?[/QUOTE]

MOVE.

It can only MOVE one province a year.

Choco

07-14-2002, 12:21

From what I have read I think We should be able to "control" better the weather we are going to fight our battles in.

And although I understand the reasons supporting the move from "seasons" to "years" I wonder if in effect the game will allow to move only 1 sector (province) away per turn (year)

Mighty absurd if we need a whole year to move an unit from England to France.

Anyway, perhaps I am misreading and that is not the case. I would appreciatte some more info abouth how far or long we can move our units in one turn (year) http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

AvramL

07-14-2002, 12:40

I agree, we should play the game before passing judgement. But I do also champion having two seasonal turns a year; summer and winter. Summer is the campaigning season with battles fought and troops moved, buildings built etc. while winter is the planning,recuperating, possibly beseiging time of year where tasks like building occur more slowly. Oh nad BTW, I never played shogun, so I don't really know exactly how it was done there.

Kraellin

07-14-2002, 12:42

darkmoor,

thanks for your reply.

i think i understand. if i'm reading you correctly, then all that's really happened here is a change in relative scale, but like you say 'a turn is still a turn', so that in fact, they could have just made a turn not even designated as to how much time had passed; that it just really isnt an importance. ok. i can see that. turns are always arbitrary anyways, a day, a week, a month, a season, a year....really doesnt matter for game PLAY. the only significance here is the one in our own minds on how long or short we believe things would take or not, but that as far as game PLAY, it really doesnt matter.

so, when that army is moving from spain to france across the border we just dub in that it has to hunt, tend the sick, refresh horses, do laundry, etc, but that the time isnt really '1 year', the true time is really '1 turn', and that any given length of time assigned per turn is going to be off somewhere, somehow and is, for the purposes of game play, irrelevant.

ok. fair enough. i think, now that i look at it, that the only way that 'time' would ever work out for each event, action, occurrence, would be if the campaign game were in real time, not that it shld be or shldnt be, but i look at how europa universalis is done and i wonder.

ok, one last thing before i drop this. if there are 3 relative eras in this game why not make 3 separate games; maybe 1 original and 2 expansion packs as separate games? in fact, let me go a bit further on this. i'm going to buck some of the stuff i said above here, but hear me out, this is just brainstorming here...something maybe for the future. let's twist this thing around a bit. let's put the campaign mode in real time and make the time scale adjustable as a slider. actually, it wouldnt be 'real' time, it would be ongoing time scaled how you wanted it. you could adjust this to say, 1 minute = 1 day or slide it up and 2 minutes is 1 day, 3 minutes is 1 day, and so on. that scale might not be workable as is, but you get the idea. your ships, armies, envoys, messengers, traders, raiders, and so on would ALL be moving slightly based on their base speed and the time scale, if they'd been given orders, of course. since this is single player it really doesnt matter if one slides the time slider backwards and forwards to speed things up at times and slow them down at others or even pause and handle a rash of things needing handling at a given time. battles automatically sort of freeze time on the campaign map (maybe) and get played out in true real time, like they are now. battle over, the campaign resumes. every unit would have a base speed based on reality. the time slider simply speeds all these up or slows them down. you could even add 'stops' for when an event occurs that slows time way down or stops it so that you could handle things. since they've added in auto-handlers to auto-manage certains aspects and given that you could slow time down or even stop it and zoom time forwards during boring periods, i think this might be a workable solution for everyone. the table toppers get what they want and the arcade folks get what they want and the builders get what they want.

at any rate, that aint gonna happen in mtw but maybe for the future. i just hate posing a problem without also posing a possible solution.

ok, enough of that. i do thank you, darkmoor, for taking up the gauntlet on CA's behalf and sitting in here and answering our questions. make sure CA is paying you more than we are; they need a good PR man ;) and remind the guys at CA that all this whining is a good sign they've got a hit. folks never talk this long about games they dont like ;)

K.

------------------
The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.

Vas

07-14-2002, 13:20

What's the point of turn-based? I want real time.
Here's a simple solution tho.
Administration = 1 per year
Battle = 4 per year (1 per season)

And here's a proposal.
Still perhaps a better simulation is 1 month per turn where day passes constantly. When 30 days have run out, your time of management will end and you have to press enter and take actions. Well, it does not have to be in real time but that will solve the problem of overloading the player by limiting the time spent each turn.

In addition, every unit/ action will be opeartional again after a given period in the scale of month. So you can have a phrase difference and hence more and better strategy.

TosaInu

07-14-2002, 18:32

Konnichiwa,

England seems famous for rain throughout the year. But Europe isn't England alone. While The Netherlands also have a lot of rain, we also seem to have some not rainy days. Temperature fluctuates from -10 degrees celcius to 30 degrees celcius. Climate is changing (I'm not crediting that to the greenhouse effect, I also don't), but in the past we had some 'good' winters, starting as early as november.

Germany, also a European country, is quite different again. Bloody hot in summer, starving cold in winter.

In your eyes a turn is a turn. It just isn't.

I do not entirely agree with Kraellin, a turn isn't a turn. Each season has clearly distinct properties (that's a bit flattened in our current era), I challenge you to name me countries that aren't affected by seasons. Therefore a turn isn't a turn. Yes, a turn is a turn when you use years, always the same change to get this or that, you just can't plan to attack in cold or heat.
Also do note the training time of units: 1 year for peasants, and also 1 year for feudal Knights. It would more be like 3 months for peasants and 4 years for a knight (I skip the squire phase here). Note: production times in crusaders_unit_prod11.txt are listed in seasons.

As weather is clearly different in the 4 seasons, each turn can have a specific role: defensive or offensive. A year turn always offers the same thing (the only difference is randomnes) and thus it takes away the strategic depth.
It doesn't take a year to march an army from the Netherlands to Germany and it certainly doesn't take a year to cross The Canal. You like year/turn, I don't and I never will. Solution: optional seasons or year.

Kraellin did also say something wise (he nearly always does), players expect something in a game. As MTW is an attempt to reflect European warfare in medieval time (note that I don't use simulation here!), skipping such a significant aspect of it (seasons) is a huge drawback.

I do understand that there are people who don't care about this, but others do.

I remember Ceasar II, it had some accelerated real time. You could see a day pass in some 2 minutes. I'm not completely sure about whether I'ld like that for TW, as the concept of a divided turn based strategy and real time tactical battles is the most appealing thing (I remember now that this is not a new concept, Lords of the Realms II, but STW did this much better).

------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

Black Prince

07-14-2002, 19:16

Darkmoor

If you have dozens of spies/agents/armies etc to manage then why can't we see them on any of the screenshots of the campaign game - seems to be roughly the same as for a faction in Shogun as far as I can make out - obviously you get more as you conquer more (as in Shogun) but I can't really see that it looks so different.

Can you confirm that you do move just one province a turn by land as well - this for me is the worst part of it - at least they should give your armies the ability to move more provinces if they are doing the time this way.

Darkmoor_Dragon

07-14-2002, 20:02

No spies in screenshots? hmph - don't worry that'l soon be resolved....

As i said on another thread its difficult to isolate individual game aspects and judge the game singularly by them - this whole "movement" issue is one of them:

The utilisation of fleets and sea routes is a new key factor in the game over STW - if you want to move stuff rapidly the best way is by sea. If you look at the map you'll notice that there are very few provinces that are far from the sea, maybe one or two moves away.

The "theme" of marching armies across vast landscapes wouldn't really be the best way of moving troops about both for a normalised army and because if you want to capture a distant province crusading is probably a better way to do it.

"I can only move one province at a time by land" doesn't translate into any form of a problem in MTW - no more than "I can only move one province at a time in STW", a move is a move is a move... and i still struggle to see how any change in this basic setup would improve the gameplay.

Neither is the comparison of troop construction times a default means for comparison now - varying support costs and construction of required buildings vastly changes the situation from that of "but i can build both X and Y in 1 turn" - you can't compartmentalise in that fashion because it isnt the full picture.

Now some folks think a breakdown of seasons is good for a "campaigning and a planning" set of moves - again its not a "bad" idea per-se but aren't we straying from the point again? Do we now want a game with periods of doing nothing because of the weather? Realistic or not again it comes back to gameplay... choices of seasonal weather for battles is a good thing - a fixation with seasonal or monthly turns for longevity or scale is another matter entirely.

Why not make 3 separate games? Ask CA - i don't know. I would imagine, as stated previously, its because they wanted the scope and variation that the 3 eras give in terms of diversity of units and the tech tree - is it so easily forgotten that a major criticism of STW was the "sameness of units and the paucity of the tech tree"?

Apparently it is...

Puzz3D

07-14-2002, 20:46

Kraellin,

The move to 400 years is significant. They wanted 400 years because you get a lot of technology change over a long period. You get a big tech tree and can incorporate 100 unit types into the game. More is better right? Aren't 100 unit types better than 14 unit types? It doesn't matter if the combat system can't actually significantly differentiate 100 unit types does it? It doesn't if you think more is better.

The seasonal turns were in there in the beginning as can be seen in an early screen shot. However, the game became bigger than what they had in mind with 400 years, 100 units, 12 factions and larger map all combining together. So, they axed the seasons. They also axed some of the planned units because I think they are down to 60 unit types.

To me, retaining the seasons and shortening the timespan covered would have been a better solution because it would have been an evolution of the STW strategic gameplay. What we have in the turn based part of MTW is a move in the direction of a game like Civilization. Unfortunately, by doing that they have lost an important strategic element of STW.

I was hoping to be able to send a crusade to the holy land with this game, but you clearly can't do that. You can't put troops in friendly territories. As Darkmoor says, you can't march across the map. So, the movement on the strategy map is still basically like Risk.

From the demo, it does look like the 3D battles are an evolution of STW battles. I'm glad they didn't decide to remove some tactical effects, and then start making statements that battles were better because there were more troops on the field. This is where the game excels and is unique. They definitely have very nice 3D battle engine.

Darkmoor_Dragon

07-14-2002, 20:55

*cough cough*

As stated on numerous occaisions Crusades work differently - you CAN put them in friendly, neutral even enemy provinces and you can walk them across the map...but it doesnt take 20 moves (although doing so may be advantageous [or not] - see CRUSADES thread for info)

Puzz3D

07-14-2002, 21:20

Darkmoor,

Quote, "sameness of units and the paucity of the tech tree"

That's what makes the battles comprehensible and elegant. Too many different unit types causes confusion. I don't see the 60+ units in MTW as a good thing for the online game. Creative Assembly is never going to spend the time needed to balance all those units for online play. It's a huge undertaking.

TosaInu

07-14-2002, 21:20

Konnichiwa,

Sameness of units in STW? Never heard about that. Who said it? If you read it here, then it was in an entirely different context. The problem in STW was the sameness of stats, you don't solve that by throwing in more stuff, but by improving the mechanics.

Fair is fair, CA did improve the mechanics, there are still things in it that caused a lot of problems, but it might be possible that the new 'tools' are capable to offset that. It's also still to be seen which other 'tools' become available.

It's shocking to see that CA also removed part of the original STW mechanics, ones that worked very well and no one, literally no one, has ever complained about.

It fills my heart with joy that you're so happy with MTW. But what makes you think that I should play MTW to judge it? Why should I see the whole thing to judge about details? Aren't there screenshots (ever heard about 1 picture says more than 1,000 words?) aren't there objective journalists who uncover details to us? Do you think that MTW will be going to be the first thing we'll ever see in our lives?

Why are you so desperately trying to force your viewpoints on us?

------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

Puzz3D

07-14-2002, 21:26

quote Darkmoor,

"There's also the point that "why would you be marching an army across europe?" (and, yes, im serious) - you cant march armies through friendly, neutral or enemy lands without fighting - so its not that"

I checked out the Crusade thread, and that does sound interesting. Thx.

[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 07-14-2002).]

Puzz3D

07-14-2002, 21:40

Darkmoor,

The number one major criticism of Shogun was "no multiplayer campaign". You can see how Creative Assembly responded to that by looking at MTW.

BTW, Creative Assembly has an official policy not to answer questions about anything still under developement. So, we can ask them all we want, but we won't ever get a response. Of course, that doesn't apply to Michael DePlatter because he's the boss.

[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 07-14-2002).]

Black Prince

07-14-2002, 21:54

I reckon the year thing must be quite a recent intro - just read a post on .com from Tarrak that says:

"I just found this in the ToolTip file in the demo.

["baggage_train_tooltip"]
{"Amount of gold this army must take to sustain it for one season if it is sent on an invasion mission. "}"

Season!! So perhaps the designers only introduced the year thing fairly last minute (the baggage train thing is a cool idea) and would rather have done it this way. Looks like the game is being watered down for the mass market - but the mass market isn't interested in wargames so why bother??

If you're going to add all this extra detail then why take out such a fundamental area of sophistication and make people have to buy boats and boatyards (or what ever they will be called) if you want to conquer Europe at any speed. No wonder there aren't Mongols as a playable faction - they'd be completely stuffed! In reality purchasing boats and sending armies overseas by boat was incredibly difficult and expensive - one of England's main problems was getting enough boats together to get men into France quick enough.

If I'm an English king - how do I launch my chevauchee (spelt wrong probably - the medieval term for a raid in strength) through France? Surely the 1 province per year move makes a mockery of a fundamental fact of medieval warfare?