View Full Version : Creative Assembly Gameplay multiplay
ElmarkOFear
08-23-2002, 08:19
Ok here are a few notes to make about multiplay.
1. If your partner drops from game his army will rout thru yours taking yours with it. Not good. Should have it to where they just stop where they are like in STW.
2. When your army routs they do not head in one direction they go away from guys that are chasing them, in otherwords all over the map. I kinda like this, a bit hectic but fun.
3. All players must have different factions. No two players can have same faction in multiplay. I do not like this and hope they change it.
3. Chatroom needs work to make it work properly.
4. To keep people from buying all the same unit, the game increases the cost of the 5th unit and increases cost for every unit after that. I like this, it forces players to use a lot of different units.
5. General flag needs to be more visible than it currently is. Hard to keep track of him when he is amongst a lot of other units or fighting. Maybe make his flag bright red or something.
6. Maps are good and varied. They look very fair for both attack and defend.
7. Honor level flags are difficult to see. They are too small, and it is hard to tell what honor unit is attacking you.
8. All in all, it is a fun game and will be challenging to play due to the sheer number of units and factions. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
9. Hope to see you guys soon online. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
Kraellin
08-23-2002, 09:25
1. not good. shld be old stw way, like elm says or ai takes over for dropped player.
2. yup. good.
3. shld be an option on this one, set by host.
4. dont like this one, but already discussed in another thread.
5. didnt have a problem with this as i just use the icons at the bottom to find him.
6. agreed
7. lol. i never pay attention to honor level flags...too busy clicking.
8. agreed :)
9. attacker/defender florin disparity setting...very good also.
10. scrolling map display that also changes with season setting....great addition.
K.
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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.
Elmo,
What about the deployment zones? Do we have the same system as in STW/MI? Is there any change? Is there a fog of war during deployment or not?
BTW,
Quote Originally posted by ElmarkOFear:
Ok here are a few notes to make about multiplay.
3. All players must have different factions. No two players can have same faction in multiplay. [/QUOTE]
This is not fair. It has to be changed.
Quote Originally posted by ElmarkOFear:
4. To keep people from buying all the same unit, the game increases the cost of the 5th unit and increases cost for every unit after that. I like this, it forces players to use a lot of different units.
[/QUOTE]
I dont like this idea. Let the players decide whether they want a 4 max rule or not.
mizuYari
08-23-2002, 10:46
1. If your partner drops from game his army will rout thru yours taking yours with it. Not good.
2. When your army routs they do not head in one direction they go away from guys that are chasing them Very good.
3. All players must have different factions. Not good for on-line campaign. Same faction must be able to attack/defend together. However, this is good to force people to play with a variety of factions, not degenerated into the "best army".
3. Chatroom needs work to make it work properly. heard this being fixed.
4. To keep people from buying all the same unit, the game increases the cost of the 5th unit and increases cost for every unit after that. This enforce the "4-max rule, good. This also is realistic.
5. General flag needs to be more visible than it currently is. General must have halow around his head.
6. Maps are good and varied. They look very fair for both attack and defend. Good.
7. Honor level flags are difficult to see. Either they are made large, or they should disappear as the enemy shouldn't know which unit is best (the enemy may know at beginning of the battle how good is the best unit in this case, like display the content of the army. This is realistic as the content of the army deployed are generally known in advance by the enemy's scout).
8. All in all, it is a fun game and will be challenging to play due to the sheer number of units and factions.
Glad to hear that.
MizuYari
Quote Originally posted by ElmarkOFear:
Ok here are a few notes to make about multiplay.
1. If your partner drops from game his army will rout thru yours taking yours with it. Not good. Should have it to where they just stop where they are like in STW.[/QUOTE]
Be like STW. AI taking over will put too much demand on the host CPU, adding to lag.
Quote
2. When your army routs they do not head in one direction they go away from guys that are chasing them, in otherwords all over the map. I kinda like this, a bit hectic but fun.[/QUOTE]
Good.
Quote
3. All players must have different factions. No two players can have same faction in multiplay. I do not like this and hope they change it.[/QUOTE]
Should allow host to decide this rule as someone mentioned.
Quote
4. To keep people from buying all the same unit, the game increases the cost of the 5th unit and increases cost for every unit after that. I like this, it forces players to use a lot of different units. [/QUOTE]
Like it as it is a simple enough formula that emphasise balance of forces, yet offers flexibility in using unbalance forces for tactical reasons.
Quote
5. General flag needs to be more visible than it currently is. Hard to keep track of him when he is amongst a lot of other units or fighting. Maybe make his flag bright red or something.[/QUOTE]
The general should have an aura of unholy light around him http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif
Quote
6. Maps are good and varied. They look very fair for both attack and defend.[/QUOTE]
Hopefully not all are flat! I'll love to fight uphills too. And hilly terrains are good for 4v4.
Quote
7. Honor level flags are difficult to see. They are too small, and it is hard to tell what honor unit is attacking you.[/QUOTE]
Either make all the unit honors unknown (i.e. no flag), or put it also in the tooltip when mouseover the unit beside having the flags.
Quote
8. All in all, it is a fun game and will be challenging to play due to the sheer number of units and factions. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif [/QUOTE]
How much longer must I wait for my copy? Gah!
Quote
9. Hope to see you guys soon online. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif[/QUOTE]
Looking forward to take your head Elmo! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif
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tootee the goldfish,
headmaster of Shogun-Academy (http://shogun-academy.tripod.com)
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Yas Terazawa
08-23-2002, 11:56
1. How about let me control all the units of my dropped partner?(like Warcraft3)
p.s. Can any guys tell me When MTW 'd arrive at Korea? http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif
1) You can see your ally's armies before they deploy. I don't remember if you can see the enemy armies as each one deploys. The deploy zones are the same as in Shogun.
2) If two or more players could take the same faction, then they will have the same colors which could be confusing. Other than a few specialized units, the factions seem to be composed of similar if not identical basic unit types. I have a bit of confusion with the colors as is because one faction can have a certain color uniform while another facion has the exact same color in its standards. You've got to focus in on either the standards or the uniforms during the heat of battle to avoid confusion.
3) The Benny Hill code which routs a unit when you make too many "away" moves is stilll there. However, I only saw this in custom game where I made about 20 or 30 consecutive "away" moves.
4) The arquebusiers I tried in custom battle are dramatically less effective in kills/volley than in WE/MI.
5) Gamespeed is slower than in WE/MI and the battle unfolds at a slower pace. Even a 1v1 with fast connection on both ends was very playable, although, marching quickly is still fairly fast. Unlike WE/MI, I had no problem making units march quickly. The gamespeed is probably still a little faster than some would like.
6) Units are purchased at honor 0.
7) Fatigue seems ok for the small and medium maps I played on, but I did end up with exhausted units in a couple of protracted battles.
8) Morale looks good. It's fragile at 5000 florins where you have H0 and H1 units, but units are much more resilient at 8000 florins where you can field mostly H2 units. H4 is the max valor.
9) I had one player drop in a 3v3 out of about 8 battles that I played. He later said it was due to a crash to desktop.
10) The animation of the men in the way they walk or move their weapons was not as smooth as in Shogun. Could be dropped frames causing this since it's smoother in offline custom battle. That jerkiness of motion detracts somewhat from the perception of realism. Could be my older Voodoo3/3000 video card, but at least the game runs on this old card.
11) There is a version mismatch, no map or wrong startpos message when you pass the cursor over a game that you cannot join. Wrong startpos could mean modified stat files do not match which would be nice assuming modified stats work online.
12) Florin distribution between attacker and defender is indicated along with unit size, season, morale on/off, fatigue on/off, ammo limited/unlimited, camera limites/unlimited, map architecture and terrain and game type. I didn't see timer indicated, but all games I joined had no time limit so maybe that's why.
13) I saved my general by disengaging from a fight in one game. And in one 3v3, I couldn't find my general for most of the battle.
14) The F1 screen has a cloumn showing morale of each unit in your army along with #men, valor, attack, defend and armor. I always thought that morale was a needed addition to that sceen and I'm glad to see it there.
[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 08-23-2002).]
ElmarkOFear
08-23-2002, 18:19
What Yuuki said. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif All very true. I have had problems dropping though, but it may be my hard drive acting up. Gonna hook up my other pc to cable modem and see if problem stops.
GilJaysmith
08-23-2002, 18:44
Hello multiplayers...
Some answers, where I can give definite ones:
Armies routing when someone drops out: we can turn this off if everyone really hates it, in which case they'll just carry on doing whatever their last orders were, or stand still and maybe snipe at passers-by.
Taking over your ally's troops if he quits: won't happen.
Several people with the same faction: won't happen, too many technical issues.
Chatroom: I've improved the UI speed for the patch so it doesn't slow down when someone's hosting, and I'm looking at problems with players and games not showing up. I also have some feedback from somewhere about the size of some of the boxes.
Deployment: you can see your allies while deploying... you can only see the enemy if you're a castle defender, so you can have a chance to position your artillery.
Animation jerkiness: could be your machine can't manage the 14fps we need for the anims to be smooth, in which case we update the screen less often to give us more processing time to keep the 'game' running at 14fps internally. Try a similar battle as a custom battle to see whether the same thing happens.
Modified stats files will work fine online, but everyone who joins the game will need the same file. If you get the "version mismatch" message, then the game you're looking at is being fought on a map you don't have, on a map which has been edited from the one you have, or with different stats files. (Or it's being hosted here, where we have a newer EXE.)
All feedback is much appreciated http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
Gil ~ CA
Quote Originally posted by Puzz3D:
1) You can see your ally's armies before they deploy. I don't remember if you can see the enemy armies as each one deploys. The deploy zones are the same as in Shogun. [/QUOTE]
Thanks Yuuki. So it is the same ... With the same distance between deployment zones? Everything is the same? Hm ... IMO this asymmetric deployment makes 4v4 and 2v2 games very predictable. Push left, withdraw on right. 1v1 or 3v3 battles are more enjoyable because of the symmetric deployment. Whoever is responsible for it please let the allies share their deployment zones. Finally, I thought that at least there will be a larger distance between deployment zones, after all maps are larger (or not?).
PS. does the rank system of colours work in the same way?
Quote Originally posted by Puzz3D:
2) If two or more players could take the same faction, then they will have the same colors which could be confusing. Other than a few specialized units, the factions seem to be composed of similar if not identical basic unit types. I have a bit of confusion with the colors as is because one faction can have a certain color uniform while another facion has the exact same color in its standards. You've got to focus in on either the standards or the uniforms during the heat of battle to avoid confusion.[/QUOTE]
Give us only 8 well discernible colours* for MP battles and let us to choose colour independently from faction and from position!!! So, when you enter a game you choose: (1) your faction; (2) your position; (3) your colour. Each of these should be independent from the others.
* for example give us the colours of:
white (Poland)
green (Italy)
red (England)
yellow (Spain)
light blue (Russia)
black (HRE)
blue (France)
purple (Byzantium)
Quote Originally posted by Puzz3D:
7) Fatigue seems ok for the small and medium maps I played on, but I did end up with exhausted units in a couple of protracted battles. [/QUOTE]
Yes, be a bit more generous with fatigue!
[This message has been edited by Cheetah (edited 08-23-2002).]
MagyarKhans Cham
08-23-2002, 19:06
Not being able to play with teh same factions in a game should be patched. I wonder what clever mind game up with that since in MI we were restricted to the number of factions during the game due the textures-max.
GUYS QUESTION ?????????????
can u give signals to your ally in multies? a simple feature but handy, especially in learning newbees how to do a massive hunt.
Quote Originally posted by GilJaysmith:
Hello multiplayers...
Several people with the same faction: won't happen, too many technical issues.[/QUOTE]
Grrrrrrrrrr... then at least let us choose position independently from colour ...
Quote Originally posted by GilJaysmith:
Deployment: you can see your allies while deploying... you can only see the enemy if you're a castle defender, so you can have a chance to position your artillery.
[/QUOTE]
Good.
MagyarKhans Cham
08-23-2002, 19:23
Quoted by Gil
"Several people with the same faction: won't happen, too many technical issues."
You must be joking Gil....... you make "just" games and decide later what is restricted by technical means or u have a premade plan and make a game around it? for me it just shows that the game is made for SP and in your spare time made suitable for MP.
u just put a bomb on our online campaigns. ofcourse we can work around it but hey man common.
why is every new version in software 2 steps forward, one step back....?
GALLOP GALLOP *** our Khan will not be amused *** GALLOP GALLOP
LOL! Of course we have a premade plan of what we want to do to make the game - and then we go about doing our best to make it.
Even though Medieval was based on the SHogun games before it, there was a fair amount of stuff we had to remove and/or rewrite because it didn't work too well or wouldn't work at all with all the new stuff we've done to it. In the case of the "same factions versus same factions" option, in MI that was a rough and ready fix on top of a system that was already groaning under the weight of a whole pile of other rough-and-ready fixes, so it had to be removed before further work could happen on multiplayer stuff.
When you get to the end of a project, there are a whole pile of things that you wish made it into the game but you just run out of time. Multiplayer Campaign, anybody? Bear in mind that everything you put into a game is at the expense of something that you didn't, and project management is about deciding which things to put in and which things not to put in to ensure the game meets deadlines and milestones. By the time we got close to to our final deadline, there just wasn't enough time to put in everything we really wanted to and, unfortunately, same faction versus same faction was one of the things that didn't make it. Don't take any of the features that didn't make it as an intentional slap in the face from us developers to you guys.
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Quote MagyarKhans Cham:
i even suspect Target is coming here to hype things up.[/QUOTE]
GAH!
Vanya thinks Gil is right in doing away with many people playing with same factions. You have 12 to choose from... pick one.
If all could go in as 'English'... what fun would that be? 8 peeps with lots of the same.
The variety the different factions offer is GOOD.
But, Vanya thinks lesser factions could be included too. Like the Hungarians, Aragonese and Sicilians. Vanya thinks online players might want to go in to an MP game as one of these. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
GAH!
And, if you could pick the name of your general in battle (not player nick, just gen name for that battle... it has no bearing on anything anyway), Vanya could field Generalissimo Vito Corleone at the head of a Sicilian mob... http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/eek.gif
GAH!
MagyarKhans Cham
08-23-2002, 20:35
howldy Target
it sounds fair, although i dont hope that your project ends just after the release.
but before my former message reaches my (and your) Khan, i get confused about the side-restriction caused by some messages on these forums.
- is it limted for the whole battle, just 1 faction per battle?
- or is it limited per side?
- or is it not limited per side but u must accept that the colours are the same?
and is there an unofficial way to mod the game to get closer to a nice home made campaign system?
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perhaps we could organise a tourney about it...
- if you or one of the developers wins it we come to England and pay your beer on a friday night until u fall down drunken....
- if our Khan or one of his generals wins it than we come to england, we pay your beer but u spent enuf time in sorting things out for us.
Take up that glove.... http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif
good day to all
Hey Cham.
The way it stands at the moment, you can only have one player playing one faction on the battlefield at any one time. If someone chooses the English (regardless of whether they are an attacker or a defender), then no-one else can play as the English.
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Quote MagyarKhans Cham:
i even suspect Target is coming here to hype things up.[/QUOTE]
MagyarKhans Cham
08-23-2002, 21:04
ok, still the problem stands. now if we dont tthink in problems but in solutions, what could be the best/ez-iest solution to solve this?
a patch?
an add-on?
a beer or girl for Gil?
i am sure, as ur a sensible man that this barrier also keeps u busy.
perhaps u can explain the technical difficulty so the community smartests can think out a nice workaround.
After comparing WE/MI and MTW animations offline, I would have to say it's just a perceptual thing on my part that WE/MI seems smoother. I believe that perception is caused by less upper body momement when marching quickly in WE/MI. In MTW, the swinging of weapons held in one hand while running is pronounced and gives the motion an asymetrical apperance while at the same time every man is moving in syncronization. Also, when you zoom in on these much more detailed sprites, the transition of views as the men pass by is more striking and abrupt as it must be. So, I think the relative smoothness is just a subjective visual impression of mine in this case. The detail on these sprites is really remarkable and justifies the closeup zoom. Obviously a tremendous amount of high quality work went into producing this game, and the team should be really proud of their accomplishment and making the deadline to boot.
[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 08-23-2002).]
MagyarKhans Cham
08-23-2002, 21:06
how smooth do the bodies fall to the ground?
GilJaysmith
08-23-2002, 21:33
Quote Originally posted by MagyarKhans Cham:
a patch?
an add-on?
a beer or girl for Gil?
[/QUOTE]
I don't drink and I'm already married - but your willingness to offer bribes is duly noted, and although I'm declining this one, please don't take that to mean that old-fashioned offers of money won't work at some point in the future.
Meanwhile, Target and I have been mulling over the problem...
The technical problem is that the battlemap requires each player to be playing with a different faction id, because lots of places make the assumption that faction X must be player Z. There's no way this is going to change - which is where I stopped thinking about it on my brisk sweep through the thread at lunchtime.
However, we've boiled down the real problem to the fact that the menu system makes you pick a unique faction and then limits your troops to those of that faction.
If instead it limited the troops using another faction which you could also choose, then you could get several players fielding say English armies.
So, a way we could do it:
- we add a flag for the host to set, called something like "Allow Players To Choose Units From Another Faction", only shorter
- if this is checked, we do something cunning to the Lobby menu so you can pick your 'colour' faction and your 'troops' faction separately. The 'colour' faction shields get greyed out like they do at the moment as people select them, but the 'troops' shields don't get greyed out, so several players can choose the same army.
We might not get the time to do it at all. And it might turn out that there are some details we haven't thought of which would screw it up and force us to take it out. But we *think* this would be enough.
Thoughts?
Gil ~ CA
Gil,
Sounds like a very good solution to me. Even if you couldn't implement the color choice, the unit choice is the key. It seems to me that for normal online play having two or more armies of the same color would be confusing. At the same time, experienced teams might want to field double, triple or quardruple armies all of the same color. It would be an impressive sight to behold. And, of course, you could also simulate civil wars with enemies using the same faction's units. I think you'd cover all the bases if you could implement your two ideas.
MagyarKhan's Cham,
I saw a horse lancer drop his lance and fall to the ground. I could see the lance on the ground briefly. The man and horse both fall. After the man and horse fell, their sprite changed to some generic blob and the lance was nowhere to be found.
[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 08-23-2002).]
[This message has been edited by Puzz3D (edited 08-23-2002).]
Good! I will come play when i get it on the 30th. I have a title to keep lol.
1dread1lahll
08-23-2002, 22:01
On the dropped player... better if his troops just stay on the field...
And troops dont start as "0" but start as the same as the last unit you selected, if you upgraded last unit to valor3 then next comes out as 3 also...
That's interesting Lahll. I always buy my units at the default honor which is "0", and then go around making the upgrades. So, I would never have seen that.
The "4max" rule thing should be OPTIONAL, not forced on us. What if we want to battle with all of one type of unit? OPTIONAL please.
JRock,
If opposing players in the battle are taking large numbers of a single unit type, it will more or less balance out costwise. You could also give extra florins to the player who wants to take all of one type aganst a player who takes 4 max.
ElmarkOFear
08-24-2002, 00:07
Gil & Target, thnx for the info. A workaround like that would be very nice and would take care of the issue. I do have one minor fault I found concerning after you pick your army. If you put your cursor over another greyed out shield, instead of telling you that factions name it shows the faction that you picked as the name of that faction. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif Minor, but since I am not familiar with the shield/factions I do not know what the other players chose as their side.
Kraellin
08-24-2002, 00:43
i was going to suggest a stat set where every faction had the same units and stats, but gil's/target's way is much better. hope you can make it work.
and yuuki, doesnt the florin thing only work for the entire attacker/defender and not individual armies within the attackers and defenders? i havent played a multi game yet, but i did mock one up as a host to see the options and all i saw was the option for ALL of the attackers and defenders to have differing amounts of florins, but not individual armies within the attackers to have differing amounts of money. so, the 4 limit rule is still an annoyance to me. this is exactly what i DONT want, hardwired arbitraries.
but again, this was discussed before the release and i believe the upshot of it was that gil said 'try it out and if we need to, we'll change it later on.'
K.
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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.
Dionysus9
08-24-2002, 00:48
I don't know if this has been brought up because I don't have time to read the full thread, but:
In multiplayer you can see your allies troops moving around as they set them up. Thus, you know exactly where your allies troops are BEFORE you deploy.
That is a MUCH needed improvement and I heartily applaud CA!
MagyarKhans Cham
08-24-2002, 01:00
SInce the game aint available yet for our Khan it but i rely on puzz3d kraellin and elmarko. so it sounds good for me.
although we had a nice campaign-workaround already. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
so keep up the good work and i am sure it will pay off afterall, at least for tyour bosses.
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Quote I gallop messages around, dont track me I can bring war as well[/QUOTE]
Quote Originally posted by LordTed:
Good! I will come play when i get it on the 30th. I have a title to keep lol.[/QUOTE]
hehehe FasT is after that http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif
Sounds good to me so far........How the SP gamin also?Its something Fast doesnt really ply untill tha server is down http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif
Quote Originally posted by GilJaysmith:
I don't drink and I'm already married - but your willingness to offer bribes is duly noted, and although I'm declining this one, please don't take that to mean that old-fashioned offers of money won't work at some point in the future.
...[/QUOTE]
GAH!
Looks like Gil's LOYALTY rating just went up by 1!
GAH!
Quote Originally posted by Puzz3D:
JRock,
You could also give extra florins to the player who wants to take all of one type aganst a player who takes 4 max.[/QUOTE]
Yuuki, this would imply that you have to report your army to the host beforhand.
"Look I need more florins, I wanna buy 10 billmen and 6 longbowmen ..."
"???"
If I understand correctly this increasing cost constraint is supposed to prevent folks to bring in an unbalanced "killer army", the equivalent of the gun/ashi combo in STW/MI. However, actually most of these unbalanced armies (all nod, all ysam, all cav) are much weaker than a balanced army. Moreover, as far as I know, there is no such killer combo in MTW (as yet). So, the question is that shall we sacrifice variety because of the fear of a potential (but as yet unknown) killer amry? Finally, if it turns out that there is such an unbalanced killer combo then we can still use the 4 max rule as we used it in STW/MI.
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"If you wish to weaken/ the enemy's sword,/ move first, fly in and cut!"
- Ueshiba Morihei O-Sensei
Kraellin
08-24-2002, 04:20
vanya,
maybe, but we still have send in a few spies to determine his hidden V&V's ;)
K.
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The only absolute is that there are no absolutes.
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