New Information from German Preview

For those around here that speak German, here is the link to the original article:

http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/total-...0,3012769.html

Since it contains some information, I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else I'd like to summarize some of the things here.

Barbarians: From Tribe to Faction
- While you start playing as a tribe in the beginning your ultimate goal is to create your culture specific faction, e.g. The Gauls, The Germans, The Brits.
- You can achieve this through war or peacefully.
- The AI tribes will try to achieve the same goal, so playing as the Romans you could face dispersed Gaul tribes or one unified faction.
- You can earn fame by defeating Roman or other invaders.

Each faction has unique bonuses:
- The Iceni make their populace happy with each war declaration.
- The Averni goldsmiths bring heightened income.
- The Suebi are particularly good at fighting other barbarians.

Roman Factions
- You can choose from the Julii, Corneli oder Junii family.
- Family members can be used in the Senate or to command Armies or Navies.
- You can reduce the influence of the rival families by making their family members generals, but then you risk them amassing an army and overthrowing you.
- Our you can keep armies in your families hands, which will reduce your influence in the Senate.
- The Romans will either be ruled by the Senate or by a single Emperor. The change will come through Civil War, which you can declare yourself or happen to you if rival factions ally against you.

Science:
- Every culture group will have it's own technology tree, split into three parts. It will work similar to the one in Shogun 2.

Agents:
- Every cultural group will have it's own unique set of agents, that can travel the campaign map.
- The barbarian factions will have classic spies, dignitaries and champions.
- Champions will work similarly to the foreign veteran from Shogun 2. The can boos recruitment or boost an army in the field. They can also duel each other to the death.

Line of sight and new battle goals
- Line of sight makes a return, meaning you can only see, what your soldiers can see.
- To avoid protracted battles, most battles will have a set of goals.
- Siege battles will have different battle objectives that the attacker has to conquer, while the defender has to hold them.
- Field battles will feature bagagge trains, that will start on the initial army location. If your bagagge train is destroyed you loose the battle.

That's all the new stuff I could find.

Cheers!

Ituralde

That Roman thing, with the Civil War, sounds mighty good. Battling the SPQR in the original never offered much advantage apart from owning Rome.

Thank you for the link!

Good info.

TY.

Aw I hope baggage trains are implemented better. First of all, raiding the baggage train should put your raiders (preferably mounted) versus the rearguard of the enemy. So depending on what they assigned as rearguard you can be really successful (your hordes of angry steppe horsemen versus green milita quaking in their boots) or you can fail abysmally (sending your light infantry and suddenly - hordes of cataphracts!).

Destroying a baggage train in a pitched battle will have little effect. Sure it might make them deplete arrows faster and you can kill some of their wounded, but you also have to somehow go around their whole battle line. Frankly, I'd like to destroy the command tent, capture the eagle and murder the Roman general, that's at least a bit more realistic. Though there is always the chance that both general and eagle are in the thick of battle and the tent is unattended.

damn the baggage train things sounds really cool!

feint retreat and then a sneaky cavalry charge to break the flank and destroy the baggage train, hell yea!

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Originally Posted by Myth

Destroying a baggage train in a pitched battle will have little effect. Sure it might make them deplete arrows faster and you can kill some of their wounded, but you also have to somehow go around their whole battle line. Frankly, I'd like to destroy the command tent, capture the eagle and murder the Roman general, that's at least a bit more realistic. Though there is always the chance that both general and eagle are in the thick of battle and the tent is unattended.

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I agree with you and recall an event during the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC where the Persian cavalry broke thru the weak Macedonian left and rather than turning in and rolling up the Macedonian line they ran off to loot the Macedonian baggage train. So rather than causing the loss of a battle that episode may have prevented it.

BTW, if a Roman general is sitting in his command tent while a battle is in progress he deserves to be murdered!

I guess I'll be the first to ask: what exactly is a baggage train and why would it decide the outcome of a battle?

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Originally Posted by B-Wing

I guess I'll be the first to ask: what exactly is a baggage train and why would it decide the outcome of a battle?

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A baggage train is a collection of an armies equipment not actually used in a battle; tents, tools, field kitchens, supplies, personal belongings, etc. It would also include grooms, slaves and camp followers.

I have no idea why losing it would automatically decide the outcome of a battle.

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Originally Posted by Barkhorn1x

A baggage train is a collection of an armies equipment not actually used in a battle; tents, tools, field kitchens, supplies, personal belongings, etc. It would also include grooms, slaves and camp followers.

I have no idea why losing it would automatically decide the outcome of a battle.

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Seconded that, but if your wagon train is destroyed, the battle might stil be winnable but the war (with that particular army) is lost.:hanged: If it is in enemy teritory I am not even sure wether they would survive to get back to their own teritorry. How could they advance without supplies?

That said, I think the wagon train should have more effect on an invading army then a defending army.

I also like Myth's suggestion of the sneaky general attack. It would be cool when the enemy general is left behind in his tent and you can kill him.

The new changes look exciting, looking forward to the internal politics side.

The ability for the barbarians to form confederacies sounds very very interesting... in fact more than that, its historically accurate :2thumbsup:

However

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Originally Posted by Ituralde

- The Averni goldsmiths bring heightened income.

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Should be silversmiths.

Thanks for.all the effort mate. Really appreciated.

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Originally Posted by Hooahguy

The new changes look exciting, looking forward to the internal politics side.

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I don't hate the idea. But I worry that it's a mechanic that could easily slide into punishing you for success.

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Originally Posted by lars573

I don't hate the idea. But I worry that it's a mechanic that could easily slide into punishing you for success.

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Sort of like realm divide in Shogun 2?

I have to agree. The older games gave more freedom for people to place at their own pace. Around the time of RTW and MTW2, the players who love to turtle got extremely vocal and CA started instituting annoying mechanics to slow players down. As much as I enjoyed Fall of the Samurai, it had a really obnoxious administration penalty and a painfully slow tech tree that the player had essentially no control over.