Campaign map - TW is now a real wargame!

Just spent the weekend trying my first RTW campaign and it struck me - the Total War engine has now become a pretty hardcore wargame. Pushing the armies around the wonderful campaign map, placing forts at choke points, pulling off an ambush, besieging the Gauls at Alessia etc it was just like playing a "proper" historical wargame. Yes, there are no tedious (but realistic) logistical or command n control issues to worry about, but nonetheless it felt much closer to simulating real military strategy than the rather abstract STW/RTW "Risk-style" campaign maps.

It's early days but I am really pleased with the operationalisation of the campaign map in RTW - the movements points and turn-based approach seems to work very smoothly; terrain features seem to be well integrated. I was dreading some kind of real time Europa Universalis thing and pleasantly surprised. My young son just autoresolves everything, finding the campaign map interesting enough as a game in its own right without those amazing real time battles.

I should add that I always considered the real time battles of STW and MTW to be "proper" wargames - they model more aspects (facing, formation, combined arms, armour, weapons, morale, elevation, terrain, weather, fatigue etc.) than many games marketed as more hardcore historical wargames. With the new campaign map, RTW is clearly one of the best computer wargames on the market (admittedly, that is now not a big field).

The marine movement is a massive move forward too.

The ship movement & troop transport on water is SO much better. Gone is the EasyJet to Antioch if your garrison needs reinforcing from Wessex or further afield. The basic strategic implications from this have made it a very big map. It adds tension when your spies see massing & movements of enemy forces & you're thinking - well it'll take 4 yrs to ship my killer army back & I can raise 'x' forces locally to hold them until the cavalry arrives.

I like it.

I can see my wife getting sick of it pretty fast though

:)

Yup, the naval side is better - the only niggle I have so far about the naval aspect is that we have gone from "teleporting armies" to cramping thousands of men onto one ship. I loaded a 20 unit army onto a 14 unit fleet and sent 13 ships to Greece with, I assumed, my army. I was somewhat bemused to find the army had actually squeezed onto the one ship I sent to Carthage.

I got the game delivered on Saturday morning so I promptly said goodbye to the wife and locked myself in the computer room for the weekend.

I have started a campaign and I have to say that I am most impressed so far, well done CA. I really like the improved diplomacy and the fact that your agents and generals grow old and die give it an air of reality.

I also prefer the sea aspect but hope this will continue to improve in future patches or games.

I have used the mod from .com that removes the timer from the battles screen but again I prefer the faster battles and the chance to choose your ground or go for an ambush etc. Being able to attack at night would be cool, but you can't have everything.

All in all I believe this is the best game I have played so far, so, again, well done CA. :bow: ~:cheers:

The operational aspects ot the campaign map are GREAT. There's real manuever here: Cutting off retreats before an attack, using cavalry as it was intended for scouting and locating your enemy, massive concentrations with units swooping down on the same army from different directions.

The campaign map alone would make RTW a whole new, better ballgame than MTW.

~:cheers:

One thing I've noticed so far in RTW is that enemy armies don't seem to escape to fight another day as much as they did in MTW. In MTW, any enemy soldier you did not hunt down and kill on the battlemap retreated to an adjacent province. Hence cavalry was incredibly valuable for pursuit. However, it seems in RTW that if you win a victory, the enemy army just dissolves[1]. My perception may be slightly skewed, as my victories against Gauls and bandits are pretty overwhelming. Nonetheless I wonder if this is what CA meant when they said they wanted "fewer, more decisive" battles.

[1] Occaisionally, I have what seems like an automatic victory (not jumping into the battle) and the enemy retreats, but it is usually easy to catch them with the rest of your move or next turn. The exception to this may be sea battles, where victories tend to leave the losing fleet weakened and displaced rather than sunk outright.

The first time I pulled off a flanking attack on the campaign map, that is, putting a general on one side & attacking with another general from the front, I realized what a great improvement the new campaign map is. Well done, indeed. :medievalcheers:

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Originally Posted by Simon Appleton

My perception may be slightly skewed, as my victories against Gauls and bandits are pretty overwhelming.

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This is the reason. Because you are basically wiping them out on the battlefield they disappear on the campaign map; the survivors just desert. If you get some battles with large forces where you don't smash them, you will see them retreating on the strategic map. Life is good when you have enough movement points to hit them again :charge:

Execept that the 'new and improved' AI controls the flanking army, and will NEVER make it in time for the battle, should the enemy decide to engage one army rather to wait for both of them.

The biggest thing that I am missing from the campaign map is an “undo” option (preferred with several undo levels or “reset to beginning of turn” option). In MTW you could just move your troops back if you made a mistake, here you need to reload the game (and remember to save it) before each move. This really annoys me.

The other thing that bothers me is how your troop’s movement gets blocked even by non aggressive troops. Sometimes you move your troops to a point and can’t get out (not even back) because of being blocked. This seems silly.

An option to easily identify non producing settlements (buildings or armies) would be great too and the ability to cycle between settlements and troops with a keyboard control...and...

Errr...ok, so I have many things I want added to the campaign game but otherwise, I really enjoy the enhancements. With little more thought, they could make the interface and gameplay nearly perfect but it is fun as it is as well.

- barvaz

A "redo" or "put back in starting position" would be very nice.

Sometimes, I move within my line of sight, stop, take another look around and move again. It's a pain and I only do that with a few units, especially fleets.

Also, as most folks know, holding down the right mouse button after the move has begun "fast forwards" the movement.

Shhh, don't let an Activision executive hear you say that! 'Wargame' is a dirty word in the video game industry.

got a laugh out of that. ~D

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Originally Posted by Ja'chyra

I got the game delivered on Saturday morning so I promptly said goodbye to the wife and locked myself in the computer room for the weekend.

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If you hit the 'backspace' key while an army/agent is moving, that army/agent will stop moving. While its not an undo, which would be kind of hard since now have battles interspersed with movement, it does help those "wait stop i clicked the right instead of left button!" type of moves.

Everyone always complained about "teleporting" armies and such in MTW, but, guys, that was actually more realistic. Remember that it still took a YEAR for you to float troops from one place to the other. That's more realistic than sailing them from Wales to Rome in five years or so. Don't you thinK? I mean, Braddock "axed" a road from Cumberland to Pittsburgh, through rugged mountains, in two months, taking troops, baggage, artillery. Same basic tools the Romans had: axe, shovel, pick. If it actually took five or six years to get from Rome to Egypt, Caesar would have been far too old to have ever made the trip. ~D Maybe moves should be quarter instead of half years?

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Originally Posted by zentuit

If you hit the 'backspace' key while an army/agent is moving, that army/agent will stop moving. While its not an undo, which would be kind of hard since now have battles interspersed with movement, it does help those "wait stop i clicked the right instead of left button!" type of moves.

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I don't see the problem with "undo" if a battle occurred, you could just make like the battle never happened and return to the position before the battle (you wasted time for doing the battle that is lost, but that is your choice).

I find myself in a need to reload too often (due to clicking or other silly mistakes), an undo option could really save time here. At least they could implement an interface (like in many other turn based games) where a move happens in two phases, you don't move at once when right-clicking on the map but rather need to confirm it, first action (whether a right-click or something else) marks your designated path, and on the second action you move.

- barvaz

I agree with Lord Ovatt on the ship movement issue.Personally i enjoy it from a gameplay point of view but it IS very unrealistic.Moving around the Iberian peninsula is particularly vexing(always wanted to use vexing in a sentence) ~;)

This would be a nice improvement for version 2.0 --- break the game down into month-long turns. Benefits:

-- realistic unit movement
-- weather could be something besides an occasional add-on to battlemaps

Downsides:

-- economy slows to a crawl
-- every trained unit takes multiple turns (except maybe peasants and town militia). Both realism and the economy would demand this.

An implementation could work around these problems, though. For example, you could ramp up the economy a bit (more denarii per turn), and then penalise the player if they over-train by making their population, and therefore their economy, plummet.

The more I think about this, the better the new map seems.

Yeah, I've done some "uh-ohs" too on the movement. I once started a war with Egypt that way when somebody was talking to me at a bad time. I thought the port I was blockading was rebel. Definitely had to re-start that one. :furious3:

However, I have to weigh that against the sheer pleasure of finding that mountain pass that lead to the heart of the Selucid Empire for the first time.

~D

frankly, i'd hate to see an 'undo' on the campaign map. that's basically a cheat in a game like this. you could scout a territory, see the enemy army that was hidden before, then 'undo'. no, i dont agree with this one. you move, take your chances and that's it. sorry if you dont like the outcome. if you want to 'see ahead' and avoid nasty circumstances, send in a spy or diplomat first. an undo command just makes no sense in this game.

as for turn time of a 6 months, yeah, you could do quarterly or even monthly, but the 6 month thing doesnt really bother me for some reason. sure, it's a bit odd at times, but not like the year thing in mtw. remember, an army lives on its belly and has to camp every day when marching and hunt and feed itself. it takes a while to feed 2000 men on a march each day, so the 6 month thing doesnt irk like the year thing did. but, if CA wanted, quarterly or monthly would be ok too.

what bugs me is, there is no good way to keep track of all your units and make sure you've moced them all, particularly the agents and ships. yes, you can see a list of all these but there is nothing that shows on that who has moved and who hasnt, and if you use the arrow keys to cycle through the units, it skips around if you move a unit and then repeats on units that have already moved, but doesnt show the ones that havent all the time, unless you cycle through everything twice. quite odd at times. and, the more units you own, the worse this gets.

K.

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Originally Posted by Kraellin

what bugs me is, there is no good way to keep track of all your units and make sure you've moced them all, particularly the agents and ships. yes, you can see a list of all these but there is nothing that shows on that who has moved and who hasnt,

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Couldn't agree more! I'd love to have some sort of button that finds units not yet tasked during that turn.

They could always implement an undo feature like other turn based strategy games.

1. Each army only gets one undo per turn.

2. If a new enemy unit is spotted your move instantly stops, and there is no undo feature. You can however keep moving.

The RTW system while great for a TW game, is quite primative compared to other strategy games in this respect. An undo feature is essential, sometimes you double right click to speed up the awefully slow movement and find your army wandering off somewhere else, sometimes you accidently move one unit out and attack a full blown enemy army, etc.
Its also highly tedious moving your units in little bits - especially when you have hundreds of them.

While the strat map is awesome, I really do miss the major scale battles you got in MTW. Im getting towards late game now in RTW and I was hoping for some major battles, but because armies can easily avoid each other you never get the large epic MTW battles. Instead of one battle between 5 stacks you get 5 battles between 1 stacks.
I would be nice if a feature was implimented so when a battle has been joined, every available army that has enough moves to make it to the battlefield joined as reinforcements.

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Originally Posted by Kraellin

frankly, i'd hate to see an 'undo' on the campaign map. that's basically a cheat in a game like this. you could scout a territory, see the enemy army that was hidden before, then 'undo'.
K.

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I agree with this. I've had the exact same observation and I don't see how an undo is feasible because of this effect on play.

There are a couple of problems though that should be addressed since we lack an undo. I've seen some non-obvious paths taken by armies, that were 2 turn moves when I was trying to send them on a flanking move to engage. I've also had boats appear to be capable of engaging, but be one turn short. We need some sort of prompt to warn us that these are multi-turn moves, rather than waisting all our movement points... I load saves for this. I don't reload if some unseen unit is blocking the path (and I wouldn't want a warning about it in the move count either.)

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Originally Posted by Kraellin

frankly, i'd hate to see an 'undo' on the campaign map. that's basically a cheat in a game like this. you could scout a territory, see the enemy army that was hidden before, then 'undo'. no, i dont agree with this one. you move, take your chances and that's it. sorry if you dont like the outcome. if you want to 'see ahead' and avoid nasty circumstances, send in a spy or diplomat first. an undo command just makes no sense in this game.

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I see your point and I haven’t thought about this before. I must disagree though:

- You can still “cheat” this way with saved games, it is just less convenient.

- This is a single player game we are talking about, it is up to each player to choose how they want to use this feature. The temptation to cheat is higher, yes, but this still doesn’t “unbalance” anything. You can also easily make it optional so players that consider this cheating or don’t see the value can easily disable it.

- I wouldn’t even consider the need for such an option if the interface was designed better and the chance for mistakes was lower. I find myself too many times slapping on my forehead saying “But I didn’t want to do that! Get back there!”. If I could see my moves before I make them, see the exact path, number of steps and turns etc, then I probably wouldn’t need “undo”. If you ever played “Heroes of Might and Magic”, for example, pretty similar gameplay, I never needed “undo” there.


- barvaz