European Barbarorum: A point of critique

The EB team has done some great work on the RTW game and I applaud them on their accomplishments; however, a grave problem still exists at a tactical level. When the player gives a command to a unit on the battlefield, the unit's response is much too fast. On the ancient battlefield, units were given initial orders and set into motion. At this point, regaining control of the units was no easy task, since communication was done by flags, horns or messengers. As a result, new or contradictory orders took a moderate amount of time, if at all, to make their way the troops. Rome TW, and by extension EB, negates this lag, as a player clicks and units immediately respond. This ability leads players to “micro-manage” and deploy troops in wild, over extending formations; two things that generals in antiquity could never do. I understand that some historical aspects have to be sacrificed to maintain playability; however, the way things stand now seriously contradict the nature of combat in antiquity and the purpose of EB, which is to promote a high level of accuracy.

Be this as it may, I believe two simple tweaks, if possible, could remedy this issue:

1) Install some lag time between the moment a player issues a command and the time the unit acts. This would change the way battles are fought tremendously in that it would negate micro-managing and force players to pre think deployment and battle tactics.

2) Perhaps limit a unit's capacity to act to a radius around the commanding unit. This would take command and control to new levels of difficulty and accuracy, as it would force players to deploy their units in close proximity to their general, as was the case through most of antiquity, and keep their general in close proximity to the fighting, thus increasing the chance of a tragedy, such as Darius III's at Gaugamela.


While I have no idea whether or not these two recommendations are even possible, I believe that they would greatly enhance the historical accuracy of the game, which happens to be the heart and sole of this great mod. What do you think?

I think those are the sort of thing's we'd need to mess with hardcode to change.

Not even those things are probably hardcoded, but in real battle field you have more or less competent officers comanding parts of the army and reacting to the situation. AI just cant do this kind of things in existing RTW engine. So as it may look unreal it is not that bad when you accept that your orders represent not only highest commander but also other commanders down to "regiment" level

I would argue that there are situations where gameplay should prevail over realism. A situation such as this could make the game frustrating to play rather than simply challenging. The excellent discipline of RTW armies is a bit odd, but probably necessary to prevent an overly-complex and very hard to manage game.

If this had been possible (I believe what you are asking for is hardcoded), we would probably have tried to implement it, but also made it an optional install, as I believe some players wouldnt have been that keen or willing to play their battles like that.

In real life battles lasted longer than 5 minutes.
Actually it is way easier for you to roleplay the command delays in your game in same way some of us have house rules and so on. There is a game like you described here:
http://www.legionarena.com/
with demo here:
http://www.vgpro.com/file/4353_legionarenademo.exe.html
so you can test the gameplay

The poor AI would be doomed. Their slow reactions, bad tactics and the instantaneous reaction of the general's unit, which, after all, has the general in it, will destroy most of the armies in this case.

If you want to simulate the effect then house rules are the only way - assign all your units greater than a certain distance from your general to AI control.

In battles of antiquity, the general didn't view the battle from any vantage possible either.

Simulate the effect by using the "genral view". Deploy your units using the strategic viewpoint, then limit yourself to the general's view for the rest of the fight.


Then we'll see how easy that AI is, eh? Who gots deh cajones for dat?

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Simulate the effect by using the "genral view". Deploy your units using the strategic viewpoint, then limit yourself to the general's view for the rest of the fight.

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I think this is an excellent idea for the descrepancies surrounding the general unit and commands; however, I think this whole debate is focusing too much on that one problem.

My main point in posting was to draw attention to problem of miro-managing, a practice which is goes against everything inherent in combat. I, like most of you, have played numerous campaigns and battles in both RTW and EB. When I look back at how I won many of those battles, I realized that many were the direct result of this evil. I know everyone on this fourm knows what Im talking about, such as multiple random clicks to lead a stray unit to a critical area faster than normal. I still belive that a slight delay would be the best remedy for this practice, perhaps only a second or two. I don't feel it would change the game that much either, since multiple spamming of orders would confuse units, just as in real life, and units would ultimately get to where they were ordered as normal. Perhaps this is only a dream, since as some have said it is nearly immpossible to change, yet I would think that a change like this could be well worth hours of digging. Just my 2 cents.

Don't forget, every strategy game that exists speeds time up so that you can build an empire that, in real life, took perhaps 1000 years, in a week...

Every strategy game that's ever been released... Lets look at just for example the first thing off the top of my head... Age of Empires... Years tick away in seconds... That's because we don't have 1000 years to retrace an entire empire... We want to do it in a week...

And it's the same with EB and every other mod... 1 hours worth of gameplay might equal 10 years in game... If battles were 100% absolutely realistic then a battle would take us all day, or at the least 3 or 4 hours...

I would play a 4-5 hour long battle:inquisitive:

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Originally Posted by Elthore

I would play a 4-5 hour long battle:inquisitive:

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But not a campaign with 1000s of them.

...and then, you would laze around, waiting for your family members and their armies to finish walking all the way over to Greece. Then you command them to attack. Wait, no, they're too far away...

If you want to simulate realism, the only way is to control only one character and no others. Then, implement dozens of house rules, tweak with the engine and files, and by that time, M2TW will be out.

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Originally Posted by Tiberius

...and then, you would laze around, waiting for your family members and their armies to finish walking all the way over to Greece. Then you command them to attack. Wait, no, they're too far away...

If you want to simulate realism, the only way is to control only one character and no others. Then, implement dozens of house rules, tweak with the engine and files, and by that time, M2TW will be out.

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Easier to just go to Macedonia and start rasing pikemen... :idea2:

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I would play a 4-5 hour long battle

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I don't understand how adding a 0.5-1.5 second command delay would produce a 4-5 hr battle.... :no:

If anything, it would only add a slight amount of time to a battle, since the player would actually have to pre-think his/her moves for once and not spam the mouse.

Yes, but the computer does not know how to properly implement say horse archers. You need to control them every second to get the maximum historical use out of them. In real life, all of the horse archers knew exactly how to do a feigned retreat or a false charge without their general telling them, but not so in this game.

I cant think of much that would be more annoying than installing a "lag" between issuing orders and having them carried out. Id end up putting my foot through the monitor screen.

Fact is... A game can't be 100% realistic... We have to sacrifice realism for gameplay sometimes, otherwise it would take us hundreds of real years to play a campaign, and at the very least, 4 hours to play a battle... I don't have such time... I'll be 58 by the time i finish conquering Italy and Sicily... By which time newer more awesome than we ever imagined Rome games will be available to play on the PCs of tomorrow...

We just have to imagine that the battle that just took us 35 minutes or less to win really took 4 or 5 hours... Then we must go back to the campaign map, build some buildings in our cities and pretend the turn we just ended lasted 3 months, and not 1 and a half minutes! :2thumbsup:

It'd be great if, during a battle you gave the signal for your right wing to advance and they, instead, charged your centre! :dizzy2:

I doubt people would really enjoy a game that had such iffy command and control - although it might be good for a challenge? It seems pretty far beyond the RTW engine's capabilities though (RTW can't even track armies really, right?).

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Originally Posted by Dayve

Fact is... A game can't be 100% realistic... We have to sacrifice realism for gameplay sometimes, otherwise it would take us hundreds of real years to play a campaign, and at the very least, 4 hours to play a battle... I don't have such time... I'll be 58 by the time i finish conquering Italy and Sicily... By which time newer more awesome than we ever imagined Rome games will be available to play on the PCs of tomorrow...

We just have to imagine that the battle that just took us 35 minutes or less to win really took 4 or 5 hours... Then we must go back to the campaign map, build some buildings in our cities and pretend the turn we just ended lasted 3 months, and not 1 and a half minutes! :2thumbsup:

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I have to agree with you, on this. I fight every battle ... even those that I know I will win against a few rebels ... on the battlemap. Sometimes, I get really irritated with the defenders positioning themselves at the extreme corner of the map, and I have to take the time to march to their position to destroy them.

The point is, I don't want 4-5 hour battles, despite the historical realism.

In a recent campaign, it took me 43 battles to conquer all of Italy from the Alps to the toe of the peninsula, and to conquer Sicily. Let's see, 43 battles x 4.5 hours = 193.5 hours.

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In a recent campaign, it took me 43 battles to conquer all of Italy from the Alps to the toe of the peninsula, and to conquer Sicily. Let's see, 43 battles x 4.5 hours = 193.5 hours.

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193.5/24 = 8.0625. That's more than a week spent only on those battles, and then we aren't even counting the time spent on the campaign map. Plus, most people don't spend much more than 4.5 hours with their computer/day, and few have the time to play this game 9 hours/a day, which means we would only have time for one battle/day, tops. If you'd play the game every day it would still take more than a month to get Italy, and by the time you finish the campaign (if you actually play that long), M:TW2 would be old news.

I say as others have done, if you want this you should simulate it yourself. Even if it's possible, this is most likely not what the main crowd wants, including me.

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Originally Posted by Dayve
The point is, I don't want 4-5 hour battles, despite the historical realism.

In a recent campaign, it took me 43 battles to conquer all of Italy from the Alps to the toe of the peninsula, and to conquer Sicily. Let's see, 43 battles x 4.5 hours = 193.5 hours.

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Im just curious, where did this 4-5 hour battle idea come from??? Has there been any evidence to suggest that the addition of a slight delay in the execution of orders would increase battle time 18 times over if we take 10-15 minutes to be the average battle time??? :no: :no: :no:

I seriously doubt the addition of such a delay would cause a significant increases in battle time. I would think it would add around 5 min to an average battle since moves would be slower, but routs quicker. No more micro managing and mouse spam to help a below average tactician win the day.

I think its just because a previous poster said that we cant have 100% realistic games, because an average battle of the day would have taken at least that long to resolve.

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I seriously doubt the addition of such a delay would cause a significant increases in battle time.

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No, but if ultimate realism should be added, as you suggest, then a minimum length of a battle should be about 4.5 hours too. The point is that there are places where gameplay must win over realism, and this is one of them.

We can't add a command delay, so the point is moot.