What we would like to see in ETW.....

This thread, I hope will present ideas on the various items we would like to see included from previous TW games, and maybe some new ideas?
Lusted, any chance you could complie the list and send to CA for us please?

Please use Point form, and try and think of how CA could best implement these ideas. Be reasonable!!

exempli gratia:

1. Titles.
I would like to see these re introduced. The abililty to raise and award in succession Knight(sir), Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marques, Duke and maybe the odd prince.
And have this included in the name as in MTW.
To award titles, click on the unit card to which a button on this card will allow you to award/view and or other things the unit in question.

2. Succession.
Can we please make it primus genetia (first born) as in salic law. With the abilitly to change heirs if we want to.

3. Lords.
Can we please have families occupie titles and succeed by their son's primus genetia. This would give great immersion.

4. Please take away adoption.

5. Keep the generals, but intergrate this with the lords function.

6. increase in the number of trabe goods. and the ability to mod more types.

7. The increase of provinces. but not so we can race from town to town.

8. Please include the "get of my land or suffer" diplomacy.

9. Please, Limit the V and V.
Most people in life aspire to achieve good V&V, and therefore we need something to represent this. And can we limit these to 8. And perhaps 6 ancillaries. And have some traits run in families with the ability of certain types of ancihllies being passed father to son?

10. This is a wish....to enable the recruitment of units to represent the units that were recruitable in there areas.
Does not have to be exact, we can make it that later. just if you could put that in game, like the legion names.

exempli gratia: London, can recruit foot regiments of the following names.
Unit of 100 foot. 57th regiment of foot Middlesex regiment.
Unit of 100 foot, 3rd Regiment of foot Royal Kent Regiment.
Unit of 100 foot, 35th Regiment of Foot, Royal Sussex regiment.
Unit of 40 Cavalry, say the 1st Dragoon Guards.
Or the Life Guards and so on. that would mean unit and region specific identification.
et cetera...

Workabilitly.
We would also need to be able to retrain these units in all other regions, we just can reproduce that number regiment in other areas. So once destoryed. We will have to recruit another.
So perhaps, on the recruitment screen, we choose recruit Foot Regiment. and have either buttons to which regiment we want it to be. Or just include all the regiments under foot, and allow the recruiting as per individual cards? EG: Just choose 3rd Foot Regiment Royal Kent. Or 57th Middlesex, et cetera...

Yes I know Kent had the 3rd and the 50th Foot, but that can be condensed to their almagamation regiments as with Sussex, Kent and many others.
Heck I will even send you the list, with foot and cavalry.

Most nations had Regiments recruitable by area, and would be fantastic immerision factor.
But like i said, it's a wish.

11. PLEASE. make spies and assinians live on unless killed. As in MTW. It removes the micromanage and headache of replacing these units in your towns. Which is really annoying. I would rather micromanage the economy or industrial out put than have to keep replacing spies et cetera...

Anyway I can't think of anything else at the moment.

sincerely,

fenir

please limit the amount of the game that is hard coded. the true gold in the series is the ability to mod the game. the more that is hard coded, the harder it is to do that in a complete fashion. we DO respect the work of those programming the game, but we also want to make the game live on through multiple mods. M2TW was the most moddable yet, but there were still many things hard coded that we couldn't touch. i would really like to see everything be open range...

Bizillions of troops on the field at the same time!

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Originally Posted by Furious Mental

Bizillions of troops on the field at the same time!

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U can already do that in M2TW...

I will like to have the ability to create your own flag ship you know the one that leads the navy....
that will be so awesome!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship

I'd like to see the thing from M2K, Heroes. Y'know, have Frederick the Great leading your troops...

A redesigned campaign....maybe even real-time....at the very least, with all the micromanagement taken out and a more realistic recruitment system. Then maybe a focus on realism (CA! Your precious kiddie demographic doesn't play the campaign anyway!) to make the movement rates make a bit of sense, and not have newly recruited diplomats dying of old age before they can reach Russia from France.

Basically I want 90% of the changes to be to the campaign.

maybe at bit more formalized approach to entering war, ie not being able to cross borders without prior declaration of war, or border crossing being an act of war. would eliminate need of "get of my land" too.

like to see more events.. Like Death of Lord Nelson maybe, Trafalgar, Exile of Napolean...etc

also would love to see a very detailed battle log where you could see how many enemy troops you have killed in the whole corse of the campaign, maybe biggest battles you've fought, most troops killed from a single faction etc... would be great.

Besides all the good points touched on here and the other threads, how about faction-specific music (set of tunes for each playable faction)?

Even more so: how about, besides original compositions, adding some of the best of the best of the era including but not limited to: Mozart, Handel, Beethoven, Wagner, Tchiakovsky? :music:

If CA needs help funding the acquisition of these works, let me know :beam:

I don't know about "we" but I would like to see, less battles.

Every single battle should mean something from strategic perspective. Enough of the TW where you see "oh, one more weak horde coming at me" type of behavior. Loosing battle or you elite troops should actually mean something. You can't recruit good units right away, only militia which is no good against real troops. That's why you can't loose or you will be in a strategic situation where you need to stop your advantage (in case), or send other troops to reinforce that front where you lost your battle.

This also comes to where AI builds smaller amounts of stacks and when they build, those stacks should look like real armies or divisions to. I mean some sense in them, real historical variety of troops in the stack would be ideal approach if possible. Nothing has bored and frustrated me in Total Wars as much as the knowledge that after this battle there will be new one in that same place, just after few turns with same like stack trying the suicide trick.

Immersed diplomacy; including the idea of coalitions, instead of just allies.
The return of titles. The removal of adoption, to be changed to "Rising from the ranks"(Sharpe style!! :D) The use of cover in combat, and ill add more when i can think of them :P

Artillery that actually works, extensive melee with the use of bayonets. Generals longer present on the battlefield as a fighting unit. coalitions, defensive alliances, military aid. transgression option for personplayers.

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11. PLEASE. make spies and assassins live on unless killed.

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AMEN! It's micromanagement I could live without. For those saying it's unrealistic: View your spy not as a single spy but as aspy-ring. You can consider the dying off of old spies and recruiting of young blood into the ring as abstracted. Just like it is now for troops. You can park them in a corner of the map for a billion years and unless some accident befalls them they won't die off either.



On a completely different note, I hope that they get rid of exploding shells for ordinary cannons. It's rare field pieces shoot explosive shot (Around 1500 many were 2-3 pound field pieces anyway, completely feeble) Explosive shells for howitzers and mortars? Fine.
If CA throws in grapeshot/cannister in exchange, that would be terrific.

-Uniquely identified units (STW had them!) so we can keep better track of our favourite/much abused units.
I don't think quite as rigid a method as fenir suggests but more like each city has a list of locally recruited regiment/unit names & just sequentially numbers them as built.
Merged units would keep the more senior number (lower/by experience) unless the unit had been nearly destroyed, in which case they get absorbed into the younger unit.

That way, you could have the 33rd Regiment of Foot, Royal Sussex regiment being much more famous than the 35th (who were tragically slaughtered to the last during a minor skirmish on their first deployment)
The roleplayers can carefully nurture specific units to be closer to history while those who don't care won't need to be troubled by extra complexity & just ignore the names, merging as they see fit.

-Definitely not a realtime campaign (thankfully info to date specifies turn-based).

-Classical/Medieval period formations/animations & walls being in the data-files even if not actually used by the game so that modders for other periods can do their thing without too much issue.
-Dismountable cavalry/mountable infantry (in the same vein)

-city/army view (though, reading between the lines, I suspect we may have a fully dynamic zoom from campaign to battle/city like Supreme Commander so this may well be implicit already)

-Lots of bizzare hats! :)

-The ability for the AI to actually accept peace at times that would be good for it (implied by change/merge of AI but its still a Want)

-Ability to have cities actually be ports without needing a separate port & for cities to be on islands/peninsulas with up to 3 sides being wall into sea/river or even 4 sides with a bridge.

-Sea vs. shore-battery battles.

-Easier ability to mod custom cities.

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Originally Posted by hoom

-The ability for the AI to actually accept peace at times that would be good for it (implied by change/merge of AI but its still a Want)

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Presumably you meant "The ability for the AI to actually accept peace at times that would be good for it (and then not declare war on you again the very next turn)"

Hope that makes it a bit more clear.

- Making the game a REAL turn-based game. IN RTW and M2TW, it is possible to move a little at the time to spot things or try sneaking stuff.

- Having more options like in STW and MTW when one of your territories was invaded. This way it would be possible to react to an invasion or maybe instead remain in your city and fortified it

- Reduce as much as possible micromanagement because of agents. It was fine with STW and then MTW also but the huge map of RTW and M2TW really makes this headache.

- Come back to 4 TPY system but one turn income like in STW. Was very challenging to budget your money (because fields were being taxed only in fall right) although if proven to be the case, trade could bring income every turn.

- Make commanding armies more realistic, where you virtually decided a battle plan with troops placed under subordinate commanders (not dumb ones this time please!) where it is possible to given them specific orders (eg. when signal X is given, move to point A, turn your forces facing left and envelop the enemy army's flank)

- When new order must be given to troops, use a system of couriers and reports which would take time, might be misinterpreted by the subordinate commander or even intercepted by the enemy ! No more of this god all-mighty flying all-viewing camera.

A better morale/cohesion system for units and their organization (a cohesion system such as in Waterloo, Napoleon's Last Battle would be simple and nice) Because having 100 horsemen running through 200 infantrymen without anybody being hurt or any formation messed up is completely stupid and impossible.

More realistic political governments with titles such as ministers, generals, dukes/barons/counts, royal families, important religious characters, with historical succession laws for kingdoms and fiefdoms. Thus a governor could be named for a specific region instead of having to allocated a family for every town (cities could probably be ruled by lesser administrators I guess)

A more realistic way of constituing armies where units where raised to be part of of sub-unit itself part of the main army. Also include OOB (Orders of battle) for army instead of a stack with 20 units in without any specified functions between units.

As well as developing cities with buildings, new technologies or social/military/politic improvement should become available after specific buildings are build or events happened (time required could be hidden to the player and would depend on various factors) Such as the Marian reforms in RTW but on a much larger scale and subjects.

An historically inspired logistic system and possible negative effects if armies get out of supply (desertion, disorganization, illness, etc)

Much deeper diplomatic system and strategic agents (spy network, religious agents, princesses and royal marriages, etc)

1) PIRATES! I am talking about proper Pirates here, not just rebellious ships, I want annoying little fella's who hound my trade routes (maybe not attacking trade ships if they don't feature, but causing a disruption of your trade route instead) and require my attention, the grand age of Piracy is in the timeframe, so I want Blackbeard to blow some holes in please. Hiring your own privateers would also be quite good, maybe if your hire them they only disrupt other countries trade and not yours, who knows, but I was rum drinking swashbucklers!

2) Ability to rename ships, it's nothing huge but I liked naming my ships in Sid Meier's Pirates and let me add my own touch to the game.

3) As has been touched on, do not make the games so rigid that nobody can make mods about anything but gunpowder era, allow hands weapons to still work well enough to equip lots with them etc

4) Increase the diplomatic options and re-work it. It's certainly improved but a similar base as the one in EU would be quite good, where viewing your reputation is quite simple, if needs be for immersion just make it avasilable through an advisor who is mointoring relations with other factions. In EU, people don't just attack you, they usually do it because you have a poor reputation world wide or you've been rude to them, it works very well (though can be improved) but is a good base.

5) More than one start date, let me fight the Napoleonic Wars and Wars of Independance, rather than waiting for them, by which time the world will be completely different.

6) Glorious Achievements, let me win by conquering everything, but don't force me to do that. Alot of players like to sit and play realistically, MTW's GA's allowed you to win without going nuts, this was a great feature.

7) Stick to the turn baded campaign, it works very well.

Charges.

No i'm not talking about calvary, I am talking about infantry. Proper Bayonet charges. With how long it takes to reload the musket it was not uncommon to have your side charge the other while they were reloading. I want to see them be, brutal, bloody, and useful.

Other then that I will be happy.

- Ability to send ships to support land armies in battles around coastal forts, or along major rivers, etc.

- For the love of God, the ability to dismount cavalry during a battle! With the addition of the ability to garrison buildings on the battlefield, place troops behind cover, etc, it would make dragoons actually useful since they could ride out to seize strong points and then defend them on foot.

Group unit AI and enemy AI

If you group units together, let them form walls etc

I would like to see:

TACTICAL MAP:
- most important thing is AI and a base consisting of a stable, simple, well balanced, and well working battle system, like in STW. The required game skills should be about being a good tactician, not about knowing much about the special abilities of strange exotic units with warcries, shieldwalls and phalanx formation.

- to this, only make one major addition that wasn't in STW/MTW1: field fortifications. They are the only major feature of warfare that was not yet introduced in STW/MTW1. Stakes, caltrops, trenches, barricades etc. Add this, in combination with bringing back the STW and MTW importance of taking advantage of the terrain, and the result is a game where both the natural and artifical terrain become crucial elements of the battles. I would also like to see larger battle maps with adding the camp of each army, important roads, river crossings and villages, and a necessity to protect the camp during the battle in order to not lose supplies etc., and a need to control the road to be able to advance and be able to receive reinforcements (using a similar reinforcement feature as in RTW). During deployment, you could select an area where you wish to set up camp, and another area for where to deploy your troops.

- make sure most defeated armies can retreat mostly intact, so battles mostly end with casualty ratios such as 2%-5% except in more crucial battles with 5-40% or similar, and only an occasional slaughter with 10%-80%. Armies should be worn down more by supply problems than combat casualties! NOTE: if an orderly retreating army and a half-routing one don't look too much different, this can also be used to finally allow the player to use fake retreats.

- make the AI capable of using cavalry properly for harassing, just as good as a human player can do it. Let the AI very seldom use cavalry for pure charges.

- obviously: assaults on star fort cities! :idea2: A good element of this would be moats, which one can choose to fill with stones and earth on the strategy map, in order to be able to approach the fort from more directions than just the gate. Also add so navies camped outside a coastal fort can take part in pounding it!

- lift the limit on number of units in an army to perhaps 100 instead of 20! Make players able to go to battle with 100 units as long as they can afford to muster them! In RTW and MTW2, most battles are 20 units vs 20 units - not much variety there. I would like to see a lot of variation in strength and almost never see armies full to the limit the game makes. Handling around 100 units should be not problem in battle (just make 5 rows with 20 in each on the bottom of the screen, or 3 rows with 30 or something), especially if there are good group formations available so you can command them as groups instead of individual units!

- IMPORTANT! make it possible to activate and deactivate "fire at will" for all selected ranged units even if also some non-ranged units are included in the current selection. Example: I want the entire left flank to open fire, but I have 4 pike and 1 cavalry unit there that I manually have to deselect after drawing a selection around the rest, before I can press the 'A' key. With RTW, this was the case, and in multiplayer this was immensely annoying and could sometimes lose a battle! And in a ranged combat game, it will become even more important than in RTW!


STRATEGY MAP:

- add desertion, attrition and supply lines. Add a system where a connected line of small forts must be controlled up to very close behind the army if it is to be supplied that turn. It shouldn't be possible to march straight into Russia without dropping off garrisons along the way and having severe trouble keeping the supply routes and roads covered properly.

- add so that armies with low supply and deep in foreign lands are somewhat understrength when going to battle. Some units will not be able to take part in it but instead be in their camp. Also make those troops that do fight be a bit tired from start if they have marched far.

- create an impressive diplomacy system where you don't fully control and can tax conquered land until either your enemy has signed a peace treaty with you (or you've controlled and garrisoned the province for at least 10 years). This way there won't be unhistorical conflicts with attempts to conquer entire countries: something that very seldom happened in this period. Also make sure a strong alliance is almost always formed against anyone trying to conquer an entire country, that refuses to accept a peace treaty after conquering about 1/3rd or 2/3rds of the country (unless the country is very small that is).

- add "casus belli", without which you get a reputation penalty for attacking another country.

- make it extremely difficult to maintain a good enough economy to keep large armies mustered even in peace time. Make sure the AI too decommissions ships and disbands regiments in peace time!

Dear CA, take a look at the Europa Universalis series. You've probably done so before, but do it again. Play EU for a while. Play it again. After that you'll have a pretty good idea what I want added to your otherwise fantastic game(s). Thank you.

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Originally Posted by Empirate

Dear CA, take a look at the Europa Universalis series. You've probably done so before, but do it again. Play EU for a while. Play it again. After that you'll have a pretty good idea what I want added to your otherwise fantastic game(s). Thank you.

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As a faithful player of EU, I'm curious as to what features of that series would you like to see CA emulate exactly?

Personally, if I had to implement anything from Europa Univeralis into a Total War title it would be the almost limitless diplomacy options. One of EU's strengths.

Will Poland have a real husars that were officially disbanded in 1776?
http://www.husaria.jest.pl/br1.jpg
If yes then world beware because againts them musket tactics are useless.

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Originally Posted by BoyarPunk

As a faithful player of EU, I'm curious as to what features of that series would you like to see CA emulate exactly?

Personally, if I had to implement anything from Europa Univeralis into a Total War title it would be the almost limitless diplomacy options. One of EU's strengths.

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Really apart from maybe attriton and diplomacy, theres not much they could learn from it, its a different engine after all, but its diplomacy is fantastic and something that would defiantely improve TW.

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Originally Posted by Praxil

I don't know about "we" but I would like to see, less battles.

Every single battle should mean something from strategic perspective. Enough of the TW where you see "oh, one more weak horde coming at me" type of behavior. Loosing battle or you elite troops should actually mean something. You can't recruit good units right away, only militia which is no good against real troops. That's why you can't loose or you will be in a strategic situation where you need to stop your advantage (in case), or send other troops to reinforce that front where you lost your battle.

This also comes to where AI builds smaller amounts of stacks and when they build, those stacks should look like real armies or divisions to. I mean some sense in them, real historical variety of troops in the stack would be ideal approach if possible. Nothing has bored and frustrated me in Total Wars as much as the knowledge that after this battle there will be new one in that same place, just after few turns with same like stack trying the suicide trick.

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Best suggestion I've seen so far. Way too many battles in current games, they feel like chores after a while.

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1. Titles. I would like to see these re introduced.

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No way. Too much micromanagement. With all the fleets and transports running around in this era you can be sure there will be plenty as is.

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8. Please include the "get of my land or suffer" diplomacy.

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Here, here!:yes:

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11. PLEASE. make spies and assinians live on unless killed. As in MTW. It removes the micromanage and headache of replacing these units in your towns.

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Great idea, have spies represent not individuals who live then die, but networks that live on as long as you keep them funded.:whip:

Some good thoughts coming, keep it up guys.

fenir

Some how discourage having a mass heavy cavalry for web battles

Various changes in weapons and units throughout the game, so at first units will be equipted with feeble muskets and mainy troops having pikes, then all musket be replaced by better rifles, and pikes be completely obsalete.

When a factions becomes conquered, if a former ally comes to "liberate" this means that all the regions the faction orginally had, which have been conquered by you, are given back to the spainish, this will massively improve relations with that faction, and you will get a good amount of support from local troops filling in gaps in your army ranks, of course you can choose if your liberating, or just "Taking it over"

Have various different TYPES of assaination atempts, so for example you can choose between poisoning, stabing, etc

Ships be distructable, so that bits will fall off, instead of it suddenly sinking

When Infantry shoot, they shoot in ranks, but one row shooting after the over, or maybe even the front row croatches, and the other 2 ranks fire along with the front.

NO DAM SHEILD BUG

Agent able to aquire aprentices, these will help the agent, and when the agent dies, he will be replaced by his aprentice

Regional troops would be pretty nice

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Originally Posted by fenir

8. Please include the "get of my land or suffer" diplomacy.

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Pity there isn't this option in M2TW (several crusading armies remained on my lands for years).

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11. PLEASE. make spies and assinians live on unless killed. As in MTW. It removes the micromanage and headache of replacing these units in your towns. Which is really annoying. I would rather micromanage the economy or industrial out put than have to keep replacing spies et cetera...

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This makes no sense. A spy / assassins killed during a mission has to be replaced just like one that dies of old age. If you allow them to live forever all the factions will end up with super elite spies / assassins with hundreds of years experience.

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Originally Posted by hoom

-The ability for the AI to actually accept peace at times that would be good for it (implied by change/merge of AI but its still a Want)

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Do you mean the AI will offer a cease fire benifical to the faction crushing it? In M2TW the only cease fires I got involved me having to pay the faction I was crushing hundreds of florins for several turns (I rejected them and usually crushed the faction in a few turns).

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Originally Posted by Abokasee

When a factions becomes conquered, if a former ally comes to "liberate" this means that all the regions the faction orginally had, which have been conquered by you, are given back to the spainish, this will massively improve relations with that faction, and you will get a good amount of support from local troops filling in gaps in your army ranks, of course you can choose if your liberating, or just "Taking it over"

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By 'factions becomes conquered' do you mean that some regions of a faction has been conquered or that the faction has been destroyed? In the latter case there is no one to give the regions back to because the leaders of the faction have probably been executed. Though the former case may be an interesting way to improve your reputation and attack another faction 'for morally correct reasons'.

However it would also be fun to have the people of a region support the attacking army because they hate the leader of their faction and want them overthrown (so you have to keep the population happy).


Personally I'd like the ability to repress the population if they demand more freedom (military dictatorship, with regular executions). Trying to subjugate the population could be interesting, especially if they try to revolt.