What should be patched?!?

Oh Gil, in case the guys forgot to say it and so you know that we are not just complaining . . thanks again for your input and letting us know where everything stands. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

Kocmoc I am a bit confused by the values you set for your example for unit A and unit B.
7 7 5 10? What values are these? I know of only three that you can set in multiplay . . .valour, weapon upgrade and armor upgrade. Am I missing something?

I am not sure how feasible this is with the current architecture, but, I would really like to see an improvement to the diplomacy side of the game.

I think that allies should be able to:

1) Ask their ally to move troops to a province at a certain date to perform a joint attack. This should probably include the minimum and maximum number of troops they want you to move.

2) Ask their ally to garrision one of their provinces. (This of course requires the game to allow allied units to stay peacefully in a province they don't own without starting a war.)

3) Send and receive florins from their ally.

Like I said, these may be impossible with the current architecture, but they would drastically omprove the game IMHO, not that it isn't already excellent! :-)

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It's getting warm in here...that must be one hell of an INFERNO!

Quote Originally posted by ElmarkOFear:
Kocmoc I am a bit confused by the values you set for your example for unit A and unit B.
7 7 5 10? What values are these? I know of only three that you can set in multiplay . . .valour, weapon upgrade and armor upgrade. Am I missing something? [/QUOTE]

Koc referring to Melee Defend Armour Morale rating. A fair comparison is at equal morale and compare net melee+defend / cost which should be a good gauge of a unit combat strength per florin. Net effect with shield in defend bonus should be used as most of encounters are frontal.

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tootee the goldfish,
headmaster of Shogun-Academy
loyal roach of Clan S.G.
'Pa Si Buay Chao! Si Liao Ka Song!'
------------------

The above example may not be very clear, e.g. maybe unit A, although more expensive and net combat strength is -1 w.r.t to B, it maybe be armour-piercing unit, or move faster, or bonus vs cav, etc.

Given that many choices for infantry and cav(many a close replicate of another when upgraded to almost same morale), MP gamers may find certain favourites that best suit online battles (because its cheaper in the sense I stated above). However rebalances these units may spoilt the game for SP gamers.

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tootee the goldfish,
headmaster of Shogun-Academy
loyal roach of Clan S.G.
'Pa Si Buay Chao! Si Liao Ka Song!'
------------------

I want a multiplayer campaign option!!!

http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif

Or something!!

The ability to field understrength units in multiplay would be nice, or to pick V&Vs for your generals in multiplay, that would be neat!

e.g. You take the Coward Vice you get extra florins (or your troops are cheaper, frex. Take the Excellent attacker virtue and you pay more...

Oh!! Reserves in Multiplayer!! Should be allowed!!!

i.e. I should be able to buy more than 16 units.

What else? Multiplayer Campaign!!! Or at LEAST Multiplayer Historical Campaigns.



[This message has been edited by Soapyfrog (edited 09-09-2002).]

Quote Originally posted by Soapyfrog:
pick V&Vs for your generals in multiplay, that would be neat!

e.g. You take the Coward Vice you get extra florins (or your troops are cheaper, frex. Take the Excellent attacker virtue and you pay more...


Oh!! Reserves in Multiplayer!! Should be allowed!!!

i.e. I should be able to buy more than 16 units.

What else? Multiplayer Campaign!!! Or at LEAST Multiplayer Historical Campaigns.

[/QUOTE]

I'd just like to be the first to say I find all of those suggestions to be horrid, and none of them are things that need to be patched, they are only requests more suited for an add-on or another game entirely.

What should be patched? All the things that are broken or unbalanced, or that are hurting our ability to play the game.

Well SORRY!

In that case, the various CTDs that have been reported should be found and fixed.

Happy?

In any case, I much prefer patches that add new functionality AS WELL as fixing problems that OBVIOUSLY need fixing.

routing units http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif

we all know the prob if ur ally rout, so u move away than u dont get infected too.
but with this in-all-direction-routning its impossible

on the one hand its a nice idea, but on the other u lose control if ur enemy routs and this means too, that u cant beat 2 armys at once!
something i loved in stw, u could beat 2 armys....now u wont have enougth units to chase them down and ifu chase down 1 enemy ur units will be too tired to come back in time or even beat the other enemy....

i dont know if there will be a better solution i just want to write my thougths.

fatique is a prob wich can be solved easy, the units get tired a bit to fast, i noticed that they refresh fadt as well but this wont help u in battle.

some units get "bonusses" vs units, well can someone list this bonussesplz...
there is just a little * or something so u know ....but what is the exact bonuss

hotkeys, with so many units this hotkeys are not enought, or at least, why not put them just on number? ...its hardcore to select ctrl+0 http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

what i love:
-the whole gamespeed, its very good exact what we need
-the balance is all together good, some little changes but not such diff like mi
-the maps looks very good
-all this units and antiunits are well done
-if someone drop he routs, thats good
-u see how ur allys deploy!!!!

koc

-if someone drop he routs, thats good

This is the worst thing since Benny Hill.

Quote Originally posted by Kocmoc:
routing units http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/frown.gif
we all know the prob if ur ally rout, so u move away than u dont get infected too.
but with this in-all-direction-routning its impossible
on the one hand its a nice idea, but on the other u lose control if ur enemy routs and this means too, that u cant beat 2 armys at once![/QUOTE]

As someone has pointed out, History doesn't get in the way; history points the way. Realistically, a broken unit doesnt rout in the general direction from where they come, they just wanna run away from the enemy to safety. CA mentioned about this previously I believe, the reason for the rout-in-all-direction thing. And it adds new dimension to the game compared to STW because now the initial victor has to think twice about giving chase, as this will mean dispersing his army in various direction, making them vulnerable to rallied routed enemies, and a chance for the routed to make a stand again. If everything is as per STW, I dont find it new and interesting. As for the allies routing through one's enemy, that is a problem he has to handle, not patched. If I'm gonna run away, I definitely will run to my closest friendlies and yell "get out of my way! cover me while i'm going back to my wives!"

Quote
fatique is a prob wich can be solved easy, the units get tired a bit to fast, i noticed that they refresh fadt as well but this wont help u in battle.[/QUOTE]
I agree. Men seems to get fatique too fast for the game to be more enjoyable (i've enjoyed every moment nevertheless). Whether that is a question of gameplay or realism has to be decided by CA.

Quote
hotkeys, with so many units this hotkeys are not enought, or at least, why not put them just on number? ...its hardcore to select ctrl+0 http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif
[/QUOTE]
ah! this i agree! simple 0 will be great. Wish I can configure this.

Quote
what i love:
-if someone drop he routs, thats good
[/QUOTE]
why?
Quote
-u see how ur allys deploy!!!!
[/QUOTE]
yes its nice.


------------------
tootee the goldfish,
headmaster of Shogun-Academy
loyal roach of Clan S.G.
'Pa Si Buay Chao! Si Liao Ka Song!'
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[This message has been edited by tootee (edited 09-10-2002).]

[This message has been edited by tootee (edited 09-10-2002).]

Fix Crusades...

Both the walking around thing, AND Crusades launched against ilegitimate targets, like non-excommunicated catholics. That is a serious bug!

Fix V&V's that are in conflict, Coward and Utterly Fearless, or Atheist and Devout.
Seems a little stupid, but this is mostly cosmetic. For me it is at least.

Tone down the AUM, a unit of 60 of them walked all over a unit of Templars (40) while another hit it in the flanks on an incline. These were 7/7/7.5 guys. They should not fall to Militia, not even Almohads. And it was not because I used my Templars wrong, because later in the battle a unit of Royal Knights were chrushed as well.
They have a far too small upkeep.

Fix sieges.
An army that goes into a castle after losing a battle will last as long as it would have if it went in directly. That is odd as a defeated army is much smaller.

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You may not care about war, but war cares about you!

[This message has been edited by Kraxis (edited 09-10-2002).]

Oh, forgot...

Give us battles in the castlemap when we have sallying forces or when forces come in to break the siege. It is too easy to defend right now.

Ability to specify which unit I want to be the general of an army. iirc in Shogun the general was determined by the order units were added to the army. In MTW it seems to be just selecting the one it thinks is best no matter what order they are added.

Need some categories for the v&v's. Some like glutony, secret heretic can be assigned at random but others like cowardice/weak due to being captured and ransomed should only be assigned after such an event has actually happened.

Change the Turkish picture that shows up while playing an English Campaign...

Change the way castle sieges are handled. see seperate thread. (dont know how to link)

key tweak would be making the besieging army suffer higher casulties than the besieged. and the besieging army should have higer upkeep costs to reflect how hard it was to keep a army in the field surounding a enemy castle.

one thing i really dont like is how u lose ur upgrades when u get besieged. especially those that have taken 4-5 years to build.
some may think it is good but for me it makes retreating to a castles pointless. especialy early in the game.

[This message has been edited by Lord Romulous (edited 09-10-2002).]

Possible bug:

1. Cancel a retrain in a already full castle (or whatever the level is) will cause the unit to be disbanded. Don't know if any one else had this problem.

Improvement I want to see:

1. Royal units of earlier period should be upgradable/retrainable.

2. Allow the AI to request help from allies (including player) to lift the siege.

3. Allow player to join the ally in a battle. This will not be perfectly timing. I remember that in STW, we have the option to delay the attack a few day (if the weather is bad). This could be implemented so that we can delay the attack for a limited time to wait for the ally force to arrive. Or we may choose to attack before the arrival of the ally. In this case, the ally forece may arrive any time during the duration of the battle.

4. V&V and Character developing:
General should not have V&V that don't go together. Instead, V&V should be made so that they can be gained or lost. A few examples such as:
- "Doubful courage", "Good runner" should be gone after a few wins.
- "Utterly fearless" should be gone if he is captured and ransomed back.
- "Eager to retreat" should not be gained after just one retreat.
- "Weak last stand" should be gone if he managed to beat an army larger than his.
- He should gain "Brave beyond belief" only if he lead the battle and kill more enemy than any one else. Or he may get some " Impressive scars"

General could gain some V&V that are related to the ones he currently has. Or he may lose some current V&V and pickup other V&V in the opposite direction.

5.Siege: make it worth to retreat into the castle or assault the castle. Defending, large army starve too quick but small army don't get assaulted. I have seen a few times an army of nearly 2000 strong (most of the times are rebels) seiges a fortress defending by 20 royal knights for 10 years long and the knights are still partying possibly for another 10 years. The siege army should only have a certain number of years to end the siege (depending on the level of developement in that province, higher/ richer = more resources/supply for the siege army). Otherwise, they must retreat in defeat after they ran out of supply. Siege can only be sustained if army is swaped/reinforced/resupply frequently or the seige army must pillage the province for supply.

That's all I have experienced so far.

[This message has been edited by pdoan8 (edited 09-10-2002).]

Also this:
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000609.html

Make it so we can edit the player/faction start spots on user-created maps.

Some of my governors get bad vices like artistic, too charitable, smuggler, etc. too easily. Sometimes, they would develop the worst ones around 5-10 after I made them governor. It's too much. More control over it would be nice.

Also, heir stats shouldn't be too random. I get crap usually as the English and the Egyptians. In the game I was playing, the Byzantines teched hard to get armor upgrades and got around 6-8 command rating heirs with good virtues like mighty warrior and legendary leader and other good stats too. The armor upgrade in addition made them too hard to kill. They had one for almost every province they have and I had a trouble even with superior troops and a 6-star general since non-Catholics don't have good cavalry killers, only good defenders. In contrast, all I get is crap with the total rating (loyalty+piety+dread+command+acumen) usually just around 10-15.

if the droped player rout i noticed that u dont get infected, his units just move the fastes way away.

imo its better to play alone vs the enemy as has a droped inaktiv army nearby, with this routing the enmy just attack this droped player and make him easy rout in ur direction and u will rout too!
so if he dont rout, u have to protekt the other army to save ur army, this is stupid, ofcourse the ally shooters could help u and some units could stay and fight a bit, but all together its better this army isnt on the battlefield.

to the all direction routing, look
ur units fight till the enemy rout, than they try to chase them down and run behind!
so what happend? ur army get splitt of if there is 1 mroe enemy u have lost, just becouse ur amy is slitted of the whole field!

what can u do? easy dont chase them down!
maybe send some horses behind, but guys...LOL
u havnt enougth horses to chase a full army dont that he cant rally!!!

this means: u have to take back ur infantry units, regroop them and pray that ur horses kill the most of the routing guy.
meanwhile u have to regroop and face the other oponnent wich is still quite fresh.
+ the routing guy, wich rout some units ofcourse behind the other enemy....so they can rally.
imo u cant chase the whole routing guy down, so he can rally atleast 50% of his routing units, so if u was good its about 30% of his whole army wich means u killed 40% of his army! so u have 1 more prob! mostly he move his shooters away, so this untis dont go into a melee, so mostly this untis can rally and u face 1 full and 1 1/3 guy wich has maybe 70% of his shooters left!

i said this in my first post, yes its historical the best way, but we need other controllmechanism or something should be changed, example if ur units routed the enemy
its a near impossible thing to select just the chasing units and regroop the other wich do nothing, u can use ur hotkeys, coz some fighting some not, this means Give us more hotkeys or any other solution, like a ctrl+key for selecting all nonfighting h2h untis....

ofcourse i speak just about multi games where more than 2 guys are playing, in a 1v1 its easy to beat the enemy and u dont have to fear 1 more guy, but in 1v2 or 2v2 ..... u will be in big troubel....

i hope this explains it a bit more

...sorry for my english


koc

Konnichiwa,

A dropped ally in a STW 2v2 was nasty as it decreased the manoeuvre options. A dropped and routed ally in MTW is worse because you're facing a 2v1.

A dropped army in STW (considered it's well deployed) is quite mean: no units move -> less fatigue, units stay together -> good morale.

I'll not claim that I'm a skilled player, but the AI in STW almost never gave me a challenge. I've made 'historical' battles that were almost impossible to win. Guess when I won them? When I did nothing/acted like a dropped army.

When an army drops in a teamgame, one of the enemy teammembers could fight the dropped army (even if it was known that he was dropped, call it courteousy). If you want to be courteous in MTW 1 of the enemy teammembers should stay out as well: game is ruined for 2 instead of for 1.

Lightcavalry is intended for chasing, but they fatigue too fast to handle chasing units very well, especially since units run in all directions (which is good). A fatigue slider (instead of just on/off) would be nice.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu

I think one thing that really needs to be put in is the ability to automate your specia units in some ways.

Like Assassin kill all german emissaries that enter current province. Stuff like that.

Being able to stack special units would be nice to.

Sorry if this has been said a million times before but as a normal gamer with limited ime I find the micromanagemnet time investment too great to be able to play this game much.

Patch this please : http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum7/HTML/001355.html

before I get carpal tunnel!!! http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

Kocmoc,

when you talk about having to quickly finish off your opponent in order to face your other enemy, thats why u think the all-direction rout is bad.. so your arguement is that you are in fact having a 1v2 situation? or your ally is too inept to at least hold the enemy? and in the latter case, the other enemy will also be facing your dilemma.. to chase or not to chase and reorg. i dont see a problem here with all-direction rout.

Probably more hotkeys (or more control over deciding what hotkeys to use for groupings) is the way to go in order to better control the units, i.e. quickly select chasing units to stop the chase etc..

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tootee the goldfish,
headmaster of Shogun-Academy
loyal roach of Clan S.G.
'Pa Si Buay Chao! Si Liao Ka Song!'
------------------

units fatique just a bit too fast down, esp horses. a few short runs and they are exhausted.

unist should disperse to all sides, its realistic and u have to made several quick decisions which to pursuit and which units u must keep for the ongoing battle.

a dropped players should be inactive instead of running away. or... if possible, leave the field and appear as your reinforcements! that should be programmable.

i didnt said, that this all direktion rout is the big prob, but its cause other probs wich should be possible to solve.

like i said in upper post, ur h2h units try to chase the enemy down automaticaly, but if i have 8 or more h2h units some chase some not, i cant regroop them in a good time!

its hard to see a difference between some untis so its near impossible to decide by a fast look!
u need to act about the unitsymbols, this means : doppleclick on the unit--zoom to unit---watch what this unit is doin-----than decide what this unit have to do.
if u wanna do it with every single unit u need too long!

so plz tell me what u guys do now?
i can tell u what i do: i call ALL h2h units back and just let my horses chase down.
but this means i do many mistakes!

i dont say change the routingsystem!
i just say give us some better controlloptions so we can react faster!

soon we will have more guys wich better skill, than the luckpercentage will raise with the current system.

....i noticed that if u chage the enemy u have big probs to control it at all, so many colours wich looks near same, so many units wich looks same....isnt my intention to change it, i just think it should be easy to gie us some more options to controll it better.

like i said bigger flags, or some of u can easy see the valour of enemy units?
...im not!
some colours, like green or orange u see it easy but some other faction u see it to late!

or the blinking general, i never search on the minimap for the general and why all units can hide in woods, just not ur general?!?
so if its wanted that u can easy find the enemy general this "bigger" flag of this unit is still to small.

i said it in otehr post already, i realy like it, its pretty good and i dont think there are so many thing to patched,
we just need a better overview, so u can decide fast and u can be sure with ur decision!
at moment i lose sometimes control, especialy in 2v2 or 3v3.

koc

Konnichiwa,

The following is my experience/feeling with cavalry.

STW had quite slow cavalry, you didn't really had to use/need them. Infantry only was fine. The worst of all was (my opinion) the heavy cav: slow, tires fast, not outstanding powerful, and no splendid morale.

There are different roles for cavalry, one of them (the most important in my view) is chasing and backstabbing.

STW WE/MI 1.02 has made cavalry faster, together with some other changes (the other great difference between cav and infantry is that the mounted warrior and horse are much heavier and faster -> more momentum -> more charge). This not only is more realistic but also promotes the usage of cavalry that they are for: move (static cav can be killed by infantry, moving cav kills most infantrytypes).

1.02 had some problems, most important was that cavalry ruled the field together with spears and guns (once an army routed cavalry finished it off). Related to infantry, cavalry still moved slower than reals ones would do.

1.03 offers basically the same cavalry, with the exception that the mobile powers have been increased and the static decreased (surgical precision is even more important). Most infantry has been made tougher and many also have more morale. Cavalry is still the best unit to chase and backstab, but they do not dominate like 1.02 ones. This and the slight shift of melee to defense makes 1.03 games last longer than 1.02 ones.

STW infantry game.
STW WE/MI cavalry game (infantry spears and guns)
STW 1.03 Infantry/cavalry/missiles.

MTW has a nice routing system. Cavalry is (speedwise) identical like STW WE/MI cavalry, but it feels different. I think it's good that they don't rule the field like 1.02 cavalry, but MTW feels like a infantry game: cavalry fails to chase effectively. That is of course because units rout in all directions, cav in STW 'only' had to move from A to B, MTW cavalry has to move from A to B to C to A to D...

If infantry acts more realistic (by routing in all directions) then so should cavalry (routing in all directions has an obvious advantage -> an increased chance to rally at least some units).

When I see cavalry running I don't think those are horses (all TW titles and versions), in STW MI 1.02 and more in 1.03 it did work though, because other things were 'simplified' too.

There are two ways (or a combination of those) to give cavalry their use:
-increase their condition (decrease their fatigue) so that they can run for a longer time.
-increase their speed. Tests showed that it is the travel time and not the speed (using run only) that determines the fatigue rate.

A higher speed will make it harder for many players to control, and changing the speed is easy enough for anyone to do him/her self. I've increased all horse/camel speeds by 30%, I feel happy with those in the SP campaign and custom battles I play.

Decreasing the fatigue is something only CA can change,I feel it's necessary, especially for cavalry. The nicest thing would be a fatigue slider when building the gameserver/host: 0n, 75%, 50%, 25%, off.

This would not change balance.

The second thing would indeed be the option to set the gamespeed. Increased speed of cavalry makes more distinct classes but also make units harder to control (trying to achieve the same results by lowering inf speed results in fast fatigue of inf since fatigue is travel time dependend).

Apart from that the current speed is already too fast for some people (do realise that many different people play this game: male/female, 13-60 years.... Even a 'teenage' game like UT offers gamespeeds from 10-200%).
I feel that 3 speeds would be enough for MTW: 50%, 75% and 100%.

I'ld (this does not mean that other things are irrelevant) ask for these battlefixes:

Building host
1. Speedslider: 50%, 75% and 100%.
2. Fatigueslider: 0n, 75%, 50%, 25%, off.

3. Dropped armies don't rout.

4a. Hotswap crusaders_unit_prod11.txt.
4b. Hotswap projectiles.txt.

Preferably even the option to have many different stats in a folder and select one like one selects a map (add-on?).

5. And option to give mobile siegeequipment (like culverin and catapult) a walkspeed in Projectiles.txt. Sieges are hard enough, all static equipment make it even harder.




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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu

I tend to like a dropped player's army withdrawing so that a player on the other team can withdraw, and you then have a clean battle. A 4v4 becomes a 3v3, a 3v3 becomes a 2v2 and a 2v2 becomes a 1v1. I've taken advantage of this in several games to salvage the game for the rest of the players, and they were able to continue with a normal game without me. To me, hiding inside a dropped player's army in Shogun was a waste of time because it's an artificial situation, although, I have seen players pretend to be dropped. Also, all players in the MTW game immediately know when a player has dropped, and they can decide right away to play on or restart the game.

The dropped player's army can rout or withdraw as long as it does not impart a morale penalty on the allies. If I manually rout a unit in Shogun that does not impart a morale penalty to the rest of my units. If that's the way it's working in MTW, then it seems ok to me. Otherwise, the army could simply withdraw.

The only thing I really h8 is the log on and log off!
PoooooooooooooooH!

{^_^} DRB {^_^}

for now our Khan is in favour of tosas option sliders but if they cant be done a second best thing is making horses n=ot to tire that fast down. a few chases and even the lightest cav is limping of exthaustion. twm is clear an infantry game but luckily horses are still needed or at lowest are usefull.

also agree with Orlok Koc, the little unitflags are ok. u must be close to teh enemy to see what power a unit really has, and it gives a bit more value to scouting horses. the big unitflages could be bigger. somehow in games, cuz units rout to all sides, its darn hard to find the right unit and even if u found one u could keep misclicking on teh banner.

although a messy h2h round is also realistic. ofcourse the better players like to control teh doing of each unit, a little mess adds some tension and something random that in all real battles occures. (little chaos theory)