Battle speed

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Originally Posted by Sardo

In short, death to PR people.

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~:cheers:

But does 'comparable to previous total war games' mean comparable to Rome or medieval though ?

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Originally Posted by Reenk Roink

I give in, you should all enjoy the longer battles, I'll admit, I like them as well, but in Rome there were just so many friggin' battles that it really got boring quick. I just hope the AI is improved so that battles actually matter, and you are not bombarded with 1/4 full stacks every turn...

And anyways, there's still the speed up .

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I found battles in MTW to be more diverse and generally more interesting than in Rome. You had a wider range of units (per faction) at your disposal who were often good at specific things. Cavalry wasn't quite as dominant as in Rome either, you could flank one unit but then you would be engaged for a while so you couldn't provide backup for the rest of your army. In Rome you can just outflank and kill one unit at a time. Bigger armies also make outflanking harder. Also cavalry was (imho) relatively expensive and since you could get serious losses even if you flanked, you weren't so eager to just charge in before you had the enemy units pinned down.

Honestly I hope they find some middle ground, MTW battles tended to be better, but I don't want to fight 3+ huge battles (taking up to or over an hour each) a turn again, since I usually play games in 1 hour doses.

Can't their just be a drop-down menu in options where you decide what battle speed you want in SP? And in MP, the host decides it and problem solved :P

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Originally Posted by x-dANGEr

Can't their just be a drop-down menu in options where you decide what battle speed you want in SP? And in MP, the host decides it and problem solved :P

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I think that would be a most acceptable solution to us all. We can't assume everybody want the solid and lengthy combat of MTW.

But I really want the uncertainty to come back, the slow development of who is getting the upper hand. The battle that lasts across the entire map. The rallying of desperate forces to last just one more charge. The furious engagement of outnumbered forces on a hill when you have all the troops engaged and the enemy is flanking you. The last one is in Rome too seldom given that you often rout your enemy to the front and then deal with the flankers. In MTW you sit a bite your nails as they edge closer and your troops are still engaged with an enemy unit with 90% if it's strength.

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Originally Posted by Caliban

Just to clarify, M2 battles haven’t been sped up or turned into an arcade game. The pace of combat on the battlemaps is comparable to previous TW games.
I think that may have been some miss-wording on the PR’s Behalf.
We do have a lot more animation though, which simply beefs up the realism aspect of combat in the battlemaps. Single units now track and acquire targets on the battlefield before engaging and have a range of moves to be used depending on the situation. Finishing moves refers to the way in which a single unit decides to kill their opposition. I wouldn’t relate it to an arcade fighting game at all.
We actually employed some historical actors to help out with the fight sequencing to allow our animators to deliver more realistic looking battlefields. They left behind some cool practice weapons as well which is really useful for ‘motivating’ the artists ;)

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~:thumb:

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Originally Posted by Kraxis

But I really want the uncertainty to come back, the slow development of who is getting the upper hand. The battle that lasts across the entire map. The rallying of desperate forces to last just one more charge. The furious engagement of outnumbered forces on a hill when you have all the troops engaged and the enemy is flanking you. The last one is in Rome too seldom given that you often rout your enemy to the front and then deal with the flankers. In MTW you sit a bite your nails as they edge closer and your troops are still engaged with an enemy unit with 90% if it's strength.

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Amen to that. R:TW may have been intented to go as fast as M:TW, it never worked for me that way. Off course, fast is a relative term.

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Originally Posted by Kraxis

The battle that lasts across the entire map.

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Or better still - if they expand the map so you still have room for a lot of manouvering and flanking and similar while still allowing for really big battle lines. In RTW it was a little sad that on huge unit settings you could sometimes create a line of phalanxes that covered pretty much the entire width of the map... I really always wanted to play huge but never did because it removed all possibilities for manouvering...

Anyway it's slower battle speed and better AI for me, I don't like the speed of the RTW engagements, it removes both the tactical game, the historical realism, and the epic feeling of battles. Too often in RTW I just collected 5-6 cavalry units and move them around, isolating one enemy unit at the time and charging it. Repeating that for a while, the enemy army is eliminated, no matter how strong it was from the start of the battle (except if it was a horse archer army). That was the cause of the fourth downside of RTW battles - that I suffered too few casualties to have any worries on the campaign map and long term strategy. More losses in the battles equals more interesting campaign map game. But it mustn't be more losses while keeping the RTW battle speed, because then defeat usually means total annihilation of the army. It's more interesting in EB when often 60% of defeated armies (both my own and those of the enemy) get away. Makes it a tougher decision to know whether to push on or not.

Caliban deserves a big hug!! That is so comforting to hear. My day suddenly improved dramatically, and it wasn't even a bad day to begin with.

Ajax

Legio what I meant was that the battle would roll back and forth if you were too uncareful and chased after the enemy when and if he routed. Then you would be beaten back when hid reinforcements arrived. Or even if you slowly crept ahead, jumping from tactical position to the next until you realized you were far from safety.

Btw, I want a return of the diluge of experienced troops if you send them home for reinforcements. You should be forced to be forced to merge your experienced troops.

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Originally Posted by Kraxis

Btw, I want a return of the diluge of experienced troops if you send them home for reinforcements. You should be forced to be forced to merge your experienced troops.

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Yeah, easy replacement of depleted units in RTW was a big thing that made waging war so much easier, and yet it was too tempting not to use it (for me at least). Something should be done with the retraining system to make it harder to just regrow your entire army in a turn or two: maybe something along the lines of "homelands" that one of the mods to RTW had?

Sorry for the OT.

Limiting the amount of replacements you can order would be nice. Say three units perhaps.
But the amount of possible replacements were never a problem in MTW in my mind as they were after all normally green anyway (the veterans would normally only come home to be upgraded and smaller veteran forces would be in special replacement armies near the front).
And often I merged so many forces that I didn't even have that many forces to send home for replacements. Most new troops coming as raw recruits.

This is very much unlike RTW where I basically retrained units as often as I could and in basically any settlement.

In Mtw, Bkb, Med, Nap, Atw or P&m I loose a lot due to umproper management of reeformcents/usage of units.
But in Rtw seems even I, a bad commander by all means, still manage to win despite all.
So hope MIItw will be an improvement over Mtw rather then Rtw, lol.

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Originally Posted by Mount Suribachi

One of the communities biggest (and ongoing) problems with RTW is that compared to MTW and STW the battles are much shorter in length. Movement speeds are faster, killing rates are faster, units route quicker. Even battles between 2 full stacks rarely last more than 10 minutes. Whereas in MTW a battle between 2 full stacks could last 30 minutes or more, with the battle ebbing and flowing. With RTW, the lines meet, fight for a few seconds, then one side chain routes. I've not even come close to the epic 3 and 4 hour fights I had in MTW whilst playing RTW. Battles that will live long in the memory.

Like most MTW and STW vets I miss those epic battles in RTW, and I am apprehensive at this talk of a quicker pace in MTW2...

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Listen to him! He speaketh the truteth!!! :end:

I miss those long, epic, huge battles of M:TW...

One of the communities biggest issues is not accepting mods. A mod that slows down running speed and combat is a piece of cake but it seems that MPers much rather yell at CA.

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Originally Posted by Duke John

One of the communities biggest issues is not accepting mods. A mod that slows down running speed and combat is a piece of cake but it seems that MPers much rather yell at CA.

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I would submit that this is because most people do not wish to rely on third-party mods for a good game. Mods are supposed to add new content, not fix the game.

If R:TW was the ideal game, then yes. But people are complaining about speeds and CA is doing nothing about it. The solution by the community? Keep whining because mods are not official.

I think most of us here want it for SP...

But in any case I did mod that stuff myself. And I ended up putting it back (well mostly). It just looked wrong with the sliding and the long pauses between attacks were horrible.

In te ned I even tried upping defense immensely, that seemed to work but then I found out that it only works 100% on the unshielded side. Nice... Suddenly the shield became a liability.

In the end the solutions were at best a bandaid over a gushing wound.

Well I would want it for both SP and MP (SP more), but I really wouldn't mind longer battles for MP, the thing that makes playing a MP game in Rome take so long is when you try to start one...

But that's a discussion for a different thread...

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But in any case I did mod that stuff myself. And I ended up putting it back (well mostly). It just looked wrong with the sliding and the long pauses between attacks were horrible.

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The solution of editing the terrain movement modifiers is indeed bad as it also slows walking (which is fine). I was talking about editing the animations, since they are the ones who dictate the speed of movement.

Ah... Then I must say that I have not been familiar with a speedmod for that. An I thought I was rather well versed in that department, at least until mid autumn.

I can not understand why only RTW comes in for abuse when considering unit speed. STW/MI was too fast but nobody goes on and on about that. I have played MP RTW battles that have lasted over an hour. I have played MP MTW battles that lasted less than 10 minutes. The combat phase is governed by many things other than movement speed.
I found unit speeds (walking/running) less than perfect in MTW, cav appeared to be running but getting nowhere, many times an arbalest unit would manage to escape light cav.
Lack of control and limited space in RTW is possibly governed by the AI habit of stretching its units into one wide line.
Deployment zones have always been arranged far too close so manoeuvre is of secondary importance and that horrible red zone is a wonderful flank protector.

A few map extras would significantly improve battles. Surprise features like marshy ground etc, things that prevent units working at optimum levels, realistic and IMO it would add more drama to the battlefield

......Orda

I agree to you Orda. I have experienced battles that lasted 1:50 hours.. And it all depends on the players experience (In MP) and how a fool the A.I is (In SP). So, I say no to blame the speed of the battle for such things, after all, if we want it as it was, increase the number of men to 1000 and see how long will the battle last.

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Originally Posted by x-dANGEr

I agree to you Orda. I have experienced battles that lasted 1:50 hours.. And it all depends on the players experience (In MP) and how a fool the A.I is (In SP). So, I say no to blame the speed of the battle for such things, after all, if we want it as it was, increase the number of men to 1000 and see how long will the battle last.

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I have never seen a battle that long in rtw in sp, but i did in mtw, so i'd like to see the speeds reduced to what they were then...

But the problem is the A.I I think. All it's armies are weak a bunch of peasents and it also can't handle them..

I never played MTW. But 8 hour epic battles sound quite cool. As long as they're not too common.

It would be helpful if you could save during battles. I'm not sure if that was in MTW?

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

Lack of control and limited space in RTW is possibly governed by the AI habit of stretching its units into one wide line.


......Orda

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I think that's because CA learned from their online MTW game vs AMP (and magy+Koc) ;).

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Originally Posted by Reenk Roink

Don't kill me, but I liked the speed of the RTW battles, and actually wouldn't mind if they were a tad bit quicker... :tomato2:

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So what do you want?any faster and two units would meet, Decide emediately who was the best and the lesser would route. This is one of the most fundamental floors with RTW the fact that things happen so fast that your not given time to implement any tactics.Thats the main reason I went back to MTW. Rome just feels like a very pretty arcade game.

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Originally Posted by Mithrandir

I think that's because CA learned from their online MTW game vs AMP (and magy+Koc) ;).

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.....And they would still lose badly, even implementing this tactic ( which is fundamentally weak). RTW armies insist on being single lined and this is the major reason for quick routs. The centre or flank (depending on your point of attack) crumbles and the rest of the battle is chasing off the rest

....Orda

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Originally Posted by Martok

[Martok comes at Reenk Roink with a club] Hold still! I promise I'll be quick. :viking: ~D


Seriously, though, shorter battles would be very very bad. I admittedly could usually do without the epic 5-10 hour-long battles we sometimes have in Medieval, but I was very dismayed that most battles in Rome didn't last more than 5 minutes or so.

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Could'nt agree more. Some battles in MTW are responsible for the black bags under my eyes but the lets clash and dash crap in Rome leads me to believe the CA think the mass PC gamer market is over ran with brain dead lets blast the crap out of it dudes, and I dont believe this is true.Surely thats the console market......

I look back fondly on those few battles in MTW which I would call "epic" battles. Fighting against the first incursions of the Horde comes to mind.

Most of my battles for MTW lasted between 10-30/40 minutes. I thought this was perfect, especially since turns were abstracted to take place within a full year.

My RTW battles last about 2-3 minutes of getting units into position (on the fastest setting), then back on normal, engagement, which lasts, oh, maybe 3-5 minutes, before someone routes. Usually, the greatest difficulty is making sure I'm able to click on my units fast enough so that the battles is not decided before everyone has been issued an order. Very frustrating.

That was a long-winded way of saying "faster paced" battles in MTW2 would make me cry.

Things that have me worried:

1) I do not think that that CA post effectively eliminated my concerns (the reference to other TW titles could mean RTW, of course)

2) I do not think Game Informer/PC Gamer reviewers (or previewers) will bother to talk about the length of battles, just about graphics and probably the campaign map and factions. Sigh

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Originally Posted by SirGrotius

Things that have me worried:

1) I do not think that that CA post effectively eliminated my concerns (the reference to other TW titles could mean RTW, of course)

2) I do not think Game Informer/PC Gamer reviewers (or previewers) will bother to talk about the length of battles, just about graphics and probably the campaign map and factions. Sigh

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I pretty much agree with your entire post, SirGrotius, but especially that part. Unless battle speeds are closer to what they were in Medieval and Shogun--or better yet, give players the choice of two battle speeds--then combat still won't be very much fun for me.

And I too very much doubt that reviewers will even mention battle speeds. I'm also concerned that they won't discuss the AI very much; and/or that they'll say the AI is great, except that it's difficult to say such things if you've only been playing the game for a few days before writing up your review.

I think it is safe to say that the majority of .ORG members want the pace slowed down. The manoeuvre aspect of the game should rate highly in the tactical battles and this is not the case at present. I want the deployment zones radically re thought, especially for MP. One large zone for all allied armies?
I want greater distance between opposing zones to allow you to manoeuvre and initiate counter moves. A large scale battle deserves the time for it to be thought out and executed. If this takes an hour or two, great. There is the choice to save before a battle if time is an issue, allowing you to come back when you have the time to play it through. Hopefully, after so much discussion on this subject, we will see some improvement

......Orda