What do you want in E:TW?

I noticed a thread a page back with the title "What we don't want in Empire" and I thought that was unnecessarily negative so I decided to start my own thread. As the title suggests, what do you want in Empire Total War? In other words, what is worth keeping from previous total war titles, and what should be changed. (Try and use my format for simplicity sake.)


Alright guys, go nuts!



Ships that can travel on rivers: Pretty simple, no deep draft ocean going vessels but allowing say transports to ferry troops up a river for an amphibious landing

Upgradeable harbor fortifications: Protect important harbors with large cannon emplacements to confer an advantage to the defenders when a blockade is attempting to be broken

Rocket artillery: Cannons are nice, but variety is a good thing. There's something special about the smoke and glare of hundreds of rockets careening wildly into the air.

Okay heres what I want.

Better AI I want to face an enemy that keeps formations and uses more advanced tactics. I want a elimination of my units doing incredibly dumb things that I didn't want them to do.

Very big map It would be great if CA included all of Africa (Though limiting your exspantion into it) and south east Asia.

Native Factions I really hope we get to play a wide range of native factions in the Americas and Africa. They'd be fun, unique, and it would be really cool to change up history and fight off the Europeans (No offense to anyone)

larger battles Lastly I want larger armys and the ability to build them conveiniantly.

Well that about covers my wish list to CA

Amphibious assaults...

Those who know their history might remember that Bunker (Breeds) Hill ended up being a very bad day for the British much because they decided to wait for high tide so they could carry out a frontal Marine assault.

This allowed the Colonials time to further fortify the hill.

Such a high aspect of the time period's warfare, I'd hate to see it neglected.

No ridiculous fantasy units: This means no flaming pigs, no elephants long-range cannons on their backs, and no ninja-like arcani.

Better diplomacy system: Allies shouldn't randomly backstab you even if you've been nice and given lots of money to them. Also, the whole system of protectorates needs to be redone.

More expansive map: It's good they're including Africa, North and South America and parts of Asia in addition to Europe. But I worry that almost all of the provinces will be in Europe and places like South America will have just a few provinces.

Smarter AI: Hopefully in both campaign and battle.

No one ordering you around: In m2tw, the Pope made it incredibly annoying to play as a Catholic faction- I could never expand where I wanted to. The Roman Senate was similarly annoying.

A Swiss Faction


A Better MP

Sophisticated 18th century Siege warfare with starforts, ravelines, trenches
Field fortifications
Good Moddability

Well for one thing I'd like them to do away with the current primary and secondary weapon system. Historically many soldiers have carried a variety of weapons and the game should reflect it by having troops switch between them based on some simple maths or conditions telling them what is to their advantage e.g. charge = lance, skirmish at long range = bow, skirmish close up or dismount = musket, melee with armoured foe = mace, pistol, assault building = grenade. Opens up more variety in the game and also for mods.

A good system for proliferation of technology through and diplomacy.

That would be good, if they could make a unit of musketeers able to keep firing even if one guy is in melee combat.

Also, observation balloons.:balloon2:

And lots of new land to conquer. I'm bored of fighting over the same bits of Europe for the last three games. Make sure the action is mostly focussed overseas and the big European showdown only comes at the very end.

Yeah, definitely. It would be completely ridiculous if, for example, one cavalryman makes contact with one side of an infantry square and, RTW phalanx style, the whole formation stops firing!

I second balloons.

I like the idea of unit imdipendence too, where just because one person engages in melee everyone else does not. It'll be excellent. But the other idea of multiple weapons does not appeal......I mean, if you have one type of unit doing everything, there will be no difference between good siege troops and skirmish units and line units......it'll get very boring.

I want to see fortress towns like Lille that we can besiege with saps and parallels and defend from bastions and demi-lunes.

And dragoons that can dismount.

And field guns, howitzers and mortars.

And color parties and fifes and drums and horns and trumpets!

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Originally Posted by Nelson

And dragoons that can dismount.

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CA have already said that they will be able to dismount, fight on foot, and remount during battle.

And there will be musicians and the like.

Most likely the types of field guns you requested will be in.

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Originally Posted by Aztec Warrior

Okay heres what I want.

Better AI I want to face an enemy that keeps formations and uses more advanced tactics. I want a elimination of my units doing incredibly dumb things that I didn't want them to do.

Very big map It would be great if CA included all of Africa (Though limiting your exspantion into it) and south east Asia.

Native Factions I really hope we get to play a wide range of native factions in the Americas and Africa. They'd be fun, unique, and it would be really cool to change up history and fight off the Europeans (No offense to anyone)

larger battles Lastly I want larger armys and the ability to build them conveiniantly.

Well that about covers my wish list to CA

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I've been thinking and here's some other things I'd like to have in the game.

Each rebel territory being independent. I'm tired of being at war with every single rebel on the map from the start. I'd also like for rebels to be more aggressive and actually pose a threat.

Completely redone siege system CA is going to have to do this anyway, there were no seige towers being used at the time and cannons had largely made walls obsolete.

A much better diplomacy system

A treaty system that can be used to end wars Fighting a faction until it's destroyed is unrealistic. Usually a war between major powers would end with a treaty after one side was forced to surrender. Then that nation would usually give up something.

Better Animations Stuff like soldiers picking weapens from the ground, men tripping once in a while, and some bodies moving while sprawled on the ground to show that some men are just wounded and not dead.

and that's it... for now.:beam:

I would like to see tribal factions like the Sioux or apache for America and how you will have to fight them if you play on the Americas as an empire or maybe even play as the natives trying to push the invaders off thier land

expand trade a bit more like you have to escort an caravan across hostile territory to reach somewhere

include the empire of japan

"But the other idea of multiple weapons does not appeal......I mean, if you have one type of unit doing everything, there will be no difference between good siege troops and skirmish units and line units......it'll get very boring."

Well we know that historically many soldiers fought with a variety of weapons. We also know that historically there was still fantastic variety between soldiers. So I don't consider that the two contradict each other. An example from this time period would be cavalry, who carried swords, pistols, and long arms or lances, but the skill and manner in which they wielded their various weapons varied greatly.In the east they often still carried bows on top of this. Qing cavalry are an obvious example. Or consider by way of European infantry Austrian grenzer sharpshooters, who carried a double barreled carbine with a rifled barrel for long range skirmishing, a smoothbore barrel for firing fast close up, a lance to steady to the weapon and pig stick cavalry, and a sabre. To represent them with two weapons they would probably just have rifles and bayonets- exactly the same as green jackets, jagers, cassadors, etc, etc. So actually it means the game can depict a wider variety of units. By definition if you have 3, 4, etc weapon slots you can have more combinations than if you have 2.

3 weapon slots would be enough.

Well I don't think there's any reason to arbitrarily set a limit at any number. I don't expect the developers to put the effort in but I would very much like them to give modders that discretion. Actually that is my number one request- make the game as moddable as possible and release tools to facilitate it.

I would like to see a move toward bringing back glorious achievement goals, as were seen in MTW. Conquest is fine, but it can get boring when you have taken most of the map, and the fall of other empires is inevitable. I can never finish a conquest game for this reason.

Also, I think it would be better for rebellions to take place if your garrison is too large. Or at least, for large garrisons, possible vices for the generals should be geared towards oppresion, and hence a decrease of happiness. I think it is better if there was some sort of balance. This could be helped by giving titles to natives rather than the conquerors.

I want pirates and movies.

I have lots of ideas about the ideal total war game but I don't know what's possible and what's not. So here's a list of things that are common to most of the games in the series that I think could be changed without too much work.

Choose the bodyguards for your Generals/Family Members. I like the idea of the bodyguards but it doesn't seem very realistic to have a unit of elite heavy cavalry for every family member. If you get enough family members together you have a whole army of bodyguards that can steamroll practically anything. And why should you have these units if in your whole empire you are only capable of training a musket militia at best? Also, the default bodyguards can get very expensive if you are on a budget, to the point where I am cursing each new family member because of the cost. I would like to be able to attach/detach the bodyguards for each family member from the units or mercs available in your cities.

A unit for settlers or colonists. I have a feeling this one might already be in the game. Anyway it's just a unit you can train, except it's much larger than a regular unit, and doesnt show up on the battlefield. If they are caught on the losing side of a battle then they can be ransomed. (executed? enslaved? exiled?) It would be cool if they brought the ratio of religion from their home province with them and added it to the new one.

Soldiers on the city view. When you view a city on the battle map it would be cool if you could see the garrison troops marching around on the streets, guarding the palace, drilling in the barracks, etc.

Also, I second all the ideas posted so far... ~:thumb:

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Originally Posted by Furious Mental

Well I don't think there's any reason to arbitrarily set a limit at any number. I don't expect the developers to put the effort in but I would very much like them to give modders that discretion. Actually that is my number one request- make the game as moddable as possible and release tools to facilitate it.

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The reason is memory higher limit = higher memory cost... if you set the limit higher, the number in that place in the code takes up as much memory at 0 as it does at 3,000.

Seems kinda odd that the difference between saying a unit can have 3 weapons and can have 3,000 weapons can make that big a difference in memory, but it does. The necessity for a limit is a limitation in computer language... if you set the limit, theoretically, at infinity (far as I know there's no code language that can do that:P), you'd take up infinite memory to hold that integer.

A formidable AI. As someone who loves the SP aspect of the TW games the most I've found the recent AIs that have come with the TW games to be severely lacking. Granted, i know writing a clever and challenging AI can be difficult and can take up a lot of time doing... But I think it's worth the effort in the long run.

So please. Better AI!

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Originally Posted by Monk

A formidable AI. As someone who loves the SP aspect of the TW games the most I've found the recent AIs that have come with the TW games to be severely lacking. Granted, i know writing a clever and challenging AI can be difficult and can take up a lot of time doing... But I think it's worth the effort in the long run.

So please. Better AI!

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Seconded. ~:cheers:

The discover of another new world, such as :
1. India
2. Singapore (Country of Department Store)
3. Phillipines
4. Thailand (I love this country so much)
5. Indonesia (Bali! I love this place!)
6. China (a renowed Ming Dynasty)
and
6. Australia (English Prison):sharky:



Can't wait to play Empire Total War... Thanks CA!

I don't think there would be much point in discovering Australia. It didn't really become a place of note until gold was discovered. And before a bunch of Australians come and tick me off for understating the historical importance their country... I am one.

Something I would like in ETW- global, seasonal weather patterns. There should at least be equatorial, tropical, temperate and sub-arctic latitudes. On the global map, trade winds, doldrums and monsoons should affect ships. Research could be carried out to map these winds and allow more efficient directing of ships, and trade routes, etc.

Blood and guts. I want to see bodies blown apart by cannon balls. I want to see limbs hacked off with swords. I want to see rivers of blood.

And if you can manage all that I want to hear the screams and moans of the dying after my formations move away from their own dead.

In short a little taste of reality.

Oh yeah; how about improved AI this time.

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Originally Posted by Slicendice

Blood and guts. I want to see bodies blown apart by cannon balls. I want to see limbs hacked off with swords. I want to see rivers of blood.....

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I think we can look forward to that, The CA will use Ragdoll physics so that the battlefields becomes strewn with dead, dying and dismembered bodies.

Attacks on trade caravans wold be cool, and gaining things from blocking an enemies trade. Also a treaty between two countries, it seems rather harsh and stupid that when war is raging between two countries, that one had to destroy the other to completely end the war. A simple treaty to stop the war wold be nice.

Also this may only be in RTW, but when soldiers climb cliffs and steep hills, they seem to do it easily, i would like to see them like grabbing onto rocks and pulling themselves up, and some of the people falling to their deaths.

When in battle, the banners and flags that an army have should be torn and burnt, with blood marks on them, not so clean and tidy like they have just been washed...

Also, as other people have mentioned, wounded soldiers and dismembered units should be left over after battle.

Also one thing that annoys me is that sometimes, after winning a hard battle, the routing soldiers seem to be much faster than my infantry, so i cannot chase them down. It would help if they fell over every once in a while due to exhasution, or their wounds from battle were too great and they died after battle.

I want to be able to capture the flags that enemy formations carry and in so doing gain greater honor for the units that captured it. Maybe an increase in accuracy or courage?

Only yesterday I downloaded the May calender from totalwar.com , there was a very interesting date in it. 15th May 1718 is given as the date when a London lawyer patented the first machine gun. :beam:
Yuuup, I guess we are going to see primitive machine guns in ETW .

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Originally Posted by adembroski

Seems kinda odd that the difference between saying a unit can have 3 weapons and can have 3,000 weapons can make that big a difference in memory, but it does. The necessity for a limit is a limitation in computer language... if you set the limit, theoretically, at infinity (far as I know there's no code language that can do that:P), you'd take up infinite memory to hold that integer.

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Computer languages are perfectly capable of representing lists, which would permit arbitary number so long as virtual memory suffices. The cost however is slightly more complex access code, memory required, memory fragmentation, and lack of direct indexed access, which explains any preference shown for units having 1 or 2 weapon types with a fixed storage allocation.

i want multiplayer war campaign without all the civil buildings, just totally focusing on war campaign, not a series of battles, but how we deploy battalions, how supply lines employed, how we manuever, concentrate. of course, that's just...a dream... :p

Strategic resources that can only be accessed by merchants. This makes merchants more important.

For instance having a merchant on timber makes building ships cheaper.

Or having a merchant on salt peter makes building gunpowder units cheaper.

Also merchants can add tradeable goods to all cities.

Oh I like that Slicendice! I definately want that in.

I want to add that having merchants on all the salt peter makes every faction that does not have a trade agreement with you pay double for gunpowder.

Also I would like some more advanced diplomatic options like embargo, mutual protection, etc.

Civ III had a similar system of strategic resources, IIRC it worked quite well since it meant that building an empire was more complicated than simply acquiring more cities than the competition; if you found yourself in a modern age war with no oil, you were essentially finished even if you had the bigger empire. It also meant the diplomacy system actually became useful, since if you had no access to a resource, you would have to trade for it with another faction who had spare, and then hope they wouldn't cut you off at a crucial moment. You could also wage diplomatic warfare, by pursuading your enemy's only supplier of oil to sign a trade embargo against them.

So yes, I think this could be a fun thing to add to Empires, since it makes the trade and diplomacy aspects of the game much more important, both of these being features which were rather underpowered in previous titles.

I really would like to see some more importance given to supplies, supply lines(and the ability to cut them, thus interfering with army performance), the ability to set a settlement as a supply depot to support close army operations. In general i think the player could have some logistics management...nothing too heavy but enough to influence the movement and operation of armies and fleets.

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Originally Posted by asj_india

Only yesterday I downloaded the May calender from totalwar.com , there was a very interesting date in it. 15th May 1718 is given as the date when a London lawyer patented the first machine gun. :beam:
Yuuup, I guess we are going to see primitive machine guns in ETW .

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this weapon, i think its called the "clarke gun" is in no way a machine( full auto) weapon, rather a repeating gun, ie like a semiauto or lever action( wich of course is pretty exciting too, and a repeater rifle would of course be a great military advantage)

the first "real" machine guns are the gatling and maxim, and they come into existence around 1860-1880, which as far as I understand is well outside the timeframe of E:TW.

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Originally Posted by Lusitani

I really would like to see some more importance given to supplies, supply lines(and the ability to cut them, thus interfering with army performance), the ability to set a settlement as a supply depot to support close army operations. In general i think the player could have some logistics management...nothing too heavy but enough to influence the movement and operation of armies and fleets.

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so agreed. logistics ( and when they failed, the ability to live of the land) must have been pretty decisive for napoleonic warfare.

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Originally Posted by anders

so agreed. logistics ( and when they failed, the ability to live of the land) must have been pretty decisive for napoleonic warfare.

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I think the napoleonic warfare just adds to it as armies grow in numbers and organization. Artillery and its diferenciated ordnance specially ...not to mention of course food and water for the soldiers and mounts, uniforms. There is the need for a structure to support all that. And naval vessels as well require a lot of logistics also.
Now all that existed before the napoleonic epoch, it just grows bigger.
Of course i dont expect CA to "give" us all that but i believe that at least the possibility to establish logistical centres can be done....imho.

Star fortifications with redoubts, bastions and glacis.

Dismounting troops such as Dragoons.

Riderless horses running amok and unhorsed cavalry riders scrambling for cover or fighting it out on foot.

Limbering and unlimbering guns.

Potentional naval bombardments when a waterway is present on the battlefield.

Infantry interacting with cover such as wood edges, walls, hedges.

Infantry taking possession of buildings to shoot from.

Field forfications such as trenchs and gun emplacements available at the deployment phase.

Additional seige options such as bombardment, and counter bombardment.

A degree of generality and backwards compatibility so that medieval and classic era mods can be implemented.

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Originally Posted by Wodeson

Dismounting troops such as Dragoons.

Limbering and unlimbering guns.

Infantry interacting with cover such as wood edges, walls, hedges.

Infantry taking possession of buildings to shoot from.

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These have all been confirmed as being in the game. :beam:

1. If you have 1 merchant on a resource, then you have supply of that resource. At a cost.

2. If you have 2 merchants on the same resource, (same or another), then the price of that resource becomes cheaper. ad et cetera...


3. I would like to see an increase in avaiable provinces/ whatever.

4 I would like to see unit identification per region.

5. I would like to see 9 different government types.




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