Dates, Seasons and Ages

Whilst adding to my Scottish blog on the AAR board I became increasing puzzled by the dates I was quoting, which were copied from the Faction scroll.

Time literally seemed to be flying by and at first I thought it must be my note taking which was at fault. However, it rapidly became apparent that it wasn't me but my game which was keeping weird time.

It seems that, whilst the seasons change alternately from Summer to Winter and then back to Summer, the years are incrementing each turn. Thus, Summer 1165 is followed by Winter 1166, and then Summer 1167.

Is this normal or has something gone wrong with my game?

And if it is normal is there anything I can do to change it, as its really annoying when your trying to keep a game journal and the timeline doesn't make sense.

Finally, does anyone know if characters actually age two years a year or is the aging process in step with the seasons.

Did you edit the time scale file before? Normally it's two years per turn (in-game campaign) as opposed to your one year per turn. As for the character, it is aging one year every two turns. That's why in a normal vanilla game, the character will only aged one year after "4 years" game time.

If you want to fix or edit it then go to:

C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\data\world\maps\campaign\imperial_campaign (or any folder where you install M2TW)

and open descr_strat:

Code:

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start_date        1080 summer
end_date        1530 winter
timescale        0.50

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You might want to change the timescale. The above is my setting, so that the game goes two years per turn (I know it's slow but I just like it for more "realistic"). Or if you want to revert it back to normal just change the timescale value back to 2.00

That only works for new campaigns though, not for running ones. If you do change it and start a new campaign, you want to check the first link in my sig to fix your events accordingly as well.

After posting my OP on impulse I decided to go back and test the game more thoroughly and it is as you suggest. Which in turn is worse then I thought.

Turn 1 = Summer 1080 and Laurence Biddel is 29 years old.
Turn 2 = Winter 1082, Biddle is still 29
Turn 3 = Summer 1084, biddle is 30
Turn 4 = Winter 1086, Biddle is still 30
Turn 5 = Summer 1088, Biddle is 31

So, as you say, Seasons and Aging are 6 months per turn, but time passes at the rate of two years per turn. Totally Weird :dizzy2:

I shall have to change that because it completely screws up any sort of record keeping.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

That only works for new campaigns though, not for running ones. If you do change it and start a new campaign, you want to check the first link in my sig to fix your events accordingly as well.

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Oh! damn that means my whole Scottish campaign and blog is screwed.

I suppose the only thing I can do is ignore the year quoted in the Faction Scroll, try and re-calculate the correct dates from turn 1 and then keep a manual record.

I suppose looking at the positive side, what this means is that I can alter the timescale to 0.5 as suggested by Tran and start a new campaign. I can then change it back 2.00 and start another campaign which will run on MTW2 time. So, I can actually have several campaigns running some of which run to accurate time whilst others can run on accelerated time.

I noted what you say about event triggers, bit to be honest if I'm running a campaign on realistic time then I'm not too bothered if the Mongols don't appear. I'd rather have the dates right than worry about whether the novelty factions are going to turn up.

The default is 2 years per turn something which I always change to 0.5 years/turn. But right now I'm playing a completely vanilla game, just to be like everyone else, and frankly it's (WAY) cooler to be playing 0.5/turn. !

Be aware that if you change to 0.50 years/turn you also have to change event dates. This thread has all the info you may need:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74279

You can change the timescale DURING your current campaign if you download and install MedManager (D/L section@,org).

It's a great blog !!! Nice job !

If your problem is with your current save game in-campaign then as Sinan suggested you should try MedManager. It has the ability to edit your save game and adjust it to your liking, worth to try (and don't forget to back-up your save game before) :2thumbsup:

Thanks for the advice guys.

I've produced a simple date conversion table using excel and gone through and corrected the timeline of my Scottish Blog, which was my main concern.

I note what you say about Medmanager but I'm assuming, even if I altered my saved game file, that this utility would not recalculate the date which already appears in the Faction Scroll. In other words I could correct the increment of the date to 0.5 per turn but that change would only be applied from the next turn of my game e.g. turn 46. So, the current date as shown in the scroll would still be wrong.

Or is the date in the scroll recalculated every time you view it based upon the number of turns.

Not sure I understood the question, but I think so.

If you use Med Manager your date will be changed as soon as you change it in Med manager. You can change the date in MedManager and once you do it's immediately applied to the current date in your save. It's extremely easy to use, very userfriendly. Does that help?

@Sinan
Just to try and clarify my question. I suppose what I'm asking is how the game calculates the date in the Faction Scroll.

If I were to edit the timeline to read timescale = 0.5 for a new campaign then obviously the year would increment every two turns starting from Turn 1 e.g. Summer 1080 AD.

However, if I use Medmanager to edit an existing campaign, such as my Scottish game which has already reached turn 46 what happens to the date?

Turn 46 = Winter 1170 in the standard MTW2 timescale setup.

So, if I change Timescale to 0.5 just before Turn 47, will the date increment by 0.5 to become Summer 1171 or will the entire timeline be adjusted to the new timescale so it becomes Summer 1103.

Hi Didz,

If you change Timescale to 0.5 just before Turn 47, the date will increment by 0.5 to become Summer 1171.

You can also change the date in MedManager. So, for example, you can change the date to Summer 1103, and change the timescale to 0.5. MedManager has 2 seperate fields in which you can change these two variables independently for an ongoing campaign.

@Sinan
That clarifies things thanks.

Pleasure. :)

Congratulations Didz - I think you're the first person to present a reason for using a non-standard timescale that is actually reasonable. People get so bent out of shape over an entirely insignificant number like the date, but at least the application to campaign blogging makes sense in this case since the actual date is obviously preferable to a turn number for that.

I also point out that Didz's experience of this problem is generally how I expect most players have experienced it: i.e. they haven't, until and unless there was a good reason to note the date across several turns. I don't think there's any question that the turn number is a far more useful number to use when you're playing the game as opposed to writing about it, and consequently the game makes it available to you everywhere. You have to be looking for the date to notice it, and consequently I doubt most players would normally even notice that 2 years are passing each turn, as they have no actual use for the date in-game. Most forum goers probably wouldn't have noticed it either without it having attention drawn to it via a thread. If that is the case, then it's really sad that so many people will criticize a game on account of something that had to be pointed out to them before they even noticed it. If you didn't spot a problem yourself that means it wasn't a problem for you, so I really fail to see where people get off complaining about things that never made a difference to them until someone else mentioned it. You can spot this all over the forum actually: for instance, the armor upgrade thread got really hot, and that's not a difference most players actually noticed in-game. I guess what I'm really complaining about is that "problems" get swollen way out of proportion because things that are unnoticeable to most players in the game get broadcast by a few that do notice, and then those same players who wouldn't notice the problem hear about it and start complaining as if it's a big deal. If you couldn't notice something yourself, then it should never be a big deal...

So while I understand that Didz and other bloggers will want to use a more sensible timescale for record keeping purposes, I think it should be sufficient for most players to simply not look at the date (like they would've done anyway if they didn't know there was a problem) and consequently never even know the timescale and character ages don't match.

Me, I still like the two years per turn, I'd hate the notion of playing the game on a 0.5 timescale, because I never even reach gunpowder with a timescale of 2!
I might change it to 4 even :eyebrows:

@Foz

Yep! your analysis is spot on, at least in my case. My current Scottish campaign is I think my eighth the previous being English, Russian, Venetian, Byzantine, Turkish, HRE and Moor and this is the first time I had noticed the anomaly in the date.

The only reason it became an issue was that I was using the year to tag each post in my Scottish blog and found I was getting weird results, like sieges apparently lasting four years.

In normal game play I don't think its a problem at all, though I am a little curious of the history and logic behind it. Presumably somewhere along the line decisions were made on what was an acceptable game length in terms of turns and how many years of history was to be crammed into that number of turns.

Then there must have been a lot of experimentation with movement rates and events to come up with a compromise between elapsed historical time and game activity. Its interesting to consider why the designers considered it important to keep the seasonal concept in place despite the fact that the turn represents more than one year, and why characters were granted 4x there natural lifespan.

I certainly wouldn't fiddle with these decisions for normal play, but for blogging purposes it is useful to modify the game time so that it provides you with an accurate date.

Perhaps the only shame is that the Event triggers were not linked to turns rather than years. That way the time elapsed per turn could have been adjusted without delaying the events, but perhaps that too was deliberate, so people who wanted a longer slower game could actually acheive it without having to modify all the Event Triggers.

Well, I guess the developers wanted there to be two seasons, mainly because some units do get combat bonuses in the snow. I like the 2 years per turn of the campaign. Unlike M:TW, you only need to conquer 45 provinces instead of the entire map. With a 1-year timescale, I'm sure tons of people will finish the game before gunpowder comes out. On my current Turk campaign, I deliberately slowed down my conquests after a while so I could get to gunpowder, and I'm using the standard timescale.

The only problem I have with the timescale is how soon the Mongol invasion is. There's not much time to tech up in game time and most people resort to taking advantage of holes in the AI logic to beat the initial invasion.

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Originally Posted by Didz

In normal game play I don't think its a problem at all, though I am a little curious of the history and logic behind it. Presumably somewhere along the line decisions were made on what was an acceptable game length in terms of turns and how many years of history was to be crammed into that number of turns.

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Yeah that's what I was figuring too. They probably decided the historical bounds first, then I'd imagine tweaked it until the campaign was the right number of turns roughly. The characters aging slower than campaign time is likely just to keep them from dying too quickly... or perhaps more correctly, one could say that the timeline moving 4x faster than the characters age is really a method to make all the important historical bits fit into an appropriately short campaign.

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Then there must have been a lot of experimentation with movement rates and events to come up with a compromise between elapsed historical time and game activity. It interesting to consider why the designers considered it important to keep the seasonal concept in place despite the fact that the turn represents more than one year, and that characters were granted 4x there natural lifespan.

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My guess is because it actually distinguishes the turns from each other when the season changes. If it didn't do so, the scenery would just always look the same, and that would be decidedly boring. Also, it may be an intentional hold-over from RTW to make the timeline change seamless for previous TW series players.

How did the aging go in MTW again. Been ages since I played it.

IMO a 1year/turn aging mechanism would still have been good enough to develop characters. Currently you tend to have your heir or his first born reigning by the time you are about to end the game by running out of turns in default.

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Originally Posted by Foz

The characters aging slower than campaign time is likely just to keep them from dying too quickly... or perhaps more correctly, one could say that the timeline moving 4x faster than the characters age is really a method to make all the important historical bits fit into an appropriately short campaign.

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Another consideration would probably have been that characters can't acheive very much even in their extended lifespan, so having them age 2 years per turn would prevent them acheiving just about anything.

For example: Even travelling by sea it took my merchant 14 turns to reach his target gold resource in Africa from Scotland. If he had been aging at the rate of 2 years turn turn he would have left Scotland at the age of of 26 and arrived in Africa aged 54, just about in time to die. Even 7 years to travel to Africa is a long time to be on a boat but at least its playable, and you are likely to see some profit before your agent dies.

Well, you can say what you want, for players taking attention of the time frame, the movement rates just do not match. They appear to match by and large for two turns = 1 year (naval movement still too slow though). However, I admit, playing a game at the 0.5 rate is really slow indeed, but on the other hand seeing your diplomat taking about 10 years to go from Thorn to Milan at the 2.0 setting is really too much for me to bear. That's why I usually play at 1.0 for compromise purposes. Problem is, for perfect gameplay you would need to change all building time values to match the original MTW settings, which were great, in hindsight.

And for the record, I noticed this on the day I played the game the first time, it's really obvious how time flies by in-game (Mongols appearing at a time the AI just didn't have enough turns to get its economy and recruitment options at least to an acceptable level).

Movement rate is unrealistic to stop siege fests, if armies could move a realistic distance you would just end up with armies bypassing defense and just oging straight to sieging cities.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

Movement rate is unrealistic to stop siege fests, if armies could move a realistic distance you would just end up with armies bypassing defense and just oging straight to sieging cities.

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Well, what you say is true only insofar as it depends on the AI coding (simply make it not to siege any city possibly siege-able [if such a word exists]) and, this would actually make it more important to guard your borders and actually build forts in strategic places. And to be honest, how often have you seen AI forces intercept an army BEFORE it actually laid siege somewhere? They just seem to try to slow the human player down (which normally is pointless as the human player only makes his move when he knows he can actually take the city, all enemy forces taken into account, and so he will fight his way through the obstacles on the same turn, whereas AI armies often take detours of numerous extra-turns, which further adds to my point), unless they outnumber him by a large margin.
Besides, movement rates are not too unrealistic if you set the time frame to 0.5, as I said before. But they are if a turn equals 2 years, desynchronising gameplay too much my for my standards.

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Well, what you say is true only insofar as it depends on the AI coding (simply make it not to siege any city possibly siege-able [if such a word exists]

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The ai is set up to take settlements as once it's taken all your settlements it wins. So coding it to not siege settlements if its at war with you would be silly.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

The ai is set up to take settlements as once it's taken all your settlements it wins. So coding it to not siege settlements if its at war with you would be silly.

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Sigh, this is not what I said. Also that it is probably too late now to make any changes to the campaign map AI is quite possible. But during the design stage of the game it wouldn't have been too hard to implement a system that allows for "more realistic" movement lengths (that would in the first place help all factions traversing their own or their allies' lands faster and arriving in time to help out somewhere) while at the same time letting the AI select targets in a smart manner, i.e. try to take cities close to their own territory first or a specifically important city that is only weakly garrisoned and attack only if sufficient forces are available. This wouldn't turn the game into a siege-fest, as you would call it, which it already is in its current state, more often than not.

@Brutal DLX
I appreciate the point you are trying to make, but I don't think its very practical from the gameplay point of view.

Even if we were to stick to a very conservative estimate for the movement rate of an army we would have to accept that it could march at least 14 miles in a single day.

At that rate, an army would be able to cover 10,220 miles, the entire distance from London to Jerusalem and back twice, every turn. Ships would cover five to ten times that distance in a two year turn. In short any army would be able to reach any point on the map instantly.

The only way to avoid that would be to reduce the timescale to match the movement per turn of the armies. At the moment this seems to be about 100 miles per turn, which based upon an average of 14 miles per day would mean reducing the timescale for one game turn to a week if it is to be realistic.

That would result in a campaign from 1080AD to 1530AD needing 23,400 turns to complete.

Given that the current game length of 225 turns is already a long haul I'm not sure I'd want to play a game that demanded such commitment.

As I see it, this is a game, it has its own set of rules that attempt to make a sensible representation of reality, while maintaining a somewhat acceptable balance. This is a highly abstract process and real-life considerations can't be very well projected onto the game world, because real life adheres to another set of rules.
As such, applying the term "realistic" to the campaign map is to be done in a very careful faction. A much better term would be "consistent", which would mean that in itself the game feels well.
Nonetheless, imo the movement base could be increased from 80 to 100 with vanilla scale, and ships should definitely move twice as fast as they do now.

The problem with fleets moving twice as far as they do now is that naval combat would simply become even more abstract and annoying than it already is.

More fleets would be able to pounce out of the FOW to blockade random ports or pick on isolated transports and those you intercepted would be able to disappear into the FOW much further making them even harder to pursue.

If anything I would argue that the naval game would be improved my reducing ship movement so that attacks can be anticipated and neutralized before they reach landfall. However, I recognize that there is a compromise at work here and that reducing ship movement would necessitate a reduction of land movement to maintain the differentiation and that would be a bad thing.

In my opinion, ships should move a lot faster. The way they're done I often don't even bother to build any because it takes longer to for example sail around spain than to cross it by land.
Plus some AI factions are really heavy on ships and you need a huge costly fleet to fight them whereas you can simply march through their lands and conquer their cities instead in a lot of cases.

Well thats offset by the fact that transporting merchants from say Scotland to Africa is much faster by ship than by foot, and a lot less hazardous. As I said faster ships would detract heavily from gameplay, my own preference would be for slower ships or at least some sort of auto/flee/intercept option.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

In my opinion, ships should move a lot faster. The way they're done I often don't even bother to build any because it takes longer to for example sail around spain than to cross it by land.
Plus some AI factions are really heavy on ships and you need a huge costly fleet to fight them whereas you can simply march through their lands and conquer their cities instead in a lot of cases.

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On the other hand, those same factions are likely to camp on your ports with their superior fleets, and most especially if you have no navy at all to prevent it. Refusing to field a navy at all can really screw with your economy if enemy fleets start blockading you. Just a few turns of blockade on an important port can pay for a navy to defend it for 10. I'm not certain that you will actually save money by fielding a navy to keep enemies off of your ports, but it is also handy enough for staving off naval invasions and transporting troops that I think it would be unadvisable to simply ignore it entirely.

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Originally Posted by Didz

@Brutal DLX
I appreciate the point you are trying to make, but I don't think its very practical from the gameplay point of view.

Even if we were to stick to a very conservative estimate for the movement rate of an army we would have to accept that it could march at least 14 miles in a single day.

At that rate, an army would be able to cover 10,220 miles, the entire distance from London to Jerusalem and back twice, every turn. Ships would cover five to ten times that distance in a two year turn. In short any army would be able to reach any point on the map instantly.

The only way to avoid that would be to reduce the timescale to match the movement per turn of the armies. At the moment this seems to be about 100 miles per turn, which based upon an average of 14 miles per day would mean reducing the timescale for one game turn to a week if it is to be realistic.

That would result in a campaign from 1080AD to 1530AD needing 23,400 turns to complete.

Given that the current game length of 225 turns is already a long haul I'm not sure I'd want to play a game that demanded such commitment.

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Well, in a way, you're just confirming what I said earlier. Neither do I want to play a game of more than 450 turns (1.0 scale, 255 ain't that long considering many players want to tech up fully but without money gained from sacking cities), but the basic thing is that in the vanilla version the movement rates and the time scale are just too much apart. It doesn't have to be perfectly realistic, but realistic enough to be consistent, which it clearly is not. The movement rates seem to have been designed for 2-seasons-per-year turns (a possible leftover from RTW), as I mentioned earlier, but even then, I have to fully agree with alpaca on that the ship movement rates should be doubled. Probable increases in port blockades and problems tracking down enemy fleets would be acceptable to me, if I have a way to move my troops and agents faster (just like as if you had a crusader fleet all the time). Also I don't see why this would make the battles any more abstract than they already are. It doesn't mean more fleets can be built than before, just that you and all AI factions can move them around more quickly (which really is the point why fleets were so important), unless they get blocked somewhere on the way.
Perhaps for the next TW title, dynamic movement scaling tied to the number of years per turn could be implemented.

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The movement rates seem to have been designed for 2-seasons-per-year turns

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They were more than likely designed for the campaign map scale, not for the time period, as it really is the campaign map scale that is the decisive factor in this.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

They were more than likely designed for the campaign map scale, not for the time period, as it really is the campaign map scale that is the decisive factor in this.

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Yes I believe that accurately sums up why everyone has been saying the ship movement shouldn't be changed. The only important consideration is how far a fleet can go, relative to the map, in one game turn. How much time passes during that turn doesn't matter at all, because movement is first and foremost required to be balanced as a game mechanic, and thus is measured by the game's most important time measurement, the turn. Your turns can be 100 years or 3 days, and still a fleet should go the exact same distance in a given turn, to balance it's ability to get somewhere against other player's abilities to react to its movement. Too much movement would remove any reaction ability at all, and too little would make reactions too easy. Consequently, their movement seems great where it is: you can sometimes be surprised by incoming fleets if you are not careful, but if you are then you can certainly react to them effectively. That's precisely as it should be.

Armies are much the same way, and gain far too much advantage if they are allowed to move any further than they already can. No sense wrecking good gameplay in a vain attempt to get a hair closer to historical and temporal accuracy. When it comes right down to it, almost all players of this game want good gameplay more than historical fidelity, so it seems quite unlikely that you'll get CA to budge on this at all in upcoming titles. Similarly most modders would probably agree that the movement rates are what they are because it benefits the gameplay, so it also seems unlikely that you'll get someone to write a mod for you. If you wish it changed, it seems likely you'll need to look at the files yourself and determine how to do it. If that is what you plan to do I will help however I can, but I have no idea how the game handles movement rates as I have never had any reason to consider changing them... so I would probably be of limited help at best.

It depends on the area in which you play. In my experience, the AI will usually not blockade a port for more than a few turns, and in those few turns I can more often than not walk into their territory and take their settlements.
The economic hit by it is fairly small in the beginning of the game, as you don't have as many trade routes per port and not as good trade modifiers. It gets more important later, but since you'll also have many more settlements you're likely to be able to compensate for it by raising the tax level (which I usually have at low from the late early-game to give my generals StrategyChivalry).
That said, you shouldn't dismiss the cost of fleets, especially for the bad ships you get at the beginning. A ship costs as much as a normal infantry unit. So if I have maybe 10 ships in two fleets because I'm playing venice and took over Milan early, I'll spend 1500 for them every turn. If the enemy blockades, say, venice, this will typically cost me about that sum for every blockaded turn in the above said time period, and maybe twice that later, but then fleets will be more expensive, too.
Furthermore, if you want to put up with Sicily, who often has fleets of 30 or more ships on vh, you have to have a sizeably larger naval force. Factor in the cost of retraining and actually building the ships and you easily arrive at a cost of maybe 2000 florins per turn
Discounting the fleet to fight the Sicilians and going straightly for their settlements (since the AI doesn't properly protect its land bridges) with an army I pay those 2000 florins for (standard army for that time) is much more effective, isn't it?

Anyways, that's not the real point of discussion here. The movements should be increased because ships don't play the role they should in my opinion play. I rarely am surprised by a large AI stack invading me by ship, and even if they take a settlement, all I lose is probably the church because I can easily field a new army in a few turns with the insanely high unit pools in vanilla.
The most important consideration for me is that the ability to move your armies and agents much faster over water than over land is a flavor decision. It's not so noticeable at the start, but once every settlement has paved roads, ships are almost as slow as land units, which just annoys the hell out of me.
If I jump through hoops to build up a navy and maintain it, I should at least get some advantage out of it, except for the rather questionable ability of being able to fend off port blockades or blockade ports myself. Since the trade routes work differently since RTW, that motivation has gone, and the movement motivation has been toned down considerably, too. Increasing it again would also allow for some completely new strategies such as coast leaping.
There are two other changes that could be very good for naval gameplay:
a) Only transport one or two units per ship (putting a whole army on a single ship is simply ridiculous) would be another incentive to maintain a large navy
b) Make armies wait a turn after they loaded onto a ship or alternatively only make it possible to load armies at a harbor. This would prevent the impossible-to-counter surprise attacks that you can launch with only one ship.

By the way: If you dispel a navy blockading your port in the turn right after it started to blockade it, you won't lose any money (since it's calculated at the end of turn). So simple blockades may be annoying with more movement, but you can dispel them more easily, too, which means you wouldn't really lose anything.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

Anyways, that's not the real point of discussion here. The movements should be increased because ships don't play the role they should in my opinion play. I rarely am surprised by a large AI stack invading me by ship, and even if they take a settlement, all I lose is probably the church because I can easily field a new army in a few turns with the insanely high unit pools in vanilla.

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I completely disagree, in fact I am frequently caught out by AI controlled fleets moving from beyond the fringe of the FOW directly into blockade or troop landing situations. Increasing the movement rate of fleets will merely exacerbate an already bad situation.

The only counter for this is the totally unrealistic and expensive option of posting picket boats one move out from every accessible port and beach.

As it is I am forced to invest heavily in watchtowers all along my exposed coasts in the hope of spotting incoming fleets early enough to counter them. In that respect ship movement is slightly too fast for playablility, but it is possible to counter it by careful preparation. One possible answer would be to increase the line of sight at sea so that fleets can be spotted over a greater distance.

However, having played several badly designed strategy games like Crown of Glory where the AI can literally move its armies out of the the FOW to your capital and force your surrender before you can react, I am extremely dubious about the idea of unbalancing MTW2 in this way. I have no problems with people screwing up their own games by modding them to increase fleet movement, but I think the vanilla version should remain unchanged.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

They were more than likely designed for the campaign map scale, not for the time period, as it really is the campaign map scale that is the decisive factor in this.

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My point is that campaign map scale IS tied to the turn no matter what. And the turn is tied to the total amount of turns per game, which incorporates all eras. For good gameplay, this needs to be balanced, so as to give players who like to play slower the ability to do just that. In vanilla, while you move lshorter distances during the same game-time amount, all game events happen faster, especially the invasions and gunpowder. To give a drastic (and bad) example, you just barely made it to Outremer when then Mongols attack, most cities and castles don't have that many buildings yet, chances are all AI factions will have only low-level units when in fact the "high era" has already begun (I know there are no eras strictly speaking, but for a longtime player of the TW series like me this is something that adds to immersion and gameplay).
So, to sum it up, you can change whatever you want, map scale, moevment scale or time scale, but the vanilla mix just doesn't feel right for me.

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Originally Posted by Foz

Yes I believe that accurately sums up why everyone has been saying the ship movement shouldn't be changed. The only important consideration is how far a fleet can go, relative to the map, in one game turn. How much time passes during that turn doesn't matter at all, because movement is first and foremost required to be balanced as a game mechanic, and thus is measured by the game's most important time measurement, the turn. Your turns can be 100 years or 3 days, and still a fleet should go the exact same distance in a given turn, to balance it's ability to get somewhere against other player's abilities to react to its movement.

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Well, mind you, but even in this thread two persons are not of the opinion that ship movement shouldn't be changed.
The game we are talking about is first and foremost a game settled in a certain historic epoch with units and buildings that reflect that epoch. (It's not a fantasy RTS quite of the same style as Warcraft3 for example, where you consequently never see debates such as this.)
That is why the total number of turns in which the game is completed DOES matter a great deal in balancing game mechanics. Thus, it does not only matter how far a fleet can go in one turn relative to the map (and relative to land movement) but also how large this amount is compared to the total duration of the game.

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Originally Posted by Foz

Armies are much the same way, and gain far too much advantage if they are allowed to move any further than they already can. No sense wrecking good gameplay in a vain attempt to get a hair closer to historical and temporal accuracy. When it comes right down to it, almost all players of this game want good gameplay more than historical fidelity, so it seems quite unlikely that you'll get CA to budge on this at all in upcoming titles.

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What advantage (and over whom?) do armies gain if all of them get an increased marching distance? Also, I did not do any vain attempt at anything. I simply changed the timescale in my game to 1.0 and I am much more content with this compromise. Ideally, I should play at 0.5 to make the change of seasons kind of useful, but then the total number of turns gets too big for my liking. However, if I was to play at the vanilla rate again, I would really tinker with the movement rates of all units, which is something I do not intend at the moment, but thank you for offering help!~:)
Lastly, while I also do not believe that CA will change anything in their upcoming TW titles on account of my remarks here, this is not a reason for me not to voice them anyway as I think they are valid points from the perspective I just tried to describe here.

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Originally Posted by Brutal DLX

What advantage (and over whom?) do armies gain if all of them get an increased marching distance?

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Put simply the longer distance an element moves every turn, the less chance the human player gets to anticipate and intercept its movement and actually participate in the game play.

If this goes too far the game becomes unplayable, as the player is simply unable to anticipate or react to the AI's movements, which is the reason I have just shelved 'Crown and Glory'.

Your approach is a better solution, in that the duration represented by a turn is far less important to game play than the distance the game elements are allowed to move in that turn. So, reducing the length of time a turn represents so that the distance a fleet of army moves is more acceptable to you at least retains the playablility of the game.

The only issue which arises is that it means that more turns will need to be played before scheduled events like the Mongol invasion occur. However, some people seem to want this delayed anyway so it may not be such a big issue for them.

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Originally Posted by Brutal DLX

Well, mind you, but even in this thread two persons are not of the opinion that ship movement shouldn't be changed.
The game we are talking about is first and foremost a game settled in a certain historic epoch with units and buildings that reflect that epoch. (It's not a fantasy RTS quite of the same style as Warcraft3 for example, where you consequently never see debates such as this.)

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You're simply wrong if you believe this. It is first and foremost a game. It just happens to be set in a historical setting, because it is convenient and makes it more interesting. If you examine the game carefully, you will clearly see that the developers try to plan good gameplay first of all, and as a result history is compromised to whatever extent is necessary to achieve that. Even if you wish the game was designed differently than that, it doesn't change the fact that it clearly does favor RTS principles instead of historical ones wherever there is conflict.

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That is why the total number of turns in which the game is completed DOES matter a great deal in balancing game mechanics. Thus, it does not only matter how far a fleet can go in one turn relative to the map (and relative to land movement) but also how large this amount is compared to the total duration of the game.

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No. The usefulness of a ship in your service does not vary according to campaign length, therefore it follows that it does not depend on that at all as a factor. The only way campaign length could ever matter is if movement rates depended on the date as opposed to the turn. Clearly they do not, so it is simply erroneous thinking to suggest that a ship's usefulness changes depending on campaign length.

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What advantage (and over whom?) do armies gain if all of them get an increased marching distance? Also, I did not do any vain attempt at anything. I simply changed the timescale in my game to 1.0 and I am much more content with this compromise. Ideally, I should play at 0.5 to make the change of seasons kind of useful, but then the total number of turns gets too big for my liking. However, if I was to play at the vanilla rate again, I would really tinker with the movement rates of all units, which is something I do not intend at the moment, but thank you for offering help!~:)
Lastly, while I also do not believe that CA will change anything in their upcoming TW titles on account of my remarks here, this is not a reason for me not to voice them anyway as I think they are valid points from the perspective I just tried to describe here.

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As people have mentioned with ships, armies would likewise be able to simply appear out of nowhere and lay siege to a settlement, avoiding any number of armies that might be along the way. I'm talking about the ability to react to threats again, which is entirely lost if the movement rate gets much higher.

Even at 1.0 year per turn your movement rates are wildly divergent from any realistic rate, which is why I called it a vain attempt - you really are not much closer to realism, you simply have convinced yourself you are. Nothing you can do makes it even close to realistic while maintaining a reasonable ability to play a campaign, so every suggestion I've heard so far can really be labeled as trying in vain to accomplish a yet-unreachable goal.

I of course have no problem with you voicing your opinions. I do however feel the need to defend the game from the assault it frequently comes under, most especially when there are very good reasons for the game doing what it does, as I consider to be the case here. I also like to think that people can understand and accept those reasons for the game diverging from their concept of what it should be, though of course sometimes they cannot do so.

Hello all, I have been reading the forums for a few months now, but this is my first post, so be gentle:2thumbsup:

@Didz
I really like the Scottish blogs, hope to see more in the future.
Regarding your problems; you might consider the Lands to Conquer mod. It follows 1turn=1year time line, but has been tweaked so that the overall feel of the game is preserved, the goodness just lasts longer:D. You can recruit generals, witch helps keeping the family tree tidy and the diplomacy is actually workable with it, among many other things. It's really more a big bugfix pack than what you might perceive as a mod, since most of the game, at least as far as the look and feel goes, is unchanged.
I was skeptical at first, my reasoning was that the professional game developers know best, but playing with LTC has been a real eye-opener. It even comes in a handy install package that does everything for you, and you can play vanilla anytime you want, since it uses its own files.

@movement distances, etc.
I too find the whole thing frustrating at times...

Regarding the naval units:
This is a tricky one. Naval combat is inherently difficult to model in a turn-based game, but some improvements are possible IMO. First, the whole losing the battle/running away 2x the movement points thing is beyond me. Do ships grow sail masts after loosing a battle, or am I missing something? As things stand, I can control a wast naval farce to dominate the seas, but the enemy will keep blocking all my trade to sea port with a hole-ridden dinky little Dhow, I have beat with my 10-ship fleet two previous times. I propose the following:

i) Enable the run away option in naval combat....sometimes. What I mean by that is the following: say one my one Cog, carrying a family member from Spain to Rhodes, from where he will launch a crusade, is jumped by a 12-Dhow Egyptian navy. In that case, if I chose the escape option, he will have a decent chance (say 85%) of doing just that, because it would be hard for a big fleet to pursue a single vessel. If somehow my ship is unable to evade, combat takes place, but my forces are penalized, and will perform worse than they would if I chose auto-resolve. He also gets taken considerably off-course, but NOT 2x the movement points of his Cog! On the other hand, if I am facing off my 10 fleet ship vs. another fleet with the same, or smaller number of ships, my chances of retreating/escaping would be considerably lower (say 10%), and again, in the event of combat, my fleeing disorganized squadron is penalized.

ii) You want to blockade a port? Better cough up the florints my friend! If you showed up in Venice with one Cog to block their port, I don't care if the have their fleet halfway around the word discovering the Americas, the merchants would gang up and paddle their row boats to throw stones at you and win by sheer numbers! So blockading a port means you must bring at least a 5-ship fleet. A shipwright: 10 ships, dockyard = 20 ships, etc. Also, If you build ships in a blockaded harbor to relieve it, you have to fight your way out, not get snagged in my zone of control for one turn, and if I attack, escape far away with relatively few casualties.

iii) So You are the big bad Ottoman empire, and your eying my Venetian islands strewn all across the Med? You think it wouldn't be much of a hassle to dump the two full stacks you keep for parades and such near Adana onto the two galleys you've just built and take the lightly defended Cyprus, bypassing my big navy in a single turn? Guess again, you'll have to pay up. Each ship carries only one land unit so a full stack of those nasty horse archers of yours is going to mean a full stack of Galleys too. And if I sink a ship, one unit in your land army units (chosen at random) sleeps with the fish.:yes:
That might be a problem though, because crusades early on would be difficult, or rather costly, if attempted by sea. Solution: hireable mercenary fleet. Not Cog or Galley, fleet. You get as many ships as you have units, but really bad, commandeered merchants, that literally can't fight to save their lives. You can always beef them up with some home-navy or fighting merc ships though...

Regarding character aging, years per turn:
This is a tough one too. I enjoy following the 'life' of a particularly promising/worthless family member (It's sometimes hard with a trait list longer than a toilet paper roll, often in direct contradiction with itself, but that is another topic, yes?), making up little stories about my 'kingdom' - little blogs just for my amusement if you will (not as good as Didz's, i'll admit), collecting my army from across the Reich and striking at the French in winter, so the fighting near Metz will be in the summer and will favour my heavy cav, and so on.
So the different time lines that characters follow, and the fact that seasons/years in general are out of sync takes away from that. The ideal for me would be 2 seasons per year/ 0.5 years per turn, as that would be the closest thing to 'real', I think.

Of course, the campaign I tried with this setting was way too long, not to mention everybody was max pre-gunpowder tech by 1150.
But why not break the game down into periods I say?

Have an early, high and late campaign with specific goals for each faction in each period, and a starting position that reflects the historical realities of the specific start date. And make the goals a bit less ambitious perhaps. For instance, Spain would actually be tasked with Reconquista the monk at the beginning is talking about, that is: conquer the Iberian peninsula and subdue Portugal (and by subdue I mean destroy faction OR make them a vassal and have a better standing in the graphs - to prevent an AI diplomacy exploit), as opposed to now, where you are expected to have Iberia and a colonial empire in Northen Africa, achieved probably before anyone has fired a hand gun.

As things are now, late game is simply not that fun for me. It's one or two superfactions (most of the time Timurids and/or Mongols) that control large swaths of the map, a few hanger-ons maybe and, of course, me - clicking away at scores of city screens trying to produce balanced armies and micromanaging production.

I realize a lot of people enjoy that sort of game though, so make the Grand Campaign truly grand for them - 450+ turns of climbing up the tech tree and obliterating every faction on the map.

That scheme would probably benefit the AI too. Think about it: no more half town militia/half balista stacks in 1450, because they are simply not recrutable any more. And AI strategy also perhaps would improve, because a simpler goal is easier to follow - no more random wars until annihilation, except with your assigned foe, everybody else is just my enemy's enemy and I like him of his friend and I don't. And another example: you finish your assigned objectives as Egypt halfway trough the campaign. You're done right? Guess again, Mongols on the edge of our maps! It would make for an interesting end-game push to wipe them out, instead of just a chore to do before you can start expanding again.


As for increasing/decreasing movement points? I can't really say, except that I suspect that it will never be perfect. Europa Universalis does away with this by being a real-time game, but I wonder if that could be translated to TW, or even if I would like it.

The author of LTC has, as far as I can tell, only increased the movement points for agents, and I must say I like it better. On one hand, it's hardly a threat that a diplomat or a merchant will come out of the fog to destroy you while you're unprepared, but that papal mission to assassinate a heretic in Russia is doable, as is asking the pope in Rome for a reconciliation before the issiue is made redundant with you faction leader dying.



EDIT: I've just realised this post probably too long, but I assure you, it's not a sign of things to come.:laugh4: Anyway, if you've come this far, I feel you deserve some kind of reward, so here's a little light entertainment:
:juggle2: :juggle2: :juggle2: :juggle2:

Are you guys actually reading my posts or are you ignoring most of it?
I think I pretty clearly said that ship movement should be increased, but at the same time armies shouldn't be able to board and unboard during the same turn. Additionally, I said only one or two units should be transported per ship. You could also argue that ships transporting troops should be slower, or introduce fighting and transporting vessels, as in Europa Universalis.
And I think I also showed that the "blockaded port economical hit surprise yada yada" is nonsense because you don't lose anything if you drive them away in the same turn again :whip:
Anyways, you're entitled to your own opinion. :gathering:

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Originally Posted by alpaca

I think I pretty clearly said that ship movement should be increased, but at the same time armies shouldn't be able to board and unboard during the same turn.

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I don't agree with the suggestion that ship movement should be increased , but I do agree with your suggestion that armies should take a full turn to board and unboard from them. This would eliminate the current expliot where small fleets are able to sail right past much larger ones to land a huge army on the coast and take out the larger fleets home port in the same turn.

Obviosly it makes no sense timeline wise to demand that loading or unloading an army will take 2 years or even 1 year but from a game play point of view it makes sense.

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Originally Posted by Didz

Put simply the longer distance an element moves every turn, the less chance the human player gets to anticipate and intercept its movement and actually participate in the game play.

If this goes too far the game becomes unplayable, as the player is simply unable to anticipate or react to the AI's movements, which is the reason I have just shelved 'Crown and Glory'.

Your approach is a better solution, in that the duration represented by a turn is far less important to game play than the distance the game elements are allowed to move in that turn. So, reducing the length of time a turn represents so that the distance a fleet of army moves is more acceptable to you at least retains the playablility of the game.

The only issue which arises is that it means that more turns will need to be played before scheduled events like the Mongol invasion occur. However, some people seem to want this delayed anyway so it may not be such a big issue for them.

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Yes, this is true, Didz, thanks for understanding my point. But of course this lack of interception ability can be countered and it would really not be too much if, for example, a normal army had the range of a crusader/jihad stack. The second problem is the summer/winter change, which just only fits properly if you play 0.5 years per turn. But then the number of turns would be too large. So some compromise just has to be made, and looking back to MTW1, I personally think one year per turn equals a reasonable amount of total turn. But still the movement rates need (ideally) to be adjusted as well, I'm just too lazy to do this as of right now. Double the number of turns is really no problem, it makes for a more relaxed game, you will see the AI teching up more, and the Mongols will arrive soon enough. (I'm a player who doesn't go for a quick win anyway, I almost always wait until after the discovery of the Americas to finish the campaign).

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Originally Posted by Foz

You're simply wrong if you believe this. It is first and foremost a game. It just happens to be set in a historical setting, because it is convenient and makes it more interesting. If you examine the game carefully, you will clearly see that the developers try to plan good gameplay first of all, and as a result history is compromised to whatever extent is necessary to achieve that. Even if you wish the game was designed differently than that, it doesn't change the fact that it clearly does favor RTS principles instead of historical ones wherever there is conflict.

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So I am wrong because you say so? You are just putting forward your own opinion, and I hold that at most you could say that you don't agree with me because, from your perspective, the game design is ok.
It is a game first and foremost (about this there seems to be agreement) and the historical setting is there for a purpose, isn't it? If it were not present I could play a game of chess instead. I never suggested I want 100% realism, I would watch a documentary then instead. But I want as much realism as is possible within the basic game outline, and, I hold that there is room for improvement.

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Originally Posted by Foz

No. The usefulness of a ship in your service does not vary according to campaign length, therefore it follows that it does not depend on that at all as a factor. The only way campaign length could ever matter is if movement rates depended on the date as opposed to the turn. Clearly they do not, so it is simply erroneous thinking to suggest that a ship's usefulness changes depending on campaign length.

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I suggest you examine the points I gave a bit more carefully and you will find that the potential utility of a ship (and troops too) increases if, over the whole campaign length, its total potential to move and transport and fight increases, which can be done by adjusting either turn amount or movement points per turn, or both. I am just convinced, that at least for my personal preference, the vanilla setting is not the optimum. Furthermore, I would advise against using words such as "erroneous thinking" in matters that clearly are not only tied to the game mechanics only but to the individual playing style too.

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Originally Posted by Foz

As people have mentioned with ships, armies would likewise be able to simply appear out of nowhere and lay siege to a settlement, avoiding any number of armies that might be along the way. I'm talking about the ability to react to threats again, which is entirely lost if the movement rate gets much higher.

Even at 1.0 year per turn your movement rates are wildly divergent from any realistic rate, which is why I called it a vain attempt - you really are not much closer to realism, you simply have convinced yourself you are. Nothing you can do makes it even close to realistic while maintaining a reasonable ability to play a campaign, so every suggestion I've heard so far can really be labeled as trying in vain to accomplish a yet-unreachable goal.

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So you are saying in other words this would make you have to garrison your hinterland cities sufficiently as well, decreasing the amount of troops you will have on the offensive? Also I like to add that most siege armies don't attack on the same turn, so if they can reach and siege one of your cities, then your intercepting force should have ample time to reach the besiegers as well on the next turn. Same goes for ships, as alpaca said before. For me, it's not really that much of a problem, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, althought for others it might be different.
I also would like to add that we are not talking about an extreme increase in movement rate, such that, for example an army could go from Rennes all the way to Naples in one turn. I'm saying this because I got the impression that some think of such scenarios when they write their replies. The 1.0 year per turn doesn't bring me closer to total realism but it is a way to increase the satisfaction I get from playing this game, which is my goal in the first place and I don't think I had to convince myself of anything for this. So please, refrain from calling this a vain attempt.

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Originally Posted by Foz

I of course have no problem with you voicing your opinions. I do however feel the need to defend the game from the assault it frequently comes under, most especially when there are very good reasons for the game doing what it does, as I consider to be the case here. I also like to think that people can understand and accept those reasons for the game diverging from their concept of what it should be, though of course sometimes they cannot do so.

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And I appreciate your willingness to defend the game from criticism that is just unfounded. But if you were to defend it against ANY criticism, then I would have to question your commitment to objectivity.
On the issue at hand, it stands to reason if there are truly very good reasons for the game doing what it does, and since some of them are tied to individual preferences, which all of us have, I'm afraid we have to agree to disagree.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

Are you guys actually reading my posts or are you ignoring most of it?
I think I pretty clearly said that ship movement should be increased, but at the same time armies shouldn't be able to board and unboard during the same turn. Additionally, I said only one or two units should be transported per ship. You could also argue that ships transporting troops should be slower, or introduce fighting and transporting vessels, as in Europa Universalis.
And I think I also showed that the "blockaded port economical hit surprise yada yada" is nonsense because you don't lose anything if you drive them away in the same turn again

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I've been reading your posts, and I find some of your suggestions very worthwhile to consider, especially fleet size being tied to number of troops that it can transport. Boarding actions should simply take more movement points from the army and the fleet, and boarding/unboarding should be quicker if done at a port. Alternatively, being able to build special transporting vessels would be a viable way too, as you said.

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Originally Posted by Foz

You're simply wrong if you believe this. It is first and foremost a game. It just happens to be set in a historical setting, because it is convenient and makes it more interesting. If you examine the game carefully, you will clearly see that the developers try to plan good gameplay first of all, and as a result history is compromised to whatever extent is necessary to achieve that. Even if you wish the game was designed differently than that, it doesn't change the fact that it clearly does favor RTS principles instead of historical ones wherever there is conflict.

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Originally Posted by Brutal DLX

So I am wrong because you say so? You are just putting forward your own opinion, and I hold that at most you could say that you don't agree with me because, from your perspective, the game design is ok.
It is a game first and foremost (about this there seems to be agreement) and the historical setting is there for a purpose, isn't it? If it were not present I could play a game of chess instead. I never suggested I want 100% realism, I would watch a documentary then instead. But I want as much realism as is possible within the basic game outline, and, I hold that there is room for improvement.

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Hmm. I said you were wrong about the game first and foremost being historical, and went on to explain exactly why. My opinion has little to do with it. It is readily evident from the game's design exactly what the developers have prioritized, and history is not number one on that list. I was simply trying to dispel your claim that the game is first and foremost historical, and the only really relevant thing we can draw on in that regard is the developers' design, which speaks volumes as to exactly what the game is, first and foremost. I readily agree that the historical aspects of the game are still important, but time and again the developers compromise them in order to further the gameplay, so there is little choice left except to note that it is likely historical aspects will always take a backseat to gameplay considerations in this title, and likely all TW titles. With that in mind, it would seem prudent to make the bulk of the arguments gameplay-based, at least if one hopes to appeal at all to the developers, since they will first of all require a change not to be detrimental to the gameplay in order to implement it for any reason, and it certainly would help if you can clearly demonstrate that a proposed change would actually benefit gameplay and not just immersion.

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I suggest you examine the points I gave a bit more carefully and you will find that the potential utility of a ship (and troops too) increases if, over the whole campaign length, its total potential to move and transport and fight increases, which can be done by adjusting either turn amount or movement points per turn, or both.

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I guess you can think of it that way, though it's not helpful really. It's rather like saying economics are more useful if your campaign is longer because you can earn more money in the extra turns. It doesn't really help with balance or gameplay considerations at all, since the relevant measure of economics is turn-based, not campaign-based. Everything in the game is better if you can use it for more turns. OTOH, a 0.5 year per turn campaign with 4 times as many turns can be won about as quickly as a standard length one. So, outside of the event triggers, almost nothing is actually affected by the number of turns the campaign is. If you choose to play more slowly and use up more turns then sure everything in the game may be considered "more useful" since you're using it for longer, but you can still choose to play at the same pace, and thus have everything stay exactly the same. The usefulness of a ship over a campaign is related to the speed you're playing at yourself, rather than the number of turns the campaign is, and since it scales directly with that we're right back to the only useful measure of a ship's abilities being what it can do in a single turn.

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So you are saying in other words this would make you have to garrison your hinterland cities sufficiently as well, decreasing the amount of troops you will have on the offensive? Also I like to add that most siege armies don't attack on the same turn, so if they can reach and siege one of your cities, then your intercepting force should have ample time to reach the besiegers as well on the next turn. Same goes for ships, as alpaca said before. For me, it's not really that much of a problem, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, althought for others it might be different.

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Actually I was saying that armies would be able to dodge field armies far too successfully, which should basically make field battles non-existent. Frankly I have few enough of those already, and would rather have more, actually. For garrisons, you probably would need a lot less, since now your defensive armies could be spread to cover huge amounts of land each. An army moving twice as far covers 4 times the amount of land b/c it's movement area forms a circle. In the end it's likely the majority of battles will be fought as siege relief battles, as fast-moving stacks issue forth from the FOW to lay siege, only to be counter-attacked by defending stacks with their new longer reach. Is that better for gameplay? I rather doubt it. It seems only to force battles scenarios into a predictable mold.

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The 1.0 year per turn doesn't bring me closer to total realism but it is a way to increase the satisfaction I get from playing this game, which is my goal in the first place and I don't think I had to convince myself of anything for this. So please, refrain from calling this a vain attempt.

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Well, as you say it didn't add much realism, which is what I was referring to. That doesn't necessarily mean it accomplished nothing. I'm glad it's worked out for you.

Interestingly, that problem wasn't so prominent in the first MTW because of the way the battles were staged when you invaded a province.
Such a thing could be implemented in the current system (which has its advantages over the risk-like system) by giving the player a chance at the start of his turn to gather defensive forces to fight an invading army, or by going the same way as Europa Universalis and adopting a real-time approach which would solve a lot or even all of the mentioned problems and be my favourite approach (of course you should be able to pause the game any time you want, and it would have to contain a very good event system).

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Originally Posted by alpaca

by going the same way as Europa Universalis and adopting a real-time approach which would solve a lot or even all of the mentioned problems and be my favourite approach (of course you should be able to pause the game any time you want, and it would have to contain a very good event system).

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The day CA start doing that is the day I stop buying CA games.

I can't stand Europa Universalis and it only sits gathering dust on my shelf because the shop I bought it from would not give me my money back. In my opinion it is EU that needs to borrow some idea's from the TW series, in particular the use of turn based movement.

Same, i don't like the EU games one of the reasons being the real time campaign. I like turn based campaigns, it allows me to take my time, and i don't need to pause it, i can just take as long as i want each turn.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

Same, i don't like the EU games one of the reasons being the real time campaign. I like turn based campaigns, it allows me to take my time, and i don't need to pause it, i can just take as long as i want each turn.

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I don't really see where the difference between just taking as long as you want and pausing the game as long as you want is :beam:

You have to admit that turn based strategy has a lot of problems and especially on a map like the one we have for RTW and M2TW (that is, armies move independently from region borders) it would have a lot of advantages.
For example, the above mentioned surprise effect will be removed, as will any character aging discrepancies, you can scale movement realistically, you won't have armies missing each other, you can take back orders, etc.
In my opinion it definitely is the way to go, but I can understand that you like the turn-based thing, I liked it better a year ago or so, too, but then I did a bit of thinking about it and the advantages easily outweigh the rather subjective argumentation of "not being able to take your time" or being "under time pressure". You get used to it very quickly.
The reason why EU isn't as enjoyable as TW has other reasons, for example TW has strategical battles.

And if you think you'd stop buying their games in case they went real-time, I don't believe you because I judge you as a TW addict ~;)

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Originally Posted by alpaca

I don't really see where the difference between just taking as long as you want and pausing the game as long as you want is :beam:

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Basically, the problem is in playability and fitness for purpose. Games like EU are unfit for purpose in that the real time system impinges upon the player’s ability to manage movement quickly and effectively and places an unnecessary delay and complexity on army and naval management.

It works for real time tactical strategy games like Command and Conquer but for a serious strategy game it just gets in the way of play, and of course it prevents PBEM play completely which means that it kills any chance of proper multiplayer gaming.

Its the first thing I check now when thinking of investing in a new game and any hint of real-time campaign movement gets the box put straight back on the shelf.

I only buy such games on recommendation now, but so far have been disappointed on every occasion I have done so. Most recently by Lords of the Realm II, a previously great game ruined by the introduction of real-time campaign movement.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

You have to admit that turn based strategy has a lot of problems and especially on a map like the one we have for RTW and M2TW (that is, armies move independently from region borders) it would have a lot of advantages.

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I don't see any problems at all with turn based movement of the TW series, apart from those that you seek to create by suggesting the modification of movement rates. In my opinion, there are no advantages at all in real time campaign movement just a hell of a lot of frustration and pointlessness hassle.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

For example, the above mentioned surprise effect will be removed, as will any character aging discrepancies, you can scale movement realistically, you won't have armies missing each other, you can take back orders, etc.

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You obviously haven't played 'Lords of the Realm II'.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

In my opinion it definitely is the way to go, but I can understand that you like the turn-based thing, I liked it better a year ago or so, too, but then I did a bit of thinking about it and the advantages easily outweigh the rather subjective argumentation of "not being able to take your time" or being "under time pressure".

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Then I think you need to think about it a lot more, and try a few more games that have opted for that approach. I suggest Lords of the Realm II as a starting point. You can probably download it for nothing by now because it flopped big time thanks to real-time campaign movement.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

You get used to it very quickly.

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Believe me, I got used to it. I wasted a ton of money and time getting used to it. Perhaps, if I ate shite for long enough I could get used to that too, but thats hardly an argument for doing so.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

And if you think you'd stop buying their games in case they went real-time, I don't believe you because I judge you as a TW addict ~;)

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Believe me I would, just as I have no intention of paying for a fantasy version. It also why I never even considered buying Spartan:Total Warrior despite its attempt to exploit its links with Totalwar.

I play the TW games because they are the best long duration historical strategy games on the market. If they introduced real-time movement, dragons or wizards they would cease to be the best long duration historical strategy games on the market, and I would stop buying them. It really as simple as that.

Anyway, I doubt that will happen as CA have more sense than to ruin their game in an attempt to resolve a minor problem. At least I hope so as the number of decent historical strategy games is dwindling rapidly thanks to the stupidity of most game designers.

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Originally Posted by Didz

Basically, the problem is in playablility and fitness for purpose. Games like EU are unfit for purpose in that the real time system impinges upon the players ability to manage movement quickly and effectively and places an unecessary delay and complexity on army and naval management.

It works for real time tactical strategy games like Command and Conquer but for a serious strategy game it just gets in the way of play, and of course it prevents PBEM play completely which means that it kills any chance of proper multiplayer gaming.

Its the first thing I check now when thinking of investing in a new game and any hint of real-time campaign movement gets the box gets put back on the shelf.

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So true. Plus of course, should any multiplayer be possible (through lenghty LAN sessions, or regular rendez-vous + saves), the real time aspect gives a silly mechanical advantage to players who can happily multitask, juggle with shortcuts and so on and so forth, thus detracting from pure strategy. Strategy is a game of go, and go *needs* lenghty, thoughtfull pauses. Tactics can and should be realtime (or the marvelous mix of turn and real time found only in the Combat Mission line of games), but for long-term thinking and planning, you need turns.

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I only buy such games on recommendation now, but so far have been dissappointed on every occassion I have done so. Most recently by Lords of the Realm II a previously great game ruined by the introduction of real-time campaign movement.

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Lords 1 was sooo much better than the second one if you ask me, but coming from me it may be pure nostalgia talking. LotR was the very first PC game I ever owned, and I had it some two years before getting a computer fit enough to run it. Much, MUCH childish reading of the manual, admiring the screenshots at the back of the box and fantasizing about the game happened during my wee years :laugh4:

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I don't see any problems at all with turn based movement if the TW series, apart from those that you seek to create by modifying movement rates. There are no advantages at all in real time campaign movement just a hell of a lot of frustration and pointlessness.

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Agreed. It's already taxing to micro an extensive empire on a turn by turn basis, and I find that I ALWAYS forget giving orders to at least a couple merchants, or a build order here etc..., real time would spell chaos for my lands.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

Believe me I would, just as I have no intention of paying for a fantasy version.

I play the TW games because they are the best long duration historical strategy games on the market. If they introduced real-time movement, dragons or wizards they would cease to be the best long duration historical strategy games on the market, and I would stop buying them. It really as simple as that.

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Wizards and dragons are not that bad. Another great (yet totally unknown) strategy game, Dominions II, is a fantasy game, yet it's probably the most intricate and engrossing game I've ever known, it's only downpoint being the horrendous, 1980s graphics.
In essence, supernatural stuff just adds layers of complexity to your strategic thinking and more options, which is a good thing - in Dominions you also have to deal with flyers raiding your lands, or even another god summoning stuff right in the middle of your provinces etc..., strategies which can't happen in historical games obviously.
It's a bit like the evolution of agents in TW games : STW strat relied almost 100% on military warfare, MTW introduced religious warfare, RTW added diplomacy and sabotage to the mix and M2 merchants, all of which are just additional ways to conquer and overcome that you can ignore, use sporadically or base your whole strat around. Magic is just a continuation of classical strategy through other means :beam:

Didz, basically all you're saying is "I don't like real time movement" in fifty times as many words.
The only valid argument you made is that it doesn't work well in MP, but to be honest, a turn-based game like this in MP takes much too long to be enjoyable for more than about 0.5% of the players, so that point isn't really good, either, in my opinion. I doubt you will ever get more than a hotseat campaign that can be used for PBEM in TW games, it'll stay single-player, possibly with a MMO offspring to make more money.
If you look at games like Civ4, the main MP action there is with simultaneous turns which is actually fairly similar to real-time (if a turn timer is used), almost nobody would wait until everyone's finished their turn sequentially.

Kobal: What you're talking about are mainly interface problems and would have nothing to do with either being real-time or turn-based because, as you say, you already forget moving characters (I do, too). As I said, the game would have to have a good event system informing you about possible actions.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

Kobal: What you're talking about are mainly interface problems and would have nothing to do with either being real-time or turn-based because, as you say, you already forget moving characters (I do, too). As I said, the game would have to have a good event system informing you about possible actions.

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Not really, no. No matter how fantasmic the interface of a real time game could be, one can only focus his attention on so many things at the same time. I know I'm a one-task-at-a-time person, while my GF has a knack for parallel-processing stuff inside her head and can issue an order here, pan to there and give another, etc..., which obviously gives her an edge against me in real time, complex games such as, say, TW games.
While I just have to devote my attention to that cav charge from start to finish and moan about the lack of pause, she's micro-ed the whole front and still had time to switch her archers' target.
Factor that times 10 if we had to manage whole empires from armies to fleets to agents to building queues to taxation to generals to diplomacy...

But I don't care, she has yet to find an beat'em up she can trounce me at :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by alpaca

Didz, basically all you're saying is "I don't like real time movement" in fifty times as many words.

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And all your saying is that you like it. If you want to trivialise my arguments then I shall trivialise yours and we can continue this pointless exercise until doomsday.

Quid pro quo! We have equal and opposing views, and continuing to discuss the subject is a waste of both our time and effort. I don't agree with your arguments or your point of view and I'm never going to so there is no point trying to come up with illogical arguments to try and change my mind. Lets face it you consider Europa Universalis a game worthy of quoting as an example, I consider it to be a pile of crap, so what chance is there that we will ever agree.

As already stated, the day the TW series goes real-time will be the day I stop buying the games. Thats really all I have to say on the matter.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

Didz, basically all you're saying is "I don't like real time movement" in fifty times as many words.

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Originally Posted by Didz

And all your saying is that you like it.

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Lol. Good one guys! :thumbsup:

Anyway, I have to say I like both real-time and turn-based games, it just depends on how well they are done. For the TW series, the turn based approach is what carried it since Shogun, but the new campaign map introduced since RTW, however nice it is, kind of brings some problems with it, some of which have been discussed in this thread. It seems a lot of the actual perception of them depends on the individual player, so I'd say it's normal there's little agreement to be found here. But, if anything, it's good that all sides made their points clear so we can get a more complex picture of the situation.

If I look back at MTW1, there were also problems with the campaign map and moving units. You could only move one province a turn, but you could go from Ireland to Antiochia in one turn, for example, if you had a chain of vessels connecting all sea regions till there. That's unbalanced too. Maybe, for future TW games, it may be a good idea that you get increased movement rates for your armies as long as they are in their own territory. That would simulate in turn that armies usually march slower in foreign territory, scouting the environment and the enemy. Anyway, just a thought.