The Pet Peeve thread

OK, so we have the 1.2 buglist and 1.3 wishlist to vent off our "OMGWTFFFS this game is horrible" urges, and the tongue-in-cheek one to make fun of them. What about... the little things ? You know, the stuff that's not game breaking however you stretch the word, but that just feels wrong to you. That detracts from your experience somehow. The minor detail that breaks the camel's back ? The silly thing you can't clear out of your mind and just haunts your nights, hounding and clawing at your sanity until you're nothing but the dessicated husk of the man you once were ?

OK, I'll start to get the ball going. Here's what nags me :

- the fact that every general, no matter your tech level or what the date is, is in full Renaissance plate. Heck, even brigand captains attached to a lone peasant unit have them.

- Likewise, no matter wether it's turn 1 or 225, the guards in spy/assassin videos are always in full field plate.

- Xbowmen quivers being on the wrong side of the model.

- I have no idea what the weather is. Oh sure, I can see rain, or snow, or fog but... What ? Is it "light showers clearing up later" ? "dense fog all day" ? "sunny with chances of rain later" ? I wanna know ! I USED to know !


And a strictly RTW one :

- "Domus dulcis domus" ? Whoever came up with that one oughta be castrated and shot. And if it's a temporary, beta, debugging name that somehow got left in the game, who let it slip needs to be drawn and quartered.
I mean it was so... underwhelming. "Congratulations ! You have managed to expand Roman culture all the way to the edges of the known world against all odds ! Here's us taking you for an idiot as a reward." :clown:

One thing I find annoying is the fact that if you have 2 units of something, the order in which they are deployed in the field is always (! not 50% of the time, but always) reversed: The unit listed left is deployed on the right and the unit listed right is deployed on the left.

Now I usually change the default deployment anyway, but still it nags me.

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Originally Posted by Philbert

One thing I find annoying is the fact that if you have 2 units of something, the order in which they are deployed in the field is always (! not 50% of the time, but always) reversed: The unit listed left is deployed on the right and the unit listed right is deployed on the left.

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Originally Posted by Kobal2fr

- the fact that every general, no matter your tech level or what the date is, is in full Renaissance plate. Heck, even brigand captains attached to a lone peasant unit have them.

- Likewise, no matter wether it's turn 1 or 225, the guards in spy/assassin videos are always in full field plate.

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I also find these slightly annoying.
@Philbert: That simply does not make sense, reversing the order. This has likewise annoyed me. Why would one simply do such a thing...

@Kobal2fr: Also, it nips at me that any non-Islamic faction you play has the same armor. You go to Eastern Europe into Russia and everyone wears the same armor except your general, who thinks it is cool not to conform, so he wears Western European style full plate. It would have been nice if based on a faction's location at least, that the given general wore different armor.

A long time peeve of my own is the lack of substance given to the Mongols. CA seemed to give them all that they needed on the battlefield, but not on the campaign map. They are considered an Islamic faction, they have Islamic portraits and their general and army markers are Islamic. CA had enough time to make simple voice overs for them but not enough time to give them a bit more detail? :thumbsdown:

Tschüß!
Erich

Yeah, the deployment phase is definitely my pet peeve. I hate having to reverse the sequence on my unit cards at the start of every single battle...

Also, I'd want the ability to make custom tactics. Like what we had in MTW, where you could choose various deployment possibilities from a list, bu we can make our own. When hunting rebels(or other small/medium battles), for example, I always use the same formation, however, it is not the one my troops are deployed in...

Ah, right. I'd like to add "I can't reorganize unit cards like I'd want to" to the list then :)

Hrmmm... "Little" things?

- City view feature. Utterly fail to understand why that was removed from RTW when it was already there.

- The unit and building queue and info cards have a 'rushed' feel to them, and are not nearly as vibrant or clear as the RTW ones.

Does having every city near enemy territory surrounded by assassins count?
That's the one thing I can't stand...

It really, really gets on my nerves that some roads don't meet up, cf. the cross-roads in Sofia, Aleppo and whatever the moorish capital is called. Sometimes i deliberately avoid taking over those territories just so i don't have to look at them. The default farmland annoys me as well, ive changed it to middle_eastern_2 now and it's much more appealing

Something that really p's me off is how, when I am struggling to build even basic units in a region's castle (due to lack of money/technology) a stack of 6-8 rebel units will suddenly, miraculously spawn with soldiers which my castle can't even build yet (the only castle in that region, mind you). Did the rural scum suddenly figure out how to beat pikes and plate armour in their straw huts?

On that note, also the way that a city, when it rebels, is suddenly filled with a full stack of hardcore, advanced soldiery whereas most of those units can't be built in the city in the first place, and even if they could, should take many turns!

It would be nice to see rebel forces build themselves up over time, with you knowing that the longer it takes you to nail them, the tougher they'll be.

heres mine

guns dont seem to fire and reload properly most of the time, half the time i have them in my armies my brain is screaming WTF are you doing, reload or shoot

and another is after a unit has engaged with another, if i send it out charging after the routers, or to another unit, only the first row go, the others stand around or "stalk" around looking for an imagined foe

also pikes and halbs (especially halbs) are to quick to break formation if one enemy gets in the line, seemingly every man within five yards of him feels compelled to drop his pike and grab a sword, while the fellows in the back shuffle around, pikes to the sky, waiting and hoping for that man to get within 5 yards of them...so they too can drop the pike

these 3 are the ones that cause me the most trouble, other things i can ignore or work around

Portugese, Sicilian, Spanish and Venetian characters all sound the same.

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Originally Posted by sabutai

heres mine

guns dont seem to fire and reload properly most of the time, half the time i have them in my armies my brain is screaming WTF are you doing, reload or shoot

and another is after a unit has engaged with another, if i send it out charging after the routers, or to another unit, only the first row go, the others stand around or "stalk" around looking for an imagined foe

also pikes and halbs (especially halbs) are to quick to break formation if one enemy gets in the line, seemingly every man within five yards of him feels compelled to drop his pike and grab a sword, while the fellows in the back shuffle around, pikes to the sky, waiting and hoping for that man to get within 5 yards of them...so they too can drop the pike

these 3 are the ones that cause me the most trouble, other things i can ignore or work around

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All of those, I'd classify as "serious stuff", in that they can ruin the game by themselves, or in that fixing those would make a lot of people scream with joy. But this is not what this thread is about, more about the very, very minor stuff that everybody but you would just zoom right past without noticing there was a problem with them.

Another peeve is how, everytime after I've JUST started a new campaign, i discover something that makes me want to play another faction! How can I play 10 campaigns at once?!!!

:wall: :hanged:

Sallies

When I am besieging a castle or town and the AI sallies out my army's deployment has been done by a complete nuttcase, fruitcake or whatever. You know all units in a single line with the general on the extreme left flank. :wall:

If I sally out of a castle the AI army has a better deployment but has a sick tendency to carry all its siege equipment all over the battlefield. :furious3:

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Originally Posted by Tusk

Another peeve is how, everytime after I've JUST started a new campaign, i discover something that makes me want to play another faction! How can I play 10 campaigns at once?!!!

:wall: :hanged:

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Buy nine more computers:laugh4: :laugh4: :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Tusk

Another peeve is how, everytime after I've JUST started a new campaign, i discover something that makes me want to play another faction! How can I play 10 campaigns at once?!!!

:wall: :hanged:

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I have that, play a new campaing every day. Save to say i havent seen the aztecs yet.

More

Sapping - It's gone. Why????? That was one of, if not the, premiere tactic for breaching enemy wall defenses. This is honestly probably more of a "major" thing for me as opposed to a peeve, but I'll stick it in here anyway.

Huge 240 men units as opposed to measly 150 - Yet something else to blame the MP crowd for. I'm just kidding guys.

Time control slider - Yeah I know we can shift click now, but that's not the same as the almighty slider.

tower defences firing flaming sho when they cant even hit the target with normal ammo

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Originally Posted by Philbert

One thing I find annoying is the fact that if you have 2 units of something, the order in which they are deployed in the field is always (! not 50% of the time, but always) reversed: The unit listed left is deployed on the right and the unit listed right is deployed on the left.

Now I usually change the default deployment anyway, but still it nags me.

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Yeah. Drives me nuts.

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Originally Posted by Ranos

I have that, play a new campaing every day. Save to say i havent seen the aztecs yet.

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*looks away*
I...I've never... I've never seen the Timurids....I'VE NEVER EVEN SEEN GUNPOWDER, DADDY !
*bursts into tears*

Yah, I've got grass-greener-on-other-faction's-soil-itis too :sweatdrop:

A peeve would be the faction heir status jumping all over the family tree.
A major annoyance is the fact that mounted units can´t dismount, especially since I seem to recall that it had been stated back in time that this particularly lovely feature would make a reappearance.

THE QUOTES!!!!!

Would it really take much more time to get a few more? We all play this game too much..... So we have all seen every single quote about 20 or more times.

Read the signatures on this board for example. There is NO shortage of things to say yet I have to suffer the same damn things over and over every time I play.

Hell just add back in the quotes from the past 3 games even!!!!!

Mine would be the way how you have to coax the game with various little tricks to reorganize your unit cards on the campaign map and having to pause and pause and pause a battle to maintain at least a chaos I am to blame for....

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Originally Posted by Kraggenmor

Portugese, Sicilian, Spanish and Venetian characters all sound the same.

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I agree. The Sicillian Doge should sound like Don Corleone. Wouldn't that be great?

Actually, I don't know how many of you have been to Spain, but the spanish accent is very accurate, and I have no qualms about it. A spanish person speaking english would sound exactly like that. It is one thing CA did do right.

My peev would be that when using an agent with 95% chance of succes, alot of times he fails. What are the odds :beam:

Hmmm.. alot covered here. Lemme try one not yet mentioned but not game breaker. Unwanted armies/stacks on my territory! Now if I go tromping through a AI faction's land my rating goes down but if Mr. Neighbor comes walking through or parking a army/stack on my territory he gets no penalty. He can sit there forever and often does. Why dont we have the ability of sending a diplomat to Mr. Neighbor's nearest guy/town/fort and say "Hey! Get off my land in X-amount of turns or else!"?

God, I forgot one of my earliest ones. The thing that totally freaked me out during my first M2TW battle : the "no-longer-Attack-Of-The-Clones" system.

It's great, there's no question about that. The idea of giving each soldier his own random pick between N faces, X armors, Y shields, Z helmets etc... was nothing short of brilliant. AFAIK, only MoC does that too, and they probably mooched the idea off CA. But... those widely diverse soldiers ?
They all have the exact same fricken weapon ! :inquisitive:

Oh I agree with you, that's industrial-grade nitpicking but... wouldn't it be SO cool if, say, a DFK unit sported some guys with swords, some blokes with hammers, some with maces, flails, axes, spetums, morningstars, bohemian earspoons, bastard swords, hammers, clubs, clubs-with-a-nail-innit, glaive-guisarme-glaive-glaives, icepicks, and/or twin-pronged tallywhackers ?

The worst thing is that they kind of did that with Christian peasant units : those wield at least two different kinds of pitchforks, so you KNOW it could have been done. Only it didn't. :wall:

It bugs me when Byzantine general ask Santiago for help.

Things that are annoying but not totally awful. Hmm.

- One peculiar one is that units sometimes inexplicably fail to follow all their waypoints. I've laid out a 2-point path and had the unit move half a second in the first direction, then immediately jump at the second WP. Especially when the first waypoint is to get the unit to flanking position, this is disastrous.

- The way units look when holding ladders. Don't know exactly how, but I think the ladder just eerily floats across the landscape, as if under mental control by the ladder unit instead of actually held in their hands. It's like they put up a half-hearted attempt to cover up their telekinetic skills by keeping the ladder close enough to almost fake that they're actually carrying it.

- The way a general's death and ensuing close-up cutscene can completely screw you over by taking away your window to issue a critical order. I have actually cursed out the dying enemy general a few times because he was, though cutscene death, serving his faction far better than he did alive by depriving me of critical command seconds.

- The fact that you don't get to see the enemy general's speech. I want to hear what crap he's dishing out about me, and get fired up to shut the man up once and for all! Screw what's realistic, I just want to hear it.

- artillery snafus. I've seen all sorts of crazy friendly fire incidents, not the least of which was when my cannons kept firing even though infantry were advancing through them. Many good men were lost that day. The most funny and likely also most disconcerting is that cannon crews can kill themselves/each other. If there are non-flat terrain features, the cannons can line up too close together or the crew can be forced to stand too close the their own gun, both of which result in immediate death upon firing. What's worse is more men will run up and often fall prey to the exact same situation that made the last crew die. Insane and often troubling, but almost always also hilarious.

hey, can you still take out the cutscenes? you used to be able to in RTW I remember...

on the artillery friendly fire thing, I once charged a unit of hospitallers through a mass of my own bombards, just as they were firing (with flaming ammo of course).....ouch

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Originally Posted by SwordsMaster

Actually, I don't know how many of you have been to Spain, but the spanish accent is very accurate, and I have no qualms about it. A spanish person speaking english would sound exactly like that. It is one thing CA did do right.

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Lol, That's exactly how I sound when I speak english......NOT

I know what you mean though, it's not bad at all. The Sicilian's should have an outrageous Italian accent though.

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Originally Posted by phonicsmonkey

hey, can you still take out the cutscenes? you used to be able to in RTW I remember...

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Yes, you can. You will have to edit the medieval2.preference.cfg

Find event_cutscenes = 1, and change the value to 0 (event_cutscenes = 0)

On topic... I find very much annoying the fact that after the flood, you can't ever build watchtowers and forts in affected province, and the movement is greatly reduced. And this has been an issue in RTW, too.

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Originally Posted by Don Esteban

Lol, That's exactly how I sound when I speak english......NOT

I know what you mean though, it's not bad at all. The Sicilian's should have an outrageous Italian accent though.

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"We've a-taken their a-walls, Boss !" :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Kobal2fr

"We've a-taken their a-walls, Boss !" :laugh4:

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Whad'ya wanna offa me such a bad deal a-for

I'm a gonna attaka your city, capiche :laugh4:


Actually come to think of it the Sicilians were Norsemen.......still, same joke just for Milan.

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Originally Posted by Kobal2fr

*looks away*
I...I've never... I've never seen the Timurids....I'VE NEVER EVEN SEEN GUNPOWDER, DADDY !
*bursts into tears*

Yah, I've got grass-greener-on-other-faction's-soil-itis too :sweatdrop:

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The solution: Make gunpowder, both invasions and world is round event take place earlier. In my current game, I have gunpower at 30, mongols at 50 and world is round at 60. Can't remember when I put the timurids though.

I actually had high hopes of FINALLY seeing the aztecs, but then I noticed that Mount&Blade thread in the arena....

I have never gotten to the world is round event yet either and I always purposely prolong my games. Maybe I will wait that long in my current game. :juggle2:
Tschüß!
Erich

I nearly forgot this one as I've become so used to it now that its almost a feature of the game.

I really. really, hate the auto-rerouting bug that kicks in when a unit can't move where you told it to.

You know the scenario.....your Crusading army is marching through Alpine Germany with all those awkward little passes to negotiate plus the usual merchant traffic jams to contend with. You click on your Crusade and it shows a clear green path all the way down the next valley, so you click on the point you want it to move to and instead of heading in that direction it marches back the way it just came because invisible to you there is a merchant or neutral army coming through the pass from the other direction blocking the route.

That is really annoying and causes damage to my keyboard when I thump it to try an hit the Backspace key as quickly as possible.

If you're too slow it also costs a fortune in replacement units when half your crusade desert because your heading in the wrong direction.:furious3:

My pet peeve would have to be...

Iberian tourists

You know what I'm talking about. Those random stacks of Spanish troops that wander the French country side, eating and drinking with the locals. They don't attack anyone, they just roam the lands drinking all the good wines. And of course their cousins in white and blue who have a strong fettish for good beer and whiskey. At least that is the only reason I can see for Portgugal to invade IRELAND.

No, not a show stopper, but something I'd not expect when these factions are trying to take over their homelands from the Arabs.

:wall: :wall: :wall: :wall: :wall:

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Originally Posted by Didz

I really. really, hate the auto-rerouting bug that kicks in when a unit can't move where you told it to.

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Now that you mention it..I'd really like it if we could see the route the unit was planning to take before it started moving on that route.

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Originally Posted by John_Longarrow

No, not a show stopper, but something I'd not expect when these factions are trying to take over their homelands from the Arabs.

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Well, spain did actually try to invade england a few times in the middle ages...

But as for the tourism, I completely agree, they should keep to their own lands when they're not gearing up for an invasion. That goes for all factions, really. They should have a big army when they're trying to invade someone, and they should stay clear of enemy/neutral lands when they're not invading(unless they're just passing through). In short, they should respect whether they have military access or not.

What bugs me is the composition of rebel armies. I don't consider myself to be an expert for medieval European history, but how often did the knights and other soldiers rebel? Not very often, I think. And yet, the rebel armies in M2TW consist mainly of those troops.
On the other hand, there were a lot of peasant uprisings, and it would be realistic if the rebel armies are mostly peasants. Wouldn't it be nice when we would be confronted with a full stack of peasants, revolting against their feudal lords? :beam:

Another thing, when a city revolts, you just find your troops out of it, and a province lost. How did the rebels manage to do it? Did they, in the middle of the night, carry your sleeping soldiers and their beds outside the city walls??
I would like to have a chance to defend my city...

And when you look at the rebel army that now holds the city, you'll see that they are mostly high quality troops. When did they came from? If you can train only 3 units per turn, how can they train 20?

Flags surrounding the town square not changing to your faction's flag when you take control of it in a siege, and vica versa.

Well, this is not a game breaker, but why does a king of your faction have a loyalty rating? Why do I get announcements that my king feels appreciated and his loyalty has increased? :inquisitive: He's the KING! People should be loyal to him!

On the same thread, I don't like it when I get a report that a "feels unappreciated" trait has decreased when it means their loyalty has increased. Just tell me that his loyalty is better. It's like saying "I ain't got no money" (a double negative which logically means "I have money")

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Originally Posted by Kraggenmor

Now that you mention it..I'd really like it if we could see the route the unit was planning to take before it started moving on that route.

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You can. It will show up when you hold the right mouse button down at the target location, provided it is not a unit/settlement (i.e. must be open ground). If it is one of those things, hold right mouse down in open ground near the target item with your character selected - you should see the entire journey plotted out without the guy moving at all. With RMB down you can even highlight the settlement/unit (an X will appear for no movement allowed) to see the path to it, which in my experience remains the path when you finally right-click the item to go there. The path includes any detours the unit will make because of road blocks, but of course not for items you can't currently see: those will just cause it to stop moving if it hits them.

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Originally Posted by Whacker

Flags surrounding the town square not changing to your faction's flag when you take control of it in a siege, and vica versa.

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The flags surrounding the town square just upset me, period. It's so horribly annoying trying to determine where among the mass of flags the one remaining enemy man is. And since your troops won't just go find him to kill him, you really do have to hunt around until you can distinguish his banner to attack him and finally end things. So I guess I don't mind the flags as much as I mind the fact that they're nearly identical to the unit flags and there's so many of them. Maybe they could be changed to the faction's colors, just in the opposite proportions. You know, HRE is yellow on black, so switch to black on a predominantly yellow flag. Even a change that small would make it infinitely easier to tell which flags were for units. Making them more sparse would be useful too. The town square could as easily be defined by only 4 flags total, one for each corner, or maybe 8 (for corners and midpoints) and that would reduce the visual clutter during square fighting by leaps and bounds. All the clutter from those flags, and in the same color as the defenders, just drives me nuts...

Foz,

When fighting in the city center, I tend to hit the faction shield on the lower right hand corner of the screen. This causes a small green circle to flash under your troops and a small red one to flash under enemy troops. Its easy to spot that lone guy hiding in the middle of your generals bodyguards that way. :hanged:

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Originally Posted by Foz

The flags surrounding the town square just upset me, period. It's so horribly annoying trying to determine where among the mass of flags the one remaining enemy man is. And since your troops won't just go find him to kill him, you really do have to hunt around until you can distinguish his banner to attack him and finally end things. So I guess I don't mind the flags as much as I mind the fact that they're nearly identical to the unit flags and there's so many of them. Maybe they could be changed to the faction's colors, just in the opposite proportions. You know, HRE is yellow on black, so switch to black on a predominantly yellow flag. Even a change that small would make it infinitely easier to tell which flags were for units. Making them more sparse would be useful too. The town square could as easily be defined by only 4 flags total, one for each corner, or maybe 8 (for corners and midpoints) and that would reduce the visual clutter during square fighting by leaps and bounds. All the clutter from those flags, and in the same color as the defenders, just drives me nuts...

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Seconded.

Also IIRC the general's unit doesn't have a special flag, so say you field 3 units of archers, all 3 are going to have the archer flag. Really obnoxious when trying to locate that unit on the field without having to resort to clicking on the unit card to highlight it.

when it rains, the rain passes through the citygate archs and trees.

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Originally Posted by DVX BELLORVM

What bugs me is the composition of rebel armies. I don't consider myself to be an expert for medieval European history, but how often did the knights and other soldiers rebel? Not very often, I think. And yet, the rebel armies in M2TW consist mainly of those troops.

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I think you'll find there were a lot of both, though I do think that the game should make a better distinction between the two.

As an example of the distinction take:

The Peasant Revolt 1381
http://www.britannia.com/history/art...ntsrevolt.html
and the revolt led by Sir Henry Percy (Hotspur) in 1403.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Percy

These two rebellions were very different in both nature, composition and threat and that isn't really highlighted in the game very well.

Also the third type of uprising which is implied by the game but not really handled very well is simple brigandry. e.g. bands of redundant soldiers, unemployed mercenaries and outlaws wandering about preying on the local population. e.g. Robin Hood and his associates. The number and strength of these bands ought to be directly related to number of military units disbanded in a given province over recent game turns and/or the number of battles fought in the area.

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Originally Posted by DVX BELLORVM

Another thing, when a city revolts, you just find your troops out of it, and a province lost. How did the rebels manage to do it? Did they, in the middle of the night, carry your sleeping soldiers and their beds outside the city walls??

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Possibly.. although its more likely they were woken up and frog-marched out the gate after being given the chance to join the uprising.

Funnily enough I was watching 'Bloody Britain' last night on the TV and they were covering The Peasant Revolt which has some relevance to this discussion. Apparently, the peasants from Kent and the South-East initially massed around Southwark on the south bank of the Thames where they were addressed from a barge on the river by the 14 year old King Richard II. They demanded that the King hand over the corrupt cleric's and ministers who were on the barge with him so that they could be tried and given their just deserts and when the King refused they decided to go and get them themselves.

This involved crossing London Bridge, which at the time was a fortified part of Londons defences guarded by two gatehouses and a draw bridge. In theory, they had no chance of getting across as they had no seige weapons and were only armed with makeshift weapons. But they apparently magically made it, pouring into the city of London, burning palaces like the Savoy and murdering anyone they didn't like the look of, the assumption is that the guards on the bridge must have just lowered the draw bridge and let them in.

Still not satisfied that justice had been done the peasants decided they wanted to get their hands on the ringleaders amongst the corrupt government, namely the Lord Chancellor (Simon of Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was particularly associated with the poll tax), and the Lord Treasurer (Robert de Hales, the Grand Prior of the Knights Hospitallers of England). These dignitaries were hidden away in The Tower of London under armed guard and the protection of the King, completely safe and beyond their grasp. That is until the peasants simply walked up to the guards said 'Lets us in mate, we want to kill your boss', at which point the guards simply opened the gates and let them into the Tower. They dragged out all the noblemen and their families hiding inside and proceeded to behead them all at Smithfield.

So, based on that real-life example I think your expecting a but much of your soldiery in such situations, in fact I would argue that the garrision of a settlement that revolts ought to join the rebels. Governments cannot rely upon the dumb loyalty of their national military in situations of civil revolt, thats why many nations retained foriegn mercenaries as bodyguard troops.

Well, as any cop in any cop-movie would say, "I ain't paid enough for this!" :grin:

The brigand thing is annoying, yes, but then again brigandry would be very hard to implement properly - I don't think they'd be dealt with in pitched battles, and most likely were sort of guerrilleros, or "unlawful combattants" as the term is popular these days. Something like a Brigand event that slowly kills your soldiers and agents in a given region would probably have been more accurate than spawning brigand armies, but it wouldn't have been fun to deal with.
Charging peasants with plate-clad lancers on the other hand ? Massive entertainment value ! :2thumbsup:

I think brigands would be relatively easy to implement sensibly and all the basic triggers are already there in the program somewhere.

For example:

Mercenaries: Take the number of unemployed mercenary companies available in a given region and take a percentage of this number to produce a random group of brigands armed in accordance with one or more or the mercenary units which remain unhired.

Unemployed Soldiers: Every time a military unit is disbanded in a region add a percentage of that unit to the number of brigands in that region and arm them in accordance with the disbanded unit.

Deserters and dispossessed soldiers Take a percentage of all soldiers who survive a battle where the defeated army disperse and add them to the tally of local brigands. You might also want to add them to the number of available mercenaries too.

Brigand Behavior
Brigands should not behave like rebels, they have no axe to grind, they are merely trying to survive. Thus they should not attack anyone, or anything, instead they should interdict trade a bit like land-based pirates and avoid direct conflict whenever possible.

By comparison Revolts whether peasant or noble-led should have a clear target agenda and behave aggressively in order to achieve their goal. They should also gather strength over time if not dealt with quickly.

Got one for you:
The bug that links sea trade routes to the Port buildings instead of the Merchant Wharf line. I'm really annoyed by it for very obscure reasons (but quite possibly because I hate things doing something else than they are supposed to and tell you on the box in big green neon letters).

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Originally Posted by Didz

I think you'll find there were a lot of both, though I do think that the game should make a better distinction between the two.

As an example of the distinction take:

The Peasant Revolt 1381
http://www.britannia.com/history/art...ntsrevolt.html
and the revolt led by Sir Henry Percy (Hotspur) in 1403.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Percy

These two rebellions were very different in both nature, composition and threat and that isn't really highlighted in the game very well.

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I must admit that I wasn't aware of Sir Henry Percy's revolt, and I'm sure there were other similar incidents. But those are, to some extent, simulated by the game - I think we've all witnessed a captain led full stack army going brigand...

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Originally Posted by Didz

So, based on that real-life example I think your expecting a but much of your soldiery in such situations, in fact I would argue that the garrision of a settlement that revolts ought to join the rebels. Governments cannot rely upon the dumb loyalty of their national military in situations of civil revolt, thats why many nations retained foriegn mercenaries as bodyguard troops.

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What you say is true, but I consider a city revolt to start not within a city itself, but from villages that surround it. Dissatisfied peasants band up together and march to the city/castle. So, basically, when a city revolt occurs, I would expect a siege battle. That would add to realism, because how realistic is the fact that highly trained elite army that fought it's way across half of Europe and stormed an enemy castle, suddenly finds itself driven out of it by a bunch of peasants?

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Originally Posted by alpaca

Got one for you:
The bug that links sea trade routes to the Port buildings instead of the Merchant Wharf line. I'm really annoyed by it for very obscure reasons (but quite possibly because I hate things doing something else than they are supposed to and tell you on the box in big green neon letters).

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Heh ? Whatchoo talkin' about Willis ?

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Originally Posted by Kobal2fr

Heh ? Whatchoo talkin' about Willis ?

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Listen well my French friend, for you may learn something:
Open a city and build the strange device you humans call a "port". Firing up the trade details screen after this deed, you will notice an increase in the number of "sea export" routes your settlement can serve. I am given to understand this equals to the number of fleets it can serve at the same time at its docks.
Building a merchant wharf, however, you will not notice such a thing, in spite of the appearance of the descriptive text and the weird name.

Well frick me gently with a poisoned chainsaw, sideways. I never noticed that, I always assumed the wharfs were what upped the number of tradelines.

And I wrote a finance guide, too :shame:

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Originally Posted by Kobal2fr

Well frick me gently with a poisoned chainsaw, sideways. I never noticed that, I always assumed the wharfs were what upped the number of tradelines.

And I wrote a finance guide, too :shame:

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Well as far as I can tell I am the only person that noticed it at all. Haven't seen it reported anywhere except by me, and usually nobody pays attention to what I say anyways :laugh4:
Actually in our mod we'll probably use the port tree as finance port and add a warport tree that can build better ships.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

Well as far as I can tell I am the only person that noticed it at all. Haven't seen it reported anywhere except by me, and usually nobody pays attention to what I say anyways :laugh4:
Actually in our mod we'll probably use the port tree as finance port and add a warport tree that can build better ships.

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Nah, it's been around and mentioned in several places already. And if FactionHeir hasn't spammed the port bug all over the bug thread, I'll eat my hat. No offense intended, it's just what he does. I've also known about it for a long-o time-o, and am certain I read it on the Org. Try somebody else's financial guide, that's prolly where I saw it :smile:

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Originally Posted by Foz

Nah, it's been around and mentioned in several places already. And if FactionHeir hasn't spammed the port bug all over the bug thread, I'll eat my hat. No offense intended, it's just what he does. I've also known about it for a long-o time-o, and am certain I read it on the Org. Try somebody else's financial guide, that's prolly where I saw it :smile:

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Ah well I'm not paying that close attention to the citadel. Good to hear I'm not the only one who's mad enough to have noticed it.

I've noticed it, too but didn't really care that much about it. I just changed my build order.

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Originally Posted by DVX BELLORVM

I must admit that I wasn't aware of Sir Henry Percy's revolt, and I'm sure there were other similar incidents. But those are, to some extent, simulated by the game - I think we've all witnessed a captain led full stack army going brigand.

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Based purely upon my knowledge of English history I would say that the vast majority of revolts in English medieval history were led by nobility. In fact the only one that spring to mind that wasn’t was the Peasant Revolt of 1381.

However, we need to make a careful distinction here between revolts triggered by a vassal lord going rogue, which as you rightly say are simulated in the game by stacks going rebel and those which are privately financed by rivals, dispossessed nobility and exiles.

England in particular had an almost unlimited supply of such nobility willing to have a go whenever they thought the opportunity for power had presented itself.

Amonst these were Owain Glyndŵr. The last Welsh Prince of Wales who led the Welsh revolt in 1401, Henry Bolingbroke later Henry IV who led a successful revolt in 1399 which overthrew Richard II and made him King.

Then of course we have all the Irish and Scottish nobles who periodically launched rebellions to reclaim their lands, Charles Edward Stuart being the most well known, along with William Wallace , and my own ancestor the Anglo-Saxon nobility who loat their lands when William dispossed them in favour of his Norman friends.

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Originally Posted by DVX BELLORVM

What you say is true, but I consider a city revolt to start not within a city itself, but from villages that surround it. Dissatisfied peasants band up together and march to the city/castle. So, basically, when a city revolt occurs, I would expect a siege battle. That would add to realism, because how realistic is the fact that highly trained elite army that fought it's way across half of Europe and stormed an enemy castle, suddenly finds itself driven out of it by a bunch of peasants?

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Personally, I see a definitely distinction between a peasant revolt that starts in the countryside and is thus represented by the sudden appearance of an army of peasants, and a revolt in a city which is triggered by poor city management.

However, whichever way one visualises the start of the revolt the idea that it would lead to peasants besieging castles and cities is unlikely.

In every historical instance of revolts with limited military backing, and in particular the Peasant Revolt of 1381 and the Welsh Revolt of 1401, castles were taken by deception rather than overt attack. Therefore, the idea that one can rest safe in the belief that an army of peasants are going to co-operate by throwing themselves like lemmings at your castle walls cannot be justified by historical precedent.

For example: Owain Glyndŵr’s rebels succeeded in capturing ever English castle in Wales, except Harlech, without entering into a formal asault on any of them. In one instance they simply walked up to the castle claiming to be a bunch of carpenters come to do some repairs and then overpowered the gate keepers. In another they actually enrolled in the castle garrison as Longbowmen and then overpowered the English from the inside.

Likewise the Peasant Revolt not only gained access to the City of London but into the Royal Keep of the Tower of London without firing a single shot in anger, by merely persuading the guards to let them in.

I think we must therefore assume that our peasants in MTW2 are at least as ‘sneaky’ and imaginative as their historical counterparts and that a city revolt would quite literally take the entire city and its garrison with it.

In France there were a number of very bloody peasant revolts, especially during the Hundred Years War when living conditions were at their lowest. Check out the word "Jacquerie" on wikipedia to get an idea of the...creativity of desperate peasants. Yurk.

(BTW, the word "Jacquerie", while originally being the name given to that particular revolt, has entered the French lexicon to mean any peasant uprising against their nobles, with implications of savagery, atrocities and rabid bloodthirst. Which leads me to surmise said revolts were common enough that they'd need their own word)

Yeah, I have two big ones but they aren't game stoppers.

1. I use the spacebar one time when on the campaign map to make everything move faster. Unfortunately, when I move something like a stack of troops through area A, instead of telling me its blocked by an other factions army, it makes me go on a major detour out of the way and it won't let me undo it. So in other words, I waste a minimum of two turns to get reinforcements to the front.

2. Not being able to pick the start time. I still to this day have not seen the Timorids nor the Aztecs but my recent campaign I am getting close to that. I just wish sometimes I don't have to start so early and I should also be able to type in the ending year, if I want to turtle to the year 1800, I should have the right to do so.

As a whole, even with its many flaws, this is a great game and I thank CA for it.

1. Computer AI in siege mode. When I attack, the computer moves the defenders (archers, spearmen) off the walls if I deploy far enough from them. Then the computer units run to the city square. When I advance, they rush back - too late and exhausted.

2. Computer AI defending on hilly terrain. They predictably deploying on highest ground. Defenders abandon the high ground after I rush up with my cav archers! My units all get up there and AI tries to charge back up?!

3. Musical Chairs Game for breeding governors. A long-term growth policy of low taxes and farm priority breeds poor taxmen and traders. To get good traits the governor has to be there on building completing turn. You need to maximize the taxes and moveout garrisons.

4. On VH - you vs the world, instant one turn full stack garrisons, infinite enemy navies that are always bigger than yours. Piecemeal armies. I would love defending/attacking more armies that fight in force like the Mongols.

5. Fighting half ballista armies, lol.

I still like the game but I use some house rules.

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Originally Posted by JJ2335

Computer AI in siege mode. When I attack, the computer moves the defenders (archers, spearmen) off the walls if I deploy far enough from them. Then the computer units run to the city square. When I advance, they rush back - too late and exhausted.

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Its interesting that you should mention that as I felt the same way about this behaviour at first and have since come to think that its either very stupid or pretty clever depending upon what you consider to be the alternative options.

On the wall or Off the Wall
The AI seems to make an assessment of whether it is better to deploy its men on the walls or off the walls at the start of the siege. I find if my assault force has towers and ladders, it normally places units on the wall opposite the point it expects them to land. However, if I have rams or if my force is heavy with catapults and ballistae then it frequently decides to leave its men in the street behind the walls and let the wall towers do the killing. Its choice is not always perfect but it means that I rarely get an opportunity to massacre wall mounted units with my catapults unless I have first done something to lure them onto the wall.

Abandoning the Walls
The AI always abandons the walls once a breach has been made or the gates smashed. This is sound logic, in that in theory the walls are now breached and cannot be defended. As a human player I can make value judgements to sacrifice troops even after the walls have been breached but the AI does not seem to have that capability. If it did no doubt people would be moaning that the stupid AI left units defending the walls even when our cavalry was heading for their city centre.

Counter attacks
The AI seems to be programmed to perform local counter-attacks whenever feasible. So, for example I frequently find a non-wall mounted unit will rush the wall as soon as my ladders or towers begin to spill out troops onto the battlements, even if it chose not to garrison the wall at the start of the siege to reduce missile casualties. There seems to be a cut-off point to these counter attacks in that after a few failed attempts the AI stops doing them and falls back to defend the city centre. However, at this point it gets abuse for being too passive so it seems to be in a no win situation.

Likewise it will counter attack the gate or a breach as soon as your first troops try to penetrate. This can be a real pain and makes it difficult to get a bridgehead inside the walls, but can be exploited by clever players like myself who deliberately block the streets with spearmen to meet the counter-attack force and frequently outflank them with cavalry down a side street to prevent them from escaping again.

Its actually hard to decide what the AI ought to do for the best. If it always manned the walls and never launched a counter attack we would accuse it of deliberately placing it troops in harms way and being passive. However, what it currently does is equally capable of being exploited by human players who master its shortcomings.

Ideally, the AI would be as imaginative as its human opponent in handling sieges, but given the options a human is willing to attempt that would be difficult to achieve. For example, in one siege I actually chose to move all my horse archers out of the city and attack the AI’s ladder teams from the rear whilst blocking their assault with spearmen on the walls. This caught the AI unawares, but when the AI attempted exactly the same manoeuvre against me I was ready for it and merely shot its cavalry to bits with my crossbowmen making it look like a dumb move.

Personally, I think there is little that could be done to improve the AI on siege defence, its does the right things but basically gets creamed because we know its going to do them. On the other hand if it was totally unpredictable then by implication some of the options it chose would be really stupid and we would be laughing at it so what can you do?

Playing the Forth Eorlingas mod for BI, I remember another one: campaign map pathfinding. In RTW and BI, when I can see an enemy army or settlement, my troops will move around it, staying well out of its control zone. Not so M2TW. It´s always the straight road, and usually any long-distance move ends up in some enemy´s control zone. Even putting a spy in the army (to increase the line of sight) doesn´t work, whenever I want any of my armies to avoid getting stuck I have to maneuvre them manually to give any castle, city, fort or stack a wide berth. I mean, if something worked in the past, and you´re going to use basically the same code again, who in his right mind would think to change the working parts :wall: .

a few more...

1) Can't designate heirs!!!!????? End up killing off half of my family just to get the right guy on the throne.

2) Experience Chevrons seem to be messed up: only XP lvls 1,4 and 7 seem to add stats, the rest seem to do nothing.

3) Rome Region, Iconium Region, etc... CA, don't be lazy and name the provinces properly.

4) I used to love being able to view the city outside of a siege battle. But cheers, instead we have worthless spying/assassination movies.

5) The narrator starts a Muslim/Orthodox campaign, but you still see the same old company of western knights galoping around as visual effects.

6) The "Winning First" ancillary line. It should be renamed to "Is not an idiot on the battlefield."

Well there's a couple things you could do, Didz. One would be to come up with more viable options and present the AI with a weighted random choice between them. Currently, though, the AI tries to evaluate the situation and deploy its troops in the one way it deems most tenable... so the implication is that if you give it options, they are inferior. This isn't necessarily the case, as there could be better options missed by the simplification of its decision routine, but unless you make the decision code more complex to allow it to see those better options, you would be making the AI do inferior things by letting it do anything other than its current first choice. So the problem is really that to give the AI choices that will result in consistent play at the level it currently plays at, you must first come up with a way to generate choices that are better than the ones it currently makes so you can use them as options.

It's also possible, though, that including some seemingly inferior options would actually help the AI by lending less predictability to it. In that case you are basically sacrificing one in favor of the other though, so you'd need a lot of studying to figure out just how much benefit is really gained by making it so the AI's moves aren't simply predictable.

There's another question too, even if the AI decision routine is improved: should you use that to make the AI have choices, or to simply improve the one decision it will always make? Again this ties into the predictability versus viability discussion.

Of course likely the best way to improve the entire situation you mentioned is to make the AI model better at predicting and reacting to threats. In the case you mentioned, the AI fails to employ the strategy you did because it doesn't recognize it is about to be railed by your crossbows. If it could realize that, it would avoid having it happen, and hopefully implement a better strategy. Similarly, its best recourse when you correctly predict its actions is to be able to fluidly react to how you counter it. It doesn't need a better strategy nearly as much as it needs better ability to adjust its strategy during the course of battle.

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Originally Posted by rvg

2) Experience Chevrons seem to be messed up: only XP lvls 1,4 and 7 seem to add stats, the rest seem to do nothing.

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Actually they do : they increase morale, and I believe stamina and archer precision as well. Could be wrong on the last two (empirical evidence being what it is) but I'm sure about the first.

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5) The narrator starts a Muslim/Orthodox campaign, but you still see the same old company of western knights galoping around as visual effects.

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Good point ! In RTW each faction (well, except for Barbarians and Greeks which all had a more generic one) had it's own movie, and it is kinda cheep that in M2 it's all the same with different voice over.

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6) The "Winning First" ancillary line. It should be renamed to "Is not an idiot on the battlefield."

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One could make the point that chivalry is akin to willfull stupidity :sweatdrop:

How exactly do you avoid getting the winning first trait?

Lead poisoning, or something like that. I start out with a smart, austere, budding bureaucrat general and two turns later he's an idiot man-child with anger management issues who lives in a pineapple under the sea.

(That's with reference to the top of the thread, not the most recent post before mine.)

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Originally Posted by Didz

How exactly do you avoid getting the winning first trait?

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1. Don't fight any battles with a general leading your army:laugh4:
2. Don't play the game:2thumbsup:
3. Pray:clown:

Now seriously:
1. Don't attack smaller armies
2. Don't chase routers (especially with your general)
3. Release prisoners

Sounds very boring to me

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Originally Posted by Rebellious Waffle

Lead poisoning, or something like that. I start out with a smart, austere, budding bureaucrat general and two turns later he's an idiot man-child with anger management issues who lives in a pineapple under the sea.

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Thank you for that, Waffle!!

Gave me a hearty laugh this morning.

Hah! Its funny because its true.

Why does Constantinople get hit by a storm every ten turns? Is the sea Marmara (sp) the Byzantine equivalent of the hurricane season in the Caribbean? Whenever I control Constantinople I block the land-bridges with a fleet. Every 10 turns I have to retrain my fleet because of a storm that hit Constantinople.:furious3:

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Originally Posted by Monsieur Alphonse

Why does Constantinople get hit by a storm every ten turns? Is the sea Marmara (sp) the Byzantine equivalent of the hurricane season in the Caribbean? Whenever I control Constantinople I block the land-bridges with a fleet. Every 10 turns I have to retrain my fleet because of a storm that hit Constantinople.:furious3:

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I've never noticed that in my game, you need to check your carbon emissions.:smash:

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Originally Posted by Monsieur Alphonse

Sounds very boring to me

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Sounds totally daft to me:clown:

I think you get points towards being a "fair fighter" when you tend to win either close, average or heroic victories -- give your enemy a decent chance at winning rather than crushing them beneath your heel.

Personally, I like to keep the blood flowing. These boots don't shine themselves!

No queens!

It would be really nice to see the occasional queen pop up as faction leader (unless its in there and i've never noticed it before). Some of the most important leaders throughout history have been women, and i know its primarily a war game, but it would be really nice to see this implemented, if only for the potential change of pace it might give if you occasionally had a leader whose stats werent primarily determined by their combat prowess.

@Davebaby
I agree, but in doing so one would need to introduce a role in the game which differentiated between political and military characters, or at least make it less likely that female characters make good generals.

[I know thats not necessarily true IRL, and not PC, but it would be in keeping with the period. The exception being Joan of Arc perhaps]

I also think it would be nice if some role for females was found for the muslim factions. I always feel sorry for that poor girl on the muslim marriage picture, she looks like a frightened squirrel.

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Originally Posted by Didz

[I know thats not necessarily true IRL, and not PC, but it would be in keeping with the period. The exception being Joan of Arc perhaps]

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Well actually its mostly true - while there were quite a few notable warrior queens throughout history (e.g. Boudicea, Artemesia to name but two) i cant really think of any for the setting and period of M2TW - which is due to the social situation of that period rather than any 'un-PC ness'.

Of course thats not saying that medieval queens didnt lead their nations successfully in times of war, just that they didnt tend to do it in the field.

Joan of Arc wasnt a faction leader, but definitely makes the case for a female general or two in the game, even if only as a special character.