6 Months-turns again

[SaFe]

The informtion came from a italian magazine and to be honest i'm dissapointed.
Again six months, in the short time period of Empire seasonal turns would have been definately an advantage.
Again 3 years to march from northern germany to italy

[pevergreen]

Link please, or scan if legal.

Im going to wait for confirmed sources before I accept this, because it would be good infomation.

[SaFe]

it is not allowed to scan official magazine pages, as everybody shoul know by now.
B.t.w. what is good on absolutely unrealistic 6 months turns?

[pevergreen]

more confirmed infomation is good.

As for realism, I dont know anything about the era, so its ok for me/the casual gamer.

[Templar Knight]

Man this sucks, probably easily modable though

4 months would be alot better, Spring, Summer and Autumn for campaigning and Winter to... well winter the troops

6 month turn will be sort of ok as long as armies and navies have huge ammounts of movement points, its rubbish when it takes 10 year to move across Europe

[Sol Invictus]

Lusted just confirmed this over at the TWC. Six month turns it is.

[hellenes]

Lusted just confirmed this over at the TWC. Six month turns it is.

The quality of a product steadily diminishes with the increase of demand...

[Rick]

... B.t.w. what is good on absolutely unrealistic 6 months turns?

One way it could work under certain circumstances and allowing for more than one engagements along the way (several, as a matter of fact). For the lack of a better discription, you could call it a telescoping.

Getting from point A to point B would be based on either a supply point system, or the administrative expertise of the leader at the head of the army, or a combination of both. Marching would use up supply points and fighting engagements would use up supply points much faster.

Moreover, if they haven't considered attrition as a functional part of this game, this may be a way to do so.

Let's hope that they do something, because I have to agree with you, a 6 month turn, the way they had it set up in RTW, is totally unrealistic.

[Faenaris]

I'm quite disappointed that they chose to go for another 6-months-a-turn system. But then again, that can hopefully be easily modded, something I will do from day 1. I just feel that there should have been seasonal turns instead of half a year turns.

[Mailman653]

Like Templar said, this will most likely be modded so don't worry too much.

[Sol Invictus]

Sadly, I don't expect CA to make the strategic movement more complicated and realistic in a way that will make six month turns seem reasonable. The more I learn about Empires, the less excited I become. I will simply anticipate a simplistic strategy game that will mildly amuse me for a time. Sure, my eleven year old son will like the battles, but I keep hoping for some more depth out of the strategic gameplay. Maybe next game.

[PBI]

I'm a little unclear about the debate here, what would be the advantages of having 4 turns a year, besides simply doubling the length of the campaign? Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm struggling to see how it would make much difference.

[SaFe]

I'm a little unclear about the debate here, what would be the advantages of having 4 turns a year, besides simply doubling the length of the campaign? Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm struggling to see how it would make much difference.

Look at the current Medieval2. Do you think it is realistic to march 2 or 3 years from France to Denmark?
The idea with 4 turns is a more realistic system for units and armies on their march to their destination.
Years or decade from Spain to Russia is simply a little dumb.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Its still a lot better than M2TW. And now characters will age properly and not last throughout the centuries.

[Sol Invictus]

I'm a little unclear about the debate here, what would be the advantages of having 4 turns a year, besides simply doubling the length of the campaign? Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm struggling to see how it would make much difference.

The Seasonal Turns also introduced a strategic element into the gameplay by making certain seasons more appropriate for military operations. I would love to see monthly turns, but that would require a very small timespan.

[SirRethcir]

4 months would be alot better, Spring, Summer and Autumn for campaigning and Winter to... well winter the troops

I don't know on which planet you live, but here it's roughly 3 months per season.

[Caerfanan]

Winter is spread over the three gaming seasons!

[rajpoot]

The turn time taken for marching or sailing from one place to another is the most glaring and the most terrible fault I've found in M2TW.........I mean, seriously, does anyone remember how many truns did it take to reach from Spain to South America??! Downright illogical!! They must do something about this. They really must.

[Caerfanan]

I guess a matter of "game balance" arrives there.... If you really play campaigns with "realistic" moves, you'll have several battles every month, I guess. That would be tiring, as the whole camapign coul dlast years of gaming!

[PBI]

Look at the current Medieval2. Do you think it is realistic to march 2 or 3 years from France to Denmark?
The idea with 4 turns is a more realistic system for units and armies on their march to their destination.
Years or decade from Spain to Russia is simply a little dumb.

True enough, marching from France to Denmark would not take that long, but planning, organising, and carrying out a major campaign to conquer the region probably would. The TW games (wisely in my opinion) choose not to simulate all this behind-the-scenes bureaucracy and instead simply have it take a long time to reach anywhere.

Plus, as Caerfanan points out, I want to be able to finish the campaign in a sensible time frame. The game's supposedly going to have in the region of 50 factions, I'd like to be able to complete a campaign as more than one of them.

I can see it would be nice to have four distinct seasons though, rather than just summer/winter. The more I think about it, the more I actually like the idea of a real-time campaign map; it would allow armies to march to their destinations in a sensible time without being able to simply sidestep any armies in their way, and it would allow the four seasons to be included.

[Templar Knight]

I don't know on which planet you live, but here it's roughly 3 months per season.

I meant 4 seasons

[hellenes]

True enough, marching from France to Denmark would not take that long, but planning, organising, and carrying out a major campaign to conquer the region probably would. The TW games (wisely in my opinion) choose not to simulate all this behind-the-scenes bureaucracy and instead simply have it take a long time to reach anywhere.

Plus, as Caerfanan points out, I want to be able to finish the campaign in a sensible time frame. The game's supposedly going to have in the region of 50 factions, I'd like to be able to complete a campaign as more than one of them.

I can see it would be nice to have four distinct seasons though, rather than just summer/winter. The more I think about it, the more I actually like the idea of a real-time campaign map; it would allow armies to march to their destinations in a sensible time without being able to simply sidestep any armies in their way, and it would allow the four seasons to be included.

Still a campaign from Scotland to siege London didnt take 2 years....think about it 1 year (4 turns per year) makes MUCH more sense...
The thing is if CA made different starting periods (like M1TW>>>>>>>>>>RTW+M2TW) with 40 years each at 4 tpy it would be a nice campaign....

[PBI]

Very true, I never understood why they got rid of the different starting periods. After all, on M2TW, even with its 1.5 year turns, it still takes far too long to get gunpowder, Mongols etc.

[Zenicetus]

Very true, I never understood why they got rid of the different starting periods. After all, on M2TW, even with its 1.5 year turns, it still takes far too long to get gunpowder, Mongols etc.

Could be several reasons, but I'm guessing it was a combination of available hours for play-testing (it's more work to balance and play-test multiple starting points), and also preserving the "sandbox" element of the full campaign.

With one long campaign the player can re-write history on a massive scale. You can try to lead the Turks to conquer Europe and then colonize the New World. Or play a Catholic faction that attempts to dominate and religiously "convert" the Middle East in a way that never actually happened. These huge what-if histories wouldn't be possible if the game re-set to roughly historical starting conditions every 100-200 years, or if it was broken up into pre-gunpowder, guns, and New World eras. We'd be playing more of a historical simulation, and less of a sandbox game.

Maybe the hardcore history buffs would prefer re-setting the conditions for a more historical appearance of the overall game, but I'm a fan of the sandbox approach. So I liked M2TW's design, at least in that respect. I could gripe for hours about other things.

The M2TW turn rate didn't bother me that much either. It happened to match my own preference for the average hours needed to complete the grand campaign, before moving on to another faction. I didn't mind waiting for gunpowder, but then I'm not a pure blitzer that tries to roll up the map as fast as I can. At any rate, you'll probably be able to mod the turn rate and tech availability dates, like we can for M2TW. I didn't even mind the unnaturally long-lived family members and agents. I think the idea there was to reduce micro-management, and that's something I'm always in favor of.

[BeeSting]

This is a sad news

[vasilisguru]

Time scale is easily modable if things are not different in Empire. Is there anyone ho can tell me how I can mode the winter phases as well?

[Lord Winter]

Time scale is easily modable if things are not different in Empire. Is there anyone ho can tell me how I can mode the winter phases as well?

Look at the EB's four turns a year code, its in there trait file.

[Zaleukos]

Sadly, I don't expect CA to make the strategic movement more complicated and realistic in a way that will make six month turns seem reasonable. The more I learn about Empires, the less excited I become. I will simply anticipate a simplistic strategy game that will mildly amuse me for a time. Sure, my eleven year old son will like the battles, but I keep hoping for some more depth out of the strategic gameplay. Maybe next game.

Dont hope for too much. The total war games are battle engines with a strategic campaign tacked on to give some sort of context to the battles. Other games with a different emphasis do the grand strategic aspect better.

EDIT: I'm not too troubled with the number of turns required to finish the game (CA got that part of the pacing about right) even if the travelling times are silly. In the end it's a matter of balancing (having many more movement points would reduce the value of choke points) realism vs gameplay, and there I am staunchly in favour of gameplay. If only CA could get rid of or abstract some of the more tedious micromanagement (do anyone actually ENJOY micro-managing a ton of merchants and priests with broken pathfinding) as well...

[The_Reckoning]

I can see it would be nice to have four distinct seasons though, rather than just summer/winter. The more I think about it, the more I actually like the idea of a real-time campaign map; it would allow armies to march to their destinations in a sensible time without being able to simply sidestep any armies in their way, and it would allow the four seasons to be included.

It worked for Europa Universalis, Knights of Honour and War of the Worlds, I don't see why CA don't try a continuous time system.

[Zaleukos]

I'm not sure these titles are comparable to Total War. Europa Universalis which is the one I've played extensively uses a different level of abstraction and doesnt have city management nearly as extensive as the total war games. It doesnt have tactical battles either.

In single player you also tend to pause to give orders. You could of course introduced some sort of "continuous turn based" (time is discretised to days in EU) system akin to that which pauses on important events, but it is doubtful whether there would be much of a gain in user friendliness and playability. It is after all convenient to have the time to survey the general situation once per turn knowing that things cant have changed THAT much:)

And you'd still get an automatic pause whenever there is a battle:)