Quote Originally Posted by Intrepid Sidekick View Post
I can't go in to details yet (yes, you guessed it there is a blog coming out about it in the future) but we have made some changes to the campaign game in terms of how you defend areas and attack the enemy. The result is that bypassing the enemy isn't always as easy as it was in past TW games.
Sounds good! CA hinted at making field battles more important by increasing the importance of control over resources on the strategic map, and coupled with better "battle setup" options that could add a lot to the strategy phase:)

Quote Originally Posted by The_Reckoning View Post
Maybe a combination of the two could be achieved, with simultaneous turns. Turns would be phased. So you'd have the command phase, giving your units their movement and attack orders, and setting up construction queues. Then there'd be the action phase. Every team's units follow their given orders. If the paths of two armies met, then there'd be a confrontation. If a cavalry army was attacking/chasing a foot army, they'd eventually catch up.
Conquest of the new world is an ancient turn based game with simultaneous resolution. It was not perfect since it wasnt really possible to block an enemy army or bump into it for some accidental combat though.

I like your ideas for a game where everything is resolved on the campaign map, and I probably want more realism than the average TW player, but realistic map movement speed and short term timescale isnt that high up on my list of prioritised realistic features:) If the right balance with respect to triggers could be find I'd like a continuous turn based approach like EU (with "pause on event" that you could tune), but I would definitely not want some idiotic RTS campaign map.. It might require a fairly drastic overhaul and departure from the campaign engines of the series though, since the engine is built to just show static situations rather than a world in motion (it'd certainly increase the strain on the gpu a little:))..

And you could still have "race" situations in a turn based game, it's just that the default is duller and you'd need to focus more on sabotaging/disrupting the other guy's movement path, maybe with a tiny partisan/skirmishing force?:)

Thinking more about time management I also realise that a continuous world map would become unrealistic with respect to battles. Since battles undoubtedly would cost some time or momentum for the involved parties you'd probably have to let the battle take zero time on the "campaign clock", but then leave the armies stuck or slowed down for some time afterwards. I'm not sure that would be less artificial than abstracting time as movement points and losing some of those in the battle (which you didnt in Medieval 2 IIRC, but that was somewhat stupid:p).