Mud, Mire and Bogs

[rajpoot]

Only recently, replaying the M2TW historical battles, specifically, the battle of Agincourt, set me thinking as to what improvement will ETW have in terms of terrain and it's effect. For example, in M2TW, the only terrain effects I've noticed are when you climb/descend slopes (which mind you is nothing very great, I don't think a armoured knight could scale a near vertical mountainside on horseback ), or rocks, which break your charge, or trees to some extent. Marshland, wet ground seem to have no effect on the units (the only exception being that camels get a bonus in deserts, I think).
Considering it's a whole new engine, I hope they deal with this in a better way, so that if we have a mod that let's us be Wellington at Waterloo, Napoleon's cannons get well and proper stuck in the dirt.

[Colonel Flambard]

This needs to be addded for total realism. Not too sure that I would have been dissapointed at the lack of these effects if you had not mentioned them though.

[PBI]

Another example of a battle where marshland was important would be Culloden, where the highland charge across marshy ground literally got bogged down and kept the Jacobites under fire from Cumberlands troops for longer before they reached the British lines. Probably would have lost the battle anyway but the poor choice of battlefield certainly contributed to it being such a one-sided rout.

I'd be wary of having too much muddy conditions making armies essentially immobile though, the TW games wisely in my opinion depict their battles with a good deal less mud and a good deal more blood than real life battles. I still think it would be good to make mountains, dense forests and swamps impassable for cavalry and artillery and only suitable for partisan-style warfare (although such lands would also be of little relative value so a defensive strategy based entirely on "heading for the hills" would mean sacrificing most of your best land).

[rajpoot]

Like I said, Agincourt without that ploughed wet field seems incomplete. It's not that I want bogs everywhere, but it'll be an interesting addition, and it'll make pre-battle/in-battle rains more effective than just gun powder getting spoiled. Furthermore in sandy places, like deserts, it'll make marching heavier for infantry, and impossible for conventional artillery.

[LadyAnn]

Snow used to have some effect :P

Annie

[Rhyfelwyr]

Smaller rivers and burns etc need to be represented on the battlefield, with boggy ground around them. Bannockburn is a great example of how important they can be.

These terrain features also need to be tied in with the weather. So if it is raining heavily then the ground should become boggy and units would get slowed down and their charges wrecked. I'm not sure if it should also directly affect guns by the time of ETW, although foggy conditions should definetely reduce their accuracy at long distances.

It would also be nice to see things like hedges and those small stone walls you get around farms to be represented, since they could often have a strategic impact on battles.

And long grass or scrub should slow down cavalry and noticably reduce their charges, rather than give them a negligible combat penalty that may not even work.

And please CA make rocky, hilly terrain clearly advantageous to light infantry. In M2TW, skirmishers just did not work in this way, which ruined the feel of warfare in places like Spain. Cavalry should really struggle in such terrain, while close formations of heavy infantry should break up.