I hope you improve the battles

[ludwag]

The battles use to be a field where you can do whatevery you want. like riding with your cavalry and charging from the back. The size of battles was historicly much bigger. And that made it harder to do this. So it was nessecary to go fancy things to get the cavalry trough the lines of infantry. Like breaking your own lines to make a gap in both the enemy and your own lines or placing the cavalry in front, or just do like they do in The Gladiator, lol.

I know you cant make the battles this big. But if you make tha map smaller. or make very thick forest around, like the historical battle from medieval 2, battle of hastings.

This is also forces you or the computer to attack the enemy from the front like in real battles.

And not making a stupid battle with all the units spread all over the map attacking eachother one on one and cavalry flanking them and running back and doing it again and units flee and come back again and full chaos, you know what i mean?

If you do this there will be more focus on planning and strategy. Making flanking something we have to do with strategy and not just running around them. We will have to fight for the flank. And that is what they did in ancient time, and the game will be more awesome.

[Warmaster Horus]

Friend, this is hardcoded. It means it can't be modded, which is what the EB team is trying to do.
Besides, the M2 AI is famous for its stupidity. So, getting it to do smart stuff is nearly impossible.

[Foot]

There is no way we can manually edit each tile on the campaign map to come up with what you suggest on the battle field. The battlefield is based on the campaign map tile, but otherwise it is randomly generated, afaik. Historical battles can be manually edited. Basically we cannot do what you suggest at all.

Foot

[ludwag]

You can edit the campaign map. And from there you can change tha battlegrounds, in cost of a little campagin map realism. And if you can edit the size of the battle map to. it would be perfect. It sounds very easy tough.

But in EB, the battlegrounds actually looks better. And that is becouse you changed the campaign map.

I noticed that in my first EB battle. Seriously, you sould just start a campaign with Getai and move your army up between the mountains your first turn and the Elutheroi army will attack, and you see a prefect battlefield. seriously you should try.

I love that the threes are more bushy and denser and smaller.

so if you cant make the battle map smaller, you can edit the size of the trees. and you can edit the size of the soldiers.

But that would probably change the gameplay very mutch

What possibilities do you have?

[Foot]

We can alter the campaign map, but that only gives us limited control over how the battlemap will look. We spent a lot of time doing that for EBI and it worked out pretty well but what you see in EBI is pretty much the best we can achieve. A bit of tweaking here and there may improve it slightly but we really cannot fully do what you suggest. There will be many map tiles that produce battlemaps that lack a lot of the terrain features that you would wish to see, of course there will also be plenty of battlemaps where tactics will be absolutely necessary. However we cannot fine tune it to the level that you seem to wish for, its just not possible.

Foot

[ludwag]

okay, i see. Just one more question: Are you able to make some kind of army-camps full of tents, in the battlemap? That lies in the background or something to make a more ancient battle-feeling? Just some idea i had. Like it is a part of the vegetation and are present on every battlefield. Maybe just some stupid idea.

[Foot]

No, I don't think that is possible either. Watchtowers, for example, appear on the battlemap, but they are hardcoded and we cannot add new elements such as military camps.

Foot

[The General]

So, smaller battle maps, less maneuvering, more frontal butchering?

[ludwag]

So, smaller battle maps, less maneuvering, more frontal butchering?

yeah. makes is more hard to flank, than just running around the enemy and charge from behind, one of my friends does. he is very noob, and he makes noob-boxes, to prevent the enemy from flanking him. And it works :( If the map was smaller, things like this would be harder.

But i just got an idea. If you make all units run slower. Then it would be much more difficult to do stupid manuevers.

[Parallel Pain]

I think that has less to do with the map and more to do with the AI.

Sending your cavalry off on a wild flanking move would dangerously isolate the cavalry and leave a hole in the flank uncovered. I used to send my cavalry off all the time because the AI won't take advantage of my weakened position.

But once I started MP I no longer send them. My friend did and I left a token force to cover my flank and smashed through the hole created when he did that and he lost bad.

The only time a wild flanking maneuver worked in MP that I personaly saw was during a 2 on 2 in XGM when the flanking move was by a huge group of twelve companion cataphracts. And the only reason it worked was because the companion cataphracts are overpowered for their prices and no unit on my team can kill them. But we wiped their infantry off the map.

So I say it's not the map size. It's large enough for battles (though not pre-engagement-maneuvering). For battles the only thing wrong with the map itself is terrain bonus and penalty (units in bad terrain doesn't recieve enough penalty, too easy to move to a high elevation, etc). For the problem you identified the problem is the AI's inability to identify weak points in the player's line and exploit it: drive through a unprotected flank, surround isolated groups, send heavy cav plowing through a weak single line that has no reserves, etc.

[Ibrahim]

welcome back parallel pain. long tome no see.

anyways, I;d have to agree with him on his post.

[ludwag]

I get you point very good. Pre-engagement-manuevring was a good thing to keep in mind.

[Parallel Pain]

welcome back parallel pain. long tome no see.

Good to be back, but I won't be here for long.