Battle Time Length?

**Megas Methuselah** · 02-06-2009, 02:03

They better be long. I remember the old RTW vanilla battles only lasted for like, 5 minutes or less.

**Noir** · 02-06-2009, 03:06

In RTW campaigns the overall number of battles would be much higher than in the previous games with the 2D map - so from a design point of view it made sense that they were brief affairs. If they were long then the game would drag endlessly for the casual gamer and CA designs for the casual gamer too. However this meant all the appalling results in tactical battle pace.

In ETW - the overall number of battles would be from starters high since there are also the naval battles now and also the map and number of factions are substantially larger.

They are left with two options - one to make battles numerous and brief like in RTW and the second to make the battles less frequent but longer. This in turn affects the pace of the battles - melee resolution time between units, unit speeds, reload times, unit type speeds etc. Its a complex issue and the root of all evil usually in these cases is the fact that CA designs for all sorts of fan types - they try to catch as many fish in the net as possible. The result typically is an average that is far from being golden.

Noir

**pevergreen** · 02-06-2009, 09:19

Rest assured, there will be mods to correct it.

**Noir** · 02-06-2009, 09:39

There is only so much mods can do - especially for mp.

But yes you are right - mods offer a variety of gameplay within the engine provided.

Noir

**pevergreen** · 02-06-2009, 10:02

Unless there is an agreed upon multiplayer balance mod. But even that would only go so far, in certain groups. It will either fall upon CA to balance, or maybe someone can do it for them, but I doubt they would change it if it wasnt done by themselves.

**Noir** · 02-06-2009, 10:11

precisely. mods are not really good for mp - they split the community - the best thing is to have a well designed and balanced and bug free vanilla game. Thats were the rub is though because this kind of thing implies less unit variety that directly conflicts with SP.

There are many solutions that people proposed over the years the best being two different exes for SP and MP - but CA seems many times immune to suggestions or at least implements them at a very slow pace.

Noir