CA requests for next patch:
Greetings gents,
Aren´t we all having fun nowdays?! ETW is out and most people seems happy about it. However there are things that I, personally, can´t tolerate as it spoils the game totally. That´s why I start this request list. No flaming or ranting please. Let´s keep it objective and to the point. I´ll be editing this first post with yours so we´ll get a clean list of requests.
1. Reinforcements
PseRamesses: "What´s the point of being tactical when enemy reinforcements enters the battlefield where there´s no possible way they could have got to? Ex: I´ve had them show up behind me on rivercrossings and other choke-points in my own territories and even on a beach-landing they show up behind me on the beach, WTF! This has to be adressed in the next patch CA! Why bother being tactical on the campaign map taking passes, bridges or even high ground when the game throws this at you? What happened to tactical warfare?"
Monk: I'm also getting sick of the reinforcements the enemy gets, which should appear behind the enemy appear behind me. Also i'm sick of my own reinforcements doing the same!
NimitsTexan: Another thing I really, really hope that add in a future patch is the ability to put Reinforcement armies under AI control, so that when you have 2-3 full stacks, you can actually get them all on the battlefield, instead of having to wait until units route then watching the reinforcements trickle in. Why they removed this option for reinforcements, which was already present in M2
2. Sea transport/ invasion
Fisherking: "As to the Sea Transport and Invasions that are bound to make the list, a little thought. What the AI needs to do is be more willing to attack enemies where it finds them, and that will get it to move the troops. Right now if it isn’t on its border it just does not commit land units to the attack, but responds with naval forces. At least some of the factions (but definitely not all) should intervene with troops to help allies which are not reachable by land. The reinforcement issue is touchy and the AI may think it can handle armies in every province by recruiting…so reinforcing provinces by sea my not be something the AI looks at. England and France, and perhaps Spain and UP should be willing to attack across the Atlantic at least. No one undertook a sea invasion of India in this time period and I am not so sure we want everyone attacking everything by sea and spamming invasions world wide, especially by minor nations. It is something the player can do, but would be silly if every faction suddenly wanted to invade everything just because it can"
Monk: Currently, Brittan is no real threat in the European theater since they cannot strike at France with amphibious landings. All they can do is cut off trade and sink enemy ships. If you focus on land development in Western Europe it's as if GB isn't even there.
3. Multiplayer problems
yankeefan05: "CA needs to fix the problem where people get "Failed to join game - No response from host" like 80% of the time 1 of my clan mates tries to join my game or I try to do a Quick Land Battle"
tibilicus:Yes it's dreadful. I have disabled my firewall completely, this goes for both software and router firewall and I still get the message for about 90% of games I try and join.
CanCritter: "Ships need the player names in mp. Game is hard on eyes, units are small and hard to follow. No main lobby for chat...sucks"
Swoosh So: What i really want in the patch is the multiplayer campaign that was promised, ofc it would have to be a major patch so perhaps not the next patch but definately want to see this as promised, its going to completely change the way totalwar is played and will be excellent to play against a human opponent on the campaign map as well as the battle map.
4. Trade
Seireikhaan: Fix the bug where conquered territories do not seem to be developing trade routes from their ports, even when there is a commercial port there. Given how important trade can be, this is a big one, if you ask me.
Polemists: Most of all tho...I want my trade routes back that the last patch stole!
5. Diplomacy
Sisco Americanus: Some tweaks to the diplomacy AI would be nice. There are plenty of things that fall under this, but I think a really big one is that when you go to war with a nation and bring your allies with you, if you make peace with that enemy and force it to become your protectorate, your allies remain at war with that country. This in turn damages your relations with your allies because now you're allied with a country they're at war with. Of course, this leads to the larger issue of the AI factions never making peace with one another, leading to never-ending wars that are often inconsequential. I assume it stems from the long-standing problem in TW games of AI factions being too stubborn in negotiations. The AI factions are generally reluctant to make peace with you unless you give them something, preferably some of the territory you conquered from them. This is fine and is fairly historical, I think (the negotiated territorial borders generally didn't coincide with whereever the front was at the time of peace, I don't think), but the problem is that I don't think the AI faction that is winning is ever willing to give up provinces it has conquered, as it then considers those provinces their own. So since neither side is willing to yeild anything, the war usually just keeps on going until one of the factions is eliminated, which is silly. This is all speculation of course.
Tinxit: 6. For some reason Prussia asked me for a trade between my region Courland and East Prussia, giving me a lot of techs and money as well. I agree. Next turn they ask for the same thing, but reversed. Now they want East Prussia in exchange for Courland. Again, giving me a lot of money and techs as well. This repeats itself a couple of times, trading the same thing again and again, gaining a lot of techs and money as a result. This is not sane. This is insane. Truly insane. 8. Also. The mathematics behind the diplomacy is weird. I am refering to the numbers shown in the diplomacy screen where you can see what nations think of each other and why they do that. Apparently going to war against another nations good friend causes -25 or so... but thats okay, because giving the same nation a statue of a horse for 5,000 apparently gives you +140. 9. No force, how small it may be, ever gives up due to "force surrender/demand surrender".
PseRamesses: What about when the AI offers u trade and a small sum of money just to revoke the deal the very next turn just to offer u trade and cash again, again and again? Maybee same bug as the swapping of provinces? "Hey, u give me A and u get B! Next turn: Hey, give me B and I give u A"?
6. Units
Feanaro: Light Dragoons and reloading on horseback: Light Dragoons are perfectly capable of reloading on horseback... if they are shooting at an enemy. Either directed or with fire at will. Move them away from enemy units and nothing you do can will make them reload on horseback. They'll sit there the entire battle, twiddling thumbs, until an enemy comes into range. Then they start reloading their empty muskets. Get them on foot and they reload just fine. If they can't reload on horseback, fine. Don't let them reload ever. If they CAN reload while horsed up, they should do so when idle. Cannons and cease fire orders: I've ordered cannons to cease fire while they were reloading, with fire at will turned off, and they still fire off a shot once loaded. Sometimes into their own horses or my line infantry, sometimes just at the ground. I can understand some justification for a slight delay but these cannons were reloading. I've nearly lost a general to this already.
alh p: Horse-drawn artillery: Trying to limber up the arty sometimes freezes mid way through the maneuver. I've noticed this in two cases: 1, when the path of the horse drawn limber is blocked by an obstacle (eg wall) and 2, when the gunners have been involved in melee (with no casualties). Looks to me like the bug is to do with re-setting the arty's behaviour -probably related to buggy fire at will behaviour. Light infantry: 1, in "light infantry mode", deploying a unit by clicking and dragging to form the shape of their unit causes the unit to face the wrong way! I first thought i must be at fault (and deploying them back to front) but after checking with a unit of line inf, i confirmed i wasn't. Clicking to attack a particular unit or move to a given location does cajole the light infantry to face the right way and they will then fire at will as intended. 2, skirmish mode for light infantry units. This basicaly renders light infantry useless (or very short lived) when deployed as a screen in front of the main battle line. Light inf have a longer musket range than many other units and so should be able to fire on the enemy, especially their line infantry, whilst out of the range of returned musket fire (i assumed that this was the whole point of them). However, light inf actually don't seem to fall back untill threatened by melee/charge range of the enemy. This means that they have to be micro-d to intolerable degrees in order to achieve their purpose of drawing the enemy on whilst remaining out of the range of returned fire. I suggest that the fallback/ skirmish "trigger" should be coming into the firing range of a targeted or approaching unit -not an arbitrary distance of the enemy from the unit of light inf. Cover: I am wary of using cover in my games. I've found that units placed behind cover don't fire by rank and will not always fire at all either. This is obviously a major pain in the neck as you might expect your infantry, so deployed, to do some damage rather than absurdly sit behind the wall.
PseRamesses: This has been mentioned regarding dragoons but my Deli horsemen doesn´t seem to reload. Whats the point of having cavalry with rifles if they can´t reload or even fire while riding, huh!?
7. CTD´s:
Marquis of Roland: One thing they HAVE to fix is the game crashing during grand campaign, from a variety of reasons, although the issue with naval crash is most poignant for me right now. I'm not a real technical computer person, I've heard speculations from memory dump, corrupted files, etc. 1. Hurons. Whether they declare war on you, or you on them, or you conquering their last regional capital, one of these will eventually happen and crash your game (as GB, since Hurons always declare war on GB). Bypassed this by not taking their last region.
2. Navy bugs. Lots of them. CTD can happen when you click on a military port (all other ports don't seem to crash your game), whether or not it has ships in it, troops, or nothing at all. clicking on your fleets also crashes your game. Apparently this happens randomly, so everytime I click on a fleet, its like playing Russian roulette, you never know if thats the next one that will crash your game. The bugged fleets cannot become "unbugged". It will stay bugged for the rest of the campaign, so it is essentially lost, but you still pay upkeep. I have at least 3 fleets of 10-12 ships of the line that is like this, thank god money is not an issue for GB. 3. Merging units. I usually never do this myself, but other people were saying it crashes the game so I tried it once and it did. Never tried it again.
Lord Ovaat: I'm not sure if CA realizes just how serious this problem is. If many of us (forum trolls) are gridlocked with freezes, BSOD's and CTD's, what about the thousands upon thousands of folks who've bought the game, can't play it, and will never be heard from because they ain't cyber dwellers? Only a relative few check our forums. Fixing anything--anything--else before stabilizing the game is meaningless. This issue is alienating a lot of CA's staunch supporters. I can only guess how the general public must feel about not being able to even play this game.
And I am tired of hearing peeps say its a hardware issue. I can't currently play ETW a full turn without a freeze requiring reboot, but once rebooted I can go right into MTW2 (SS) and play the campaign I was in while waiting for ETW release. And, I might add, I play at 1680X1050 with all settings maxed out. No lag on campaign map, and very little lag on strategic even with multiple stacks and "speed-ups." I only hope CA can get this corrected before it damages their credibility.
8. Misc.bugs:
ZIM!!: I found a bug in naval unit production. I was building 3rd and forth rate ships in the windward islands(dutch) and they all just froze at zero turns till creation queue so none of the ships ever spawned.
Susanna: I am not sure if this is a bug, but has anyone ever had sucess with the "Offer Surrender" option? So far the AI hasn't agreed to it once, even when being outnumberd horribly.
Superteale: Make it easier to delete save games
PseRamesses: When a agent gets available in one of your settlements I click on locate and get zoomed in to where he is. When I click his unit card in the settlement to move him out the garrisoned unit moves out instead??? This has happened on numerous occasions so it can´t be me. More: I came across a bug last night. I had 2 indiamen in a trade slot in Madagaskar but can not move more I.M into them and I can´t even move them out of there. I had to delete them to free up the space.
9. Alliances related:
PseRamesses: I just recently learned a very cheesy exploit that convinced me that I will NEVER ally with another faction: Form an alliace, march your armies in and park them besides all their cities, attack = faction destroyed! OMG Now, as a human player I can choose never to do this but can the AI do the same or can an ally of yours march right in and destroy you?
Dopp: The 'auto-eject' functionality is already in the game. I bought several provinces and all foreign armies were immediately moved to the border, even those that were garrisoned. Too bad they didn't think of extending it to declarations of war or military access breaking.
Polemists: Well technically once you break a military alliance the Ai cannot "Enter" your land without declaring war, however if the Ai's army is already marching through your land it just sits there, not sure what to do I guess. A auto eject would be nice. This only partially works, as if you buy a island, the army isn't sent out to sea or anything, they just sit on your island for the next 100 years. Not doing anything.
10. Protectorates:
Vlad Tzepes: 1. It's so easy to become a minor's faction protector. Just throw in some cash and you're done. 2. Now it looks like you have to be at peace with that faction to offer protectorate; couldn't find the "become protectorate" option with factions I was at war with. Different from MTW2. 3. Protectorates territories don't seem to count anymore in your province number count. As GB, I have Malta as an objective. Made the Knights there my protectorate, but the province isn't checked in my objective list (this is different from MTW2). Guess I'll have to destroy the poor Knights. Not nice. 4. I dunno if this is a bug or intended to be so, but military access to a protectorate does not include sea lanes. For instance, Morrocco has some ships parked at Gibraltar Straits. As GB, I own Gibraltar, Morrocco is my protectorate but I cannot move my fleets in the Mediterranean. Gonna have to stab those guys in the back, I hate it. (Note: I copied this from another thread, PseR)
11. Battle issues:
PseRamesses: When a unit routs, often, they scatterin several directions and my pursuing cav runs back and forward between multiple locations to eliminated one unit. Extremely frustrating since fatigue kicks in pretty fast in ETW.
Warhammer 3025: Anyone notice the bug where if you fight an AI army and he has some fixed artillery coming in as part of the reinforcement stack that you cant finish teh battle due the fixed arty not entering the field? I've had several battles where i kill everyone but the battle keeps running because i didnt "win" yet. The stupid fixed arty wont come in cuz they cant move and i lose the battle even though i control the field. Surprised no one else bitched about this one yet, it's pretty damn game breaking in teh early game. Oh yea, also, whenever i suffer this bug i just withdraw everyone and take the loss, but killing everyone i can get my hands on. However when i suffer the arty limber glitch and i cant pull those idiots out, when i manually end the battle via esc i suffer catastrophic casualties as if my entire was on the field even though i pulled 95% of my troops. They gotta fix this thing too, if i pull my army out in good order they shouldnt be obliterated... i mean hell, M2:TW did this just fine why the heck did we have such a step backward.
PseRamesses: I dream of the day the AI will keep formations. I think that would be both harder and more challenging to play. What really bugs me is the AI´s obsession with chasing cavalry around. Last night I had 1 cannon, 4 lines and 2 cavs and I was able to use my cavs as bait eventually routing the entire 17-18 units AI army.
Slaists: In the current state of the game, as far as fort wall defense is considered, the following holds: 1. the wooden fort is the BEST for wall defense; cannons are deadly so is rifle fire from the walls. 2. the gun fort is the second best, but worse than the wood fort; player units seem to start to fire when the enemy is at much closer range than in the case of the wood fort; accuracy is worse. 3. the star fort is the WORST for wall defense; player's units fire cannons only at point blank range with almost zero efficiency; rifle fire from the high walls almost always misses the enemy. So, this progression leads me to suspect, the walls as coded into the game now are too high for the current rifle range, which is pretty short... The vertical distance of the units from the top of those huge skyscraper walls almost matches the usual 'aiming distance' on flat ground.
12. Pathfinding:
PseRamesses: Say you´re playing England. You build an Indiaman and want to move it from the port east of London through rhe channel towards Spain. If you have a fleet, your own, that blocks the channel the Indiaman tries to circumnavigate the whole brittish isles instead of the "path blocked" pops up instead. On the other hand I find it silly that my own troops can block the path of my own troops, don´t you? This behaviour applies to all unit types as well as agents.
Whats even worse is on the battlemap. If you order a unit across a bridge by clicking on the other side an there´s a ford on the map the unit runs all the way over to the ford instead of crossing at the bridge. To sucessfully cross a bridge you have to click on the bridge to move the unit on to it. Imagine this micro managemant in the middle of a battle with 20 units tha you have to nurse this way. Unacceptable!
13. Misc:
Monsineur Alphonse: You win a campaign by controlling enough regions in 1799. This means that even if you have captured enough regions in let say 1750 you still have to play until 1799 . Does CA really think that a human player who controls 50 regions is going to lose them during the rest of the game?
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Originally Posted by PseRamesses
No place like home.
Get them on foot and they reload just fine. If they can't reload on horseback, fine. Don't let them reload ever. If they CAN reload while horsed up, they should do so when idle.
I've nearly lost a general to this already.
Now, as a human player I can choose never to do this but can the AI do the same or can an ally of yours march right in and destroy you?
- Horseman of the 
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