Discussion on innovation for future TW games

[ScamallDorcha]

Hello everyone, first of all I apologize if this thread seems a bit off topic but I didn't see anywhere that would be the appropriate place to post this thread, because while the purpose of this thread is to share my ideas for innovation for TW games that I think would make them ( in my opinion ) more fun, I really don't think that R2 can (or will) be modified to the extent that I mention, I of course also want feedback from the community on my ideas, that being said I would really like to keep the tone of the discussion civil, no flaming, name calling, rude, comments etc.
I expect many people to disagree with me, I have no problem with disagreement as long as it is expressed in a respectfull manner.

Wheter you agree or disagree with me I would like your opinion on how you think my idea can be improved, or maybe post an idea of yours that its completely different from mine.
Alright now to the point, imagine yourself playing Medieval 2 Total War ( if you haven´t played it you definetely should, specially with mods ) you have engaged in a battle, you see the UI on the bottom ( or I guess that you could modify it to be minimalistic ) with 20 unit cards, exept those aren´t unit cards! those are stack cards! each one of those cards represents a whole stack consisting of 20 units each, I supose that to access a stack you could click on the card that represents it and it allows you to move the entire stack as it is arranged, and they will keep formation, similarly to how you can move a group of units by grouping them with G, you could also double click the unit and that will show you all the different units which you will be able to select and control individually.
This will allow huge armies composed of tens of thousands of soldiers fighting against other armies of tens of thousands of soldiers!
The battles would handle a great deal like they do in Med 2, with the whole interface, action buttons, the mechanics, etc. Although I would like soldiers to tire out a bit slower, like warmed up after after 5 minutes of fighting, winded after 10 minutes, tired after 15, very tired after 20, exhausted after 25, but the level of exhaustion should decrease a lot faster, I mean going from "tired" to "winded" in just one minute of just standing idle, and the purpose of this would be to make battle last longer, perhaps around 1 hour or maybe less if there are not as many units in the battle.

And now you´ll be thinking something like ¨but that would just be way too chaotic and there is no way I´ll be able to micro 400 different units at once!¨ but thats the beauty of it, it´ll be a tremendous challenge for the player to keep track of all those units, that is exactly what I think would make this more fun, don´t you like a challenge? the learning curve would go way higher than it is now making it less repetitive to fight battle after battle that you know you´ll win because the AI really can´t compete with human intelligence, but by having so many units to controll the human will really have to focus and micro effectively to win because the AI has the advantage of not having to deal with a UI but instead issuing commands to units intantly.

You may be wondering, ¨but is this even possible? can a developer like CA make something like this? is the current hardware able to process and render battles that big?¨ and I think that the answer to that is, yes, if the models are kept to that level of those on Med 2, and the engine optimized so that it can ( efficiently ) run from 8 cores, the graphics card is taxed to the max, I´m sure that many high end computers would be able to run these types of battles, and even PCs that are not quite so high end should be able to do battles of, lets say, 5 stacks vs 5 stacks if the graphics are not on the highest setting.

I don´t even think a strategy map would be necessary for this game, I mean, there are already other games out there that do this aspect well so I don´t see a need to spend time, effort and resources on that, but if you disagree please by all means reply with your explanation. ( but again, lets keep it civil )
Of course this would also mean that this would require the field of battle ( the inside of the red line ) to be a great deal larger than they are now, siege battles would also require the town/citi/castle to be a great deal bigger than they are now, otherwise you just would not be able to manouver effectively, or even be able to place your units inside of your town/city/castle.
That is all.
If there is something you would like me to clarify, or some detail that you think I forgot to add, just

[Sp4]

So you want more people in future TW games?

You know, if you want to (and this doesn't even require extensive modding knowledge), you can put as many people as you want into a Rome 2 battle right now. (Or as many as your PC can handle).

For the future, I hope they bring back some of the stuff, especially faction related features from older games and stop with the ridiculous amount of streamlining.

[ScamallDorcha]

So you want more people in future TW games?

You know, if you want to (and this doesn't even require extensive modding knowledge), you can put as many people as you want into a Rome 2 battle right now. (Or as many as your PC can handle).

For the future, I hope they bring back some of the stuff, especially faction related features from older games and stop with the ridiculous amount of streamlining.

No, what I want is not as simple as just upping the unit count, I want to control several stacks at a time, and would prefer it if each one unit on those stacks has similar unit counts as those of previous total wars ( and also the ability to change it to our liking of course )
Lets face it, one of the reasons that TW is not as exciting anymore is because we are so used to it, give or take one mechanic the game has been the same since Rome 1, its really easy to beat the AI in battle even when we are somewhat handicapped, and so by controlling and trying our best to micro multiple stacks the battle will be that much more intense and challenging, and I think that it would revive the old flame that has been dwindling lately.

[Veho Nex]

I'm not sure if you are aware of this but CA doesn't have a small dev team. They are a pretty decent sized group with around 300 people. Sure not everyone is working on Rome 2, but, a decent amount were.

EU games, while having a great campaign map, don't allow for the same type of characterization that the total war series has and their battles are about as shallow as shallow gets. In S2 or ETW I always had great fun making these histories with generals or in ETW case the unit names. They tried a more streamlined version of it in R2 with the legions or armies but it didn't have the same effect. Having a general who has gone through numerous campaigns and that you have personally molded into shrewd tactician or a valiant warrior is what makes TW for me.

Also R2 was a horrible release. I think most anyone can agree on that. Try S2. I regularly get my FoTS battles up to 20k men with only a minor hit in FPS.

[Veho Nex]

While I see and understand your want for larger battles. I think the strategy map is one of my favorite points for the TW series. Building an empire is fun. If I just wanted battles I'd play other RTS games, like; Theater of War, Wargame, Stronghold, Real Warfare, etc, etc...

Also one of the great things about total war is you can get large armies to fight each other in the battle creator. While you won't have total control in FoTS or R2 you can have up to 40 unit cards and with the maxed unit size battles can easily get into the 20k unit range.

[ScamallDorcha]

While I see and understand your want for larger battles. I think the strategy map is one of my favorite points for the TW series. Building an empire is fun. If I just wanted battles I'd play other RTS games, like; Theater of War, Wargame, Stronghold, Real Warfare, etc, etc...

Also one of the great things about total war is you can get large armies to fight each other in the battle creator. While you won't have total control in FoTS or R2 you can have up to 40 unit cards and with the maxed unit size battles can easily get into the 20k unit range.

The thing is though that there are other games that do the strategy part ( in my opinion ) much better, just look at the Europe Universalis series for a good example, I´m not saying that I don´t want a campaign included in a game with the characteristics that I described, hell I would love it if they did make a game with battles like I want, and a good strategic management, again like that of the EU series, but I just don´t think that It´ll happen, I´m not even sure that a game with the battles I want will ever happen so I´m just trying to be realistic and keep the bar as low as possible, I really don´t want a game that does both battles and campaign mediocre is what I´m trying to say, I´d rather they just spend all the resources on one aspect and then when it gets really popular ( because it will ) they will now have a more solid base to hire more staff and make a game with good battles and good campaign.

Also given how poorly optimized Rome 2 is I really don´t think its a good idea to have battles of over 10k men, even people with high end pc have been having a bunch of frame drops and other issues so yeah.

[Hooahguy]

Without the strategy map, this game wouldnt be a Total War game. It would basically be the custom battle feature that is currently in place with nothing else. Yeah, the battles would be great, but that would also require a much better MP system, and in all seriousness, I prefer a better single player campaign as thats what has been driving this series for a long time.

[ReluctantSamurai]

and so by controlling and trying our best to micro multiple stacks the battle will be that much more intense and challenging

I simply could not imagine trying to control multiple stacks of horse archers Especially at the start of a campaign when you have only the light, unarmored version. To get trapped against a terrain feature or the edge of the map is insta-death for these units, so a player has to watch their every move carefully. Now if the "skirmish mode" worked like it should.........

Without the strategy map, this game wouldnt be a Total War game.

Spot on with this comment

and so by controlling and trying our best to micro multiple stacks the battle will be that much more intense and challenging,

and the purpose of this would be to make battle last longer, perhaps around 1 hour or maybe less if there are not as many units in the battle.

I take it that you've never played Shogun I.....never, since the inception of the TW series have I had epic battles that literally had me pausing the game to rest (had some battles last nearly two hours) as I did with the original

[ScamallDorcha]

I simply could not imagine trying to control multiple stacks of horse archers Especially at the start of a campaign when you have only the light, unarmored version. To get trapped against a terrain feature or the edge of the map is insta-death for these units, so a player has to watch their every move carefully. Now if the "skirmish mode" worked like it should.........



Spot on with this comment



I take it that you've never played Shogun I.....never, since the inception of the TW series have I had epic battles that literally had me pausing the game to rest (had some battles last nearly two hours) as I did with the original

I don´t think that controlling several stacks of horse archers would be that hard, just select the whole stack like it was a unit card, and then click fire at will, make them move as a whole or just a few units on their own, and I think that the skirmish feature could be improved by having units react to enemy cavalry from a much greater distance than enemy foot units, like I mentioned in the OP, I would like the engine to work more similarly to that of Med 2, because well, in my opinion, the Warscape engine sucks, I think that its fundamentally flawed and it would also be a waste of processing power to have graphics too enhanced, Med 2 had perfect graphics imo, and your comment about the edge of the map made me think about perhaps implementing a feature where if too many units where too close to the edge of the map, and there were non on the opposite side of the map, the red lines would align so that units could go to where they couldn´t before because the red line was there, so imagine that on MP a player decides to corner camp, well then his opponent just has to get close to him and the map would shift so that they were roughly at the center of the map, of course this would only work if there were no units on the side of the map that becomes offlimits, and of course like I said in the OP the map would have to be much, much larger than it is today, probably around 20 times larger to accommodate all the units.

No, sadly I couldn´t get Shogun 1 to work on my pc But I have had epic battles on Rome 1 and Med 2, battles that lasted 30 minutes because I paused a lot and they involved a heavy amount of positioning or artillery shelling on sieges, and I strongly believe that controlling multiple stacks would only add to the level of epicness by making you feel like you are truly commanding an army and not just a skirmish/raiding force of only 3k men, but as I said before its not just about increasing the numbers ( specially because that would be extremely annoying in siege battles as I´m sure you already know ) but about increasing the numbers of units to take care of, I´m sure that many times the AI ( as unimpressive as its always been ) will sometimes manage to hit and route your right flank while you were busy on your left, maybe it will even be able to execute a successful hammer and anvil tactic on the player because while it may not be able to make decisions as intelligently as the player I´m sure that it can take those decisions a lot faster, forcing the player to be always on his/her toes, being able to order 100 units to do something in the same time that it takes the player order 20 units surely must count for something right?

[ScamallDorcha]

Without the strategy map, this game wouldnt be a Total War game. It would basically be the custom battle feature that is currently in place with nothing else. Yeah, the battles would be great, but that would also require a much better MP system, and in all seriousness, I prefer a better single player campaign as thats what has been driving this series for a long time.

Like I said before, its not that I don´t want a campaign map, I would love it if they managed to get the campaign part right ( sort of like the EU series ) and at the same time do battles like I described in the OP, I´m just afraid that they, by trying to focus on both campaign and battle will actually not get either of them right, like Veho Nex said, CA is a pretty big development studio with over 300 employees, but if Rome2 is anything to go by then I think that being too ambitious would not turn out well.

[The Black Douglas]

i dont know why they cant embed variable field strategies for AI armies, if a simple AI chess game can roll out classic strategies from past masters.
chess is fundamentally a war strategy game, surely its possible.
i don't remember ever being flanked in TW except in historical scenarios.

my TW wishlist

1. bring back the ability to view your settlements in 3D as per RTW & BI.
2. more intricate diplomat abilities i.e. being able to complain to the pope about aggression from another faction.
3. ability to call a council of allied factions for the purposes of sharing intelligence, or planning joint attacks.
4. option to fight as a recruit in first person view, but still be able to quickly revert back to normal mode.
5. female heavy infantry in bikini bottoms, that use their big breasts as melee weapons.