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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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?

[Sp4]

You do just want the game to be bigger than it currently is.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I don´t think that controlling several stacks of horse archers would be that hard

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one....having to control 60, 80 or more individual horse archer units would be virtually impossible for a human player, and the "skirmish mode" definitely does not work properly in any TW version, so just ordering a stack to carry out a harassing movement will will result in excessive losses or even outright destruction of the stack.

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

I don't question the epicness of your battles, but.....a 30 min battle in RTW I would be a loooong battle (and I've had one or two RTW battles last that long) but that pales in comparison to a two hour battle in Shogun where you are fighting for your life against heavy odds (and the two hours does not include break time).

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

While I applaud the effort at trying to find ways to improve the TW series, I do not believe increasing the number of units to control in battle necessarily achieves this goal. There are many facets to a TW game, and the battlefield is just one of those facets (albeit a very important part). But before you can engage the enemy you have to improve your infrastructure to be better at war; you must gather intelligence on what your enemies (and potential enemies) are up to; you must cultivate good leaders to govern your empire and lead your armies; if need be, you must forge alliances to form a unified front against a common enemy...etc,etc.....

Then there are the intangibles like a pleasing map (both campaign and battle) that draws you in and creates an immersion for the time period; inspiring music for battles, mood music for the campaign map; an easy-to-use (and intuitive) UI that allows the player flexibility and fluidness when interacting with all the game parts....

And besides....despite greatly enjoying those massive, time-consuming, epic battles....I have a great fondness for small unit engagements where there are only several units to each side. Here you must know exactly what your units are capable of, take every advantage the terrain offers, and be bold in your actions. There is no room for error as you do not have an excess of units to make up for a mistake. The consequences of losing one of these battles can be just as great as losing one where thousands of soldiers were involved...making a small unit engagement every bit as exciting as one involving many, many units.

[Sp4]

I don't question the epicness of your battles, but.....a 30 min battle in RTW I would be a loooong battle (and I've had one or two RTW battles last that long) but that pales in comparison to a two hour battle in Shogun where you are fighting for your life against heavy odds (and the two hours does not include break time).

You could get hours long battles in M2 but that was not really because of the odds but because of how long units would stay on the field and slug it out.

[ScamallDorcha]

About the horse archers I think that you could control several stacks of those by dividing each stack into 2 groups, one goes in front of the other, you go and harass the enemys´flank and then when they send cav against you you just retreat the first group behind the second group ( which is still firing at the enemy cav ) and repeat, its like you are only using 2 units so controlling 6 groups of horse archers would be 3 stacks, not that hard imo, and like I mentioned before I think that the skirmish function could be improved by having units react to enemy cav much sooner than enemy infantry.

And you know what? I´ve now changed my mind on the whole campaign thing, you guys have convinced me that taking it out would also take out a lot of the immersion that you feel when you fight a battle which, if you lost could cause you to loose several cities or maybe the whole campaign, but I´m just worried that seeing how bad CA dropped the ball with Rome 2 that expecting them to do something like what I suggested as well as a complex, rewarding and well done campaign with good mechanics at the same time would be too much, and they´d end up doing a mediocre job on both, but to be fair it was SEGA that had a lot to do with Rome 2 being so rushed and casualized, but I digress, I guess that having a campaign which allows you to take a step back and allow the AI to do most of the work while you just focus on the military strategy would be great, as long as you were allowed to make the managements decisions if you want to.

[easytarget]

When you lose your way on the vision thing the resulting game is often not fun to play. I don't see passion reflected in the game design of Rome 2 like I did in every aspect of Shogun 2. I think they've lost their way quite frankly and it remains to be seen whether they ever find their way back again. That's why indie games often feel fresher, less baggage, less design by committee.

That said, the act of creating something is harrowing at best, so my hats off to them for having the balls to toe the line and make stuff. It's damn easy to sit on the side lines and play arm chair quarterback.

If I was in their shoes right now, depending on what the money situation is looking like, I might be inclined to consider a few options:

1. Increase the odds of success by going smaller, CA appears to make a bit of a hash of it when they make big behemoth spanning games (witness Empire and Rome 2). Perhaps even consider putting out two at the same time, if they really do have 300 people working on this, which I find really hard to believe, but if they do, I might split them up and have them work on two different total wars with a closely staggered launch. Sort of a hedge your bets on the next project by doubling your odds.

2. Fix the warscape engine. One of the two fundamental elements of the game platform is broken. Scrap it or fix it.

3. Examine your own past works through the lens of Sid Meier looking for the game play components you've worked out in the past that played well and which just didn't work.

4. Play test your work using NDAs. There's no excuse for not beta testing given the community of free labor available.

5. Figure out the RPG piece of your works, this provides that extra spice, that additional hard to quantify magic that draws people into caring about their generals and agents.

6. Get back to the small details and a bit of a sense of humor. There are small touches in M2 and S2 all over the place that are missing in Rome 2, which is the poorer for it all around.

That's a start anyway, haha

[alQamar]

I already made up my mind when it comes to this topic. Basically before everything else I wish the most for a completely new and technological scaleable and modern engine, than the current Warscape is.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...Total-War-game

[Sociopsychoactive]

Ok, just read through your idea's and I have to disagree with the base concept completely and utterly for several reasons.

1)Concept
More stacks does not make for epic battles automatically. What it makes for is endless battles. In Medieval 1 (yes, that old thing) if you knew the mongol hordes were approaching and planned for it you ended up with one battle against the entire mongol hoard in one sitting (with no time limit). Yes, the armies were always re-inforcements rather than all being on screen at once, but the battle was NOT epic, it was a neverending slugfest that got very old and very frustrating very quickly. Instead of being able to focus on an aspect of the battle or an individual unit fighting braveley to hold the center, you end up trying to focus on armies manouvering around armies. Instead of circling aroud with your single cavalry unit trying to break the end of their lines to roll up their whole army you end up leaving your army to hold the line while you focus on the next army and the next. I honestly think that splitting the focus that much would make for a terrible game overall as the little things that make all total war games great, like seeing a unit play a vital role in battle and survive against the odds, would be drowned out completely by the mass of unimportant automatons slugging it out on the front lines.

2) Control

I don´t think that controlling several stacks of horse archers would be that hard

I, and others, disagree again. With some units, and horse archers specifically, the way to win with them cannot be automated. Even if skirmish worked perfectly every time for every unit, horse archers would still be useless untill they were directly controlled by a human. Their role on the battlefield is to harry and disorganise the enemy, not to engage, retreat, engage as a working skirmish would do. A human uses horse archers to pull a unit out of formation, demoralise and disorganise it and then set it up for other units to attack and kill it. Doing this with several armies on the field is hard enough already as taking your eye off the ball for a few seconds is enough for the enemy to counter all your hard work. Have this happening over several army atacks and it becomes litterally impossible to use units that require this level of micro control.

3) Performance
In order for a modern, high end rig to manage that many units, you simply have to dumb down the individual details. You would end up with units of 80 identical people doing the same identical animation at once, rather than the ebb and flow, the individual unit rendering and animations that you currently have. Yes, the current system has it's flaws (many and varied that they are) but your idea would not allow for one individual to have any detail, at least not untill hardware moves on a fair amount.

4) Campaign
I get your point, that you are far more interested in the battle scene than the campagn scene and would be willing to sacrifice it, but glad to keep it. I understand that. I also think the campaign is half of what makes total war a great franchise. Having to conquer, expand, build and develope your empire in order to build your army which then gets wiped out in an epic battle is far better than being handed an army. Even the wonderfully made and hugely detailed historical battles rarely hold my interest for long compared to my own battles on the campaign map with troops I feel a real connection to. Admittedly less so than in Shogun 2, but I still feel for them when they get wiped out.

Now, epic battles as a desired end goal is definately worthwhile, so I would suggest you increase the scale, not the size. Aim for massive, well defended castles with tiers and murder alleys and things like that. Aim for siege army stacks for these battles, aim for larger more varied maps and combined land/sea battles where the combined bit isn't just you landing the boats. Aim for battles that last 2 hours, not because there are twenty different armies on screen, but because the battles shifts and moves, ebbs and flows as land is gained and lost, small victories are won and the whole thing makes you feel connected to the achievements of the individual soldiers your ardering around.

Some of the most memorable moments of Total war games are from battles like this for me and, unfortunately, not many of them are from rome 2. It was shogun 2 that had the epic for me, and not even FOTS, just the heroic sacrifices and the balanced large-scale battles that took real skill and concentration to fight. Thats what we want and need, not massive numbers of armies.

You did say feel free to disagree...

[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.

[ScamallDorcha]

You can still pause though, so just like when you were playing a TW game for the first time you would pause a lot during the battle and order your troops while on pause, I would only take out the pause feature for the highest difficulty of battles, like legendary, though I suppose that you can`t really pause while playing an online match, but then again your opponent can`t either so its balanced.
Also I think that a lot of the reason that Rome 2 was so easy is because it is very much similar to all the previous TW games, we understand how to play and how to win, the AI is no match for a human unless the human is severely handicapped, so by controlling so stacks on one army the battle would be way more difficult, way more challenging and therefore ( in my opinion ) rekindle the old flame that was ignited when we played our first TW game.
Units already loose a huge amount of detail during battles, they are only detailed while you are zoomed in into them, when you zoom out the detail goes out the window to render all the units with as little detail as possible so I think that its not that hard, just do the same, give detail the the unit that you are zoomed in on and when you zoom out just focus on rendering all the units without much detail, current hardware can do this, its just that CA has not done a very good job of optimizing their games.

As you can see in my previous post I do understand the importance of the campaign in TW games, but I think that I would be willing to buy a TW game that was huge battles and no campaign because other companies already do campaign really well, look at the EU series, I could play EU3 and then do a battle in TW and pretend that they are connected, what I don`t want is a mediocre campaign that is really streamlined and arcadey which only takes resources away from making the battles better, and I do agree that Shogun 2 was a lot better than Rome 2, thanks for disagreeing in such a respectful manner, after all the purpose of this thread was to have a conversation, which goes back and forth, not to force my opinions on people.