Your dreamed MTW

[SwordsMaster]

As there are a lot of post critisizing MTW and lot of people modding it for their own likes,that made me think of how would be the perfect MTW,without actually moving int some sort of Matrix type computer....

Thats my vision:

Mix together Europa Universalis 2 and MTW,so you manage the diplomacy and are able to conquer the whole world,although i know it would take a lot more of time and space (6 cds?),but you can always put in on a DVD...

The way you conquer the world would work differently for every faction(obviously), and each of the provinces described would be a micro campaign on its own (if you played Lords of the realm 2,you know what i mean) and once you conquer every province ,you go to a bigger map,when the map you conquered previously would be counted as a single province...

So, if you're conquering Spain, you would start with Castilla divided into 4 or 5 factions which you should conquer to advance to conquer Leon, then go to the Europe map, and once you have ,say 30% of europe, go to the world map...

Ok, its starting to be too long, so im gonna leave it...
Post you own versions, and maybe someone will mod it at some point

[Gregoshi]

Interesting idea, but you lose me with the world conquest theme. It destroys the realism. In MTW, I don't like that it is so easy to conquer Europe. Is it EU2 that people comment as having a better diplomacy system than MTW? I'd go along with that.

[Axeknight]

I agree. Better uses of diplomacy and spies would make MTW even better. I don't think there is much that can be done to improve the battlefield element, but the campaign map could benefit from some tweaks.

Being able to plant spies on an enemy faction leader and getting them to convince him to attack another faction. Perhaps an ally, who has lands you want but can't legitmately attack, so you need to cancel the alliance by getting the ally to make war on another ally, then allying with the attacked faction if you get my meaning...

Also, I want a new strategic agent. One who can spy better than a spy, assassinate better than an assassin, and form stronger alliances than a princess marrying. Yes. a court jester.

[nightcrawlerblue]

I want a complex diplomacy system. I want to be able to trade troops/provinces for Florins, make ceasefires easier and alliances harder to make, and to be able to demand stuff/offer tribute. I'd like more diplomacy than that but I would be very happy with just that.

[SwordsMaster]

Its not easy at all if thats what you´re worried about Gregoshi....After some 4or5 years of war, you start facing rebels in every single province,no matter how high the loyalty....it depends on how many men from that place you took to the army and how succesful were your battles...

Give it a try anyway,its really tough after you reach some point,and gets tougher and tougher...

But still, the diplomacy is the real weak point of all Total War games...At least something like CivIII would be so much better...

[Sociopsychoactive]

I definately agree on the diplomacy thing, tributes and demanding danegold are key concepts. (for americans and other aliens, danegold is the 'we won't kill you if you pay us this' money.

And I also agree that ceasefires should be easier to make, though alliances should remain shakey. When you back a faction into a corner they would probably do anything to stay alive, rather than refuse treaties and charge at you.

I like the idea of mini provinces within provinces, heres how I see it...

Take scotland. In realisty it is made up of loads of small clans, glens, cities and so-on, not one large city to be taken, but lots of smaller ones. So, you invade scotland and I see two ways of doing it. Unless they were prepared yoiu have to fight several smaller battles rather than one large one (meaning the troops were scattered and not centralised)

or,

you have to take each little bit, complete with crappy strongholds (borrowed from VI, so fortified villages and such) but you can do it all in the one turn, and still conquer the whole place in a year, just not in one battle.

Maybe it would just be annoying, I don;t know.

[VividYoshee]

Improved diplomacy, mwahahaha

I probably count as one of the 'modder' crowd, but I don't really think there is all that much wrong with MTW. When I'm in a roleplaying mood I don't like that the AI gets unreasonably stupid (even at lesser difficulties) once your empire gets to a decent size, that I think would be the simplest change to the game.

My dream MTW I'm working on designing in more detail at the moment, in the hopes of actually building a bit of it.

Features I would like though are:

-AI remembers who is their buddy and who isn't, and base their relationship with the player (and other AI) on more than just faction size. In my ideal game the AI is concerned with surviving, they will allow you the lesser victory if their own lands remain intact, but they'll fight like hell to prevent themselves from being conquered.

-Related to that, social interactions would become a bit more complex. Don't make alliances easier, in fact, make them harder to create and maintain, but allow the player to show signs of good faith and develop peaceful solutions through some methods.

-Yet further, the AI will cooperate with the player, but it will watch its own back and if for a moment the human tries the old friendly until I send a billion armies at you strategy the AI will be prepared. Similarly, if the human isn't watching, make the AI do the same thing to them. :)

-Make strategic agents more effective, to avoid 'training' (i.e. building emissaries just to assassinate them which is plain stupid and boring...) Increase the ability to counter agents to avoid them getting too powerful (therefore creating a use for defensive spies/border forts for instance).

-Allow 'framing', if your agent is very successful it will look like someone else did it. Don't let the player choose who gets framed though, have it be based on whether there are other countries/agents nearby and be random.

-Have the AI get very ticked at strategic ops (if they found out who did it), to the point of endangering those carefully built diplomatic relationships.

-Put in marraige contracts. If no one wants to marry you because you ticked everyone off, allow the king to give away land in exchange for a princess. The land must be considered valuable to the country the princess came from (no trading Ireland to Egypt...).

-Rework breeding. The heir's stats go from 0 to the maximum of the king (that sired them) randomized. If the king married a princess, the bonus is the addition of half of the stats of the princesses father (another king). Therefore, with marraiges to princesses the quality of heirs will generally increase. Have incest result in a negative modifier (random but distributed based on closeness of the princess to the king). Now that princesses are more valuable (never underestimate a good heir) they become more valuable, possibly even enough to trade land for. Marrying a lady of the court randomly should result in incest penalties, and no bonuses.

-Muslim factions do not get any incest penalty (except maybe a small random chance applied to all generals), as they don't get any princesses to begin with.

-Some trade would be cool, but not necessarilly the same system as Civ III.

-- more more more

[Fanty]

More of these little powergames.

- Multiple kingdoms
There had been Multiple Kingdoms around.
Wich means, several factions have the same factionleader but still remain independant factions.

The mainexample for this is the HRE.
The HRE is an Empire made of several kingdoms in it.
Wich are:

Regnum Teutonicum (Literate Kingdom of the Teutons, thats Germany, Switzerland, Austria basicly)
Kingdom of Burgundy
Kingdom of Italy
Kingdom of Bohemia

These for example remained independant kingdoms all the time. The only thing that happend was, that there was one guy beeing the king of all of them at once.

The guys then had very long titles.
Liek Barbarossa who was:
Duke of Swabia, King of the Teutons, King of the Lombards, King of Burgundy and Emperor of the Romans.

Ingame this would mean: These factions dont die or are annexed, but your faction leader becomes the king of these factions. This faction however can rebell against a forreign leader and reapears in a realistic way (because it never was gone)

There should also be more bloodline stuff.
I remember one guy who became King of Spain, King of Sicily, King of the Teutons and Emperor of Rome, because the right guys died by illness and he was randomly number one on each of these tronelists.

It even happended that a forreign nations beggs your king to become their king because the land suffers from rebellion and no king in sight.

This happend once, when Danmark had no king and asked the GErman king to take the job until there is a new Danish king. well, he did it LOL

Other way around begged the Germans the English (because the English king had bloodlines to Henry the Lion) and the Spanish (because their King had bloodlines to Frederick Barbarossa) to temporay annex them, when there was no German King in sight, because everyone refused to do the job and there was civil war and dead all around. the inceadable thing: Both, England and Spain refused. Nobody wanted to deal with civil wars for the rest of his life. They didnt want to touch it with a 10 foot pole. HEhehe.

Feudal relationsships
Thats possibly similiar to the mentioned Danegold.

Things like this happend if a country invaded another one. The invading country isnt able to cmplete the conquest and the defender cannot defeat the invader also.

In this case, the king of the defending side can offer to subordinate himself to the king of the invading side.

Sometimes they did it even fro free. If your at danger you offer another king to be his subordinate. And then demand help from yur Lord.

That isnt annexion. Its more of an alliance in wich one side is the dominant one and the others are satelites.

The satelite can however demand help. The Dominant side can demand tributes and (lended) units.

I dont know if this was a widespread thing in ALL of Europe. But the HRE did open such relationships extremely often. Specially between 900-1200

Examples are. Otto II frm the HRE had been in war with France. In wich France offered ceasefire and subordination under the HRE. A perfect solution. Neither side had the power to conquer the other one, but Otto II. had surounded Paris with the French king inside....

Other examples are with Poland subordinate under the HRE.
That however was a backstabbing thing. Polish forces invaded frequently.... after a counterattack the Polish king offered subordination. Accepted. Waited 3 years, canceled the contract and invaded again. Again counterattack, Polish kind offers subordination, Holy Emperor accepts and withdraws once more........

If I read such stuff, I sometimes wonder how damm stupid this was. It must be that the Polish forces couldnt stop the Germans, but the Germans felt too weak to conquer and occupy Poland, garrision troops and fight rebellions for the next 200 years.

Anyways. I miss this kind of Contract ;)

More more powergames and bloodlinestuff.
Killing the right people until one of your people canm claim the right on the trone etc.

[Kekvit Irae]

My dream MTW is a MTW Mod for RTW.

[Phatose]

My suggestions, on trade alone:


Distance should be a factor of profitability in trade. It costs more to ship wool from England to the middle east then it does to ship wool to france. Any trade profits for a good are reduced by 1 florin per ocean square between the two provinces.

Land trade - a new province improvement, roads, should be added. This allows a land province to act as a part of a trade chain as if it were a controlled ocean area. However, since land travel is far less efficient, profits are halved if land travel in neccessary for trade, and each land square further reduces profits by 3 florins.

Land travel trade is questionable in security - you can only trade through non-hostile provinces, and if the province being traveled over doesn't belong to you, your profits are reduced by another 2 florins - which the owner of the province gains as taxes.

Hostile ships shouldn't be able to blockade an ocean area on the turn they move into it. The blockade is only effective if they have more ships in the area then the faction being blockaded as well.

A province is limited in how much it can produce in profit. Full value of the trade good is produced for exporting to the wealthiest provinces, while poorer ones produce 75%, 50%, 25% or 10% profits for the poorer provinces. It makes no sense that a province with no money can buy as much as a very rich one.

If a trade good is being imported to a province from more then one exporting province, then each exporting province recieves less then normal - the value each recieves is equal to (80% + 20% per exporting province)/number of provinces. This way, more places exporting always gives more total money, but it becomes far less efficient beyond the first.

If two empires both are trying to export good to a province, then allies get preference. Ex) England and Spain both have 1 province trading salt to the French. If Spain is allied with france, and England is simply neutral to it, the Spanish get the trade profits at 100% and the English get nothing. If both are neutral or allied, they both get 60% of trade good value as above.

[SwordsMaster]

What ive seen is that there are lots of good ideas...And most of the things you've said are doable without drastically increasing the size of the game,neither the time that would be spend in programming those events...
In the other hand as i see it those improvements are impossible to mod cause the'yre controlled by the core code of the game.

A pity...

[Fortebraccio]

What I would like to see in a revised MTW:

- Season based turns

- Turn based order of movement on the strategic board. Faction with most spies/emissaries acts last.

-No single unit production, but crusade-like levies. Each province could contribute with local troops. Armies raised in this way should negatively affect province loyalty until they are disbanded.

-Mercenaries should be hired as small armies, as well, and should serve for a limited amount of time before becoming obsolete.

-Conquest should be backed up by legitimate claims (be them bloodline related or generated by a casus belli), under penalty of a dramatic influence/loyalty loss.

-Logistics. Armies should be entirely supported by the province they are occupying, in absence of a very costly logistical system. Mongols should be the only faction capable of launching unsupported campaign.

-Besieging armies should be able to raze the province as they please (resulting in unrest)

-No reinforcements. Leftover troops should be controlled by an AI general.

-Huge battlefields, with defender's deploying zone close to the center. A sphere-like battlefield could do, as well.

-GA should be far more accurate and compelling, both for the human player and the AI.

-Trade related assets like dockyards and merchant houses should be available to build in allied/neutral provinces, providing a share of the province's commercial revenues.

- Annals and records of kings, generals, heroes, and significant accomplishments.

- Papal election, as in Machiavelli: The Prince. Each Cardinal on the board would count as one vote. Cardinals could be bribed away from other factions or created (exactly like crusades, only if the Pope permits you to, and only if you pay him a respectable sum of money).
When a cardinal is elected Pope, he would become a general unit, and his factions' religious agents would be able to excommunicate and declare crusades.

-Most of the things you guys pointed out in the previous posts.

[SwordsMaster]

I disagree with the Casus Belli. This is Medieval age...Most of the Rulers couldnt write,so its pointless talking about formalizing the warfare actions,anyway Casus Belli were not taken into account til the late Renaissance,if my memory is right,which is out of the game spectrum.

And I also think that reinforcements shouldnt exist, instead you should have bigger battlefields and the attacking army should be distributed in the way they arrive (ie: faster units first) but both armies should start furhter from one another.

Another improvement is that if someone had spies for ,say more than 2 turns in the province he's about to attack, he should be given the chance to re-deploying his troops as if he was defending due to the prevision given by his agents...

Know your enemy, Sun Tzu called it.

[PseRamesses]

My ultimate wet dream for a strategic game of an epic scale contains the diplomacy of EUII (or even better with even far more options), the TW battle engine, the strategic map of CIVIII and the micromanagement of Pharaoh.

You play on a real world terrain map with no provinces just cities and your realm will grow as your influence, technology and faction evolves. The map for lets say England would contain hundreds of battle-maps like the ones in TW, much like a mosaic jiggzaw puzzle, for each part of the land. So, conquering England will take a long time. Each part of the map can be micromanaged like in Pharaoh or you can just put it on auto-build. You should be able of building several different kinds of units in one province. Send out explorers (EUII), emissaries, establish trade with neighbours (CIVIII/ Pharaoh) etc.

If you choose a game as the egyptians it will start around 4000 bc, as the Romans around 700 bc etc etc. The world is unexplored (EUII) and the game should follow mankinds real development (CIVIII but far better).

I don´t know if you get the shere scale of what a game I´m talking about? This would probably take thousands of gigabytes and a Uber-Matrix-PC-system, he he I´m confident though, looking at the evolvement of PC-tech the last 20 years, that I´ll probably see this come to life before I pass away. The need for theese kind of games are huge and is getting greater each year.

[SwordsMaster]

Possibly that kind of game will be about 3 DVDs size, but you wont have to install it completely....

The only issue that bothers me is: how many provinces with Pharaoh micromanagement could you handle at a time?
How long will it take you to end a Campaign? A lifetime?
What you want is no a game but a simulator.

BTW you would not need such a great computer, maybe just about 4GB processor...Which is no impossible at all.

[VividYoshee]

I think you could build an engine for such a game that would work fine on a decent PC. You only need more CPU/graphics hardware if your really trying to show a lot of stuff at once in high detail (which a good company wouldn't do). I haven't played all those games, so it may become a bit slow, but if they are handled in turn the minimum requirement wouldn't be an issue (however if it has to chug through mountains of data every turn, as it may if you combine all those games together, it may take eons to play).

The issue is it is very easy to say combine games X,Y,Z, however legal issues aside, it rarely works so simply as that. Despite the similar material these are all very different games in terms of how they are played, and the audience they are intended for. Trying to please anyone often just leads to ticking off everyone.

So if this game doesn't appear over the next two decades I wouldn't chalk it up to technology, but rather the desire of a game company to create such a game. However, they might evolve something similar to it in time, with the same general concepts but a different way of gameplay that balances all of the many sides to appeal to a larger crowd.

Instead of combining games I think we should always be on the lookout for entirely new ways of doing the things we are used to from games like TW, CIV, etc that will make putting together the ideas of the games easier to handle.

PS: I hope no one minds that I've been using this thread in designing my own MTW-based variant (or er ripoff.. :) ... but its all for edumacationamal purposes). Some of these ideas may not be moddable in MTW, but are easy to implement if your building a new engine anyway (if anyone knows how to mod directly the AI of MTW I of course would just mod it in).

[PseRamesses]

Quote[/b] (SwordsMaster @ Mar. 24 2004,08:42)]Possibly that kind of game will be about 3 DVDs size, but you wont have to install it completely....

The only issue that bothers me is: how many provinces with Pharaoh micromanagement could you handle at a time?
How long will it take you to end a Campaign? A lifetime?
What you want is no a game but a simulator.

BTW you would not need such a great computer, maybe just about 4GB processor...Which is no impossible at all.

Swordmaster, finally someone who understands me ;) Yes I do realize I´m gonna need some monster machine to do this but mark my words: within the next 20 years I wouldn´t be surpriced if we actually could enjoy that kind of game.

[SwordsMaster]

Not even 20.I´ll bet that in 5 years time, you´ll have a 4gb processor for the price of an average Pentium 4...
I´ve seen 200 gb processors already (in the Pentagon), so its not impossible at all...

The problem is not the machine, but the time and money that need to be spent developing such a game.By the time they´re done, people´s interests will be somewhere else, so they´ll have to charge wild amounts of money for the game.Its more of a market risk than a technological impossibility.

(Wow, im talkong as if i knew something about markents)

[VividYoshee]

200 GHz processors? wow...

You sure it wasn't some sort of multiprocessor supercomputer that was equivalent to 200 GHz? I know home stuff isn't top of the line, but I thought there would have to be a breakthrough to get that sort of power into one processor.

[SwordsMaster]

Hey, I forgot it in the last post.What should definitely be added to MTW is the battles for the disembarks...Its the easies way to defend against an invading enemy army after all...

[PseRamesses]

Quote[/b] (SwordsMaster @ Mar. 24 2004,14:57)]Not even 20.I´ll bet that in 5 years time, you´ll have a 4gb processor for the price of an average Pentium 4...
I´ve seen 200 gb processors already (in the Pentagon), so its not impossible at all...

The problem is not the machine, but the time and money that need to be spent developing such a game.By the time they´re done, people´s interests will be somewhere else, so they´ll have to charge wild amounts of money for the game.Its more of a market risk than a technological impossibility.

(Wow, im talkong as if i knew something about markents)

I´m not talking of the actual hardware that much but the massive HD-space you´ll need and the enormous delevoping and storing of that kind of information. When you play your game in the beginning you might want to micromanage city development for the few towns and willages you have but when the empire grows you can simply auto-build with the capitol or any other city as a mold.
Personally I would have no problem in paying some 500-1000$
for that kind of game. Constantly modded by players and patched by the developer for a fee, much like a perscription.
The real potential is that this kind of game won´t be sold on cd or dvd or any other media but rather played online against a central computer somewhere. So you can sign up for a game against hundreds of other players online.

[SwordsMaster]

I thought there would have to be a breakthrough to get that sort of power into one processor.[/QUOTE]

Well, the breakthrough is a huge hall full of PROCESSOR.If you want to see it, look for IBM Blue.The US Army used it to simulate nuclear weapons explosions so its quite good.

The real potential is that this kind of game won´t be sold on cd or dvd or any other media but rather played online against a central computer somewhere. So you can sign up for a game against hundreds of other players online.[/QUOTE]

How do you download it?
Then it would be impossible because other players won´t be waiting til you finish your turn, and if the battles are going to be similar to MTW or RTW, you can just play RTW multyplayer, its much easier.
BTW, 3 DVDs its about 25 GB of HD space, suppose its compressed, you will probably face some 50 gb of HD only for the game...I think its not THAT much...

Do you realize that were talking as if were about to make it ourselves?
...Who knows? Mybe we will...

[PseRamesses]

Quote[/b] (SwordsMaster @ Mar. 24 2004,15:22)]How do you download it?
Then it would be impossible because other players won´t be waiting til you finish your turn, and if the battles are going to be similar to MTW or RTW, you can just play RTW multyplayer, its much easier.

BTW, 3 DVDs its about 25 GB of HD space, suppose its compressed, you will probably face some 50 gb of HD only for the game...I think its not THAT much...

Do you realize that were talking as if were about to make it ourselves?
...Who knows? Mybe we will...

You downloada license, then the main game and everything you need to play it. Then you play realtime

I don´t think human evolvement and the rise of civilization will fit in just 50 GB, maybee 5000 GB?

Sign me up Now we are two ;)

[Kropazz]

I would love to see alliance working much better. I mean now it's only for trade reasons (well bigger chance that faction wan't attack u), but i would like to see allied attacks and invasions, help your friend not only then they got surrounded in your neighboring province, but in any province. And i would like to use my troops as a mercenaries to other factions for some few florins

[Fanty]

Moores law:

Every 18 month, computers will be twice as fast and have twice as much RAM for the same price.

I have seen a graph that this was true since the 60s (when he said this prophecy)

Ray Kurzweil (if someone knows him) says, in 2030 will a 1000$ computer be able to simulate a thing wich is as complex as a human brain.

And 2060 will a 1000$ computer be able to simulate the brains of the population of a whole planet.

THAT will be cool games then ;)
But possibly we have a moral problem if its legal to kill a computersimulated character, wich is able to think like a human beeing.

[Kekvit Irae]

Quote[/b] (Fanty @ Mar. 24 2004,17:00)]Moores law:

Every 18 month, computers will be twice as fast and have twice as much RAM for the same price.

I have seen a graph that this was true since the 60s (when he said this prophecy)

Ray Kurzweil (if someone knows him) says, in 2030 will a 1000$ computer be able to simulate a thing wich is as complex as a human brain.

And 2060 will a 1000$ computer be able to simulate the brains of the population of a whole planet.

THAT will be cool games then ;)
But possibly we have a moral problem if its legal to kill a computersimulated character, wich is able to think like a human beeing.

Can we say, SkyNet?

[PseRamesses]

Quote[/b] (Fanty @ Mar. 24 2004,17:00)]Moores law:

Every 18 month, computers will be twice as fast and have twice as much RAM for the same price.

I have seen a graph that this was true since the 60s (when he said this prophecy)

Ray Kurzweil (if someone knows him) says, in 2030 will a 1000$ computer be able to simulate a thing wich is as complex as a human brain.

And 2060 will a 1000$ computer be able to simulate the brains of the population of a whole planet.

THAT will be cool games then ;)
But possibly we have a moral problem if its legal to kill a computersimulated character, wich is able to think like a human beeing.

Finally some hard facts and I´m proved right. Thanks Fanty. Now, has anyone got an asessment on the total amount of mankinds knowledge from pre-history to modern day and how much HD-space we need to store it on?
Boy, I´m not doing the txt-files for this one, he he

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Quote[/b] (kekvitirae @ Mar. 23 2004,22:07)]My dream MTW is a MTW Mod for RTW.

That's going to happen, if I have something to say about it...

However, the most fabulous project is, obviously, PseRamesses's idea of a Humankind: Total War.

Just EPIC I would probably NEVER play another game again, though...

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Quote[/b] (PseRamesses @ Mar. 24 2004,17:49)]Now, has anyone got an asessment on the total amount of mankinds knowledge from pre-history to modern day and how much HD-space we need to store it on?

Good luck with the calculations, my friend...

Quote[/b] ]Boy, I´m not doing the txt-files for this one, he he

ROTFL

[SwordsMaster]

Quote[/b] ]Finally some hard facts and I´m proved right. Thanks Fanty. Now, has anyone got an asessment on the total amount of mankinds knowledge from pre-history to modern day and how much HD-space we need to store it on?
Boy, I´m not doing the txt-files for this one, he he

Well i dont think its all that big though,possibly twice the Congress Library,which is about 1000GB...Ridiculously small size for 10000 years of history (or we are not that smart...)BTW can be transferred via Internet in just about 20 hours using the new connection that is being researched.

By the way and as someone was talking about Moore´s law,i have to say that we are close to the top of the evolution of the microprocessor computers, its a fact.But i read somwhere (and it wasnt Hello) that by 2050 the technology from The Matrix (no explanatio needed) will be abroadly available.

BTW the most expensive computer ive bougth was about 800E = 850$ approx...