Realism vs playability

[Oaty]

Well there may be 2 big game balances thrown in, Spartacus and Hannibal. Now hopefully in wo'nt be as predictable as the Mongols are in MTW. Hopefully there will be a 50 year timeframe that they show up and would make it near suicide to camp out for them. Also they could have spartucus pop up at a random location so there would be no way to camp out waiting for him.

Giving them a random timeframe in a way is more historically accurate in a way. Because the Europeans were'nt camping out waiting for the Mongols it was more of oh crapola what do we do. So if they make there appearances random we can not be fully prepared for them.

1 thing that is definately not historically accurate and not to many have really mentioned is unit sizes. Do a custom battle in MTW with small unit sizes, then do 1 on huge unit size. With the huge unit size you will notice a big difference in maneuverability. Now if we could just have units with an average size of 1000 it would represent battles much better with 1 being maneuverabilty and 2 those 1000 men will last a lot longer to allow you to do a major flanking manuever.

Well I do'nt know much about the sacred band but as I wrote this I came to the conclusion that the reason there were always 300 men in it (no more no less) was it gave them enough men to be an effective unit but not too many to allow them to manuever much better than there regular phalanx units. A little help would be appreciated here to either contradict my conclusion or to further emphisize at what I wrote.

I play with huge units in single player and found you are much better off not giveing the center of your line any orders unless they all are marching in formation. This reduces the effect that every other unit is flanking another unit (both the A.I.'s and mine) and makes it more of a true battle where there is a line and then misaligned units on the flanks doing the job of trying to break the flank of the enemy.

Well just the basics of the game where the units are small makes the game arcade style from the beginning IMO.

The only problem with 1000 or even 5000 man units or bigger and all 70,000 (graphics permitting) men on the battlefield is how long would the battle last. theres pros and cons to this. I figured I'll start a new topic for this but 1 big pro is you would not have to wait for reinforcements and the morale penalty for being flanked could be way higher (as most units were next to another unit and did not turn giving the enemy onle a few units to hit on there flank). This would emphasize the need to protect your flanks while trying to flank down on the enemy rather than decimating 1 unit at a time

[HicRic]

With units that big, you'd be looking at an absurdly large battlefield, or a very zoomed-out view, both removing the Total War "feel". Not to mention battles would be more strategic and less tactical. (Could you hide a unit of 1000 in a forest for an ambush?)

[Oaty]

With units that big, you'd be looking at an absurdly large battlefield, or a very zoomed-out view, both removing the Total War "feel". Not to mention battles would be more strategic and less tactical. (Could you hide a unit of 1000 in a forest for an ambush?)

Heres a little hindsight. Decisive battles and Time commanders. Of course the option for smaller units should be there if you want battles over quicky.

Also Hannibal hid his whole army for an ambush against the Roman Army. So I hope that clears up any questions you have.

The battlefields are already big and I have a feeling they can already and easily support this

As far as feel of the game, theres a historical feel, the "totalwar feel" and then theres the feel like your actually there, like Shogun was able to with there short cinematics and great music(at least for me)

[GeWee]

For me this "Total War feel" would be only enhanced by having a greater number of soldiers on the screen. I say the more realistic the better.
The Total War series is a great breakthrough for gaming in terms of epic battles but compared to real battles fought in ancient times the battles in the TW games still look like minor skirmishes.

My "Total War feel" would be even more enhanced if the next TW game wasn't just a RTS game. Imagine if you could jump inside your general or any of your soldiers on the battlefield and fight in FPS mode. Be Alexander himself charging in front of the cavalry issuing orders through a menu system or by having given orders to your 'sub-generals' before the battle. That would indeed be Total War!

[andrewt]

They could easily balance the relative strength of the units by how much they cost in denarii. Unit cost is abstract and is needed for gameplay purposes but didn't exist in real life like how it exists in games. CA could easily use them to balance and at the same time keep the relative strengths of the units toward each other as realistic as possible. They could keep the legions as overpowering as they were in real life. You just can't have as much of them as you could other weaker units using other factions.

In single player, however, the factions don't really need to be balanced. Some historically powerful factions should start with more developed and richer provinces and have access to more resources.

[Nelson]

For me this "Total War feel" would be only enhanced by having a greater number of soldiers on the screen. I say the more realistic the better.
The Total War series is a great breakthrough for gaming in terms of epic battles but compared to real battles fought in ancient times the battles in the TW games still look like minor skirmishes.

Amen!

Armies were big ponderous things. So let's make them bigger and more ponderous.

The more men TW can have on the field, the better. It would be easier to outnumber someone all at once rather than possibly having the larger force but be still being outnumbered yourself due to the 20 unit limit and the difference in unit sizes. Once both armies can field the limit you can never really experience a 2 or 3 to 1 advantage or deficit.