Realism vs playability

[Tamur]

hi all,

I know I'm hitting a hot topic here, and this may have been covered in depth already, but...

I notice a lot of people telling Creative Assembly, "Keep it historically accurate."

I also notice a lot of people saying, "Don't overpower the Romans."

It seems that, when we're talking about the time period (250 BC - 15 AD) that these two are a contradiction. The Romans were beatable, certainly, but they basically mowed over everything in their path and sowed salt on top of the ones they REALLY didn't like.

I'm not trying to get on anyone's bad side here, just wondering:

What techniques can a game designer use besides historical inaccuracy to balance gameplay?

Tamur
Si vales, valeo.

[Sjakihata]

They can use head hurlerz

[CBR]

One big thing they did for RTW was to divide the Romans into 3 playable factions that in the end will compete for the ultimate goal of becoming emperor.

That is a nice way of simulating the different factions of Rome that eventually destroyed the republic.

As I understand it RTW is going away from the old (and simple) gameplay of just conquering the whole map, By adding more diplomacy and other (more limited) goals the gameplay is different and IMO better.. and one could say even more historical accurate.


CBR

[mfberg]

What techniques can a game designer use besides historical inaccuracy to balance gameplay?

Supply lines, homesickness, desertion, (unit morale off the battlefield), unit upkeep costs, famine, illness, drought, and of course rebellions and assassination.

mfberg

[Steppe Merc]

Balance? Frankly, I'd just rather them respect the other factions rather than make them stronger. Give the Gauls there unique units, give the Germans theirs, and the Celts theres. Don't smush them all together. Frankly, I don't care to much about balancing, and would rather have the game that respects all the factions and has historical accuracies than a game that has all the factions equal (since, as you pointed out, they weren't).

[The Wizard]

Ah, but Steppe Merc, that is the problem with games. Who will buy RTW, when any other faction than the Romans they play will get totally annihalated by the Romans, over and over again?

Gameplay and the correct balancing are extremely important part of game development. That is the line CA must walk over after they chose to make a historical game.

It must be said, however, that they chose quite a good starting date for the game - 270 BC. At that time, every faction that will be playable in the game had about equal chances to come out as sole master of the Mediterranean and beyond. A reason one could think up for CA having only one single starting date would be that any other starting date would have the Romans in a grossly overpowered position. In 270 BC, they had just made themselves master of all of Italy and were but an emerging western Meditteranean power.



~Wiz

[Steppe Merc]

Mabye I have a different deffinition of balancing. In my oponion, a normal game has factions, some harder, some easier, but all can win. But balancing ends up giving one of the harder factions an easier win. After seeing your agrument, I agree with you Wiz, because I strongly dislike the Romans and don't want them to ever win (I can't stand them). But I just wish they had a more historical and less... kiddie. But it seems that the Romans got way more time spent on them on the other factions. The rest kind of just get pushed off to the side, and given idiotic units.

[Lonewarrior]

One big thing they did for RTW was to divide the Romans into 3 playable factions that in the end will compete for the ultimate goal of becoming emperor.

That is a nice way of simulating the different factions of Rome that eventually destroyed the republic.

As I understand it RTW is going away from the old (and simple) gameplay of just conquering the whole map, By adding more diplomacy and other (more limited) goals the gameplay is different and IMO better.. and one could say even more historical accurate.


CBR

One word, NICE

[Orda Khan]

I understand how Steppe Merc feels and it definitely appears to be going the way of Romans plus rabble and that can't be good IMO. I've seen the argument for Mongol supremacy being the fact they were blessed with good generals while other countries possessed none. Does the same not apply to the Romans? They were certainly beatable and this should be the case with the game. I appreciate what CBR says about a 3 way race between Roman factions for overall rule and that it's no longer a case of conquering each province but will fighting the ' barbarians ' just deteriorate to slapping an unruly mob?

SP is surely a case of enactment and this being the case we should be able to alter the course of history

As for balance, it is very important indeed, don't forget there is a MP side to the game also. I don't want to see another case of the MTW/VI cav/sword armies

.....Orda

[CBR]

RTW will have nearly 600 turns from start to finish and AFAIK you can continue to play after 14 AD, so I dont think its gonna be easy to conquer all the barbarians.


CBR

[Colovion]

just because of the turn number doesn't mean that it'll take you that long

I mean I've yet to see gunpowder when starting from the beginning of MTW and that's playing conservatively

[Nelson]

The factions can be strategically balanced AND historically accurate. The Romans had a very hard time building their empire. They didn't simply march around and accept surrenders. Varro, Crassus, and Varus would all disagree with the notion that the world was theirs for the taking. Even winners like Scipio and Caesar would admit that outcomes were often close run things.

The fact is we have no reason to believe as yet that it will be easier to win with the Roman factions than with any other.

[Steppe Merc]

I agree with that that is how it should be. But look at the evidence. The Romans get more units, more attention, and you have to start out playing as them. Now look at the rest of the faction. They've been butchered to a mockery, most aren't even playable, and are called barbarians.

[Colovion]

I agree with that that is how it should be. But look at the evidence. The Romans get more units, more attention, and you have to start out playing as them. Now look at the rest of the faction. They've been butchered to a mockery, most aren't even playable, and are called barbarians.

let us remember the episode of Time Commanders as well. The one with the barbarians severly outnumbering the Romans and they had nothing to throw at them, the romans just formed up and waited for the Barb's charge - decimating them when they did. Sure the Romans had some casualties but unless the valour had been tweaked or something that fight was rather telling of the Roman's strengths.

[Blodrast]

speaking of overpowered romans, ResRomanae's advice of the day suggests that the Romans' cavalry leaves much to be desired. So they do have their weak points, therefore, don't be too pessimistic about it

[CBR]

Well even if we assume that the Roman factions are the only factions that are balanced to play so what? In Shogun you only had one culture to play with and enemies where of the same culture.

Lots of people have complained about how MTW didnt have the same detail/feel as STW had. RTW looks like it will have the same feel as STW but now comes with a lot of other factions to fight on a much bigger map than STW.

If I disliked Japanese culture and wanted to play the Portuguese I would have been out of luck by buying STW. But from what I see in some posts, some people hate the Romans and want to kill them (but Im sure some of the other factions will be strong enough to do that) in a game called Rome: Total War.

We just cant expect the same level of detail for all factions compared to how the Romans will be.

In STW Multiplayer lots of players and clans took Japanese names and some became interested in the culture and language but I guess Latin isnt in these days..


CBR

[Blodrast]

aww, come on, CBR, don't be sad !
I'm sure _most_ of the people on these board will thoroughly enjoy RTW, and even for those who don't (at least in the beginning) I'm sure there will be mods to satisfy even the most demanding guys/girls
I'm sure it's gonna be huge fun, and I can't wait for the freaking demo to come out (even though I'm swamped with work)
So cheer up and enjoy the chills of anticipation, 'cause is coming early this year, even in Denmark

[CBR]

Oh dont worry Im not sad

I only bought MTW for the MP (finished a few campaigns but thats it) but RTW looks very good and Im actually looking forward to trying out the campaign..hell I have hyped myself up so much expecting that I will actually enjoy the campaign lol


CBR

[Scipio]

I think Nelson made a good point. The Romans didn't "walk" over the world, in many cases it was skating on thin ice for the Romans. Rome has had a huge amount of humiliating defeats; Cannae, Lake Tresimene, when the gallic sack of Rome for the first time are but a few... And also as Nelson said we have no evidence to say that Rome will be invincible. I don't think Rome will be over powered because historically, Rome didn't have a good cavalry and from MTW most mp players now the importance of a good cav and how devstating a proper flanking is.

[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.