Annoying multiplayer grrrrrrrrr.

[danimal]

I like total war.
I like it a lot.
I have been playing ever since the first demo came out for STW on the cover of PC Pro ages ago.
I have only ever played it on expert and so I fancy myself at it quite alot.
So then I thought I would spread my wings and hurt lots of people in multi player.
FRUSTRATION SETS IN.
Now, in a war when you have an army of lets say 10,000 men, their position is pretty obvious, save for ambushing, so why do the so called and self proclaimed 'expert' players on multioplayer games insist on starting their armies a gnat's farting distance away from your flanks.
No preperation for strategies or formations, no use of territory and landscapes, just horsemen right on top of you and bang your dead.
TRULY RUBBISH
ABSOLUTE UTTER GRANNY EXCREMENT
Their should be a minimum distance and I don't think I am being too over the top when saying it should be at least a mile. Not a foot. A mile.

[King Edward]

Just Position your army towards the back of your deployment area then you wont have cav on your flank as soon as the battle starts (Bit Tricky sometimes in a 4v4).

I do see your point about a minimum distance being a goosd idea though

[danimal]

you can't position towards the back if your attacking though.
you are forced by the default formations to have your army nearer the front.
Experienced players know this and take the advantage fro mthe attacker by moving their armies in close but with complete control over positioning. I am sure this is not what creative had in mind when they launched the multiplayer battles and it takes the realism out of the game completely.
START OF A NEW CAMPAIGN. MINIMUM DISTANCES BETWEEN ARMIES ON MULTIPLAYER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[CherryDanish]

Well, there is a cheesy way around this, although I have never tried multiplayer. In single player you bring artillery OR siege engines (for use in this tactic, use base ballistas), the engine lets you place the siege engines first, then you sub in the units you want through the reinforcements and they take the same field position as the ballista (or whatever). Obviously set up will take longer and you might have to play around with the formation button as the formations are pretty unintuitive, but at least you get position. I gave up using this feature in single player as it takes some of the challenge out beating up on the AI (granted, sometimes it's choice of positioning suprises me). Although I have used it on a couple bridge battles when the race for who crosses first sometimes changes a battle of attrition into one of skill and chance.

[Essex_Cohort]

well, personaly i only played the single player for about a total of 2 hours, and thats when i bought the game, i got very bored *yawn*. I prefer the Military side of the game(battles), and as such, more so the online battles. Each to their own i suppose.

I think the reason you are so frustrated, is that you have been playing battles against AI, that have set perameters. But when online, there is always more chance of an un-predcitable event happening. I.e the enemy form ontop of you at the start(suprise attack), or our opponents pick all cavalry and run you over. Still, you do have plenty of time to deploy

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Um...in multiplayer you dont' have to use the formations, you can position all of your units manually on both offense and defense.

[CBR]

The deployment zones in MP are not the best and there is a risk that some armies start right in front of each other.

The left forward position (in a 4v4) can also be tricky for newbies as they might end up being deployed way too forward and isolated, or sideways with an open flank towards the enemy.

We can only hope that Rome: Total War will bring some changes to deployment zones. At least the maps are bigger and there is more limited information from the radar and mouseover of enemy units. Maybe we can have more ambushing and maneuvering before the actual battle.

Oh and welcome to the Org danimal You can already post in the MP forums as they are open to all, incl junior patrons.


CBR

[danimal]

cheers for that