Suggestions for the new series of time commanders?

[bones58]

I heard there is a new series in the making for time commanders if so what improvments need to be made?.Personaly i think the set is crap it looks like a mini warehouse its even got boxes in it lol

[Kommodus]

I think the show would greatly improve if they did the following things:

1. Find better teams. I realize they don't want to bring in people who are major military history & tactics buffs as this would make the battles too easy, but they should also steer clear of people who have no ancient military knowledge whatsoever, as this leads to episodes containing nothing but embarassing rookie mistakes. They should try to find mostly people that are somewhere in between, with just a few on both extremes. After all, we've seen teams get completely thrashed due to incompentence; would it really be so terrible to see a team of TW veterans execute a brilliant plan like clockwork and turn the tables on the enemy?

2. Stop Eddie Mair from harassing the teams while they try to plan and fight battles. The battles may seem easy enough to us, but for non-TW veterans, they're quite difficult enough as it is without someone rushing them to develop a plan and then heckling them as they execute it. He could even give a few helpful hints without throwing off the balance too much (for example, "the testudo formation is for repelling missiles, not melee combat...").

3. Give a more comprehensive view of the battlefield action, including more accurate commentary. Sometimes the battlefield views they give don't quite tell the whole story, and the commentary is sometimes inaccurate. This seems to be an easy problem to fix.

[bones58]

i have to agree with you totally.Eddie mair is just annoying when he annoys teams and doesnt help rookies when trying to get there head round the battle.

[Spino]

Make it a team on team affair instead of the current team vs. scripted AI approach. More expensive but far more exciting and it would also mean there are twice as many idiots to make fun of!

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Keep Eddie mair and lets him harass the teams because most often they deserve to have a bit of verbal


Looking forward to the medieval battles hinted by Nusbacher for the new series, such as stamford Bridge and hastings amongst many others

[Epistolary Richard]

1) I'd agree with the team vs team approach, but the trouble would be that as both sides would be unsure of their footing, they'd both go on the defensive. You need one controlled side in order to get things moving.

2) The teams need to get a better briefing on how to use their units. It can be amusing (like with the testudo example, notice they didn't mention that special ability in subsequent games), but more often than not it's frustrating when you see their plan going to ruin because their obsessing about getting their one archer unit a clear LOS because they don't know they can fire over the heads of their own troops. They need to be briefed better on ancient warfare as well, their understanding tends to be based on what they've picked up of medieval warfare and they treat their cavalry like C14th fully armoured knights and their archers like English longbowmen.

3) I was disappointed by the post-game "What really happened..." why do we have to settle for just block-bashing when there's a bloody great graphics engine going begging. Keep the experts moving the blocks, fine, but reconstruct the crucial scenes in the RTW engine as well so we can cut in between the two.

4) A bit more effort could be made in making the generals look more individual, less generic.

5) Finally, how about a comedy episode full of examples of things like the phalanx shuffle, a town square firing squad and suicidal red-line skirmishers? I'd love to get the reactions of the historians on those...

Or how about a team of RTW veterans? We can watch them eat their own egos as their army goes down in flames as both generals insist on micro-managing to their own battleplans and the lieutenants try to wrest the control of the keyboards away from the controllers because they think they can do it better.

[Hambut_bulge]

According to www.radiotimes.co.uk the new series starts on Sunday 16th January, BBC 2 at 7:15pm.

Military strategy game in which contestants recreate historical battles, presented by Richard Hammond. A team of vicars take on the might of the Germanic army in the battle of Teutoberg Forest in the year 9AD.

Eddie Mair's gone then...

[rebelscum]

1. Make the program longer so we can see where they are messing up. I think at least half of it is cut, well the bits where the gereral bursts out crying anyway.
2. Replace those university boffins with people who don't nyarf every time someone does something historically innacurate. Oooo hannibal wouldn't have done that, he would have nyarf nyarf nyarf.
3. That dick of presenter needs to go, I mean he really needs to GO!!
4. Indeed have some people on who 'do' actually have some knowledge of battle tactics and strategy. Please no more teams of management consultants!

There we go!