Expansion Feature Wsihlist

[Mikeus Caesar]

you can build whole armies from elites.

A good idea would be to allow a limit to the amount of elite units you can have in an army. e.g. a limit of 4 elites to an army.

Eric Hurley, the Headhurler as the official mascot

Eric!!! We want eric!!! Wooh!!!

[screwtype]

That's true, I'm pretty sure that each man has his own exp.

The problem with this idea is that men are still ordered as a unit. So take an example: there's a unit of 80 hastati. 40 run away during a fight. However, the general rallies the 40 men. Now you have a a group of 40 men still fighting, and 40 men far away who just got rallied. This could cause some weird pathing issues, also, when an enemy attempts to charge a unit, which 'group' does it go for, and what does it do when it defeats one 'group' etc etc.

Actually, if you look at the way units get strung out now, this is already happening to a degree. It appears that the AI will more or less charge toward whoever is holding the unit banner. So I'm not sure pathfinding would necessarily be an issue.

However, I can't see the point of having individual morale. It's the herd instinct. When those around you start to break and run, it's obviously going to make you feel that you should be doing the same. And you insitinctively realize that that when the guys next to you start to run, the odds against your own survival are about to increase exponentially. So breaking as a unit just makes better sense to me.

[fret]

"Auto-pilot battles" (not auto-resolve ones)

Could be fun to watch AI vs AI

Excellent idea!! Probably very easy to implement as well.

You can do this already to a certain extent. Take two armies into a battle, have one of them AI controlled, and just sit back and watch the action.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Take two armies into a battle, have one of them AI controlled, and just sit back and watch the action.

That works, but it's not perfect. I find that without a bit of guidance, most armies that are yours which you leave to fight for themselves end up routing within a minute or so. Btw, can we get this stickied please? It could be a rather interesting opposite to the Bugs sticky.

[Colovion]

It would be nice if line-of-sight could be handled better. As it is missile units fire at targets they cannot see, ignoring walls, buildings and hill crests like they have x-ray vision. I expect this would make for a more complex shooting algorithm that would go beyond a simple range check. Hence not a likely improvement. But hey, this is a wish list, right?

How was it handled in MTW? Seemed fine then...

[Quietus]

I fear another "mini-campaign" expansion pack coming Why not just extend the map and add more factions and provinces.

[Colovion]

I fear another "mini-campaign" expansion pack coming Why not just extend the map and add more factions and provinces.

because that's what the EB mod is doing

[Khorak]

The ability to take personal command during a rebellion. Not 'thrown out city, army appears in city'. That's rubbish, and seriously pisses me off. Rebellions do not happen like this.

You should be taken to a battle in the city, the bulk of your forces outside the barracks and some of them on the plaza having come out of the governors building. Then you hold back the city or lose it, with the size of the rebellion and its composition dependant on the size of the city itself. Because frankly, I'm also tired of a town producing more rebels than it has total population.

And one last idea....100% happiness in a city no matter what you, if your garrison equals or outnumbers the total population. That's total martial law. When you've got a trained legionnaire with two pila and a gladius for every single man, woman and child in the place....no-ones going to be rebelling. Obviously though, peasants won't count towards this. Sorry bub, you gotta pay to jackboot people into the floor.

[Mikeus Caesar]

You should be taken to a battle in the city, the bulk of your forces outside the barracks and some of them on the plaza having come out of the governors building. Then you hold back the city or lose it, with the size of the rebellion and its composition dependant on the size of the city itself. Because frankly, I'm also tired of a town producing more rebels than it has total population

That's a good idea. Defending the main governement buildings against the unruly masses. And as for the amount of rebels being in proportion with the population, i totally agree. Since when was a small 400 people village able to raise an army of 1600 men? Out of their own population too?

[William Amos]

A real long shot here but

The option t watch OTHER factions fight their battles. Wheneer a battle happens on the map it "pops up" in a screen and you can have the option of watching the battle unfold or just skip it.

Say your a roman faction and the Egyptians and Selucids fight a major battle. you get to sit and watch and see how it plays out.

Also naval battles actually battling.

The ability to TRAIN some traits for your leaders. Say sending your Heir to a Roman School to gain math or other skills or to a roman war college (or whatever its called) to gain military traits. One way to overcome random traits being assigned.

Please fix the damn speed.

Spoils of war. the ability to plunder the defeated and gain either denarii or their armor and weapons and equipt your troops.

Gladiatior games. Have the ablity to sponsor gladiator games in which you can have either solo gladiator battles (sort of like a chapion general vs another champion) or massive battles with either dogs, or lions or chariot races or scores of battles. Winner of these battles gets denarii.
(Another Long shot)

[_Aetius_]

I think that there should be more participation in battles from allies, as historically the roman empire often fought armies with there legions but had numerous barbarian tribes come to the battle to aid them or there enemies, the battle of Chalons is a perfect example, Rome v the Huns but it had thousands of ostrogoths, gepids, visigoths, and burgundians and many more.

I find it annoying when im allied with another nation and my empire is being invaded left right and centre by someone and my ally just sits there instead of coming to my aid, unless its like right on their doorstep. Whats the point in an alliance if allies dont help each other in war? all the ally needs to do is get an army put them on a few ships and send them to the field.

There is the attack faction option in diplomacy but the times ive done it my allies have still done nothing, ive many times sent armies without requests to allied territory to help fight off invaders, the AI should do it to.

Also shouldnt barbarian hordes be larger? I mean the romans wouldnt have had any trouble conquering all of the barbarians if they like in RTW popped up with tiny armies in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps like my first suggestion abit like mercenaries you could call for local tribes to ally with you against the enemy your marching to face and tribes of barbarians or rebels join your cause for denarii or integration into the legions or what not.

[Wishazu]

i know this is probably the longest shot of all but i would like some kind of multiplayer campaign. but maybe a shortened campaign or limited human players, i.e limit the campaign to 4 humans etc. this would be a huge hit with small groups of friends and clans etc. but i think this is doomed to only ever be a dream. i could push it even further to some sort of persistant online game MMORTSG - Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy Game.

[Colovion]

A real long shot here but

The option t watch OTHER factions fight their battles. Wheneer a battle happens on the map it "pops up" in a screen and you can have the option of watching the battle unfold or just skip it.

Say your a roman faction and the Egyptians and Selucids fight a major battle. you get to sit and watch and see how it plays out.

Also naval battles actually battling.

The ability to TRAIN some traits for your leaders. Say sending your Heir to a Roman School to gain math or other skills or to a roman war college (or whatever its called) to gain military traits. One way to overcome random traits being assigned.

Please fix the damn speed.

Spoils of war. the ability to plunder the defeated and gain either denarii or their armor and weapons and equipt your troops.

Gladiatior games. Have the ablity to sponsor gladiator games in which you can have either solo gladiator battles (sort of like a chapion general vs another champion) or massive battles with either dogs, or lions or chariot races or scores of battles. Winner of these battles gets denarii.
(Another Long shot)

Some good ideas there.

[Colovion]

Also shouldnt barbarian hordes be larger? I mean the romans wouldnt have had any trouble conquering all of the barbarians if they like in RTW popped up with tiny armies in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps like my first suggestion abit like mercenaries you could call for local tribes to ally with you against the enemy your marching to face and tribes of barbarians or rebels join your cause for denarii or integration into the legions or what not.

The barbarian horde is a piece of propegana, it's not real... the game just has a Rome/Hellenes bias so that all of the other factions are heavily weakened. The EB mod is fixing that problem.

[Mikeus Caesar]

some kind of multiplayer campaign

That would be good. Me and a friend have always dreamed of being able to do that. We would be allied, until we'd both conquered half the world, then we'd assemble all our troops in one place for the battle to end all battles, as tens of thousands of men pour onto the screen

[Oaty]

Capital building in your capital making it costly to move your capital but has 1 huge bonus and maybe more. Allows you to train any unit in the tech tree available to you. Some kind of penalty though maybe 4 years to train unit units from it and if it takes 2 years then 8. This allows units such as triarii to be trained, as it is now it's nearly worthless to train them. This would be seperate from regular city recruiting so you still could recruit regular units. Also allow 2 recruiting slots, so you can retrain those elite units.

If you move your capital it takes 10 years or so to rebuild the capital building. So no moving your capital every turn isn't such a good option anymore.

An elite and cavalry population This would help reduce an overabundance of elite troops from the capital building.. An easy way about this is if you have 10000 troops and the elite rate is 5 percent, then you can have up to 500 elite troops and once you are at 500 or more you cannot train new elites until you lose some or your regular army gets bigger. There should be a minimum your allowed to have not to hurt the small factions and when there on there knees. Same with cavalry population, with Romans having one of the lowest populations while the eastern gets a higher population.

Forts/ bridges overpowered, Lay siege to a bridge. you get build points to ferry troops across the river. So you can have half your army on both sides either forcing the human to withdraw or fight a fair battle and on the rare occasion making the A.I. fight a fair battle.. Forts, ability to bypass a fort that blocks the path of course costing movement points. The bigger the fort garrison the more movement points it reduces.

garrison based on upkeep cost instead of numbers. It's lame having 20 peasants in a huge city. This would also allow the A.I. to get public order bonus while stocking it with good troops. Oh no the A.I. with a stonewalled city effectively garrisoned.

Citadels for large and huge cities.

Edit: forgot to add A.I. sallies, siege equipment should be deployed behind your lines and unequipped. Kills multiple exploits and 2 annoyances. The exploits are it creates an obstacle course for the A.I. and can allow your frontline to have it's flanks protected by siege equipment. You can also keep a tower/ram equipped to lure in A.I. arrows as long as you can afford to lose it. It also allows your men far away from the gate to scale the walls most likely unopposed calling off the sally trapping them inside getting shot up. ! minor annoyance is having to drop it all and lining up your troops the big annoyance is the CTD(1.2 patch) that can occur if you are fighting on top of ladders.

[Mikeus Caesar]

An elite and cavalry population This would help reduce an overabundance of elite troops from the capital building.. An easy way about this is if you have 10000 troops and the elite rate is 5 percent, then you can have up to 500 elite troops and once you are at 500 or more you cannot train new elites until you lose some or your regular army gets bigger.

Same with cavalry population, with Romans having one of the lowest populations while the eastern gets a higher population.

Precisely what i think. It would stop all the nooblets getting their elite armies and then trampling all over the AI, then coming here and saying how well they owned their enemy. Personally, i have a maximum of 4 elites and 4 cav to an army. Then i have a maximum of 8 regular infantry and then 4 ranged units. The ranged units can be either archers or siege weapons or both.

the A.I. with a stonewalled city effectively garrisoned.

If only. Another thing i would like is to see the AI have some order to their armies, rather than just recruiting anything and sticking it in an army.

[Quietus]

because that's what the EB mod is doing

Hmm...Do you mean a new map or the current map with a physical extension? Sounds good either way.

Here's more:

Riot solution - instead of just kicking out the occupiers, give them an option to fight inside the city square. The player deploys inside the city square while the rioters try to take it from the periphery.

If the rioters rout en masse and couldn't be captured then they become rebels camped just outside the city in the campaign map.

[aw89]

i agree, but when a unit of hastatii gets to x chevrons it can be uppgraded to principes at a cost in a city that can build them. and some system to the reforms aswell.

edit: the elite system i mean here.

[jerby]

naval strategy wasn't that har though. just a bunch of ramming, schooting and entering, controlling it woudl be just like controllig 15 units of scatterred HA with skirmish turned of against a big enemy.

recruiting should be redone, RTR did ZOR. but here's my idea:
when you are greek, and you take a gaul city, yopu shoudl be able to recruit gaullians until you build your own barracks.
imagine: rome counqers sparta and gets to recruit spartan hoplites. ho much fun would that be? you could have a great mix of units.

[Claudius the God]

we already have five levels of government based on popultion.

i want to see, after imperial palace, not necessarily another governmental stage, but the ability to build and upgrade villa's in the countryside (one villa in that settlement, upgrade to 2,3,4,5) based on the population of that region as a whole (not just the city)

this i'm basing on that in some cities during the first centuries AD had hundreds of thousands (or even more than a million) inhabitants.


and i want to see 2 expansion sets, one for Alexander the Great (and other events preceeding RTW), and the rise of the Roman Empire until the great Germanic invasions destroyed the Western Roman Empire...

[bobderfisch]

Some people mentioned having a special layout for Rome; I'd like for all the cities to have a special layout, and I don't think it'd be that hard. It could be sort of "modular." Currently, all the buildings have a "slot" they go into at each level of city size. When the city size is upgraded, the slots change, and, for example, the barracks might get moved across the city (this is the real reason it takes years to upgrade city size - dismantling and moving buildings!).

I think city construction could be done "agglutinatively," ie, if you build a trader early on, it's near the center of the city, even after an upgrade, as are its derivatives, like forums or markets. Each building could have a preset arrangement of streets around it, which changed as the building was upgraded.

Thus, if your buildings were positioned in a city based on the order they were constructed, and each level of building "ordered" the city around it in a certain way, then each city you encounter in a game would be different.

Also, it'd be nice if there were a bit of interplay between different cultures in cities, since now, Coliseums and such don't even show up in occupied barbarian cities until you upgrade and they become Roman.

Really, though, I'd like city combat to be more unique. Perhaps town watch could have enhanced stats, or at least morale, in the city. I also like the idea some else mentioned of putting guys in buildings. Granted, all this would make city combat even more anachronistic, but hey...it'd be fun.

[a_ver_est]

I whish buildings out of walls can be select as target in the strategic map.

So mines, farms, ports, ... could be burned by troops

[Mikeus Caesar]

Last two posts, very good ideas. Especially the one about how to make every city different.

[jerby]

-have a (round) pike-box for greek hoplites: essecpially spartans. it will be like an testudo, but round and pikes sticking out everywhere. it will make phalanxes stronger when isolated.
-create war drumms, like the drum of chaerona. it will be round 20k and have a moral impact all over the battle map: pos. on own, neg.on enemy. it will be extremely slow on campaign, about 0.7x artillery.
-let people get knocked of their horse/chariot fighting allong on foot. or make elephants rampage without anyone on top! horses running amok.
-make sarmatian horses armoured, not likecataphracts but a plate on the head and make it look mean.
-give generals/captains on foot a beautifull shield. the left arm is now just hanging there.
-change levy pikemen, or phalanx pikemen to :pezetairoi.
-give greek cities companoin cav. it's kinda weird that GREEK royal cav is not available for greeks.
-keep cretan archers as merc. but also give them to greeks with siege engineer.
-give a nice ( scripted) mini campaign of alexander. scripting all enemy army's and maybe, just maybe even give them tactics! ( sarcasm alert)( not trying to start new topic but hé)
it will be like an rpg or something.

[Khorak]

Get basic unit interaction right. I see units of cavalry mashing themselves into enemy formations, all shoving each other forward in their eagerness to get to the front, and I wonder who the hell thought this makes any kind of damn sense at all. Who sat down, watched a tight packed formation of soldiers in a phalanx formation get shoved back into a thin crescent moon shape and thought 'bingo'. I want that person shot in the face, and replaced with someone who thinks that a deep, close formation should not be spread open so easily. Who thinks that, in fact, a stoic line of Roman Legionnaires braced for impact or a phalanx will only break up if they all start dying.

[jerby]

Get basic unit interaction right. I see units of cavalry mashing themselves into enemy formations, all shoving each other forward in their eagerness to get to the front, and I wonder who the hell thought this makes any kind of damn sense at all. Who sat down, watched a tight packed formation of soldiers in a phalanx formation get shoved back into a thin crescent moon shape and thought 'bingo'. I want that person shot in the face, and replaced with someone who thinks that a deep, close formation should not be spread open so easily. Who thinks that, in fact, a stoic line of Roman Legionnaires braced for impact or a phalanx will only break up if they all start dying.

completely true.
but that will probably need big changes on the enige. not easily done for a quick patch.
but how do you propose to do it? didn't the romans brace? it seems logical they did, it's a natural reflex to put your shield and weapon in front of you.

maybe their should be a trampeling action, at least 10 men dying by the mass of the horse. but then again. horses shouldn't be able to beat a phalanx up front, wich they now sometimes do.

what also seems logical is a phalanx braceing for impact-> putting his spear in to the ground(but-pike) and aim it at the charge. but that will be a pretty much instant pike box and unbalance the game.

another suggestion: make barbarians auto. warcry during charge. it's micro managing each unit now, micromanaging somethign they would automatically do when charging.

[Khorak]

Yes, I don't doubt they probably would need big changes in the engine. Which is a shame, as usual MTW was vastly superior in that regard. When men charged and hit an enemy they either killed him and kept charging into the next man or failed to kill him and stopped to do battle. You simply wouldn't have one unit mashing another unit back like RTW because it simply didn't work like that. A cavalry charge would murder the first line or two and then be stopped by the sheer number of men. In RTW this whole 'mass' thing they've got and the fact that you can push one man into the man behind him and on and on to move the whole unit, screws it all up mightily.

Hell, the whole point of the phalanx was that there was so many men behind it. You just couldn't push the front row back or break the formation because all the men behind aren't moving for anything.

[jerby]

so men should be able to get trampeled...
do you might happen to know how phalanxes react to flanking from the rear? it seems to me that a (short piked) hoplite would have the common sence, training and reaction time to stick hsi spear in the ground and brace for it..

about my pikebox, I realised that it is currently not possible to have to special moves.. so: make primaire fire phalanx, and sec. fire loose. so you click HOW you want to attack with the ALT-key.
but then moving without attacking will have flaws. so you could
a: make prim. and alt. walking
or b: make phalanxes auto. abort formation when told to run.
when all teh above can has been done the special ability will be pikebox. would be nix if it looked like an hedge-hog or something.

[BeeSting]

4. Better AI

Better AI, and that's all I ask.

As long as the AI could do its best to keep formation not opening up gaps all over the line, skirmish before engagement, and the battle turns into phases... I would be a happy man.

Also on the campaign level, I would like to see more options and features:

1. A numerical indication of your favor with a particular nation.
2. More notable personalities for different factions.
3. A diplomatic option to have a faction stop attacking one of your allies. Where was Rome when Saguntum was under siege by Hannibal? Did they not first send envoys to Carthage?
4. A hegemon, which more than likely would be a human player, seems to be singled out by weak nations, forcing a player to their senseless elimination. As it seems the AI policies are extremely suicidal.

The potential for this game is great with its battle engine and awesome graphics. The level of sophistication of battle rules is realistic and yet the AI falls so short of expectations. The same could be said about the overall single player aspect of this game, it is too crude and limiting for the kind of costumers who were initially attracted by the depth of its battle engine. I’m sure they expect no less depth on the diplomatic and economic aspects of the game.

The idea is there.... but the pieces are far from being together even after the third series of its development.