Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
Shadar,
Blaming Activision for the 2 patch policy is misguided at best. CA could release a 'developer' patch, something commonly used in the industry, to address issues that the publisher didn't want to fund.
CA could step forward and fund a developer patch but they have moved on to other things (Spartan Warrior for console). The people left holding the bag are the customers who bought the game and are now stuck with a game ruining bug.
When you decide that servicing your core niche is no longer important, you might as well put a gun to your corporate temple. - Red Harvest -
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
I prefer Rome's campaign map. I just wish the AI knew how to use it properly.
The army speeds should be increased, but not too much. The logistics of moving a large force through possibly hostile territory would slow down the movement. Not sure how difficult it would be to program, but maybe add some stack size changes. The larger the stack, the slower it goes. And the larger the stack, the larger the visibility footprint, for both the stack and anyone searching for the stack.
Ship speed should be increased, but only if troop transport limitations are added.
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Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
Okay, but what about moving through friendly territory? Why should it take literally years of game time to move a couple of friendly provinces?Originally Posted by drone
Like I said you could make it so that you could move, say six provinces a turn provided none of the provinces you entered or left were occupied by an enemy unit. In other words, rapid movement only through territory that is exclusively held by or allied to you. You'd still have to move and deploy normally when entering an enemy occupied or enemy controlled province.
With a bit of tweaking, a system like this could add a lot of dynamism and suprise to the game. As things stand, it's like World War I trench warfare. Your units creep along at a snail's pace and it all becomes very predictable. There must surely be a better way to simulate warfare than this.
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
Maybe implement a zone system. "Friendly" territory would comprise of internal provinces, but once you near neutral/enemy territory, armies would need to worry about ambushes and scout more. Granted, you could ignore those and just take your chances.
It would also be nice if the movement was adjusted for the season/weather. Moving a army through snow and mud during the winter should be slower, even with roads.
Overall though, I like the map. Unfortunately, it presents the AI with too many options.
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If I werent playing games Id be killing small animals at a higher rate than I am now - SFTS
Si je n'étais pas jouer à des jeux que je serais mort de petits animaux à un taux plus élevé que je suis maintenant - Louis VI The Fat
"Why do you hate the extremely limited Spartan version of freedom?" - Lemur
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
That would be fine with me. And while we're at it, I'd prefer seasonal turns rather than biannual, as in Shogun.
I *want* to like the map, but since it's made the game less rather than more challenging, I can't like it.
Something needs to be done to revamp the campaign and make it more unpredictable and hard to beat. And I don't mean more frickin' rebel armies popping out of the woods
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
I think the new campaign map was a good idea - but sadly the AI is intrinsically stupid and really struggles to get to grips with it. All too often it has little armies moving around with little to no cohesion, whilst other armies invade and slaughter the confused critters. With massively improved AI behaviour, I'd probably prefer the new map to the old system, but really it's a draw in its current state.
I'd have preferred to see a compremise until the AI coders have learnt how to improve the AI. Basically the provence/Risk based map, but with 3-4 mini-provences within each one. You'd still have lots more places to move than before (and lots more battlemaps), but it would be more linear and the AI would benefit greatly. Plus you could implement some kind of power-control system, whereby the more of these mini-areas in the provence you control, the more tax/trade and loyalty the current owner of the actual city would lose. You could therefore strangle the lifeline of the provence without having to lay siege to the city until much later. Sieges are so dire and poorly implemented that this would be a good thing in my opinion.
Another thing I'm not convinced about with the current map system is the battlemaps. They are generated and based on the landscape in the current square, giving thousands of individual maps to fight on. Sadly 99% are featureless, being nothing more than open ground with a few thickets of forest here and there, some hills etc, but seldom are the maps in any way interesting. MTW maps seemed to be a little more thought out, and typically the defender could scout for a good defensive position beforehand. The maps in RTW seldom have any natural defensive positions or chokepoints which ultimately makes battles very similiar.
In conclusion: new campaign map style was a nice idea, but needs improving or removing.
Improving the TW Series one step at a time:
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Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
I was just musing for a moment. It occurs to me that the Romans appeared to have a maximum number of legions they could raise at any one time. (This is probably true of other ancient civs as well). At the same time, they eventually found that there was a more or less ideal size of empire, corresponding roughly to Western Europe and the Mediterranean coast.
Now suppose that there was a maximum cap on the number of units you could field at any one time. It would mean that the bigger your empire got, the harder it would be to both conquer more territory AND maintain control of the empire you've already conquered with a sufficient garrison.
This could be a good simple method of halting the "steamroller" effect and prolonging the campaign challenge. In fact with an army cap, the game could actually get *harder* as you expand instead of easier, which is how a good game should really operate.
You could probably link it up with your finance in some way as well. As your empire expands, and your garrisons get diluted, corruption increases, and you begin to get a decreasing amount from each province. This could prevent you accumulating too much gold. At the same time, the wealth stolen through corruption could be used to fuel more rebellion, as the local leaders who stole it become more powerful and self-confident in their own right. So then you would have a mechanism for faction re-emergence, a la MTW.
It could also throw other aspects of the game into greater relief, such as the importance of maintaining good governors in major cities. Heck, you could even have family members defecting and trying to knock you off and become Caesar themselves...
Last edited by screwtype; 04-06-2005 at 18:25.
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
Exactly, controlling your ever-expanding empire should become more of a chore as the game progresses. You really should find yourself stretched, up to a point anyway. Sadly you can pretty much leave large regions alone once you've wiped out the opposing neighbours, and then you're free to carry on streamrolling your way across the map until you either win, get bored and start-over, or give your entire empire away to someone else and attempt to take Rome using nothing more than a bunch of pitch-fork wielding peasants and a donkey.
By the way - what type of screw are you? Crosshead?
Improving the TW Series one step at a time:
BI Extra Hordes & Unlocked Factions Mod: Available here.
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
Well noone can be correct unless they see the actual contract. A patch is a modification to a game. In the contract it could state all modifications have to be approved by Activision first. So if that is the case CA can't release a developers patch. And now with CA changing affiliates/companies, makes a mess on who supports the patch.
Anyways back on topic:
IT'S A GAME
Armies have limited movement for game balance not for realism. I like the new campaign map much better. For 1 in MTW it was unbalanced I remember a game where Italy deployed 15000 troops early on in the game and abandoning every territory they had only leaving a few troops behind in each. Let me just say I lost the game due to total gayism
As far as movement in friendly territory well maybe a 10-20 percent movement bonus would be nice but nothing extensive
As far as diplomacy goes it works to a degree. If you want to keep good negotiations with a nation you have to have an occasion ceasefire, although ceasefires should have a lasting effect ESPECIALLY when tribute is involved and when the ceasefire is broken all tributes recieved should be cancelled.
What is the most buggering part of the campaign map is it's size but some modders are releasing mini campaigns
When a fox kills your chickens, do you kill the pigs for seeing what happened? No you go out and hunt the fox.
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Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
Exactly. What fun would it be if you could, as Simetrical says, march from Gaul to Parthia in a single turn. It wouldnt. There would be no tactical advantage for the defender. You would not be able to "pick your own fights" like you would in the campaign map. I'd rather have an unrealistic game that's fun than a game built solely on realism. If I wanted realism that wasnt fun, I'd buy the various civil war, napoleon, and (insert wargame genre here) games from those unknown developers.
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
What do you think of a possible not-so-real-time strategy on the campaign map? Say, 12 hours per second. Which makes it a year in about 12 minutes.
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
Actually, he said that moving around takes more time, and said that that was more realistic. I don't know about the former, never having played MTW, but the latter is certainly wrong if the former's right. And how on earth would you get from Venice to Sicily by land? That's a two-mile strait in between.
By the way, I entirely agree that in the context of six-month turns, realistic movement rates are inappropriate. RTR could up the movement rate dramatically, but we haven't for good reason. Quite simply, for movement of individual armies on a quasi-tactical scale, turn length should probably be no more than a week or two to allow for realistic response times. In six months, a real ruler would conduct entire campaigns, or even entire wars.
-Simetrical
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
I disagree. I believe the essence of Total War rests in the relationship between "action" and strategy.
Only in TW is the player afforded the oportunity to have the best of both without losing the heart of either.
What you, I, and the rest of the TW community dream of is the CA peak of effort; the day that these two concepts ("action" and strategy) can be synchronized perfectly as if each alone were worthy of a title, but the two together make an epic.
With Shogun, they succeeded.
With MTW, they succeeded.
With RTW, they succeeded.
We wait only for perfection.
But gentlemen please remember: Excellence requires the pursuit of perfection. The CA team aspires to perfection, fails, but leaves excellence in the wake for our pleasure.
It can only get better. My hat to CA.
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." -Einstein
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
Idid played MTW (a lot).
Well actually it's a two edged sword:
- Landings from Asia-Minor into Scandinavia is disabled.
- If you look at Greece in this game it's much much larger then it is in MTW (so more time).
- Roads save time. This is a real realistic thing. In Germany when play with the Germans movement of troops feels like forever.
Anyway. Time based it isn't that accurate. But hey; The game is not only about movement realism. Also other things are taken into account.
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
The camp map is a masterpiece, although I do feel that it´s to small. If the prov-limit is, what 230? provs, why the h_ll didn´t CA go for the full monty?
I just have to wait for EB I think.
Movement rates is set relative to other feats like build time etc. TW isn´t about Total Realism and the only thing to do to solve this is make the game run as EUII - in real time where you can increase or decrease the games running speed.
What I really miss is attrition and ransoms and that traits should only be based upon what the caracther actually does. Another annoying thing is formations during sieges. Marching down a narrow street with a selected group of units I actually have to place them all individually or order a column formation or they will just move in one big mass. The AI should march them in formation IMO!
I´m also annoyed with movement from A to B on the camp map when one of my own, or allied units, are "blocking" the shortest way, like a pass or bridge, and the AI thakes a huge way around them!!!
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
You're probably right that just upping the movement rate would not work, because then of course you'd be able to move and attack any point on the map with your entire armed forces from one turn to the next, which wouldn't be much fun at all.
What I suggested was a strategic movement ability, which is a different thing. If you could only utilize strategic movement in non-contested friendly provinces, then you would still have to move and deploy normally the next turn to mount an attack. Also, you couldn't switch units quickly from one engagement to another. It would take you at least three turns to (turn 1) leave a contested province (turn 2) use strategic movement and (turn 3) enter another contested province. And it might take you an additional turn or three marching out of/into each contested province before you could actually engage the enemy stack. So strategic movement through friendly territory would not just be a matter of instantly switching from one part of the battlefront to another.
It would however make for a more dynamic game, and create a lot of new possibilities. For example, if along with strategic movement you added a feature that each stack you attempted to move had a variable chance of not receiving orders on time, and therefore not moving at all, that would add an element of tension to movement and strategy that is not there now. And it would be totally historical, in the sense that battles are often won and lost because of failure to get the news on time, or getting scrambled orders, or having logistic difficulties etc.
Let's say each stack had a 33% chance of failing to move on orders, perhaps modifiable by the general's command rating, it would mean you could never be sure of getting to a battle in sufficient numbers, or perhaps at all. That would add a much needed element of unpredictability to this game IMO.
Come to think of it, you could simulate this easily enough in the current game. Just roll a six sided die before moving each stack, on a roll of 1 or 2 it can't move for the rest of the turn. There's a little "iron man" rule for ya
Last edited by screwtype; 04-06-2005 at 14:01.
Re: The unwanted child: Campaign map
The map is excellent. Forts, passes, roads, all good.
Very nice, CA.
I also like loading up a character with Quartermaster, etc. so they can move faster.
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