Battlefields&Distances

[_Aetius_]

The small size of the battlefields, severely reduces the potential tactics of your army or the enemy army, you can see the enemy army straight ahead of you so anything they do you can see so battles usually end up in being boring slogging matches that because of the crap AI and the fact battles last about 30 seconds makes me feel like throwing RTW out the window or wasting my time.

If maps were larger, thered be not as much need for ambushes on the world map, as you could set up your own (assuming the AI doesnt see ambushes even when they are apparently hidden abit like in MTW) itd just make the battle more interesting. Aside from map size maps need detail badly, not just a basic hill bang smack in the middle, but proper geography, gorges, valleys, marshland, passes through woodland.

I think also at some points if an enemy is nearby but not quite close enough to engage your army in pitched battle that you abit like in Teutoburg forest have to march your army to the other end of the map to carry on the march, your enemy can harrass your army or race after you and attack you on the march.

The ambushes on RTW now are so daft and basic that in reality very basic recon would have foiled them.

Theres alot of work that can be done with the battlefield and world map in general, coupled with improved performance of the AI and battles and campaigns could be much more interesting.

[Colovion]

So far I've only seen the "rolling hills" and "flat land" and "forest" battlefields. THere aren't really any "broken land" or jutting rocks which form a ridge or well - it all seems very mutes and smoothed off into a hill that is easily traversed aside from a few rocks or trees here and there.

Though the maps look amazing, they could be improved upon. Do I expect they will before the XP? No. But they should be before the next 'Evolutionary' release.

[bubbanator]

You have to take into account the fact that, with the large fatigue penalties, very large maps would give an advantage to the player who wasn't moving. Also, large "civilized" battles in Roman days were usualy set up in a clearing where armies could move around without rocks and trees messing up formations, movement, or communication. Unless it was an ambush, the battles were fought in a clear, fairly flat spot of land, granted there were usualy nearby forests and the such for concealing archers or calvalry, but the bulk of the infantry fighting was usualy fought in open ground. Another thing, the phalanx would lose much of its value with trees and hills and gorges all over the landscape because of the disrupted formations. I do think that the maps need a bit of work, but making them massive areas with many terrain features is impractical without modding the game to decrease the penalties for fatigue and broken formation. However, that would cause an imbalance in flatland battles. The battle maps aren't perfect, but they are very good concidering all of the factors that you have to take into account.

[pezhetairoi]

In real historical battles the armies would draw up facing one another only several hundred metres away, which is approximately the distance we see in the game (alright, maybe less.) However, counterbalancing that, we see that the battle lines in the past were way longer than what you see in RTW (nearly a mile long for big armies, the equivalent of full-stacks) so no matter how far you put them there was no space for tactics except on the flanks. Since the armies in RTW are smaller, it only stands to reason that the battlefields are smaller. There is still enough space on the flanks to manoeuvre, so in that respect they aren't all that different from the way the battles were fought in the past. The distances between the armies is right, in the game, it's just that you don't see it because the behaviour of the AI makes it look like the distance is too close, since they come at you at a run, and do not advance in a line as armies in the past did but every unit for itself. I've tested the ranges between armies using Scythian HA with 120m range, and I've found that the distance between armies on an unbiased battlefield tends to be between 200 and 300 metres, which is only slightly shorter a distance than in history. After all, we can assume the battles we play in RTW is just the part where the armies come within engaging distance, so we can ignore the long-distance march from the camp that must've come before the actual battle itself.

Just my two cents' worth.

[Nelson]

Overall I am very pleased with the battlefields generated in a Rome campaign. If they were too busy it would be tough to deploy and maneuver.

There are times when I would like to cross the red lines but if there were no borders the game would reach a limit that it could not sustain as it would try to draw more terrain.

[pezhetairoi]

I totally agree with that. The red lines are there to prevent the computer for overloading. Also, it's a haven for routing soldiers. Even in historical battles the pursuit had to stop sometime, and ingame that limit of time is represented by the red line. Without it all victories would be massacres whereas in reality portions of the enemy army managed to escape because the cavalry gave up pursuing, either due to time cosntraints, or due to exhaustion.

[Oaty]

The only thing I hate about that redline is when skirmishers get trapped there, and when you hit the withdraw button they go to where they came from and not for the closest redline.

Allowing them to withdraw across the line would add a bit of accuracy as quite often outclassed units were usually routed beyond the point of return and this would represent that