RTW Multiplayer Rules: A Synopsis

[L'Impresario]

I think that 2 different opinions regarding the perceived problems in TW are expressed here, which are caused:
a) by players
b)by CA/TW as a series/the marketing department etc

If one's objection about playing the game is a), then he can find a group of similarly minded people, or play SP, alternatively wait for another game with a different MP crowd.
If OTOH its b), then one can try to mend the defficiencies of the game, thus modding and rules could come into play, unless the problems are so extreme for the said individual that TW as a series is to be dismissed until it gets a radical overhaul.

I also find rather unprobable that a game could depict any type of actual warfare-be it medieval (most hard) or classical - without important compromises to gameplay. Ofcourse that isn't to say that I'm pleased by the general RTW approach, but VI MP offers quite satisfying gameplay at a tactical level when the "skill" gap between the teams isn't significant, esp. with some mods and certain florin levels.
I remind you that the game wasn't built around a certain amount of money anyway, and each may have his personal preferences.

Commenting something that Yuuki said, I believe that if a group of people is able to deliver solid teamplay, then any army "inferiority" is somewhat diminished, plus more diverse tactics can be performed - ofcourse straighforward moves come to anyone quite naturally, the challenge lies beyond that. And straying from the standard can often prove very surprising for the opponent.

[Orda Khan]

Yeah.....I thought so.
OK I will give it one more try for what it's worth.
Yari Samurai.....historical, certainly not modern.
Man-at-Arms....the same.
Roman Cohorts...the same.
Armies meet on a battlefield and fight a battle, which is warfare. And the game is called Total WAR.

Not once did I state that the game is historically accurate!

What I did state was that games that are treated as battles, with more realistic types of armies ( as opposed to the SPAM armies, from any of the TW games ) are far more enjoyable

.......Orda

[hellenes]

Yeah.....I thought so.
OK I will give it one more try for what it's worth.
Yari Samurai.....historical, certainly not modern.
Man-at-Arms....the same.
Roman Cohorts...the same.
Armies meet on a battlefield and fight a battle, which is warfare. And the game is called Total WAR.

Not once did I state that the game is historically accurate!

What I did state was that games that are treated as battles, with more realistic types of armies ( as opposed to the SPAM armies, from any of the TW games ) are far more enjoyable

.......Orda

Roman cohorts... wearing red, lorica segmenta in 270bc, all looking the same
Head hurlers
Screeching women
Unattackable dogs
Bull$hit warriors
Cheerleaders in mini skirts pretending to be Scythian
"Egyptian" MUMMY ressurected armies
Arcani sadomasochists
Imaginary axemen all over the place
Monks
Priests
Sarmatian funky disco girls
Pink parthians
burning pigs
Spartans in dresses
I think the above explain the behaviour at the RTW mp lobby and the target age group of CA...

Hellenes

[L'Impresario]

What I did state was that games that are treated as battles, with more realistic types of armies ( as opposed to the SPAM armies, from any of the TW games ) are far more enjoyable

Then as I said, your problem doesn't have to do with the actual game itself, but with your concept of realistic armies and spamming. Therefore you wouldn't be against rules (or even mods) that promote those armies, not? I assume that many tourney rulesets have diversified the game, but I don't play RTW since I last tried 1.2 so...
Else the question would be about the mechanics and the engine, and you'd have to blame CA ;)
Naturally there could be a combination of both. But if it's solely about immersion, then you just can't force everyone to play the same. In the end though, tactics -and balanced armies- depend on the R/P/S system effectiveness.

[Orda Khan]

I have tried many mods, L'Impresario, as you know and mods for each of the series. The trouble with mods is no different from the trouble with the original game....things are still disputed. As for rules, I do not believe rules do any good when all they achieve is to make people play a certain way. There have been some big improvements made in RTW, HA for example. We see 'No CC' rules because people can no longer target them with archers. I guess these people were happier with the old 'stop and shoot' HA purely because they were easier to deal with. Of course there are the players who look for flaws and exploit them and I suppose we just have to blame human nature for that. Some form of insecurity that makes people search out the winning way so they can prove themselves online. Some may find this perfectly reasonable but I can only speak for myself when I say I find it rather sad. The time involved could surely be used more positively, such as dealing with real life issues.

It has been suggested that I should find a group of people with a similar outlook to the game. I already have. Furthermore, I have made historical battles which play very well both online and SP. Even human versus AI online in these battles is very enjoyable and a real challenge. The AI is far less predictable than human opponents and not as useless as is being made out. I have no doubt that others would critcise them, for whatever reason but having played them I stick by my previous statement that they are far more enjoyable because of the tactics and team work required. Each of these battles have more 'realistic' armies, which is another point...

If anyone thinks I am an ignoramus when it comes to history then they obviously do not know me or cannot understand what I am saying. Look at some of the issues in the list that Hellenes posted. Romans wearing red and all looking the same. Since each faction has to be readily identifiable on the battlefield, then a predominant colour for each faction has to be the easy option. All looking the same....When you zoom in this is very apparent but each unit is a multiple of the same sprite and to have a few hundred individuals is asking a lot. I remember all those white 'Bedsheet Knights' and 'Fluorescent Byzantines' in MTW but I do not recall much critcism. When it comes to the 'silly' units, they do not have to be picked in MP and can be modded out of SP. Historically out of date armour etc is acceptable IMO since we all know the game is not historically accurate and I would challenge anyone to create a game or mod that is. There are too many unknown or presumed facts about history to even begin to paint a picture of what things 'actually looked like' and sources can be very one sided and biased.

So I still think that the MP game is ruined more by people than any fault in the game, I have not played regular MP for ages because of the fact that people stop it from being what it could be and make it what it is

........Orda

[GrimSta]

Do you reckon you could share those historic battles with the community Orda? i always had a good laugh with the Historic Battles add on pack for RTW origional.

Thanks for the replys guys, it seems that this issue is still a priority among players and i think it does need to be adressed, hell...if CA were to bring out a MP only patch that only affected units for MP and made the game perfecly balanced i would download it, or if they made it so that you could only pick from a selection of pre-defined armies i would also download that, as it would breather life into something that has the potential to be great, but is ruined by Human nature.

[Puzz3D]

So I still think that the MP game is ruined more by people than any fault in the game, I have not played regular MP for ages because of the fact that people stop it from being what it could be and make it what it is

Creative Assembly made the game what it is. They made the game so you can buy whatever units you want and upgrade them however you want. They could have made it so that the host decides the army and everyone in the game gets that army, but they didn't. Players utilize what the game system allows with the objective of winning the battle, and they are not going to elect to take realistic armies because those armies are inferior to the non-realistic ones. If this drives the gameplay towards something I don't like, I just don't play. I don't go around saying these people have ruined the game, and have something wrong with them. They are taking advantage of what the game allows, and to stop it you would have to make a rule unless the game is changed by Creative Assembly so that realistic armies work best, and we already know that CA isn't going to do that.

Creative Assembly worked on improving the playbalance in RTW v1.3 which shows the game has playbalance issues. They still haven't brought the game up to what it could be with the last patch, and they are still foot dragging on a new patch to address outright bugs introduced by RTW/BI let alone playbalance issues. The cantabrian circle formation is overly effective, and some of those hunnic horse archers cannot be beaten in melee by light cav at equal cost. Where is the counter unit if foot archers and light cav are useless against them?

[hellenes]

Historically out of date armour etc is acceptable IMO since we all know the game is not historically accurate and I would challenge anyone to create a game or mod that is. There are too many unknown or presumed facts about history to even begin to paint a picture of what things 'actually looked like' and sources can be very one sided and biased.

While agreening with Puzz3d I have an observation:

1st
If the game is another version of the ignorant masses view on history aka is dumped down fantasy for 12 years olds how one can talk about "historically accurate" armies?
Or also there are too many unknown or presumed facts about army compositions so an army of headhurles, dogs and screeching women is PERFECTLY historically viable.
2nd
What about these guys: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=70 ?

Hellenes

[Orda Khan]

I am well aware of Europa Barbarorum, it is one of the many mods that I have tried already. Would I stake my wages on their mod being a true reflection of history? No.. and the reasons for this I have already stated in the quote you have used.
Why the appearance of some MTW units have not received the same level of criticism is beyond me. I can only put it down to the fact that MTW, as a game, was acceptable to the masses. It seems that RTW was less favourable and has therefore received ( IMO ) undue criticism.

The cantabrian circle formation is overly effective, and some of those hunnic horse archers cannot be beaten in melee by light cav at equal cost. Where is the counter unit if foot archers and light cav are useless against them?

By 'some' I presume you are talking about Hunnic Elite? Do you think Elite units should be beaten by Light Cav? Should there always be a counter unit? Maybe there is a counter tactic instead

.....Orda

[Lord Adherbal]

many of the problems could be removed if there would've been a limit on each units type (or class). Having a few overpowered units (= cannot be beaten cost-effectively) isn't such a big problem if one can only buy 1 or 2 of them. This is also proven by games such as Age of Empires: some units beat anything in 1 on 1, but you cannot get a lot of them because they either take very long to train, or take a lot of population slots (meaning you'll be outnumbered). MTW had the 4+ cost penalty and that did help.

But in RTW there is no such limit, so there is no point in buying weaker units. On top of that the speed difference between light (weaker) and heavy (stronger) infantry/cavalry is so small (and both insanely high) that this is nolonger an advantage worth considering. So why buy any weaker units at all if you can buy a whole army of stronger units ? Even if they have good counter-units that doesnt help much, because unless you know the enemy will buy 20 units of type A before the battle starts - so you can buy 10 or so units that counter type A - it is unlikely you will have enough counter units to deal with such a "spam" army.

So either you make the RPS values so extreme that a counter-unit can deal with 2 or 3 of the units it's supposed to counter, or you have to put an artificial number on each unit type/class. Until then the game will largely be decided by the army you buy, and not by the skill of the players.

[hellenes]

I am well aware of Europa Barbarorum, it is one of the many mods that I have tried already. Would I stake my wages on their mod being a true reflection of history? No.. and the reasons for this I have already stated in the quote you have used.
Why the appearance of some MTW units have not received the same level of criticism is beyond me. I can only put it down to the fact that MTW, as a game, was acceptable to the masses. It seems that RTW was less favourable and has therefore received ( IMO ) undue criticism.


By 'some' I presume you are talking about Hunnic Elite? Do you think Elite units should be beaten by Light Cav? Should there always be a counter unit? Maybe there is a counter tactic instead

.....Orda

Are you a Beta tester for EB?
Lucky you!!!
Ask Khelvan if their mod is a true reflection of history or not...
MTW graphics engine didnt leave much space for criticism, and MTW (compared to Rome) is MORE historically accurate.
Also MTW wasnt acceptable to the masses because before the CA turned the eyecandy on, all the current RTW fanboys were calling MTW a "notsorealtimeuglyriskcrap".
But as I said before how one can talk about:

"It's the players analytical approach to a game that is supposed to represent historical warfare that ruins MP. I have played many MP games where the approach was to field realistic armies and these were far more enjoyable than the usual"

When :

"There are too many unknown or presumed facts about history to even begin to paint a picture of what things 'actually looked like' and sources can be very one sided and biased.

How can we know how "realistic armies" were if we express doubt about historical facts and disregard them? Shouldnt we then persume that armies of dogs, pigs, screeching women and druids existed in full military use and thus use them online?
The vanilla battle of Raphia makes me wonder how far the stupidity and the bending to that stupidity can go.

Hellenes

[Puzz3D]

Why the appearance of some MTW units have not received the same level of criticism is beyond me. I can only put it down to the fact that MTW, as a game, was acceptable to the masses. It seems that RTW was less favourable and has therefore received ( IMO ) undue criticism.

More people play RTW online than played MTW. So it seems RTW is the one more acceptable to the masses. RTW also has the most fantasy elements. RTW has also brought back the confounded battlefield upgrades to multiplayer which had been eliminated in MTW/VI as a result of suggestions made right here in these forums. It didn't make sense that towards the end of a battle a unit of 3 men could defeat a unit 10 times larger, and I saw replays demonstrating just that. It also doesn't make sense that a ranged unit gains increased melee capability during a battle because it kills enemies with its ranged weapon. Battlefield upgrades favor strong units because they are more likely to get alot of kills. This exacerbates the issue of overpowered units because they become relatively stronger than less capable units as the battle progresses, and this boost in melee capability doesn't cost the player any money.

By 'some' I presume you are talking about Hunnic Elite? Do you think Elite units should be beaten by Light Cav? Should there always be a counter unit? Maybe there is a counter tactic instead.

I was thinking that every unit should have a counter unit. As long as that's true, the multiplayer system where you can buy as many of whatever you want will self-regulate. The alternative is to restrict purchasing those units that are not balanced relative to the other units so that the armies remain diverse.

I don't think light cav should beat hunnic elite archers. I mentioned that because in another post you said light cav was the counter to horse archers. If the counter to hunnic elite is hunnic elite, then have fun but you won't see me playing the game. It's the same reason you don't see me playing much MTW/VI where the spears and ranged units are so weak that the game devolved into cav/sword armies. I might still play some MTW/VI MP from time to time just for competitive reasons. I choose MTW/VI over RTW/BI because for me the speedup of movement coupled with the delay of units responding to orders, the increase in the number of units to be controlled, the battlefield upgrades and the bad ground textures of RTW/BI all detract from a good playing experience.