Lesser battles and more important armies

[econ21]

I agree strongly with this.

On the fewer battles: The few RTW campaigns I have finished have had me fighting around 200 battles - granted some may be naval, but most were not. However, only around 25% or less were really worth fighting - the rest were "make work" where the outcome was predetermined. STW and MTW were also exhausting, but at least with the Risk maps, the battles tended to be more epic scaled (the AI retreated when heavily outgunned).

On the more important armies: I think reducing the number of units is key here. If you had say, 25 decent units (field units, not garrisons) in your kingdom, you might care about them. At the moment, you have so many - or can replace them so easily, they are just cannon fodder. Also, personalising the units might help - at a bear minimum, give us the option to name them; maybe customise their liverie (how cool would that be); ideally let us customise their combat effectiveness (choose alternative kit, captains or unit skills - rather like the Civ4 promotions).

[King Ragnar]

Wow, you guys are thiefs, stole the words from my mouth

[doc_bean]

The AI should just try to bundle its forces and use concentrated attacks. In an early Brutii game 2 days ago (hey, all this talk of MTWII made me want to give RTW another shot) Greece attack my one army with 4 armies, in three separate attacks. In the one attack that had two armies they didn't coordinate on the battle map, making them easy pickings. I would not have survived if they had all attacked at once (well, probably not) but now it was easy.

I'm not sure what to do about using your cities as unit spawners, it's unrealistic, but in Rome, if you had a city with a low population limit, you couldn't really do much with it. Good gameplay comes (mostly) from the ability to make choices, limiting those choices tends to be a bad idea.

[City walls]

A human tends to manipulate every aspects of a game to survive. Be it sending 1 unit to halt a marching army or buildspam units before a siege. A human never willingly accepts defeat Even if it is ahistorical or unrealistic. Thats why a 2d map should help a bit. Knowing that you are far more vulnerable by an invading (2-3) armys. You begin to think in a different angle "strategical" and "tactical" the way you should think in this game.


I dont know just speculations

[TinCow]

Let me ask a few questions. Do you think we are fighting many unimportant battles due to the way the game is structured or due to the poor AI? Would we still be fighting all of these unimportant battles if there were fewer/no rebels and the AI massed its troops better?

[City walls]

Yes the AI is a huge part in this. But its hard to speak of AI to a game developer. Even if it was the easiest thing in the world to implent.

im not fighting with you guys or anything but i really see this as an issue in RTW and possible M2TW so i would really hear your opinon about it

[Ignoramus]

Hopefully they can fix this.

[Reenk Roink]

Touche and less sieges too...

[Efrem]

I felt Romes system was more historical than Medievals 30 armies in the one province tactic.