GA and other ways to make MTW II even more realistic

[Rufus]

I agree with those who would like to see a return to GA in MTW II. Although it sounds like we will get "missions" from the Pope as we did from the Senate, I wouldn't want all the goals to be limited to doing the Pope's bidding.

But if CA includes GA again, I think they should include more variety in the goals. In original MTW, the French and German goals were mostly interesting, but most of the other factions got relatively short shrift, limited to Crusades (if Catholic), homelands and maybe a few others. If you played one of those factions in a GA game, particularly a bigger faction that scored fewer points per province conquered, you ended up getting most of your points from conquest anyway in order to keep up with the smaller factions that didn't have to conquer so much to score points. So CA should also make the non-conquest goals worth more points. That way, the GA game would be more historically realistic, as few kingdoms/factions/families were ever in a position to conquer all of medieval Europe.

Let's come up with some ideas for new GA goals that weren't in the original MTW, for either new or old factions. Here are a few off the top of my head:

England
(previous ones included Crusades, Homelands, wool trade, Plantagenet lands in France, conquering Scotland, maybe a few others I don't remember)
Westminster Abbey (build a Catholic Cathedral in London by 1275 or so)
Oxford University (build a University in Wessex (?) by 1250 (?)
Naval dominance (develop strongest navy in game by 1530)

Another feature CA could include that might be cool and relevant to the period (although not GA-related) is pilgrimages. If you build a Cathedral in a province, and develop priests in that province into prominent, widely admired religious figures, the game should cause a pilgrim trail to emerge that brings more money and honor to your faction, or at least the Church in your faction, and improves your relations with the Pope. This should be particularly true if your local saint was martyred ... It could work like a trade route, where brigands and warfare can interrupt the flow of pilgrims.

Finally, CA should allow you to grant titles of nobility to your princes or maybe even the faction leader to allow him to control the province directly. Princes were often Dukes or Counts before becoming King, such as Richard the Lionheart, who was Duke of Aquitaine before he was King. And Kings (of England, at least) often retained titles of nobility for themselves for their overseas provinces, such as William of Normandy.

Any thoughts?

PS - Sorry about the anglocentric nature of my message; what little I know about medieval Europe is mostly about medieval England.

[lancelot]

Byzantine Ga's were quite lacking considering their status in the early period. Id like to see more there...

Perhaps even some a-historical ones thrown in to?

[phred]

Perhaps something along the lines of the missions in EUII would work.
Have a list of missions (with time limits) and you could pick and choose which ones you wanted to perform.

The missions could range from easy ("Keep Wessex for x years")
to hard ("Annex Ireland in x years").

[econ21]

Yes, I really like the Senate missions in RTW. TW games are admirably free-form, but I think the gameplay does benefit from some direction - whether from GA goals or missions, or both. I thought it particularly good the way they pitched size of the rewards for success - a cool unit etc - and the penalties for failure - less influence on the Senate. It meant you had an incentive to do a mission, but not necessarily to put all your plans for greater conquest on hold to do so.

I also think there is scope for more scripting in TW campaigns. More things like Christians arriving in STW, the Mongols in MTW or even the Macedonian plague in RTW etc. At the moment, the player tends to make history and the AI does not much. Maybe the game needs to throw more balls at the player, to keep you on your toes. Perhaps developing the historical generals in MTW would help - e.g. when a Saladin type figure arrives, maybe he should come with an army and his arrival prompt local provinces to switch allegiance to him. Or if you are playing the Egyptians, maybe there should be more scripting to ensure hefty crusades set off in your direction. The hordes in BI are a good example, of CA trying to get more happening in a campaign than just the human player's nefarious schemes.