Turns per year?

[Rodion Romanovich]

Hopefully it'll be 4, with a movement restriction bonus in the winter, like in EB. Would make the campaigning much more interesting. What would be even cooler would be if there'd be desertion and disease for armies on the march, with those factors increased dramatically in the winter turn. Has there been any information on the number of turns per year yet?

[Monarch]

I heard it was one campaign. And that is spanning 500 years. Four turns a year means you'll be having 1000s of turns jsut to finish. It'll be 1 tpy probably.

If the time span was shorter, like in EB, then perhaps four turns could have been implemented.

[King Noob the Stupid]

I don't tink it would be good to have more than 2 turns per year, for example if your young, new king completely sucks you'd have to play 50 years/200 turns until he finally bites the dust...

[Rilder]

a several thousand turn long campaign *dreams* but all those "leet" power gamers who pwn europe in 6 turns would hate it.

seriously i dont really see the problem with 4tpy, it would allow for whole bunch of different dramatic stuff like winter fighting restrictions, bonuses in spring for your economy,due to all the the new hunting, bonuses in autumn due to harvests, and summer restrictions in the desert, after all if they dont it will get modded in one day anyways

[A.Saturnus]

I don't believe they will do 4 turns a year. That would mean almost 2000 turns in the whole campaign. But I hope they will make at least 2 per year. Otherwise the RPG-aspect of family members or whatever personage we'll see will be diminished.

[Templar Knight]

hopefully 4 with the ability to choose your starting date similar to MTW

[Orda Khan]

I voted 4. The 1 in MTW and 2 in RTW have not impressed. Each season would add so much IMO....and I would prefer to see a longer, more immersive campaign too

......Orda

[SirGrotius]

I would like 1.5 turns per year, i.e., 1 Spring/Summer turn, and then one Autumn/Winter turn, where campaign map movement for armies would be severely limited. I think it's a little corny that armies are able to move so much during the Winter as in RTW. But I do like to see the snow, so maybe an abbreviated Winter turn is in order.

To simulate exceptional circumstances, perhaps a trait can be added for certain leaders which would allow increased winter movement and troop performance.

So army movement limited to about one turn per year, but agent movement two per year. If this is too confusing, then one turn per year is best.

[Antiochius]

I prefer 4 turns per year because if you want to go with your army from, i.e. spain ti the HRE you General becomes 2 years older. but with 4 turns, only the halt of it. I don`twant that my general needs the most of his time for goingthrogh the provinces

[Geoffrey S]

I rather liked the EB system. There were more turns per year, armies moved at a more realistic pace, but crucially it was quite possible due to the large number of turns to finish a turn very quickly since the 'end turn' button was hit more frequently; or at least, I did this. To achieve this, there should be fewer battles but when they do occur more crucial, with larger armies rather than the incessant skirmishing of large portions of the original RTW campaign.

[Dooz]

I rather liked the EB system. There were more turns per year, armies moved at a more realistic pace, but crucially it was quite possible due to the large number of turns to finish a turn very quickly since the 'end turn' button was hit more frequently; or at least, I did this. To achieve this, there should be fewer battles but when they do occur more crucial, with larger armies rather than the incessant skirmishing of large portions of the original RTW campaign.

Well... yeah... if we lived in Perfectland...

[King Yngvar]

Hopefully it'll be 4,

Yes, please!

What would be even cooler would be if there'd be desertion and disease for armies on the march, with those factors increased dramatically in the winter turn. Has there been any information on the number of turns per year yet?

Hopefully not... Have you ever tried playing Europa Universalis? How annoying that atrittion is!

[Rodion Romanovich]

Hopefully not... Have you ever tried playing Europa Universalis? How annoying that atrittion is!

Nope, but I've been looking for a demo like crazy. Well, not like crazy, then I'd probably have found it. As I learnt recently, google is the place to find it... Anyway I know it's annoying and all that, but that's the very point of it! It would add more depth to the game. Plus they could make it so that the desertion etc. work like this:
- in province you own - o%
- in province you don't own, not winter - 3% (or 5% on higher difficulties)
- in province you don't own, winter - 10% (or 15% on higher difficulties)

I'd like it a lot! Then you'd never launch a new offensive in the autumn unless you have a strong superiority in numbers and troop quality and would try to besiege only cities/castles you could assault early unless you have open supply routes for reinforcing your troops. Would also make the keeping open supply routes more important and make for more realistic strategy.

Now I'm off to see if I can find a demo of Europa Universalis. I've been curious for a long period about that game.

[City walls]

Im more of a hardcore TW player. If it was possible i would rather have a dynamic weather/season/day night cycle/realtimeworking clock system

and every battlefiled would be different depending on season,weather

Rather then next turn,next turn,next turn etc until its 300bc or so

[Cesare diBorja]

Right on(recht gut)!, City Walls!

diBorgia

[King Yngvar]

- in province you own - o%
- in province you don't own, not winter - 3% (or 5% on higher difficulties)
- in province you don't own, winter - 10% (or 15% on higher difficulties)

If there were ever to be included atrittion in TW, I would prefer they do it more like Knights of Honor than Europa Universalis. Where each your armies have a stack of food they need to resupply in cities, if they run out of food they start starving, but not before.


And back to the turns... If there is supposed to be 4 turns a year, they should perhaps add much more provinces, so it will be harder to conquer the whole map within a few years, the more provinces, the more to defend...

[Divinus Arma]

4 Turns a year with:

Seasonal campaigning restrictions depending on climate.

Very slow development.

Very expensive units and a very slow economic build system.


But I think they already said 1 turn a year, didn't they?

[Ironside]

BS: The grand campaign will span four and a half centuries of history, from the year 1080 to 1530. These years are significant because it was a particularly turbulent period and because of the milestones that took place. It begins with the golden age of chivalry and the crusades, spans the Mongol invasion and the invention of gunpowder, and finally ends with gun-toting professional armies, the renaissance, and the discovery of America.

The campaign will feature summer and winter turns as in Rome, but we're trying to get away from the idea that a turn represents a specific amount of time, since it's impossible to reconcile the scale you need for army maneuvers with the scale you need to cover a decent slice of history. The history of the period will unfold in around 225 turns.

Well the most complete answer yet.

Although is the 225 turns for a minor period or for the hole campaign?

[econ21]

I should have put in an option in the poll for one turn per two years. My reading of the article is that there are 225 turns for the whole period - around one turn per two years.

Personally, I'm happy with that. I never played a MTW campaign from beginning of the early period to the end of the late period - it's just too long - but I think it would be more fun than being always stuck in the early/high periods as I ended up being.

[TosaInu]

1 turn for 2 years? gasp.

That will work (for me) when the moving points intermediary layer is largely expanded.
-Economy - 2 years turn.
-Diplomacy and army manoeuvring across the whole of Europe within 1 turn.
-Real time battles.

[Quietus]

I don't know can they pull a '1 turn per 2 years' campaign . The movement range is going to be huge for two years, allowing the players multiple battles, multiple units to train and even multiple sieges.

Pro:
- The Campaign will be a less predictable.
- With a good AI, enemies can string up a decent campaign (strike multiple times least a player can do about it nor know where to expect it).
- Large Buildings can finally be built in ~10 year durations.

Con:
- The AI can only make moves within the turn. This gives the player more advantages.
- With a weak AI, the Campaign can turn chaotic, with AI armies running all over the place.
- Supposed for 100 provinces (not that it was announced), you can take 1 or 2 provinces per turn. That's a bare minimum of 50 to 100 turns.

The game should have been divided in eras with 4 turns per year.

[Divinus Arma]

1 turn for 2 years? gasp.

That will work (for me) when the moving points intermediary layer is largely expanded.
-Economy - 2 years turn.
-Diplomacy and army manoeuvring across the whole of Europe within 1 turn.
-Real time battles.

I don't see how moving a diplomatic piece across the entire map helps gameplay. In fact, it makes diplomatic pieces irrelevent. Why send a piece halfway across the map in one turn when you can have a static diplomatic simulation?

So, the major problem with 1 turn per 2 years, or even 1 turn per year, is one of movement. With the new engine's dynamic interaction, movement and turn time are closely linked.

[screwtype]

I don't care how many turns per year the vanilla game has, but what I would like them to do is include the option for four turns per year, with differing graphic, weather and combat effects for each season, so that those effects can utilized in mods.

[Divinus Arma]

Unless, the campaign map has a real-time element in it, I can't see how they can make a turn not a constant.

Actually, this is a very good idea. The question would be on how to implement it. And I think I have just the thing:

(1) The campaign map as it is now need not change in appearance whatsoever. The dynamic interaction and fluidity of the board is a necessity to implement the following:

(2) Eliminate turns entirely. Make the campaign map real-time, with a sliding scale of speed. In this way, army and diplomat movement can be realistically linked to time AND the player retains control over how fast he or she wants events to unfold. Months, seasons, and years all pass at a speed designated by the player. So, the time it takes to train a unit or build a structure all remain. In fact, very little of the constant campaing map need change. Only the campaing engine msut change, but it is entirely doable!


So, consider this example from an RTW perspective: You start the game as the Julii. You move the time control all the way to very very slow, a speed at which a year takes maybe twenty minutes or so. With the campaign speed this slow, you see minor changes in the movement of your allies and enemies. You set which units you want to train and which structures to build. You also decide to set your army North for a nearby barbarian settlement. Finished with decision making, you set the speed to slightly faster then before- a speed where you can watch all map pieces move and still have time to react. On your way north, you see a barbarian army moving to intercept you. Deciding that you cannot fight both the settlement garrison and the field army, you direct your army south.

Do you see? How can this not be possible?!?!? CA where are you now?!?!?! STEAL MY IDEA PLEASE!!!!!!

[econ21]

I don't really want an EU real-time type campaign map, but making turns "fuzzy" as regards years makes some sense. In real life, many years would be relatively inactive for a faction but then specific campaigns would see armies covering large distances in short periods of time. Breaking a tight link between turns and years might help represent this.

At one stage I thought TW should have an intermediate level between the strategic and the battle - call it an operational level. At the grand strategic level, you would invest, recruit, build etc. But when war is declared, you zoom into an operational map and maneouvre armies. When they meet you zoom to the battle map.

[cannon_fodder]

(2) Eliminate turns entirely. Make the campaign map real-time, with a sliding scale of speed.

Just wondering, have you played Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds? It was very similar to the Total War games, and must've been an inspiration for CA with STW. Anyway, it was split into campaign and battle maps. Unlike the TW games however, the campaign map was set in real-time with a sliding scale of speed as you describe.

One large problem with a real-time campaign map is that there needs to be ways that the player can easily see what's happening, at all times, and at all corners of their empire. Certainly not an easy task, but it's possible.

[Divinus Arma]

One large problem with a real-time campaign map is that there needs to be ways that the player can easily see what's happening, at all times, and at all corners of their empire. Certainly not an easy task, but it's possible.

I think this can be solved by slowing things down to a degree where everything is manageable. Of course, their would be a learngin curve here, but this could be done without difficulty. Even the "building complete" alerts would work inmuch the same way to your benefit...

[screwtype]

I'm absolutely against a "real time" map. There are too many games like that out there already, and I don't like any of them.

There's a crap old game called Theocracy which has a kind of interesting system. You can give all sorts of orders to your units with time stopped and then you can drag a time slider out to your desired level to let time run until the next significant event occurs, in which case time stops again and you are informed of the event.

A system somewhat along those lines might work...

[Trithemius]

I'd like four seasons per year, with some incentives (or disincentives) to campaign based on the particular season.

I think that this approach simply has more benefits than the others offered, and is certainly superior to the two years a turn that some people seem to think we'll be getting.