MP faction

[Puzz3D]

Then all it will be is a chess match... There are countless examples of armies with superiority in numerous areas, getting defeated handidly by better generals. One example of this is the English in the 100 Years War who were often out-numbered generally and out-numbered in the area of Cavalry, who had three key advantages, the Longbow, better generals and foot-wear.

The players who want a balanced faction for online play want the better player to win the battle. This faction's units have to be balanced properly within a rock, paper, scissors gameplay so that strategy and tactics are maximized.

With a pure MP faction, I feel that the art of warfare is less of a possibility. I stand by this. I feel that doing this would put the two playes on such an equal footing that strategy and tactics is out the window, it will generate into a single melee.

STW v1.12 gameplay had plenty of strategy and tactics, and the armies were all drawn from the same set of units. It wasn't perfoect because it could have been better balanced, and there were some limitations in the battle engine.

Of course the engine is geared more toward the archetypal western europe style of warfare, which is attritional. And one of the defining characteristics of attrition warfare is lack of all except the most rudimentary of strategy and tactics... The shield-wall is a prime example of attrition warfare.

The best battle engine in the series is MTW/VI v2.01. It was an evolution of the STW battle engine. The RTW/BI engine is inferior because it's missing some important features that were in the older engine. Problems in MTW/VI were the ineffective ranged units and ineffective spear units leading to a sword/cav dominated gameplay. STW v1.12 had more useful ranged units and spears that worked properly, so there were more tactical options with the four basic elements of ranged, sword, spear and cavalry in the rock, paper, scissors system. Those four basic elements have to be well balanced for the gamplay to have the full range of tactical options. You can have more than four elements, but it still has to be well balanced to maintain diversity in the tactics. If the elements are not well balanced, the gameplay collapses to a narrow solution. The attrition warfare you mention is one of the consequences of imbalance. It's one of the narrow solutions caused by a particular imbalance in the units. LongJohn, who designed the STW/MTW battle engine, went on record saying he felt 25% balance was good enough. I disagree with that because I've seen good players turn a 15% imbalance into a big advantage. I think you need not more than 10% imbalance.

The RTW/BI 3D engine looks nice, but, except for the killing at the spearpoints and the men being tossed around, it seems to use the same 2D system for the combat resolution with some of the features of that 2D system missing. Unfortunately, even a balanced faction for multiplayer isn't going to bring back the missing features. The emphasis on watching the men fight close up has meant a lengthening of the combat cycle which is not good from a statistical point of view especially since the number of men in a normal sized unit have been reduced to 66% of what it was in the previous 2D engine games. If you increase the uncertainty in the combat, then you diminish the value of using correct tactics. I would say the previous STW/MTW engine had a good level of uncertainty, and the gameplay didn't need more uncertainty.

The player community can't make a mod that balances everything because some parameters in the battle engine are not accessible to them. Getting players to use a custom mod is also very difficult.