Years to turns....

[econ21]

Have CA ever given a reason? I don't recall one.

I suspect that what lies behind it is a desire to have a campaign that covers the whole of a long period of history, running right through from the MTW "early-" to the "late+" period. CA want people to see their armies develop from basic spears etc to gunpowder units; and to see their operations expand from Europe to America. Basically, I think they want to get a little closer to the kind of rapid coverage of history you see in Civilization games for example. I think they are calculating that the greater variety introduced by this will appeal to the mass market.

Given the above, they want to accelerate the strategic gameplay. The mass market gamer won't want to commit months to a campaign. But if it proceeded at MTWs pace, then that is what would be required. I don't know about anyone else, but my MTW campaigns started in early and tended to peter out by the early high period, just about the time when I got feudal knights and high period units. I either became too dominant for it to be challenging or I got too bored (usually both). That pacing is contrary to idea I've suggested of trying to get a panoramic historical campaign. The implication is that CA are going to need fewer turns per year.

The problem then arises that with the RTW engine, they actually have more turns per year than in MTW. Raising the number of turns per year to more than MTW will make it apparent that armies are moving across the map far too slowly to be plausible. By any reasonable standards, they will crawl, as early armies do in Civ, for example.

So to fudge that problem, CA decided to end the fixed relation between years and turns.

That's my interpretation of why CA switched from years to turns.

[Temujin]

econ21 is right.

The underlying problem is the same as in the Civilization games: warfare is tactical while the rest of the game is strategic. Those aspects function on different timescales, but the games can only handle one scale: turns.

That's why completing Magellan's Journey in Civ takes centuries, and moving an army from Rome to Constantinople in RTW takes years, when the real timescale for these actions were weeks or months.

The developers have approached this issue in different ways, but the results are always less than stellar from a realism standpoint; simplicity always win out.

The real solution to the issue is to divorce the two disparate aspects into their own scales. Let gameturns be years, but allow for "sub-turns" where warfare or other tactical movements are carried out.

The implications of this solution are complex, however, and in a game such as Civ with strategic MP it's downright unworkable. It would suck to be a peaceful builder if every other player needed 30 sub-turns every year to resolve their warfare, while you rack up three more buildings in your queues and twiddle your thumbs. I think it might work for *TW though, if the designers put in some realistic limitations to prevent warfare every single game-year (like real costs, need for casus belli etc. as in other strategy games). This would give the game a more realistic feel with short, dramatic campaigns interspersed with longer periods of peace, rather than the all-out WW2 style europe-in-flames kind of game we're used to.

[Mooks]

Sooo basically its another move by CA to dumb down the game?? Preparation for a battle is one of the funnest and key factors of the game.

MTW2 might very well be the last TW game I ever play

Or am I reading that last post wrong...

[sunsmountain]

I know for a fact that very few Rome:TW campaigns make it past 200 BC, let alone 100 BC. I've never seen anyone play it till August (the emperor, not the month - i've seen plenty who do that :))

So if you could just start in the Early, High or Late age as before, and still have the rapid turn transition (ie, not too many turns, i find myself hardly ever needing more than 100 in both MTW and RTW).

And whats wrong with finishing MTW within the Early period (ie before 1205)? Or in the Late period? The only crappy thing i can think of is that you won't be able to complete the tech tree in all of your cities, so some will be stuck at level 3 or 4 and the game is over. Is that better or worse than having everything at level 5, which gives a strange sensation of perfection and power though it is illusional.

MTW was good: 100 turns per period, more or less.
Rome lasted too long: 500 turns for 1 period, which nobody ever completed. I find myself clicking the end turn button just to progress the game and get some more content/events/retinue members from history.

The winter battles are nice though.

[magnum]

Sooo basically its another move by CA to dumb down the game?? Preparation for a battle is one of the funnest and key factors of the game.

MTW2 might very well be the last TW game I ever play

Actually, I believe that if you enjoy/enjoyed RTW/BI you'll most likely enjoy MTW2. That game pacing and style of play seems to be what they are shooting for.

That's not a shot at CA though. Since CA never planned on re-writting the engine but only improve the existing one, what they are doing might be the best solution. Basically they had no way of logically spreading new units and new events (i.e. Golden Horde) over 900 turns when most if not all players would complete the game in under 250 turns. Thus abstracting years into turns ends up being perhaps the best solution... at least for now.

[sunsmountain]

I don't expect to ever get to the Aztecs, given the way i play with Rome:TW. I like to keep close tabs on my governors, sometimes reloading when they're turning corrupt for some random reason. I hope they add a summary of gained/lost traits, so I can check that part faster. For 20 or 30 family members that list would be at most 60 entries long, but everything is better than having to check them each individually.

A similar table for settlements, listing choice (ie, not all of them) buildings would also prove useful i think.

Kind of goes against my idea not to ask any new ideas from CA before they finish polishing the old ones, but oh well.

[Mooks]

Why dont they go to the old system and do low age, high age, and late age??

[Lord Ovaat]

Well, this debate has been going on for some time, so I guess I should throw my two-cents in. I do NOT want to play a strict, historical game, and I believe most who purchase the series would agree. It wouldn't be a game. Turns are really the only way to go. I would like to see the option of starting in a more advanced era, as Holybandit just mentioned, but that's about all. One of the few things that peeved me with MTW was the EXPECTED and always PUNCTUAL arrival of the Horde at half-past noon. Even the AI didn't want to occupy the emergence provinces.

I do not want to be restricted with hard-set historical dates. The objective of the game is to re-write history, isn't it? I mean, I've won MTW on the hardest settings playing with all the factions (some took more than one try ). What that means, in essence, is that Denmark has conquered the entire Western World. Really? Seems to me, no faction has ever accomplished that feat. Here we are in the year (turn) 2006, and England is still England, France is still France. Go figure.

A truely historical game would be exquisetly boring, and probably playable only once without the need of medication. I relish the increases in tech, weaponry, etc. It enhances the game. But I do NOT want to know that I will be forced to fight Hastings in 1066. What would be the point in the game? Historically accurate weapons and such are great, and one of the reasons I play the games, but does anyone honestly think there was that diversity of "organized", "uniformed" units in the Dark Ages? That concept wasn't re-introduced until after the common use of firearms--for obvious reasons.

Gee, I even applaud CA for expanding into the Americas. Why? Because Europe, Africa, Asia Minor, etc. has remained physically unchanged for millions of years. One of the great adventures and lures of any new game is the discovery of all the new features like techs, units, etc. But the map is the map. Months before MTW2 is even released, I know exactly what Europe is going to be like, where the "provinces" will be, etc. So, without the additon of the Americas, what will we have to experience? Oh, gee, look at that. Those little trees are much more life-like.

I truely prefer "historical" strategy, but while waiting for MTW2, I've found myself playing a space opera for the first time. Galactic Civ II. Simply because the strategy is pretty good, but more importantly, there is a huge amount of gameplay available. EVERY map is different and presents new challenges, experiences, etc. Yeah, OK, so you're playing against intelligent alien species, though they are all humanoid and have human reactions and such. So, is that really much different than Western European Christians "playing" against Middle-Eastern Muslims? Could aliens be culturaly more different from each other?

One last point, and this has been mentioned many times in our forums. There are several thousands of folks who have joined and participated in the forums at the Org, Com, and TWC. Pretty impressive. But how many belong to all three? Lots. And of the vast numbers who purchase the game--which, of course, keeps CA in business--how many are ever even aware of the rest of us? There are very few multiplayers in these games when compared to the overall community, but they are probably the most frequent visitors. Maybe because they need other folks to play with, but maybe because they're more computer literate, lol. The vast majority of purchasers, myself included, never have any intention of playing online. We play strictly for our own enjoyment--when we have the time. Well, the point to all of this is that I believe we mislead ourselves into thinking the entire community sees things the way we do. Not true. After all, most of those folks actually have a life, lol. None of this is meant to offend anyone, for I am as guilty at nit-picking as the rest. If CA listened to everything we say, they would have gone belly-up shortly after Shogun. But we have also given them a horde of valuable first-hand experience and ideas, many of which they have incorporated. I personally can't think of many franchises who can say that.

So, it's just a game. The single player strategy will be the deciding factor in just how good the game is; not the graphics, not the battles, not the MP. And, I honestly feel we should give the game a playing chance before we tear it apart. One of the first threads concerning the new game dealt with modding. Mod what? We haven't even seen the game. Come on, guys, lighten-up a little. Remember, if we help put CA out of business, we will be left with only AOEIII or such. Anyone really want to go back to click-fests?

[econ21]

The real solution to the issue is to divorce the two disparate aspects into their own scales. Let gameturns be years, but allow for "sub-turns" where warfare or other tactical movements are carried out.

I agree with that. At the moment, TW has two time scales - the campaign turns and then the real time battles. What we are suggesting is a third time scale - you could call it "operational".

So the strategic level would be for peacetime - for building/economic stuff etc, you would have turns that last a year or whatever.

The operational level would be for wartime manouvring your army around a RTW style map. I don't know what the appropriate time scale would be - it could be just a month equals a turn (given the rate the Romans or other decent armies could march).

The battlefield time scale would be unaltered.

I don't see a problem with the above, except it is shifting TW into a being a historical wargame, when in fact it is more of a hybrid (I think the battles stand up to those in most historical wargames, but the strategic layer has more in common with Civ type games).