How to improve the mid/late game

[Mount Suribachi]

How many TW campaigns have you finished? Played through till you have 100% of the map or run out of time. I've only ever done it twice.

Once on Shogun where I had half the map, Hojo had the other. I got very tired very quickly of fighting stack after stack of peasant armies, so I sent Geishas out to eliminate the Hojo royal family, turned their lands to Ronin then autoresolved every battle to completion.

Second time was on VI as the Mercians, and the hardest part about that was the (&^(^(***(&&!!! Vikings.

Why only 2? Because, no matter who you play as, no matter which TW game, you reach a certain point in the game where you achieve a critical mass and you become unstoppable. Yet historically this never happened. No-one has ever controlled the entire MTW/RTW world. Why is this? And why can't we replicate this in the TW world to add intrest and difficulty to the mid-late game?

1) Communication & distance. In the pre-industrial age communication was slow, especially so with the far-flyng provinces of your empire, and they were less likely to feel part of your empire. RTW does have an unrest feature which increases the further a province is from your capital, but IMO it is nowhere near punitive enough. I would like to see this greatly increased, make it really tough to control Finland from your capital in Alexandria, just like it should be

2) Integration. One of the great successes of Greek and Roman culture was the way they integrated peoples from all over the world into their cultures, but this took time. The Romans were clever with the way they used their language and citizenship to encourage "assimilation" and especially clever with the way they avoided religious unrest by co-opting other nations Gods. RTR simulates this with its auxilia line of buildings, and a great idea it is too, but again it is too quick and too cheap IMO. Faction re-emergences should be more frequent, they should be a continous threat - even false pretenders to the throne if need be.

MTW had the different religions, but again religious unrest was nowhere near as bad as it should be to make the game realistic and challenging. Build a church, plant a bishop, and a few turns later a 100% Muslim province is 100% Christian. If only it were that easy

Changing a provinces religion should be really hard. It should take a loooooooong time, it should cost a fortune, and it should be really, really painful.

3) Civil Wars. These don't happen anywhere near enough. Relatives trying to grab the throne, power struggles, wars over succession to the throne, these things are at the centre of medieval history. Any time your king dies you should be holding your breath to see if a brother, uncle or son is going to challenge you for the throne. Playing as the Turks a civil war should be mandatory any time your Sultan dies

So to sum up - provinces harder to control and integrate, more rebellions and civil wars. Of course, this is all relative to the playing difficulty, and the AI doesn't suffer the same penalties as the player.

[Servius]

Well, one thing to remember is that, if you just make it harder to control far-flung provinces, or those that are culturally different, people will just stop playing once they hit that point.

A few people might be encouraged to press on just to overcome the increased difficulty, it think you might be missing the whole point of playing, which is to have fun. I think you need a solution that make it FUN to press on. To some extent, it's fun to overcome obsticles, but if those obsticles are dumb friction (higher unrest), it won't be fun. The solution to the increased difficulty needs to be creativity or skill, not just greater and greater investments of time and/or garrison troops. IMO at least, it has to be a puzzle to solve, not a grind to get through.

One suggestion I have is, rather than increasing the difficulty of holding what you've taken (the unrest problem), perhaps the difficulty should come from you being attacked by coalitions of smaller nations. And not the headless stacks like in RTW, but I'm talking battles where you have been attacked by 2-3 actual armies at the same time, in the same battle. Using MTW as an example, if I am the English and I hold Flanders, the Germans, French, and Danes should ally against me, and then attack me all in the same year, so that my stack in Flanders faces three armies in battle. THAT would be a tough fight.

Another way to make it more fun and interesting would be to have different nations actually field armies of different kinds of units, and use them in different ways. If the same army and tactics I used to crush the Germans won't work against the Polish or the Italians, that will encourage me to overcome that obsticle and beat them.

But again, I suggest these because overcoming challenges with my mind is what makes these kinds of games fun for me, while overcoming them through patience or just more of the same is not fun for me. Other people may have different motivations.

[Batory]

Very good ideas guys....

They should also increase the number of rebellions within your empire(the bigger empire the more often a rebellion), that would certainly keep players busy...

[cegman]

No that would be bad. The reason I quit is because the rebellions are stupid and I am sick of dealing with them.

[econ21]

No that would be bad. The reason I quit is because the rebellions are stupid and I am sick of dealing with them.

Depends what you mean by a rebellion. If you mean, the vanilla RTW bandits, I agree - they are a right royal pain in the you know what. I have played so many Roman vanilla/RTR/EB campaigns where about 100+ battles were trivial affairs with a handful of rebels. The 1.5 patch allowing you to cut their spawn rate was a life-saver for me.

But the MTW rebellions - entire provinces errupting in disloyalty, often respawning dead factions - were great and really helped kept the mid/late game alive. I remember one Almo PBM, where I instantly lost 10 provinces on becoming king because I did not have the influence of my deceased father - it was an exhilarating opening to a mid-game reign.

BI went some way to getting these back with Romans having loyalty stats and the rebel factions. However, I don't think they went far enough - as WRE, I never see the WRE rebels, nor lose a single general to disloyalty. It's too easy to manage loyalty and unrest once you know how it works.

[Hochmeister]

I agree that the mid/late game can get repetitive.

Rebellions are part of the answer but as mentioned the main reason people dont finish a campaign once the "critical mass" is reached is that it is no longer fun.

I think it just needs some variety in there, some random thoughts:

Interesting late game units that take a lot of teching up to reach.
Rebellions/Faction reemergence (decent sized ones not the RTW type)
An expansion on the jihad/crusade/pope situation which may change late game??
Unlock units/attributes/factions after a campaign is completed.
Have an epic high quality end game clip when total domination is reached!

[screwtype]

No that would be bad. The reason I quit is because the rebellions are stupid and I am sick of dealing with them.

The rebellions are certainly stupid in RTW because of the way they are handled. A handful of units randomly appearing in a province somewhere just becomes a nuisance.

It would be different though, if the rebellions started from within your cities, so that you actually lost provinces and had to retake them. I also think that in a rebellion, some or all of your existing troops in that province should defect to the rebels.

Mind you, I think it would be difficult to get the balance right for such rebellions. It all depends on how well the mechanic is implemented. Too weak rebellions and you've just got a nuisance value again. Too strong and it's a disincentive to play. You've got to get the balance right.

[GFX707]

I actually managed to LOSE a campaign once in VI as the Scots....it was one of the most memorable campaigns I have ever had....I think it was my first campaign in VI and I didn't realise how tough they made the Vikings or really how to play the game....in true Scottish style I conquered half of England before being pushed back (I think I got stabbed in the back by an ally, can't remember) and fought a glorious last stand with a good old highland charge.

Those are the campaigns you remember....not the ones where you finish off your neighbour in a few turns, build a fleet and take Rome in 260BC.

[The Wizard]

I never really had a problem with the no-finish syndrome, to be perfectly honest. However, I'm all for taking the campaign, as it was found in MTW, to a new level at last.

In MTW and Shoggy it was possible to lose, now and then... and almost always there was a period where the going got tough. RTW lacked this. It's time to take a hike back to where we took the wrong turn, and then take that part of the fork in the road we didn't choose back then...

[Dave1984]

I think the best way of keeping interest throughout the game is the more imaginative "Glorious Achievements" from MTW and that's something I'd really loved to have seen in RTW and really hope is in M2TW.

Knowing you have the objectives to shape your strategy around, and not being forced to win by unrealistically conquering the whole of Europe, and then introducing new ones progressively through the game- the idea is in my eyes unbeatable and the way of turning the mid to late parts of the total war games.

Of course it seemed like the GAs in Medieval were sometimes rushed in- homelands only and that, but there were some crackers in there.

[Barbarossa82]

I think the best way of keeping interest throughout the game is the more imaginative "Glorious Achievements" from MTW and that's something I'd really loved to have seen in RTW and really hope is in M2TW.

Knowing you have the objectives to shape your strategy around, and not being forced to win by unrealistically conquering the whole of Europe, and then introducing new ones progressively through the game- the idea is in my eyes unbeatable and the way of turning the mid to late parts of the total war games.

Of course it seemed like the GAs in Medieval were sometimes rushed in- homelands only and that, but there were some crackers in there.

I totally agree, GA mode made the game far more interesting and gave you a sense of setting for the inevitable wars - after all you have to have something to fight for, and your homeland's a lot more characterful if you're, say, building the Jagellonian University!
Loyalty amongst characters is another thing that can make the late game interesting - successful generals with large armies should take a loyalty drop from being far away from the King or from the faction's homelands. An English general who's just conquered Constantinople should be much more tempted to set himself up as a king in his own right than one who's garrisoning Normandy.
Faction re-emergences are another dynamic which keeps the game interesting, as long as they are handled realistically so that they require a substantial level of disloyalty in provinces which are their traditional homelands before they can re-emerge.
Another great addition would be succession disputes, a reality of medieval court politics.

[poo_for_brains]

I like the idea of powerful generals setting up their own rule once they come into possession of a powerful distant province. It would mean you'd always have to be careful when sending your best general and his army into important lands, lest you lose all your best troops, and your best generals.

[Satyr]

While I have only ever finished one MTW campaign (100%) I have finished many VI campaigns with at least a couple wins for each faction. These got especially challenging after the Beefy Vikings mod came out. Having said that, I still agree that there needs to be some change to make the game more challenging in the later parts. My choice would be to have a coalition of smaller factions join as allies so that if you attack one of them they all attack back. It would just have to be pretty common for smaller factions to form large alliances for it to work. This sort of thing is implemented in Civ4 but it is so rare for factions to form large coalitions that it isn't something you need to routinely worry about.

As for random rebellions, I would hate that. There needs to be certain criteria that one can avoid, just as there was in MTW, so that with care and skill you can have a peaceful empire. You also have to be careful that you don't weaken the stronger AI factions with rebellions because you know that they won't be programmed well enough to avoid them later in the game. This is already a problem in MTW and I would hate to see it made even worse in M2TW.

[screwtype]

Mount Suri - love your suggestions. Particularly the ones about the problems controlling farflung provinces, and the threat of civil war. If civil wars broke out frequently on the death of a faction leader, it could make the game very interesting!

I wouldn't support it though, if it was like the "faction reappears" mechanic of MTW where factions would miraculously reappear with incredibly powerful armies that far outstripped the available province infrastructure. Civil wars instead should divide your existing army up into different factions, with you choosing to back one or the other.