Note on whinging

[Myrddraal]

I agree with almost all of Puzz's list, with a few exceptions, and a few elaborations, and a few questions for Puzz, which I've added below. I've also taken the liberty of removing or rearranging some of the points so that they aren't too repetitive.


Battle Speed

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Make the battlespeed slow enough that you can coordinate 20 units
- Basically reduce movement speeds across the board, reduce kill rates, and increase morale. It would seem that the current style of play is to get into battle as quickly as possible. Once battle has started, it isn't very long before one side breaks, and this tends to leave no time for maneuvering, before or during battle. This (for me and I think for a lot of players) is at least half, if not much more than half, the fun.

( Make the infantry running speed 1.66x the walk speed
Make the cavalry run speed 2x the infantry run speed
Make sure that units fight long enough so that hammer and anvil tactics work ) - are all included in the above, there's no need to repeat them.

Battle AI

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Get rid of the bias that favors the AI on auto-resolve on normal difficulty
- Absolutely

Fix the suicide general
- Again, a necessity.

Make the AI understand how to use a shield
- I agree, but again it's too general a statement. To elaborate a bit more: if individual men in units (with the exception of those in the first rank) turn to face the direction of the last missile attack, you wouldn't get the stupid situations where men are slaughtered without even trying to protect themselves.

Make the AI understand how to protect a unit's flanks
- Only, it's another general statement, which isn't much use to CA or to anyone trying to analyse the situation. To make a practical suggestion with respect to this, the key point is that the AI needs to put holding formation as a higher priority than it currently does. It is because AI formations break up so easily and so quickly that they expose their flanks so often.

Make the AI respond better to ranged attack
- Again, I agree, but these are far too general statements, and not much use by themselves. I think this links back to the priority of holding formation. Fire a few arrows at the enemy in RTW and they will respond. The problem is that the AI generally responds by trying to redeploy most of their army, and attack with maybe 1 unit. The result it a lot of units moving around, exposing their flanks and other units getting isolated.

Some simple triggers could improve AI behavior a lot here.

AI defending: If the player only has ranged units within a certain distance, the AI hold formation and (a.) fire back with it's own missiles, and optionally (b.) send out cavalry to chase them off, without getting too close to the enemy line.

AI defending: If the player has their line up close and is firing arrows at the AI formation, the AI should either charge, or hold formation and fire back

AI attacking: Just attack, with the option of sending cavalry to attack the ranged units.

Stop AI units from walking towards the enemy only to turn around and walk away
- Once more, it's all about holding formation.

The above three points are effects of the importance of holding formation

Stop having the AI make frontal charges with units that are weaker than the target unit
- This is far far too general. If the AI has a large army of weak units, then a frontal charge is necessary to tie down the enemy units. Similarly, if they have units with generally weaker stats, but a heavy impacts (such as medium cavalry vs swords or halberds, then a charge may be the best tactic. This is too general a statement.

Stop the skirmish AI from shooting its own men in the back so often
- It's not something I've noticed particularly. However, if its a problem it needs to be dealt with. From a scripting point of view, it's hard to come up with any suggestions on this front... I'm sure someone knows better than me though.

Make the AI use the secondary weapon when it's better than the primary weapon
- This is obviously true, and should be quite easy to implement, though I hadn't noticed it as a problem actually.

Campaign AI

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Stop having the AI sail around with a full army on a single ship until it's sunk
Make the AI provide reasonable garrisons for cities

The thing is about these two points is that again, they are the obvious effects of something a bit deeper. Here is something I've posted before, which I think I'd like to say again here:

I think the core reason why it became a steamroller effect in RTW was the lack of co-ordination in the AI's armies, I was playing as the Romans recently. I just had a couple of armies personally stationed near my gallic borders to mop up the almost constant flow of 2 unit stacks and unaccompanied family members who strayed into my lands.

The one time I saw a nearly full stack (without a family member), they besieged a town of mine which was mostly un-protected. Right! A challenge!

Next turn, the gauls broke off the siege (my relief force wasn't even gathered yet) and marched away...


I'm sure CA aren't ignorant of these things, but a little reminding can't hurt



I think there are a couple of simple additions to the AI which would have a huge difference to gameplay:

If all stacks smaller than a certain number in the same province were programmed to converge on the town, and only leave once the army is large enough for safety.

If armies only moved if triggered to do so by a specific event or tactic (to strengthen a border here to attack or counter attack)

Battle Mechanics

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Balance the maneuver and attrition aspects of a battle
Balance offensive and defensive styles of play
- I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Some suggestions of what would make the game more balanced would be helpful.

Put back the combat penalty when units overlap
- I'm not sure this applied with RTW and the historical style of battle during that period.

Fix the group movement commands so they work so that you don't have to use drag all the time
- I can't really comment because I'm not sure what the problem is, if you're talking about the fact that selecting a group and telling it to move will sometimes make the formation end up facing the wrong way, then

Get rid of the delay to movement orders
Get rid of the battlefield upgrades in multiplayer


Increase the rock, paper, scissors back to the level it was in STW
Now this is a tricky one. I would agree with "Increase the rock, paper, scissors" but not to the level of STW. I don't want STW with better graphics, the game has to evolve. I think a more complicated stats system is a good thing as it requires you to have a better knowledge of your unit's abilities to be a good general, and it allows for more variety in a unit's skills. However there is a tendancy in Rome for it to be as simple as "good unit beats bad unit". I think more specialised units (i.e. spear beats cav) are a good basic idea. It can be evolved, but I don't think it should be replaced.

Stop using heavy artillery as anti-personnel weapons
- Historically inaccurate, and not much fun either.

Make crossbows use their ammo faster so that battles don't drag on for an hour with boring shootouts
- I disagree, crossbows are not machine guns. Boring shootouts only happen if you let them happen.

Make ranged units use their ammo before they charge into melee
- I disagree, this isn't always the best tactic, in fact it often isn't. Forcing either the AI or the player to do so isn't good.

Get rid of exploding rocks
Stop using fire weapons in the rain
- Nothing to add to these

Reduce the uncertainty in combat results to the level it was in STW
- It is true that in RTW, individual unit combat is too predicatable. Unit x will always beat unit y. If combat is more uncertain, problems occur, and dealing with these problems was part of the challenge and part of the fun.

Stop horses from jumping into pikes
- I sort of agree. I don't think it should be stopped, I think it should be suicidal. A line of pikes should mash any cavarly charge that tries to break it head on (which it does to some extent in RTW, but not enough), but I don't think it should be impossible to try.

I think an excellent additional feature would be if horses had a percentage chance of hesistating from a charge like this. In which case, a charge would be broken up, but that's an extra.

Put LOS for individual men back in the game
- I'm not sure I agree. If a unit is ordered to fire in a situation where part of the unit can see around a hillock, but the other half can't, the entire unit should still fire. Direct line of sight is not needed in mass archery.

Bring back the weather effects of STW
- The weather system could be better, but it's not a vital selling point for me.

Campaign map mechanics

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Make the loyalty of a province dependent on distance and isolation from the faction leader
- Not a critical point. I think a better and slightly more realistic option would be to have the loyalty of your generals tied to the proximity of your faction leader. Generals accompanying the king are much less likely to rebel, whereas generals far from the power and decision making are more likely to try to carve out their own kingdom. What do you think?

Shorten the timespan of a campaign and provide multiple campaigns
- Even in MTW you could play from beginning to end, you could just start a bit later if you wanted to. This might be a nice touch.

Return to seasonal turns
- I haven't played the new system yet, I'm not in a position to judge. I'd like to give the new system a go though.

To return to the subject of whinging, these are the kind of comments that annoy me, and make any post loose it's quality:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Make sure the traits are working

Is there any point to this statement? NONE!

Aren't these already the case:
Provide more settings on fatigue rate, morale level, and ammo
Separate the fatigue, morale and ammo settings

Reading your list, it seems you've tried to pad it out. You repeat yourself, you make general sweeping statements. Why is this necessary? This is what I call whinging, this is the negative attitude that annoys me. Why spoil a post that otherwise contains some very valid and important points?

[Ignoramus]

I do admit I have gotten into the habit of whinging and complaining, and for that I apologise.

I am disappointed, however, that CA has been ignoring all the forum communities like this for so long.

[econ21]

Brilliant use of spoiler quotes and smillies, Myrddaal. Maybe it will catch on?

On the issue of campaign AI, I wonder how many people have tried using the BI.exe to play RTW?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Just add "-mod" to your BI shortcut command line.

I may be imagining it, but it seems CA may have improved the campaign AI already between RTW and BI. I did a small test.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I ran through 10 turns of the same mid-game campaign (RTR PE as Rome) doing nothing (just autoresolving), first with the BI.exe and then with the RTW one. It wasn't much fun.

And I found the AI did better with the BI.exe.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

At the end of the BI.exe run through, the AI had taken more of my settlements than at the end of the RTW one.

I have hunch why it did better.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It concentrated its stacks more - there were less of the silly small stacks moving around aimlessly that was a feature of RTW.

It's funny, but I always thought the AI in the BI campaign gave a better fight than that in RTW.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

But I assumed it was because of the campaign setting not the AI. Maybe I was wrong?

It would be interesting if anyone else can confirm this.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Especially any CA folk.

On reflection, I am not sure Myrdraal's new posting style works for me.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Are the smillies and spoilers driving you crazy?

[cromwell]

Hello,

Let me jump in here with a word about whinging and Puzz's gameplay point's.

I will agree that we all have done our own share of whinging, it's easy to complain, and pick apart things. However, speaking from my own personal experience, my involvement and joy from the TW series has diminished overtime.
To start with I only play MP. I have played a couple of campigns with each series, but never extensively. I have invested probably hundreds if not thousands of MP time with all the series.

There is no doubt the Multiplayer aspect peaked with MTW/VI. This includes everything from gameplay to the MP community.

I have been playing RTW/BI online since they were released and have never had as much fun, or more importantly felt the growth of tactics and overall skill improvement, as I had with the two previous series. The MP feels very limited in RTW, and I believe, in part, it's because of those issues Puzz has listed.

I'm going to cut to the point, you may agree or disagree. All these finishing moves and the extra animations that MTW2 has....it's all marketing Bullshit! Here's my reasoning why.

1. Single players, many people like to auto fight so the computer runs the simulation and says who won. They won't see the moves.
2. If you fight all the battles in SP, and you can afford to zoom in 3/4 times in the heat of the battle, not the setup phase or ending, but the height of battling, the AI sucks.
3.MP, I doubt anyone playing a good MP player can afford the time to zoom in more than 1/2 times, and even then only for a couple of seconds. I'm talking again here about the heat of the battle, anyone can zoom in when it's 10 units to 2, or when the enemy is routing.
4. 99.9 percent of the time when fighting online or battles in SP, you have to be zoomed all the way out to see your 20 units. As soon as you zoom in you have lost visual contact, and run the risk of losing that battle.

The amount of time anyone is going to see these finishing moves is slim to none. It's great for scripting battles, and making movies. That's eactly why the marketing team likes it. You the buyer, even TW vets fall to the eye candy, but thinking about what I have listed, especially MP's it will mean nothing to us. I particpate in these marketing meetings, in my own field, and branding is everything to companies, even if it means the product is not as good, or even faulty.

The finishing moves are animations to watch, there is no gameplay to them at all. You the player are not participating in this "move", you are watching!
Gameplay is everything, eye candy is a bonus.

Ok I have ranted long enough, I just want a good MP experience, one that gets me excited again.

Cromwell

[lars573]

I don't get this "bane of strategy games" argument. Under the RPS system level used in MTW or STW, spearmen would not always lose to swordsmen, but swords have an advantage over spears in hand to hand melee combat that I would have thought would have been quite obvious. Cavalry have the same advantage over the swords, and spears have that holding advantage against cavalry. It is not a clear cut system though. For example Trebizond Archers or other skirmishers can often take on light, or even medium cavalry and win. Swordsmen can win against cavalry when flanking, wheras in a head on assault they would surely lose. Morale fatigue and height all play a big part in this. When a unit is more seasoned, better equipped or elite it can counterbalance those effects, this adds another dimension to battles removing their predictability. If predictable easy battles are what you want then your simplified system is ideal.

That is not RPS. In a RPS system it's not that spear vs. spear lack advantage over each other. It's that they can't damage each other very well at all. AoE uses RPS. Where if two spear units could attack each other for 5 minutes and not get very far. But a sword unit would kill either in 5 hits.

You seem to be calling for a simplification of battles down to a high speed RTS style clickfest level. These type of fast battles don't involve any kind of tactical manouvering or outflanking. They are unrealistic and dull.

RTW battles are the best form. Not over simplified (if you don't turn on arcade battles), not overly complecated (like S/MTW). Optimal. Now could there be improvement, yes. The AI needs work on army management. I won't mind working a little harder for victory in M2TW.

[L'Impresario]

Regarding some of the elaboration here:

Put back the combat penalty when units overlap
- I'm not sure this applied with RTW and the historical style of battle during that period.

This is one of the most important things that need to be fixed. This means you can lump all your cav units together in one mass and win vs an opponent that will try to pin and flank you. The importance of this can't be understated.

Aren't these already the case:
Provide more settings on fatigue rate, morale level, and ammo
Separate the fatigue, morale and ammo settings

No, you don't have multiple selection regarding these, it's a "use it or leave it" approach. If one wants to play with fatigue, but not with the standard fatigue system that doesn't penalize enough (as in MTW/VI for example) running around, then no other option exists. Same thing with the other settings, some people don't want to use upgrades to most units in order to bring them to a desired general morale level, and sometimes the upgrade system works contrary to intuition and number-crunching methods ("army selection skills") become more important than the actual use of your units.
With ammo it's maybe harder more settings (like 1/2, 1/4, x2 ammo?), but we 're not talking mainly about an arrow exchange with the AI, but rather vs intelligent players, where you might be relunctant to move unless the opponent has used a good portion of his ammo/ tired his shooting units. Now, if this means 15 minutes of non-stopping, pure shooting, then it's something that can alienate a portion of the players (I can speak of VI here), that consider it an extremely long time, given that over time units start becoming less effective, slowing further the combat resolution phase. Just to be able to cater to different tastes without small modding that makes games incompatible.

[AussieGiant]

It seems Lars is "type casting" himself into the exact market segement that CA is now aiming at.

It could be more than possible that CA is designing the game to this mass market segment, knowing full well that this segment is not able to modd the game.

The hardcore groups can use the modd community to get what they want.

Hitting two birds with one stone hey??

[AussieGiant]

Speaking of "RPG click fests",

Check this idea out at the official site.

It makes me wonder how much CA will cater to this crowd in the future?

http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...cID=3369.topic

[Puzz3D]

On the issue of campaign AI, I wonder how many people have tried using the BI.exe to play RTW?

.......

And I found the AI did better with the BI.exe.

At the end of the BI.exe run through, the AI had taken more of my settlements than at the end of the RTW one.

I have hunch why it did better.

It concentrated its stacks more - there were less of the silly small stacks moving around aimlessly that was a feature of RTW.

It would be interesting if anyone else can confirm this.

I play XGM and use the BI.exe to play the RTW campaign. The strategic AI does consolidate it's armies. It seemed to me AI army consolidation was improved in RTW v1.3 when I compared it to RTW v1.2. I haven't played XGM using the RTW.exe.

[caravel]

That is not RPS. In a RPS system it's not that spear vs. spear lack advantage over each other. It's that they can't damage each other very well at all. AoE uses RPS. Where if two spear units could attack each other for 5 minutes and not get very far. But a sword unit would kill either in 5 hits.

When we say 'RPS' we are not speaking of RPS in it's pure form, but the RPS style of unit melee engagement 'rules' used in all TW games. Basically that one unit is more suited to taking on a certain type of unit than another. For example Pikes should do a great deal of damage to any type of cavalry, and a 9 star general's Kataphraktoi unit should be no exception. Yes they should fare better, but the end result should be the same. Brute forcing your way through with valour and upgrades is not sound tactics. The overriding factors of the unit type should take priority. A pike is a pike whether wielded by elite bodyguards or the conscripted peasants. The player should be forced to use his units intelligently... not bumrushing.

With TW it works as basically: Spears beats horses beats swords beats spears. If that system wasn't in place we would have a situation where certain units would become pretty useless. More definition of the 'RPS', as it was in STW would only improve gameplay and tactics while enhancing the overall multiplayer, and singleplayer experience.

RTW battles are the best form. Not over simplified (if you don't turn on arcade battles), not overly complecated (like S/MTW). Optimal. Now could there be improvement, yes. The AI needs work on army management. I won't mind working a little harder for victory in M2TW.

In your opinion. In my opinion they are boring, fast paced, simplistic slugfests, and in the opinion of many other RTW players they are the same. Which is why so many mods for RTW tend to address these sorts of issues. They are in no shape or form 'optimal'.

[econ21]

With TW it works as basically: Spears beats horses beats swords beats spears. If that system wasn't in place we would have a situation where certain units would become pretty useless. More definition of the 'RPS', as it was in STW would only improve gameplay and tactics while enhancing the overall multiplayer, and singleplayer experience.

I guess RPS opens up more scope for tactics, but personally, I would prefer the modelling to be based on history and realism than artificial gameplay considerations. If a battalion of M1 Abrams renders most other land units "useless" by comparison, so be it. However, I freely admit one of the problems for my perspective is that people don't agree on what's a realistic model of historical conflict. When MTW came out, I recall an epic thread in the Org on the "Myth of the Cavalry charge", where it was hotly disputed whether cavalry was underpowered in MTW. At the time, I was struck by a lot of informed people arguing that - contrary to the original thesis of the thread - actually knights were not as vulnerable to spears etc as people assumed.

Personally, I think RTW did a good job of modelling some of the interactions between units, at least after tweaking of the stats as in RTR or EB.

For example, contests between phalanxes and non-phalanxes often evolve in believable ways. For me, this was to be the litmus test of how RTW modelled combat between different types of units: who would win, the legion or the phalanx? People argued about it endlessly, but I am happy with the answer provided in RTW. The phalanx slowly grinds through if its flanks are secure; otherwise, the swordsmen slowly work around the phalanx and things fall apart. The weakness of the RTW phalanx is in the AIs inability to maintain a solid line and defend its flanks. It may also be too vulnerable to cavalry (although if you keep it at rest and get rid of the 2 hit point generals, it may do better).

I actually like the fact that the swords vs spears difference is muted in RTW. It seemed wholly unrealistic in MTW and my heart sinks at the thought of it inevitably returning in M2TW (please, no repeat of the 100 strong Byzantine sword-armed infantry! For realism, give 'em long spears and make them anti-cavalry shields, not legion type meat grinders). Most Medieval units (like Ancient warbands) used a mix of melee weapons. And I'm not convinced swords are much superior to spears in infantry combat, as throughout history spears have been favoured (including the gunpowder period with the bayonet, not the sword, being adopted as a secondary weapon). For much of the Medieval period, the best Catholic infantry should be dismounted knights, who would be equipped to handle both cavalry (using their - possibly shortened - lances as spears or polearms) and other infantry (using a variety of swords, axes, maces, pole-arms). They should also be the best cavalry. Yes, this might render a lot of other Catholic units potentially "useless" but pricing and availability constraints should mean that they have nonetheless to be used. I always hoped people would do a kind of "MTW - Total Realism" mod that reflected this - they never did; hopefully we will see that now with M2TW.

I think RTW did a better job modelling horse archers than STW or MTW. The shooting on a the move ability is welcome and foot archer vs horse archer contests are not so lopped side (I confess, I would have thought the edge was with the foot archer, but playing Mount and Blade made me question that presumption - it's not so easy to hit a fast moving, skirmishing horse.) The AI uses its horse archers rather well too. A Hun or Parthian army can be a painful thing to handle, whereas in MTW, Mongol or Turkish horse archers could provide something of a turkey shoot (no pun intended).

In terms of cavalry and archery, I think CA have given us the ability to mod their power as we wish by altering the stats. I've tried a lot of different representations - IMO, cavalry and archery are rather too strong in vanilla RTW. I like EBs representation and can even live with the extreme nerfs in RTR. However, I felt knights were a little dull in MTW. Giving them a bit of the vim they enjoy in RTW would not be inappropriate. I always found knights were an optional extra in my MTW armies (all my comments are SP only) - that does not feel right.

I fear I have gone off-topic a little, but there's only so much one can say about whingeing.

[Puzz3D]

I agree with almost all of Puzz's list, with a few exceptions, and a few elaborations, and a few questions for Puzz, which I've added below. I've also taken the liberty of removing or rearranging some of the points so that they aren't too repetitive.


Battle Speed

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Make the battlespeed slow enough that you can coordinate 20 units
- Basically reduce movement speeds across the board, reduce kill rates, and increase morale. It would seem that the current style of play is to get into battle as quickly as possible. Once battle has started, it isn't very long before one side breaks, and this tends to leave no time for maneuvering, before or during battle. This (for me and I think for a lot of players) is at least half, if not much more than half, the fun.

( Make the infantry running speed 1.66x the walk speed
Make the cavalry run speed 2x the infantry run speed
Make sure that units fight long enough so that hammer and anvil tactics work ) - are all included in the above, there's no need to repeat them.

These aren't repetitive. First, there is the absolute speed of the game that should be such that a human can coordinate the 20 units. It shouldn't be easy, but it should be doable with practice. Second, there is the issue of relative speeds, and I gave the specific relationships of 1.66x and 2x that worked well in the previous games. You would have some variation around that to differentiate between lighter and heavier units. Third, there is the combat resolution speed which should be such that a hammer and anvil maneuver can work if the opportunity is there. For example, using 60 man units in STW a warrior monk (the best sword unit costing 500) is 2.5x better in combat than a yari infantry (the standard spear unit costing 200). A warrior monk will defeat a yari infantry in about 30 seconds. It will also defeat two yari infantry frontally. However, if one yari infantry engages the warrior monk frontally while the other moves to attack it from the rear, the two yari infantry will win if the maneuver can be carried out so that rear contact is made within about 15 seconds of the frontal contact. In STW, you could successfully do this with both yari infantry starting out side by side, and the flanking maneuver started immediately upon frontal contact.

1) There is an issue of coordinating the units.
2) There is an issue of relative speeds.
3) There is an issue of speed of combat.

Simply raising morale to slowdown frontal combat can adversely affect the effectiveness of flank attacks. Reducing the unit size made the system more difficult to balance, and the increase from 16 to 20 units reduced the player's control.

Again, I agree, but these are far too general statements, and not much use by themselves.

Creative Assembly doesn't recognize any of my points as problems. You have to get over that hurdle first.

Stop having the AI make frontal charges with units that are weaker than the target unit
This is far far too general. If the AI has a large army of weak units, then a frontal charge is necessary to tie down the enemy units. Similarly, if they have units with generally weaker stats, but a heavy impacts (such as medium cavalry vs swords or halberds, then a charge may be the best tactic. This is too general a statement.

The AI isn't sophisticated enough to carry out that tactic. The older battle AI never did this, and it gave a more challenging game. My suggestion is very specific.

Stop the skirmish AI from shooting its own men in the back so often
- It's not something I've noticed particularly. However, if its a problem it needs to be dealt with. From a scripting point of view, it's hard to come up with any suggestions on this front... I'm sure someone knows better than me though.

It's a big problem with slingers. LOS for individual men would fix it for low tragectory weapons. For higher trajectory weapons such as archers, you reduce the accuracy of the volley. BTW, the velocity of arches is too high.

M2TW is going to have guns. This is going to be a disaster if they shoot through their own units because of the nearly flat trajectory.

Put back the combat penalty when units overlap
- I'm not sure this applied with RTW and the historical style of battle during that period.

Turns out it's important in multiplayer. It's not as important in single player as the AI doesn't overlap its units.

Fix the group movement commands so they work so that you don't have to use drag all the time
- I can't really comment because I'm not sure what the problem is, if you're talking about the fact that selecting a group and telling it to move will sometimes make the formation end up facing the wrong way, then

Yes. The ALT click movement of a group sometimes rotates the group, although, sometimes this is just a preliminary indication by the yellow arrows that gets corrected later. In anycase, it's very bad in multiplayer because you can't afford such a mistake in movement.

I have to stop here for now.

[caravel]

I guess RPS opens up more scope for tactics, but personally, I would prefer the modelling to be based on history and realism than artificial gameplay considerations. If a battalion of M1 Abrams renders most other land units "useless" by comparison, so be it. However, I freely admit one of the problems for my perspective is that people don't agree on what's a realistic model of historical conflict. When MTW came out, I recall an epic thread in the Org on the "Myth of the Cavalry charge", where it was hotly disputed whether cavalry was underpowered in MTW. At the time, I was struck by a lot of informed people arguing that - contrary to the original thesis of the thread - actually knights were not as vulnerable to spears etc as people assumed.

Modelling based on history would be ideal though some abstraction has to occur. There were few 'M1 Abrams' units during that period. Knights were not the mainstay of an army, they were moreso the well armed and well protected nobility. Neither were armies organised into units of like types and weapons, 'feudal men at arms', for example, would have been armed and armoured with whatever they could scavange/steal/afford. There were no real 'standing armies' as such.

[Little Legioner]

If we take presantation movies as a solid reference your lists are already dead guys. I just hope they've been increased the overall speed only for movies not actual game. ( infact i'm praying for that )

As a clarification CA may give some information in their FAQ section about this matter titled "battle mechanics".

[econ21]

There were few 'M1 Abrams' units during that period. Knights were not the mainstay of an army, they were moreso the well armed and well protected nobility.

Point taken on the knights. I was using it loosely to refer to a well-armoured, semi-professional warrior with a horse - I guess a man-at-arms would be the proper term for this. Knights, as in the nobility, would be included here but not the majority. By the high period, I suspect most men-at-arms might be functionally armed and armoured to a similar extent to the knights proper, but with less finely crafted equipment.

AFAIK, by the High Period of MTW, such men-at-arms were the mainstay of many Catholic armies; for example, the Hundred Years War French. They were supplemented by some missiles (mercenary crossbowmen) and probably at times had a lot of low grade feudal infantry along with them as well. But my impression is that the cutting edge of the medieval French army, for example, was it is large number of men-at-arms. And the decisive encounters in the many of iconic Hundred Years War battles were when they were be met by English equivalents, often dismounted and supported by longbowmen and billmen etc.

Yes, men-at-arms were not invulnerable M1 Abrams, as the longbowmen and the pikemen showed, but at their prime, they were rather more than one element of an RPS system of warfare. They were the mainstay.

I guess you could say MTW models these non-knight men-at-arms with the mounted sergeants and men-at-arms swords units. But:
(1) The mounted sergeants in MTW are too lightly armoured, at least in the High Period. They should be closer to the MTW chivalric knights unit.
(2) These men-at-arms units should have had the mount/dismount option before battle, as should the knights proper.
(3) When dismounted, the knights and men-at-arms should have been at least as good against cavalry as the spears.

All three changes would undermine the RPS system. Basically, Catholic players would want men-at-arms plus missiles - most other units would be, if not "useless", then clearly inferior. But arguably this would model history better.

Medieval scholars feel free to contradict me; I'm no expert.

[Lord Adherbal]

It's a big problem with slingers. LOS for individual men would fix it for low tragectory weapons. For higher trajectory weapons such as archers, you reduce the accuracy of the volley. BTW, the velocity of arches is too high.

M2TW is going to have guns. This is going to be a disaster if they shoot through their own units because of the nearly flat tracjectory.

this is incorrect. I believe the problem was addressed in some patch. The NTW2 mod has musket units who all have a flat firing trajectory and shooting friendly units in the back only happens VERY rarely.

[lars573]

When we say 'RPS' we are not speaking of RPS in it's pure form, but the RPS style of unit melee engagement 'rules' used in all TW games. Basically that one unit is more suited to taking on a certain type of unit than another. For example Pikes should do a great deal of damage to any type of cavalry, and a 9 star general's Kataphraktoi unit should be no exception. Yes they should fare better, but the end result should be the same. Brute forcing your way through with valour and upgrades is not sound tactics. The overriding factors of the unit type should take priority. A pike is a pike whether wielded by elite bodyguards or the conscripted peasants. The player should be forced to use his units intelligently... not bumrushing.

Actually a generals Kata unit should be an exception. Just as a pike isn't going to the same if weilded by a conscripted peasant or elite bodyguards. Your examples are both flawed. Kataphraktoi and pikes are mean't to brute force your way through with valour and upgrades. And when used this way they tend to excel. Sword units also tend to be good at that, provided they have armour.

With TW it works as basically: Spears beats horses beats swords beats spears. If that system wasn't in place we would have a situation where certain units would become pretty useless. More definition of the 'RPS', as it was in STW would only improve gameplay and tactics while enhancing the overall multiplayer, and singleplayer experience.

And that's a bad model. It always has been. It means that a spear unit has 10 points of defense for spear attack. But only 5 for sword attack. It would also mean that in terms of damage calculations melee cavalry is all the same. Lance or sword makes no differnece. No RPS systems mean that every faction has to have at least one of every type of unit in the RPS wheel. Without regard to history. It worked in STW because every faction used the same army. Save the Mongols but they were given a tone of Korean and Chinese subject infantry to compensate.

In your opinion. In my opinion they are boring, fast paced, simplistic slugfests, and in the opinion of many other RTW players they are the same. Which is why so many mods for RTW tend to address these sorts of issues. They are in no shape or form 'optimal'.

Not as many as you think. They are optimal. The lack of an RPS system means that if your lacking a certain kind of unit you can still win many kinds of battles. The faster movement speeds mean that battles only take 10 minutes. Rather than 30, which is far far far too long.

[Lord Adherbal]

makes me wonder why on earth some people bothered playing TW games, instead of sticking with AoE and other "fast" RTSes. What is most painfull is that CA decided to listen to these people and not their old fanbase who prefered tactics and thinking and for whoSTW/MTW was not too complicated. Its not like we have a lot of alternatives.

[Puzz3D]

I guess RPS opens up more scope for tactics, but personally, I would prefer the modelling to be based on history and realism than artificial gameplay considerations. If a battalion of M1 Abrams renders most other land units "useless" by comparison, so be it. However, I freely admit one of the problems for my perspective is that people don't agree on what's a realistic model of historical conflict. When MTW came out, I recall an epic thread in the Org on the "Myth of the Cavalry charge", where it was hotly disputed whether cavalry was underpowered in MTW. At the time, I was struck by a lot of informed people arguing that - contrary to the original thesis of the thread - actually knights were not as vulnerable to spears etc as people assumed.

You do realize that the consequence of that thread was a degrading of the multiplayer gameplay. Swords were given a hidden +1 attack vs spears, cost of spears was increased 15%, cost of cavalry knights was decreased 25%, and the cavalry was given some pushbacks (+6 attack on the next combat cycle which is a 300% attack bonus) against spearmen. All this done with no improvement to the morale of spears. Since swords were also cheap, they were given upgrades making the problem worse. The system only worked as a combined arms game with either no upgrades or uniform upgrades across all units. You can't play multiplayer with no upgrades because the morale is so low that the gameplay is a routfest. Creative Assembly refused to provide stepped morale settings as an option. After the MTW v1.1 patch multiplayer quickly deteriorated into cavalry and sword armies, and that remained to be the case despite fixing of the infinte charge bug and removal of battlefield upgrades in VI v2.01.

I actually like the fact that the swords vs spears difference is muted in RTW. It seemed wholly unrealistic in MTW and my heart sinks at the thought of it inevitably returning in M2TW (please, no repeat of the 100 strong Byzantine sword-armed infantry! For realism, give 'em long spears and make them anti-cavalry shields, not legion type meat grinders). Most Medieval units (like Ancient warbands) used a mix of melee weapons. And I'm not convinced swords are much superior to spears in infantry combat, as throughout history spears have been favoured (including the gunpowder period with the bayonet, not the sword, being adopted as a secondary weapon). For much of the Medieval period, the best Catholic infantry should be dismounted knights, who would be equipped to handle both cavalry (using their - possibly shortened - lances as spears or polearms) and other infantry (using a variety of swords, axes, maces, pole-arms). They should also be the best cavalry. Yes, this might render a lot of other Catholic units potentially "useless" but pricing and availability constraints should mean that they have nonetheless to be used. I always hoped people would do a kind of "MTW - Total Realism" mod that reflected this - they never did; hopefully we will see that now with M2TW.

The sword units are a fabrication in STW and MTW, and I agree the swords were made too strong in MTW v1.1 and thereafter. They also cost less than the spear they beat in MTW. At least in STW, the sword unit was more expensive than the spear it beat which is what makes the RPS gameplay work in a system like Total War multiplayer where you can buy as many of whatever you want.

I think RTW did a better job modelling horse archers than STW or MTW. The shooting on a the move ability is welcome and foot archer vs horse archer contests are not so lopped side (I confess, I would have thought the edge was with the foot archer, but playing Mount and Blade made me question that presumption - it's not so easy to hit a fast moving, skirmishing horse.) The AI uses its horse archers rather well too. A Hun or Parthian army can be a painful thing to handle, whereas in MTW, Mongol or Turkish horse archers could provide something of a turkey shoot (no pun intended).

That's true, but if HA don't have a counterunit you don't have a combined arms game in multiplayer. If HA are going to be uncounterable, they should be significantly more expensive than the unit they can beat. In STW, a cav archer cost 450 and could beat a no-dachi infantry which cost 300, but they couldn't beat a warrior monk that cost 500 and the only difference between the no-dachi and warror monk was the melee combat power. This was in a game where the cav archer had a clearcut anti-unit in the yari cav. In Samurai Wars, we will model the mongol horse archer with a better bow and perhaps more armor to reflect increased difficulty in hitting them, but the cost is going to have to go up otherwise the gameplay will be damaged.

We have taken steps in the new Samurai Wars stat to make the standard cav archers better by giving them the same accuracy as the foot archers and increasing their morale. We can't lower their cost because the no-dach which they beat are in the next cost slot below them. You can't make a higher mobility unit beat an equal cost lower mobility unit because then you aren't placing any cost on the higher mobility. In RTW, mobility doesn't seem to have a proper cost associated with it.

In terms of cavalry and archery, I think CA have given us the ability to mod their power as we wish by altering the stats. I've tried a lot of different representations - IMO, cavalry and archery are rather too strong in vanilla RTW. I like EBs representation and can even live with the extreme nerfs in RTR. However, I felt knights were a little dull in MTW. Giving them a bit of the vim they enjoy in RTW would not be inappropriate. I always found knights were an optional extra in my MTW armies (all my comments are SP only) - that does not feel right.

That's why we need options on the number of arrows for multiplayer. We didn't need that in STW because the effectiveness of archers was fine. Remember the STW demo where you had to beat a yari samurai with a samurai archer? To win you had to shoot, fall back to higher ground, shoot again, fall back to higher ground and finally charge down using the hill advantage. What's happened to that kind of balancing that Creative Assembly used to perform? Now they don't do that because the players they are aiming the game at won't notice it anyway?

[Myrddraal]

That's why we need options on the number of arrows for multiplayer.

OH NOW I GET IT! So you want an option for MP whereby you can reduce the amo of all units. Sorry I didn't get that at first. Duh.

I think the problem we have here is a problem which cannot be solved universally. Cost is meant to represent the actual cost in money for a Lord to raise a unit, but when it comes to MP and custom battles (where unit production is limited by nothing except money), this can prevent balanced armies from being selected. Things like a cost associated with mobility don't make sense in SP but are (it seems) necessary for MP. A seperate currency (called MP points or something) could be implemented for MP and custom battles maybe?

This probably wont happen, but it's the only way I see of resolving these issues.

[Lord Adherbal]

I think RTW did a better job modelling horse archers than STW or MTW. The shooting on a the move ability is welcome and foot archer vs horse archer contests are not so lopped side

it is an improvement, but the ability to shoot 360° is unrealistic too. A HA unit chased by light cavalry shouldn't be able to fire backwards. An exception being elite HA's who master the "parthian shot" technique, but this would still not be as effective as shooting forward. And the right flank of a HA unit should definitly be a "blind zone" because it is physically impossible for a horseman to shoot in that direction unless he can shoot both left and right handed.

[Lord Adherbal]

A seperate currency (called MP points or something) could be implemented for MP and custom battles maybe?

There already is a seperate cost value for a unit in the SP campaign and in MP/custom battle.

[Puzz3D]

That is not RPS. In a RPS system it's not that spear vs. spear lack advantage over each other. It's that they can't damage each other very well at all. AoE uses RPS. Where if two spear units could attack each other for 5 minutes and not get very far. But a sword unit would kill either in 5 hits.

That's too extreme. In STW, two 60 man (YS) spears will fight for about 2 minutes and possibly less, and it will take about 30 seconds for the best sword (WM) to beat the standard YS spear. The absolute longest combat is between two NI (naginata infantry) which are much more defensive than spears and fight for about 3 minutes. On top of that, two YS can beat one WM by using maneuver, but I know that for you this is too complicated.

RTW battles are the best form. Not over simplified (if you don't turn on arcade battles), not overly complecated (like S/MTW). Optimal. Now could there be improvement, yes. The AI needs work on army management. I won't mind working a little harder for victory in M2TW.

If something can be improved then it is not optimal. If RTW is best, why did my clan stop playing the game? Why did the FF clan stop playing? How could there be a successful Knights of Valor Clan Wars Competion involving many clans long after RTW was released if RTW was so good? That competition was a direct result of RTW gameplay issues not being addressed in the RTW v1.2 patch. There were were over 500 signatures on the multiplayer petition asking that, in addition stability issues, specific gameplay issues be addressed. The stability was addressed, but the gameplay issues were not addressed. Cavalry spamming and rushing ruled RTW, and it's still a problem if you happen to be a player who wants to play a combined arms game.

[econ21]

You do realize that the consequence of that thread was a degrading of the multiplayer gameplay. Swords were given a hidden +1 attack vs spears, cost of spears was increased 15%, cost of cavalry knights was decreased 25%, and the cavalry was given some pushbacks (+6 attack on the next combat cycle which is a 300% attack bonus) against spearmen. All this done with no improvement to the morale of spears.

Well, this might be an example of a conflict between SP and MP; or between realism and gameplay. I felt after these changes (primarily the pushback effect, I guess), CA finally got the balance between spears and knights in SP to a reasonable level. There certainly seemed to be less complaints. In MTW 1.0, knights seemed to bounce off spears (maybe the same is true in STW). After the tweaking, a unit of royal knights was dangerous, a real threat if they hit your flanks or get behind your lines. After the changes, if royal knights charged head on into a unit of feudal spears, they might prevail. But it would be very bloodly for the knights and given the rarity/cost issue, the general of the spears would be happier at the trade. That was my rough impression from my SP games - I did not do formal tests of outcomes before and after the patch - and intuitively it seemed fair enough.

However, as I said earlier, I'd like to see M2TW knights retain a little bit of the power of RTW cavalry. Knights against good infantry - say Flemish pikes etc - should like MTW. But knights against run of the mill stuff, should be a bit more like RTWs uber-cav. Otherwise, historically, why did people go to all the cost of training and maintaining knights if a run of the mill infantry could negate them? It does not compute. An example of the kind of balance I am thinking of may be Goth's mod for BI. It seems to do a reasonable job of modelling Dark Age and super-heavy cavalry. It's nasty but you still don't want to charge Gothic spears head on, you still want to go for the flanks and you still want to set up a good charge.[1]

I take your points about swords and MP, but I tended to under-use swords in SP. I regarded them in MTW as most of us regard Egyptians in RTW - sure, they are powerful but they are so unhistorical, they are aesthetically ugly.

[1]BTW, I wonder if RTW has improved the modelling of the cavalry charge? Playing RTR Platinum, where the cavalry attack stat is nerfed, and also Goth mod where there are no 2 HP uber-bodygyards, I am starting to appreciate the nuances involved in getting a charge bonus to kick in. Ideally, you want to be in formation, facing the right way, start at a trot and have enought time for the run up. Do that and your men lower lances, and hit with great impact. Mess it up and you go straight into a messy melee with no advantage either side and much lower lethality. I don't recall these subtleties from STW and MTW.

[Ser Clegane]

The faster movement speeds mean that battles only take 10 minutes. Rather than 30, which is far far far too long.

To reduce the overall "battle-time" during campaign I would rather liked to have seen a reduction in the number of battles than in the length of individual battles.
That the former did not happen was actually my major gripe with R:TW as I was looking forwards to less but more decisive/meaningful battles (especially as the developers announced that this would be the case) and I got the impression that the number of battles actually increased compared to M:TW.

I would be very happy if M:TW2 would change this situation as I would love to play a campaign with relatively few but epic battles that leave you with a feeling of having changed the course of history instead of having to fight lots of quick battles that I forget as quickly as I fought them (I know that I can auto-resolve but doing so insituation where your forces aren't clearly superior this might be a waste of troops)

[Puzz3D]

OH NOW I GET IT! So you want an option for MP whereby you can reduce the amo of all units. Sorry I didn't get that at first. Duh.

I think the problem we have here is a problem which cannot be solved universally. Cost is meant to represent the actual cost in money for a Lord to raise a unit, but when it comes to MP and custom battles (where unit production is limited by nothing except money), this can prevent balanced armies from being selected. Things like a cost associated with mobility don't make sense in SP but are (it seems) necessary for MP. A seperate currency (called MP points or something) could be implemented for MP and custom battles maybe?

There are different considerations between single player campaign and multiplayer. For instance, there is no upkeep cost in multiplayer and the general has no command stars in multiplayer. The only controls in multiplayer are the florin level and "arcade" on or off which turns off fatigue and morale and provides unlimited ammo. If you raise the florins to get more morale on the units it wrecks the rock, paper, scissors gameplay as players try to make superunits with the upgrades or as Orda says they numbercrunch the cost/benefit ratio with stat compare tools to the disadvantage of those players who don't want to have to use those tools. Above all, newbies get blown away by players who have mastered the unit purchase/upgrade optimizations. What's strange about this is LongJohn used the reason that newbies would be confused when he refused to provide more options on multiplayer. Creative Assembly has made the game extremely confusing with the upgrade system they have implimented.

Why not simply provide generals with increasing command stars for various levels of play? With a system like that, multiplayers could find a setting which provided a good balance between maneuver and attrition gameplay without upsetting the combined arms balance. LongJohn is on record as saying he thinks the optimal morale level is different for 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 games, and this system would allow adustment for that. You would still have the possibity of low morale battles (mostly maneuver) and high morale battle (mostly attrition) with this system. This system would actually make the gameplay more like a campaign game, and some players do come to multiplayer after playing campaign.

Variable fatigue and ammo is not necessary if Creative Assembly does a good job of optimizing, but since STW they haven't shown the ability to continually improve the game in this area. They oscillate around the optimal point by a wide enough margin that the gameplay is significantly affected. For instance, ranged units too weak in MTW only to be too strong in RTW, and fatigue rate too high in MTW while too low in RTW. We don't see a steady improvement in these optimizations since original STW. That's why when someone posts how RTW is improved over STW, I don't see it that way.

In MTW, you can designate a unit for use in single player campaign or custom/multiplayer or both. We use this in STWmod for MTW/VI to separate the cost and morale level of each unit whether it's intended for SP campaign or multiplayer. Creative Assembly could do this, but if they don't want to then I don't see how multiplayer can ever improve especially when there are ever more units and more factions in each release. I see a steady degradation of the gameplay with each release if they stick to the multiplayer system they used in STW.

This probably wont happen, but it's the only way I see of resolving these issues.

I don't think this is going to be solved either.

[Puzz3D]

Well, this might be an example of a conflict between SP and MP; or between realism and gameplay. I felt after these changes (primarily the pushback effect, I guess), CA finally got the balance between spears and knights in SP to a reasonable level. There certainly seemed to be less complaints. In MTW 1.0, knights seemed to bounce off spears (maybe the same is true in STW). After the tweaking, a unit of royal knights was dangerous, a real threat if they hit your flanks or get behind your lines. After the changes, if royal knights charged head on into a unit of feudal spears, they might prevail. But it would be very bloodly for the knights and given the rarity/cost issue, the general of the spears would be happier at the trade. That was my rough impression from my SP games - I did not do formal tests of outcomes before and after the patch - and intuitively it seemed fair enough.

Royal Knights were never supposed to be a viable combat unit according to LongJohn. They were put in there for flavor, and I think against his wishes. Changing the playbalance to accomodate that unit would be wrong.

However, as I said earlier, I'd like to see M2TW knights retain a little bit of the power of RTW cavalry. Knights against good infantry - say Flemish pikes etc - should like MTW. But knights against run of the mill stuff, should be a bit more like RTWs uber-cav. Otherwise, historically, why did people go to all the cost of training and maintaining knights if a run of the mill infantry could negate them? It does not compute. An example of the kind of balance I am thinking of may be Goth's mod for BI. It seems to do a reasonable job of modelling Dark Age and super-heavy cavalry. It's nasty but you still don't want to charge Gothic spears head on, you still want to go for the flanks and you still want to set up a good charge.

I'm sure that you'll get what you want to the detriment of multiplayer.

I take your points about swords and MP, but I tended to under-use swords in SP. I regarded them in MTW as most of us regard Egyptians in RTW - sure, they are powerful but they are so unhistorical, they are aesthetically ugly.

I don't care what unit represents the third component of the rock, paper, scissors system just so long as there is one. MTW multiplayer deteriorated to a two component system, and RTW to a one component system. I'd like to know what happened to Creative Assembly's attention to gameplay which they claimed was their focus just before RTW was released. They have stated that historical accuracy and realism are not their focus.

BTW, I wonder if RTW has improved the modelling of the cavalry charge? Playing RTR Platinum, where the cavalry attack stat is nerfed, and also Goth mod where there are no 2 HP uber-bodygyards, I am starting to appreciate the nuances involved in getting a charge bonus to kick in. Ideally, you want to be in formation, facing the right way, start at a trot and have enought time for the run up. Do that and your men lower lances, and hit with great impact. Mess it up and you go straight into a messy melee with no advantage either side and much lower lethality. I don't recall these subtleties from STW and MTW.

Cavalry charge bonus was broken in STW. There was no noticable charge bonus given. In MI, +12 morale was added to all units in multiplayer, and the power of guns increased from 4 to 16 eventhough anything above power 8 didn't do anything because the system saturated at 8. On top of that, the weapon and armor upgrade costs were incorrectly calculated. The naginata cav unit was introduced with identical stats to a warror monk except faster and it was cheaper in cost! The single man kensai simply cannot be balanced in that combat system, and the invisible ninja with 100 ammo was another indication of changes which were not historical or gameplay improvements unless you think extreme units are fun. What it did to multiplayer was to make some bizarre exploits possible.

In MTW/VI v2.01, the charge bonus was finally fixed and the subtlety of managing the cav charge properly as you describe does exist in lower florin battles, but most games were played at such high florins that pumped swords beat cav frontally. You could even beat cav frontally with pumped ranged units due to that screwy discount on ranged unit upgrades. These aren't problems in MTW/VI SP as far as I remember.

[Puzz3D]

I would be very happy if M:TW2 would change this situation as I would love to play a campaign with relatively few but epic battles that leave you with a feeling of having changed the course of history instead of having to fight lots of quick battles that I forget as quickly as I fought them (I know that I can auto-resolve but doing so insituation where your forces aren't clearly superior this might be a waste of troops)

In playing XGM, you can't go anywhere near that auto resolve if you play a faction such as Carthage which doesn't have as high income as several other factions. The strategic AI programmer thought it would be fun to force the player to play every battle, and that's why he put the bias that favors the AI in the auto-resolve. It seems to me the tactical difficulty setting could be used for that or maybe the strategic difficulty if the tactical difficulty settings tracked the bias accurately so you could match them up if you wanted to.

[econ21]

Royal Knights were never supposed to be a viable combat unit according to LongJohn. They were put in there for flavor, and I think against his wishes.

Well thank goodness they were put in - they were the only knights I tended to see in MTW early campaigns for a long time. The thing about knights in MTW SP was that it took so long to get them and then they were just so-so.

But I do think RTW went over the top with its "royal knights" - the general's bodyguards. Giving them 2 HP unbalances things and means they often determine the outcome of the battle. I once watched an AI vs AI battle in RTR Platinum (which nerfs cav but retains the 2HP). The two generals' units were decisive, pulling off devastating rear charges in hammer and anvil tactics. A battle report is here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...9&postcount=22

Interestingly, I did not find the AI tactics too shabby. For example, I liked the way the Gallic warband (an inferior unit) methodically lined up a rear charge on the engaged principes (an uber unit in RTR) and so brought it down. You could think that battle report involved a human player.

[Orda Khan]

Otherwise, historically, why did people go to all the cost of training and maintaining knights if a run of the mill infantry could negate them?

Prestige mainly. Or old boys school, or elitists club, or them and us, the have and have nots. Precisely the reason why the Longbow 'serfs' did not find it so disagreeable to despatch them (Agincourt murder of prisoners)

the ability to shoot 360° is unrealistic too.

Agreed.

A HA unit chased by light cavalry shouldn't be able to fire backwards. An exception being elite HA's who master the "parthian shot"

That would cover most of the horse archers who ever rode the steppes. All these HA were 'elite', if elite is the correct word.

this would still not be as effective as shooting forward.

Agreed, or to the left side.

And the right flank of a HA unit should definitly be a "blind zone" because it is physically impossible for a horseman to shoot in that direction unless he can shoot both left and right handed.

Though there were bound to be some left handed HA, not enough to negate the above statement.

The most obvious thing I have noticed about this thread or any whingeing on these boards seems to be that the MP side of TW is suffering most. How do we expect to substantiate our concerns about overlapping units when some think that is how battles were fought in these times?

"This left the infantry unprotected and so closely huddled that a man could hardly wield his sword or draw back his arm once he had stretched it out." Ammianus Marcelinus.

I wonder how eight cavalry units on top of each other would fare?
I find it extremely odd that some like Lars in particular, find the tactical battles so boring as to want them over as quick as possible. There again, given how easy it is to defeat the AI, I suppose boring is a good description of SP battles against the current AI

.......Orda