Wanted: some limits to expansion

[screwtype]

I said I was going to post something about the elements of Lords of the Realm 2 that I would like to see adopted by CA for its TW series.

First though, I'd just like to emphasize that I'm not advocating the inclusion holus-bolus of the LOTR 2 campaign system into TW. Rather, I'm advocating the adoption of certain principles, which I will explain below.

LOTR 2, TW, and Malthusian limits.


Every game has limits on the player at the low end of the scale. For example, when you first start in almost any sort of computer strategy game, you have very little in the way of resources, of manpower, of money etc and you have to build everything up and gradually increase your strength in order to win. That is basically what 99% of computer strategy games are about.

For many such games though, there is no corresponding difficulty at the opposite end. You just go on accumulating more and more stuff, more and more power, until you eventually overwhelm the enemy with enormous resources. This is the usual paradigm for run-of-the-mill, mediocre strategy games. (Unfortunately, the TW series fits into this category). The good strategy games incorporate some sort of upper limit on the player, as well as a lower limit. The original version of RTW made an attempt at this with the squalor factor, but it was very crudely implemented and soon effectively abandoned by CA in later revisions.

In my experience, the game that best incorporated the principle of upper limits was the old Impressions game Lords of the Realm 2. LOTR 2 designed a game that incorporated an essentially Malthusian principle on virtually every possible aspect of expansion that forced the player to strike a careful balance between the two extreme ends of the scale. In other words, there was an optimum level of expansion the player could reach, beyond which his kingdom would implode rapidly back to the starting point. Furthermore, this optimum level was not easily discovered except by trial-and-error and by mastering a set of management skills. The optimum level was also somewhat malleable depending on the player's skill level. In my opinion, this sort of design philosophy presents the ideal challenge for a strategy gamer.

To give some examples - obviously, you can always have too few of anything. But in LOTR 2, there was almost no element you could not also have too much of (with the possible exception of money and food reserves). For example, too little happiness in a province would cause catastrophic rebellion. But too much happiness would cause mass immigration from the surrounding provinces, causing a population explosion and rapid meltdown of the province as it rapidly exhausted its food reserves. You also wanted your population to be healthy, but not too healthy, because that would cause a baby boom and again, the danger of population explosion. You wanted plenty of sheep, cattle and grain to feed your people, but too many sheep and cattle and your flocks would grow diseased, too much grain and you would exhaust the soil, again leading to mass starvation.

You could create an army, but armies had to live off the land too, so you couldn't afford to create too large an army or again, it would starve the province. Likewise, if an enemy army invaded a province of yours, you had to defeat it quickly before it ate all the food reserve and caused mass starvation, and even if you won you had to get your own army out of there pronto to stop it doing the same!

This system not only created a constant challenge and plenty of excitement, but it also happened to simulate very well the actual problems facing a medieval kingdom. Warfare in the medieval age was, of course, devastating to the land and to the populace that depended on it, particularly if the warfare was prolonged.

Now I'm not suggesting TW should adopt the LOTR 2 system chapter and verse. I certainly don't think there's a need for replicating the complex agricultural system, whereby the player has to manage sheep and cattle and grain and the labour allocated to them each season and so on. But the underlying principle of some sort of upper limit on growth, manageable by a skilled player - that is something that in my opinion the TW series needs desperately. And the economic devastation and vulnerability of the populace to warfare - once again, avoidable by the skilled player - is something else I think the game needs. The campaign in general needs a whole lot more excitement, more thrills and spills, more sense of engagement with a living, breathing world. Right now, it's little more than a one-dimensional, one-way march to total domination - a game of arithmetic, characterized by steady accumulation.

In other words, the strategy side of TW is by and large a yawn. And just fiddling on the edges with "unit pools" is not going to fix it - any more than will merchant units, religious leaders, princesses, assassination videos, V&V's or any of the other chrome that CA tosses our way as a substitute for gameplay.

[x-dANGEr]

So you're suggesting more squalor?

[Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)]

I said I was going to post something about the elements of Lords of the Realm 2 that I would like to see adopted by CA for its TW series.

First though, I'd just like to emphasize that I'm not advocating the inclusion holus-bolus of the LOTR 2 campaign system into TW. Rather, I'm advocating the adoption of certain principles, which I will explain below.

LOTR 2, TW, and Malthusian limits.


Every game has limits on the player at the low end of the scale. For example, when you first start in almost any sort of computer strategy game, you have very little in the way of resources, of manpower, of money etc and you have to build everything up and gradually increase your strength in order to win. That is basically what 99% of computer strategy games are about.

For many such games though, there is no corresponding difficulty at the opposite end. You just go on accumulating more and more stuff, more and more power, until you eventually overwhelm the enemy with enormous resources. This is the usual paradigm for run-of-the-mill, mediocre strategy games. (Unfortunately, the TW series fits into this category). The good strategy games incorporate some sort of upper limit on the player, as well as a lower limit. The original version of RTW made an attempt at this with the squalor factor, but it was very crudely implemented and soon effectively abandoned by CA in later revisions.

In my experience, the game that best incorporated the principle of upper limits was the old Impressions game Lords of the Realm 2. LOTR 2 designed a game that incorporated an essentially Malthusian principle on virtually every possible aspect of expansion that forced the player to strike a careful balance between the two extreme ends of the scale. In other words, there was an optimum level of expansion the player could reach, beyond which his kingdom would implode rapidly back to the starting point. Furthermore, this optimum level was not easily discovered except by trial-and-error and by mastering a set of management skills. The optimum level was also somewhat malleable depending on the player's skill level. In my opinion, this sort of design philosophy presents the ideal challenge for a strategy gamer.

To give some examples - obviously, you can always have too few of anything. But in LOTR 2, there was almost no element you could not also have too much of (with the possible exception of money and food reserves). For example, too little happiness in a province would cause catastrophic rebellion. But too much happiness would cause mass immigration from the surrounding provinces, causing a population explosion and rapid meltdown of the province as it rapidly exhausted its food reserves. You also wanted your population to be healthy, but not too healthy, because that would cause a baby boom and again, the danger of population explosion. You wanted plenty of sheep, cattle and grain to feed your people, but too many sheep and cattle and your flocks would grow diseased, too much grain and you would exhaust the soil, again leading to mass starvation.

You could create an army, but armies had to live off the land too, so you couldn't afford to create too large an army or again, it would starve the province. Likewise, if an enemy army invaded a province of yours, you had to defeat it quickly before it ate all the food reserve and caused mass starvation, and even if you won you had to get your own army out of there pronto to stop it doing the same!

This system not only created a constant challenge and plenty of excitement, but it also happened to simulate very well the actual problems facing a medieval kingdom. Warfare in the medieval age was, of course, devastating to the land and to the populace that depended on it, particularly if the warfare was prolonged.

Now I'm not suggesting TW should adopt the LOTR 2 system chapter and verse. I certainly don't think there's a need for replicating the complex agricultural system, whereby the player has to manage sheep and cattle and grain and the labour allocated to them each season and so on. But the underlying principle of some sort of upper limit on growth, manageable by a skilled player - that is something that in my opinion the TW series needs desperately. And the economic devastation and vulnerability of the populace to warfare - once again, avoidable by the skilled player - is something else I think the game needs. The campaign in general needs a whole lot more excitement, more thrills and spills, more sense of engagement with a living, breathing world. Right now, it's little more than a one-dimensional, one-way march to total domination - a game of arithmetic, characterized by steady accumulation.

In other words, the strategy side of TW is by and large a yawn. And just fiddling on the edges with "unit pools" is not going to fix it - any more than will merchant units, religious leaders, princesses, assassination videos, V&V's or any of the other chrome that CA tosses our way as a substitute for gameplay.

Screwtype how do you think that the romans conquered the world ,or how did the british empire was built,or how the germans fought 2 world wars in that short time and they fought almost alone against the ally.To do this you need to accumulate a lot of resources.The germans lost the war because theirs resources finished this can happen in mtw2 too, if you keep fighting and going in crusades you start to lose your resources and then the enemy can attack and cut you down .In rtw if an enemy army was in your territory it was damaging your farms.

[Peasant Phill]

The point is that it's just to easy to collect the resources needed to steamroll other factions. In MTW, for example, the only thing you needed was a good trade network and you earned more florins than you ever hoped to spend.

Screwtypes point is (correct me if I'm wrong) not that it shouldn't be possible to conquer the world but that it should be more difficult the larger your empire gets. TW should be a quest for some kind of balance instead of just resource gathering.

[econ21]

I think this thread addresses very similar questions to the following:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=67522

Even if some of the proposed solutions are different.

[Dracula(Romanian Vlad Tepes)]

The point is that it's just to easy to collect the resources needed to steamroll other factions. In MTW, for example, the only thing you needed was a good trade network and you earned more florins than you ever hoped to spend.

Screwtypes point is (correct me if I'm wrong) not that it shouldn't be possible to conquer the world but that it should be more difficult the larger your empire gets. TW should be a quest for some kind of balance instead of just resource gathering.

But now with the new recruitment system it will be harder to recruit so many men .Now the money won't be so important.You need to have men ready to be trained.And if you play on higher difficulty the computer will have more men ready to recruit than you,so it would be harder to conquer .And if the AI will be improved maybe on higher difficulty will be almost impossible to conquer even 10 towns.When you conquer it will get harder ,so that when your empire gets larger
you have to defend a lot of territory and because you can't train so many soldiers it will be very difficult to defend the territory.

[screwtype]

So you're suggesting more squalor?

Um - not exactly

[screwtype]

Screwtypes point is (correct me if I'm wrong) not that it shouldn't be possible to conquer the world but that it should be more difficult the larger your empire gets. TW should be a quest for some kind of balance instead of just resource gathering.

I'm not arguing it should be more difficult the larger the empire gets, I'm just saying I want the game to retain some challenge as the campaign continues, and not be effectively all over in 25 turns.

But more importantly than that, I'm arguing for a campaign that actually has depth, that is engaging, that has thrills and spills and crises to keep you involved and on your toes.

I mean, are rebellions a challenge in RTW? No, they are a friggin' bore. After a while they are just irritating, because they don't represent a real danger to your Empire, they are just another chore you have to deal with. In LOTR 2 - as anyone who's played it can tell you - rebellions were a real disaster, to be avoided at all costs.

Likewise, when you captured a new province in LOTR2, you would often have to adopt extreme emergency measures to stop it imploding. Get some grain shipments to it as soon as possible. Get the bulk of your army out. Find a way - any way - to pump the happiness up a few degrees. It could be a real juggling act, with a corresponding sense of achievement if you managed to avoid meltdown. So where's the challenge in TW? Once you take a province, all you need to do is leave an army in it for a few turns, and it's safely yours. No challenge. No excitement. It's a ho-hum experience.

Or take the issue of army building. In LOTR2 it takes a lot of resources and careful planning to build an army. When you finally get your first province to a reasonable size, and peel off your first 50 or 100 swordsmen - to be followed a little later by another 100 or so, enough perhaps to take the adjacent province - there's a real sense of achievement. In RTW you just churn out army units like it doesn't matter.

Even in the earlier games, STW and MTW, it could really hurt when you lost a battle, because it could take you quite a while to build up your strength again. In RTW you just whip your beaten army back to the nearest city, top up all the depleted units, and you're ready with another full stack. I mean, there is just no tension in the game - the campaign side of it, at least. And no skills to master. Just a whole lot of micromanagement. And even that's not really so important.

What I find frustrating is that after all this time, TW is still essentially little more than a battle engine with a very primitive campaign game tacked on, which basically enables you to play a series of battles which are nominally linked in purpose. And that's it. It hasn't grown at all in that respect, except for the addition of some cheap chrome. What the heck is wrong with CA that they've done so little to deepen the campaign element? I can only suppose it's the usual game company timidity, they are afraid to tinker with what they see as a winning formula so they just keep churning out the same old thing time after time with only cosmetic changes.

So we end up with a game that looks increasingly fantastic, with great looking units and terrain, battle machines, shiny armour, finishing moves and all the rest, and the underlying concept hasn't moved forward one iota from the first release of STW.

I guess I should be used to this by now, there are so many game companies that are going down the same road - Civ 4, AoE 3, HoMM5 come to mind, all great graphics tacked onto hoary old concepts - but, even if it's futile, I feel obliged to keep demanding more because I'm sure they can do better. Either that, or I guess I'll have to take up a different hobby

[econ21]

Even in the earlier games, STW and MTW, it could really hurt when you lost a battle, because it could take you quite a while to build up your strength again. In RTW you just whip your beaten army back to the nearest city, top up all the depleted units, and you're ready with another full stack.

This is a fair point, but you can avoid it even with the current RTW engine by the following means:

1.) Play with a no retraining house rule (ie only retrain full stacks if you want an armour bonus etc). That goes an awful long way. I believe the AI does not retrain, so it's only fair.

2) Have restrictions on recruitment, EB or RTR style. If you can only get decent troops, one per turn (or per two turns) from your faraway capital, losing an army hurts. For example, as Romans, only recruit legions etc in Rome.

3) Of course a tight economy also helps. Modders can do this well enough - e.g. EB is particularly cruel in this respect. But I guess you could give some money away to AI factions if you don't like mods.

I'm saying all this because the other night, I lost my WRE army of the Rhine to the Franks in Goth's All Factions BI mod. It hurt so much, I reloaded.

All the above is for the early to mid game only though. But then MTW had the "too big to be beat" problem in the late game too.

[Tamur]

Either that, or I guess I'll have to take up a different hobby

Or start up a new game company. Seriously, there is always room for a shakeup of concepts.

edit: what econ says above about the mods is very true in regards to this specific point. Getting to the point of rolling over other factions in EB is really, really difficult.

[Myrddraal]

that has thrills and spills and crises

Civil wars in MTW were really interesting. They usually happened when you overstretched yourself, leaving a few disloyal generals in your wake and bang, you loose half your provinces and most of your armies. That was fun. I hope they bring them back.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of such minor tweaks which have been seemingly forgotten.

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)




Then of course you get down to the resources problem. (Where once you have accumulated a certain amount of resources nothing can stop you) This was evident in MTW and STW, but there are ways of correcting it. Like all the suggestions in this thread for example

However, your resources would matter less if the AI didn't waste theirs.

[x-dANGEr]

Man.. "Limiting" yourself is really not we ask for.. I never micromanage anything in RTW campaigns, and I still get away with a victory after what..? 50 turns! (50 turns aren't long at all btw.. I just move that army, and click end turn)

[iwantmyaccountdeleted]

I hated the WRER and ERER. They were pathetic. I even let them rebel, gave them five turns to build up then attacked them with small armies. I crushed them without even retraining or pausing to consolidate.

Several points about rebellions

-They should be a faction living in that region, not rebels
-Rebel factions (if they are included) should not be a different colour clone of the original faction
-Dead factions can appear
-Rebels should not have gold chevrons in a large town. Or gold armour. Or gold weapons. Or be cataphracts. Limit the rebels to what can be trained there. For gods sake, I'm being tired of being eradicated by Kydonian rebels when they rebel against the Greeks (who retook it) kill them, and kill my invading army taking about 3 losses. (How'd they get full stats on a large town?)
-Rebel factions should appear in neighboring factions, not spread out across the whole empire. I simply pause in my stride, wipe them out in one turn, and carry on...

Several Points about LOTR

-It is a great game but it is not TW. Don't try to make it TW. Don't try to make TW it. If I want to play LOTR, I'll play it, not M2TW.
-I don't like the idea of making weapons etc. Maybe on a global scale, have that sort of choice for your economy, but it sounds suspiciously like more micromanagement to me.
-LOTR can teach M2TW some things. I think a reasonable blend of the two games - including a lot of existing MTW material - could just work...

I'm kinda skeptical about house rules, but to each his own

Signing off,

Stormie

(The relative newb)

[gunslinger]

I'm amazed at how many people compare MTW to Lords of the Realm II. Until I came here, I thought I was the only person in the world who remembered that old game. The "campaign map" part of the game was very good for such an old game, but the "battle map" part could be mastered by a six-year-old.

I've said this before in another thread, but the thing that really kept LOTR II interesting was that you were on a comparatively small strategic map, and once you had conquered it, you started over on a more challenging map (I never did play them all). This would never work in a TW setting which uses a realistic map of the medieval or Roman world as a stage.

[poo_for_brains]

In other words, the strategy side of TW is by and large a yawn. And just fiddling on the edges with "unit pools" is not going to fix it - any more than will merchant units, religious leaders, princesses, assassination videos, V&V's or any of the other chrome that CA tosses our way as a substitute for gameplay.

The merchant units are not "chrome." They remove the guaranteed unbeatable economy that you always got in previous TW games, because even after conquering a lot of provinces, the resources within them are still up for grabs. They will also help to make small countries more viable - because they can use trade to bring them a lot more wealth than previously.


The recruitment system, to some extent, prevents a completely superior military being put together.

The city/castle system means that to be the best militarily will cause huge economic problems (not enough cities), and to become really wealthy, and economically superior will leave you vulnerable, especially as the AI now launches attacks by ship, making it hard to simply build a protective layer of castles on your frontier, and cities behind.

So to expand greatly in MTW2 should prove harder than previously in TW games, although I have optimistically assumed that the AI will be able to use all of thes features to their advantage.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

MTW was capable of throwing you amazing strategic challenges. In my current campaign the Italians attacked, destroyed my fletts and struck in four seperat provinces. As a result I lost my conection to Outremer which caused a mass rebellion in the Holy Land and my reliance on naval trade threatened to bankrupt me. Had they done it ten turns earlier it would have been dangerous. Unfortunately I had full stacks on every border, which meant my only problem was the Holy Land.

The AI isn't that stupid, it just doesn't see the big picture. Its individual moves are usually good. They just don't add up. The retaining thing is a serious handicap and CA need to fix it.

[cannon_fodder]

Some of those things are already present in RTW (notably the healthy populace one). I think the concept could and should be expanded, but perhaps not too much. Having more good resources and attributes is better than having too few, and that should be reflected in the game.

The main source of challenge and limit to expansion once you have a large empire should be more powerful enemy empires to fight, which was the case in RTW.

[screwtype]

The merchant units are not "chrome." They remove the guaranteed unbeatable economy that you always got in previous TW games, because even after conquering a lot of provinces, the resources within them are still up for grabs. They will also help to make small countries more viable - because they can use trade to bring them a lot more wealth than previously.

The recruitment system, to some extent, prevents a completely superior military being put together.

The city/castle system means that to be the best militarily will cause huge economic problems (not enough cities), and to become really wealthy, and economically superior will leave you vulnerable, especially as the AI now launches attacks by ship, making it hard to simply build a protective layer of castles on your frontier, and cities behind.

So to expand greatly in MTW2 should prove harder than previously in TW games, although I have optimistically assumed that the AI will be able to use all of thes features to their advantage.

Sorry, but this is all just speculation. You don't know these features are going to affect gameplay in the ways you claim because you haven't played the game yet.

I've described the merchants as chrome because of what we've been told about the way they are implemented. There's a little subgame where merchants will fight over resources. As many have pointed out, this is likely to provoke a "merchant rush" as you have to send out a stream of merchants to continually retake resources taken from you by other factions. It's a hokey idea, which adds nothing to core gameplay.

I'm all for the idea of having to develop and protect economic resources, but this is not the way to go about it.

[screwtype]

I've said this before in another thread, but the thing that really kept LOTR II interesting was that you were on a comparatively small strategic map, and once you had conquered it, you started over on a more challenging map (I never did play them all). This would never work in a TW setting which uses a realistic map of the medieval or Roman world as a stage.

The version of LOTR II that I mostly played was the Amiga version, which is considerably superior to the PC version. And the Amiga version had only one map - the map of Britain, excluding Scotland. But I can assure you I played that one map over and over again! So the LOTR II system certainly isn't inappropriate for "a TW setting" using a single realworld map.

[rory_20_uk]

The thought of a game where I need to micromanage food, birth rates, resources, etc etc doesn't thrill me. I can play Civ 4 when I want that.

IMO the problem is that historically a strong leader could lead his country and gain a lot, regardless of the time period. However, often when the succession went bad so did the empire.

We are always the good leader with a firm hand on the tiller. We're not led astray with such matters as court infighting or a surfeit of food / wine / women. So, yes, difficulties are overcome and the empire grows. Charlamane managed to conquer most of Europe. Alexander most of the Middle East. Only their death destroyed it.

Personally, I don't want a game where everything I make sporadically implodes regardless of what I do (oh, up to 30 provinces - oh, this time it's a plague!)

What might be slightly more interesting (if contrived) is to have the threats that are external to be increased from time to time, such as another wave of people from the Steppes / Middle East / North Russia / British Isles (where is not that crucial. The warn out factions against you are slaughtered and a new foe takes their place, radically altering the map of Europe.

Yes, you can survive, but you'll be defending against an attack from a fringe where you might not expect it. Getting a decent number of semi plausable triggers might be slightly tough (there are only so many pretenders / new religions / cults / crusades / excommunications / barbarian invasions that can be stomached).

[screwtype]

The thought of a game where I need to micromanage food, birth rates, resources, etc etc doesn't thrill me. I can play Civ 4 when I want that.

Yes, but I specifically said I wouldn't support such a system for TW either. A bit too complex for a campaign map as big as a typical TW game. It would have worked great for Shogun though!

Personally, I don't want a game where everything I make sporadically implodes regardless of what I do (oh, up to 30 provinces - oh, this time it's a plague!)

Neither do I - far from it. (In fact one reason I've never much liked MTW is because of the province rebellions/60% world rebellion features. Boring).

What I said is that I'd like a system that is based on player skill - ie you can avoid implosion of your Empire if you're skilled enough. As a general rule I'm against random events in games that have a big impact on play. At the very least random events should be able to be ameliorated by a skilful player.

[rory_20_uk]

The current system requires skill. So you are advocating one that requires more skill.

To do this there can be:

more variables to balance
AI allowed to cheat more (more gold / trade / units are better)
More savvy AI both tactically and strategically.

IMO the basic crux is that the AI isn't capable enough. Other solutions are merely to palliate this fact. Random implosions are no good I agree, but then nor is having another 5, 10, or whatever factors to balance. Again, once you get that sorted you'll continue to crush the opposition beneath your sandles. Ths skill needs to be present on both the tactical and the strategic maps. The AI doesn't do a particularly great job on either.

Strategically, even when allied the AI never acts together. No joint attacks, no coinciding thrusts to stretch your armies. Hell, you can trade with one half of an alliance when at war with the other! In essence alliances mean precious little, and empires will passively sit there watching you crush their allies one by one - whilst bankrolling you - until it's their "turn".

To fix this problem there are mods that address this issue with trying to sort out the AI (darth's darkmod for example). Whilst it is a lot better the basic system is flawed.
Others try to do things the other way and the player is drowned in barbarian hoards pouring in from Gaul - effective, but hardly fun fighting essentially the same battle 5 times per go.