patch wishlist

[frogbeastegg]

Forgot one.

Let's say you are allied to faction A, and at war with faction B. If faction B forms an alliance with faction A then you are automatically forced into a truce with faction B. Please add in a full diplomacy pop up telling you "A truce has been formed with Faction B at the request of our new mutual ally, faction A." when this happens! Right now the only notification of the truce is contained in the diplomacy overview pop up at the start of each turn; it's easy to miss in there and it doesn't explain clearly what has happened.

Information is vital. I don't like it when my war suddenly stops with no warning or given reason, mucking up my cunning plans.

Taking this point one step further, add in an option to keep the alliance and accept the truce (should then be very bad for your reputation if you attack faction B again within X number of turns, and there should be a boost in relations with faction A for sticking with them) or to let the alliance lapse and continue the war. This is important IMO. Control of important aspects like diplomacy should not be taken away from the player, especially when Catholic factions are in a risky position Pope-wise when attacking other Catholics. You shouldn't have your war halted, then need to take a hit to reopen it.

[Daveybaby]

Someone should sticky this thread IMO.

[Quin]

Introduce moats with water to protect castle walls and custom map for the city of Venice so it won't stand on a plain anymore

[Quin]

Oh, and lower aggression of European nations. It is not very realistic to be embroiled in constant wars on a big scale with 3 powers simultaneously from 1100 on since nations didn't really evolve yet so there was a bunch of small fights on a far smaller scale than whole nations against each the other. rebel spawn rate can be upped though...Besides, AI tends to attack even if it is way weaker than you and don't accept ceasfire even if you are hammering them hard and pope is warning with excommunication.

It would be great if some sort of warscore (like in Paradox games) would be introduced. Every battle and every captured town (during war) would influence that WS and it should determine the peacetalks. Only with really high WS you could hold a captured town for good. It was extremly rare for one sie to occupy 3 big towns per war as it is now...

[PorT_Lobo]

Please CA! Take a good look at Campaign AI!!!

AI don't garrison settlements making to easy to human to conquer it!! And AI is few agressive and almost no attack our bigger armys!!

[Valpo]

Anyone else notice the bug with the time.

My second king who was in his 20's at the start of the game is about 60 years old now and the game says the year is 1222. (Remember we start in 1080) It seems like the guys age on a 6 month turn and the game runs on a 2 year turn.

Also the faction leader switching to the King's son after his son comes of age would be nice. Sure make it easier to marry princesses.

[Daveybaby]

I dont think its a bug, so much as a 'design compromise'.
Note that the seasons only advance 6 months per turn also. I think there was a decision at some point to increase the number of years per turn to 2, hence the counter only showing turns instead of years so as not to highlight the discrepancy.

There are already mods around to change this back to 6 months per turn.

[Rothe]

"Few" things:

Inquisition is broken, it needs a major fix.

- More ways to protect generals, why not including priests in armies/cities. This may already be helping, but not nearly enough. I would also include option for voluntary excommunication instead of getting burned for faction leader and faction heir.

- Less randomness in the actions of the inquisiotion, and maybe less activity as well. I understand it is a fun part in the game and needs to be a bit threathening, but now it is a major pain and detracts from a good gaming atmosphere.

- Maybe even make it work so that it does not enter lands that have over < X % catholics >, if at all possible. The % could be high, like 95%+. On the same note, it could ignore characters over a certain piety level (generals / priests) and ignore merchants alltogether (could already be so).

Battles are a bit weird still:

- The freeze effect when AI is faced with certain type of armies (mostly I guess archer heavy armies) needs to be removed.

- Cavalry charges need to be more intuitive to work properly. I mean that if you select cavalry and double click an enemy unit, it should mostly work out OK. And with this I mean that the lances should come out, which now is a bit random and too much dependent on the distance to the enemy.

- Archer targeting needs to be fixed. They should be able to consistently fire over the first rank of enemy troops at a selected target. Now they fire at rank 1 and that is it. Even if rank 1 has 2 men, all the archers fire at them ever if ordered to fire units behind the 2 men...

- Movement in formation needs to be more consistent. I had trouble with moving a formation of 2 crossbowmen forward so that they are level with each other. Breaking firing sequence when ordered to move could help with it.

- Taking walls in sieges is lagged somehow, not sure what is the problem exactly. Also, AI sometimes tries to take settlements with hopeless siege equipment.

Campaign AI:

- The AI needs to be less agressive in attacking player with small stacks.

- The AI needs to keep some armies back to protect lands adjacent to peaceful nations. Otherwise the player can take a settlement with very little trouble and recover from losses before the AI can strike back. Each settlement does not need a big army, but at least castles could be defended better.

Unit stats:

- Only some weirdness here. Why do billmen have default defence value that is lower/ equal to peasants. Even with armor it was not much above 15 attack / 3 defense. Or, is this just some oddity in the game mechanics? I still felt the billmen performed reasonably well, but the stat card says the defense is low.

Agents:

- merchants could maybe have a bit higher income boost. Maybe just add a static sum to the level1 merchants that stays the same regardless of the exp. Something like +10 for each of them. Now they are not worth the trouble in the beginning because of the cost and the possibility of losing them to foreign merchants (not so small possibility either); later they are not significant anymore. Also, if possible, merchants could act as emissaries that can _only_ make trade right deals (including money compensation).

Years/Turns:

- I would prefer a simple 1 year / one turn system so that I see the actual year listed on the campaign screen. Also, some aging bugs are there I think.



All in all, I have to say that MTW2 seems like a great game. Actually that is just why I am keen to want even more from it because of the awesome potential.

[SoxSexSax]

1) MP lag. It's horrendous. 2v2s are barely playable...I don't even want to think about how bad a 3v3 would be. Serious work needed here.

2) Movement speed on campaign map is too short. It does not take 6 months to travel from York to London!

3) Kill speed in battle feels too quick (again). Most melees are decided in seconds.

4) AI far too willing to stand still under archer fire. This is true even in battles where the "passive AI" bug does not seem to be in effect.

[Fearless]

Troop deployment in Castles/towns before battle commences. Many times its impossible to drag a unit for positioning as the pink markers fail to show and when on occassions they do the unit doesn't appear. Been playing since Shogun so I know the limitations on unit placement in cities. But this is really bad now!!

[Whacker]

I didn't see this thread until a bit ago. Here's a slightly modified version from my original review thread of stuff I'd like to see.

- 2 years per turn? Ugh. 2 turns per year is much better. At least it's modable. Better yet, someone else in this thread suggested making it a game option from the menu.

- Please un-encrypt the pack files/use a COMMON compression mechanism that we can all use to open it, aka 7z, rar, zip, etc. Having and "unpacker" tool is completely overkill and pointless, in my humble opinion.

- Dismounting units aren't in the game?!?? Please fix this CA, pronto!

- Titles. This was another great part of the original MTW and RTW:BI, and in my humble opinion it should be back in. Given that they were in BI, this should not be hard to implement. I would further like to see them implemented in some fashion like the risk style drag-and-drop on the generals, rather than fiddling with ancillaries like in BI. Also give us the ability to strip a general of his titles, a la MTW.

- I'm not really sold on the whole city/castle difference. I can understand it's purpose but I don't unnecessarily like it, nor do I feel it's very useful.

- The building browser is not the least bit intuitive. One of the mods said in another post, "RTW's was perfect, why change it?" I couldn't agree more.

- In terms of "building cards" when selecting buildings to be built, or showing what is built in a settlement on the campaign map, I can't help but feel that they are graphically not as good looking as in RTW. It's not very easy for me to establish what the various buildings are.. In other words it's not always obvious, at least to me. I can't really think of a good way to describe this, but I just feel that a better job could have been done on the images to make them sharper or more distinct.

- There really needs to be an easier way to remove excommunication (recommunicate) with the Pope for catholic factions besides the pope dying or your faction leader dying. I know this wasn't in the original MTW and can appreciate that it's in M2TW. Excommunication was a very big factor in the middle ages, "recommunicating" with the catholic church was also a very real deal and a natural counterpart to the removal process, in fact if I remember correctly part of the process of excommunicating someone is extending the olive branch and stating how they can be recommunicated, a "penance" if you will. In other words, the papacy should automatically send a recommunication mission that doesn't expire after a few turns which you can ignore or complete, imo. The way for resolving diplomacy shouldn't be terribly difficult, but it shouldn't be mind-numbingly easy either. For example, an open-ended (no time limit) quest with several line items would be a great idea, imo. For example, 1. join/start a crusade, 2. build several churches, 3. recruit x priests. At the very least it should put you back to neutral status with 5 crosses on the Pope-o-matic-chart. :)

- Likewise, I would still like to see the option for a catholic faction to change it's faith, this would have been an outstanding idea in the original MTW. For example, to go "protestant" and sever ties with Rome, on the premise that you'd be vulnerable to crusades, reduced diplomacy with other catholic factions, lots and lots of unrest for a transition period, other factions catholic priests could make your life hell, etc. I understand that the probability of this making it in is near zero, but it's still a great and entirely logical idea, and can probably be done without too much trouble. Also going with my above statement, it should be possible to reestablish ties with Rome, but in this case it should be *very* difficult to do. One of my main reasons for wanting this is avoiding those damn Inquisitors. Speaking of which...

- Give us back inquisitors for all the catholic factions. :)

- Give us back the ability to assassinate our own named characters!

- Give us the ability to gracefully retire unwanted/unused characters, such as diplomats/priests/assassins, who are otherwise just sucking up cash flow. SORELY missed in RTW/BI/A, which was my most recent memory.

- Move rates and move distances for units on the campaign map are woefully inadequate. I'd like to see them increased by at *least* another 50% across the board, even for crusading/jihad armies. After all, crusade/jihad is pretty much a race and a special condition.

- Just fought a custom siege battle for poops and giggles. Set myself up as the french, 1 late commander, 6 dismounted chivalric knights, and 10 trebuchets vs a single unit of polish peasants in an unwalled village. After expending ALL trebuchet ammo (flaming), including dead cows, with the city in flaming ruins dripping with cow chunks all around them, I calmly marched my army into the mess, and when in range I charged with the knights followed closely by the general. The poor bone-stock unbuffed peasants, after spending a good deal of time having large, ugly, smell, demoralizing unpleasantries lobbed at them, were able to kill ***25*** knights and 3 general's horsemen. Something just does *not* feel right about that.

- I ... don't unnecessarily like the new damage models for city structures during sieges. I think there's a happy medium somewhere between RTW where buildings collapse into a generic featureless "rubble pile" and M2TW's "it's got a few holes in it". Just my 2 cents. For one thing, I think it'd look much better and it'd be easier to tell what buildings you've demolished already. Also, structures that catch on fire tend to stay on fire and smoke, which imo isn't a good idea, especially for frame rates, and might be one of the reasons they made this so. The best possible solution I can think of is simply to limit how long destroyed structures remain on fire, say maybe 3-5 minutes max. Perhaps this is modable? Irregardless, I'd like to see this addressed in the base campaign by CA.

- I don't like the fact that huge cities cannot be converted into citadels, but citadels can be made into 3rd level cities with no going back. This goes hand in hand with my above comment about the castles/cities system.

- The routing-unit-kill-rate feels far too slow for my tastes. I actually liked RTW's routing-kill-rate, in fact if anything I would have preferred that cavalry chasing down routers would kill them faster. I do understand that CA wanted to make routing units harder to do, and for them to recover earlier, which is fine, but if kept on and after by chasers, they should be mopped up in short order. After all, it's been well noted during large battles in the past that quite often the vast majority of the slaughter occurs when the losing army routes. If a unit routes and I let them go due to negligence or I have other pressing issues like the rest of the enemy army, fine, let them go, and then when they recover with what should be very reduced moral, let them come back to haunt me. This is perfectly logical in my view. If I make a unit route, I need to keep on them and either kill them all or chase them off the map. If I can't expend forces to do this or I just forget/whatever, then the opponent should be able to recover them and send them back into the melee.

- Cavalry not being able to move through troop formations, friendly or foe, is really annoying. I liked RTW's cavalry movement implementations for this issue with horses being able to "pass through" lines of units who would make way for them. Even when not standing still, cavalry should still be able to pass through units much easier than they can in M2TW. /shrug I still liked RTW's implementation of this. If the complaint was being able to charge THROUGH infantry formations, that I can understand, to me the fix is just removing the charge bonuses if you choose to have cavalry attack through already-engaged troops.

- I tend not to use archers so this took a bit of using them to come to this conclusion; they don't always shoot cohesively. I don't know whether to list this as a bug or a suggestion, so I listed it here, because I almost get the feeling CA designed it this way. I don't unnecessarily like it, if that was the intent. If it is a bug, then great let's get it fixed. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect them all to shoot at the EXACT same instant, but a trained group of medieval archers should fire as a single cohesive group with VERY little margin of difference in release time. Like maybe half a second on the far outside, imo.

- Someone else made this comment and I can't agree more, this was also badly missed in RTW. We need the ability to tell enemy army stacks to get the #@$!@# off our land or else, and if they don't then THEY started the war, not us. I can't count how many times I was held as responsible for starting a war in RTW just by parking some army stacks on a neighbors land, then not removing them when warned. That's fine and dandy, but the same thing needs to hold true for the cpu players.

- Only named characters with above a certain size stack can go on crusades? Tripe. Give me the ability to send just a big stack w/out one of my characters on a crusade!

Cheers!

[kyllerbuzcut]

It would be very helpful for a lot of people if there were loads of options we could switch on or off or move a slider up or down in an advanced section of the options menu.

For example- you don't like the speed- normal is too fast. Have an option to have the speed halved- or if you think it's too slow you can have it sped up a bit. similarly for kill rates.
Another one would be an option to choose whether we want merchants to be automatic or to be micromanged.
For me, I'd like the ability to change the battle minimap so there aren't those stupid arrows, and instead we can see the displacement of the troops as they actually are all the time on the minimap. You just can't tell what units are doing currently unless you are looking right at them, the minimap is almost useless. Lots of people complained about it when it became so in RTW and it's still there now in M2TW.
I think about 3/4 of the little niggles people have been experience that aren't die to actual bugs could be solved right away with the addition of some simple options. So, instead of keeping everything hidden away in burried files deep within the hard drive, pleaase put loads of options we can interact with on the screen by ticking or sliding or selecting which one we want.

Thank you for a great game so far:)

[Valpo]

I dont think its a bug, so much as a 'design compromise'.
Note that the seasons only advance 6 months per turn also. I think there was a decision at some point to increase the number of years per turn to 2, hence the counter only showing turns instead of years so as not to highlight the discrepancy.

There are already mods around to change this back to 6 months per turn.

Actually I found out how to do it, its in the desrc-stat file or whatever its called. Anyways I went in there to unlock all the factions and saw the time scale thing and I was like . . . hmm I'll bet thats it. . .

Now if they would just fix the stupid faction heir thing so princesses actually have a use.

[Whacker]

Something else I forgot, that would have been perfect in MTW and esp. RTW. Give us the ability to "change" a settlement's structures to the player's culture. For example, in RTW I would occasionally get to Egypt after they had made one of the 3 big cities into full sized towns, with the max size governor's palace and possibly walls, and I'd be stuck with those as the Egyptian culture as Roman/Greek/whatever. For perhaps half the cost and a single turn or two, give us the ability to switch them over to our culture so we don't have the cultural penalty. I guess this really applies mainly to max size cities and structures, but I think the basic premise is a great idea.

Cheers!

[hoom]

Pathfinding for ladders on both stone castle & wooden is broken.
Units going up seem to most of the time get stuck trying to go up the right most ladder but fail.
Probably this is whats causing the AI ladder wierdness too.
Also they fail trying to go back down that ladder.

[Spendius]

All mentioned AI issues, with in addition the algorithm used to choose which troops should be recruited (no more siege machines-only osts please !)

I also would like a couple of features:
- the possibility to access the family tree when a "suitable husband" is found
- the possibility to access a general's stats when having to choose the fate of a city/prisonners

It's just annoying not being able to know whether it's a princess or a normal girl getting married, and having to remember whether your current general is on the light or dark path...

[Whacker]

More spam.

- Give us back the ability to select our faction heir! Also, when our faction leader dies, bring up the family tree and let us pick the faction heir from there! Also let the game "recommend" who to pick, for those of us who just want to be lazy.

- I've seen this mentioned a few other places. Bring back the fatigue bars and the moral indicators on the unit cards! The quick visual reference there was utterly invaluable in MTW, and was missed greatly in RTW. Yes I know that one can mouse over to see these things, but being able to see these by just looking at the unit cards is very handy, I'd imagine even moreso for multiplayers.

- When saving/loading, the game should save our settings for the campaign map, specifically I'm referring to "sped up" animations. Whenever I quickload/load the game, it forgets that I had pressed space to speed up unit movement speeds. Please make it so the game remembers this!

[Spendius]

I don't agree with heir selection. There should be a defined rule: eldest son, if this one dies before having a heir, then is oldest brother takes over.
For specific cases (underage heir), being able to choose a regent, until the heir's majority, leading to possible civil wars for regency... Or bastard heirs appearing if a king has a mistress, leading to even more civil wars!

[Whacker]

I don't agree with heir selection. There should be a defined rule: eldest son, if this one dies before having a heir, then is oldest brother takes over.
For specific cases (underage heir), being able to choose a regent, until the heir's majority, leading to possible civil wars for regency... Or bastard heirs appearing if a king has a mistress, leading to even more civil wars!

While I think people would generally agree with this statement for European (and other cultures possibly, but I'm not a historian there) cultures that the general concept of "eldest son" holds, I think you'll find in reading that it was hardly the hard and fast rule and certainly not universal.

There were many instances in the English successions, both pre- and post-norman where a son other than the eldest inherited, either due to preference, intrigue, or ability. Look at the Holy Roman Empire, while I am not well versed on it's history, iirc the "Emperor" was actually elected by the nobility, and the eldest sons did not always obtain the crown. I'm also positive that in Poland, the nobles elected a King from their ranks, and this king in effect had very little power and his sons most certainly did *not* inherit the throne. Also take for example the Mongols, which were a very strong meritocracy-based society. I'd look for someone who knows more about that such as Orda to give a better answer but I believe that on the ruling individual's death, the ruling class reconvened to elect a new ruler. I have zero knowledge of how the Islamic nations handled inheritance.

The bottom line is that while in general eldest son inherits is true, it was far and away not a hard and fast rule, with plenty of examples of where it did not hold true or was simply not the way the ruling body worked at the time.

Cheers!

[Spendius]

Agreed, it should be faction specific (as it was in MTW with the HRE at least...)
I wouldn't mind the "classical" eldest heir rule, if it were properly implemented, but it is a bit erratic for now.

[Sir Robin]

Get rid of dismounted versions and add the option to dismount during the deployment phase or battle.

While I know dismounted knights were used often to reinforce the line it seems silly to have them as seperately buildable units. Just as it seems sill to not have the option to dismount them during the deployment phase or battle itself. A little getting off a horse animation and weapon swap.

How about no option to re-mount after dismounting during the battle. Honestly, I never really believed that M2TW didn't include it until I played retail. It just seems like such an obvious feature.

[Whacker]

Agreed, it should be faction specific (as it was in MTW with the HRE at least...)
I wouldn't mind the "classical" eldest heir rule, if it were properly implemented, but it is a bit erratic for now.

That I could live with. Even better, make it modable! For example a config line in the desc_strat file, or something else easily changed.

[Akka]

My patch wishlist :

Bring life back to the fight :
- Make units more responsive. They take ages to actually do what they are told.
- Make units more cohesive. They scatter too much.
- Bring back (larger) physics influence. Units seems barely affected by push and charge right now.
- Fix charges. Half the time they just stop when closing in and cavalrymen draw their swords rather than charge.
- Fix the spacing. For now, there is only a handful of men fighting, and the majority of the unit just stay here observing the combat.
- Make units a bit more resilient. Losing tens of knights to peasants in mélée is silly.

- Remove adoption. Make it "promotion" instead, and make it give a general rather than a family member. The birth of a new heir should be as important as it was before, for now it's irrelevant considering the crapload of people being adopted.

- Give a "huge" setting that is really "huge". 1,5x or 2x the actual "huge" setting, thanks.

- Tone down Inquisitors.

- An option to eliminate brigands and pirates. Really. Please.

- Titles ! Please !

- Dismounting during battle.

- More mobility on the world map. Too few movement points for now, really.

- Make the AI sensible in diplomacy. Peace is better than being beaten. Vassalage is better than being utterly destroyed.

[Djurre]

The missing balance in Cavalry charges.
A light cavalry unit charging into the front of my elite infantry causes half the unit to die insantly, while my cavalry charges have no effect.
on higher difficulty this makes the game unplayable.

[MSB]

For the intelligent trait to be spelt with two l's instead of three.

[itsme]

1. Ability to change the time of the battle from infinite to time-limited from withing real-time battle.
Yesterday I got the game and run a campaign where I choose to be able to play the real-time battles for unlimited time... what happened was that one of my towns was besieged by at least 3 times bigger army, so far so good I was defending it ;). Now the enemy had ram and 3-ladders, during the attack I destroyed his ram and repelled the ppl claiming over the ladders destroying 40-45% of his army..after this he retreated and the cavalry and infantry left were just sitting outside doing nothing..
I could not go out and attack 'cause his force was still overwhelming...
(something like ~7 cavalry units plus some infantry left from previous attack against my depleted from defence 4 unit strong /1 archers,1 peasant,1 spear, 1 cav/)
So I could not go out and attack and he doesn't attack...
If I was able to go and modify the battle to time limited !?!
Otherwise I will lose a battle which If I fought from inside my fortress I think I could easily win, but going out will definitely not win..
So how do you solve this problem.


2. Next time either make a larger book (would be better with more detailed pictures) or don't make the background of the book so dark-greyish, because with these small letters is not comfortable to read...



PS. Why I can't play in campaign mode with Byzantee, but only with 4-5 factions ???
Now one idea come to my mind i.e. I could tried to just pop-out outside the fortress so that he charge, but still !!!

[Djurre]

PS. Why I can't play in campaign mode with Byzantee, but only with 4-5 factions ???
Now one idea come to my mind i.e. I could tried to just pop-out outside the fortress so that he charge, but still !!!

que?

[Sir Robin]

PS. Why I can't play in campaign mode with Byzantee, but only with 4-5 factions ???

Its a way of trying to make sure players are familiar with the game by completing one campaign with the standard factions before unlocking the others. Check the M2TW Guides forum for how to unlock the other factions if you don't want to complete a campaign with one of them first.

Now one idea come to my mind i.e. I could tried to just pop-out outside the fortress so that he charge, but still !!!

Probably still wouldn't work or you would have to do it a lot to wear down an enemy with such a big quantity advantage.

[Whacker]

Spam spam spam spam spam eggs bacon sausage and spam!

- I get the feeling I could get jumped for this one, but I am a HUGE fan of the way arrow/ballista towers were implemented in RTW/BI, and do not like the new style in M2TW. I would like to either see 1. an option in the game menu to switch between RTW/M2TW style city defenses, or 2. at least make it easily modable in the game. I guess we'll still have to wait and see about option 2.

[jibosan]

hi all,

just got m2tw, but am experiencing major problems of game/computer freeze during gameplay, random and often. much more often that ocurred with BI w/ patch. any patches out there to fix this, or video card related advice i can follow? all help is appreciated, thanks!