MMOTW: An Idea for a MP campaign....

[hellenes]

First of all I want to say that Im not happy to play Cassandra's role, saying "I told ya" about the fact that a challenging "PO" (Programmed Opponent of marketing purposes christened "AI") is impossible with such free style game as TW with so many possibilities and variables. Now a "stack after stack" chore can be done on the campaign map level but it gets tiring and boring....
Ive got the idea from an MMO game called Lineage2 where the alliances and clans hold castles in the game world:

A Gigantic map...that has every little castle, dutchy, county that existed in Medieval times. 100 factions (Knights of Honor has as much) so any player will have the choice to choose any faction he likes.
A living world that is in REAL time and runs 24/7.

Whenever a player starts he makes an account and chooses a faction.
Now he can pick up an army from the available pool depending on the buildings his faction has at that time. Hes allocated with set amount of cash to start. After that he has many options: Either manage his castle/province or engage in diplomacy with the neighbours or or even start a war by attacking a nearby settlement or army.

Any action he is doing is represented as his character as a general and his army as his tool of destruction. His army grows or dwindles depending on his actions.
Now the most important factor (IMO) is what happens when the player is absent? Well his army simply loggs off the game! And his castle is manned by the "PO" garrison of a decent amount of archers/crossbows and militia OR if his faction has more than one players (mostly the popular factions like Byzantium or England) that player is notified to fight to defend the castle. The diplomacy in the case of multiple players that picked up the same faction is treated on a presence/rank level meaning that any negotiations will be engaged with the highest ranking player (meaning clan/faction leader and lower) present at that time OR on a pre set basis or "guidelines" that are given by the absent leader.

All players will be free enough to go wherever they want in real time on a scaled movement rate however with the appropriate consequences like a war declaration or annoyance...
There will be rebel armies in a quide abudant numbers with plenty of little catsles and provinces to expand to...
The characters themselves would aqcuire parameters same as the SP game based on the player's actions with the death of the character the player would either get the heir of that character (so he must make sure that his character gets married) or if there is no heir the player gets to fight a mini civil war and pickes the side, and if that side wins he gets a new character spwaning from the ranks....

Also the world that surrounds the player can be set in the battle engine of the TW games WITHOUT any boundaries and if the sizes of armies are too big for the server to cope with it, the strategic layer can be used in real time as |I said before.
On the unit sizes the player can pick up ANY size he wants the cost of the units will be based on per soldier capita....So if 100 spearmen cost 100 florins to buy and 50 florins to upkeep, 200 spearmen will cost 200 florins to buy and 100 florins to upkeep.
Speaking of which the castle that the player is allocated with generates a fixed amount of money that pays the upkeep cost of anything that the player has in his army.
If the castle of the player is lost his army turns into "bandits" and he will not pay any upkeep for them until he recovers his castle or takes the castle from another player. In the case that the player belongs to a bigger faction he can become a general in the service of the monarch but his army will have to be paid from the crown's coffins but will have the option to recruit soldiers from the crown's castles/cities at his expense (the player generates wealth through looting enemie territories/castles or from booty from the battles and has his personal money).

The crown itslef is an entity thats allocated to the faction/clan leader it recieves a "crown tax" from the other clan members engages in state level diplomacy and generally operates the "big picture" of the clan/faction.
Naval battles will be made controllable and the troops that are present on board will participate in any engagement. No agents will be present in the game since the diplomacy would be dealt through a chat and any other character would be simply part of an agreement (marriage would be agreed through a chat no need for a princess character)...

If at any later point a new player joins the game he will be allocated soldiers/castle etc scalable to the point that the game is at that time so there are no phaenomena like a newbe with peasants against a veteran with gothic troops.
Armour upgrades and soldiers will be tradable, like the player can "upgrade" his byzantine infantry to varangians by "disbanding" the infantry in the castle and having the worth of that unit back (again based on per soldier capita) and by purchasing a unit of varangians the same size (or bigger with extra cost) as the byzantine infantry by paying any difference...

Events will take place in the game at a chronological time through "upgrades" that the developers will release (like chronicles in La2) like the high era upgrade after a year or the mongol invasion patch....
Speaking of UNPLAYABLE factions the mongols or the astecs will be mainly the PvE element that will require HUGE alliances to be forged to deal with them.
The Pope will be a GM character in the game regulating the catholic factions and launching crusades. The orthodox factions will have the patriarch of costantinople as the spiritual leader and most importantly will play major role in the reunification of churchers attempts that will be voted by orthodox players (players that control orthodox factions).
The crusades will be deal in the sense of raids with huge alliances forged to march to the holy land...

These are the few of the ideas I have. I just hope that the developers from the CA and most importantly SEGA read this and consider it.
Thank you for your time.

[Maizel]

It's a nice idea, Though it sounds too much like a MMOG.

I rather have CA make a multiplayer campaign as it is now, possibly with different sized areas. Like England with about 16 regions 3 factions (Irish, Scotland, England)

Or the entire western Europe, for more players with more provinces etc.

[hellenes]

It's a nice idea, Though it sounds too much like a MMOG.

I rather have CA make a multiplayer campaign as it is now, possibly with different sized areas. Like England with about 16 regions 3 factions (Irish, Scotland, England)

Or the entire western Europe, for more players with more provinces etc.

But sadly the CA wont make an entire game just for the few people that would like it and maybe just for the LAN players....
Turn based campaign is impossible due to the battles being fought manually....
Plus with the MMO idea there is a motive for SEGA in the finansial sense....because MMO games are the only that resist piracy (and dont tell me about private servers, the lag is so bad its ridiculus)....

[Quillan]

They ran a PBEM game in RTW that would probably work in Medieval 2. It was called "The Will of the Senate". Basically, applied to M2TW, one player would take the role of the King/Emperor, while the other players formed the Council of Nobles. The King role would rotate every so often (was 5 or 10 years in the RTW game, IIRC). The others would take on the roles of the generals, with the remainder having voices in the Council but not being able to control troops until new generals came into existence. The Council would give suggestions to the King on what to do, the King would handle movement in the campaign map, and when a battle came up that involved a general, the game would be saved, emailed to the player running that general, who would fight the battle and email it back to the King.

[econ21]

They ran a PBEM game in RTW that would probably work in Medieval 2.

Yep, we are chewing over the possibilities here:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...ewpost&t=71900

[hellenes]

They ran a PBEM game in RTW that would probably work in Medieval 2. It was called "The Will of the Senate". Basically, applied to M2TW, one player would take the role of the King/Emperor, while the other players formed the Council of Nobles. The King role would rotate every so often (was 5 or 10 years in the RTW game, IIRC). The others would take on the roles of the generals, with the remainder having voices in the Council but not being able to control troops until new generals came into existence. The Council would give suggestions to the King on what to do, the King would handle movement in the campaign map, and when a battle came up that involved a general, the game would be saved, emailed to the player running that general, who would fight the battle and email it back to the King.

Still I believe that an MMO game would attract more people and has a finansial sense in the development side...And my main goal with this idea is to minish the Player vs the PO battles...

PS Cmon Developers say something Iknow you read this boards...

[Whacker]

Still I believe that an MMO game would attract more people and has a finansial sense in the development side...And my main goal with this idea is to minish the Player vs the PO battles...

PS Cmon Developers say something Iknow you read this boards...

Uhmmmm... No.

While the idea is indeed interesting, there are a fair number of us who absolutely loathe MMOs and any game that requires a subscription to play, or requires one to be online to play. I fall firmly into this camp, I have never played an MMO nor will I, even the free ones. If I am going to buy a game, then great, charge me a good deal of money up front, but do NOT double dip and expect me to continue paying out the wazoo!

That being said, if this were a *free* feature that were optional to the game, then I'd be all for it!

Cheers!