What happened to the season indicator?

[Sirrvs]

You know, the little sun or snowflake to show the season in the HUD of the campaign map? Where'd it go? It's there on the left side in the screenshots in the manual. Curious.

Also wondering why they decided to have it display turns instead of the year.

[Quillan]

It's because the timescale is different. In RTW, you played 2 turns per year - winter and summer - from 270 BC to 14 AD. In this game, it runs from 1080 to 1530 AD, nearly double the length. Rather than make you play 900 turns, by default the game runs 2 years per turn, so there's no longer a winter or summer. The game does still alternate with the winter and summer campaign map, though. Your characters only age 1 year every other turn. By not showing the date, it hides the fact that characters don't age at the same rate that time progresses. Out of sight, out of mind.

[redriver]

It's because the timescale is different. In RTW, you played 2 turns per year - winter and summer - from 270 BC to 14 AD. In this game, it runs from 1080 to 1530 AD, nearly double the length. Rather than make you play 900 turns, by default the game runs 2 years per turn, so there's no longer a winter or summer. The game does still alternate with the winter and summer campaign map, though. Your characters only age 1 year every other turn. By not showing the date, it hides the fact that characters don't age at the same rate that time progresses. Out of sight, out of mind.

that's a halfassed concept to come up with to cover the 3 eras.. instead should have done as in the original MTW and let ppl pick in which era they want to start their camps.

[Copperhaired Berserker!]

Yeah, tell me about it. What you need to do is a little bit of modding to get it: A) showing the year. B) and progressing in two turns. There is a few threads about it, that will tell you how to do it.

[malkuth74]

Yes its moddable, you can show the year and have turns last only a half year if you want. Its easy.

[Lord Condormanius]

It's easy and it's awesome.

[Musashi]

Yup. But you still don't have an indicator to tell you whether it's summer or winter. You have to keep track in your head.

[JeffBag]

You can just look at central Europe and see if there is snow or not, I guess.

[Grimmy]

I'd be happy if the computer game industry would finally cop to the concept that there's often zero need for a time limit in such games.

In TW we play against ourselves. How long we choose to take in exploring and expanding should be up to ourselves and not forced by turn numbers available.

If they'd get away from set total turn numbers they could have much more flex in how much "turn time" needs to be invested in building and such. The turns could represent months or weeks or seasons or whatever suited the desires of the designers for purposes of having specific climate induced travel bonus or reducer, events triggers etc.

Get away from the social engineering desires ... "they'll have to decide this or that, rush this or risk waiting for that because the end is coming"... or the beginning, middle, end phase thinking that's been carried over from board games and such.

A game like TW, since it's single player campaign, has no need to be limited by specific turn numbers and should be open ended so that the player has full freedom to decide how much time and effort to devote toward success or when to give up and start over.

If they'd catch on to the reality that computer games have no reason to be bound by boardgame conventions and how a player goes about playing the game is his/her own dang business, then that'd free up many of the self imposed constraints on game design.

[ZachPruckowski]

I'd be happy if the computer game industry would finally cop to the concept that there's often zero need for a time limit in such games.

In TW we play against ourselves. How long we choose to take in exploring and expanding should be up to ourselves and not forced by turn numbers available.
<snip>
A game like TW, since it's single player campaign, has no need to be limited by specific turn numbers and should be open ended so that the player has full freedom to decide how much time and effort to devote toward success or when to give up and start over.

If they'd catch on to the reality that computer games have no reason to be bound by boardgame conventions and how a player goes about playing the game is his/her own dang business, then that'd free up many of the self imposed constraints on game design.

At that point though, someone could complain that events stop happening after 15xx, or that they are in 1975 with feudal knights. All of the Civilization series (at least the mainline series, not Call to Power) stop at only modern stuff (ending with the Alpha Centuri mission) likely for this reason. The game's gotta start sometime and end sometime content-wise. That's just a rule of design.

If they'd get away from set total turn numbers they could have much more flex in how much "turn time" needs to be invested in building and such. The turns could represent months or weeks or seasons or whatever suited the desires of the designers for purposes of having specific climate induced travel bonus or reducer, events triggers etc.

That sounds a lot like a Real-Time Strategy, while Total War is a turn-based strategy on the campaign-level.