Post-patch wishlist

[PROMETHEUS]

I WANT a Battle map stuff importer Exporter !!!

[Chrisky]

Disable crusading armies to reinforce non-crusading, same-faction armies when fighting another catholic faction. If a crusader isn't allowed to attack another catholic faction, they should not be allowed to join the fight either.

[sapi]

Stop the AI charging their general when there's under 5 men in his unit (because then he dies in the charge).

Put a limit on how many militia the AI can use in its armies to try to get some real ones emerging.

Get rid of passive campaign AI!!!!!!!! - I just came across the spanish and the portugese in my hre campaign (i've got all of germany, france, poland and most of italy, so i'm a fair way in, probably about 50 or 60 turns) and they haven't done anything. I could take zaragosa and valencia from the rebels. Not good :(

[afrit]

Agreed, I would just add that option to sort them by age, skill, how much money they are making (for merchants) and similar stuff... And a number of them (you have 23 spies)

And sort by movement points left.

[Little Legioner]

View settlement in battlemap. That's all i want.

[brokguitar]

show symbols for units in city under the income, pop growth, build/recruit bar.
p(or a cross)for priest
s(or a eye)for spy
m(or $) for merchant
g(or feather pen) for governer


make it so if you cross into someone land and do not leave by third turn it constitutes war.
Exept when miltary agreement or a crusade is made. (this should include allys, and maybe not papal states)

Make priests stackable WITHOUT a army! Cardinals should be able to lead a group of priests like a general. I dont think acting as a general would be cool but maybe it would??.(like the pope does)

Have agent button that allows you to go through agents on map that have moves left.

[Orda Khan]

Deleted

[PureMassacre]

Sapping: Why is there no option to sap a castles defenses?

Moats: Castles near water sources should have the option to construct moats. Moats would obviously prevent attacks from getting to the walls, and would make it more difficult to sap (maybe have a chance that the mine will collapse, fill with water and drown those inside). Attackers could have the chance to construct barges/rafts/bridges to cross the moat. A drawbridge would allow the defenders to cross the moat.

Gatehouses: Need to be more elaborate, there would often be two portcullises to the main entrance. The one closest to the inside would be closed first and then the one furthest away. This was used to trap the enemy and often, burning wood or hot oil would be poured onto them from the roof. Also, archers could shoot arrows at the trapped enemies. There were often arrow holes in the sides of the walls for archers and crossbowman to eliminate the besieging army

Dismounted Cavalry: Option to dismount cavalry during deployment.

[JCoyote]

Aztecs should be capable of building units and buildings... anywhere. I gave them Sofia as a gift, and they weren't able to do anything with it. No Coyote Priests against the Mongols... for all their wealth.

Mount/Dismount! There are features here other people haven't mentioned yet. YES, you could still allow the making of Dismounted units, as a price break when you only need the infantry abilities. Like MTW, some units might just be more useful as dismounted even and would thus be usually used dismounted. But the new strategic map gives a great reason for mount/dismount: while some units might almost always be used as infantry, and even be terrible on their horses, the fact they have horses means they can move on the strategic map much faster. "Dragoon" type units that fight on foot but move on horse are possible with the current system, and would be nice to have.

Moats would be nice, but then again, most castles were near good sources of water. In fact it was pretty fundamental on choosing sites. Making moats though could be appropriately expensive too: after all, it involves reinforcing the foundations of the castle against erosion. I agree with most suggestions to make sieges much tougher. To balance though, the siege time should be increased to allow the attacker more time to accomplish things. (Also though, in most sieges with many moats the water would have been diverted upstream by the attacker.)

Cavalry charges need to be easier to set up. Pikes need to be better at halting them.

"Stealth" units like Sherwood Foresters, when part of a garrison defending a siege, should be deployable outside the city in some cases. While more theatrical, it would symbolize sneaking a team out at night or whatnot to ambush at "just the right moment". Also from a player standpoint, it could make a fun unpredictable element to some siege battles

Armies interacting with strategic pieces. There should be caveats here though. Diplomatic repercussions should be much harsher when using an army to do this kind of thing. "Escort to the border" should have little consequences. "Execute" should have severe consequences, greater than getting caught using an assassin (being so heavy handed), and should seriously hurt your reputation. These penalties should be even worse when used on clergy... while you should be able to kill off priests with your armies because they are obvious and public figures, doing so more than a couple times should make you a diplomatic pariah. Doing so against a catholic priest as a catholic faction should almost guarantee excommunication.

Priests of different faiths should be able to attack each other, WITH prerequisites. The attacking priest should require a certain percentage of the population to be of his own faith first, and the odds should be low. A success would mean he rallied local believers into action against the target. This should also have a small but very short lived spike in unrest in the local public when it happens. (Inciting your own people to riot, even against competing faiths, is playing with fire after all!) This is diplomatically clean though, after all, it's not the national leader's fault a handful of hotheads took it upon themselves to do those unfortunate things...

National leaders are kings. Princesses are their daughters. The "certain favors" idea is out of character. You don't send your daughter to do those things. At least I hope to GOD you sick piece of work!

LOL. Anyway. On that thought though, it could be made so when spies and assassins are recruited, there is a coinflip on whether the resulting agent is male or female; each would have similar basic abilities, but slightly divergent special tricks. Like wooing heirs, etc. That might be for a later game though. (Also historically pretty accurate; jobs as spies and assassins have usually been open to both genders throughout history.)

[Bijo]

National leaders are kings. Princesses are their daughters. The "certain favors" idea is out of character. You don't send your daughter to do those things. At least I hope to GOD you sick piece of work!

There's no need for name-calling. I was just throwing something in. Don't like it? Then attack the words, not the person.

Sending a princess to another faction's family member to establish an alliance by marriage is not so bad then? Sure, send her away to a far land then, marrying somebody she doesn't know, a man who will control her. A marriage based on pure pragmatical basis. Yes: it is truly great, hm, those kings and princesses.

[Joshwa]

I want Glorious Achievement back. Please? And that damn road in Corinth to stop magically going over the sea!

[fabiano]

Hi,

Just don´t now if it is a wish list for post-patch of for next game. Sorry for the english.

Battles
I really like it. I think it is were TW had less major changes from Shogun to Medieval 2 (engine and system, not with graphics) because it was great and it is still great.

Infos - But I would like some more visual informations. Like, if my cavalry is going to charge with lances, some info at the unit card or the flag would be nice.

Ambush - And i still miss some way to really make a trap on the battle with the disposition of my forces (Not the ambush on Campaign map), but some way to prepare my units before the battle (Ok, I am waiting on this hill for 2 game years, I know the terrain, so I want to place some units at the far hill to ambush the invading army from the north).

Sige Battles - When a siege army is attacked from another side, the army insade the castle does not need to leave the castle, they already appear outside. It is not right. If a army is coming to releive the sige army, they have to pass the attacking, and if the castle garrison want to fight they need to leave, giving the atacking a chance to counter-attack whrn they are leaving.

More Units - I would like to increase the max number of unist, not only the size of units.


Campaign
Here is were I think the game need major changes. The change from board-map to real-map was a great idea, but it took out some good features and bring some bad ones.

LOS - The line of sight, the red space where your army could attack is too small. With the board-map, all units at the region battle. Now we have only really small battles. And what is worts, no more Alliance battles (France attack England, but the Holy Roman Empire send his troops to help). The map is too big and the LOS too small.

If the LOS is a little bigger it could be great. Like Army of 200 units 1 square LOS, 500 units 2 squares, 1000 3 squares. So we could have more units fighting, and more allies fighting.

And the positing of your troops will be much more importante too. Because, if you move a satck of many troops to your borders, and fortify, the enemy would have to fight you to pass. The fort will be very important.

Agents
The ideia of agents, with traits and ages is great, but the gameplay is not. We have 10 prients, 10 spys, 10 assassins... and 90% doing nothing, just watching TV. Too much micromanagement for nothing. It would br nice if when a agent die i receive the msg and an option to recruit a new one.

But the agents could be more useful doing missions (like Rebellion, old game). Ok, I recruit a priest, now I have to give a mission to him: exterminate all heretics. So he is going to move all over the map chasing heretics, and when he destroy one I receive a msg asking if I want to continue the mission or stop it. Spys could be send to look for the leader of one faction, or looking for the major armys of the enemy, so I could track then down. But if he is discover... Princess could infiltrate enemy courts and find which general is more open to bribe.

Priest: Hunt heretics, expand your religion, stop unrest, debate religion (destroyng other priest of another religion).
Spy/Assasin: Look for emperor, look for enemy agents, look for enemy armies, counter-spyonage, unrest city, took information from the enemy (the prince maid discover and tell his lover the enemy is goin to attack france in 3 turns
Princess: Marry a general, infiltrate court (giving gossips, which general is easy to buy, which general is moving to south with his army)

Diplomatic
I know the game is Total War, but it would be great to win withount destroying every faction near you. It would be good to have long alliances, and win with then.

Using Diplomacy - It would be nice to really use diplomacy in war. Like to spread rumors about yous enemys (using princess or spys). Turn one allie against the other, using mercenaries... Or make long alliances against one evil (and the computer doing the same thing). France and Spain make a pct to defend against the inaving Holy Roman, that destroy Milan.

Alliances and Enemys - What about using the diplomacy for war. Ask for your long friend to send a army to help defend the borders againts the unfriendly neighbour. So, you could have some Spanish army defending France, their great friend for 100 turns, agains the might Holy Roman Empire. No more armys moving without a goal in your territory.

Ask for help - Another great think is if you could or the computer ask for help agaisnta and invader. The Russian prince ask for all catholic nation to send army to fight the Mongol at Novorog in 10 turns, when they are going to arrive. Is is historic and a we have a major battle, with many European Powers. If you send a lot of troops the pope will love you.

Crusader Army - Allies joing to fight a crusade, as it happens in real crusade. The major Force, ask their allies to send armies to fight with then against the enemy. So the allies force join, or just move linked to the crusader army.

New Ruler - A major chance of relations with new rulers. A pacifist ruler trying to make peace and a arrogant one attacking their neighbours.

Rebels
Rebels could be annoying and boring, because they just sit there. But if they could be more active and more RPG. Like a uncle rebels aginst the current empirer after he lost a great battle to muslins, and declare independence. The rebel invade a region and build armys to conquer the country. No mre 100 armys at the borders and 10 at the capital.

I thinks thats is... Too much.

Fabiano

[IvarrWolfsong]

Battles
- Charging - (fix) I actually LIKE the new charge system. The main tweak I would make is a "carry through" if you are using wedge formation. You should continue on through the enemy unit after wrecking it's formation.
- Pursuit - (fix) Make cavalry stay in semi-formation when pursuing, and just cut down the fleeing enemies. Aside from spread out in HUGE miscombobulated messes, cavalry likes to run up to the slowest fat guy in the routing unit and poke in the back and then stop... Let them get on with the butchery!
- Pikes - (fix) Make pikemen stay in formation and act a little more like phalanxes ala RTW. Make them more reluctant to use that sword and let them poke more. Currently, they are nearly useless and a Dismounted Knights are a much better option (more on this later).
- Dismounting Units - (common request) MOST mounted units should be able to dismount in the deployment phase. Units that don't have a current dismounted version shouldn't (CA did a pretty good job with chosing units there). Most Knights should NOT be able to dismount (more on this later).
- Castle Defenses - (wild wish ) Castles need more defensive options. Make them "buildings" like balista towers. Gatehouses, moats, oil, wall mounted or courtyard mounted Trebs, etc should make Castles feel more like bastions of defense that shatter resistance like a rocky shore smashes waves. Right now, as far as a siege is concerned they are just cities with an off center layout.

Campaign
- Diplomacy - (fix/common request) Make it more interesting and a little more reasonable. I won't list all the nonsense and bizzare happenings of the Diplomacy engine. There are already about 100 threads addressing the lack of rhyme of reason for the AI's actions.
- Ransom - (wild wish ) One of the key diplomatic and economic tools of the middle ages was to capture some VIP and force a ransom out of his people. I want to do that! You should be able able to hold enemy family members for ransom from turn to turn, instead of execting them if the AI doesn't have the coin. Create a "Dungeon" tab in the faction management window. It would list who you held in your tower, what faction they were from, and the suggested ransom. Using your diplomat, you could offer to ransom them, trade them for your own captured VIPs, or return them for any other diplomatic reason. If he has high Chivalry+Piety perhaps the Pope could get involved and order his return.

Units
-Effective Against Armor - (Fix) Greatly reduce the number of units that have this ability. Light javelins and early hand axes should not be slaughtering heavily armored knights and men at arms. These weapons were not made for defeating armor. Maces/Hammers, some polearms, two handed axes, guns, longbows, higher end foot xbowmen and elite javelins should be the only ones with this attribute.

- KNIGHTS - (wild wish ) This is the later I was referring to . Knights should not be the rank and file infantry for most factions!! Knights (as a whole and dismounted especially) should be few and far between. They should be the elite, top of the line jet fighters of their day. They should be just as reluctant to give up their horse to slog among the peasants as a fighter pilot should be to give up his F18 and grab an M16. It is nonsense for every army to be 75% knights prancing about like brave Sir Robin ( and even he had coconuts ). Of course there should be exceptions such as in sieges. What brave knight wants to hang back on his horse when he could storm the walls and be thr first to raise his standard?

So how do we do this? First make them expensive as heck to maintain. At least double their upkeep... 500-900 per turn. Second, make them less available. No more than one per turn per castle would be about right.

Third, we need to replace Knights as the normal everyday infantryman. Replace them with a slew of new units based around the "Seargent Swordsmen" type of concept... a medium infantry that is cheaper to recruit and cheaper to maintain, but with less defense and armor. Mix them up for flavor... Falchion Swordsmen, Morning Star Seargents, etc. Denmark and Russia both already have this kind of medium infrantry so those units could be used as the basis. As the periods move along, they would be replaced with the econo-knights: Men at Arms, an heavily armored footman. These changes would make the standard army more of a mixed melee/spear type that is more realistic. It would also put the importance and power of the Knight back in perspective.

[rorarii]

- Allow baileys to fire arrows. In castles you have the bailey, where no unit is allowed to go so these large defensive structures do nothing. This might be ok in most castles as they're centralized and out of the way .. BUT in some castles the bailey sits on a outside wall, usually on a outcrop (aren't these castles devine! :), very close to where the enemy can be. i actually thought if I moved a unit close to the bailey, the flags would appear and it start shooting ... and yes, on one small section of the bailey a flag appeared but not the lot. Please allow the whole Bailey to be active when one unit is near.

- When a settlement is under siege and there are less than 4 units defending then the GAME automatically creates 3-4 units of CITIZEN archers / javelinmen. These units then vanish after the siege. I'm sick and tired of easily taking undefended settlements.

- Add a button on the strategic map so the player can zoom in and SEE WHAT THE TERRAIN IS LIKE WHERE HIS ARMY IS STANDING ... I'm sick and tired of thinking i'm defending a hill on the strategic map only to find out i'm in a gully when the battle starts!

R

[Razor1952]

Using battlefield structures.

At present there are many wonderful looking houses/small castles/buildings on the battlemap, however it is impossible to put say a group of archers on the walls on this structure, or say retreat to the doorway of this building (thereby negating flanking).

Enabling these structures would open up new stategic options on the battlefield.
(Imagine the nasty surprise when those pesky rebels are holed up in an impressive mini-castle and you had thought , "Ill just run these guys through with my lances")

[pike master]

i give a third vote for improved pike cohesion. and make sure they fight in the right direction would help too.

on a lighter note i believe that the peasants need maybe 2 more defence skill to bring it up to 5 and allow them to upgrade to advanced plate and upgrade their weapons from pitchforks to shotguns.:D

[Bijo]

Wish: when having different groups in battle, when selecting them all (still separately grouped) and then selecting an army setup (Shift + #), they should remain separately grouped AND follow the selected army setup, and NOT move like idiots. One word: WYSIWYG :P

Wish: when having a couple units grouped, left-clicking one unit will only select this unit, but Ctrl-clicking a group's unit will select the whole group (like in Shogun).
When left-clicking a unit, and then Ctrl-clicking another will select these two only (and any others you add like that).


Matter of fact, an overall go-back to Shogun's battle control regarding grouping and army setups (of course in the proper contexts) would be great.



edit, more:

-for the series in general: the sprites look UGLY. They should be better looking and versatile, as if almost animating in 3D while still being mere sprites (...exaggerated). But still: make more sprites for different angles and such. Only when the set Unit Detail level is gone into (longer distance on higher levels, or just zoomed in enough), should the units go 3D.

-to recruit/train generals.

-Man of the Hour: when you get this, you should have the option to choose whether you adopt him or just promote him to general. I don't need new family members as I keep the original line intact, but I do need more generals to lead the armies.

[Bleda]

Maybe I'm reiterating some previous posts on this thread but the top priority fixes should be , dynasytic succession, titles, diplomacy and all around return to the Medieval 1 and Rome game mechanics.

-There should be

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

human control over dynastic succession

. Or at the very least, the AI should have the sense to make the thrones pass father to son. In my game, there is no cohesive formula that heirs are chosen. My king will be a young man with young sons, but then the first son comes of age and the title of prince is not transfered onto him. The AI just doesnt allow someone to lose their faction heir status even if a beter claimant comes of age. If this were real, there would be civil war over birthright claims.

-Titles should be made available for both provincial titles (Duke of Wherever) and court tiles like "Earl of the Stables".

-Factions should be more open to the idea of becoming a vassal when they are facing extinction.

-Castles should be able to build more units at a time. Max of 3 just doesnt cut it.

-Power blocs should form. Allied countries should help each other and be able to form coalition type offenses or defenses. There is no point in allying with anyone because they turn so easily against the human and other AI players.

-The factions in the game should start behaving like real states! Countires should have several things in place before attacking anyone.

1) Something to gain!
2) AI should invade with higher stacks, no more half-ass invasion then retreat
3) Personality of AI kings should translate to their actions
4) A chance of winning!

Dear CA,
First and foremost I must stress the importance of fixing the dynastic succession problem. Its my least favorite thing about this game, if you dont fix anything else, fix that!

[dopp]

IvarrWolfSong is on to something here, personally I wish that sergeant spearmen and the like would be buffed to take up the role of frontline fighters, and no more of this sword beats spears RPS nonsense. It seems that this is the direction CA was going anyway, since apart from dismounted knights few factions get anything other than spearmen as their line infantry. Buff pikes, buff spears, buff halberds and remove dismounted knights altogether. Knights should be allowed to dismount before battle, but the resulting units of foot knights should be smaller than normal (ie a unit of 40 feudal knights becomes a unit of 40 dismounted knights, not 60 dismounted knights like right now) as a curb on their superior individual prowess.

[supadodo]

1.Fix stupid castle cannon tower bug and cannon before gpowder invented on balista tower for huge city.

2.Enemy cavalry should flank properly. Now they just charge headfirst into infantry on the flank, not the infantry's flank.

3.Make armor upgrades more worth it rather than just giving a +1 def bonus. Like make units with plate armor upgrade harder to kill. Also have more units capable of receiving more than one upgrade particularly for eastern factions.

4. Fix some missile units not skirmishing properly. Sometimes missile units with the ability on don't run away when enemy approach them.

5. Fix wooden stakes so that they can be placed on battlefield roads but not when bridge is nearby.

6. For Turks, English and probably a few other factions, either allow the Armour Factory building to upgrade units or remove it altogether. Its just a major money waster rite now and sore sight for those who like to see empty build menus.

7.Fix crusading armies so that when a new unit joins in a turn after the army join s the crusade, that new unit also gets the crusade sign. Right now any unsigned unit in a crusade causes the crusade to cancel when that crusading army captures the target.

[Bijo]

Now that I think about it, I second (or "third?") the thing about medium infantry or buffed up spearmen. I actually use lots of spearmen in my armies as main infantry (the ones with about 7att. and 14def. and bonus against cavalry) and that's fine in general. I agree knights should be limited.

Btw, a question/observation: should swords really beat spears? When I think about it, a sword is handled more swiftly so it could beat a spearman with agility, but the longer spear keeps the sword enemy at a distance. Of course this is seen from a one-on-one theory, and makes sense to me.
When I think of it as two units engaging each other, it'd look like a draw to me.

[Bijo]

Wishes:


-Burning men (running around). I present to you a picture that says it all, but in-game it doesn't do it at all. If it's too difficult or time-consuming to include, then at least make them drop down burning as if they were hit by fire arrows.


They just came rushing out as if nothing's going on. Nobody in that tower should get out unburned (or get out at all). Make them die in the tower. When it fell it was nice, though, but they weren't burning. WYSIWYG.


-About my previous wish regarding watchtowers:
Having every army (without general) able to build them is alright, but even better to put Border Watchtowers in the building options of the region/settlement.

[pike master]

what about the memory leak problem with diplomacy merchants treaties upgrading troops etc etc. i think they are all connected somehow.also in retraining units you should be able to use all the slots on unit build page and not just the ones available for training new troops.

and i agree with chrisky on some of that too about the manual being in synch with the game because it does say in the manual that a pike unit can do a schiltrom as well as spearmen. and im sure they will give boiling oil hopefully in the second patch. i remember it took the first patch in mtw 1 before you had boiling oil.

[sapi]

I've seen absolutely no evidence of a memory leak in m2tw (in my experience it uses very little ram, compared with other games) so i'd like to see what you've got...

[noodles]

i have to agree to the dismounted option - its rediculous to produce knights like this ... in my view it could either be

- an option in the campaign map to switch them from mounted to dismounted
- even an option on the battle map on which the horses run off like a retreat for the remainder of the battle - kind of a one time thing dismount during battles to keep things from getting complicated or unreal

[pike master]

@sapi

im not talking about when im playing the game im talking about after i save the game and turn my computer off. when i play the next time sometimes things will be different just like what a lot of people have been complaining about. even battle replays arnt showing exactly what happened like mtw and rome did.

i suppose memory leak to some people and to others are to different issues but the one im talking about is when a game is saved and when you come back your merchants arnt making the same amount of money they were before you was saved or when you had units redy to be upgraded in your unit slots they havnt been upgraded but you spent the money so if you keep retraining them you are just waisting your money.

what i am talking about would not involve random access memory.

[sapi]

A memory leak is when a program does not correctly reassign memory that it has used (and thus the system runs out of memory and crashes).

It has nothing to do with what you have described, which are software bugs.

[Wario]

Battlemap unit mesh importer/exporter.

[pike master]

im kinda leaning more to defence bonus for spearmen now. the reason being is that napoleon only used infantry squares with bayonets and they held horses at bay. and the schiltrom formation spear units look like their spears are about 8 to 10 ft so i guess maybe they should have a defence bonus against cavalry.

[Bijo]

Additional wishes:


-To recruit in besieged settlement
-For archers to better pick their targets while on Fire At Will (firing at a routing unit of a few men is stupid compared to firing at more important targets)
-More events