Post-patch wishlist

[TinCow]

One that I haven't seen mentioned:

I want to be able to enter and use the 'fortified manors' that show up on some of the battle maps. They're somewhat rare, but they are very interesting. They are square structures with several towers and ramparts on the the walls, surrounding a square courtyard with a well and a single entrance that has no gate. If units could enter this building and climb and man the walls, it would make for an interesting defensive position for some battles. Since there's no gate on the entryway, no siege equipment would be needed to take it (slaughter everyone in the gate area and then climb the stairs), so no real way to exploit it. Based on their size, I doubt they could hold more than 2 to 3 units, so not too unfair to the person who has to attack.

It would be fun to have a small fortified position like that as a strongpoint in a defensive line.

[Razor1952]

One that I haven't seen mentioned:

I want to be able to enter and use the 'fortified manors' that show up on some of the battle maps. They're somewhat rare, but they are very interesting. They are square structures with several towers and ramparts on the the walls, surrounding a square courtyard with a well and a single entrance that has no gate. If units could enter this building and climb and man the walls, it would make for an interesting defensive position for some battles. Since there's no gate on the entryway, no siege equipment would be needed to take it (slaughter everyone in the gate area and then climb the stairs), so no real way to exploit it. Based on their size, I doubt they could hold more than 2 to 3 units, so not too unfair to the person who has to attack.

It would be fun to have a small fortified position like that as a strongpoint in a defensive line.

Absolutely one of my wishes as well, imagine those darn rebels you thought you'd just roll over with your Medieval tanks(knights) only to find that they had stationed themselves in one of these Manors and required some footguys to root them out.

[bbrass10]

There's a serious bug that I haven't seen anyone mention yet, and it seems so obvious to me that I'm surprised that CA missed it both before the product release and before the first patch; speaking as a programmer, I don't think it would be difficult to correct the problem. Here's the bug:

If you do a load game, and there are units queued for upgrades, they will not receive any experience upgrades (die to guilds or whatever.) This means that after pressing "end turn", it will see that they have not been fully upgraded, and you can add them to the queue again -- spending money on them a second time for an upgrade you've already purchased, and also losing one turn of usage with those units.

The only way around this problem is to remove all units from all queues that are due experience upgrades after a load game, and then add them back to the queues before pressing "end turn". If you accidentally forget to perform this procedure after a load game, and wish to return to the a previous game turn to get the experience upgrades that you've already paid for, there's a good chance that different random events could change the entire course of the game when pressing "end year," which is extremely frustrating.

Another bug that I've encountered occurs frequently when using the battle simulator. I prefer to draw my own formations for a group, rather than using the limited selection of formations provided by the game. In previous versions of Total War, the battle simulator would remember the formation that was in effect at the time a group was created and attempt to hold that formation. In M2TW, as soon as a group starts moving, the battle simulator loses track of the initial formation and will not allow you to specify that formation at the destination on the map (with green arrows, etc.). At times, this makes battles unplayable for me.

Here is my wish list for enhancements:

1. Player-selected elimination or reduction of spawned threats (heretics, rebels, etc.) These are not only historically unrealistic but they do not add to the entertainment value of the game whatsoever. They have little or nothing to do with strategy, but they are and endless stream of repeated annoyances that puts a short halt to the real flow of the game until they can be dealt with.

2. Smarter campaign AI.
3. Less suicidal combat AI.

[sapi]

mate, are you sure that that's the cause of that bug?

If so, it's getting added to the buglist

[TinCow]

I also wish we could specify the depth of a line of units. Currently, when you group units and drag them into a line, the computer gives them all the same frontage, no matter how large the unit is. That means that depleted units end up as thin lines when placed in formation with full units. I would like the option to specificy, for example, that the formation never go below 4 ranks deep. So, when drawing out the line the frontage of the depleted units stops expanding when it would reduce them below 4 ranks, while the larger unit continue to get longer until they reach the preset depth. As it is now, in order to achieve my desired formation, I have to manually draw each unit's formation.

[Foz]

I had actually speculated the same thing as bbrass10 about the upgrades, Sapi, though I haven't tested it empirically. It does seem like it always happens when I've just loaded the game to start playing again though, and doesn't happen after I'm continuing to play. I have also taken to flushing my retraining queues when I load now (and actually saving the game at the very beginning of a turn before anything gets in the queue), and it's been a while since I had a unit come out with the wrong experience. All signs point to some vital bit of information failing to be recorded in the saved games, but I'm not really in a mood to actually make sure right now.