My one big wish...

[PaulTa]

Everyone has one big wish for MTW2. In some cases, it's a feature that was present in previous games, but was dropped for one reason or the other. Sometimes, the feature is something that hasn't been implemented yet, and is in some opinions "much overdue" (such as naval combat).

Well mine is a blast from the past so to speak, a feature that was once present in the original but no longer with us today. My big wish is different starting times for the grand campaign.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy aspects of the early years. Everything was nitty, gritty, and down to earth. Nothing seems quite as "medieval" as the starting years, where the bigger the weapon and the thicker the armor was the norm.

I, on the other hand, can't wait to get past the age of spears and large swords to gunpowder, pike formations, light specialized cavalry, and a focus on new and totally different warfare. My era would be characterized by pikes holding heavy lancers at bay while the cannons roar and the musketeers pick off enemy troops with their new and mysterious weapons. Heavily armored knights who spend their lives training are rendered obsolete by a peasant with a smokey tube and lead shot. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the point.

So to be down to earth and simple, I wish that we had the function that lets us skip the basic infrastructure years and lets us get to the more advanced stuff.

Anyone else agree?

[JCoyote]

I agree, for another reason. It removed the "necessity" of the faster year progression we see. With the slower progression, it didn't matter so much how long it took to "get to gunpowder" because if you wanted you could always start later.

That would be especially nice with the current allowance to continue play as long as you want. I won my first english campaign, but then kept on playing almost to the "1800's" cause I was having fun.

Which was a downside to the original game, an absolute "end year". With this kind of game, people should be allowed to play a campaign as long as they want, provided they haven't been crushed or already own everything.

Another nice feature would be allowing the choice of starting areas, AND allowing a choice of maximum technological level. So if you are someone for whom musketeers break your imagination of a "medieval world", just cap the level before gunpowder and pretend it never happened. It's not something I'd want to permanently mod my game to, but it might be nice to play a "chivalrous forever" game sometime.

[Kraggenmor]

I'm really stuck on a fence between the already offered variable starting eras

OR

Region specific troops/troop bonuses.

[PureFodder]

It is frustrating that you only seem to get to the gunpowder age when it's fairly pointless. You're already close to finishing so by the time you manage to round up a decent gunpowder era army it's all over. My last long campaign didn't even get to the invention of gunpowder. I guess you can continue after you have 45 provinces, but you're so rich and powerful and typically the AI factions haven't massively expanded, that it's going to be an easy crushing anyway. It'd be nice to actually see the Timurid invasion and the Aztecs without having to play the turtling game.

Variable stating points would be a great feature to put back in.

[FrauGloer]

I'm really stuck on a fence between the already offered variable starting eras

OR

Region specific troops/troop bonuses.

Region specific troop bonuses can be easily implemented by modding the export_descr_buildings file and hidden resources. For example, I modded it so that longbowmen from Wales come out at valor 1. The same can be done for Higlanders from Scotland, Vikings from Scandinavia, Genoese Crossbowmen from Genoa,... the sky's the limit.

For instructions, go to the modding forum.

Of course, it would be nice if the feature were official.

Different starting dates, however, are rather harder to mod manually, so here's hoping that CA will look into it for the expansion.

[MilesGregarius]

Region specific troops/troop bonuses.

I'm split between that and assigning offices and titles. Especially in a feudalistic era it would seem to add to the flavor to refer to family members by title rather than name. Duc d'Anjou, Prince of Wales, and Elector Palatinate are a lot more evocative of the times than a random collection of names. Also, tying a settlements income to its liege-lord, as opposed to a governor would be more in line with the feudal time period of M2TW as opposed to the imperial bureaucracies of RTW. The distance a general got from his realm, and the length of his absence, could contribute to unrest and rebel formation.