The QUEST against ALL-ELITE armies

[Varyar]

In a broad perspective, I'd say that the game suffer from two major problems regarding this issue:
*the way recruitment works
*the linear design of the game

The problem with recruitment is that the players hoard units. If you recruit elite units these are always around, potentially for hundreds of years, if you have the cash to pay the upkeep. This creates a situation where everyone have large standing armies in a time in history when few had more than a handful of troops permanently armed. A better and more realistic solution would be to create a "draft" instead, where unit recruitment might be cheaper but upkeep is horrendous, and of course elites are limited.

The linear design of the game means that everyone start off piss weak and work themselves up to a sort of permanent glory. Once a citadel always a citadel, with the units and income that comes with that. That doesn't create a long-term interesting game but rather a "try-to-win-as-fast-as-you-can" game where by each turn the game becomes easier. A more dynamic design where the realms actually rise and fall would create a longer and more fun game.

[Garnier]

If the AI could work with the recruitment system that had equal purchase cost and upkeep cost (so you couldnt recruit men and disband them in the same turn) then that would be awesome, but the AI currently cant be made to disband units. So basically this is impossible.

[Whacker]

Erm, I don't mean to derail this thread, but I would like to put forth my dissenting opinion about the subject in question. Will try to be concise but this is still going to be long.

While providing a challenge is important, part of what happens with M2TW and games that involve some role-playing-ish elements involves the gaining and exercise of power. Hand in hand with this is the relative difficulty throughout the spanse of the game. I prefer games that do not "scale" per se, and that will let me choose if I wish to "grind" (or turtle, or whatever term you prefer) and become as godlike as I wish, then proceeding on with the plot or mission. Likewise, should I wish I can just embark on my mission/crusade/plot/whatever and try to take it as it comes, thus gaining in abilities/power/money/wealth/all that great crap as the game "intended" through basic unplanned gameplay.

Now, I have two games to use as examples of how I think this is well done and poorly done, sorry in advance if you don't like my opinions or analogies. Also please keep in mind the general concept that I'm getting at here, and don't get sidetracked by the fact that these are RPG'ss and not RTS's. These two games are Morrowind and Oblivion. I think Morrowind is the example of how to do this RIGHT, in that the game can be incredibly challenging if you just blindly set off and try to go about your quest without any planning or forethought. Even with planning, it can still be a great challenge. The game rewards players who try to think in advance about how to develop their characters, and who explore and do sidequests for items and experience. You can become a god very early on in the game if you want to, and then set off and the game will be very easy. The game does not SCALE to you, it's there and set. Some things will be inately easy, others impossible without the right equipment or stats. Thus the point is, the ability to gain relative power is there, and should you choose to do it, you will be rewarded and can exercise that power in whatever way you see fit. In Oblivion, almost the entire game scales with you. While you can become a "god" so to speak, your relative power and the effort put into gaining your abilities is generally offset by the game scaling it's difficulty to you. Therefore where you were once fighting rats in a dungeon, you'll come back to find out it's infested with the most powerful zombies and undead in the game. I positively hate this. If I take the time to put the effort into my character/game/whatever to increase my relative power, then I should be rewarded and be able to wield that as I see fit.

Now, how does this relate to M2TW and the TW games in general? Again it's about relative power. If I spend the time and work at it, tech up, turtle and make the best troops I can, train on rebel stacks, etc, I should be rewarded appropriately and be able to bulldoze all in my path (with proper skill of course). The scaling with the TW games in my experience comes with managing a large empire once you've carved it out. Micromanagement is required and can be a pain, but then again if you don't like micromanagement, what are you doing playing an RTS? :) Much less the TW series....

At any rate. I do NOT want to see any changes that increase difficulty through any means in this game now or in any future patches. I'm not that great of a player, so normal is fine for me. If I build an all-elite army, then by the gods I should be rewarded for my efforts and mulch away. :)

Cheers!

[Hochmeister]

Just trying to think what MTW did better apart from the "risk" map. One thing I have noticed about western european factions is that you can win the game easily without coming into contact with either the Mongols or the Timurids. Maybe if we had a very powerful Switzerland and or the Burgundian uprising with large elite armies it would create more of a challenge late game??

[General Zhukov]

At any rate. I do NOT want to see any changes that increase difficulty through any means in this game now or in any future patches. I'm not that great of a player, so normal is fine for me. If I build an all-elite army, then by the gods I should be rewarded for my efforts and mulch away. :)

I think all-elite armies are okay. Sort of unfair to the AI if the player does that, but only because the enemy won't match it. Higher difficulties should not just be about the AI being stubborn in diplomacy. On the higher difficulties, the AI really should be smart enough to field armies full of as many top-notch units as they can recruit. Imagine my suprise and delight if I saw an enemy stack with 10-12 of their most powerful knights in it, or a Turkish stack full of their great early horse archers. 1/3 of the way into my Byzantine campaign, on Hard difficulty, usually the Turks just build small stacks of spear militia. They must think they're playing a mod by Carl or something.

About the late game difficulty. It does become too easy. But one can't expect the AI to ever do as well as a competent human player given the same resources. So, maybe a page from other games should be taken (like Civ) and give the AI cash bonuses, reduced upkeeps, and other assorted advantages. And what about the computer choosing one to three factions to become "top dogs"? Those factions would expand more aggressively, avoid empire bloat easier, and perhaps get other advantages like fudged dice rolls on autocalcs against other AI factions. The whole point of which would be to ensure that a least a few factions develop into true threats for the player to deal with.

[The historian]

i think the main problem with late game is not that you can have all elite armies after all at that point you usually have an empire 25-30 regions at least so iti is pretty realistic the problem is the ai is usually not capable of presenting a similar foe to fight.Now i won two long campaigns one with the venetians and one with the danish. In the one with the danes i had a lot of fun late game fighting two ai empires hungary in the east and spain in the vest i actually lost some towns to the ai had to send reinforcemenets fight battles against full elite hungarain armies with feudal knights even tougher was fighting spanish chilvaric knights point is i had none as i di not upgrade that far.i belive that were i to continue that game i wpuld have to pull out of northern france and north italy as i do not have them men to fight the spanish and the towns are just conquered.
So the late game can be very nice if the ai is able to create a real competitor.
In my case i owned the her england , poland and western russia and everythingt to constantinople after crushing the hunagarian toolk long enough mind you.
while the spanish have all of france to the loire the iberian peninsula and all of north africa.

[Whacker]

About the late game difficulty. It does become too easy. But one can't expect the AI to ever do as well as a competent human player given the same resources. So, maybe a page from other games should be taken (like Civ) and give the AI cash bonuses, reduced upkeeps, and other assorted advantages. And what about the computer choosing one to three factions to become "top dogs"? Those factions would expand more aggressively, avoid empire bloat easier, and perhaps get other advantages like fudged dice rolls on autocalcs against other AI factions. The whole point of which would be to ensure that a least a few factions developed into true threats for the player to deal with.

Hi Mate. This is somewhat my point exactly. The end game IS generally going to be easy, because you've carved out a huge empire and can afford to field numerous elite-filled armies. Again this is the "usages of power" thing I was talking about. If you take the time and effort to build that up, you should be rewarded. That's what I meant when I made my last little paragraph there. I don't want to see the AI get any special bonuses or crap end game just to make it that much easier, I want them to continue as normal, and if/when I choose to crush them, I should be able to do with the relative ease that I choose, as I've worked at and earned that ability. The ONLY thing I can think of that I personally would be ok with this something like the original MTW "once you're this big and have so many provinces, everyone hates you and attacks you". On the other side of that argument, it would arguably be more prudent to ally with the larger guy then piss him off and have him bulldoze you in short order.

@The Historian

I agree in general that I'd like to see that form of Darwinism play itself out such that the player is provided with a number of significant factions as opponents throughout the game. Moreso I'd like to see this achieved randomly, such that you don't always go up against a huge Byzantine empire, or the Mongols don't always own Eastern Europe, or the Moors always bulldoze Iberia, or the HRE doesn't always get swallowed up, etc etc etc. My point was, I don't want to see the AI "cheating" to do this, or to be more competitive late game.

Cheers!

[econ21]

The ONLY thing I can think of that I personally would be ok with this something like the original MTW "once you're this big and have so many provinces, everyone hates you and attacks you".

I think M2TW has introduced this feature. At least, that is what I heard in the pre-release discussion.

Personally, I hate it - we've moved from modelling human diplomacy to dreaming up a psycho lemming land - but whatcha gonna do?

[hrvojej]

I think M2TW has introduced this feature. At least, that is what I heard in the pre-release discussion.

Personally, I hate it - we've moved from modelling human diplomacy to dreaming up a psycho lemming land - but whatcha gonna do?

I hate it too. I don't know if you already knew this (and I apologize if you did), but you can at least partially mod it out. Go to descr_faction_standing.txt and just delete triggers 0086, 0087, and 0088. Now your standing with other factions will not drop just because you're successful. I think is very frustrating when the game is in fact punishing you for doing well: shouldn't it be the opposite, at least in things we do for fun and relaxation?

[antisocialmunky]

I'd rather see the game time scale adjusted to months or two months/ turn and all the buildings, units, growth rates, and income adjusted to it. If you increase movement rates then you'd make armies be able to advance really deep into enemy territory and it would be impossible to defend unless you could find a choke.

[PipBoy]

Well I have a few ideas to throw into the mix, firstly what if the AI had templates for its army stacks such as x amount of cav, x amount of infantry, x amount of archers. Before sending the army into the field it has to meet minimum requirements for a stack.

This could also mean less small stacks wandering the map and when the AI does attack it would have a more threatning army with better composition.

This could be themed according to the faction, france prefers more cavalry, danes prefer infantry, eastern factions use lots of HAs.

The big problem here is if the AI doesnt have the troops avaliable, eg. no castles, hasnt upgraded the right buildings.

Another idea that has been brought up already is creating strong late AI factions. Why is it that the human player should always dominate and own half the map when the AI seems to still be fighting over the same settlements.

By creating a few large, strong AI factions that increase the size of their empire alongside the human player there would be a much larger challenge in the end game. This would directly affect the composition of AI armies as it would have a much larger recruitment base to draw from, it would certainly have a good mix of castes and cities if it has 20+ provinces.

[kallistus]

Another idea that has been brought up already is creating strong late AI factions. Why is it that the human player should always dominate and own half the map when the AI seems to still be fighting over the same settlements.

By creating a few large, strong AI factions that increase the size of their empire alongside the human player there would be a much larger challenge in the end game. This would directly affect the composition of AI armies as it would have a much larger recruitment base to draw from, it would certainly have a good mix of castes and cities if it has 20+ provinces.

I believe CA tried to build that (the 'strong AI faction') into the game; that was the point of having the Mongols and Timurids turns up – the player spends the first half of the game creating their empire, then they have a powerful enemy force in the East to test themselves against.

The end game is always a problem in these sorts of empire building strategy games because power begets power. Once you get above a certain level, or critical mass, you tend to get enough inertia on to start steamrolling. CA have tried to address this with the Mongols, Timurids, and to a lesser extent the Aztecs.

The difficulty of the endgame varies with nation to nation tho. As Russia I had a great late game with my Dvor archers near Constantinople, screaming for more ammo against Mongol horde after horde; while in the East hordes of Kazaks rode round and round the Panzerjaeger VI ‘Elefant’ assault guns, bouncing arrows off them. Holding off the Mongols and Timurids at the same time was a titanic struggle and made the end game really challenging.

However, the Western nations can carve out a big empire, build up, then descend on Jerusalem en masse and avoid much of a fight with the Mongols if they want.



Separating the settlements into the economic cities and the military castles is a good idea from a human perspective (that is, it adds a different dimension to planning your empire), but it just makes it that much harder for the AI to get its act together; now the AI has to create troops then assemble those troops into balanced armies in the field. Which it is not good at.

And the rarest unit in an English AI army seems to be a Longbowman...

[CountMRVHS]

Really quick: I didn't notice a lot of these endgame problems in my VH/VH Poland campaign, probably for a couple of reasons: 1) the 3-way slam I took from Denmark, Hungary, and Russia really slowed down production; 2) the Timurids emerged just as I was finishing with Russia and kicked me back to the Baltic; 3) I was sort of racing through those last several turns as I was desperate to get to America and see what that was like. When I *did* get there, the Aztecs were waiting, very powerful.

However, Poland might not be a fair case as it's over in eastern Europe where things tend to be more exciting. At any rate, to be fair, this endgame ennui is nothing new to me; I experienced it in RTW and in the original MTW. The Risk-style map did make for a climactic last battle with a cornered AI faction, but don't forget that those last battles were sometimes more tedious than fun -- especially if it consisted of many stacks of crap units. I remember autocalcing several of those "last stands" once my empire had grown too big for me to really care -- I knew I'd win the war eventually, so the individual battle was no longer as interesting. At that point, interest in the game itself begins to fade and you start to think about trying a new faction.

The point about inertia was well-made. My solution in MTW was to *only play GA games*. I was very quickly turned off by the idea of England owning 2/3 of Europe, so I started playing a restrained, turtling GA type of game. The "short campaigns" of RTW and M2TW are an attempt to throw a bone in that direction, but the name "short" campaign means it doesn't live up to the kind of game I'd like to actually play -- it's not that I want my campaign to end faster, it's that I want a chance to continue playing as a smaller kingdom, with all the challenges that entails. Playing a strict GA game in MTW allowed you to do just that, and if you survived to 1453 with the most points after observing whateve house rules you set for yourself, it was a cool accomplishment. The short campaign of RTW and M2 is a very different beast, more suited for blitzing your neighbors to get a feel for a particular faction. However, now that I mention it, that Polish campaign actually began as a "short" campaign -- that lasted until the discovery of America with no winner (Russia and Hungary were still around).

Anyway, my main point was that this sort of endgame feeling isn't new to RTW or M2TW -- I know I felt it in MTW. Probably anothe reason I loved the VI game so much: smaller map, less boredom with a huge empire.

CountMRVHS

[dopp]

I might point out that the 'shiny' factor means some people do want to build armies composed of nothing but elites, and historical accuracy can go hang. Which is shinier: 10 units of Lancers, or 1 unit of Lancers trying to maintain their dignity alongside 9 units of smelly peasants?

Besides which, many Medieval armies were small enough to be just knights, or mostly longbowmen or horse archers or whatever. Not that unusual. The French army at Agincourt was mostly men-at-arms with some crossbowmen and cannon. No proper observation of the 1:10 ratio (elites to normal troops) at that battle, nor is there any sign of 'balanced' battlelines. The English army were all professionals as well (retinue longbowmen and dismounted EK in game terms). There would be a lot of peasants and camp followers and servants as 'baggage', but these were often not involved in the actual fighting.

[lobo76]

another thing about big empires, should be it is hard to defend. Typically, the AI only try to attack the border cities/castles. So we, the human player, stuffs it up with troops for defence. For our 'inner' empire, we do not have much of a defence. If the AI will attack with full stack through a backdoor into our 'inner empire', we'd be forced to maintain a huge force just to keep our cities. then the money factor may be more balanced.

[Hochmeister]

I believe CA tried to build that (the 'strong AI faction') into the game; that was the point of having the Mongols and Timurids turns up – the player spends the first half of the game creating their empire, then they have a powerful enemy force in the East to test themselves against.

However, the Western nations can carve out a big empire, build up, then descend on Jerusalem en masse and avoid much of a fight with the Mongols if they want.

Yes I had this in my first campaign. Hadnt seen a Mongol yet & had my 45 territories so my final act was a massive crusade to Jerusalem supported by several elite stacks. When my massive military operation landed on the shores of Israel I promptly besieged the city only to find that it was garrisoned by one unit!! I was so horrified I autocalced for the campaign victory. Talk about a let down

That is why I suggested earlier that maybe a central european "swiss or Burgundian" type uprising might make what is the most popular factions to play more challenging.

[Yun Dog]

It would be nice if each AI had specific build and expansion strategies a bit akin to Civ.

Along with this would be a recruitment and army composition code

eg. HRE - overall want to expand towards italy to consolidate its borders
- it wants x number of cities and x castles
- it makes units x,y,z from the castle and puts them with a,b,c from the city and 1 general

once it completes level 1 of its build code
it then recruits x2,y2,z2, and combines with a2,b2,c2

its a fairly tough ask to code this and have each nation have specific goals, characteristics

something that used to be nice in MTW was the province specific unit bonuses

at the moment once you get past a mid sized empire - the castles and citys all just become the same

the nations and regions need a little more distinction IMO

edit : and a garrison code would be nice to have too

[Von Nanega]

Yes I had this in my first campaign. Hadnt seen a Mongol yet & had my 45 territories so my final act was a massive crusade to Jerusalem supported by several elite stacks. When my massive military operation landed on the shores of Israel I promptly besieged the city only to find that it was garrisoned by one unit!! I was so horrified I autocalced for the campaign victory. Talk about a let down

That is why I suggested earlier that maybe a central european "swiss or Burgundian" type uprising might make what is the most popular factions to play more challenging.

I fully agree that a Swiss nation showing up, regardless of who owns the territory, or Burgundians showing in the proper place could make thing get real interesting later in the game. That is the one thing I miss from MTW is the new factions apearring in the game.

[pike master]

what about a playable swiss faction ?

[Grifman]

I think one problem is that there are no longer revolts to make things more difficult for the player. Medieval history was full of rebellions by lords/generals seeking to take power for themselves. Yet this seems totally ignored in the game. If we actually have to fight off half a dozen rebellions in 400 years that might slow the humans down.

[Jambo]

Yep, the whole point of loyalty seems to be lost in M2TW. I've yet to have a general defect and therefore loyalty doesn't seem to represent an issue at all. Maybe lowering some of the bribe modifiers in the campaign_ai file would help...?

[dopp]

I have generals defect all the time. Your king's authority affects the chances of revolt. Too bad they just go rebel and not march on your capital to stage a coup or something. In BI they joined a specific Roman rebels faction, I think, which made things very interesting because it was a regular faction that could invade your lands, take settlements from you, and so on. In effect, the rebels could do everything you could, plus they had a chance of acquiring and using your own armies against you.

Suggestion: Making a separate rebel faction for every regular faction is impractical. How about just making the generic rebel faction more active? The code governing rebel AI is editable, I think. It currently stops them from doing much more than sit around and defend themselves, but that could be changed to make them use the regular AI code.

[Frankmuddy]

Hi Mate. This is somewhat my point exactly. The end game IS generally going to be easy, because you've carved out a huge empire and can afford to field numerous elite-filled armies. Again this is the "usages of power" thing I was talking about. If you take the time and effort to build that up, you should be rewarded.

It seems that the game as it is currently structured is does not build to a climax. Conservative and intelligent play will almost garuntee victory. From a properly dramatic point of view the end game should see the nacent imperial powers facing off against each other for ever higher stakes. Towards the end of the game you should have tremendous power to dispose of, but similarly face tremendous risks. It would be more rewarding, for myself and others, to face real challenge towards the end period of the game. Not from contrived advantages, of course, but from credible threats and enemies.

[rich19]

The rebels could be expanded on. I'm not sure of the code, but it seems to me that having two rebel factions - one passive one for the garrisons of rebel cities that you race to get to, and one active one to which people defect and which actually attacks and tries to get your cities. It's always puzzled me that my navies get attacked by pirates all the time, but my armies can stand right next to a rebel stack for years and not be in any danger.

[General Zhukov]

It would be more rewarding, for myself and others, to face real challenge towards the end period of the game. Not from contrived advantages, of course, but from credible threats and enemies.

If you faced powerful empires that posed credible threats in the endgame, would you really care if the AI advantages had been contrived or not?

I recall playing a player made scenario for Civilization II called Red Front. It was about the German onslaught on Russia during World War Two. And you were playing Russia... The scenario was the hardest and funnest experience I ever had on that great game. And you wondered while playing it how the AI could plan and perform the overwhelming blitzkrieg it did, something the AI could never do in a normal game of Civ. As it turns out, the AI was using scripts to get huge numbers of free units every turn, free money etc. The computer was using contrived advantages in the interest of giving the player a really hard challenge. But knowing that didn't spoil the experience. It was still an absolute blast.

The computer is just not going to match a skilled player when given equal resources. So, with all the above in mind, I think M2TW should take a page from Civ and give the AI more contrived advantages as the difficulty goes higher. From what I can tell, all that changes with increased difficulty now is that the AI gets more and more stubborn in diplomacy.

[dopp]

Total War does do that, but in the reverse way. It gives YOU more penalties as the game goes on (aka bloated empire). Drove me mad in MTW how I'd build the second Roman Empire and then every single governor starts picking up bad traits in the endgame. The traits update message at the beginning of every turn would run on and on and all of it would be bad. Incest would suddenly become the in thing. Every single governor would simultaneously be afflicted with genetic disorders. Orchestrated mass disobedience would manifest itself with a wave of corruption. Add to that the fact that you lose a massive amount of income from conquering your trading partners and maintaining an empire becomes incredibly frustrating.

[Lord_hazard]

In a broad perspective, I'd say that the game suffer from two major problems regarding this issue:
*the way recruitment works
*the linear design of the game

The problem with recruitment is that the players hoard units. If you recruit elite units these are always around, potentially for hundreds of years, if you have the cash to pay the upkeep. This creates a situation where everyone have large standing armies in a time in history when few had more than a handful of troops permanently armed. A better and more realistic solution would be to create a "draft" instead, where unit recruitment might be cheaper but upkeep is horrendous, and of course elites are limited.

The linear design of the game means that everyone start off piss weak and work themselves up to a sort of permanent glory. Once a citadel always a citadel, with the units and income that comes with that. That doesn't create a long-term interesting game but rather a "try-to-win-as-fast-as-you-can" game where by each turn the game becomes easier. A more dynamic design where the realms actually rise and fall would create a longer and more fun game.

Agreed. I would love to see the totalwar games take a turn for the more realistic.

[Moah]

I see your point but from the games I've played RTW and M2TW are the most realistic battle simulators I've ever seen. But also playable. Units, generally, have the same advantages and disadvantages as hsitory. The tactics that worked historically work in game (generally). Credit where credit's due.

Yes massed armoured cavalry is pretty supreme in the west. But it was. So we develop pikes. But pikes are slow so....etc etc etc Don't forget we can sit and do 5 test battles before we fight the AI, losing hundreds of men and 4battles to test units - not sure henry v had that option....

There's no uber, unstoppable unit (except maybe HA )