True multiplayer campaign map

[_Tristan_]

Yes, what would do to have CA issue the next installment in the TW series with a full-multiplyer campaign map ?

Personnally, I would sell my soul to the

Imagine a cross between a paperboard Diplomacy game and the computerized battles of the TW series...

My dream come true...

I know that some palyers of the MTW-community have started playing PBM to be able to play like that, I've never been tempted.

I used to play tabletop wargames some years ago and with friends we had designed a whole set of rules to play between the fights (mostly based on Diplomacy)

What I liked on discovering the first installment in this series (STW) was that it enabled me to play almost the same game with less effort (no figure painting, no table installing, no dice-counting) but I found the AI lacking in many ways compared to my human co-players...

Now, the real revolution in TW games would be to go fully multiplayer...Not only on the battle map but on the campaign map... Imagine the challenge involved if all factions were driven by a human mind.... No more AI bashing, real diplomacy and


So to the gods of CA, hear my prayers....
Make MTW2 fully multiplayer

[TinCow]

There has been a lot of discussion about this over the years. The basic problem with a multiplayer campaign map is speed. If you've ever played mulitplayer Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, or other such turn-based strategy games, you'll be aware that they move very slowly and take a lot of time. Throw in multiple real-time battles per turn, each of which can take 30 mins to an hour to play, and you've got a game that would take weeks just for a 2 player game. A 10 player game would likely take several months, even if it was played for several hours a day.

There's nothing wrong with this. I would gladly dedicate myself to a long game like that, but the question is how much would it help game sales? A multiplayer system like that would be so long that few people would be interested in it and it wouldn't likely have any impact on sales. So CA is faced with extensive work to create a multiplayer campaign that won't give it any extra profit. Not a good move from a business perspective.

[Ethelred Unread]

How long to large MP battles last? The biggest problem I could see with a live campaign (apart from the coding natch) would be the turn time.

e.g. If you were HRE and fighting on several fronts then you might have a couple of large battles to fight = couple of hours?

That's going to make turn time equal a couple of hours, so unless you get everyone to commit to playing in certain time slots each week (for people like me with g/f and a job) or every day (if you're hardcore), then it would be well tricky.

Anyone else thought about how it could work? (and take as read that the coding isn't going to be a problem)

[_Tristan_]

I fully understand the time and involvment it would need to play such a campaign but barring an all-out match between factions, it could be played maybe two factions at a time and the turn resolved when all fighting was over...

Unresolved battles due to absence of one of the players could then be autoresolved or fought against the AI.

Moreover not all fights would have to be fought by the players the rest being autoresolved.

My main point being not so much in the time needed to fight those multiple battles rather than the effects of diplomacy against a human opponent or (opponents) rather than a less-than-enlightened AI.

From my point of view, I think the game would then be much more strategic and a bit less tactic, the cost of going back on your word would be much more severe (human players tend to bear a grudge) and if you decided to attack you would have to be sure to gain something because any human player that I've known would make you pay that outrage the most severe way.

Thus field battles or sieges would be much rarer so the time question won't matter so much...

Anyway, glad you wanted to participate in that debate...

Any other thought on the subject is welcome...

[sbroadbent]

The simple solution to multiplayer campaign would be using a STW/MTW style risk map. Each player takes their turn, moving their pieces and hits end turn. A box pops up to show which players have finished their moves and which haven't. to prevent one or two slower players from holding up the game, a timer ticks down after a percentage number of players have hit end turn. Alternately players could select an amount of time for giving orders (such as 5 or 10 minutes per turn).

Regarding battles, a setting can be selected when the game starts that they are either auto-calc'd, or if there is a player vote. Players would vote to decide whether a particular battle is played out or auto-calc'd. If there are several battles in a turn, players can vote for which (if any) they'd want to have played out. Players not part of the battle can either choose to view the battle, or sit out. For those players who have larger empires and would like to sit out, they could go back to the campaign map to use that time to instead plot strategy.

In a RTW/M2TW style of map/gameplay it would need to be somewhat different. Since players can move all their units around all at once, making several moves before other players can even take their turn, this definately needs to be adjusted. Each player would make his moves normally, except the strategic pieces wouldn't move until everyone has hit end turn. At that point, the game would move all pieces until 2 pieces came into conflict. Once that happens that phase of the turn ends. Once the conflict has been resolved, if pieces still have movement points remaining, the units can continue to move, and players can if necessary give or change additional orders. Essentially having potentially several mini-turns in the main turn based system.

[Dead_Like_Me]

now your idea might be good but i think that its not the best idea...
TinCow how many battles do you fight a day ?
i believe not that much ... try imagining a small map that would be in the size
of France only with some cities and 3 players.
now if you got only 4 cities in the starting turns building times in the game
wont take that much. if you don't have a lot of cities you can't support
to much armies which can be bad but its like a Cap limit in other strategy games.
so instead of supporting 4 huge armies you will have 2 full armies.
so you will have to decided whether to send to huge armies in to directions
or divided each army or send the two of them on the same player.
now for the family members problem rate of years will increase so they will
die after more turns and breed less :D.

a game like that can be with a limitation for turn time like in Civ4.
and with battle time limit so each player will hurry up a bit in battles.
players who see that they can't reach max results when rushing will
prefer to auto-resolve. as Sbroadbent said not all battles must be played
and besides as i said its hard to find a Multiplayer game and it takes a long
time ... so instead of doing 8 games a day you will do only 4 huge good
battles were you have build the army in your own money and you have
chose where to go before getting into the battle.

games like this with 4 players can be fast and if players leave then you will get
AI that can be switched back to a human player like in Civ4.

read my ideas here :
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...oto=nextnewest

the up coming expansion of medieval 2 will bring with it a small campaign maps
and maybe the ability to create your own like in other RTS games.
this small maps can be perfect for MP games.

besides if they do my idea it will be very good and will be worth it.
its like risk online but better :D

[alex9337]

Heck, I'd even go for a strategic map multi-player game where the battles had to be auto-cal'ced.

But to be honest, it would be best if it was a toggable setting before the start of the game, where the participating players could decide amongst themselves prior to starting.

[Vanya]

GAH!

Vanya sez...

For this to work, it must be as asynchronous as possible.

For example...

1) Vanya logs into a MP "console".

2) Vanya picks an on-going game He has joined. Note, Vanya can create new game too. And, Vanya can play many games at once, for He has no head and no life outside of the endeavor to harvest heads.

3) Vanya can review last turn outcome/results and issue "orders" for current turn. When Vanya is happy, He commits the orders.

4) A committed turn is a turn where everybody's orders have been committed. This will queue a list of battles that must be fought, in the order they must be fought in, and who will fight them.

4a) Click scheduled battle.

4b) Can see if others are logged in. If not, can send email and/or message directly from console. If message, can review replies.

4c) If all present, can click to "fight battle". Then the battle begins and the usual mayhem ensues. A player that cannot or will not fight battle can order it be fought by AI on his behalf. If all do this, entire battle is auto-calc'ed.

4d) Outcome of battle is recorded and computed into next turn's strategic "fabric".

4e) Stats can be kept on Vanya's performance for 1) battle, 2) campaign, 3) all campaigns to give Vanya warm, fuzzy feeling of how many heads He as collected.

4f) When all battles fought, next turn can start and players can start making their next set of moves.

Since the above is not intended to be played in real-time other than battles, it would accomodate people with different schedules. It factors in the reality nobody with half a life can spend 24/7 playing a game. And while it may end up taking many months to complete a game, those that are really gung-ho can tickle themselves by playing hundreds of campaigns "simultaneously".

Now isn't that the meaning of tw life? (That, and collecting heads... )

GAH!

[atheotes]

That is a very good idea... though i dont know how complex it is going to be to code some sort of separate engine to run the MP camapaign...

[Daveybaby]

The Total War campaign map is designed for single player. It is fundamentally unsuitable for multiplayer games, especially with the length of time battles take in TW.

I could see a completely separate campaign engine, completely redesigned to be suitable for MP play, working. It would have to be fundamentally different to the current SP campaign engine though - probably something much more like the old 'risk' style maps of STW and MTW1 (and even then, would probably still need to be simplified further).

What i think could work is something similar to the Boneyards system cavedog implemented for Total Annihilation. i.e. a persistant web based MP campaign engine used to spawn separate battles. Something like this could even be developed completely independently of CA (although it would be greatly helped if CA modified the TW engine to be able to launch an MP battle using a list of external parameters to define armies etc).

In other words... what Vanya said.

[Plaidwarrior]

they could do it if you make all battles autoresolve, and set a reasonable time limit on each turn (like chess). but not being able to play battles would not be fun. Especially if one person wants to fight and the other wants to autoresolve. that could run into problems. maybe if they only allowed short campaigns or something?

[Cheetah]

Even if battles are auto-resolved, which they should be to keep a reasonable time frame, it would be a lot, lot more fun and a lot, lot more challenging. Practically the easiest way to "make" a good AI is to give the faction to human player.

Those who whish to fight tactical battles can do it in the current MP system. Of course, this would be completely independent from the MP campaign system (so basically there would be two MP foyers, one for campaign, one for tactical battles) but IMO most of the campaign battles are not fun to play out anyway, given the disparity in numbers.

[LadyAnn]

There are several attempts of the TW community to develop a multiplayer strategic game where factions owns provinces. Each turn, economic actions take place, build up of troops and buildings are ordered, troop movements ordered, result of battle resolved via online matches.

It would be similar to Diplomacy, except that the resolution of battle is based on multiplayer battle result.

However, there is a fundamental difficulty:
On the one hand, the online battle must be fair to be fun. Both side must be approximately equal in strength, otherwise, there is no fun playing them. On the other hand, it is of strategic importance to be able to attack the enemy with overwhelming force.

As reasons cited by others above, I wouldn't see MMORPH-like multiplayer as a better alternative. The turn-base nature of TW on strategic map is easier and nicer to work with.

Annie

[hellenes]

Turn based campaign makes 0 sense if its gonna be mp...here is an idea of mine that has alot probabilities to work:

"A Gigantic map...that has every little castle, dutchy, county that existed in Medieval times. 100 factions (Knights of Honor has as much) so any player will have the choice to choose any faction he likes.
A living world that is in REAL time and runs 24/7.

Whenever a player starts he makes an account and chooses a faction.
Now he can pick up an army from the available pool depending on the buildings his faction has at that time. Hes allocated with set amount of cash to start. After that he has many options: Either manage his castle/province or engage in diplomacy with the neighbours or or even start a war by attacking a nearby settlement or army.

Any action he is doing is represented as his character as a general and his army as his tool of destruction. His army grows or dwindles depending on his actions.
Now the most important factor (IMO) is what happens when the player is absent? Well his army simply loggs off the game! And his castle is manned by the "PO" garrison of a decent amount of archers/crossbows and militia OR if his faction has more than one players (mostly the popular factions like Byzantium or England) that player is notified to fight to defend the castle. The diplomacy in the case of multiple players that picked up the same faction is treated on a presence/rank level meaning that any negotiations will be engaged with the highest ranking player (meaning clan/faction leader and lower) present at that time OR on a pre set basis or "guidelines" that are given by the absent leader.

All players will be free enough to go wherever they want in real time on a scaled movement rate however with the appropriate consequences like a war declaration or annoyance...
There will be rebel armies in a quide abudant numbers with plenty of little catsles and provinces to expand to...
The characters themselves would aqcuire parameters same as the SP game based on the player's actions with the death of the character the player would either get the heir of that character (so he must make sure that his character gets married) or if there is no heir the player gets to fight a mini civil war and pickes the side, and if that side wins he gets a new character spwaning from the ranks....

Also the world that surrounds the player can be set in the battle engine of the TW games WITHOUT any boundaries and if the sizes of armies are too big for the server to cope with it, the strategic layer can be used in real time as |I said before.
On the unit sizes the player can pick up ANY size he wants the cost of the units will be based on per soldier capita....So if 100 spearmen cost 100 florins to buy and 50 florins to upkeep, 200 spearmen will cost 200 florins to buy and 100 florins to upkeep.
Speaking of which the castle that the player is allocated with generates a fixed amount of money that pays the upkeep cost of anything that the player has in his army.
If the castle of the player is lost his army turns into "bandits" and he will not pay any upkeep for them until he recovers his castle or takes the castle from another player. In the case that the player belongs to a bigger faction he can become a general in the service of the monarch but his army will have to be paid from the crown's coffins but will have the option to recruit soldiers from the crown's castles/cities at his expense (the player generates wealth through looting enemie territories/castles or from booty from the battles and has his personal money).

The crown itslef is an entity thats allocated to the faction/clan leader it recieves a "crown tax" from the other clan members engages in state level diplomacy and generally operates the "big picture" of the clan/faction.
Naval battles will be made controllable and the troops that are present on board will participate in any engagement. No agents will be present in the game since the diplomacy would be dealt through a chat and any other character would be simply part of an agreement (marriage would be agreed through a chat no need for a princess character)...

If at any later point a new player joins the game he will be allocated soldiers/castle etc scalable to the point that the game is at that time so there are no phaenomena like a newbe with peasants against a veteran with gothic troops.
Armour upgrades and soldiers will be tradable, like the player can "upgrade" his byzantine infantry to varangians by "disbanding" the infantry in the castle and having the worth of that unit back (again based on per soldier capita) and by purchasing a unit of varangians the same size (or bigger with extra cost) as the byzantine infantry by paying any difference...

Events will take place in the game at a chronological time through "upgrades" that the developers will release (like chronicles in La2) like the high era upgrade after a year or the mongol invasion patch....
Speaking of UNPLAYABLE factions the mongols or the astecs will be mainly the PvE element that will require HUGE alliances to be forged to deal with them.
The Pope will be a GM character in the game regulating the catholic factions and launching crusades. The orthodox factions will have the patriarch of costantinople as the spiritual leader and most importantly will play major role in the reunification of churchers attempts that will be voted by orthodox players (players that control orthodox factions).
The crusades will be deal in the sense of raids with huge alliances forged to march to the holy land..."

[Kitt]

Atm im playing a hotseat campaign with the mrs, we have two copies of most games except the totalwar series because there has never been a real lan campaign where we could play together and fight on the battle map together.

Id be happy if they could set up at least a TWO player lan campaign :)
The only thing missing from the current hotseat game ,
Simultaneous turns "like other turn based games" , battles involving two human players.
I never really understood why i could set up pre battles and play people online yet not have a lan campaign.
i mean from where the game is now, would it really be that hard to code?
i agree a 16player campaign would just be insane but im sure there are pple out there who could manage "a friend who plays", "a other half that plays" for a two player grandcampaign.

[TheLastPrivate]

There are other risk-style games that had pretty solid multiplayer, except all of them had autocalc battles, or turn-based battles (warlord, Heroes of might & magic, romance of 3 kingdoms..)

But I doubt they'd need to develop something new to this, it would be just like hotseat except you had the option of connecting to each other via gamespy and play out a real-time battle. I don't think that's a big addition, but then again CA has the tendency to overlook even the most basic neccessities that make or break a game at times.

Anyhow, autocalc would suck and not reveal the true genius commanders out there although some of the messed up mountain maps need fixing (and an option to view a certain grid in battle-map before engaging).

[Ferret]

I say get Europa Universalis III, the multiplayer on that rocks, the campaign is waaaaaay better than any total war game, the only downside is the battles are all autoresolved, even in single player, but the greatness of the campaign itself more than makes up for that.

[KingKnudthebloodthirsty]

autocalc is probably the only solution fr a mp game on vanilla. But wat about on the crusades and the britania camp, where there's only five players? maybe then battles could be included and maybe the battle speed could be doubled or something.

[Heinrich VI]

Personnally, I would sell my soul to the

+1

I'm longing for years, TW game after TW game for a full multiplayer campaign game.

Sure most players would never play out a campaign in MP or use the feature at all and an Internet game with all faction slots manned by human players would take ages. But so what! I don't even want CA to spend massive amounts of time to balance the whole deal. Just give us the ability to simply play the campaign game via IP and play out the battles. No balancing no extra stuff. Modding could take it from there.

Unfortunately I doubt we will see a real (full fledged not some special scenarios) MP campaign in E:TW...