The - if there are new things in... thread

[Ayesha]

I don't know why you said no camels. Camels frighten horses and they're cute ;)
In TW I use nearly all camels whenever I get the chance (except for Shogun Total War. I have never played that).
As far as changes that I would like to see. Definately more camels and definately more archers. I don't think that there are near enough of either. I just got RTW a a week ago because I liked MTW and M2TW so much and was disappointed by the lack of camels and archers.
I still like the TW games just how they are though.

[Martok]

I don't know why you said no camels. Camels frighten horses and they're cute ;)
In TW I use nearly all camels whenever I get the chance (except for Shogun Total War. I have never played that).
As far as changes that I would like to see. Definately more camels and definately more archers. I don't think that there are near enough of either. I just got RTW a a week ago because I liked MTW and M2TW so much and was disappointed by the lack of camels and archers.
I still like the TW games just how they are though.

Folks, we clearly have here a lady of impeccable taste. Truly Ayesha, you are more than worthy of being a fellow disciple of our beloved Camel Lord Mithrandir.

Transport ships.

A better AI on strategy and battle maps

I strongly second these two things as well.

It's always bothered me that an entire army can cross the sea in a single ship -- it really hurts a player's ability to suspend disbelief and forget that s/he is playing just a game. Yes, I know we're suposed to simply imagine that the actual troop transports are "abstracted", and that the ships we build are merely their escorts. Doing so, however, really detracts from the immersion factor, regardless of which TW game you're referring to. I don't care if transports were cheap and easily destroyed, so long as we'd actually be required to build them.

And I can't agree more on the need to improve the AI. I can say Medieval 2 has made noticable improvements over Rome (not that that's really saying much, to be honest), but there's still so much more that could be done. The computer has never been very good at castle/city assaults in any of the Total War titles, although I admit that's perhaps as much a failure of the empire-level AI to provide its armies with the proper siege engines and assault troops.

....Which brings me to the area where the AI still could use some *major* beefing up, which is the campaign itself. The strategic-level AI is still not very good at training the right units and combining them effectively, and (especially with RTW and M2TW) it's still rather poor at maneuvering its armies around the main map. It also continues to have major difficulties prioritising potential targets to attack and/or places it should defend. I've read too many complaints (and in a few cases have seen it myself) from mystified players who, while placing a city under siege, notice that the enemy has 2-3 full army stacks less than a turn away, but refuse to come to the aid of their beleaguered comrades.

[Ayesha]

Folks, we clearly have here a lady of impeccable taste. Truly Ayesha, you are more than worthy of being a fellow disciple of our beloved Camel Lord Mithrandir.

That's cute ;)

[Raijer]

Some great suggestions so far...

I would love to see basic military marching/drill commands implemented, which IMHO would often be easier and a far more elegant way of issuing commands to a unit or army.

[Caerfanan]

I've seen a lot of nice suggestions/comments, on differents matters, here.

What I would add, then, should be a "depth level setting" for all fields of the game (trade, agents, battle orders types), so that the battlers would have very complete and realistic battles with loads of things to manage, while the trade would be some "yes/no", the unit master could use a very detailed unit development "tree" and artisan tree so that he could desing his units completely (armors, weapons, type of training, type of mounts, etc...), and so on...

[caravel]

It's always bothered me that an entire army can cross the sea in a single ship -- it really hurts a player's ability to suspend disbelief and forget that s/he is playing just a game. Yes, I know we're suposed to simply imagine that the actual troop transports are "abstracted", and that the ships we build are merely their escorts. Doing so, however, really detracts from the immersion factor, regardless of which TW game you're referring to. I don't care if transports were cheap and easily destroyed, so long as we'd actually be required to build them.

I couldn't disagree more.

Personally I prefer the abstraction of how it is handled on the risk style map of MTW, and don't like the transport vessels in RTW. It bothers me having to walk my army into a ship and then move that ship off using movement points from one coast to another.

One way it could have been implemented in MTW1 would have been to have the ships come into port, merge the army stack with the ship, then move the fleet back out to sea and move it to the province in the normal way. This would have been an improvement on the existing MTW "pick up and drop in one turn" system anyway.

With the newer game engine (RTW/M2TW) there is not much you can do with it as it currently works in about the only way than it can work on a movement point based tiled map.

[Caius]

It's always bothered me that an entire army can cross the sea in a single ship

That is true.How can 4820 troops stay in a single bireme?

It doesnt make any sense

[Don Esteban]

That is true.How can 4820 troops stay in a single bireme?

It doesnt make any sense

True but also, how can it take so long to build a single bireme when Rome was capable of building fleets of hundreds of ships in a year????

[McIwoo]

yep loads of interesting ideas

How about making possible to play the campaign in multi-player?

This is a serious draw back in m2tw for me...or maybe it is possible and I'm too darn obsessed with it I can see it

[Caerfanan]

yep loads of interesting ideas

How about making possible to play the campaign in multi-player?

This is a serious draw back in m2tw for me...or maybe it is possible and I'm too darn obsessed with it I can see it

It could be done, but the games would be too long... In other games "campaign style", some attempts have been made, but plyaers don't finish the games usually... The diplomacy is hard to do, for instance...

[Caerfanan]

True but also, how can it take so long to build a single bireme when Rome was capable of building fleets of hundreds of ships in a year????

You have a point there. The "bireme" unit is probably to be considèred as a fleet, and not a boat!