MP Wishlist @ .COM

[Puzz3D]

True, but MP is limited in it's own way, you can't develop your generals or armies, there is no lead up to or aftermath of, your battles.

You are the general and you develop your skills to a higher and higher level. The game needs tactical depth to allow that continual improving of your game. The game needs balance so that a wide variety of armies are used rather than one best army type dominating the gameplay. There is lead up and aftermath because you are in a social setting. The lead up is arranging matches, making alliances with other clans, recruiting clan members, training and talking to people. The aftermath is analyzing the battle, offering a rematch and gaining the respect of other players.

The emphasis is more on tactics (where to position/when to move individual regiments, flanking, trying to get archers to the left and back of your enemy) than strategy (where to move whole armies, risking leaving a Front open while you attack).

The emphasis is on tactics, and that's why there is so much disappointment when the tactics are dumbed down just because tactics aren't as important to the SP player. The SP game certainly isn't hurt by good tactical depth in the battles. Also, better graphics hurts MP when it causes lag, and zooming in to watch the men fight is a luxury MP players can't afford. Finishing moves add no value to MP.

There is strategy in the battles, just as there is in chess, in the making of a battle plan. You must have that strategic planning to create the tactical opportunities. In team games, the strategic element is even more important. You can also have different game styles such as capture the flag which involves both offensive and defensive strategy.

I personally get more enjoyment out of successfully managing a blossoming empire than winning individual battles.

I like tactical games, and at one time Total War was the best real time tactical game available. Total War MP used to be on the level of chess as a game (It even had a chess style ranking system), but that's not the case anymore.

I don't play MP at all really, but I imagine that bridge battles are much less frequent in MP than in SP.

Bridge battles are a waste of time in MP because they are one sided and offer almost no maneuvering. No one has ever figured out how much to handicap the defender in a bridge battle, and you would certainly have to do that to even the odds of winning.

What I want is some type of officially supported hotseat mod, I think a mp campaign would add a really cool dimention to the game, especially if more than 2 players could join (Byzantium, Danes, and Spain fighting for control of northen Italy, how could that not be fun). The best way to do it IMO would be to have all non-AI players to have thier turns one after the other. At the end of a turn you'd be prompted to input an e-mail addy that the CPU would use to send the game file to the next player. PvP battle could be Auto-calced or fought through the std MP mode, it's takle some commitment on the part of players, but if people can play WOW for hours at a time I wouldn't think it'd be a huge problem.

I don't want to commit to something like a campaign that's going to take a long time to play. At the same time, I remember playing a 13 hour session of one battle after another in STW. STW had very well paced battles that lasted about 20 minutes. MTW had those slow firing xbows that extended the average battle to 40 minutes. That would be ok if somthing was happening most of the time, but it wasn't. Rather than achieving the sustained excitement that consecutive 20 minute battles offered in STW, you had periods of bordom introduced to the MP experience in MTW. Even with that problem, I played over 5000 MP battles in MTW. Magyar Khan had well over 10,000 MP battles played in STW, and I don't know how many in MTW.