Battlefields

[Mithradates]

Does anyone else feel that the mountain battlefields are rediculous. It seems nearly impossible to have a vaguely level battlefield which i assume must have been the preffered battlefield of the time. Im fed up of having to march my men up a 45* slope. And when they satnd on this slope they seem the men appeared warped and out of proportion. I think a return to the rolling landscapes of Medieval would be nice. I understand that you can position yourself on the strat map to get the right battlefield but when chasing an enemy they always seem to run to the hills leading to a dull mountain battle.

(edited to be more specific)

[Moah]

when chasing an enemy they always seem to run to the hills leading to a dull mountain battle.

Erm....Is that not a sign of decent AI?

If I'm going to be fighting a defensive battle then I want good terrain (i.e. height)

You just need to expand further. Once you have 40+ cities you find yourself fighting battles in all sorts of exotic locales...

[rebelscum]

Yes in Medieval times they sought out cricket pitches and bowling greens to fight their battles on.
Terrain plays an important part in your battle tactics, aim for the high ground every time.

[Mithradates]

I wouldnt mind particularly if the hill were somewhat realistic im just saying fighting about 5 units of peasant archers on a huge hill gets tiresome needless to say when fighting a full scale battle around the alps.

[Tambarskjelve]

I agree with Mithridates, the Fields are just slightly too rugged.
If the Ai argument was true, How come he often positions himself in an awkward low position anyway.
Given, there are rugged terrain in the world, and some battles undoubtedly were fought in such, but the majority of battles (if not ambushes) were fought in pretty level fields. The tactical advantages of defenders were often of a more logistical nature

[rebelscum]

If the Ai argument was true, How come he often positions himself in an awkward low position anyway.

How come we don't think the AI is playing an impossibly stupid character, eh eh. Not all Generals are Napoleons or Alexanders

[HoreTore]

Why, oh why are there hills/mountains in denmark and the steppes?


Seriously, there is a reason why denmark is called the pancakecountry. It's flat. Why are the battlefields there "hilly", instead of flat? Same goes for the steppes...

Yes, armies sought out hills and such. But were they able to magically create them when they weren't available?

[Didz]

Does anyone else feel the battlefields are rediculous. It seems nearly impossible to have a vaguely level battlefield which i assume must have been the preffered battlefield of the time.

Um! short answer is NO.

As far as I can see the terrain produced for the battlefield reflects the terrain that exists in that location on the campaign map. (or are you talking about MP battlefields)

Indeed, I've been repeatedly dissappointed to find my army defending exactly the sort of bowling green you seem unable to find when what I dearly hoped for was any sort of hill, or even a decent mound to deploy my pitiful army on.

Infact, I would go farther and say that I think the construction of the battlefield terrain is one of the best features of MTW2.

If you fight outside a city, then the city is there either physically as a feature of the battlefield or as a visual reference in the background.

If you fight on the coast the sea is there, and if you landed from ships, then the ships are actually there in the background.

I recently fought a battle against the English in an area of heavily cultivated farm land and was surprised to find the battlefield dotted with small farms, villages and enclosed fields which required my army to thread its way through village streets and along farm tracks to reach the enemy.

I think its excellent, that you can actually choose a location on the map and know that the battlefield will depict the terrain in the location you chose. It certainly, an improvement on the original 'This Province=This Battlefield' system used in STW.

Also, I would argue that the idea that Medieval, or any army, deliberately sought flat terrain to stage is battle is a myth. What actually occurs is that armies seek to find terrain that favours their situation, and that would only be a bowling green if your army was heavy in cavalry (or some similar troops) who needed clear open terrain to operate effectively. There are plenty of examples of battles throughout history being fought on hills/ridges/and mountains through choice.

[Mithradates]

I dont deny that the battlefield in Medieval are a thing of beauty particularly the ones you described. However i find that all to often u seem to be attacking an army half way up everest rather than on a ridge or slight hill. Sometimes it just feels like there is very little flat ground and the enemy never oblige to fight you on even the remotest amount of it.

[Didz]

Seriously, there is a reason why denmark is called the pancakecountry. It's flat. Why are the battlefields there "hilly", instead of flat? Same goes for the steppes...

To be honest I've never played Denmark, but studying the campaign map it looks pretty flat. I'm surprised to hear that you are finding battlefields with mountains on appearing and if so it would seem to be a gliche as the campaign map doesn't suggest there should be.

[Didz]

I dont deny that the battlefield in Medieval are a thing of beauty particularly the ones you described. However i find that all to often u seem to be attacking an army half way up everest rather than on a ridge or slight hill.

Actually, this feature is a very important indication that the designers of the TW series know their stuff. In fact it convinces me that they have a background in actual wargaming rather than just being computer programmers and history buffs.

Anyone who has been a serious wargamer, and especially those who have designed wargames or modelled wargame terrain will be intimately aware of the awkward compromises that have to be made between figure scale, ground scale, vertical scale and timescale.

Get these wrong and what you produce is unplayable, even though it might be historically accurate and true to the real world.

The fact, is that sticking to real world accuracy produces an unplayable and unpleasing result. A classic example of a computer wargame designed by people who didn’t understand wargaming was Napoleon 1813.

Anyone who tried to play that game will remember that (apart from the games crippling bugs), all the battlefields looked completely flat and featureless. The reason for this was that the designers didn’t understand the adjustments necessary to vertical and ground scale when modelling wargames terrain. They simply adopted the obvious 1:1 relationship on the basis that it was real world accurate.

In reality, the correct relationship between ground scale and vertical scale needs to be 1:3 when modelling wargames terrain. Partly because typical figure scale results in troops who are too tall in relation to their surroundings, and the amount of ground they occupy, but more importantly because most battlefields are viewed by players from a ‘God-Like’ perspective 100’s of feet in the air above the terrain which creates an optical illusion that the terrain is flatter than it really is.

The Totalwar series follows this tradition of ‘best practice’ and so the vertical scale of all the terrain has been emphasised by what looks like a factor of 3. If viewed from a troops eye perspective this does look incredibly steep but most of the time we adopt the wargamers perspective when controlling our troops and if the CA team had adopted a realistic relationship we would be complaining that all our battlefields looked flat as they did in Napoleon 1813.

Incidently, whilst nobody has actually mentioned it, try comparing the height of tree’s, buildings and even grass in MTW2 against the height of your troops and the ground scale being used (as suggested by weapon range) and you will begin to see how cleverly these have been adjusted to make the relationships work without creating obvious and unplayable anomalies.

[HoreTore]

To be honest I've never played Denmark, but studying the campaign map it looks pretty flat. I'm surprised to hear that you are finding battlefields with mountains on appearing and if so it would seem to be a gliche as the campaign map doesn't suggest there should be.

Well, not mountains in the normal sense, mountains in the Danish sense... "hilly" would probably be a better word. And there are almost no hills in Denmark... It should be almost entirely flat, I can accept slopes and the odd hill, but not the up-and-down terrain in the game...

[Didz]

Well, not mountains in the normal sense, mountains in the Danish sense... "hilly" would probably be a better word. And there are almost no hills in Denmark... It should be almost entirely flat, I can accept slopes and the odd hill, but not the up-and-down terrain in the game...

Well as I said, it probably looks more bumpy than it really is simply because of the adjusted ratio between ground and vertical scale.

I mean I just tried to fight a battle outside the western wall of Zaragossa and quite honestly the mountain shown on the map there produced a feature on the battlefiled that was almost vertical.

I agree that sometimes it does look odd, but compared the the realistic approach used in Napoleon 1813 I'd settle for the inflated hills any day.

[Empirate]

If only height advantage weren't figured so heavily into missile attacks then! It's so ridiculous sometimes: Archers firing hundreds of meters with the same accuracy as their usual max range. REITERS firing bullets that travel for 150 meters or more, their max range being 45! And Crossbowmen firing every second bolt straight up because of a little bump in the slope...

[crpcarrot]

if you are choosing to fight on mountains ground isnt it obvious that you will find lots of mointains in your battle??

although i'm probably dont play as much as most people i do play a bit and i see mountains only occasionally. nothing to complain about. I generally tend to autocalc meaningless battles anyway. no fun killing 5 peasant archers when u got a full stack.

[Shahed]

if you are choosing to fight on mountains ground isnt it obvious that you will find lots of mointains in your battle??

although i'm probably dont play as much as most people i do play a bit and i see mountains only occasionally. nothing to complain about. I generally tend to autocalc meaningless battles anyway. no fun killing 5 peasant archers when u got a full stack.

[Didz]

Trouble is I can think of much worse ways they could have handled all this. How many of us have played games where missiles magically avoid hitting your own troops, or casualities are determined mathematicaly regardless of the animation.

I agree that missiles fired from a height do travel a lot farther and that must be affected by the fact that the ground to height ratio is exaggerated. If the hill is three times higher than it would be in real life and the trajectory of the missile degrades at the same rate as it would in real life, then it will travel further than it would in real life because of the additional height of the firer above ground level.

I suppose CA could try fiddling with the rate of kinetic energy loss on the projectile but personally I think that would create more problems than it solved. Not least for missiles fired from battlements where we actually want to get the value from the full hieght of the walls even though they are too high in relation to the true ground scale.

Its like everything really, we all have our pet hates. Mine is undoubtely the over-powered cavalry, but I recognise that this is a game and that people like to see men thrown through the air as a reward for their efforts. Personally, I quite like watching my enemy suffer because I was clever enough to grab the hill before they did. The higher ground advantages have been a feature of CA's games since STW and its always been the primary battlefield tactic.

[crpcarrot]

agree with didz and would like to add fatigue and weather affects were also a major feature in MTW & STW its a shame they nerfed it in this version. units take too long to tire and even when exhausted seem to fight reasonably well whereas in MTW you had to protect your tired troops even if they were high end troops figtinng militia. i remmeber having to withdraw them to the back of my battle lines and keep them there for a breather before i send them back in. and also remember using the exhaustion factor as a tactic when fighting with inferior troop quality. so far in M2 i haven't had to worry about my men getting tired.

edit:
that was also another reason for taking the higher ground. any unit that had had to trudge up a steep slope would be pretty tired by the time it reached the top so u didnt need to be of similar quality, troop wise, to defend a hill. still to notice any significant affect of this in M2 as well as the above

2nd edit: correct my horrible typing

[Temujin]

And there are almost no hills in Denmark... It should be almost entirely flat

This is not true. Apart from the southern part of Jutland and the smaller isles, Denmark is covered in hills. I have a nice view of some big rolling hills, that were undoubtedly much more rugged a thousand years ago, from my office window.

Danish hills may not look like much next to the mountains of Norway, but you try biking around Hobro, Vejle or Silkeborg and then tell me that Denmark has no hills!

I've only played a couple of battles in Denmark so far, all near Århus of course, and the maps look very much like what you see going south down the E45. If anything, they should have more trees, streams (where are the streams?) and lakes, not fewer hills.

If you fight outside a city, then the city is there either physically as a feature of the battlefield or as a visual reference in the background.

I don't get this, though. This was a good feature in RTW, but whenever I've been attacked while laying siege in M2TW, I can't seem to spot the city I'm sieging anywhere.

[Didz]

I remmeber having to withdraw them to the back of my battle lines and keep them there for a breather before i send them back in. and also remember using the exhaustion factor as a tactic when fighting with inferior troop quality. so far in M2 i haven't had to worry about my men getting tired.

Thats so true, why on earth did they nerf that it was brilliant feature.

I can remember cavalry used to just refuse to go into a gallop once they were exhausted and if you could catch them in that state you creamed them. Resting horses used to be a major factor in battlefield success and you only got two or three charges per unit during a battle. Heavy cavalry were especially fragile because their horses just didn't have the stamina, which was why you had to employ light cavalry for pursuit work.

Do, you know I'd forgotten all that, and now you've reminded me I'm really dissapointed that its all been lost.

I don't get this, though. This was a good feature in RTW, but whenever I've been attacked while laying siege in M2TW, I can't seem to spot the city I'm sieging anywhere.

Not sure I understand what your saying.

Surely if your attacked whilst seiging the result will be a sally battle, so not only should the city be there but the enemy army should appear through its gate.

However, I suspect you talking about is being attacked by another enemy army from outside the city whilst you conducting a siege. In which case the battlefield terrain is probably going to be based upon the map location of the attacking army (I think the assumption being that as the relief force approached you would be forced to lift the siege and march to meet it) which may, or may not, be within sight of the city. For example, intervening hills, forests or other terrain features might be hiding it from view.

Bear, in mind. btw, that its probably going to be behind you if your being attacked by a relieving army, so if your expecting to see it on the horizon behind the enemy army you are going to be dissappointed. The other factor which might be relevant is whether the city garrison has sallied to join the battle.

Nevertheless, its an interesting observation, I'll have to check it myself next time I end up fighting a relief force, or indeed attacking a besieging force.

[Didz]

@Temujin

Well I stand corrected, I did some tests this afternoon and you are absolutely correct. The cities are missing from the battlefield backgrounds.

I used Hotseat mode to take control of every faction and then engineered a number test seiges to determine if the city appears and under what conditions.

Seige of Hamburg

If you check the inserted image of the campaign map, you will see that the City should be more or less directly to the rear of the HRE army. The river is there, but the city isn't.

A close up of the edge of the map clearly showing the river but no sign of the city.

Seige of Sophia

If you check the insert you'll see that this battle actually takes place across the north-eastern corner of the Sophia castle, so the city should appear just off to the right flank of the Hungarian Army. But it doesn't.

Again a close-up of the map edge just in case its hiding in the distance, but nothing.

Seige of York

This seige deliberately involves two English Armies, one in the city and one attacking from outside. York should therefore be directly behind the English reinforcements shown in the picture. No sign of it, although typically for Britain it is raining.

Seige of Cordoba

Final test. Again two Moorish armies involved this time the Portuguese are clearly sandwiched between the Moors to the North, the City to the East and the river to the South. So, plenty of reference points to plot the location of the city in the background.

A closer look to the East, the river is clearly visible, but once again no city.

So, I've proved myself wrong, and I'm really disappointed. I'm sure cities appeared in the background of the RTW battlefields and I'm really surprised to discovered that MTW2 has taken a retrograde step and exclused the background detail.

[Shahed]

Nice screens Didz.

BTW I figured out why the exhaustion penalty is less:
I think it's because you face more armies simultaneously on the same map (specially when you mod out man limit).

[crpcarrot]

@ sinan

is that good or bad? i'm confused

ive never had the message limiting my men and i play with timer on so does that have an affect on my gameplay. (never had to go to the end of the timer so far only one battle where AI reinforcements just sat there at the edge of the map in 1.2)

[Didz]

BTW I figured out why the exhaustion penalty is less:
I think it's because you face more armies simultaneously on the same map (specially when you mod out man limit).

Are you talking about MP here?

I did wonder if the fatigue had been nerfed to placate MP 'rush' players. I know they used to get upset about it in the STW MP battles.

[Shahed]

carrot Well IMO it's bad. If you meet 3 Mongol stacks with 1 of your own and all are on the field at the same time, you will be fighting for a long while. I think this MIGHT be one of the reasons why the fatigue factor is lower because you can have as many soldiers as you want on the field at the same time. They might have wanted to make it easier, for you to play against many stacks. IT just needs to be improved IMO, Ihave yet to do that.

You can mod out the max number of men on screen at the same time so the game will allow anything in your grid to appear on the battle map. That's what I understand anyway, I have'nt done it myself, yet.

Didz, nope SP. For MP it's even more important to have a fatigue factor. I don't think CA sees it the same way. You could be right.

[Shahed]

Are you talking about MP here?

Source link

To allow all armies in the area to enter the battle:

Change "unlimited_men_on_battlefield = 0" to "unlimited_men_on_battlefield = 1"
.... in the file medieval2.preference.cfg

That is what I meant.

[Didz]

To allow all armies in the area to enter the battle:

Change "unlimited_men_on_battlefield = 0" to "unlimited_men_on_battlefield = 1"
.... in the file medieval2.preference.cfg

That is what I meant.

Seems a bit strange that they would nerf the fatigue system just to accommodate a potential mod.

Anyway the point is that as things stand fatigue has more or less ceased to be an issue in MTW2. I find myself galloping troops around the battlefield with out giving it much thought at all which never used to be possible.

[Shahed]

I don't think they did that to accomodate a mod. I think (and it's just a guess) they toned down fatigue due to larger maps and larger battles. I gave that as an example because it is possble to have absolutely massive battles if your rig permits.

Fatigue matters when you have those large battles. Or, for example, if you have a 10 unit all cavalry army and you go up against a 20 unit infantry heavy army which has a 10 units reinforcement army. Then it matters.

Like you mentioned though it does NOT matter enough in the vast majority of engagements. It should matter more.

[Didz]

Like you mentioned though it does NOT matter enough in the vast majority of engagements. It should matter more.

I don't know if you played STW, but assuming you did, do you remember what a killer it was just to march your army up too many steep hills. Najinata's and heavy cavalry arrive at the top completely knackered and fit for nothing without a nice long rest. I can even remember having to conduct a Roman style passage of lines for long battles so that my front rank Yari Spearmen could catch their breath.

[Shahed]

Yeap, I did. I remember that very well. That definetly should be in M2:TW. You can climb huge mountain and have a fight on top. It's excessive. Actyuaally in S:TW I never even moved because I wanted everyone fresh. Now yo can move very freely. However it is hard and it does hurt when you use small all cavalry armies, outnumbered all the time.

Hmm.. ideas... ideas.... I wonder if anyone has already modded would you share your tips ?