The Complete Game

[Yun Dog]

the lack of other means to victory than steamrollering the world is really something that is inherent in the very formula TW was first built on; it is a tactical battle game with a strategy part whose only function is to set the stage for tactical battles, iot is not a grand strategy game with tactical battles.

that sais, on lower difficulty you can achieve a lot with subterfuge, but it is more costly and far less effective than pure military means. and irrational and overtly aggressive AI makes subterfuge irrelevant in some games.

I agree but if you look at the thread on 'the poll results' a few weeks ago, MP was unpopular - most people said they didnt play MP because of lack of context for the battles - this is key

yes it is a tactical battle game with strategy to set the scene

but the battles lose context if they are boring, repeditive or clearly some AI cyclical pattern - those battles your wanting to auto

the battles people love are the battles WITH context - ie the great crusade for constantinople, a huge battle with your allies against your enemy and their allies for control of Italian peninsular - with 10's of thousands of men


if the scene is not set adequately then the tactical battles lose context and become pointless and boring, and at that point you stop playing - atm that point is coming not long after starting the game

[dopp]

Agree 105%, that's what makes Total War special.

[Didz]

I would have to agree with Yunus, whilst the tactical battles were the major innovation of the TW series they cannot stand alone and continue to sell the games.

I for one rarely play the historical battles, never play multi-player and only use custom games for testing and novelty value. (e.g. massed Tim Elephants v Massed Aztec Peasants - hilarious)

The real danger is that as the TW series has matured it has gradually moved further and further towards the situation that Anders has highlighted.

In the original Shogun TW there were valid alternatives to waging a military campaign and many of us completed entire campaigns without declaring war on a single faction. The so called 'War of the Shadows' with massed spies, assassins and geisha's was a valid alternative way to victory.

Unfortunately, the more recent games in the series have lost that variety and the overall replay value of the game has sufferred as a result. Hopefully, in future versions we will see this balance restored and perhaps some more goal oriented victory conditions added.

[crpcarrot]

also in MTW there was a chance that a province that was rebelling would join your faction (usually if it was taken from u recently or if its religion was more in line with yours) so their was more incentive to use spys and priests to convert and to get new provinces without a fight.

personally i think the new strategic map has also done a lot to reduce the significance of battles. in STW MTW if u decided to venture into another factions province (even if you were trying to pass through to the adjoining provice) you had to face the whole garrision and any other army stationed in that province. it only went into a seige if the the defender decided the open battle was not a good choice. this made decisions of moving into another province a much bigger decision. now you can just stroll up to the castle and check out if there is a small garrision there decide if u want to seige or not and then walk away. thats why the AI seems to be so stupid it jut walks around looking for a target that it mathamatically could beat if not it just walks away doing nothing so u end up with loads of stacks doing nothing most of the time. and fighting lots of silly one sided battles that mean nothing other than getting to where u want to go.

what i would like to see is for castles and cities to have a much larger region of control depending on their size. and any army that moves into this zone without military access will immediately take u to a screen asking if u want to attack. all armies in the zone of control will be included in this battle. so if u have 2 stacks standing outside your city u will have both of them plus the garrision in the battle. the attacking faction will have the invading army and any army in the squares adjacent outside the zone of control as reinforcements. if you decide not to do battle then it automatically becomes a seige. when an army decided to retreat to the castle it losed the sone of control round the castle allowing all enemy armies to move freely in the proince. for this to work the the zone of control will have to be pretty large but will still leave plenty of room for armies to go around cities in large provinces.

its silly to think that a whole army can just move into your provice and lay seige to your city without you haing the chance to go out and meet them. and it becomes significant in my games as i have small kingdoms and the lost income can be significant. it will create more oppotunities for more significant (strategically) field battles.

also bringing back civil wars (where disloyal generals went rebel and took whole provines and armies with them) and faction reemergences would be great. but rather than them just turning into armies that are going to sit on the map knowing what to do it should take you staright into a battle for that provice/castle/city.

i think the movement seige system in the current map is really taking away from the significance of the battles. it was a step in the right direction but need to be improved.

[Didz]

Well personally, I think a 'Get off my land' function would be a sensible solution to this problem, plus the obvious increase in the diplomatic and political penalties imposed for breaching another factions soveriegnty.

The problem with instantly creating a battle scenario is that it would merely increase the level of aggression within the game.

[crpcarrot]

well in the relevant time period the only time an "army" would be allowed to walk your land unchallenged is if you had a prior agreement and i dont think any nobles were known for just seding whole armies on scouting missions. the aggression will ahve to be controlled through diplomacy rather than letting anyone just walk anywhere as long as they dont attack.

the already weak ai is just wasting its resources by having a full stack walking around doing nothing while the human player is wisely building armies only when he needs to attack or when their is a percieved threat.

anyway it was jsut an idea that i was thinking about its prob got be refined quite a bit. but i seriously dont like the idea of armies just standing by your city doing nothing for 10 turns and then turning around and walking away. and also Ai armies seiging a city in the center of you kingdom leaving castles and cities behind then affectivly cutting themselves off from thir resupply routes.

unless a province is reached by sea it should not be possible to calth through one enemy province and take the next one. this will also limit the human layer being able to target the just the rich AI provinces effetively bankrupting it before it can make any affective counter attack. of course the sea route is still there for exploitation but that brings in the danger of several ai fleets picking u ships off and sending yout army to the bottom of the ocean.

i'm rambling today sorry

[diotavelli]

well in the relevant time period the only time an "army" would be allowed to walk your land unchallenged is if you had a prior agreement and i dont think any nobles were known for just seding whole armies on scouting missions.

Are you sure? My reading of medieval history is very, very different - armies were frequently able to walk through enemy territory unchallenged for long periods. Raising a full feudal host (or getting cash instead and using that to recruit mercenaries) took a lot of time. There was very little in the way of standing armies - typically a monarch might keep a small number of troops around him and have regular garrisons but other forces would be dispersed into their native regions.

The end result was that armies could and frequently did spend a lot of time in enemy territory. Garrisons were big enough to withstand a limited siege but too small to fight an open battle - something the game reflects quite well, IMO.

It was the duty of the monarch (or one of his lieutenants) to raise sufficient forces to fight and defeat an invading host. There were often reasons this was impossible. Civil war, rebellious nobility, being engaged elsewhere or simply being bankrupt often meant that invaders weren't dealt with adequately.

This doesn't mean they conquered all available territory and reduced every fortress. Invaders had poor supply lines and had to rely on what they could get in the locality (again, well reflected in the game) - they were resupplied from their home territory very, very rarely.

The upshot is that an army would frequently 'squat' in enemy territory, achieving little other than being a nuisance and buggering off before anyone came to fight them (about the time they got bored of dysentery and eating the local dogs).

Back on topic, I tend to play the "Complete Game" on an irregular basis - I've paid my money so I may as well get as much from the game as I can......

[Yun Dog]

Well personally, I think a 'Get off my land' function would be a sensible solution to this problem, plus the obvious increase in the diplomatic and political penalties imposed for breaching another factions soveriegnty.

The problem with instantly creating a battle scenario is that it would merely increase the level of aggression within the game.

I like the idea of this type of Civ4 diplomacy the addition of defensive pacts would be nice too

but as said the AI doesnt pay heed to consequences now - the excommunication and reputation are suposed to be the mechanisms controlling the AI - it wants to avid excom so it makes peace - the next turn however it declares war again - and them makes peace - it would be the same with getoffmilanddude - it would get off - but then back again the next turn

Also people saying the AI more readily accepts ceasefires when its in a bad way in 1.2 - not in VH anyway - Poland down to 2 provinces, few family members left - war with me the whole game - peace - nah dont think so

One thing I have noticed is the AI is continually switrching beteen citys and castles in it provinces obviously as it goes broke it changes to citys - this also seems flawed to me - switching back and forth - and kills the immersion again - and its rediculous really

I have also noticed the small stacks AI against big rebel stacks

As said the failing strat AI is noticable now because of the change from the risk map - and because of this fact alone - the strat game now needs to become more than it was... and it could be great... it is the great timeless game of medevil warfare.. and it can be made great, and the strategy came be made to be complex and appear devious and many layered, it just needs development within the confines of the progamming.

think about this

instead of citys vs castles - we go back to MTW - each province has a castle - with a surrounding network of small towns like a web throughout the province, when attacking you can choose to scorch the earth and burn the towns (if your try to economically starve the enemy) - eg. poland has good cav, it could have all cav armies roaming the countryside burning towns but never seiging - you would be forced to attack them in the field to stop them. Alternately if your planning of taking the province you wont want to burn the towns but will want to head straight for the castle and seige it - taking the province and the town intact, at this point the enemy could abandon the castle and burn as they retreat.

the towns would be attached by little road networks like an spiders web

then add in some nation specific programmed behaviours

some goal oriented objectives

tweak some of the provinces to give them some differing characters and build lists eg +1 to bowyers built in this province

add the re-emergence and titles

and the hardest of all attempt to progrem some type of scaled priority model for the AI - ie it wants to expand, not be excommunicated, have a good or bad rep depending on what nation it is. It want to make itself stronger by defensive pacts, and a set of scaled factors for declaring war (at this point should the human declare war then its all out war the AI and whatever allies it has against the human) otherwise it should try and avoid war at least with its own religeous group.

looking at that big mass of text posted on the previous page - looks to me like all the necessary parameters are there - the numbers just need tweaking and some will need scaling factors applied

we'd need to look at how those parameters 'fill out' as far as numbers generated during a game - then look at the numbers when the AI does something silly and tweak the numbers

frontline_balance="0.0":: ratio of factions frontline military strength vs the target
military_balance="0.0":: ratio of factions overall military strength vs the target
production_balance="0.0":: ratio of factions overall production strength vs the target

for the AI looking at a human these values need to have a *3 multiplier for the target ratio


strongest_neighbour="false" :: is the target the factions strongest neighbour (if this is true the AI nation should seek alliance with this neighbour)

the more I look at it the more I think its all there - the numbers just arnt working the way they should

[crpcarrot]

at VH difficulty the diplomacy is screwed up cos of the attack human override so dont expect any sort of rational decisions in diplomacy if u r playing on VH

[anders]

someone said the game isnt tactical, because in a battle, anything works anyway. that is pretty much true, but not in all battles, and it always works a bit better when proper tactics are used. also, the mere fact that you can implement tactics, and that they make a differnce to battle outcomes make this a tactical game.

as for making the strategy game work, maybe they should just ditch the whole current strat game and make it anew, I mean if games like EU and Civ. can work why cant TW work out a functioning strat game.

there are things like supply lines and living of the land, working diplomatics that actually bind you and rational AI behaviour that would make the game that much funnier as a wargame and more imersive.