New mod for M2TW, or perhaps Medieval 3 suggestions

[Askthepizzaguy]

On one of the threads there was a discussion about what Total war game was the best, and then it degenerated into what the next best game would be. Inevitably, I offered my opinion:

Imagine a game that combined the best of European warfare and the best of Asian warfare, and more realistically portrayed the Mongol invasion, the rise of the Caliphates, and the rise of superpowers in the European theater, all on one glorious map. A game that extended the map completely around the globe, like a Civilization map, so that eventually America (in it's entirety) would become available.

I think it would be fair to cut off the map at the equator and just include the northern half, but any extra map space would be great, and give the Aztecs and Mayans and Incas space to move, and introduce African tribes and so on.

You have the game move at the slow place of 2 turns per year, have realistic timetables for inventions, set the time period anywhere from the dark ages to the middle ages to the Renaissance, and extend the technology all the way up to the American revolution. (Shouldn't be too hard... it's not much different from the 1400's era.)

I picture the AI in the game having random and varying degrees of strength and predictability. Some AI factions might "turtle" and others might expand at their own pace, and some might go for a bloody conquest as uber expansionists. You could go for realism, and have certain factions more likely to emulate their historical counterparts, or you could have a "randomize" option.
This way you have the likelihood of battling superpowers equal or greater than yourself, even after the initial stages of the game are over and you have vanquished some opponents.

After you defeat one empire in the vanilla game, it's all but over. The only challenge is the Mongol/Timurid invasion. Well, what if all of Eurasia is one connected map, and there is a realistic depiction of Asian factions, including Mongols, Chinese factions, Japan, India, the steppe factions, and the middle east factions. From such a map and with varying AI strengths and abilities, each game could give rise to a new and different superpower to challenge, and also provide for two AI giants battling it out. Europe could "turtle" While the Muslims fight the Mongols, etc, and then the winner goes on to challenge Christendom, which could be relatively united, at war, or under the banner of a superpower.

The New World event could be left in place, and the game could also provide for the possibility of the Japanese or Chinese or even the Mongols to discover the proper sailing technology first and sail to the New World, altering history and providing unexpected game play for the Europeans.

The Americas could also have competing native factions, who, until the New World event, have a limited techtree, but when the New World event happens, they are gradually allowed to gain technology from their contact with Europe/Asia, and become powerful themselves, if the game goes in that direction. Suppose the Europeans reached America, but they were promptly destroyed by Mongols... then the new technology might spread throughout America and the Aztecs could go on to become the superpower that challenges the Hordes.

There could be features such as your King dying in battle causing unrest in all your regions, possibly triggering a civil war for larger empires. Authority should be directly connected to unrest. Major bullet points so far:

*Bigger map spanning all of Europe, North Africa, Asia minor, the Middle East, the Eastern steppes, India, China, Mongolia, Japan, and the Americas, that connects to the other side for a complete global map. Possibly cutting off half of south America, south Africa, and Australia… or perhaps not.

*More regions (larger map scale)

*More factions (several New World factions: Aztecs, Mayans, Incas… Asian factions: Mongolia, Chinese factions, Japan, southeast Asian and Indian tribes… African tribes)

*Longer timescale (2 turns per year, realistic advances in technology, and/or have an option menu to change the trigger for new technology [Population goal, size of empire, buildings constructed, or a new Literacy Rate feature. Build libraries to increase literacy rate to get better technology])

*All factions playable, even rebel factions (rebel factions are divided and not given any new features separating them from existing factions… play as the Burgundian rebels, which have the same units/techtree as HRE or France, unlockable)

*New and improved campaign AI, with either realistic, custom, or random AI “personalities”, including Perfectionist, Warlike, Expansionist, Pacifist, Blitz, Defender, Trader, Alliance builder.… (Civilization meets Total War)

*Each game would give rise to new and different AI superpowers. Mongols might become dominant, perhaps China, perhaps an Islamic Caliphate, perhaps Russia, perhaps the Roman empire will be revived via Constantinople, perhaps the French or the English create a Western European empire… with varying AI strength, games become unpredictable and playable even after you defeat one or two factions, because there are other rising conquerors as well.

*Fixed game bugs and loopholes closed (No more blatant exploit of the Crusade function for askthepizzaguy… all who wish to join the Crusade are welcome, but there should still be at least SOME upkeep, and, of course, desertion)

*New religions! Native American spiritualism, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, PROTESTANTISM, paganism…

*Basically, take the best features from all the Shogun/Medieval/Barbarian Invasion and modded Total War games and combine them into one massive, replayable, and revamped game. I am largely inspired by The Long Road, Lands to Conquer, Medieval 1 + 2, Shogun, Rome Total Realism and Barbarian Invasion.

*Most of the features are already there. This game could almost be created as a Mod to M2TW, but it is too massive, I think. So let’s make CA build it.

*Don’t stray too far from Medieval 2 when making this new version… fix the bugs and the gameplay mistakes, and you have a perfect game.

*Civil wars caused by unrest or sudden loss of the King, based on Authority rating and loyalty rating for each region to your crown, in addition to loyalty rating for all characters.

*Tone down heretics and inquisitors, and don’t make civil wars the new pain in the neck, tone it down to the proper level. A latent threat, especially to blitzers and expansionists who have low loyalty to the crown, but not such an annoyance that it happens to everyone, all the time. Proper management should avoid civil wars, they should be reserved for those with too much territory and power proportional to the rest of the game’s factions, to avoid Pizza Guy blitzing the entire map.

Perhaps there are already threads out there designed for new features and bug fixes, but I believe this one is worthy of floating on it’s own. Imagine this game as Medieval 3: Total War.

I’d be interested in hearing feedback, suggestions, and debate about such a game. I believe that if we got enough good ideas here, we could have someone copy and paste it and send it to CA for consideration. Unless some crazy, tripped-out modder can build this game as I envision it… which would take more effort than any unpaid person should ever give… so, maybe CA would be the best for the job.

I’d trust Lusted to make the game playable, he did a great job with Lands to Conquer. The game definitely should be Beta tested extensively before being put out on the market.
I’d be willing to Beta test it for about a thousand man-hours. I’d probably die from happiness if someone actually built this.

Ok let’s hear your reaction!
If you reply with quote and the quote is long, please remember to use (SPOIL) (/SPOIL) [ ]

[hoetje]

The map you are talking about, will be huge.IS it actually possible to make such a large map,which, let's not forget, spans the entire world?

[Askthepizzaguy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The map you are talking about, will be huge.IS it actually possible to make such a large map,which, let's not forget, spans the entire world?

I'd think so. Remember, the map isn't all loaded onto the screen at the same time. I played on The Long Road map and it worked perfectly (minor minimap bug when you use CTRL ALT DEL to leave the game and then come back, easily fixed) which is about twice the size of the regular map. This map would be roughly three times the size of the Long Road map.

The map itself doesn't take up much space. Loading it all onto one screen might take forever, but they don't do that. They only load a small piece onto the screen at a given time. If you click on your minimap far away from your current screen, the game sometimes shows ocean with outline of territories on it, and then loads the real map. So I'd say it should be easy to have a bigger map. The challenge is being crazy enough to build it.

I wouldn't care if this game needed 3 cds in order to install, or two to play (like RE4 for the gamecube) as long as they built it right and it worked well.

[hoetje]

then,another factor, (sorry i didn't mean to destroy your dreams ^^) how long will it take CA to work out all those factions in detail?There will probably be over 40,50 factions,that's a huge number to give proper attention to all of them :D

[gingergenius]

OK that sounds sounds sick, my ideal game would go even further than this and have perhaps 600AD-1700AD with the ENTIRE world map. I understand games like Civilisation and Rise of Nations are crap because the time period is too big and tanks would never get beat by a caveman, 1000 years plus is probably the limit to the timespan.

2 points.

1. My computer is slow enough as it is running MTW:2. I made it an aim of mine to kill off factions just so the game would run faster.

2. This game would take AGES. I would end up like the sort of person who spends all his time playing computer games and I would never go out. This would create an antisocial, depressed society.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

then,another factor, (sorry i didn't mean to destroy your dreams ^^) how long will it take CA to work out all those factions in detail?There will probably be over 40,50 factions,that's a huge number to give proper attention to all of them :D

True, but they have already built a great game engine, and have already designed half of the factions. They would simply need to touch up the ones they already made. Pretty much all of Asia would have the same sort of armor and so forth, and natives have already been done. Major innovations would be African tribes and more unique units.

The game would be somewhat easy to build using the existing game, Medieval 2. It just needs some programming tweaks, a couple new features, a bigger map, and a few new factions. Modders working for free (I think) have already accomplished all of the above.

Granted, this mod would eat all the other mods alive.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

OK that sounds sounds sick, my ideal game would go even further than this and have perhaps 600AD-1700AD with the ENTIRE world map. I understand games like Civilisation and Rise of Nations are crap because the time period is too big and tanks would never get beat by a caveman, 1000 years plus is probably the limit to the timespan.

2 points.

1. My computer is slow enough as it is running MTW:2. I made it an aim of mine to kill off factions just so the game would run faster.

2. This game would take AGES. I would end up like the sort of person who spends all his time playing computer games and I would never go out. This would create an antisocial, depressed society.

I agree with the slowness. Unfortunately, between turns there would be a longer delay. That's unavoidable. Of course, if the game ever gets built (and probably won't) we will have faster computers by then. I hope.

As to your second point, I think that you wouldn't necessarily have to conquer the entire map (you would have to be crazy, like me). You could have goals and victory conditions, just like Medieval 2 and all the other games. So I dunno, I disagree. Other than the increased turn delay, the game would progress at the same rate, and end around the same time. Just provides more gameplay for turtles who want to fight superpower versus superpower, and provides a challenge for those of us who blitz to actually HOLD the regions we are given, and defend against rival superpowers. Plus more varied gameplay and more replay value. I'd shell out big bucks for this game.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Well thanks, Odin. I do appreciate the feedback, though.

lol

[Brighdaasa]

I think you're looking for Europa Universalis with the Total War battle engine :)

[John_Longarrow]

I think the first question is

"How long did it take for you to overrun Europe with Gunpowder Danes"?

[Xehh II]

This game would be awesome...but I don't think it would be done.
I voted for the top one. Also, when I voted I didn't see that it was multi-choice, if I knew that I would also've put that I would pay for it.

[ReiseReise]

Europa Universalis had some really good points. It was diplomacy centered and this is TOTAL WAR after all, so maybe you wouldn't want to go overboard, but I played a lot of EU2 waiting for RTW to come out, and some good points were:
-Realtime (by days) strategy map of the entire word, speed adjustable from a few days per minute to a few days per second.
-Multi-party alliances that actually meant something
-It took a LOT of time and effort to convert religion.
-Establishing trading posts and colonies (lesser than full cities) in the new world.

Ideas that would fundamentally change the game and so maybe are too much. * A lot of these ideas are present in TW, just implemented very differently, but a few compromises might work.
-Trade centers (eg in Europe: Venice, Hamburg, London, Lisbon, etc etc) that gained money from trade in their area of the world and gained/lost area, new ones opened, old ones closed.
-Ability to change state religion (although the time period was later when you had all the protestant choices, also 2 sects of Islam, not to mention the other half of eurasia) and religion affected your economy, diplomacy etc.
-Forgot what they were called, but you had sliders where you could adjust (SLOWLY) from centralization <-> decentralization, serfdom <-> free subjects, etc, etc, with pros and cons at each end that affected economy, happiness, etc. This was more like a macromanaged system instead of the micromanaged taxrates, buildings, and Governers traits system, but they could be somewhat combined while retaining the TW feel.
-Holy Roman Emperor position that was similar to the M2TW Pope with elections and whatnot. Although that doesn't really make sense when there is an HRE faction.

Of course EU and TW are very fundamentally different, EU was diplomacy and peace based, TW is, well, Total War. Peace was the goal in EU, war caused a LOT of unhappiness. It was very difficult to eliminate another faction, and there were a lot of them, imagine western europe being 30 separate factions. The goal was to survive and be successful and rather than take over the world. EU tended to be more of an alternate history with you making choices in real historical events (eg Poland-Lithuania union), the only thing historical about TW is the setting (two different styles, not knocking it).

Holy Mercenary Riesenschildkroetereiter , when i start writing i just don't stop.

[Budwise]

I would seriously buy it and I think it would work great if CA would spend the time to build the AI and fix the enhancements instead of working on the graphical aspect of it. I believe if they did this they could make more sells than any of the TW games by themselves.

[phonicsmonkey]

pizzaguy, stop trying to get me divorced

[hoetje]

pizzaguy, stop trying to get me divorced

Amen to that ^^

[_Tristan_]

ATPG (or me) My wife...

[Askthepizzaguy]

I'm not even gonna ask what you guys are talking about.

So far it seems pretty popular. No suggestions from anyone on how to make it better, or what is extraneous and should be axed?

[Zasz1234]

Definitely a great idea. Kind of like a closer hybrid of Civilization and the more TW games. Also nice that the factions that didn't survive historically would have a chance to develop, especially the American factions. Would also be wild if Japan or Chinese made to knew world first. Imagine that, Chinese conquistadors.

[John_Longarrow]

One way to keep things interesting would be faction or faction block specific events. Take the "Gunpowder" event. There could be different events triggered that cover different factions. There could also be prereqs for each.

We could have a trigger of "Search for immortality" that can be triggered once per game. This would have an equal chance of being applied to "Greek", "Egyptian", "Congo", "Inca", "Indian", and "Oriental" factions. Which ever one gets it would then have a set of subsequent events all dependant on "Search for Immortality", to include their initial development of Gunpowder.

Other faction blocks would have contact with a "Gunpowder" faction block as a prereq for getting the event themselves.

That means you could have European knights facing off against bear warriors who are throwing exploding clay pots at them. Or you could wind up with a technological backwater in Europe being invaded by steel clad Aztec troops.

This would require a LOT of reworking on the buildings that are available and when they become available. Advanced farming would be available pretty early on to most factions besides "Greek" based once and all factions besides the "Inca" ones would have access to both Cavalry and metalurgy, at least in a historical game. This would require at LOT more building options and a lot more unit options.

It would be kewl to have Inca deer riders attacking China, firing their long range muskets at the club wielding locals...

[ForgotMyOldNick]

MTW II is all delightful visually etc, but there is something about RTW that makes me keep going back. I think primarily it is because RTW seems more versatile ( Especially swapping the ancillaries etc) to play and you are more free to do what you like in the game without having the Papacy getting upset every five minutes.

As per my other thread I did get frustrated enough in the end to launch war against the papal states as I only had 5 provinces ( and no turtling and on medium difficulty! ) due to constrictions in expanding and the damn Venetians attacking me and never getting excommunicated (grrr they had the florins to bribe I suppose)... So I got excommunicated and suffered a crusade heading toward Tunis. I then went straight for Rome of course but didn't have the florins to field enough of a decent army and after taking on two full stacked papal armies, which I managed to win with a handful of men left... ( Which was one of the best battles I have ever played and won in TW series, but still can't save campaign battle replays; Which to me are more inspiring to watch than those few I get of the boring sp4m armies online:( ), and making a wrong move after the battle without quicksaving there was nothing I could do and that sort of ended that campaign :S Previous saves had old preferences anyway.

Kinda fun but can anyone scream 'ai is cheating!'

For me to really enjoy MTWII I think I need an option to set the difficulty of the Papacy... Or even a 'I answer to no Wack' option would be good. Papacy dictates too much in game and engages in conquest too much to justify it's legitimacy as an external element to a player's viability in executing strategy.

I strongly believe RTW with the Graphics engine of MTWII would be utterly awesome. I know CA is a business entity and needs to make money but if they addressed all the issues of the current bugs in MTWII and made a new version with the RTW ancient time setting as an option to play right up and into the medieval period itself...( plus a few more hundred years BC prior to the RTW/BI setting) and if most of below was included as well then I would line up at a store for 'Ultimate Total War': )

Please note that the other day I swiped most of the interesting content from the wishlist thread and pretty much recomposed and categorised a new list, which fulfills what I want to ultimately see in MTWIII or a Mod.

My comments are in *()'s* after quoted text,(if unquoted I simply haven't had time sorry) and I either agreed priorly being an RTW veteran, or have done so since and thus used your contributions in support of what I propose or as stand alone elements as good ideas, but not necessarily agree totally with due to this or that, which I tried to designate with an '*'.

I'd like to gratefully acknowledge the contributions of about most of the people in the 'Wishlist' thread which can be found here : https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=82990 , and also various other threads on the forum. If you see what you said, you know who you are ! I'd do more for attributing text etc but this took me 16 hours + to form into something readable, so... please forgive me. Plus I had many of the ideas over the evenings of playing recently too + experience with RTW, MTW, STW etc !

I'd also like to especially thank :
(In order of finding your names about the forum, and with time limit)
FactionHeir, Daveybaby, phonicsmonkey, madalchemist, Whacker, I Am Herenow, devnull, John_Longarrow, Didz, neoiq5719, AskThePizzaGuy, Sapi, Soulforged, ...ugh... all of you really.

I will make a new thread next weekend and make many clarifications also. At the moment though I am too tired to append much.




---Campaign Play:---



-Diplomacy:-

"Also on that vein, I believe it would be great if family members could do the diplomacy for themselves instead of relying on diplomats or princesess (wich are family members too ) everytime they need to negociate."

If you engage in diplomacy but nothing can be achieved as in nothing to even propose or declare then you should keep that agents ability to engage with another faction. I do it all the time but then can't engage another through my mistake ...

Diplomats should have an option to requisition Pirate navies, which you can allocate a target for but not control.

More options and
The much debated option: Get off my Land!!!
The option: to declare war!!
The option: change Faction heir!!

"Originally Posted by madalchemist
Simply, you cannot bring troops into lands you do not have military access with when you are not at war with (if you have troops who lack the military access because the land they are in switched owner, they won't move at all until the war or military access is gained). Gives more sense to the diplomatic action and prevents global faction standing from going low because you attacked a neutral faction.
Personally, I think thats going too far. I would agree with higher penalties for tresspassing on another factions soveriegn soil but physical blocking smacks of interference by the program in the way I want to play the game. After all the AI would have access to 'get off my land' too so they have the same options we do. I would also argue strongly that 'Get off my Land' should be implemented in the same way as a mission, e.g. once issued you have x turns to comply failing which you suffer the additional penalty. I certainly don;t want armies to magically leap to the nearest border."

"Quote:
Originally Posted by madalchemist
-"Break alliance with <insert faction here>", the same thing the Pope ask you sometimes, you ask to untrustworty faction (or would-be untrustworthy).
I like this idea. There have been several instances in my current game when I have wanted to try and change the balance of power through diplomacy and being able to undermine an opponents power block by stealing his allies is an important option. I also think that their needs to be definite penalties for being allied with an ex-communicated faction probably in terms of Pope-o-meter deductions on a turn by turn basis."

Choose Faction Heir
Declare War
Get off my Land!

"Make the diplomatic option of "Demand Attack Faction" actually cost less than 600k in florins AND make the AI actually act according to your demands if you pay it that amount. Currently they just let it expire and take the rep hit..."

Option to SURRENDER: I remember pinning an enemy army against the sea, at which point it withdrew and basically "drowned" rather than fight. Even if the Player never uses it, the AI needs the option.
( and after the option to ransom them )

If you kill a priest/merchant using 8pack exploit (please keep exploit though!): Counts as an act of aggression.
If a priest is on your land: As Above. It would be nice to have some sort of diplomatic solution to meddlesome priests/imams.

If an assassin is caught trying to kill your general: An automatic diplomat warning screen (i.e. without needing a diplomat) allowing you to change relations without a reputation hit.

If a spy is caught in your city: Same as above.

If enemy troops are on your land: A diplomat sent to them can give a "Get orff my laand" warning. If they fail to leave you can declare war without a reputation hit (perhaps after X offences).

"..."Bribe merchants", like you bribe units or diplomats. They shouldn't be so faithful to refuse a little cash, or at least not more than a DFK or a diplomat

-"Go fight heresy in <insert faction here>", a proposal for inquisitors; instead of bugging me, they go bug my enemies, triggering a move action for him to the selected faction or province, assuming they can reach it without sailing. The longer the trip, the higher the cost. (maybe the chance and cost might be influenced by papal standing...)

-"Go spread heresy in <insert faction here>", the above proposal, but for heretic and witches. Useful not only to free my provinces from them, but to annoy an enemy with an heresy rampage (then he'll have to deal with the spawned inquisitor as well :P)

-"Break alliance with <insert faction here>", the same thing the Pope ask you sometimes, you ask to untrustworty faction (or would-be untrustworthy).

The catch is: if you are used to a little dread score and have florins burning on your wallet, let's give you more options!"


"Originally Posted by madalchemist >
With the presence of both "Get off my land" and "Declare war" the necessity of not letting an army move in other lands disappears completely, as you send a diplomat saying "Get off my land - accept or we'll attack" or "get off my land - accept or declare war" to the intruded army.
Not necessarily...one of the goals I had in mind for the "Get off my land" option was to get rid of an offending army without the need to declare war or threaten it. Thus a third option would be 'Get off my land and I will pay you X florins' or 'Get of my land and you can look at my maps.' It would, in effect, merely be another demand in the diplomatic bag."

"Make peace with other faction" Diplomacy option

"Get off my land" Diplomacy option;
Of course, if they say no, you now are at war.

Diplomacy option:declare war
"We should be able to just send the French king a note saying your mother mated with a goat and we declare war upon thee."

Diplomatic option: Quit spying/sabotaging/assassinating in my lands
Once again, if you know who is doing it, you should be able to have your people talk to their people and say knock it off or else! Right now, it is almost impossible to kill a spy or assassin, short of stacking a squad of your own agents in a town. The risk/reward of trying to assassinate a spotted enemy agent is ludricrous. In MTW1, you at least had a decent chance to whack enemy agents.

Diplomats gain experience by "gaining an audience," as opposed to the results of the deal (over which they may have very little control), which gives them something to do, allowing them to advance, when the factions nearby have nothing to offer at the moment.

Map Info "diplo-mission" should include "updates"; as it is, it seems that if the faction being asked does not know the location of any cities you do not, he won't tell you anything at all.

What I've always wanted to see.. (Mainly in the original MTW, because rebellions happened more frequently there). Is the ability to finance the rebels against your enemies. Say, for example, an AI held city neighboring your province enters revolt. Imagine that if, with a diplomat or likewise, you could secretly finance the rebellion and get a higher chances of higher quality troops with upgrades being generated and a higher chance of the faction losing control of the settlement.
(Setting/sending a diplomat to 'subvert' an alliance would be useful. If he fails he gets killed or suffers negative traits of course. If he is extremely successful maybe set them at war?)

If you can take advantage of the situation, It would be a subversive way to take an allied settlement without breaking an alliance.

Loyalist Revolts, like in MTW.

Political situation scroll. "I brought this bad boy up ages and ages ago, but I think it's a good idea. It would have the map appear at the beginning of a new turn showing the map of Europe with tick boxes to see what was going on.This pic is ages old, but you get the idea: Situation Map > "

Diplomat/Priest: Can try to bribe citizens to rebel, and/or spread lies/rumours of the cruelty/military defeats/etc. of the citizens' faction, decreasing happiness. Possible option to try and convert some/all of the citizens to the Diplomat's/Priest's faction...?

AI factions should be willing to accept extremely generous gifts, instead of rejecting them on the basis that they have nothing appropriate to offer.
(I agree, Why not be able to assist a lowly faction with finances who is bordering on your enemies?)

"Unnegotiated trespass should be flagged as an act of war. So should assassination attempts that fail. The pope should not mind if you attack a hostile army in your territory. Trespass should count as aggression in the pope’s eye. When the pope tells you to back off, you should have to leave their country altogether."

Character ransoms should cost more.

Rejecting a ransom should increase your King's dread. Paying a ransom should increase his chivalry.

Factions should be forced to ransom their king and the heir apparent.

You should be able to borrow money to pay ransom.

AI Should honor treaties to some degree. Otherwise the diplomacy system is a waste of time.

"If the AI breaks a treaty, it could provide some explanation. Example1: the Germans feel that Metz should be theirs since the population speaks German, and if they can have it they might leave you alone. Example2: the English want to expand their empire and you are the only opponent in the vicinity. Example3: you are filthy rich and everyone wants your stuff."




--Vassalage issues:


"One thing rarely used is the vassalage, and imo it could be made a valuable option.

Diplomacy improved from 1.1 regarding backstabbings/accepting ceasefires etc. but compared to RTW, I have still to see an occasion where I could get one more vassal instead of one more annihilated faction, for these reasons:

- AI now is more likely accepts ceasefires when risking to be annihilated, but vassalage hasn't changed much. They still prefer to die with honor (and give me 1-2 provinces at low military cost in the process) than survive as protectorates.

- If you want to have a vassal (assuming you are huge and it's tiny) you have to pay a sum of money and/or land very far from being cost-effective.

- The worst part, the vassal can break the vassalage anytime with no drawbacks save for a loss of global faction standing (considering they are about to die, I'd say the loss is near zero).

If these points are true, vassalage is an useless diplomacy option :(."

"In RTW I remember making more than one protectorate, but the chance of it to backstab me was rather low and overall the vassalage was cost-effective."

"In that very old game, vassalage existed, and was rather a profit since:

-Vassal could break the vassalage in no way, mutual military access granted, every nation I go to war with, same goes for my vassal (but not vice versa)

-The number of provinces controlled by my vassal increased the value of provinces "under my influence" (and when you got enough provinces under your influence, you won the game).

So I say: why not making the AI accepting vassalage more often (particularly when they are about to disappear in a game without re-emerging factions) but granting the sovereign nation that the vassal will not backstab -by forbidding them to commit acts of war against the sovereign, like a crusading army cannot attack not-excommunicated factions, in addition assassins and spies cannot target sovereign nation's armies, cities and agents, etc.- and adding the number of province controlled from the vassal to the total needed from the sovereign to win the game.

Under these circumstances, I'd say vassalage would be used as a viable diplomacy option."



--Alliance issues:


"Make alliances more worthwhile by increasing trade between the factions."

"I'd like to write my 2 cents about alliances.

Orientiss' mod created nearly-unbreakable alliances (from AI's point of view, of course), and 1.2 improved a bad alliances scripts making it almost realistic.

"Almost" , I say, because factions with 2-3 provinces still attack an empire with 10 times their military, economic and political strength, and I think it's faulty.

I know this has been debated a lot, dividing those who think "If they are an empire and I'm a county, I should attack them asap before they overwhelm me" and those who think "If they are an empire and I'm a county, I should assure asap that I'll remain to their side not to be annihilated"; the formers say that since the game objective is to conquer 45 provinces, it sounds reasonable to attack who is winning, even at the cost of losing; the latters say that is neither realistic nor historically accurate that a county should act as if it should conquer 45 provinces instead of trying to survive against an empire.

Personally, my opinion is the latters'. I won't say things like "this should be Medieval2: Total War instead of Medieval2: Total Stupidity", but it's true that if alliances means nothing once effect like the "tall poppy" are triggered, diplomacy has few or no use.

I must add that, as many could already know, I'm a MTW nostalgic, so I miss a system where you could win the game without having to conquer 45 provinces and alliances were reliable till the end. I specify that to short any possible answers.

Let me speak again of Birthright, and how the alliances worked: there were 3 kind of positive relations with another nation, from the lesser to the greater:

-Permissive alliance (mutual military access granted, but nothing else)
-Full alliance, the "true" form of alliance (mutual military access granted, each time one of the two declared war to an enemy, the entire "block of full allies" declared war to the enemy -and all the enemy's full allies dclared war with the other block-, no chance to ally with an enemy of one of your allies)
-Vassalage (I explained how it worked in my precedent post in this thread)

The interesting things were these:

-You could not enter the land of ANY nation with an army, unless you had a permissive alliance, a full alliance, a vassalage, or you were at war with that nation -the game simply said "not permitted" and left your army within your borders-; that means, behind the lines, that diplomacy option "get off my land" many ask was not needed.

-If you wanted to wage war against a neutral nation, you had to "declare war" to it via diplomatic action at no monetary ot faction standing cost BEFORE set foot on their provinces. No war declared, no chance to make an act of war by sending unit in neutral lands.

-To wage war against a permissive ally, you had to cancel the alliance through diplomatic ways (the AI had the 100% chance to let you do it, just trowing a small bag of coins to it).

-To wage war against a full ally, you had to cancel the alliance through diplomatic ways (like permissive alliance's situation, just the fact you needed a little larger bag for the coins) OR degrade the alliance to permissive one (with little coins).

-To wage war against your liege lord (one you was the vassal of), you had to submerge it with coins to shift the relations to full ally (the rest is written above).

The catch was: "To wage a war you must first declare it or be prevented from sending troops"; and to declare it, you had to make diplomatic agreements with the would-be enemy in the case of any form of alliance.
This way, backstabbing and its consequences were impossible, and there weren't faction standing problems for attacking a neutral faction.

All this could be created easily (probably with some adjustment, like the fact a nation WILL have to accept your interrupting the alliance without make impossible requests and "what happens if I cancel an alliance with military access AND I have troops in what are now neutral lands?" -the answer would have been in Birthright "those troops cannot move until they get military access again or they are at war with the province they are in"), but I know the chances these suggestions have to be taken into consideration are near 1%; no problem, let me write them once and be done with it"

"A few things that IMO would add to the games immersion.

A "Get Off My Land" Diplomacy Option This is VERY frustrating.
Ability To Set The Faction Heir Should be as standard - logical and historically accurate.
Governer Titles ala MTW This was great.
Civil War! Choose Your Side: ala MTW Added to the flavour of the game, and civil wars did, and continue to happen."..."

"Enforce Alliance This would require a faction to cancel an alliance before they can attack / blockade a port. With the current "Random Blockading" issue this will avoid AI factions starting wars they are not prepaired to fight."



******


-Characters / Agents:-


family tree option:change faction heir, and locating princess from family tree on campaign map would be useful.

"Yes, I realize you can assign faction heir to the desired character's attributes and send the lousy heir on a sightseeing trip to the Pirates to get rid of it. Realistically, how many times in history did a king; murder/imprison/send to the monestary/etc a bad heir? The Byzantines almost made it an annual ritual, lol. Let the game reflect that option, with appropriate loyalty penalties."

"And as we're on the topic of killing off members of your own faction, generals/family members with enough Dread should be able to kill off any irritating or embarrassing ancillaries they happen to pick up."

allow recruitment of General (who is no family member) + bodyguards, but can be bequethed a title to become 'adopted'

Ability to assassinate your own generals/family members/agents

Ability to disband agents
"Disband agent If I no longer need someone, I should be able to get rid of them and not have to keep paying for them. I should even be able to send a wayward Princess to a Convent if needed."

Sort agents by agent type and creation order
A 'cycle through idle agents' hotkey.
Definition of 'idle':
All Agents : agent is outside a settlement, and doesnt have a movement path defined for the next turn, and has not yet been used by the player this turn.

Agents in transit that are pushed out of their square should recalculate their movement path instead of forgetting where they’re going.

Agents pushed off from there position should return to that position at first opportunity; i.e. Merchants camping a resource mainly.

"Inquisitor animations play very slowly even if you’ve set the graphics options to skip AI animations. This is also true if you lose a city and your agents slowwwwwwly walk out of it."

"Quote:
Originally Posted by madalchemist
-"Go fight heresy in <insert faction here>", a proposal for inquisitors; instead of bugging me, they go bug my enemies, triggering a move action for him to the selected faction or province, assuming they can reach it without sailing. The longer the trip, the higher the cost. (maybe the chance and cost might be influenced by papal standing...)
I think the current three kills and they're out arrangement is reasonably sound.

If this option was provided I don't think I'd waste a diplomats time on delivering such a message when the inquisitor is unlikely to be around long anyway. I would certainly like to have a bit more warning when an inquisition was being initiated in my land, I think its inappropriate the way they just appear without permission. Perhaps, the Pope should give factions a no choice 'Grant me the right of Inquisition, or I will be very unhappy.' type note before sending them in. The current arrangement is a bit too Pythonesce for my tastes."

"Quote:
Originally Posted by madalchemist
-"Go spread heresy in <insert faction here>", the above proposal, but for heretic and witches. Useful not only to free my provinces from them, but to annoy an enemy with an heresy rampage (then he'll have to deal with the spawned inquisitor as well :P)
As I understand it the appearance of heretic's and witches is a consequence of local conditions caused by the owner of the province e.g. by us. Assuming that to be true it doesn't really make a lot of sense to be able to send troubles of your own making to plague someone else.

Having just had to deal with a major heresy problem in my Scottish blog I found it made a lot of sense and responded appropriately to the counter measures I took to clear it, so I think this is a case of 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' from my point of view. The idea of bribing heretic's doesn't really make much sense realistically, they are after all fanatic's. My only real gripe is that on an individual basis the heretic's themselves look unfinished, it would be nice to see a bit more detail to them. Certainly they ought to be regionally specific and it would be nice to see some detail on the nature of their heresy rather than having to imagine it."

Auto-manage agents (by type?)? Managing them takes way too much time.*

Player should be able to get details about enemy factions, like family tree, bankroll (basically, being able to look at the AI's "info scroll(s)"), probably via spy-mission.

"We could use spies to kidnap important people like family members or agents and then negociate a ransom maybe adding a new option to the diplomats like "Offer hostage"...."

Merchants, Diplomats should also be treated as idle if they are inside a settlement, since AFAIK they don't contribute anything useful while in there.

Merchants aren't idle if they're sitting on a resource.

If a merchant is “stepped on” while gathering resources, he should move back at the first opportunity.

I guess Priests could be considered non-idle if theyre preaching in foreign lands.

Priests should be able to do diplomat missions (as for MTW; less chance of "gaining an audience" if using that suggestion). And BTW, where are the Bishops?

I second that. Maybe 'convert' would be friendlier. You should then get to keep the converted priest (maybe with a reduced piety).
You should also get to keep the merchants you managed to buy out (maybe with a loss of certain positive traits, or a gain of negative traits).

Increased priests The cap on priests should be the number of churches plus the number of generals. That way you don't have a LOT of generals running around with pagans because they have been in the field without a designated priest. That would allow for each faction to keep the faith in its armies AND service the provinces.

"I would like for agents to replot their course automatically IF the new path is less than 2 or 3 turns longer than the original (So they don't go around the world). Agent micromanagement is the worst."


--More specifically characters:

King grants governor titles to Generals
and Governors traits then directly influence province

Influence is increased when governor is resident in province.

Cannot give governorships to non-generals

Title added to name description

Titles Hereditary

Choose Faction Heir

Nobles And titles, rather than this adoption and general making.
This way Noble families help run the realm with the Royal families.

Increase global affect of kings traits so success of empire is more dependent on quality and distance of leader.

Titles NOT as Ancillaries.
Please do as MTW Orginal, where the general may not be in the province be the effects are there.
( I say be able to exchange title at the cost of the former holders loyalty. King cannot transfer title of King unless death do him part. In which case tiotle transfers automatically to eldest prince or in the case of usurpment the rebel leader whatever.)

Titles Pass father to son

"Fix the trait system so we can actually role play our generals et cetera..."
(in fact why not make it a modable in game option from the in game menu ? It only has to change the save file slightly also doesn't it?)

"...Also on that vein, I believe it would be great if family members could do the diplomacy for themselves instead of relying on diplomats or princesess (wich are family members too ) everytime they need to negociate."

Troops not led by a General cannot rebel in a home province

"Yes to change of heir.
A very big yes to agent type field as it takes ages to keep tabs on them
A very big yes to granting of titles
Limit the number of spies and assasins as per merchants but make them more effective
Stop inquisitors burning your king and heir.
Better positive traits for generals relating to actually running a town
Just an observation."

sort function by agent type in agents table
I would love to able to sort all my merchants, then spies, then assassins. Hard enough going agent by agent, especially when the table resets to the top every time I bring up an agent on the map screen.

I would just like to put in a good word here for sorting agents by TYPE. Let me look over all my spys. THEN my priests. THEN my diplomats. In most games as my empire gets larger I have no idea where alot of them are or what I intended them to do last turn, since it was 2 days ago.

Let me cycle through agents based on what they are and not have to churn through EVERYONE 15 times to find that one single idle spy or priest.

"...You can already do this, if I read you right. Open up the agent tab, and click on the upper right corner. Can't remember what the word is though. If you click the name, you can sort the agents by name, if you click on ...... you sort them by type."

Auto-manage agents (by type?)? Managing them takes way too much time.*

"Agents should stack even without a military escort. Thus a large number of low level merchants could have reasonable chance against a single master merchant. Also, stacking agents would expedite movement of priests."

_Some_ way to deal with high-level enemy priests/imams/inquisitors/merchants inside my own territory! Don't care how, just make it happen

The fertility/marriage/adoption rates of family members seem to be correlated with the number of generals/family mambers I have at the current time. This seems to produce periods where I get lots of generals within a short period (e.g. 10-20 turns) until I reach some type of "cap" and then I get no new generals until most of my current ones start to die of old age (i.e. the majority of my generals get old/die at the same time, which gives too-high fluctuations in the family size). If this is the case, please adjust so there is a more even distribution of new generals over time (make it depend on the traits & status of my generals, and noting more).

Show Agents/Armies/Navies Movement points in lists scroll
I would second all points made so far regarding agents, seperating lists, restricting quantities etc.
Or bring back the movement bar that was introduced in BI. Much easier to keep track of which agents/armies/fleets still might need to be moved.



--Vices & Virtues, Ancillaries and Items/Acquisitions/Relics/Heirlooms:

"Station Ancillary characters A general should be able to leave ancillary characters, such as overseers and architects, at a settlement. Then the settlement would have that advantage even if the general is out fighting."


"Allow Generals to hire “Ancillary characters” in settlements. Examples would be; Priest that accompanies general (Abby or better, increases piety), Scout (Explorers Guild, that increases line of sight), and many of the existing ones. This way the player doesn’t have to worry as much about luck in getting these characters and can instead groom generals to their play style."

"I've built my princess up pretty fast and easy. Just make deals one at a time. For instance, trade rights, sell map, buy map, alliance, give money. That's 5 deals in one turn and if you continue to give money then that is even more successful diplomacy in 1 turn. I've marched my English princess Cecilia to Rome stopping along the way and by the time she got that she had 9 charm.

However, I do agree that there are negative triggers that happen to princess' and Generals which make it very annoying to keep them around."



--Annoyances to be remedied:


"The Agent scroll list has several bugs:

-Once you select and use an agent from the list, it closes itself and you have to re-open it

-Once you select and move an agent from the list, it "resets itself" (sp?) and returns to the top agent displayed

-Given the number of agents you could have to menage, to find those you have to use every turn is a looong process.

The result is I spend more time looking for my agents on the map/agent list than move my armies and enjoy the game (one turn lasts forever).

Please, remove the above-described bugs and add one hotkey per type of agent to remove time when you select and use them."


---Supplemental:

A 'Patrol/Explore' function for agents and armies would be useful...

"...I agree with your ideas, and on a similar note, can agents have an "auto-explore" option? i.e. they walk around the map each turn, discovering any areas that are grey to the player, so that you don't have to keep micromanaging diplomats each turn. Maybe have a Scout agent who does this.

Also, you can assign the agent (Diplomat, Scout, whatever) to patrol a specified area (or number of regions), to check for settlements which have changed hands since you last saw them."




******



-Battles and Armies:-



-Campaign Context Issues:


Any military unit that’s available in a city should be available in a castle (not including guild-specific units.)

A line defining best path to target for Crusading Armies, when they are selected on campaign map.

Show Agents/Armies/Navies Movement points in lists scroll
I would second all points made so far regarding agents, seperating lists, restricting quantities etc.
Or bring back the movement bar that was introduced in BI. Much easier to keep track of which agents/armies/fleets still might need to be moved.

"Fix or change the way the ai crusades. They don't get desertions even if the are standing still for a couple of turns. I don't know if it is a bug but I have one AI crusading army running around which consists out of a one general and 19 units of crusader mercs."
(Try going from Tunis to Antioch... Only the General is left without any recruitable mercs anywhere lol!
I Strongly Believe armies on the same continent as the Crusade Target Settlement shouldn't suffer desertion unless they go completely in the opposite direction to target at 50%+ of their available movement and/or unless idle for 2 turns.)


"Chevauchée: ability to pillage the countryside without actually attacking enemy units—it'd give the AI something to do while it's sitting around doing nothing on your lands. Of course, it should be considered an act of war."
( For the person who posted this you will find certain areas of your map get greyed and burnt looking: This is the rebels/invaders pillaging etc in your territory and also affects trade income. I think if you are at war and camping in enemy territory near a zone of control of a settlement then a portion of enemy trade income appropriate to army size and trade capability of the settlement should be diverted back to your faction. I put this in for completeness sake)

Add gunpowder units to East Roman Empire, sicily et cetera.....remember we are playing them, so they will go longer than historically

Watchtowers and forts should be destructable in friendly territory and in enemy territory.

Armies should not choose a path through neutral terrain unless no other option is available.

Neutral/allied units should not block units belonging to the territory's owner (i.e. they have no zone of control and they also let all units they are not at war with pass right through them). Units in their own territories should still be able to block neutrals, though

Unit descriptions should include all abilities, not just abilities “at a glance”.

Make the AI factions actually use thier family members/generals to lead their armies instead of always leaving that job to useless captains

Add some form of kingdom-wide penalty (X% unrest for Y turns in all cities?) when the king/sultan is killed by enemies (in battle or through assassination). If there already is such a thing, increase it so it is noticable

Give the AI more cash/turn for recruitment on high difficulties (but restrict its spending on the navy, since it already overspends there)

Make the papal state less militaristic, it often ends up as the strongest catholic faction. I'd prefer if it mostly used its unit in crusades and in defense instead of always beating the Sicilian/Venetian out of Europe and often taking most of the balkans. Give it a couple of free unit stacks every time Rome is threatened, but otherwise make it semi-pacifist against catholic factions.

make charges less unpredictable

"warwagons"? :)

A MTW style “Pre battle” screen that shows our forces, the enemy forces, and a display of the terrain the fight will take place in.

"Allow troops to be upgraded to better versions. I should be able to upgrade peasants to town militia to spear militia, etc. This way I can keep veteran troops by upgrading them. As is keeping veteran troops isn’t useful until you’ve topped your tech tree."
(Except have an experience loss if the unit type is vastly different.)

Besieging ports with army. Not sure if this element was removed too, seems I can't blockade them anymore though in MTWII...Bring it back please, and make AI armies forced to defend the land launched blockade.


--AI Issues:


AI elect certain provinces to specialize unit production
It would add a strategic option to the campaign map to actually target certain provinces to acquire a production line if you lack one your self or vice versa for the AI.

Retrain Mercenaries in their region. It'd be good option to fulfill their ranks again.

Any military unit that’s available in a city should be available in a castle (not including guild-specific units.)

AI often makes large amounts of futile seige attempts against garrisons it cannot defeat either on attack or defense. This is a reasonable strategy as a diversion or surprise attack, but not to use turn after turn.

AI Should build fewer portable seige engines. They are scary but only a few are really needed to take a town.
(Mass siege engines look silly, play silly, and I am surprised that CA didn't spot this in game testing... for a long, long time until gun powder age came about cavalry ruled the battle field and were the 'real' awe and danger of the battlefield. They are the primary unit to mop up siege engines also so why have the AI sp4m siege weapons?)

AI Should beef up garrisons in cities that are in range of enemy armies. In very rare cases the AI actually doesn’t put ANY garrison in its cities.



-BattleMap Issues, Deployment and Sieges:-


Further improve deployment inside cities or castles. Not enough room... and the clicking and dragging gets frustrating after 5 minutes..

When setting up seige defense, units should be placeable anywhere they could subsequently move after the battle begins. Currently they can be difficult or impossible to place.

Pathfinding inside the cities, in fact, in general too. I have lost heaps of cavalry milling about from confusion of pathing.

"possibility to see the battlemap so you will not be suppressed to find yourself at the foot of a hill in stead of on top of it. Especially when you are the attacker you should now in advance what the battlefield would look like."

On Battlemap (and/or Deployment mode), hotkey to display zones where units may not pass or be deployed, probably with separate colors (yellow vs. red?) to indicate where foot units can go but artillery cannot. Would take a great deal of frustration out of deployment.

Ability to control balista/cannon towers: select targets, hold fire, use fire ammo. Also, the ability to put Balistae/siege weapons on those corner tower platforms would be more realistic.

Moats for the main game. I know this is a feature of the expansion, but would be luuuurvly for the main game.


Ordering of unit cards.

Units within armies should be automatically sorted by unit type and sub-type. Players should be able to reorganize manually, as in STW and MTW.

Dismounting units option.

"I utterly fail to understand why this can't make it in. It should be incredibly easy, just add a line in the export_descr_unit file, something like dismounts_as "x", then before battle in SP (not MP, because that's technically redundant) like at the pre-battle card, option to "dismount" the unit. Hell this doesn't have to be in the base campaign at all, as long as it's THERE and we can USE it."

"Make those walls less powerfull. Imagine this formation. I've only four Longbowman units while the enemy has 20 full stacks of heavy cavalry and reinforcements of more cavalry units (why not). I place my archers in a perfect square and order them to form a pike wall in front of them. The result, and endless slaughter of man and horse alike and almost no damage for myself. This could be solved in two ways: either make the walls destroyable upon the first charge and/or make horse units dismountable as someone has already requested, but also dismountable on the battlefield."

(I don't know about making them actually dismount on the battlefield as that would involve heaps of coding/animations to make that happen. Then again if it's an entirely new game, then why the heck not!... In the above example within the context of dismountable units : AI would dismount some units prior to battle if it is besieging to get a realistic percentage of troops to take the walls for instance. Also, an all sp4m Cavalry Army simply shouldn't be able to construct siege equipment unless the units are dismounted for the duration of the siege and an appropriate portion of them dismounted to make any large siege equipment. Although if available movement is calculated as ability to build siege equipment then All Cav. Army could be exploited.)

Re-balance of unit stats, now the shield bug is fixed.

Sap points/Saping, "sapping was/is an integral part of siege warfare throughout history, from pre-history all the way up to the early modern times."

Traps for sieges. "For example a fire trap which could be ignited by bowmen firing from the walls. Or ability to add stakes outside the walls when defending."
( Hidden Spear Pits, Oil trails at chosen and rangable from wall locations to be ignited by flaming arrows, moats etc... Maybe the complexity/availability of these based on residing General's command star rating and/or technology level of the settlement.)


"Add a hotkey to toggle between your main stack and your reinforcement stack during a tactical battle.
In other words, we currently have the option to either:
(A) Let the AI control our reinforcements (ummm.... no thanks), or
(B) Control them ourselves, but only up to the limit of 20 units, so the remainder of our reinforcements sit idle unless another unit withdraws or retreats.
Please add an option (C) that lets us control multiple stacks, cycling through them using a hotkey."

Assault ladders should be easy to destroy by melee troops.
(Or Repellable, if the ladders are not occupied at the time, or if they are melee troops and non missile: should be able to drop rocks and flaming oil upon them... based on the technology level of settlement and General Command rating maybe?)

Battering rams should be somewhat easy to destroy by melee troops.
(Not too sure myself, as they are just a log of wood reinforced really. Chopping wood takes time, burning it is faster. Maybe different types of Rams (Full on covered ones that are resistant to boiling oil for instance? that can be 'downgraded' via melee attack and not destroyed totally if no flame attack upon them. Any spear/pike troops should be inneffective.)

Arrow towers in a stone fortification should outrange low level seige engines (ballistas and catapults).

Cannon towers should be extremely expensive, representing a complete gunpowder-age overhaul. A cannon tower upgrade should produce walls and towers that are highly resistant to all but the most advanced seige weapons. Also, cannon towers should be able to fire across the face of nearby walls.

The area effect of flaming seige ammunition should be reduced.

Seige engine crews should have reduced morale and melee capability.

Units on walls should never pursue unless instructed to.
(unless they are defending and assaulters make it into settlement or there is an impetuous charge unit trait.)

Manned stone walls should automatically drop flammables onto battering rams that have entered the archway and are attacking the gates.

Manned wooden walls should automatically drop stones.

Manned towers should be able to shoot a full 360 degrees.
('Commandeered Towers' should shoot at defenders IF there is an assault unit at it's base, or next to it.)

When a battering ram reaches the gates, the towers should choose eligible targets further away, instead of holding fire while the gates are battered down.

Units on walls should not suffer LOS penalties when shooting.
(If shooting directly forward or backward. Wall itself should be considered an obstruction for other angles though. Siege towers and any other obstruction should be considered an impediment/cover bonus also. Ranged units should get a % range bonus for elevation on wall, hill whatever as well.)



-Units, AI, Battle performance issues and suggestions:


Improve cohesion of units on a battle map, e.g. make units less likely to fall apart when they charge and chase routers.

By this I mean to remedy the situations when only the first row of the unit charges and the rest mills around behind them, and anti-blobbing horrors when chasing routers. Additionally, it would also be a great bonus for tighter maneuvering in general.

Should generally be more aggressive in battle. One reason Mongol armies are so effective is that the AI attacks with them. Other AI armies tend to become passive and easily outmaneuvered. Often the strategic AI will decide to fight but the battle AI will decide to withdraw. There needs to be 100% agreement between the two of them.


Readjust 2hand sword unit's stats.
As of now the zweihänder are quite possibly the worst unit compared with it's price for stats. After testing DGK on most sword units and axe units they come up short each time. Despite their charge bonus they seem to all fall in a neat line of dead each time upon making contact with enemy sword, especially S&S units because of their shield + high defense.

You would think the DGK's armor value would be greater or more effective for the labor intensive full plate and heavy mail. At least enough to stop a sword thrust or swipe every now and again in game. Also pointed out in another thread, one would be lead to believe a sword as capable as the zweihänder would be able to do significantly more damage as compared to a simple one handed sword.

Winning First is still not fixed. It makes it almost impossible to use cavalry effectively without gaining this trait. Which makes a early games a bit less fun not being able to engage my general's bodyguard, especially in a charge. And I am not sure how to trigger the fair fighter trait even when losing half of my army to the most even battle as possible. Trying to stay chivalrous in battle is now seems something of the past unless your general starts with the fair fighter trait.

Non-interlocking Concentric Castle Walls Somewhat suspect that this won't happen because how the pathfinding works, but I could be wrong. Nevertheless, this was another awesome bit from MTW that I greatly miss. As it stands right now, once you get a unit on the outer wall, you can run all the way around and come out in the inner ring always, because the walls are all linked.

Give us back the ability to implement the RTW wall mechanics Captureable towers, Boiling oil, but I think this is going to be in the expansion.

Make artillery units more powerfull than archers. Right now I'll prefer archers all the way instead of any hand cannon man.*
(Not sure about this one myself, please refer to the supplementary provided on Gunnery)

bows, crossbows + gunpowder units actually do damage during a siege, like shooting the assaulting units, instead of making pretty flaming arcs into the air when they are on the walls.

"I would like people to fall of wallslike in RTW, also, this might have been changed when assulting a settlement when I rout sall enemies they get a chance to run to the flagged part and rally but I don't get this option when I defend and shouldn't units in the flagged area automaticly get fight to the death when they rout(may have also changed) I don't think you should ever win a seige by routing all units unless you are defending."
(The falling off walls was great fun in RTW and should be reintroduced for sure. Especially if the units are very concentrated and packed at wherever point along the catwalks and parapets.)

Charging units shouldn’t reform or pause until they have both a) impacted the enemy and b) left combat. They shouldn't pause immediately prior to executing the charge. And they shouldn't come to a screeching halt just short of enemy lines.

Every man in a charging unit should charge, not just the front line.

Charging models that don’t connect with an enemy should maintain their momentum and charge bonus until they do connect.
(Until tiring, but charging air can lose a man's impetuousity? Then they should revert to running unless that's how it already works...)

Charging cavalry wedges shouldn’t stop when the tip of the wedge makes contact.

Charging cavalry should always have their lances out and should always move at top speed until they hit their target. Drawing sword when engrossed in melee with a smoother animation, and more 'skirling of steel' sound effect.

When a cavalry unit executes a cancel command (aka backspace), and moves away, that should not trick the opposing unit to think they are out of melee.

Pursuing cavalry shouldn’t periodically halt to reform.
(yeah, annoying, unless they are exhausted, then it makes sense)

Pursuing units shouldn’t try “scattering” to increase collision chances.
(Loose Formation units should be able to move faster in pursuit.)

Pursuing units should never wait for the fleeing unit to get ahead of them. Instead they should constantly move back and forth at full speed, through the center of the fleeing unit.

Units placed on “defend” should never pursue. Defending models should not push forward in melee.
(Maybe if impetuous charge trait of unit can make it a possibility to charge, but lessened due to set on defend, and only hold fast TOTALLY if General is within immediate visual range of the unit and doesn't have a rack of pansy traits/anc./ Bad Command Rating.)

Pikes should create a pushback effect similar to cavalry.

Pikes should have an increased radius of attack.

Pikes shouldn’t advance if already in melee range.

Polearms should also have an increased radius of attack. Or possibly tweak the collision algorithm so they detect melee conditions before advancing further.

Stationary anti-cav infantry should be immune to frontal cav charge (aka bowling ball effect). The same goes for infantry in shiltrom.

Good quality anti-cav infantry should be immune to cavalry pushback from the front.
(Err, not immune but maybe a little more stand fast than other troop types)

Archers should fire faster than crossbowmen.

Shooters should not be required to complete firing animations if given a move instruction or if skirmishing.

Experienced shooters should fire more rapidly, as should elite shooting units, such as Retinue Longbowmen.

Archers and crossbowmen could slowly recover ammo when not shooting. This represents scavenging efforts.
(If stationary for 'X" number of volleys and can't let loose when 'scavenging'. Button to scavenge ammunition. Gunners can not recover ammunition as powder is expended instead... unless they engage a similar enemy unit in successful melee for theirs?)

Hand gunners should fire slower. Their anti-morale effect should be reduced. But they should be very cheap and their recruiting availibility should replenish quicker than usual.

Hand gunners should be able to walk around loaded, ie not always be required to reload upon reaching their destination.

Battlemaps shouldn’t be so steep for the most part. Excessively steep areas should be slated as impassable.
(To Cavalry, unless dismounted)

Impassable terrain should be clearly marked and not left as an exercise for the student.
(In deployment phase)

In battle, the AI should not commit its general except as a last resort. This is a sore subject because almost every release of TW (including if I recall the first patch of STW) has promised to fix this problem and it’s still not fixed. For example, if my reinforcements are under AI control, I expect to hear that their general has died within 30 seconds of reaching battle lines.
(I have noticed when the AI is defending in a settlement, the General tends to camp the rally/objective square of the settlement. Maybe if the AI general has a higher command rating on the open battlefield will he only be willing to take risks.)

"Give Forlorn hope the 2hp they deserve."


--Siege Issues:


Seige engine crews should have reduced morale and melee capability.

Units on walls should never pursue unless instructed to.
(unless they are defending and assaulters make it into settlement or there is an impetuous charge unit trait or something.)


--Navies:


Show Agents/Armies/Navies Movement points in lists scroll
I would second all points made so far regarding agents, seperating lists, restricting quantities etc.
Or bring back the movement bar that was introduced in BI. Much easier to keep track of which agents/armies/fleets still might need to be moved.



- Battle Outcome Issues/Suggestions:


Ability to capture/salvage artillery pieces from the enemy after winning a battle, doesn't make sense the enemy can keep them just because a few of their crew got away alive. Of course you would need to have to retrain them if you want to use them for yourself.

When a Cannon is captured in battle you should lose that cannon. I think they should become a prize of battle and you should be able use captured cannons and re-enforce them even if you don't have the tech to build them. So basically you build a cannon and it is a character unto itself. The operators are easily replaceable but the cannon is not.

I'd like to see towers and other seige equipment that are destroyed when an army sallies from the castle/city have to be rebuilt thus requiring more time for the attacking army. I remember how disappointed I was when I destroyed all the equipment only to find when I ended the battle that equipment magically re-appear!

"Also: Under no circumstances should the computer ever EVER, EVER! automatically consolidate my troops for me. EVER! Even if there is just one left I want to rebuild it."
(Bloody true... if A unit of 6 triple gold chevron ranked knights survive the battle please don't have it reabsorbed into another unit, nor disappear all together, merely let them lose their rank to a single silver Chevron upon retraining the unit to full capacity or something...)

"Regenerative units Much like Generals Bodyguards, it would be nice if our units could recruit in the field. The new recruits would have the same problem as Generals Bodyguards (ie, replacements have no experience), but this would allow for a more organic feel to strategic operations instead of the current "Send another unit up with replacements / bring them back to get them patched up" feel."
(where'd the Apothecary Ancillary go from RTW ?)

"Are there any features currently implemented in M2 that make actions on the battlefield (which are more specific than just winning/losing a battle) change traits/ancillaries? For instance, mowing down some routers increases Dread; Generals get more command stars if they win more decisively; they become bloodthirsty/whatever if they actually charge into the enemy (especially from the front).

I understand that linking specific battlefield events to the campaign map would be harder than linking campaign map events to the campaign map, but still, could it be done?"
( A General's loss/victory factor in the battle should have more implications on his traits; A unit that got massacred should counter the overwhelming success of another similar classed unit((Or lesser due force and appropriate lessor overall factor)); Famous battle sites should have some sort of relevant moral factor for any armies engaging within the 9 square/cell area of that site; A General withdrawing to charge and not melee an exceptional number of times should acquire a negative trait ((Even if withdrawing on the battlefield to align for a new charge costs casualties anyway)), and conversely, a lucky General in 'very' risky battle should gain a rare positive trait )



-Save & Camera Issues:


OPTION TO SAVE CAMPAIGN BATTLE REPLAYS***** (Anyone know a trick for doing it?)

Allow the free camera like in the cinematic editor, to be available in any battle, or most importantly in campaign battles. To be able to move the camera to any spot during campaign battles would be awesome.

Of course the default could be as normal, but if there was a setting, like RTS cam, General cam, total war cam, and cinematic cam, that would work well.



-Cosmetic:


It would be great when units on horses die, that some of the horses live and run away and scatter somwhere on the battle. Don't like it that when a knight dies the horse auomatically dies with him.

Dismount animations on the Battlefield.

"Crazy wishes--Some cavalry fall off their horse or their horse dies or whatever. I'd like to see these losses on the battlefield. Knights get up off the ground and try to join infantry units automatically."

"Also it would be nice if troops were unique when you built them. That each of them had a name that stuck with them (or that you could edit). For instance I have a battle coming up and I'm going to make sure I put the 5th Cavalry in the stack, but not the 4th cavalry. You could pour units into other units all except for 1 unit. Once built you could only get rid of that unit by disbanding it or if it is completely destroyed in battle. Also if all men are destroyed in battle there is still a chance that some will heal and the unit will reappear after the battle.

I think this will give another emotional attachment to the game that will make it more enjoyable to play. Players who suddenly lose a unit they've had the entire game will lament their loss and the rest of us can hear stories about how the fabled 1st Infantry was lost."

"Also it would be nice if troops had a record that you could access. For instance an information window that pops up stating the year unit was commissioned, how many battles fought, where those battles were, how many heroic victories, miles travelled, etc.

Also if each unit developed special characteristics that would be really cool. For instance, a special attribute like, "Stubborn Defence" for infantry which makes them impossible to route, "Vicious Charge" for cavalry increasing charge speed and damage, or "Devastating Fire" for archers giving them ability to pour twice as many arrows into a target. (you may notice I've gotten some of these from Panzer General II)"



-Supplemental:

"Trivial but: the French faction narrator often mentions the Oriflamme and Fighting for Honor in the same breath. This is odd because the Oriflamme was the signal that no prisoners would be taken."

Units “fighting to the death” should surrender en-mass, particularly if the enemy general has a chivalrous reputation. Fleeing units should be more open to mass surrender vs chivalrous opponents.

"Tercio pikes could be modified into a true hybrid unit. When not in melee contact the front rank would switch to hand guns. When melee units approach, they would revert to pikes (historically the handgunners would have retired to the rear ranks). Legal formations would be at least 4 ranks deep to prevent the unit from being fielded as one long shooting formation one rank deep. Ie, in reality only a percentage of the unit was equipped with hand guns."
(This is interesting. 'Hybrid Units' would be very cool to see and be a mix of troops etc, mainly elite units, or mercenaries mainly. I suppose this would be very hard to implement in a coded way though? The graphics of the mixed animations etc would look awesome!)


"Battles could have an objective zone similar to that in castles. This would prevent winning-by-evasion and allow the timer count-down to be disabled without worrying about passive AI."
(This would add exceptional value to the game. Especially for custom and online battles. Maybe an option for campaign play though or possibly a small game of battlefield chess so to speak as Generals compete for battlefield objectives based on their Command Rating? Could be a mini game in itself and supplying a relevant and inspiring context to the battles. Primary and secondary objectives etc,
Wow! Lot's of fun could be had here.)

((Other that I haven't had time to examine yet but look interesting))

"Here's yet another long wishlist for the game (some are repeats of what others have said, many of them I haven't seen anyone suggest).

Battle
--
- Firing range has been strange in all the total war games. Say that the "bow symbol" turns green at range X, then I cannot fire unit one unit is within that range (fine so far). But when one unit is in range, my missed shots seem to be able to travel up to range 2*X (or sth). Either chagne the logic so missed shots do not reach longer than X, or alternatively give me a "yellow bow" symbol which gives me the option to fire at units within 2*X but with lower chance of hitting compared to "green range". I'd prefer limiting the range of missed shots. Sending out a "scout" unit up front makes the enemy artillery fire manage to hit at rear units, which would not be possible if I didn't send out that scout. It seems completely ridiculous, IMO. *IMPORTANT*
- Reduce the incredibly large advantage of standing higher than your opponent. Alternativly flatten 90% of all battle maps on the campaign map. It gives too much of an advantage to the army happening to "spawn" on a hill/mountain, and it also encourages passive play, especially there no reason for a defender to move a single unit and still kill off the attacker with ranged weapons. The damage from ranged units on high ground should also be reduced to be the same levels as when standing on equal ground, the range advantage of height should be more than enough. To me, this is making many battles boring since the outcome is clear 5 seconds after seeing the battlefield (i.e. I see who will get the high ground). At the very least make it an option to change "advantage of height" between a couple of different settings when starting the game *IMPORTANT*
- Related to the above: Line-of-sight ranged units (e.g. some cannons and muskets) should not get increased range from standing on a hill. If they cannot "lob" their shots when standing on level ground, why should height increase their range?
- Ranged units (especially line-of-sight units) should only show the "green bow" symbol when they actually can *fire* from their current position. I have no use knowing that a unit is in range if I cannot fire (due to elevation/obstacles/other reasons) which happens all the time right now
- Related to the above: Modifier key (e.g. holding down CTRL) to show the map area that can be fired upon for currently selected ranged unit (e.g. highlighted in green similar to how movement range is showed on the campaign map). Preferrably also "modifier+klick mouse anywhere on map" should show that "if my unit was located in clicked spot, it could fire in the following area" (when done for multiple units, it can either not have to work, or it should show area for shortest-ranged unit
- Ability to see where units can move/deploy (bind another modifier key to paint the battle map in some color where the currently selected units can and cannot move). I hate when my artillery just refuses to move for no apparent reason and finally it turns out there's a minor rock in the way (and I _might_ be able to move if one centimeter to the left of where I wanted it to go, but I cannot find out that before I have clicked every pixel in the vincity
- Mode for ranged units to "attack clicked unit when it gets into range, but don't move before that happens".
- Reduce accuracy of all elephant artillery to be on par with (or maybe even lower than) regular artillery. Why should elephant-mounted guns be 10 times more accurate that "standalone" artillery? They are good enough even with reduced accuracy!
- AI formations with little or no ranged units should attack (or possibly run out of range) when coming under (significant) ranged fire instead of just standing around geting butchered
- Add ability to choose order of reinforcement arrivals (prior to start of the battle would be fine)
- Mode for cavalry "chase down nearest routing enemy unit" (needs only be available when at least X% of opposing units are routing). Mode continues to apply until all routers are eliminated or user unchecks this option. Micromanaging end-of-battle is not _that_ fun"

"Hopefully this hasn't been mentioned yet: REDUCE THE REFRESH RATE ON THE PATHFINDING ALGORITHM FOR SKIRMISHING MISSILE CAVALRY. When being pursued by other cavalry at a relatively short distance behind, my experience is that the new path chosen by the unit has a strong horizontal component, which changes (evidently) several times a second. The result being that the missile cavalry slows down as if it were going to turn, but never does -- it just lags slower and slower until the enemy catches up and engages in melee combat, defeating the purpose of skirmish mode. The problem can be circumvented by turning off skirmish mode, but then I don't get to use the game feature effectively at the time when it really counts."
(this is important to get resolved)


"I'd like to see the return of Siege Engineers primarly and also more effective moats. I think the Siege should be more complex and less susceptible to cheesy tactics. I'd like to see the effect of this wax and wane deppending on what technologies are available to the sieger and deffender. I'd also like to see more deffensive tactics from counter-siege equipment. Large scale catapults and ballista's that could be purchased and set on the battlements.

I'd also like to see some kind of attrition when an army is on your soil, as in, an increase in upkeep and possibly not being able to adequetly supply your invading army if the route is blocked by an enemy force.

While there is a lot to do in Medieval 2, the system could be more realistic in terms of how difficult it is to maintain an army on someone elses soil."


--Gunnery:


"Soulforged,
With smooth bore muzzle loaders being the only gunpowder weapon available, you run into several problems.

1) How well the powder was mixed and how recently directly affected their power and range. If the powder was allowed to sit for any length of time it would begin to separate, thus reducing its power. The longer it was mixed for, the finer the particles, the more powerful the explosion per mass.

2) Round projectiles fired from a smooth bore weapon have poor accuracy. At 25 paces you are not sure if you can hit a barn with one.

3) Fouling from firing caused many misfires. These could either be a lack of ignition, poorly packed powder that tended to fizzle rather than explode, or a projectile wedged into the barrel tight enough that the barrel itself exploded rather than the projectile traveling down the barrel.

In all, a crossbow was a more reliable weapon that was far more accurate at greater range with a comparable reload time. Gunpowder weapons had only one major benefit over other projectile weapons of the time, fear. They were scary, especially to troops not used to them. Both a crossbow bolt and a bullet would do similar damage. The crossbow bolt was a known quantity that medical science could deal with. Bullets tended to be much harder to deal with, thus more people died after a battle from them. They also tend to do nasty things inside a body and are much harder to get out.

In general, a soldier in the 1300s would much rather be hit with an arrow or bolt over a bullet. After all, the arrow or bolt had a conveniant way to remove it and an easy way to find it.




Woolwich Arsenal did some tests on the accuracy of the Brown Bess Musket. (This was a much later smoothbore weapon as used at Waterloo in 1815)

300 rounds were fired at a company sized target board.

At 100 paces they scored 153 hits, suffering 15% misfires which would have disabled the weapon for the rest of the attack had it been a continous test.
At 200 paces they scored 102 hits, 15% misfires.
At 300 paces 64 hits, 15% misfires.

This was in range conditions, with the weapon being loaded carefully and unfouled if it misfired.

Analysis of actual casualties in battlefield conditions where misfires and cleaning was not conducted and rapid loading and stress combined to fluster the solider showed a different picture.

At 100 paces estimates show an average of 38 hits could be expected from 300 rounds fired. (12%)
At 200 paces 17 hits (5.6%)
At 300 paces 8 hits (2.6%)

These results degraded rapidly over periods of prolonged firing as misfires, fouling and fatigue reduced the number of rounds discharged. The average effect of three rounds rapid fire from 300 muskets showed a drop in average hits-

At 100 paces from 12% to 6%
At 200 paces from 5.6% to 2.6%
At 300 paces from 2.6% to 1.2%

A significant proportion of this reduced effect was attributable to weapon fouling and other failures which after three rounds would have disabled over 100 weapons."





******



-Gameplay and Interface issues:-


-General:


A full set of Multi-player campaign options e.g. Hotseat, PBEM, LAN and Online.

Information lists should scroll properly. Currently if you click the “down” button, it scrolls all the way to the end, instead of one line.

Identifying symbols above characters/ armies/ agents that relate to action or event in the game and are readily seen. A broken cross for Excommunicated Faction armies for instance. Better than going through lists with 50+ agents on the board. Also a symbol for idleness and anything that is abnormal to action for the agent/army/character. Set as an option in Pre Game Options as well.

"I wish there was a summary of the cumulative effects of all the various attributes and/or ancillaries which belonged to a general.
This summary could be contained in a pop-up when you hold the cursor over his portrait, such as:
Attack bonus: +2
Defense bonus: +1
Law: +3
Squalour: +2
Trade: +8%
Taxes: -2%

We already get pop-ups for individual traits; this would summarize their effects.
As we all know, it's practically impossible to sort out all the factors for a veteran general in order to decide which one is best for your various cities."

"The diplomacy screen should not be a full screen. It should be half size to allow the player to still look at the campaign map and units on it. "
(In fact why not have a magnify button on location of the diplomatic event location? The player could go back and forth from the events section and magnify button)

Bring back a grand achievements mode

I like the music at the start up screen of the game where it asks for internet; please include this in game somewhere maybe alternating with theme music or in game music.

No way to find out which factions are excommunicated.
(There is actually in the Pope Scroll you can hover the mouse over the Cross Rating and see that 0 Crosses do indeed = Excommunication as per the pop up text.)

no way to know the location of an agent or army that has rebelled or betrayed you. no magnify option to show you the location.

Append "BC" or "AD" if the year option is chosen, instead of turn number, like in RTW. Having it say 200 BC or 1000 AD is much more immersive than just 200 or 1000.

Possibility for faction re-emergence as part of a rebellion/ civil war as it was in MTW This was nice as some AI factions could get a second chance after they got overrun through bad luck at the beginning of the game.

It'd be nice if you could recall all the "announcements" after you've dismissed them

View settlement in battlemap
Who does not want to see glorius achievements of his cities? Mighty walls, grand temples, markets, taverns etc etc.

Faction re-emergenance

Loyalist revolts

Peasant revolts, religional revolts
"Due to high taxes or heretics rebel armies can attack your regions or try to assasinate your family members or diplomats. Hussites, Catharsists, Hashashins, Peasants..."

Re-balance of unit stats, now the shield bug is fixed.

"Political situation scroll. I brought this bad boy up ages and ages ago, but I think it's a good idea. It would have the map appear at the beginning of a new turn showing the map of Europe with tick boxes to see what was going on.
This pic is ages old, but you get the idea: Situation Map"

Add a hotkey for the campaign map that organizes the selected stack by unit type. This will be very helpful and time-saving for those of us who otherwise have to keep moving our armies around and remerging them to organise.

A line defining best path to target for Crusading Armies, when they are selected on campaign map.

More natural effects/disasters
Floods, bad harvest, plague etc etc.

city architecture will depend on climate and not on type of faction. For example when conquering Jerusalem and upgrading walls or buildings it will keep its oriental style architecture instead of being transformed in northern-european style.

If possible it would be nice to see loyalist revolts and religious revolts added as well. As this adds more flavor and more importance to keeping the peace.

"Speaking of rivers. . . I would really like it if the rivers had names when you moved your cursor over them. I've learned so much about European Geography from playing this game (go figure) and adding these names would be a really nice detail that might help any of us who ever get on the Jeopardy game show. ;)"
(speaking of everything on the map in general, right click for land form/region information, mouse hover for 'more' summarised stats of characters and etc outside of settlements)

"I'd like to have a full screen strategic map, with selectable "layers" (something like Civ4). This map would provide political situation, religion distribution, army, family members and agents positions, guild distribution, units availability, trade routes, etc."
(Yes please! Maybe in a total demographic map mode or something that the game can switch to...)

"On the small map when on the campaign map, I'd love to have a dot in each province I know about that shows where its settlement is. Optionally have another dot for the port."
(I second this one for sure!)

-Game/Pre-Campaign Option Suggestions:


pre campaign option to set Jihad/Crusade cooldown time

Vices On/Off (allow/prohibit negative traits)

Fatigue On/Off

Morale On/Off

6 month /1 Year / 2 Year turns

"I'd like to see 6-month turns made into an official game option, which in order to work, would have to include matching adjustments to build times, income, etc. to balance out with the normal game."

Ancillary & Items list in full as default/negative off/edit list. With full descriptors. Also modable so that people can develop packs of new items/ ancillaries and insert them into the game easily.

"Ability to remove ancillaries via code or check for presence of a given ancillary without having to give it its own type"

"There should be separate menu options for disabling spies, assassins, and/or bribery. Some people like subterfuge but others (like me) find that it detracts from campaign flow."

Option for a 'non-cheating' AI.
"Why? Because it alters and ruins the game mechanics and logic: when the AI siege units never catch fire, AI keeping public order in cities despite spies, Ai spawning "Men of the Hour" without fighting, AI 1-rank Assassins trying to kill a faction leader for several turns -failing each turn- without losing ranks and in the end succeeding while player's assassins cannot (this last happened to me in 2 separate campaigns).

If the AI must cheat to be more at the player's level, I say: no problem at all! Just give me an option to disable it (and fight with a poorer and more stupid enemy, I guess), like the option of unlimited time for battles and so on."

a menu-selectable way to disable tooltips, as we had with previous releases.


-In-Game Menu:

a menu-selectable way to disable tooltips, as we had with previous releases.

Allow the free camera like in the cinematic editor, to be available in any battle, or most importantly in campaign battles. To be able to move the camera to any spot during campaign battles would be awesome.

"Fix the trait system so we can actually role play our generals et cetera..."
(in fact why not make it a modable in game option from the in game menu ? It only has to change the game save file slightly also doesn't it?)



-Movement:


"Potential movement locations should not be shown in green if it is impossible to get there in one turn. Specifically this refers to cases where it is known that any attempt to move there would take the unit into enemy ZOC, thereby preventing further movement this turn."
(The only problem with this is a potential ambushers game is up...I think some coloured area designations within the army's field of movement would be useful, mainly red for impassable etc. etc..)

If an amry expends it's movement to be next to a settlement it should be able to lay siege outright and not wait until next turn. Unless the movement points also account for the type of siege equipment being constructed?

Show Agents/Armies/Navies Movement points in lists scroll
I would second all points made so far regarding agents, seperating lists, restricting quantities etc.
Or bring back the movement bar that was introduced in BI. Much easier to keep track of which agents/armies/fleets still might need to be moved.

"I watched "The 13th warrior" again last night, great film!

While watching it, there is a scene at the beginning where a Norse ship is docked at the side of the river, and then it hit me. How cool would that be, if you could use the rivers in game. Imagine the possibilities!

So another wish would be:
A more detailed campaign map, with the facility to use your ships up and down the rivers. Now that would be cool."
( the lower class ships could be the only ones allowed up rivers or those with a low drift ((Meaning the ships hull didn't sit too low below the water line)) like the ships of the norse/Danes...)



-Provincial Management:


"city architecture will depend on climate and not on type of faction. For example when conquering Jerusalem and upgrading walls or buildings it will keep its oriental style architecture instead of being transformed in northern-european style."
( Mixes look cool though. However; maybe if the population isn't converted and loyalty is low still have the availability of that prior factions tech to build until the populace gets converted to say 100% loyalty through religion or whatever? Or if General could get foreign/eastern/western architect and have availability of those building types. A very rare Ancillary say...)

If possible it would be nice to see loyalist revolts and religious revolts added as well. As this adds more flavor and more importance to keeping the peace.

Cities with High Trade stats should have population migrating to lesser settlements. I am not sure if this is a feature or not. And/Or peasants that can be recruited and re-established in other settlements. The slot limit sort of limits exploiting this in a way and maybe only a certain percentage of Settlement population can be recruited as a limit also?


--Guilds:


Make horse breeders guilds available to castles as well as cities.

Make thieves and assassins guilds harder to get so the AI doesn't only have them.

Make masons guild easier to get.

All the benefits of a guild structure should be listed at the time the guild is offered.

Some guild structures seem to provide global effects instead of local ones. This needs to be clarified or fixed.

AI Should be more judicious about the guild buildings it accepts. Currently it almost always builds a Thieves Guild in every city.



-Factional:


Make AI Scotland actually take Inverness and Dublin

Faction re-emergenance

Possibility for faction re-emergence as part of a rebellion/ civil war as it was in MTW This was nice as some AI factions could get a second chance after they got overrun through bad luck at the beginning of the game.



-Missions:


"Desperately need a "spy-hunter" mission, for when you know a spy is in your city but you can't do anything about him—for assassins, maybe?"



-Much Ado About Rebels...:


Stop the non sensical random port blockading of the AI

Appearance of rebels tied to Province Happiness
100% happy = no rebels, the lower it goes, the more rebels appear and the better qualtiy they are. As above, make them more pro-active!

"3) Blockades

Rebels blockading you and blockading rebels currently doesn't make sense. I understand that pirates would want to sink ships at sea to grab some loot for themselves, which is why they are aggressive. However, why they would want to blockade a port remains a mystery to me, as reducing some random faction's naval trade doesn't help them in any way. Also, there is currently no point blockading rebel docks as they don't do anything anyway (i.e. are non-aggressive) and money doesn't seem to help them; they'll only train/conjure a few ships and kill you eventually, and it ties up your ships and wastes money for you.

Therefore, I propose that blockades should not only choke a rival's economy, but be beneficial to your own. I.e. the blockading ships will stop trading ships by coming in and out by looting and sinking any ships that try to enter/exit the city's port (like traders who didn't know about the blockade or something). This will mean receiving a steady drip of money into your economy as well as hurting an enemy's.

Therefore:

If a fleet blockades a port large enough, it can pay for itself, and even generate a profit.

Blockading rebels will make sense, as you get income from it and don't anger any nations.


Pirate ships can be assigned to rebel cities which exist on land (preferably ones with ports) and bring income to their assigned city (meaning they produce more troops, maybe?).
Also, I think that you shouldn't be able to build warships whilst blockaded, but the enemy fleet that is blockading you will gradually lose units as merchant ships manage to overcome one of their fleet every once in a while."

"- Rebel appearance should be tied to region instability. If a region is 100%+ loyal, rebels should never appear. Conversely, regions with 50% loyalty should see a full stack of rebels every turn (up to 5? stacks per region). The level of rebelliousness influences the number of troops produced and their quality. Any region with less than 100% loyalty is guaranteed to spawn some kind of rebel. Rebel spawning replaces riot casualties. Also, armies won’t be kicked out of rebellious cities. Instead, rebel stacks continue to form until the problem is cured.

- Rebel armies should aggressively attack cities, and assault before food runs out. A successful assault could potentially create/restore a faction, if an appropriate one is available.

- There should be a tab/tool for scrolling through rebel stacks within your regions. It is especially difficult to spot them during winter time as they blend in perfectly."

If you capture rebels you should get a reward from the counsel of nobles. for example 1 florin for every captured rebel, 100 for a captain and thousand florins for a general.

" If the human player gets into negative florins he should get a warning that his troops will desert in a couple of turns. The first units to desert will be the mercs. After that lonely captains, generals will low loyalty. I mean soldiers won't fight without being paid."
(Or go rebel )

"Limit Rebel tech No rebel force should appear with units that he player cannot build. If there are no facilities to build crossbows in my empire it doesn't make much sence for rebels to be turning them out."



Anyway, hopefully I will be able to edit this post and clarify it more by next weekend. I am going to include my master resource list for RTW and MTWII also.

Hope you enjoy the read!

[Furious Mental]

Well that would be great if only it wouldn't take a whole lifetime to make properly.

[Askthepizzaguy]

@ForgotMyOldNick

Holy good grief, Batman.

I can see you put a lot of thought into this post. If I may make a constructive criticism, it could be organized into a more readable list.

Specifically, simply a list of bullet points containing things we'd want changed. Gets right to the point, and you could squeeze in the acknowledgements at the end. It could be divided into sections as above, but with the reasoning and sources cited at the end of each section rather than dispersed within them. Some of the reasoning is pretty self-explanitory and could be cut. Sources could be found as links to their original threads rather than so many quotes, just to trim the overall size of the post.

Definitley a strong thesis, but needs either the structure of a simple point-by-point list, or an actual essay with various parts of the game given a single paragraph each. Should be condensed.

Those are my two cents. I feel kinda bad critiquing your work, because you definitley did your homework here. Also, the fixes I recommend would also take a lot of work. So, it's just there for your consideration.

[Nikos_Rouvelas]

@ForgotMyOldNick
If the Pope is pissing you off just be the Byzantines and DESTROY the pope. Its pretty funny.

[Guyus Germanicus]

Imagine a game that combined the best of European warfare and the best of Asian warfare, and more realistically portrayed the Mongol invasion, the rise of the Caliphates, and the rise of superpowers in the European theater, all on one glorious map. A game that extended the map completely around the globe, like a Civilization map, so that eventually America (in it's entirety) would become available. . . . etc.

Basically what you're asking for here is a game that allows you in computer mapboard fashion to replay a span of 1/4 to 1/5 of human history from a global perspective. The constraints of authoring such an enterprise are complexity of the design and code of the game, and the constraints of PC memory. I think it would take some significant improvements in the game driver to accomplish this.

Even with the patches for Civ IV, I was still unable to play that game with huge maps. And Civ IV doesn't have the combat phase of the game that SEGA/CA have designed into the Total War series.

Also, one of the difficult aspects of the Total War series is the scale of the work in managing your faction in the late game when you have a few dozen provinces and faction members to manage. Now multiply that by three or four continents.

But judging from the poll results, you have a lot of sympathy out there for your idea.

I would say . . . keep dreaming, 'cause good ideas come from the process.

[Miracle]

Duke Nukem Forever 3 will have been released by the time anything like this even makes the beta stage.

[Orb]

Sorry about the misquotation, I'm trying to paraphrase every huge paragraph into a bullet point so I can answer it properly. Please contradict me if I misinterpret, omit or add in material. Things which I have no opinion on I've usually ignored.

[QUOTE=ForgotMyOldNick]
Problem: The papacy restricts expansion, is annoying and
Suggestion 1: An option to turn off or reduce influence of Papacy
Problem 2: Campaign battles tend to be more epic than the typical custom ones, but you can't save the replays.
Suggestion 2: Campaign battle replays should be available.[/quote

1. I'm all in favour of more options. I'd personally like to see Autoresolve Naval/Land and Agent chances seperated from the campaign difficulty as an extra option.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I personally think it only deepens the campaign experience, and also adds some interest to the strategy. As HRE earlier I had the option to seize Venice with a beautiful stab and fort-off trick, but I knew I would be excommunicated if I finished the siege (I finished it :)). That the excommunication was threatened forced me to *think* about my actions was positive, but I still had the option of taking the hit and going ahead, without too many long-lasting consequences.

-Diplomacy:-

Suggestion: Family members should be able to do diplomacy themselves

I agree, I would also like the option to open diplomatic relations with an ally at any time, just to allow a little more coordination while not completely obsoleting diplomats. This would also provide a little more incentive to be peaceable.

An agent who does not achieve anything in a negotiation should be able to negotiate again this turn

I don't think it's significant enough to merit an alteration in function. Perhaps if *no proposal at all whatsoever refused or accepted* has been made, then it would be worth including to prevent accidental clicks. I think the current modus operandi encourages negotiating more carefully, which is imho a good thing.

Diplomats should have an option to requisition Pirate navies, which you can allocate a target for but not control.

I agree for a bribe option for these, but this seems needlessly complicated.

General options:

1. 'Get off my Land'
2. To Declare War
3. Change faction heir
4. Break alliance with (faction) option
5. Stop spying/sabotaging in my lands
6. Make peace with (faction) option

1. Yes. Absolutely. Perhaps a personality for an enemy king might dictate whether he's going to honour it. Perhaps a conditional option for 'pay when you leave my land' would be good. Your later mission suggestion seems good.
2. Yes.
3. I disagree with this one purely for atmosphere. This is the medieval era, and as such hereditary kingdoms are the rule.
4. Yes.
5. Yes.
6. Yes.

Higher penalties for trespassing

I agree.

Definite penalties for alliance to excommunicated factions in papal standing

I think there already is some sort of penalty for this.

[quote]Make demand Attack Faction viable and the AI honour it at least sometimes[quote]
I agree.

Option to surrender and ransom an army

I agree.

[quote]Diplomatic solution to priests?[quote]

Automatic diplomatic negotiations if an assassin or spy is caught trying to kill/spy on one of your characters/cities with no reputation hit for changed relations.

I agree.

Bribe merchants

I disagree, due to the function of merchants - as pure money-making units. A bribe option would reduce the point of getting them and reduce the value of managing them properly.

Pay inquisitors to bug someone else

I'd rather just have a papal request to 'remove inquisitor' option.
Just seen your later comments on this. A bit more warning would also be nice.

Pay heretics to bug someone else

I don't really see the point. It just reduces the reason of having priests in your own province and provides an almost-overpowered yet useless way to annoy the AI.

Diplomats gain experience by gaining an audience rather than results

I'd suggest a mixture. I'd prefer for tangible results making up much of the improvement, but also A) How widely travelled the diplomat is (e.g. how many factions he's negotiated with) and B) Which sort of targets the diplomat speaks to (e.g. Someone who goes after captains will get less benefits than one who talks to kings daily).

Ability to finance rebellions
2. Diplomats can subvert an alliance

I've always seen this as being represented by spying and using your agents to increase the chance of a rebellion.
2. I think it would be better to simply allow a diplomat to 'spread rumours' and attempt to damage the standing between the faction you're talking to and another. Increased chance depending on how treacherous your target is.

Loyalist Revolts, like in MTW

I don't think it's plausible, according to CA. I'd like to see it, but I can see why they might have problems.

Political situation scroll.

I don't understand the value of this

Diplomat/Priest can try to bribe citizens to rebel or convert them

I've always seen this as being the use of spies coupled with a hefty bribe once the settlement rebels. The option isn't needed. One thing I'd love to see is a 'priest duel' where a priest of one faction can engage another in debate and attempt to ruin them (bonuses for orthodoxy). This would allow you to remove annoying imams or even rival cardinals without resorting to assassinations left right and centre.

AI factions should be more willing to accept gifts

I've had no problems with this except giving map information without an accompanying couple of hundred florins.

Character ransoms should cost more.
2.Factions should be forced to ransom king and heir apparent.
3.Should be able to borrow money to pay ransom.

I disagree, currently they seem to work just fine for my preferences. The cash gained isn't stunningly overpowering but is substantial.
2.I disagree with the second too, but I think it should give a substantial negative penalty to the new faction leader/existing faction leader for failure ('Usurper?' Trait or something similar) if it was possible to ransom them.
3. Borrow from where? I disagree because it is out of line with the game and the current situation encourages saving up a little for the end of a turn in case of a defensive disaster.

Rejecting a ransom should increase your King's dread. Paying a ransom should increase his chivalry.

I think it does. Kobavelli's 'The Art of War/The Prince' guide seems to indicate this.

AI explains breaking a treaty

I like it. Perhaps another option might be a *threat* before breaking a treaty explaining why it will be done unless you comply.

--Vassalage issues:

Vassalage more common and less expensive.
2. Vassals can make no move whatsoever against their owner.

1. I agree.
2. I entirely disagree. This would make vassalage *permanent*, and thus not a viable option for either a player or computer. What I would like to see is a Hostage/Deposit option where the owner faction may state a demand and remove the payment/underage family member if a treaty term is broken, causing a trait-hit on the enemy king or your own (if the treaty isn't broken, but you kill them anyway), but must release the payment/kid.

--Alliance issues:

Alliances increase interfaction trade

Yep :)

birthright reference removed for ease of use

Governer Titles ala MTW.

I agree, but I'm unsure how it would be done in the game.

Cancel alliance before blockade or invade

I agree.

-Characters / Agents:-

generals/family members with enough Dread should be able to kill off any irritating or embarrassing ancillaries they happen to pick up.

I disagree. Too overpowered. What I *would* like to see returning is a version of the old MTW spy investigates general for treason option, where a spy can a) Investigate a general and remove him if he's too disloyal or b) stand a chance of removing one of your own generals' or an enemy general's ancillaries, negative or positive.

Recruitable generals

I don't see the point of this. It's rare that you really need more family members, and by the time this could reasonably be included for balance, you wouldn't need more generals.

Ability to assassinate your own generals/family members/agents

Yes.

Ability to disband agents
Sort agents by agent type and creation order
A 'cycle through idle agents' hotkey.
No shoved agents forgetting pathfinding or returning to spot.
2.Automanaged agents.

I agree with all of these. Perhaps the last one would be difficult to do. To be honest, I'd like to just see the agent shoving contests removed. Merchants are the only case where it is almost appropriate, to stop a resource being stacked.
2. I don't really see where you'd go with this. Perhaps a snooze option for the above cycle-through thing would be a way to deal with it.

Player should be able to find out more details about AI by spy missions

YES!

Kidnap option

Not neccessary or useful, really. Just a bit of fluff.

Merchants/Priests bought out are kept

I disagree, this again possibly overpowers and would be annoying as *hell* to deal with.

Increased priests

I have had no real problems with priest caps. I don't think it's needed, but perhaps that's just me.

--More specifically characters:

King grants governor titles to Generals
Governor options provide extra benefits in own province
Title added to name description
Titles hereditary

I don't see how it would be done. Perhaps on the family tree as with the RTW heir-changer option. I think the hereditary titles might be a bit difficult to work with this, but I'd like to see it nonetheless.

Increase global effects of king's traits.

I don't really see the use. If someone wants to roleplay a weak king, let them, if they just want to continue, they shouldn't suffer impossibly irritating random command failures because of a king's distance.

Troops not led by a General cannot rebel in a home province

I don't see the significant change. This just encourages general movement, which I like.

Stop inquisitors burning your king and heir.

Why?

Better positive traits for generals relating to actually running a town

I agree. I would like to see more from running rather than building.

Stacking agents

I agree, if only to stop the irritating agent pushing contests.

Fertility/Marriage/Adoption not linked to current family size so extensively

I agree.

--Vices & Virtues, Ancillaries and Items/Acquisitions/Relics/Heirlooms:

Station Ancillary characters at a settlement and provide benefits even if he isn't there.

A) such individuals are already represented by the current building complexes.
B) It seems like a balance issue. If the general needs to be there, I might think about seperating my governors from my soldiers mostly.

Allow ancillary hiring

I'd like a couple of options for hiring, but not too many, perhaps a retinue priest to exclude pagan magicians and then an expert from each guild or really high-level building at an appropriate cost.
--Annoyances to be remedied:

-Once you select and use an agent from the list, it closes itself and you have to re-open it

-Once you select and move an agent from the list, it "resets itself" (sp?) and returns to the top agent displayed

-Given the number of agents you could have to menage, to find those you have to use every turn is a looong process.

The result is I spend more time looking for my agents on the map/agent list than move my armies and enjoy the game (one turn lasts forever).

Please, remove the above-described bugs and add one hotkey per type of agent to remove time when you select and use them."


---Supplemental:

A 'Patrol/Explore' function for agents and armies would be useful...

"...I agree with your ideas, and on a similar note, can agents have an "auto-explore" option? i.e. they walk around the map each turn, discovering any areas that are grey to the player, so that you don't have to keep micromanaging diplomats each turn. Maybe have a Scout agent who does this.

Also, you can assign the agent (Diplomat, Scout, whatever) to patrol a specified area (or number of regions), to check for settlements which have changed hands since you last saw them."




******
-Battles and Armies:-

-Campaign Context Issues:

Any military unit that’s available in a city should be available in a castle (not including guild-specific units.)

Disagree. This helps add individuality to some factions, and to provide a further consideration in the city/castle debate.

A line defining best path to target for Crusading Armies, when they are selected on campaign map.

Definitely a good idea.

Fix AI crusading/desertion not happening

I'd just have it. I agree

Chevauchée: ability to pillage the countryside without actually attacking enemy units—it'd give the AI something to do while it's sitting around doing nothing on your lands. Of course, it should be considered an act of war.

Sounds micromanagy and annoyingbandity. If made significant enough, it might be a good idea, but if it's just pissant damages, there's no point including it.

Add gunpowder units to East Roman Empire, Sicily, etc.

Of mixed opinion. Half of me says yes, the other half says that doing that would also legitimise adding cannon elephants to England and giving a lot of bland end factions.

Watchtowers and forts should be destructable in friendly territory and in enemy territory.

Forts I agree, watchtowers I'm not sure on. You can always block them off by sitting on them. I don't think it would actually do much for anything except the multiplayer campaign.

Neutral terrain should be avoided by the pathfinder except when impossible.

No opinion.

Neutral/allied units should not block units of a territory's owner.

I agree for allied. Not for neutrals.

Make the AI factions use family members to lead their armies.

They already do that enough for my liking. More family member useage would not be bad, but I don't see too desperate a need for changes.

Kingdom wide penalty for King's death

I agree, perhaps a difference in authority between old king and new king might be a good mechanical aid.

Make the papal state less militaristic

I haven't seen it ever being horribly militaristic.

Prebattle screen

Needlessly cumbersome, and a waste of loading time.

Allow troops to be upgraded to better versions.

Veteran abuse. Really there is no need for this, and it would not be that easy to implement fairly, I think.

--AI Issues:

AI specialise provinces

Yes

Remove repetitive attacks against stronger garrisons.

Maybe, but I think that a few attacks here and then add flavour.

AI builds less siege equipment

I don't agree, having more siege engines seems to give the AI a slightly stronger chance than a three-engine thing

for a long, long time until gun powder age came about cavalry ruled the battle field and were the 'real' awe and danger of the battlefield. They are the primary unit to mop up siege engines also so why have the AI sp4m siege weapons?)

I disagree, but that's an issue for the monastery.

AI Should beef up garrisons in cities that are in range of enemy armies.

I think it does. Maybe increasing this would be good.

-BattleMap Issues, Deployment and Sieges:-

Improve city unit placement and pathfinding

In my humble opinion, the current sieges are just fine. Perhaps that's too much RTW speaking, though.

Pre-battle view battlemap

To be honest, I'd rather not bother with the loading time involved. As an attacker, I can always retreat if I really dislike it.

Dismounting units option.

Yes. Provided they remove the current 'dismounted' units, or at least rename them.

Traps/special defenses for sieges.

Too cumbersome and difficult to implement, in my opinion.

Add a hotkey to toggle between your main stack and your reinforcement stack during a tactical battle.

Assault ladders should be easily destroyed

For gameplay terms, they work fine. Maybe some option of removing ladders would be good.

Battering rams should be somewhat easy to destroy by melee troops.

Not particularly, but I think other mobile siege equipment (catapults, ballistae) should be easily destroyed, as they would require to be fully functioning to act, while a ram is really not that hard to build or put back together.

So far at siege weapons. Can't write more tonight.

[Askthepizzaguy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Basically what you're asking for here is a game that allows you in computer mapboard fashion to replay a span of 1/4 to 1/5 of human history from a global perspective. The constraints of authoring such an enterprise are complexity of the design and code of the game, and the constraints of PC memory. I think it would take some significant improvements in the game driver to accomplish this.

Even with the patches for Civ IV, I was still unable to play that game with huge maps. And Civ IV doesn't have the combat phase of the game that SEGA/CA have designed into the Total War series.

Also, one of the difficult aspects of the Total War series is the scale of the work in managing your faction in the late game when you have a few dozen provinces and faction members to manage. Now multiply that by three or four continents.

But judging from the poll results, you have a lot of sympathy out there for your idea.

I would say . . . keep dreaming, 'cause good ideas come from the process.

Here's my rebuttal:

At first it sounds rather true, but then I thought... well, wait a minute! I can save about a billion save files onto my hard drive. I'm no technical expert, but the space it takes to save one .tga is infinitely larger than the space it takes to save your game progress. That means that the campaign map, while large and beautiful, (and not loaded to your screen all at once, to save space) with all of the little stacks and characters and buildings and roads and everything represented by the game, it all gets saved into a very small file which simply makes a note of the changes to the map. I believe it is a text file like descr_strat.

In other words, the map could be HUGE and take up almost no space. And if I am figuring correctly, the added textures for the new factions and all the other minor changes to the code of the game would not significantly add to the game size.

All these mods are out for our beloved Total War games, often requiring totally new skins for factions, totally new maps (see The Long Road), and a whole mess of new game rules, but even with all of the additions, the game runs fine and with fewer errors and just as fast.

That's why I initially recommended that this Medieval game be built as a mod. It seems like the biggest amount of work would be making a new map, tweaking the code, and designing the skins for Asian, African, and American factions.

Not actually all that much added to the game. I believe the only significant difference you would see is the fact that in between each turn, there are more factions moving.

[phonicsmonkey]

I think there's an inherent limitation in the game engine on the number of factions...sorry to be a spoilsport

[Askthepizzaguy]

I think there's an inherent limitation in the game engine on the number of factions...sorry to be a spoilsport

Well ok... but on what basis do you make such a claim?

Just curious.

There's definitley more factions in The Long Road.

[phonicsmonkey]

I've seen it referenced in quite a few different threads..but a quick search of the mod forum brings up this, which implies there also may be a limit on the number of provinces..

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...on+slot+limits

if those two things are true, it seems unlikely your grand plan could be achieved by way of a mod using the existing game engine

which is an unfortunate thing, but bear in mind I could be completely wrong