What we would like to see in ETW.....

[ChaosLord]

If anything at all changes in terms of siege battle mechanics let it be this: Give the defender the option to meet on the field to prevent/counter the beginning of a siege. This would make the 1 unit besieging a city with an entire army in it alot less annoying, since it could be dealt with. Retreating behind the walls or meeting on the field should be the options. Not to mention this would also eliminate most of the annoying sally forth battles that are one-sided slaughters, but a pain to manage due to the city/castle.

[Riadach]

Will it be against total war mechanics to have a build your own fort or city and delimit your own province option? Could also allow provinces to be eaten away from the edges through creating military outposts and trenches that are not destroyed by your enemy. Or is that a bit too civilisation?

[specsy1]

I'd like to see:

-A complete refurbish on the field construction system, so instead of just watchtowers and forts, we should have simple wall boundaries, maybe to defend a mountain pass, rather than having the forts in RTW and M2 that in real life could easily be sidestepped. I'd love to see garrison-able watchtowers, beacons that would serve a similar purpose, and gates to let certain characters (like diplomats) and factions through!

-Fully customizable city layouts. Ive played castle strike, which is nowhere near as good as Total war games, but it lets you customize the castle (though not very well). It would be fantastic to be able to create custom layouts, save them, and use them in the campaign, then add a wide range of defences (like towers and ring walls), that can be build via a separate construction queue to the regular one.

-Placing settlements anywhere (or numerous ones in a region, the main being its 'capital'), such as merging into ports or on top of hills, would be an added bonus

-Highly improved choreography for battles, so that the soldiers are truly brutal and merciless, slashing anywhere they want and spraying blood as opposed to slashing or blocking every 5 seconds in slow motion, as it appears in M2TW

-In battles, soldiers should be able to SWITCH WEAPONS!!! It would be great to see an archer get a net out and throw it over horse in a cavalry charge, then wrench the spear out of the dislodged rider's hand and stab him with it. It'd also make elephants a bit easier to kill. And after the battle, a warrior might acquire a high-quality rifle from the body of an enemy, and use it thereafter.

-Cooler still would be soldiers in a unit actually using co-ordinated moves and working together to bring down the enemy. Fights should be much quicker and crueller, with people using all the skills and weapons they've got. If you ever get to see 300, when they're fighting the immortals, you'll see what i mean.

-An interesting concept would be to customize the units themselves, based on armour. So would give them armour as you would in a custom battle, but in the campaign only some levels would be accessible, and would require an armoury to use heavier armour. So when recruiting a unit, the armour value would affect the cost. The same goes for weapons.

-I'd like to see negotiation - on the battlefield. To see a diplomat, or a general come with a party of guards to discuss matters before the battle, or play out the traditional method of bringing up the most powerful soldier from each army and having them fight, the winner getting to settle diplomatic agreements on his general's terms. (That's shown in troy)

-Generals really should appear on the battlefield as the do in their portraits. Then you can tell which is your faction leader!

-On the campaign map, there should be patrols along trade routes, and if some caravans are looted, this should affect the income.

-Sieges still have a long way to go, with garrison-able towers (and combat within), deadly gatehouses and more sturdy battering rams. As i said before, customizing the city's defence would add an extra depth to sieges, because if you found a certain section vulnerable in one siege, you could add towers to it for the next. And buildings should certainly be fully-destructible when the attackers breach the walls, whether it be by artillery fire or - regular fire.

-To really make it interesting, why not add townspeople and helpless citizens who can run around screaming in despair when a tower collapses? Then we can be told when something's destroyed in a way other than a video talking about THE WALLS OF JERICHO!!!

I'm sure there are more, i just can't remember them...

[Daithi MacGuillaCathair]

god white dont we just ask them to build us a working holodeck so we can re-entact our wildest fantasys (cause some of them posted here are pretty out there)

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[Zoring]

Multiplayer Campaign.

Nameable Regiments, would love to name my regiments 54th Foote, 1st Co. or whatever

Huge variety in units on a national scale, no more Blue Tunic+Chainmaille = France and Black Tunic+Chainmaille = Germany

Revolutions! it was quite the fashion of the time.

Redcoats hats changing from different time periods :P

When we are having multi-army battles i dont want some vague Attack/Defend/Shoot mode for them, because they still act like gits, just make it so that i can push an arrow ----> and my 20 unit cards slides over and shows me that armies 20 unit cards, magic! With the PAUSE button we can then organise them splendidly and on a massive scale.

[Rodion Romanovich]

This gave me a new good idea for a request: add reforms instead of pure army building upgrades as the main way of changing your army over time, as in EB. This way, the early game won't be all militia units vs another, and the late game all professionals against each other. I like how EB does it, so that the player has some capability of affecting when the reforms will happen, but a lot of them will be difficult to work towards getting, and appear semi-random.

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[Daithi MacGuillaCathair]

- Bigger, more decisive battles. Fewer useless skirmishes.

- Introduce simple logistical considerations on the strategic map. Ex: armies in hostile territory would need access to forage or supply trains, or begin starving.

.

Do the two of these not conflict, supply trains and foraging would naturaly lead to more skirmishs, trying to raid opponents supply train, farm lands,etc.

[Shifty_GMH]

IMO......

-Ability to bombard city/fort from sea and/or land without launching an assault

-Better pathfinding

-Improved diplomacy. Including, but not limited to: AI that actually keeps alliances. Huge penalties/consequences for ai and player that break alliances without just cause. Formation of lasting and meaningful coalitions. Ability to perform multiple diplomacy per diplomat per turn (ie rtw). AI that will actively seek or readily agree to accept cease-fire/client kingdom instead of being killed off. A "get off my land" option.

-Named units that also mention where recruited. ie Legio I Italia, Legio II Spanish, etc.. Records kept for each named unit. ie. # of battles fought, total casualties, regions fought in, etc....

-Everything on a battle map is destroyable.

-An option to select 4tpy or Xtpy at startup so those of us that want to play 4tpy and have a long and slower game can and those that want a faster game can pick the Xtpy.

-Default show year and not turns. Could make it an option to select as well.

-Realistic troop movements. No more of this takes a year to move a province or two.

-Show a family members ability to govern too.

-Titles. BBB for MTW2 is a good example. Titles given to those that govern a city for at least a turn. When that character dies it goes to the next character that governs there for a turn.

-Ability to select an heir if desired...otherwise default to eldest son. If no son or no son of age then perhaps we could have a queen that could rule in son's name till he is of age or line of succession passes to eldest daughter if there is no son at all. Succession must stay in particular family branch by default unless player is forced/chooses to change that.

-How about another option to select if fantasy units are to be included in campaign or not? Would mean an increase in amount of unit slots available, but would satisfy those of us that want only historical units and those that want the flaming pigs or war dog type units.

-Family names are past down....even if only as a trait.

-Better logistical system for armies. Generals can gain a "understanding of logistics" from a academy or through successful campaigning. Without trait you get a "rationing," "belts tightened," "starving" type of trait for commanding general with comparable desertion rates per trait. See EB for example.

-Recruitable governors and generals that aren't part of your family tree. Each should have decent ability in their respective field upon recruitment. Recruited governors should have 0 movement ability. Loyalty of recruited generals should be good at start but can get lower if not actively used. Both should be able to be disbanded at will. Maybe to occasionally pop up again as a rebel general.

-Different governments able to be built with different game effects with the ability to change government types if desired. ie Homeland (limited to specific regions), merchant colony, military colony, allied colony, etc... See EB for example.

Anyway, that is my

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[Zoring]

I would also love to see small towns, villages, ports and all being represented on the Strategic map, as garrisonable, so that you can occupy a rural town and use its buildings as a strategic defense on the battlemap.

Ports should also act as cities in there own right not just an extension of cities.

[Freedom Onanist]

Do the two of these not conflict, supply trains and foraging would naturaly lead to more skirmishs, trying to raid opponents supply train, farm lands,etc.

But also it would represent some historical fact. French armies of the later part of the game were renowned for their ability to live off the land. Probably because their logistics were rubbish, but anyway, it was a positive for as long as they were still moving but once they stopped living off the land becasme ravaging the land and turned the inhabitants against them. A good example of this would be Spain and Portugal where they were never going to win a popularity contest but stripping an already poor land of resources lost them many of the friends they had made. Wellington was able to impede the French armiy in Portugal by a policyu of scorched earth. The French came, saw his army in their entrenchments and had to leave becasue of a lack of supplies. Whereas Wellington's army didn't have these problems in Spain and virtually none in France because he insisted on paying(ish) for supplies and had somewhat efficient Quatermaster's system.

[Daithi MacGuillaCathair]

i know its historical accurate to have baggage trains and living of the land etc. i was just pointing out that your request for the inclusion of this feature is some what opposed to your wish for less skirmishes. as the raids and counter raids would be conducted on a small scale.

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[Freedom Onanist]

I've attempted to brainstorm a simple logistic system...

- Armies draw forage automatically, leading to indirect competition for food.

- Each soldier and horse strips a tiny amount of forage from a nearby farm (5 square radius? 10?). Large stacks of men and horses can rapidly deplete the countryside. Richer farmlands provide more forage per turn and recover faster.

- As farmlands are depleted, they provide less food/income to the regional capital, and are depicted darker on the campaign map (green->yellow->brown->gray->black). Thus a fully depleted farmland would provide nothing to the capital. This is similar to "devastation" in existing TW games.

- If a port is within an army's foraging radius, forage can be redirected through that port.

- If all local supplies are exhausted, forage is automatically redirected to any unblockaded port within forage range. This will transfer farm depletion to other controlled provinces that are not themselves blockaded. If troops cannot obtain supplies locally or through a port, they are considered "unsupplied". If a stack contains a mix of supplied and unsupplied troops, the stack as a whole is assigned a supply%.

- 100% supplied armies operate at 100% mobility and combat strength. Armies below 100% move proportionately slower on the campaign map, and fight under a handicap, ie reduced morale / attack / defence / speed. Thus an army at 80% supply moves at 80% speed and fights at 80% effectiveness in battles. Armies below 25% supply are also considered to be starving, and lose troops each turn.

- Besieged troops cannot forage. They are considered "in supply" until they consume the city/fort's food stockpiles. If the city has an attached port, they can trace supply unless the port is blockaded.


Why a logistic system? Because historical military campaigns make no sense when viewed outside a logistical context. Why did they build navies? Why did Napoleon split his armies into separate columns? Why were generals forced to attack strong positions instead of waiting it out?
1) Standing armies cost food, not just cash.
2) Large armies eat alot, impacting population growth and economy wherever they go.
2) Moving an army into foreign territory lets your troops dine at enemy expense.
3) The size of a standing garrison is limited by local forage.
4) To march a vast army into enemy lands you probably have to control nearby ports.
5) You'll normally want to divide large armies into separate columns for better foraging.
6) Large armies must keep moving or eventually starve, unless supplied through a nearby port.

What about the situation where a concerted effort was made not forage? Wellington put a lot of effort into creating a semi efficient supply train. Part of the reason was to avoid (as much as possible) pillaging the allied Spanish and Portuguese contrysides, and avoid local antagonisms. When he got into France he experienced none of the problems with the local population the French had in Iberia becasue he paid(ish) for what he took.

I do like your ideas though. You could add an option to use scorched earth tactics as well, like the russians in front of Napoleon, or Wellington in Portugal. An enemy has to move on even faster. Or you could have resource raiding, where you rob and devastate an opponent's resources.

The only problem is that in game terms logistics might get pretty tedious with the expanded map. I took out the supply side of things from the Stainless Steel mod in M2TW, good, but not for me.

[Mersk]

One thing I’d like to see is realistic close order movement in battles. in MTW2 groups sort of flow through turns. As someone who has been subjected to close order drill, I can safely say the entire unit can turn any direction and stay in formation with ease and moving along at a pretty good pace or turn in an orderly fashion by rank or file to navigate tighter spaces.

Perhaps there can be a button on the UI, and this toggle button turns on/off close order movement. When on, units, elements in close order speak, stay tight and turn tight, march etc in a very orderly almost mechanical fashion. When the button is off, they move more loosely, more along the lines of MTW2 unit movement.

The purpose being that a unit needs to be able to stop and deliver a volley in unison and in short order. This may require CA allow stragglers to “walk through walls” on occasion. But that would be preferable to having a unit standing there getting shot up waiting on a straggler that got hung up on some battle map obstacle.

[RoadKill]

I really hope CA read this stuff, because if they take our advice they can make one heck of a good game.

Well what I'm really looking forawrd to see is more intense and detailed Diplomacy.

For example: If you are able to capture prisoners from battles, maybe make it so you are able to build jail cells in the cities so you can place the prisoners there in the jail cells, then in diplomacy you could ask them to give you a region or make them get off your land for the prisoners.

Maybe even add a Non-Agressional-Pact option for diplomacy.

For infantary battles it would be better if the battles used more of land advantage and stuff like that, more tatical planning then like the MTW 2 strategies where you just shot arrows then throw your whole army at them. What I'm trying to say is it would be cool if the battles could work like Company of Heroes, where tatics are the most important.

I also wouldn't mind a campaign with a better story line to it. Like I dont want to spend half my time playing a game then end up only having a pop up telling me I won, I want better prizes for my winnings, and even devastations for losing. A optional storyline is even better, so the game can flow with a story line in all diffrent directions.

[anders]

i know its historical accurate to have baggage trains and living of the land etc. i was just pointing out that your request for the inclusion of this feature is some what opposed to your wish for less skirmishes. as the raids and counter raids would be conducted on a small scale.

the board game "empires in arms"( fantastic napoleon era game if you have the time) handles supply routes by forcing you to be able to pull an uncontested ( ie not broken by enemy units) straight line between the supplied force and a depot, it doesnt cause to mant skirmishes, but makes cossaks and freikorps very valuable.

[Colonel-Commissar Gaunt]

god white dont we just ask them to build us a working holodeck so we can re-entact our wildest fantasys (cause some of them posted here are pretty out there)

oh, yes, pretty please!

[sassbarman]

Something small and easy to implament how about the ability to see your armies that you have so lovingly and meticulously created and assembled viewable on the battle map.

As you form your army stack and send them off to some distant battlefield have the cityview option like in rome to see them on the march.

Nothing like the sound of thousands of marching boots, creaking cannon wheels and fluttering flags to get the blood pumping Eh!

[Zoring]

Like 'view a city' mode but your soldiers are assembled in the city and you can march them around and such :P

[babumbumching]

i wonder if slavery will be present as that was a major earner for the UK in those times.

main things id like to see

1.Arkwright, Cadbury etc.. economic as well as military figures (i always think the TW never focus too greatly on economy)
2.A big focus on the industrial revo if you are playing as the UK (i dont know how much it affected other nations but if wikipedia is correct it certainly made the Uk top of the tree in the 19th and early 20th century)
3.Basically a much bigger focus on economy but also (for players who just like the war) the ability to turn micromanagement of ur economy off
4.The ability to make laws and change ethics. this has been mentioned somewhere but id like to be micromanageable (with the option to turn it off of course) and for instance with laws the ability to pass health and safety acts for instance that would help the public to like you
5.Railroad
6.Major trade interface overhaul, with a much higher importance being placed on trading
7.Exploitation of the West Indies and Carribean for sugar, cocoa beans etc
8. And finally something i've always wanted to see in TW, when there is a riot i want there to be the option to go down to ground and control your troops against the rioters. i think it would be a nice novelty device to have within the game and probably wouldnt take too much effort

[babumbumching]

one thing i forgot to add.....

conscript-diddly-iption!! this would integrate with the logistics systems ppl have been talking about and also with my railroad point. never mind the fact you could raise armies of millions if needs be.

[sassbarman]

Like 'view a city' mode but your soldiers are assembled in the city and you can march them around and such :P

Not in a city per say but anywhere you have a stack moving. just click on it and you enter the battle map where you can see your army marching in column formation. It could be sorta similiar to the city view button in rome where you could look but not touch. You often see what I mean in the promotional cutscenes for Rome And Med 2 of armies on the march, long columns of men stretching from horizon to horizon. I always find those scenes rather riveting.

[Prodigal]

2 things

1. The ability to access building, unit windows, even if you have selected or seen an event screen that you've now closed. Its fo annoying & has been in since Rome

2. The ability to move (drag n drop) troops around in your army so you can more readily see the troop types you have

[Defender]

Apart from (most of) the things mentioned above, I would like them to (re-)add the View Settlement option.

Only this time with a more "detailed" city life. I.E. actually seeing people practice at the barracks, people loading and unloading ships. The usual activity.

I loved the view settlement option in Rome (mainly for the purpose of showing of to my friends ;))

[SenecaTheYounger]

I want to see Political Agents in Empire. When your country is a republic you can send agents to another country to spread the idea of democracy like the imams and priests does it with the religion. So you can start a revolution in another lands.

The next good idea is that when there is a riot in one of your regions, you can give the order to execute some of the citizens to show them who is the boss. But there also should be the possibility that this fails and the citizens then becomes really angry.

[Frederick the Great]

I'd like to see deployment area's disappear from the battle map and your forces have to actually march to position themselves in their order of battle.
With reinforcements arriving during the battle at various points on the map be it being preplanned or not,maybe the chance of a flank march with the better general's.
General's ability to motivate his troop's on and off the field of battle
e.g. not all troop formation's march at the same pace so with a General he could spur them on to march a bit quicker.
A better moral system where troop's could waver or even break on seeing friend's close-by rout.Maybe each troop type could have their own moral status e.g. Guards would be Elite,Grenadiers would be Veteran,Common line troops would be Trained and Concripts and the like would be Raw.
Really looking forward to this game because this was the era when nation's were uniforming their armies in specific colour's.
I wonder if they'll include pirates on the high sea's??? Could be nasty!!!

[Sheogorath]

Everybody asking for bigger battles:
That would conflict with any request for 'historical accuracy', around the 16th century, armies as a whole got REALLY small. Why?
Because the state started supplying equipment to many people, you started seeing the concept of a 'standing army' come into wide use. All that equipment and all those supplies are EXPENSIVE.
Armies didnt start getting BIG until the Napoleonic Wars, which is apparently about the time ETW's campaign ends.
Basically, almost every battle (with a few exceptions) was a 'useless skirmish', the two sides manuvered around each other, maybe fired a few volleys, then the one who was in the worst tactical situation was 'beaten'. Nobody wanted mass casualties because soldiers were EXPENSIVE.
The 18th century saw a bit of a decline in this, with events like the Great Northern War, but still, few commanders were willing to field huge armies in decisive battles.

My personal suggestions...

More emphasis on trade. This is the colonial era and all, before people were just nabbing colonies for the sake of getting colonies (Partition of Africa, anybody?), people were out looking for USEFUL areas. Trade with your colonies should be vital to keeping your nation operable, or at least make things much easier.

Less AI use of troops moved via ship. From what I can gather, only two nations seriously considered Marines to be an important part of the armed forces, the Russians and the British. Prior to the 1600's they had an important role, IE: Fending off ship-to-ship boarding attacks, but once the British introduced long range fire and people more or less stopped boarding each other in the midst of battle, dedicated marines on ships vanished except in those two nations (again, as far as I can tell)
Both the Russians and British used marine landings and, in fact, launched one of three invasions of Italy from the South, when they landed in Naples during the Napoleonic Wars.
If possible, the AI should only land troops in territory it owns.

More interaction with cities. This may've been mentioned, but I'd like to see more customization in cities, maybe more detail too. Cities of this era got pretty huge, and places like London and Paris would've been daunting to attack simply because of the huge number of alleyways, passages and backroads that they contained. Including paths like these, and making them traversable, would add a fun element to city combat.
Oh, and make it so soldiers can garrison buildings on the battlemap. Maybe add things like blockhouses (Small wooden forts, or large, short, towers, basically.) to the city defences.

If youre going to make differences between sides, PLEASE dont do like Imperial Glory and simply say, "Well, the British are better than everybody else, so we'll give them great starting stats for everything! Huzzah!"
British infantry were good, yes, but they didnt have many men, as most of their forces went into the navy to sail their rather massive fleet (Something like two HUNDRED Ships of the Line total around 1800, and thats not counting all their other ships). Of course, those ships tended to be rather shoddily built, and at the time the French were the recognized masters of ship construction. They just didnt get many chances to show it since the Royal Navy basically blocaded the entire French coast throughout the Napoleonic wars, and those few battles that did take place were, as we all know, rather nasty defeats for the French.
Anyway...just make sure that if one side gets an advantage, the others do too. EX: The Russians would have quite cheap infantry, after all, they managed to raise a force comprable in size to the Grand Armee, even if many of them were armed with pitchforks >_>