One aspect of realism that's missing...

[Kολοσσός]

There should be crazy horses running around the battlefield minus their riders who had been killed or otherwise knocked off the saddle. Also, some riders should be able to get up after falling off and resume fighting on foot...or flee on foot.

I wonder if the game engine is flexible enough to allow for programming that. I can imagine it would be a programming challenge because within the game's object programming scheme a rider and his horse are considered a single object, not separate creatures who may act independently of one another as in real life.

[Palasta]

I wonder if the game engine is flexible enough to allow for programming that.

No, it isn't.

[Kολοσσός]

Well, in a future Total War game maybe...the designers have already made strides not thought possible 5 years ago.

[Palasta]

Well, in a future Total War game maybe...the designers have already made strides not thought possible 5 years ago.

In the future they might make it possible, though it's not necessary. Still hope they tend to more realism in the next TW game or anything alike the TW series.

( Wants a new Shogun. )

[cmacq]

No blood?

[Malik of Sindh]

I saw that someone made an animation for MTW2 with a rider being killed and the horse running away,and stopping after some time.

[ross1025]

maybe just like the elephants will be ok, the elephants could run amoke without any rider on them.

[Maeran]

No blood?

And entrails. Inexplicably (well not if you think of different countries' rating laws) the blood gore, writhing entrails and screams of the injured are all left out of all Total War games.

Less bloodily, so is the need to send runners or horsemen in order to give orders, and so is insubordination or 'creative misunderstanding' of orders by junior officers.

Quite a bit, if we're honest, but there are limits within which we must work and play.

[Palasta]

No blood?

I for one is not a bloodthirsty gamer. I would be satisfied with a smarter A.I. and more "heart" by the developer, you know.

[Mykingdomforanos]

I for one is not a bloodthirsty gamer. I would be satisfied with a smarter A.I. and more "heart" by the developer, you know.

I agree, and reasonably balanced units like in EB (generally speaking) though obv historically some units were better than others as were some factions , and thats part of "realism"

The riderless horse thing is just eyecandy IMO and I wouldnt miss it much, the actual effect of unseated cavalry can be reflected in stats or damage etc

[quackingduck]

no one take this personally or as an insult

but
no matter what you do to a comp game it will have many "unrealistic" flaws.

[LuciusCorneliusSulla]

Correct - theres a point where realism is crippling to Gameplay. I would not be impressed if I needed 'Runners' to give orders on the battlefield. At some point the realism would outweigh the joy of playing... why not add Governor paperwork and accounts? Or hosting religious festivals and personally directing all trade? One nice word which, if we really worry so much about realism, we can use to help us sleep at night... delegation.

For the apt comment above (sorry, cant remember who) on our small wishlist for the next Total War - AI and 'heart' - its amazing how a group of independant volunteers on their own free time can create a game which so exceeds what the men and women at Sega/Creative Assembly can do, paid on paid hours. My hat off to all you folks, the Sega/Creative Assembly team should recruit you as the developers for the next installment... but then they'd pay you which would take the good out of your efforts, because as with our nature, we tend to shirk and half-*ss anything we HAVE to do in life.

Which brings me to the question of why the offical TW peoples dont take a look at these websites and your mods and take a leaf from your book, even engage your members to find out how to build a better Total War game? The seniors of this website, even just as an advisory council, would steer the development in the right direction, I've no doubt.

Sorry, waxing on about nothing here... :(

[cmacq]

And entrails. Inexplicably (well not if you think of different countries' rating laws) the blood gore, writhing entrails and screams of the injured are all left out of all Total War games.

Less bloodily, so is the need to send runners or horsemen in order to give orders, and so is insubordination or 'creative misunderstanding' of orders by junior officers.

Quite a bit, if we're honest, but there are limits within which we must work and play.

No Blood was a joke, that is no joke?

Right, no drummers or horn blowers? But I'll tell you, it makes a big difference when fighting a battle at just above normal ground level. If you want a little more realism or think the AI is too weak, try it. You may find you can't see whats happening around you or you may find you're a baby in a maelstrom.

[beatoangelico]

Correct - theres a point where realism is crippling to Gameplay. I would not be impressed if I needed 'Runners' to give orders on the battlefield. At some point the realism would outweigh the joy of playing... why not add Governor paperwork and accounts? Or hosting religious festivals and personally directing all trade? One nice word which, if we really worry so much about realism, we can use to help us sleep at night... delegation.

For the apt comment above (sorry, cant remember who) on our small wishlist for the next Total War - AI and 'heart' - its amazing how a group of independant volunteers on their own free time can create a game which so exceeds what the men and women at Sega/Creative Assembly can do, paid on paid hours. My hat off to all you folks, the Sega/Creative Assembly team should recruit you as the developers for the next installment... but then they'd pay you which would take the good out of your efforts, because as with our nature, we tend to shirk and half-*ss anything we HAVE to do in life.

Which brings me to the question of why the offical TW peoples dont take a look at these websites and your mods and take a leaf from your book, even engage your members to find out how to build a better Total War game? The seniors of this website, even just as an advisory council, would steer the development in the right direction, I've no doubt.

Sorry, waxing on about nothing here... :(

EB is just too complex for the general public. And probably for the ones that write rewies for the major sites and magazines too. Medieval 2 got really high critical scores and even higher sales: a success on all fronts, but most of the fans that follow the TW games from the beginning agree in considering M2TW well down the previous games. The "right" direction for SEGA, and every other publisher, is making the sequels sell more copies than the previous game, and simply put this is the reason of the general oversempliflication trend of this years.

[bovi]

its amazing how a group of independant volunteers on their own free time can create a game which so exceeds what the men and women at Sega/Creative Assembly can do, paid on paid hours. My hat off to all you folks, the Sega/Creative Assembly team should recruit you as the developers for the next installment... but then they'd pay you which would take the good out of your efforts, because as with our nature, we tend to shirk and half-*ss anything we HAVE to do in life.

Of course we can exceed them. This is simple economics. We are a lot less productive than a paid workforce per day, but we're not reined in by the constraints of a budget or timetable synchronizing development end, marketing, customer annoyance (AKA "copy protection") and physical production. And of course as Beato says, we don't have to care about what the mass of customers want since we don't rely on the profits. So we can (and do) use a bigger team for a longer time to get where we want to be. They do not have that luxury.

[Hooahguy]

And entrails. Inexplicably (well not if you think of different countries' rating laws) the blood gore, writhing entrails and screams of the injured are all left out of all Total War games.

.....but if you have been hovering around the total war forums, there will be blood and gore and screams from the battlefield injured in empire total war.

[CirdanDharix]

IMO the screams of the injured and blood beginning to stain the field in places where many men have fallen would add to immersion. I couldn't care less about entrails and severed arms and stuff; they wouldn't be noticeable except when zoomed fully in, they'd waste processing power, and they wouldn't be very common anyway. Riderless horses are pretty much in the same boat; they wouldn't be common, since more horses died than cavalrymen, and when a horse did survive its master, it would probably be grabbed for use as a remount, unless it managed to escape the battlefield quickly. Either way, not many riderless horses galloping aimlessly around. Dismounted cavalry would be more useful.

[LuciusCorneliusSulla]

Of course we can exceed them. This is simple economics. We are a lot less productive than a paid workforce per day, but we're not reined in by the constraints of a budget or timetable synchronizing development end, marketing, customer annoyance (AKA "copy protection") and physical production. And of course as Beato says, we don't have to care about what the mass of customers want since we don't rely on the profits. So we can (and do) use a bigger team for a longer time to get where we want to be. They do not have that luxury.

I concede the point, as well as the one above - about the game being overcomplicated for the general public. I suppose I'll have to hope that as Total War keep releasing them, you'll keep modding them ;)

What about Medieval 2, I've seen loose threads about modding for this. To be honest I dont think the period covered in Medieval is interesting enough to base a good game on. What I find most intriguing in Rome and EB is diversity, different nations. Greece and Anatolia are always my favourite campaigns because there are so many ethnically diverse nations in the same small campaign area. Medieval 2 lacks this.

So what about a modification of medieval 2 back to roman times? The extra functionality (graphics, marginally improved AI in the lastest patches, extra features such as capturing and selling) would be very interesting in our ancient setting. Apologies if so far I seem the type who bats out ideas only! I'm not a modder... yet.

[Hooahguy]

have you heard of EBII yet?

[LuciusCorneliusSulla]

Unfortunately not, but I'm both new to the forum and a bit of a dabbler (of the forums mods, i'm a die hard Empire-builder fan). Any links? Much appreciated.

[Strategos Alexandros]

Look at the top of this forum.

[Hooahguy]

and btw, there will be riderless horses in ETW......
at least as far as i know

[Maeran]

No Blood was a joke, that is no joke?

I did in fact mean it in jest, building on your 'no blood' with something based on a general's opinion in a Discworld novel. That all the paintings of great battles he saw as a child inexplicably left out the entrails and dying horses- which he saw a lot of when he actually fought.

It is a pity that humour doesn't carry across on the internet as well as we all would wish.


As for Empire:TW, I'll believe it when I see it. Creative told us that in M2:TW bodies would eventually impede progress remember?

It looks like we are getting naval battles (probably because Rise and Fall showed them that it could be done). But that's the limit of my anticipation after the last release.

[Bonny]

I did in fact mean it in jest, building on your 'no blood' with something based on a general's opinion in a Discworld novel. That all the paintings of great battles he saw as a child inexplicably left out the entrails and dying horses- which he saw a lot of when he actually fought.

It is a pity that humour doesn't carry across on the internet as well as we all would wish.

I remember this passage but don't get the name of the book

[pezhetairoi]

Hum. I'm guessing either something from the City Watch story arc or Monstrous Regiment. o.O

[Jaywalker-Jack]

To be honest I dont think the period covered in Medieval is interesting enough to base a good game on. What I find most intriguing in Rome and EB is diversity, different nations. Greece and Anatolia are always my favourite campaigns because there are so many ethnically diverse nations in the same small campaign area. Medieval 2 lacks this.

Maybe Medieval 2 dosnt represent it, but it was there. If you ask me the middle ages were one of the most interesting periods in history. To take your example, Anatolia and the Balkans were still very ethnically diverse regions. Anatolia was a mishmash of Armenians, Greeks, Kurds and incoming Turkic peoples, with the steppe peoples and the Arabs on the borders. The Balkan region had become arguably even more convaluted in an ethnic sense - the Greeks still persisting in the south, the Hungarians in the North, the Avars, and the myriad of Slavic nations. The Bulgarians were one particularly interesting example, a fusion of the native Thracians, the Turkic Bulgars, and the Slavs. And to add a whole other dimension to the diversity of this time period you had the clash of different religions.

Id love to see an EB style remake of a game set in this time period before I die.

[Strategos Alexandros]

Hum. I'm guessing either something from the City Watch story arc or Monstrous Regiment. o.O

It's from Night Watch, the one where Vimes goes back in time and trains himself. (Don't worry if you haven't read it, it says this on the blurb anyway)

[Senatus Populusque Romanus]

I don't think RTW engine will allow that

[delablake]

In the future they might make it possible, though it's not necessary. Still hope they tend to more realism in the next TW game or anything alike the TW series.

( Wants a new Shogun. )

me too!

[an_do_89]

I don't think the game engine is flexible enough to allow for programming running horses and so on..... but you can take a look at this game Mount&Blade ( www.taleworlds.com ) and see it is possible to implement it in a game.