The Official Hopes, Dreams and Fears Topic

[ljperreira]

To my knowledge, the era of siege battles was pretty much gone by this point. Forts were still used to guard ports and so forth, but they were mostly geared towards fending off ships in that case. Cannons and artillery were simply too effective at this point.

Field fortifications were the new big thing. Building redoubts and so forth prior to the battle to stick your cannons in and so forth.

There were a few sieges during the Napoleonic war (for example, the first and second siege of Almeida, Portugal), but they wouldnt have lasted as long as sieges from the medieval time period. Cannons and artillery were quite effective, but so were some of the methods used to counteract this, such as star fortifications and such.

Anyhow, two of my "hopes" for ETW is the inclusion of Marines, and ship to shore attacks on shore batteries (Naval landing parties), or ship to shore attacks on basically anything .....would it be too much to ask to hear sailors singing sea shanties as they worked?

[Polemists]

My only fear is that nations will act completely eradaic again


Ex:

Hello my name is Milan.

I will never have more then three cities, but I will manage to train over 8000 crossbow men to send against you. Nothing else really, just crossbowmen. I always entire into alliances, and will always betray you, even when it's in my interest not to.




I mean I don't want to see the 13 colonies sailing a fleet over to england and invading london


Otherwise diplomacy is always nice.

[rajpoot]

Anyhow, two of my "hopes" for ETW is the inclusion of Marines, and ship to shore attacks on shore batteries (Naval landing parties), or ship to shore attacks on basically anything .....would it be too much to ask to hear sailors singing sea shanties as they worked?

They've already said ship to shore attacks are not happening......if there was one thing that could have made Empire absolutly flawless, it would have been being able to attack forts using ships.....but it's not in there. I must confess this was one thing I too wanted alot.

[Owen Glyndwr]

What I want to see is a battle system that is easier to use.
A lot of my complaints are coming from RTW, but I'd love to see an AI that knows how to manage its troops. One of the major reasons I find the AI loses nearly every battle is because they become unable to maneuvre their troops in force. Instead they move troops in one division at a time, which effectively minimizes completely the advantages in numbers. Also, I'd like an interface that is easier to use. In RTW and M2TW, the problem I had was when you were on the attack, if you want all your troops to move at once in a unified charge, you'd have to either tell all your forces to attack one unit, to which they all funnel into one guy, or pause the game and tell each individual unit to attack one other individual unit, which makes me never want to play the attack in the game because it becomes so frustrating. What I want for ETW and future games, is the ability to tell your entire infantry line to charge the enemy in general, as a singular unified force. Also, I'd like better pathfinding in the game. In seiges, I want my cavalry to go get around behind the enemy so I tell them to run around the square, and instead they decide to run straight through an army of 600 spearmen to their deaths. It becomes idiotic, and often I find success in these games is just to aimlessly wander around enemy armies until they attack you because defense seems to be the easiest way to win a game.

[Martok]

Some good points, Owen Glyndwr. I too would like to see units able to better take care of themselves when necessary. I like micromanaging to some extent, but I don't like it when I *have* to do it.

[gardibolt]

Fear:

Securom, or some other malware again.

EDIT: Hoo-Ray! No Securom!!

[naut]

Boats. Early boats, especially continental boats where poorly set-up for combat. They used land-style cannons that made reloading near impossible, as men would have to scale the outside of the boat to reload the cannon's. The Spannish Armarda effectively fired 1 cannon shot every day because of this. Where as the English ships fired 1 shot an hour because they could be reloaded from the inside of the boats.

Also early tactics involved firing cannon on the front and rear of the boat rather than broadside.

I can't see CA getting boat battles historical in anyway.

[batemonkey]

Boats. Early boats, especially continental boats where poorly set-up for combat. They used land-style cannons that made reloading near impossible, as men would have to scale the outside of the boat to reload the cannon's. The Spannish Armarda effectively fired 1 cannon shot every day because of this. Where as the English ships fired 1 shot an hour because they could be reloaded from the inside of the boats.

Also early tactics involved firing cannon on the front and rear of the boat rather than broadside.

I can't see CA getting boat battles historical in anyway.

They DID, but not in this period. In this period the main problem (esp at the start of the century) was overloading ships with so many cannons that the handled very badly even in calm weather and in bad weather were libale to sink.