Wishlist for Rome 2 (and beyond)

[Peasant Phill]

I would like:

- A choice of start dates. I loved the 3 periods in MTW. You had so much more difference in campaigns on top of the choice of faction.
- A choice of victory conditions. Glorius achievements, Prestige victory, a specific playstyle, ...

[ReluctantSamurai]

When you siege a port city, you should not be able to starve them out or make them give in unless you blockade the port with a fleet. In that case, the defender needs to send their fleet to open it up or their population will start to starve.

Amen to this and more. Some sensible adherence to basic rules-of-engagement, like:

You need a certain-sized army to siege a particular-sized city [do away with the silliness of a couple of units of light infantry and some skirmishers laying siege to a huge city of 24k+]

If a garrison is evicted from a city due to a rebellion, said garrison should suffer losses depending on the city size (larger city=higher losses). This would simulate the panic/confusion of having to make a hasty exit through a very hostile populace...

If an enemy army gets backed into a position where the only avenue of retreat is through your ZOC (and this should hold true for naval battles, as well) then the enemy is destroyed if defeated.

If the collective mobility of one army is higher than the mobility of another, the army with the lesser mobility has to stand and give battle...that was the point, after all, of having cavalry (AFV in modern warfare)...to force the enemy to battle.

And one that I would dearly, dearly love to see: the ability to scout/see the terrain on which a battle is to be fought. The game is already keeping track of locations on the campaign map and the corresponding battle-maps at any precise point, so let the player see that (perhaps in a sub-box in a corner). One could even have the ability tied to a general's scouting ability or by how much cavalry is in the stack. Nothing more frustrating than maneuvering your army into an apparently commanding position on the campaign map, only to find yourself at the south end of a north-bound kangaroo on the battle map...

And speaking of maps....please, please have some imagination when designing battle-maps. One simply gets tired of having no choice but to charge past a clump of buildings/trees/ruins placed in the center of a map to get at the enemy standing on the hill in either the left or right-hand corner...

[Peasant Phill]

If the collective mobility of one army is higher than the mobility of another, the army with the lesser mobility has to stand and give battle...that was the point, after all, of having cavalry (AFV in modern warfare)...to force the enemy to battle.

Isn't this already the case? Or am I missing something?

[ReluctantSamurai]

Isn't this already the case?

Bear in mind that I play a modded version of vanilla RTW and I haven't bothered with any TW games since M2TW. Later games might have implemented this feature...I wouldn't know of it then.

But in vanilla RTW, an army can decide to fight or retreat irregardless of the mobility factor. I play mostly the Armenia faction and by mid-game I have several all cataphract armies roaming the country-side and I can tell you that an all infantry army very often retreats from my initial attack requiring me to attack them a second time....that's just not right considering that infantry could hardly escape from cavalry except, perhaps, in a heavily wooded situation.

[quadalpha]

Bear in mind that I play a modded version of vanilla RTW and I haven't bothered with any TW games since M2TW. Later games might have implemented this feature...I wouldn't know of it then.

But in vanilla RTW, an army can decide to fight or retreat irregardless of the mobility factor. I play mostly the Armenia faction and by mid-game I have several all cataphract armies roaming the country-side and I can tell you that an all infantry army very often retreats from my initial attack requiring me to attack them a second time....that's just not right considering that infantry could hardly escape from cavalry except, perhaps, in a heavily wooded situation.

It's still like that. You can explain the current behaviour by saying that the army icon only represents an army dispersed in a general area that has a certain amount of strategic mobility (+baggage trains, etc.), but the way it's represented makes it look like the whole army is in one place.

[quadalpha]

You know what would improve the campaign game immeasurably? Simultaneous turns. You order an army to a location, set its stance (attacking/attacking+pursuit/avoid battle/etc.), and there is no guarantee it will get there. This would make the campaign much more tense and exciting, as well as putting real emphasis on scouting and intelligence since you can't just walk up to an enemy army and decide what to do. It would also be more realistic than present, all with one little change to the turn resolution system.

[TinCow]

You know what would improve the campaign game immeasurably? Simultaneous turns. You order an army to a location, set its stance (attacking/attacking+pursuit/avoid battle/etc.), and there is no guarantee it will get there. This would make the campaign much more tense and exciting, as well as putting real emphasis on scouting and intelligence since you can't just walk up to an enemy army and decide what to do. It would also be more realistic than present, all with one little change to the turn resolution system.

That's an interesting idea, though it would make the action very difficult to follow when the turn execution began. You couldn't simply watch one area, then watch another area, etc, as all areas could theoretically impact each other, by blocking army movement and such. Everything would literally have to move together at the same pace, pausing the entire world for battle resolution, then resuming the worldwide movement of all units. You'd pretty much have to hit end turn, fight a bunch of battles as they popped up on your screen, then review the map and try to figure out what happened and why.

[Monk]

I would like:

- A choice of start dates. I loved the 3 periods in MTW. You had so much more difference in campaigns on top of the choice of faction.

I like this. Maybe Early Republic, Imperial, and Late Imperial. Each giving distinct army styles for the Rome factions as well as the enemies they face. Late imperial might be asking for too much (maybe an expansion down the line) but Republic/Imperial start dates would be amazing.

I'd also like the ability to switch government types at the cost of a lot of civil strife. If I want to upset the army and fight for a new republican rome after we're imperial, i should be able to do that.

[Stuie]

I like this. Maybe Early Republic, Imperial, and Late Imperial. Each giving distinct army styles for the Rome factions as well as the enemies they face. Late imperial might be asking for too much (maybe an expansion down the line) but Republic/Imperial start dates would be amazing.

I'd rather see Early Republic, Middle Republic (Carthaginian Wars), Late Republic (First and Second Triumvirates/Civil Wars).

It would be interesting if they could change the campaign game to more accurately reflect periods of peace and war. When at peace, turns could encompass longer periods than when at war. Almost like having two different campaign map modes. This would help solve the scaling of time/movement during campaigns vs. peace.

[Nelson]

I want to see proper naval battles including ramming and appropriate missile weapons. Hopefully the corvus can be included, too.

Music. I want to hear trumpets, horns, flutes, drums, bagpipes and whatever else armies played to direct and motivate the troops.

Thick, tough earth and timber walls for the Gauls would be nice. Oppida were difficult to break into.

[quadalpha]

There's a picture in the new PCG showing an x-reme ramming and breaking another ship in two. Don't think it's a screenshot, though.

[Ishmael]

I do like the idea of moving back towards the RTW RPG system a bit. Whilst I thought the TWS2 skill tree was nice (particularly the multiplayer one, which would work well in SP as well), I missed putting my lunatic generals in charge of an army so that I could hear their crazy pre-battle speeches .

[Ibn-Khaldun]

I do like the idea of moving back towards the RTW RPG system a bit. Whilst I thought the TWS2 skill tree was nice (particularly the multiplayer one, which would work well in SP as well), I missed putting my lunatic generals in charge of an army so that I could hear their crazy pre-battle speeches .

You may be able to do that and try to remember all the old RTW stuff(that made the game fun) if you follow my signature.

[Arjos]

Another thing I'd really like to see are phalanxes that can actually "charge", sure not as fast as other infantry, but we have descriptions of phalangitai rushing to the enemy...
In RTW they walked, against the AI it still works, but in MP it just makes them useless XD