Discussion on innovation for future TW games

[ReluctantSamurai]

I don´t think that controlling several stacks of horse archers would be that hard

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one....having to control 60, 80 or more individual horse archer units would be virtually impossible for a human player, and the "skirmish mode" definitely does not work properly in any TW version, so just ordering a stack to carry out a harassing movement will will result in excessive losses or even outright destruction of the stack.

But I have had epic battles on Rome 1 and Med 2, battles that lasted 30 minutes because I paused a lot and they involved a heavy amount of positioning or artillery shelling on sieges

I don't question the epicness of your battles, but.....a 30 min battle in RTW I would be a loooong battle (and I've had one or two RTW battles last that long) but that pales in comparison to a two hour battle in Shogun where you are fighting for your life against heavy odds (and the two hours does not include break time).

its not just about increasing the numbers ( specially because that would be extremely annoying in siege battles as I´m sure you already know ) but about increasing the numbers of units to take care of

While I applaud the effort at trying to find ways to improve the TW series, I do not believe increasing the number of units to control in battle necessarily achieves this goal. There are many facets to a TW game, and the battlefield is just one of those facets (albeit a very important part). But before you can engage the enemy you have to improve your infrastructure to be better at war; you must gather intelligence on what your enemies (and potential enemies) are up to; you must cultivate good leaders to govern your empire and lead your armies; if need be, you must forge alliances to form a unified front against a common enemy...etc,etc.....

Then there are the intangibles like a pleasing map (both campaign and battle) that draws you in and creates an immersion for the time period; inspiring music for battles, mood music for the campaign map; an easy-to-use (and intuitive) UI that allows the player flexibility and fluidness when interacting with all the game parts....

And besides....despite greatly enjoying those massive, time-consuming, epic battles....I have a great fondness for small unit engagements where there are only several units to each side. Here you must know exactly what your units are capable of, take every advantage the terrain offers, and be bold in your actions. There is no room for error as you do not have an excess of units to make up for a mistake. The consequences of losing one of these battles can be just as great as losing one where thousands of soldiers were involved...making a small unit engagement every bit as exciting as one involving many, many units.

[Sp4]

I don't question the epicness of your battles, but.....a 30 min battle in RTW I would be a loooong battle (and I've had one or two RTW battles last that long) but that pales in comparison to a two hour battle in Shogun where you are fighting for your life against heavy odds (and the two hours does not include break time).

You could get hours long battles in M2 but that was not really because of the odds but because of how long units would stay on the field and slug it out.

[ScamallDorcha]

About the horse archers I think that you could control several stacks of those by dividing each stack into 2 groups, one goes in front of the other, you go and harass the enemys´flank and then when they send cav against you you just retreat the first group behind the second group ( which is still firing at the enemy cav ) and repeat, its like you are only using 2 units so controlling 6 groups of horse archers would be 3 stacks, not that hard imo, and like I mentioned before I think that the skirmish function could be improved by having units react to enemy cav much sooner than enemy infantry.

And you know what? I´ve now changed my mind on the whole campaign thing, you guys have convinced me that taking it out would also take out a lot of the immersion that you feel when you fight a battle which, if you lost could cause you to loose several cities or maybe the whole campaign, but I´m just worried that seeing how bad CA dropped the ball with Rome 2 that expecting them to do something like what I suggested as well as a complex, rewarding and well done campaign with good mechanics at the same time would be too much, and they´d end up doing a mediocre job on both, but to be fair it was SEGA that had a lot to do with Rome 2 being so rushed and casualized, but I digress, I guess that having a campaign which allows you to take a step back and allow the AI to do most of the work while you just focus on the military strategy would be great, as long as you were allowed to make the managements decisions if you want to.

[easytarget]

When you lose your way on the vision thing the resulting game is often not fun to play. I don't see passion reflected in the game design of Rome 2 like I did in every aspect of Shogun 2. I think they've lost their way quite frankly and it remains to be seen whether they ever find their way back again. That's why indie games often feel fresher, less baggage, less design by committee.

That said, the act of creating something is harrowing at best, so my hats off to them for having the balls to toe the line and make stuff. It's damn easy to sit on the side lines and play arm chair quarterback.

If I was in their shoes right now, depending on what the money situation is looking like, I might be inclined to consider a few options:

1. Increase the odds of success by going smaller, CA appears to make a bit of a hash of it when they make big behemoth spanning games (witness Empire and Rome 2). Perhaps even consider putting out two at the same time, if they really do have 300 people working on this, which I find really hard to believe, but if they do, I might split them up and have them work on two different total wars with a closely staggered launch. Sort of a hedge your bets on the next project by doubling your odds.

2. Fix the warscape engine. One of the two fundamental elements of the game platform is broken. Scrap it or fix it.

3. Examine your own past works through the lens of Sid Meier looking for the game play components you've worked out in the past that played well and which just didn't work.

4. Play test your work using NDAs. There's no excuse for not beta testing given the community of free labor available.

5. Figure out the RPG piece of your works, this provides that extra spice, that additional hard to quantify magic that draws people into caring about their generals and agents.

6. Get back to the small details and a bit of a sense of humor. There are small touches in M2 and S2 all over the place that are missing in Rome 2, which is the poorer for it all around.

That's a start anyway, haha

[alQamar]

I already made up my mind when it comes to this topic. Basically before everything else I wish the most for a completely new and technological scaleable and modern engine, than the current Warscape is.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...Total-War-game