Arcade Mode

[Puzz3D]

I found out how to play the demo in arcade mode, and it's great! Fighting speed is no longer too fast, and you have lots of time to zoom in and watch the fighting or maneuver units. To turn on arcade mode edit preferences.txt, and set these three parameters to false:

MORALE:FALSE
FATIGUE:FALSE
LIMITED_AMMO:FALSE

[Tamur]

Cool! ... I think. You mean turning off Morale, Limited Ammo, and Fatigue makes the game run SLOWER?

[Puzz3D]

The units fight a lot longer, and you don't have all that chasing of routers over the red line. The elephants threw people all over, but eventually went amok and many elephants were killed. The Cartaginians still won the battle on medium difficulty. I think you could leave fatigue on and still get the longer fighting. You could also leave limited ammo on. It's morale and routing that is causing the quick resolution in the fighting.

I didn't try increasing the command rating on the generals, but you might get the same effect that way except if the general dies you will loose. I did try playing with the melee units boosted to experience 8 in a mod with larger units which does raise morale, but it didn't seem to raise it enough to lengthen the fighting enough for me. A flank hit by cav would still send a unit packing, and then all the other units would tend to rout very easily. If you want it to be over when the first unit routs, then leave morale on.

Turning off morale does reduce the effectiveness of flanking since you can't trigger the rout, but it introduces the tactic of using reserves to counterflank or plug holes in the line.

[Aelwyn]

So you think it needs a +2 morale or something similar like for VI?

[Orda Khan]

Did you try it with just morale turned off? It sounds interesting, I don't think the battle as it is lasts long enough for fatigue to be much of an issue.
I'll give this a try because, to be honest, I don't think you have time as it is to appreciate the battle

.....Orda

[Puzz3D]

I don't know what it needs, but, if you don't like the out of control feeling of the demo and quick battle resolution, you can get a lot of control back by turning off the morale feature. With morale off, the player who keeps units in reserve will have an advantage over players who commit everything at once because you can fix his units with fewer units, and then use your reserve to go around and come in from behind. The battleline will be stable for a longer time which will allow you to control quite a few reserve units. Units that attack from behind and from the side get a combat advantage in STW and MTW, and I expect that's still in the battle engine. As in MTW at high florins, the gameplay will shift from one of establishing a quick local superiority to one of outmaneuvering the opponent with reserves after the main battlelines meet.

I was actually being sarcastic when I said arcade mode was great because I thought the game was supposed to play better with all the features turned on, but the fighting was more intense and you do have more time to look around and issue orders. I think it would be unfortunate if turning morale off made RTW play better because morale is one of the main features of the engine, but I'm not going cling to the old style gameplay if it doesn't play well. If it has to go to get a playable game in multiplayer, it has to go. I remember the guys who got to try the beta saying the battles were more exciting and tense in arcade mode.

As far as VI goes, it didn't need +2 morale. There were only certain units that needed +2 morale such as spears. However, what we got was a blanket +2 morale, and most players responded to that by lower the standard florins from 15k to 10k to erase the +2 morale.

[Aelwyn]

As far as VI goes, it didn't need +2 morale. There were only certain units that needed +2 morale such as spears. However, what we got was a blanket +2 morale, and most players responded to that by lower the standard florins from 15k to 10k to erase the +2 morale.

Yeah was just a comparison.

I agree, if turning off morale helps, then fine. I assume its just a boost as before, not completely an absence of morale. We don't want men fighting to the last man, just standing up to fight until they are truely beaten. Routing on impact...or few seconds after...is one of those annoying things that needs to go away.

I wondered if we just weren't keeping our flanks/rears protected and close together, but this wasn't the case when I set up a formation against that large rock formation to the left of the hill. I protected one flank with the rock barrier, and protected the other flank (of a front wall of Poeini Inf) with the merc infantry. They did hold better this way, which was good. But there was still a problem imo.

So its either the morale for these units isn't high enough, or the combat bonuses are too high. Lets hope its not the second one, Kocmoc would have a fit over it.

[Cloudkill]

Personally, I think arcade mode is a bunch of BS. Not that I go in for that elitist "RTS games are for n00bs, real strategy gamers play Total War, I'm proud to have never let a friend talk me into playing an RTS like Warcraft!" (what a crock of shit that kind of talk is) but what makes Total War so great is indeed that it truly accurately simulates real battles like no game ever has come close to doing! For that matter, I don't think the battles go too fast; they simply gave us (the Carthaginians) a massive experience/weapon&armor bonus because they want the player to win the demo battle (at least on medium difficulty).