Feature requests - what's missing from Total War?

[alhoon]

I would prefer the current system: 1 turn/3months... and moddable for those that don't like it.

Army units: 24-28 in the army, but with more armies controllable like Kingdoms and more importantly, the ability to group some units and give them to the AI to play them.

[Lord Baal]

I would prefer the current system: 1 turn/3months... and moddable for those that don't like it.

Why can't we have the option natively???

It would make life easier to a lot of people, and it will be something simpler to implement. A simple global time value that divide the value of turns needed to everything and round it up in the case the result is not a integer value could do the trick.

[Deutschland]

Again and again... MODDING TOOLS!

[Chrysantheme]

please bring hotseats back.

[Inhuman One]

Focusing on a specific war just makes it boring to me, its why I didnt buy Napoleon and Alexander.

It might be better if they would make a short series of custom battles to represent such a war instead.

[Jingo Eugene]

Focusing on a specific war just makes it boring to me, its why I didnt buy Napoleon and Alexander.

It might be better if they would make a short series of custom battles to represent such a war instead.

Napoleon was actually six wars. Jus' sayin'.

[Antissa]

So I'm asking you what you'd most like to see in future Total War games or expansions. What features would you like that you feel are missing from the game?

Could you please bring back the traits & retinue system from RTW/M2TW?

[Hazbones]

Continuing this DISCUSSION

As I had mentioned about the Regional Specialties as introduced in TWS2...

In Shogun2 there were regional specialties but those were sort of a moot thing to me since you could just trade for the resources you need. I think CA can take Regional Specs a bit further by using the Region of Control (ROC) concept I was talking about in my previous posts and make the resources more valuable and give a REASON for the AI and players to aggressively pursue them.

You can have a resource represented on a map like "fertile fields" instead of making the entire region fertile as in TWS2. Players or AI can build a farming structure just near enough to the resource so that its ROC touches the resource on the map. Ok, now what? The way things are now, you get all the benefits of that structure just by building it. What if there was a way to "upgrade" or "increase production" of that structure more than just building another structure in a chain on top of each other?

This can be accomplished by agents.
Make the farming structure enable you to train recruits into farmers. You can read more about the recruiting system I had suggested in my previous posts. Build a unit of recruits (or whatever CA wants to call the "basic" untrained unit) and move them to the ROC of the farming structure. After the set number of turns passes the recruit unit will spawn a "farmer". This farmer agent can now move into the farming structure and give a boost to production the same as a gentleman would do for research when placed in a college. There will be only a set number of slots for agents for each structure of course but the cool thing is, you don't have to pile a bunch of farmers into the farming structure...

Other agents you can create with your recruit unit in the farm bldg ROC could be engineers. Once spawned, place an engineer into a farm bldg and then you can have the capability to build dikes or levees within that farm ROC. This boosts production of course without having to simply build another bldg on top of the old one.

Other possible agents to spawn from farming bldgs:
>Traders - allow production of markets and/or trade posts within the farm ROC. These in turn boost income and/or tax revenue. These can also "carry" food from a structure to another on the map (see my supply line idea) sort of like land-based "trade ships".
> Farm Merchants- basically an upgraded Trader that can build guilds or larger merchant buildings. A live Farm Merch must be present within a guild for it to function.
>Regional Specialty Unit "Land Owner" or "Plantation Owner", etc. - these can only be spawned if your farm bldg has a regional specialty like "fertile fields" within its ROC. These large bldgs give massive food and income boosts maybe even allow recruitment of troops like "slaves" or "peasant soldiers". There could even be a personal unit type that is bought and outfitted by the land owner himself to protect his property sort of like many of the companies that were raised and outfitted by land owners during the ACW. They can also be spawned like "Ronin" do in Shogun2. Personally I think it would be cool to have an ACW Total War and build a Plantation in South Carolina. After a few turns to my surprise I get offered the "Hampton Legion" from my building. I can choose to spend the money to get it or turn it down. This unit can only be built from Plantations in S.C since it was a personally raised unit historically. CA could sell it as DLC if they offered new models and accessories for the unit to be outfitted like create a mixed unit of cav and artillery something along the lines of what TROM has with the mixed pike and gun unit in that mod.

*Que the dream music... (flashback on the recruitment idea): as I talked about earlier, elite units are not just "recruited", all units start out as basic "recruits" and they have to be outfitted within the ROC of military structure you build on the campaign map. This would bring CA and SEGA closer to the normal idea of what DLC is supposed to be. Instead of making DLC out of a unit that any modder could whip up on their own, instead the DLC will be models and accessories/weapons or new formations of men that you can buy and make new units (IE: the Hampton Legion). The better you outfit your basic unit with the DLC packs, the better chance they have of dominating on the battlefield and "becoming" elite.

Ok, back to Specialties...

Don't you get tired of just using your ninja or other agents for just 1 or 2 purposes? You spend all that effort to train them up then when they are super-duper their purpose just seems boring to me because they are only good for one thing. With the feature I mentioned above, you can use your assassins or other agents to battle a whole multitude of other agent types or you can use them to procure (steal) from the buildings of the enemy, or you can just keep them at home to boost your own production. If you lose a farm agent as in this example, now you will REALLY feel it as the boost that the agent was giving to that structure is now gone and it will take time to spawn another agent and get them in to replace your loss. This goes way beyond the same old torching a building only to see the AI has completely rebuilt it in just 1 turn.

Now you will be waging war on a much more personal level (agent vs agent) and doing real damage to the enemy's war machine. Send an agent to attack the enemy agents and at the same time attack the military building where he will need to raise a "recruit" unit and now you just prolonged the damage your agent has been causing!

It also makes the you spend alot more time looking at that purdy campaign map that CA has put so much effort in to. Imagine seeing all the little structures you have built within that 1 farm bldg ROC... a farm, levee or dike around a pond, a trade post, a merch guild, and a Plantation all in a little micro-city within itself. Now army stacks have more than just a single structure or city target within a region. Now they go for your production machine instead!

This feature can also produce something like what another poster had mentioned about the creation of a true Medieval society. Now you can have the basic foundation of a class system to recruit units from instead of just building a single barracks and get a whole roster of units.

[Birdofilo]

- Give us the possibility to fight first-person battles, like in Mount and Blade. Instead of controling a soldier, give us the possibility to control a general. Most of the times, the general should stay on the top of the hill (with limited view from the battlefield), and he should be giving orders from there. To signal the orders, the general should use the same methods used in the past, such as rising flags and playing sounds with musical instruments. The general should also be able to receive advices from his captains about the best strategy to defeat the enemy. Finally, if the general is good in hand-to-hand combat, give us the possibility to control him in the middle of the battlefield, to kill some enemies.
- Bring back the reinforcement system from M2TW-Kingdoms.
- Bring back the city view from RTW.

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

About multiplayer, I read the back of my DVDCase and it sais "Craft, customize and upgrade your personal General and your army in a persistent online world where every victory counts".

Persistent? Really?

Let's be honest the new multiplayer system is fun, but, it SUCKS badly, technically, ladder is full of bugs, matchmaking is bad, connections to the game or steam are a coin toss, also I think there is no cheaterbuster system.

So how about stealthily making a multiplayer client like Blizzards, Bnet.

We won't tell them so they won't sue you!

Here is how it works:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=195273

CA could really learn a lot from these guys.

Just make it work . . .

[AngryTitusPullo]

Probably someone has mention it but I somehow miss the revolution feature in ETW. I wonder if Shogun 2 expansion (if there's any) can bring back this feature though instead of changing to republic, monarchies etc the option becomes available if the current Daimyo for example is weak and maybe the heir or any general that has the elusion of granduer trait for example if/when asked to commit seppuku decide to rebel instead. Player have the choice to either support the old daimyo or choose the rebel instead.

If the rebel is from non-family general and wins for example then maybe to option to change the clan name or even continue with the old clan name, choice is yours.

[jp1747]

What I enjoy most about Total War games is getting to play as so many different factions in different places across the span of history. The scope of the games is very important to me. As a result, I would like to see multiple starting positions and starting dates for each game, the way it was with the original Medieval. For instance, I would like to see a Total War game that covers the Victorian Era and the Scramble for Africa and includes African and Southeast/East Asian theatres of war. Several different starting dates and positions could cover different events of the period such as the American Civil War, the Crimean War, the Franco-Prussian War and other slightly earlier or later events. I would have liked to have seen on Empire, for example, a Grand Campaign dealing with earlier European settlement of the Americas and also a later one dealing with the War of 1812. I know that modding makes much of this possible because I play tons of mods to fill in the gaps, but I would love to see the basic game get back to this, especially if modding is going to become increasingly difficult.

[Humble Warrior]

Just make it work . . .

Apply to this the AI sieges and AI reinforcements which is still buggy. As I have recently discovered.

[Dwizzle]

I want most if not all clans to be unlocked in this

[daniu]

If you're serious about taking MP more seriously, I don't see another option than switching to dedicated servers.
Most complaints on the forums are about disconnects and cheats, and a server could prevent either.

[xploring]

16 pages already O_O Is CA going to read all this? Anyway here's my suggestions/wishlist. Not organized, some probably not feasible, just ideas.

Some of the most famous victories in history were achieved by moving quickly and surprisingly through harsh/improbable terrain under unlikely conditions(e.g. blizzard). Forced march with increase campaign movement, or through mountains(reduced movement, too predictable now), to launch surprise attack with heavy morale and fatigue and speed penalty would add a lot IMO. I was thinking as generals gain experience/trait, they could inspire men better to reduce the penalties, which could add another dimension to the skill tree/customization of generals.

More varied terrain for battlefield would make battles more interesting, and melee and range advantage restored for units on higher ground.

Introduction of natural factors affecting battles, like wind, fire, water, rocks. Wind more prevalent to affect arrows, direction of fires. Ability to set fire to forest and haystacks for detecting ambush, lure enemy with smoke, corner/demoralize enemies, clear battlefield, etc. Troop can build bridges across water crossings, with mechanism to collapse them too. Ability for troops to change battlefield terrain with minor fortications, floating bridges, rocks, barriers, burning of forest, blockading waterways with valves to flood enemies, or landslide/avalanche when opportunities present themselves. Disguise swamp and lead enemies to drown. Water sources to be fought for or poisoned. Crops to be fought for and harvested.

Camps with rations/weapons/supplies that can be guarded or used as lure on battlefield.

Much bigger morale, fatigue, speed penalties for troops in harsh terrains and seasons.

Reintroduce line of sight on battlefield so player can't see everything. Mountain, wall, forest, smoke, mist/rain, night, etc. work like they should.

Less and inaccurate intelligence being more prevalent with respect to troop numbers, quality and composition so players have to plan for contingency and be on their toes most of the time. Ability for agents to influence intelligence gathering, disclose false information to serve factions' aim, with respect to loyalty, health, military/economic prowess, resources, ....

Propose joint military campaigns... March undetected through enemy/allies' territories... Hire mercenaries, or units working undercover who can change sides to turn the tide during battles...

Oh, Amphibious warfare on same battlefield/map, so land and sea/river units can fight/reinforce/turn into each other
Weapons and horses discarded on battlefield can be used by anyone, even by untrained enemies.

Skill tree for dojo too? So troops produced at each one have special customizations, or would that be too tiring to keep track of...

[Lord Baal]

I like your ideas in general. The forced march and encampment thing are a must!

I think I'm gonna include some of it on my wall of doom. If an army is still on the campaign map but not on a city or fort, and gets attacked by another army, then the battle map should show a encampent near the side where the defending army is deployed. This could add flavor.

The general giving orders, I had an idea of voices commands like the ones on End War, that could suit to this. However I see somewhat difficult to make the flag bearers to make animations according to every kind of orders. But I think is doable, the general (at least in the context of Shogun) should start the battle (or most of them) dismounted, with some counselors in a table with some maps and whatnot. Its retainers could then have some random animation and sounds every time you order a unit to do something.

I however could swear that some sort of trumpets or instruments are already played when we are in battle, have to check that tough..

Regarding to generals I also think that some generals should be made a more fragile unit, not suitable to open combat. But as hi/her gains experience, a trait like "leading by example" could be unlocked and then it gets a bigger guards squad, turning it into some awesome fighting unit.

About the 16 pages, I think Craig Can condense this into a nice report. Or just deliver my edited wall of doom (that would be like 16 pages by it self )

[CraigTW]

16 pages already O_O Is CA going to read all this?

Yep, I'm keeping a report up-to-date

[KamilW]

Don't know if someone already mentioned this, but I know historical accuracy has always been an issue in TW games. You say TW games are historical. I say there's no way!

So my request, and I think many others would join, is overall historical accuracy. And to go even further, which is necessary. And please do not kill me now... Poland. Poland has always been one of the countries in TW that was terribly terribly neglected and overlooked. It seems like you give a lot more attention to Britain, France, Germany/Prussia and so on... Poland has never been historically accurate. It even came to this point that Poland was ridiculously represented in TW. Poland in Medieval II... I lack the words to describe it. In Empire it was even worse; there you just took some British/French models and painted them red and that was it, we have a Polish army. Poland has always been a black hole. I'm only speaking in terms of units/soldiers here because it's obviously very difficult to get everything and I mean everything right historically.

So please, focus more on other nations too. There are thousands of Polish TW fans. I think it's one of the biggest TW communities. Keep that in mind ! I love your games, to me the thing about Poland (as I play as them a lot) is a big big big downside.

[MiliadroPeacraft]

I personally think CA should hire or work in conjunction with the fine people here at Twc. If you want to make a really mind-blowing bestseller that is fun and Historical, that (to me) is the only way.

Here we have the most passionate people I have seen and they are passionate about "YOUR GAMES" so close collaberation would be a gesture of the highest caliber.
I know this Thread is about that in a minute way, but lets face it things like this is as far as it will go, I (if not others) feel dis-connected with CA. I remember a time where I could spend hours on a TW game, I know companies and games change (evolve) but trust me when I say this "this time it is not for the better". Regardless, If you keep the fine people here close and work in tanget I have no doubt the next TW will be an astounding succsess and will bring back the mind-blowing and unique experiance there is to be found playing the TW series.