Feature requests - what's missing from Total War?

[GambleFish]

6. Oh and, yes i realise alot of people play multiplayer but this isn't Call of Duty and the majority of players prefer singleplayer, even within the multiplayer crowd... they enjoyed RTW just as much without all the fancy clan stuff.

Speak for yourself. You have no data on what "the majority want," so don't make up facts just because you don't like the multiplayer features.

If anything, I think they should have more MP support, and a lot more stress-testing and bug hunting before release. Not because I purport to speak for the entire TW community, but because I personally didn't like the troubles associated with it that still cause problems. (I did very much enjoy the MP approach, despite it's flaws).

[helmersen]

I would LOVE to have the HOTSEAT feature from Medieval II Total War: Kingdoms back! Why? Well, as my online capabilities are limitied, I dont play much online. I have friends over very often, tho, and we just love playing it together. Hotseat is perfect in that way. Playing hotseat, that's what's keeping Kingdoms alive for me, and that single function is the reason why a lot of my friends bought the game; so they could play campaigns with their friends, offline and in the same room. Many will say "But now you have the onlien campaign!" Yes, we do. But not everyone has super computers, not everyone's got awesome internet connection, and therefore, hotseat is a super feauture when it comes to having fun with friends. I would LOVE to have this feature back, and I hated that it ended in Kingdoms and wasnt part of either Empire, Napoleon, or Shogun II.

[GambleFish]

I would LOVE to have the HOTSEAT feature from Medieval II Total War: Kingdoms back! Why? Well, as my online capabilities are limitied, I dont play much online. I have friends over very often, tho, and we just love playing it together. Hotseat is perfect in that way. Playing hotseat, that's what's keeping Kingdoms alive for me, and that single function is the reason why a lot of my friends bought the game; so they could play campaigns with their friends, offline and in the same room. Many will say "But now you have the onlien campaign!" Yes, we do. But not everyone has super computers, not everyone's got awesome internet connection, and therefore, hotseat is a super feauture when it comes to having fun with friends. I would LOVE to have this feature back, and I hated that it ended in Kingdoms and wasnt part of either Empire, Napoleon, or Shogun II.

I used to email games back and forth with my friends while I was at college. We'd all take turns playing the same game for 10 or 15 turns and trying to undo all the crazy stuff the guy before had done, like putting all our Egyptian armies onto boats and taking 15 turns to ship them all to norway XD.

I would like to see hotseat games, though. Played them all the time for civ 4.

[Dominicvs]

As I said in a previous post, one can already play with up to 80 units per army easily. They just have to change the UI to allow that many units. Most people can play fine without the UI though...

You idea of a chain of command does sound interesting though!

Ever played Histwar Les Grognards: http://www.histwar.com/

It uses a 100% historical chain of command system

[|Quintus Sertorius|]

Ever played Histwar Les Grognards: http://www.histwar.com/

It uses a 100% historical chain of command system

I've played the first demo when it came out. I really disliked the game

[Tomesli]

Hi CraigTW

Thanks for making this thread and I hope my contribution will help in improving your games

- Edicts. they will be like the global bonuses for shogun 2 but you can issue specific edicts for different effects.

- Coastal battles where lands units can be assisted by nearby naval units.

-I like the idea behind decreasing unit detail as you zoom away. It increases the spriting distance and makes battle animations visible from a greater distance than past games.
I understand performance is the main thing but the unit degradation shouldn't be so severe and the changes in LOD are too noticeable.

- Seiges where the wholes castle interior is the battle map. The seiges in recent games have left out a lot of the good features from the past such as laddders, seiges towers and battering rams.
The initial stage of seiging (breaking down the walls, capturing the walls) if those seiges dynamics are not possible to implement then I don't think substituting them for grappling hooks or wall climbing is necessary.

I'd prefer to not have to capture walls altogether if that is the case. What I'd like to see is what you could do in Napoleon - Destroy the walls outside of battle, on the campaign map.
but instead, once the seige starts, you are inside the castle, the battle is the entire castle interior as the whole map - a large urban space with buildings to occupy, walls to take cover behind etc.

- Make conquering regions more of a challenge. Right now I can walk up to an undefended settle with half a stack, auto resolve and I own all of france. I'd like to see region control represented in percentages where you have to capture gradually every town, resource and industrial centre, all with their own auto garrisons and unique battle maps and features.

- Please don't limit features to multiplayer only in future releases.

-Unit history tab. Something that records all the events of a single unit, achievements, number of kills etc.

-geographical differences in terrain. Playing as the mongols in medieval 2, my archer army was more effective in the mountainous terrain in the east. When I arrived at flatter terrain in the west battles were slightly more challenging without the height advantages. This sort of thing forced me to diversify my tactics as my army was now 'out of it's comfort zone'

-Clan destruction - it shouldn't be so easy! In shogun 2 I can wipe out numerous clans in a single turn if I take their only provinces.
Even if they have 100 full stacks, capturing that last settlement erases the entire faction.
To prevent this constant 'dropping like flies' effect maybe a clans destruction could be depedant on whether their faction leader has been killed/captured?
perhaps armys could 'tactically' retreat to an allied clans regions before making a comeback?


Thanks for reading

[Sir Nicholas Altman]

I would like to see in MPC Play as AI feature back as an option (in a tick box). It is present in ETW and NTW MPCs but it has been removed from SH2 MPC. Its a real MPC killer cause you can't play as AI army and check the advancing foe with an AI army. It was the best thing for hardcore MPC players. It was an option for those who want to play like that. I wrote about that in this thread:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=453373

Also I pm Dave about this. We will see what will turn out. SH2 MPC for now is ruined for me.

And in the future MPC for maybe 3-4 players. That would be awesome.

Cancel military access in diplomacy options. So you ask another country to cancel to another country military access.

And Rome 2!

CA fan forever!

Nick

[Sevasti]

Expanded diplomatic options. There needs to be more ways to interact with other factions besides trade or war.

[Kyias]

Some of my wish list is what some other people want: Unique castles and opening up the campaign map to a more "epic" level like older titles.

Some personal flare things I would love however:

-Empire and Napoleon ability to rename my units. I loved this feature in the past set and was slightly down that it didn't carry over. I loved the personal touches we could make with our units in that way.

-Expansion of Avatar campaign. By this I mean making it more meaningful in Multi-player and pushing some of those features into the single player. It would be cool to be able to CREATE your own general avatar alongside the normal general methods, with the ability to customize parts about him. I would say the same be true of very high ranking veterans through the campaign.

-"off map" support. Say I'm besieging a city built right on the coast, and I have a navy within the reinforcement radius. It would be cool if it then gave me 1-2 cannon barrages as an "off map support" ability to show that me having control of the waters meant something for my land campaign and lack of control of the waters hurt me.


These are my big 3

[Luminous Smurf]

Hello,

I'd like to see more quantity and variance with regard to character traits, at the moment i feel they are somewhat few in number and generals/agents are not as unique or as memorable as they could be.

I'd like to see the return of bald, flatulent, tightfisted, mad, obsessed, bloodthirsty, raving, randy, noble, just, envious, disloyal, loyal, hairy, incompetent etc, generals and agents, i'd love names acquired from traits to make a return too, for example, Carlos the mad, Robert the just, or even Craig the magnificent!

This is just my opinion of course, but since you give me the opportunity to say what i feel is missing, then thats my small contribution to the thread.

edit* almost forgot, would really love villages, towns and cities to make a comeback

[Graphic]

What I want is all the stuff that were in previous Total War games that were taken out.

• Customizable tax rates for each town. Just make the faction-wide rates an option for people who want a simpler game.
• Demand surrender of besieged units.
• Diplomatic option to trade provinces and techs
• On-map research buildings and the "gentleman" (or whatever the equivalent of the era and setting is) unit to go with it.
• Interception outside of naval invasions
• Ransoming/executing/releasing captured routing units
• The mercenary system from the pre-warscape games.
• Additional ratings for characters. Chivalry, dread, acumen, piety, etc.
• Dueling (why this wasn't included in a game about samurai is beyond my comprehension)
• The old archers and horse archers aiming. The gunpowder line of fire cone is just not suited to bows and arrows, especially now that height confers no range advantage to arrows.
• M2TW Kingdoms battle reinforcement system
• Admiral ships like in ETW and NTW (as opposed to putting a land general in a ship).
• Plagues and more national disasters (made Rome unpredictable)
• ABILITY TO MOD

I'll probably remember some more later on.

New stuff? I dunno, I'm too sleepy to think of anything groundbreaking in a moment. Generally I just want more and more campaign map depth.

[Tr0tskY]

You already know everyone wants modding tools. Get working on that before you start adding glitz and glamour to your next product.
The amount of "new content" and "new features" that could be worked in by the community alone would absolutely dwarf any paltry effort CA could make.
You know this already of course, we know this already, the modders especially know this already. I feel like we are all stuck in a mexican stand-off.

[Luminous Smurf]

You already know everyone wants modding tools. Get working on that before you start adding glitz and glamour to your next product.
The amount of "new content" and "new features" that could be worked in by the community alone would absolutely dwarf any paltry effort CA could make.
You know this already of course, we know this already, the modders especially know this already. I feel like we are all stuck in a mexican stand-off.

Haven't seen the good, the bad and the ugly in ages, great film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6x401CGAl8

[SPECTREtm]

Navie request incoming:

Much larger battles. The 10,000 man battles (at best) is just no longer that impressive. I want to see the 20 units limit broken, and by that I don't mean you guys just adding another 10 slots. No, at least 40 slots. However, the number of unit slots available should depend on the general leading the army. Thus making certain characters more interesting and important for your faction.

[Ecka65]

The ability to share a trade node. If two at peace factions / clans wish to trade with the same foreign port, they can. Amazingly it really happened and still does today. As it stands, if a human players want 'em they'll get 'em. This way the Ai might get some as well.

My suggestions after the S2TW experience:

- try not to seperate features and content between SP and MP. If it's in the game, let it be IN THE GAME
- either a LOT more field battles, or make siege battles that might be still fun after the 15th time
- finally, if you going to stick to the "DLC to add stuff" idea, actually start releasing it in bigger chunks earlier after release with "sneak peeks" of what's coming.
- functionality info available (like +1 to defence stat will decrease chance of suffering casualty by 4%..." and modding tools.

Due to the last three above not being in S2 I'd relegated the game to the shelf well before the patch, and then again shortly after the patch. The DLC was no incentive to "go again". Least value for money TW I've ever bought and the first one I actually bought on release day.

[cpdwane]

First of all I think the best setting for the next TW game, especially with the inclusion of Shogun 2 style naval battles, would be an Ancient Greece Total War. I believe however that in order to make a game like this (or in fact a game set in any Ancient or Medieval era,) the campaign system, in particular unit recruitment, needs reworking to make it more accurate to real life.

In ancient Greece, for example, almost all of the soldiers that fought for the City States were effectively militia, who could be relied on to fight for part of the year, but would expect to be able return to their homes and farms for the growing season in order to tend to their crops. They did not simply form into units like your game currently depicts them as doing, and then continue fighting for more or less the rest of their lives until they die.

So I think what you would need for an accurate Ancient Greek total War game would be a “levy system”; where at the start of each fighting season (which would start in the spring and last multiple turns, maybe 12 or 24 turns in a year) you would be able to call up bodies of troops by the hundred in each of your cities, which would then be split down by the game engine into units of variable size, rather then fixed units which are both unrealistic and inflexible. You can also adjust your unit sizes during a campaign, so that your army can be arranged into a few large units or many small units depending on the tactics you want to use (although a maximum of twenty units or so would probably still be required for the engine).

Your units would be set to disband after a certain number of turns (to represent the troops returning to their fields in the winter) but if you needed to keep them active for longer to execute sieges or the like, you could opt to keep them fighting over the winter but at much greater cost to their upkeep and potentially morale. When troops are disbanded they would return to the recruitment pool of the city they originally came from, so that they can be recruited next year, but if they don’t return because they have been killed or captured, the recruitment pool would obviously be depleted.

Certain units like mercenaries and maybe Spartans would of course be able to remain on active duty all year round.

I think another important element of a game like this would be the ability to form “leagues” out of the minor states around you, much like Athens did with the Delian league. Unlike protectorates, you would control these allied states tightly, in terms of being able to collect tithes from them and recruit troops and ships from them into your own force. However, they would still have some control over themselves, and if it looked like things were going badly for you in your campaign they would very quickly turf out your governmental officials and declare themselves fully independent of you, perhaps joining your enemies’ league instead.

[Lord Baal]

How is that I missed this post? Darn work and real life!!!!
Keeping it on topic. Craig I'm very pleased to see a thread like this one! Thanks a lot! I really hope both Creative Assembly and your loyal fans get a huge benefit of this.

Now, with the task at hand... where I putted... oh here! Look, I know this is kind of a insane long arse petition, and I don't know if you will have the will to read it, also I made it some time ago but I'm no sure if you read it or not, any way I made a resume about it at the end, if any one have 20 minutes to spare I really suggest you to read the whole thing.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Hi to every one that takes the time to read this, I thank you in advance for the reading and also for any possibly input on this subject as long is constructive.

It has come to my attention how is that many post/wishes invariably goes for the more "realism" subject, but at the same time they want more "variety", while keeping it as historical accurate as possible, some of the following ideas could have some effect on that and I think they strike the best balance between them.

I know before hand that more of the things I will mention are far beyond of what would happen, but if you, my dear reader comes with a open mind and for a strike of luck any CA employee see this then I can hope some of the ideas exposed here could be at least considered. Other things are basic and vital to the survival of the game and should be addressed and resolved even after launching any new game.

AI
I will start with the artificial intelligence of the game. This has brought a lot of conflict in the past and even when individual thoughts do vary to a certain degree, ranging from outright bad, passing from acceptable up to good, the most broad and public accepted consensus is that the AI is bad, or at least is not as good as it should be. So I will elaborate in this issue a little bit.

The Battle Artificial Intelligence

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For the battle AI, certain errors like the ones in the sieges, some ineptitude in battle like not flanking and other issues have been pointed out a lot and do are a really pain. They seem to be far beyond a pathfinding issue so unless I'm mistaken and there are not other variables in this matter, they are 100% fault of a flawed battle AI.

However I also have see the BAI perform some basic good moves, and even go beyond and pull out brilliant moves out of the blue from time to time, so the BAI remains a mystery to me. Some times it works, some other's it don't. Now I'll grant to CA and Sega that making any kind of AI is not piece of cake, even more when the it's suppose to command troops, a activity that demands cunning and skills that even not every human posses, but I can't keep myself to wander about how is this BAI made? Maybe they are trying to make it too smart/complex, when "basically" all that is "needed" for a siege army is to rush forward on the most defenseless point on the walls? The other possibility is that they haven't make it complex enough, but that's does not seem like the case, as if that where so, all the enemy units will rush to attack you all the times, in all battles, so we can rule this out. In either case the battle AI needs a lot of improvement or even a rework from 0 in order to offer a better challenge and be able to find it's path in any map..

And taking the opportunity I'm at this issue I will point out one of my wishes:

- The BAI should behave according to it's leading unit: A army with no real general but a captain would behave in more disarray than one with a full fledged general. A green general might rush the elite/reserve melee troops against you, and so on. I don't know if this has been tried out in the total war series beyond the moral and other stats bonuses granted for the skilled generals. I know this is a hard one, but it would be awesome if we start to really fear the higher ranked enemy generals, to the point of avoiding then in battle and trying harder to eliminate then trough agents and complots.

The Campaign Artificial Intelligence

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In this department I have no complains, but certainly other persons will have theirs and I will love to hear them. I fell the current CAI is up to a good challenge in the maneuvering of troops. As for the diplomatic side, well, it still happen the same thing like the BAI, some times is good, some times is not. Some of inconsistencies would be dealt better if the player had the option to force peace between two (or more) other factions. Still I think the current one is good, but its too prone to back stabbing the player and favor other AI factions. Maybe this is to create more resistance and in turn, increase the difficulty for the player but a little more impartial AI would be better in this department in my opinion, and the game should be made more challenging in other departments instead.

Battles
This is the feature most people is here for. If not, then we all be playing either the action packed counter strike or other FPS or pure strategy games like most Paradox ones. This is the most used feature of the game. Some people even only play custom battles and on line matches with out giving to much thinking about the campaign. They also represent the turning points in every campaign, so we can see its a important feature. Sega can see this, The Creative Assembly know this, so this is one of the best aspects of the game.

Battle Maps

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The battle maps are carefully elaborated and the battle mechanics of the game are given proper attention too. However there seems to be some things that did scape their attention or they didn't make for any reasons. This is what I consider they did not put and battle maps should have:

- Garrisonable buildings: They where present in Empire and Napoleon, but absent again in S2TW, even when some buildings like the Tenshu should be. In future releases of TW I will like to see their return.

- Garrisonable towers and gates: I don't like the idea of them shooting automatically only while they have some one near, neither I like the idea of capturing them so easily as standing at their foot. A permanent garrison of archers or soldiers should be assigned to towers on a castle, and the attacker should need to destroy them or at least kill it's occupants to stop them. And if he wants to use them, then it should use some of it's troops to do so. This should work like the cannons on Empire Total war. As for the gates, I don't think they should work like super market gates, opening for routing troops and your troops alike.

- Unique maps for every province's castle or customizable maps: For the campaign, since the online and custom battles having the same map is not so big deal. But for the campaign it kills a lot of the magic to besiege or defend the exact same castle on the exact same map in different provinces over and over again, with the only variation being the level on the castle. I would really like to have a different castle map to every province, with it's own terrain and castle design, the same for towns. If that's so, then I don't mind if I can or can't customize my castle/town on the battle map, as long they are different enough. Of course some castles would look very similar and that's pretty acceptable (this is even more forgiving when it comes to towns), but having the exact terrain for a lot of different provinces is not that appreciated. Other wise please make the battle maps (at least the town ones) customizable, putting a map editor when you make a zoom in the city ala Rome Total War, and from there order the construction of buildings, in this way one could order the construction from the campaign menu (with the game auto placing the structure) or you can zoom in the city and put the buildings where you want to.

- Show building on-progress in the battle map: If you are upgrading a building when a battle on it's in mediations start, the battle map should reflect this. A upgrading castle should have incomplete outer walls. It does not have to reflect the exact amount of progress on the upgrade, maybe only a single "work in progress" map for every level of every map can do. This can give a lot of more deep impression about the battle with relation on the campaign. This also could make some really fun battles with such obstacles.

- Mixed battles: This are suppose to be really rare, but a naval landing on a beach would be the most awesome battle ever. Can you imagine a battle that, after defeating the enemy navy you start download your troops? And maybe a enemy army would try to defend the port? I do, and it's pretty sweet.

This is pretty much all I have to say about battle maps, other than this they are brilliant and very well programed. I specially like how now every single mounted troop can dismount! Alas! A shame that's not possible in MTW2, it was however with some units in the original MTW, but only pre-battle. Other thing that I do love is the implementation of wild life on the maps. Last week I saw a family of deers on a battle in the Owari province and that was a really nice touch!

Battle Units

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

- Not everyone being a parkour-ninja master anymore, never again: I don't like every single unit scaling the walls of the fortress. In this department I'm not very well informed, but I believe not every wall of every castle was scalable. It would be more fun if just selected units, like the ninjas could go up a wall, take out silently the (small?) garrison of a gate and then open it for you. In any case I hope this is just a matter of the period when the current TW is placed, and not the norm from now on.

- Units being able to surrender: Both enemy and yours, if unit has really low morale, and there's a chance the enemy would accept a surrender, they should be able to do it.

- Reflect the unit equipment on the battle map: As one upgrade the armor and weapons of a unit in the campaign map, this should be reflected on the map at least sightly. This should happen in every total war game. Not only the most experienced and/or better equipped troops will have a tactical and practical advantage, they will be the most "eye candy" valued ones too. For more of this see the spoiler below Really different units?, in the Army topic on the Campaign Section below.

- Been able to capture and use enemy equipment on the battle map: and then keeping said equipment on the campaign map, pretty much like ships are now. This is specially important with stuff like cannons.

Battle mechanics

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

- The higher ground bonus for ranged units: It has come to my attention that the archers and other ranged units in general does not gain a range bonus in high terrain. I would like this back, of course it have not to be a overpowered bonus, just a sightly one would do.

- Units attacked from behind should turn and engage intermediately: unless they are already engaging a enemy unit. The turning could even be made automatically for the unit if is not carrying any other order, like some units auto charge sometimes.

- Being able to betray an ally or been betrayed on the battlefield by an ally, like in the first Medieval Total War. This will give back more tactical options and strategy considerations to the game.

- Capturing some enemy units that rout and all of those that surrender: if the faction and era context is appropriated, and then ask for a ransom, or even to join you on the battle field. Also, the surrendering units could be allowed to just leave the battlefield, or even join you, giving the leading general of the battle more piety perahps?

- More deployable defenses on battle maps: Maybe no only for defender the but also for the besieging and field attacking army?

Campaign
This is for me the jewel of the crown of every singe TW game up today. I love to make strategic decisions, recruit, mobilize and engage enemy troops. However, in my opinion the lack of options and mechanisms that could add more deep, strategy features seems really bad. So here it is:

Campaign map

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

- A bigger, global map: I will not criticize the size of the maps because that really depends on the scope of the game. However I do would like to see a global map some day, Empire Total War almost did it, but well, that's only my opinion/taste.

- Allow renaming objects: like units, towns and even armies now! Like Empire and Napoleon use to! I don't know why you take out this from the game.

That's all I can think about it for now, the 3d, beautiful, fully 360° spinning maps are already done!
All the following points are represented to some or fully extent on the campaign map, but since they don't necessarily affect or change this map I will put them under other categories.

Campaign mechanics

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

- Optional 2, 4, 6 or 12 turns per year natively supported in the game: This and the balancing of the income and turns to build and recruit should be natively supported from the game options menu. Is a lot easier for the developer to do this than to modders and gives the player more options without need of modding.

- Having truly civil wars and delegation of power: By delegation of power I mean like the auto management feature in the recruitment and building like the one we already saw in Total War. But I want it to go even further, and assign a governor to every province. This AI will be in charge of buildings and recruitment. If allowed, it also will manage the movement of the garrison (yeah, the one you can't control) in behalf of the defense of it's province (being a nice way to deal with raider forces, you won't have to send your own huge stacks to hunt down a couple of calvary units). But be aware, letting the lace too loose will inflate the egos of the governors if they aren't honorable mans, so a real civil war might erupt in your nation/clan/lands/empire if one of your governors rise with much power, so some of the other governors would align with you, some others will rebel too. Or two province that have each other could go to war (exclusively with each other) and you could interdict the conflict, take a side or the other or just watch. I know that vassals sound pretty much like this, but I don't mean this lands to be other faction, but one of yours, so if you suspect about a governor you could put him out of office, or put a garrison of your own, permanent troops on the city to suppress the local power, having full control of the province, unlike with vassals.

Cities and towns

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

- Bring back the individual tax levels for every city: I think this one is pretty simple, and like some one else said, you could still use a global marker to make it easy on the people that do like the global tax rate.

- Allow the moving of the capital: this one is pretty selfs explanatory.

- A better application of population mechanics: Every total war game takes place in a Geo-historical place where caste, feudal and economic reasons split the people in very well defined population classes. Generally it will be slaves, commoners(peasants, merchants, artisans and basic foot soldiers), warriors (land owners, military elite) and nobility and/or the royal family (this putting aside the religious folks that depending on the context where between the commoner and the warriors or the warrior and the nobility). A relation between the numbers of every kind of population should be keep, or unhappiness, unrest and full revolts could occur!

- A combination between the old and the new building system: Being able to build several buildings at the time seems to be a logical possibility, I mean, it's a city after all, not every one work in the very same thing at the very same time, one thing after another. To balance this, the construction should be capped by the labor available on the city. I. E. a city of 10K habitants have a hand labor available for building of 1000. Building a barrack would need 300 workers for x turns, and a cathedral would need at least 600 for other x turns, that leaves you with only 100 workers, so you are allowed to build things that need that many labor or below. Or maybe one could start another building, lets say city walls, that do require more than 100 workers, but until more workers are available, (either when the barracks or the cathedral are finished, by acquiring slaves or simply by population growth) the walls will take a lot longer to be finished.

- Some buildings requiring labor: Some buildings should permanently require labor, for example the "farm building" should be very labor demanding. In the past example, of the 10K people, assuming at least 8000 lower class individuals, maybe 2000 of them would be needed for farming. 1000 should be needed to gov buildings like armories and the sort, and the rest would pursuit their own economic interests, causing more income in the form of commerce taxing, etc.. When recruiting you could choose which kind of population to drain first. See the army part.

- Don't restrict the number of buildings every province could have: if there is the will, the money and the materials, why not build it? Restricting the number of buildings a province can bare seems like a forced way to provide strategic decisions.

- Every town/special building in the province can be garrisoned: Again, like in ETW. Ports and other important towns and things could be protected better. For controlling this, there could be a cap on how many units can be garrisoned like in the castles on the original MTW that you can increase by investing on the town it self. I.e. a coastal town could have a "army camp" or garrison building besides the normal port buildings, and as you upgrade it along with the port you can have more and more troops defending it and why not, even have better defenses, walls, cannons, towers etc.. For further balance of this, developing the garrison capacity on a town can have negative effects, like if one militarize to much a port the income of it could be lower than that of a more civil one.

- Every town/special building in the province can be captured individually: This is specially true with the ports. If you only have a navy you can block the port. If you have a army transported on the navy, you can capture that port prior invading the province, and then you could have access to reinforces and supplies (more of this one below) trough sea. The other "villages" on the province can be occupied/sacked too for supplies and other resources and/or just deny them to the enemy. They should remain like propriety of the invader as long there's enough troops in there to quench the discontent.

- Give me back the chance to look at MY cities: again like in Rome Total War. This has been missing since then and even when it does not add to much to gameplay it was made 101% of awesomeness and badassery!! Back then I believed that CA was made by the best world's programmers and artists!

Army mechanics

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

- Simultaneous movement: in one's turn one should be able to only command were the armies should go, this is, instruct the orders to your generals, and when the end of turn button is clicked every army, human and AI alike, start to move. Then when armies intercept and/or ambushes each other, battles are fought, and when armies reach a enemy city sieges are started and/or assaults are made. This will avoid having to use the zone of control of the armies and the bottleneck filled campaign map to balance the maneuvering of human and AI armies, also it adds maneuvering armies as a better strategic challenge. Having a general that forces your armies to march faster is more important now for example, taking gain of a bridge or other natural bottleneck, by getting there before the enemy will get a new meaning too. This, as many if not all of my ideas should be optional and able-disabled from the game options menu.

- Change the max size of armies and its caps: Please, more than 20 unit cards per battle as well traits on generals should increase or decrease the amount of units they can bare on their stacks. On the other side, a army without a general should not be allowed to have more than let's say 3 or 4 units, even less. BUT smaller armies could have less chances of being intercepted or ambushed by bigger ones and should have some advantages over movement and sight. This theoretically could led to relative small forces causing havoc, raiding undefended ports, farms and the like. With this mechanics you can have a main army marching towards the enemy while a small scout force could go ahead and scout for ambushes (or triggering them and escaping if possible). Also some logistics tech could increase the max size of the armies.

- Supply system for armies: The addition of the attrition on the game is a very nice improvement. However the fact that in theory an army can stand on the middle of enemy territory for years if it's left undisturbed without any penalty beyond losing few mens every winter is disturbing, and is a big set back for the strategy part of the game. Implementing a supply system, along with better maneuvering, having to plan ahead a route for movement of troops and potentially supplies too would give a heck of fun! Both making them and disrupting them. Supplies should be delivered like the trade routes both by land and sea, that follow the army as soon it comes out of your territory, coming from the nearest controlled port and/or town big enough to support the army, in the land they could naturally follow the preexistent roads. The supplies bar/counter of the units in the army would remain filled as long the army is still connected to the supply route. This supply routes should cost money, the longer they are, the more they add to the of the basic upkeep of the units in the army and when the army goes back to your territory their upkeep should go back to normal again. Raiding this routes with land or naval forces depending on the case should cause the army to stop receiving supplies (Imagine you can stop a siege by raiding supply routes for a couple of turns with a small, horse mounted force?). In the event the army is effectively separated from it's supply route it's supplies bar/counter should drop very rapidly, maybe in 1, 2 or 3 turns tops. An army without supplies could have a rapid drop in moral, effectiveness and will, it could have soldiers routing from the units and even whole units disbanding in the campaign map if they can't forage, pillage and/or scavenge what they needs fast enough. The worst thing is that they might be more susceptible to bribery.

- Re-filling ranks in enemy provinces: As long as the army is supplied the casualties could be replaced at a slower phase perhaps?

- Campaign ammo counter to ranged units: This one should not be a problem as long the army receives supplies. Once that is not the case anymore, this ammo counter should be activated, in every following battle the ranged units that use arrows will start with less ammo (few arrows could be recovered/scavenged from the previous battles) and when the campaign counter reach 0 the archers start the battle totally depleted. For gun powder units the decrease should be even more drastic since is a lot harder to scavenge bullets. Perhaps a way around this could be a ancillary for the general like field bullet or fletcher workshop, that in turn, will make the upkeep of the general higher than normal or will require more supplies. Rock throwers units should not have this one since rocks are everywhere, unless they are in the desert...

- Speaking of desertion and all that, Rōnin and mercenaries in other games: should be recruited with the old mercenary system. I miss this a lot on S2TW, if it have it I don't find it anywhere beyond some dilemma thing... The number of Rōnin and mercenaries should increase as factions are eliminated and more troops routes (surviving) in battles.

- The recruitment of units should affect not only the population numbers but the balance of the types of populations: A spear militia should only need commoners, while a armored lancer could need commoners as retainers that does not appear in battle and land owners as the fighting dudes on the battlefield. In the case of commoners composed units, since the "buildings" required common labor (see Some buildings requiring labor in the Cities and Towns section) one should be able to put a priority on which population drain first when recruiting units, if you choose farmers the income would not be hindered immediately but on the long run food shortage would be a problem unless enough people moves back to the fields quickly enough. If you choose the other commoners (the city ones) then you will not touch the food production but will hinder the economics of the city immediately and maybe cause more unhappiness. Also the time it takes to "train units" should be a little tweaked.

- Really different units?: The difference of units should come from their stats and appearance as it is now, BUT this should apply even between two units of the same type, like two yari ashigaru units having differences, both practical and visual. This should be specially thanked in a game like the current in which units tends to look and be the same since its a civil war? This, as I stated on the battles section would help a lot. The faction, region and buildings available should determinate a lot in the initial appearance and stats of the units, like its just color and shape of armor and weapons.
Here its a edited, more deep analysis of the last two pints, that I made some days ago. Al thought all this would reflect on the battle map and maybe this point belong to the Battles section, the mechanics behind mostly involve the campaign, so here it is:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

NOTE: I'm using the 12 years per mod now, and also I'm a dreamer about the length of modding that could be applied, so some crazy arguments could come out from this:
I have been thinking about this... all samuari should be recruited in one two turns tops, because they are the land lords that have been training all their lives in use of weapons. They are "ever ready to fight", only waiting to be called upon service, and once recruited they should have some experience right of the bat, not that much but some, and even some extra according to the dojos present on the region they come from. And for the weapons and armor, as they buy it for themselves it should depend on the wealth of the land owner class on the region. A wealthy class in the region means that the samuaris (the land owners) are rich and can buy expensive armor and weapons. A poor region should have its samuaris with (relative) low quality armor and weapons.
On the other hand the ashigaru should need more turns to be conscripted, since they have to be gathered, and then trained (assuming they have not served before, they where just peasants before recruitment). So a mob of peasants will be ready in one turn. Yari ashigaru, being the most basic weapon should need one month or two, while yumi would need more months of practice, at least 4 I think (unless they where bow hunters), the teppo is even easier so two or one month would do it too. The speed of this can also be influenced by the population numbers on the region. The officers in province with excess of peasants should have no problem finding young people to fill in the ranks, maybe lessing the training time a month, while a scarce populated area will add a month or more to the training. Their experience should always be green as they really are green, having never used a weapon before. Their armor and weapons should be relative to the local weapon and armor smith (built by the player) since this is the "government one", that provides armor and weaponry to the conscripted troops, also the stats like melee damage and charging should be increased by the encampment building it's upgrades, but this would also add some months of training.
So if you want really light and cheap ashigarus, don't make either armory or encampments/barracks/etc on the province and recruit them in a really populated one, you will be filling stacks really soon, they will be fragile but faster to replenish too, so if you have the population to do so, what is stooping you?
Or the other way around, you could build professional ashigaru armies by making barracks and armories on the provinces you choose to, but they will be more expensive and slow to muster.
And not only the ashigaru would be slower to recruit in this system, but also more expensive, since you are the one paying for their equipment and upkeep, while the samurai would pay for most of their stuff and then only will require the upkeep while being mobilized.
All of this should also reflect on the units you see on the battlefield. Every unit should have a few models, like unarmored poor ashigaru, armored ashigaru, poor samurai, middle class samurai, rich samurai. And according to the status of the unit more models of one kind should appear in it on the battlefield. I.e. a samurai unit of 100 man recruited from a poor province would have like 80 poor samurai, 15 middle samurai and only 5 rich samurai. This would be only aesthetically since the unit stats would be given at the moment of recruitment, but it can help to differentiate and give even more variety to the units on the battlefield. Maybe as they progress in experience they would be able to buy/scavenge better armor and weapons, so they start to look better in the battlefield and have better stats? I don't know, I'm still dreaming.
This is pretty unbalanced and crazy right? A upside down kinda of world? Well even being faster and cheaper to recruit than the ashigaru, the samurai would not be as viable as the ashigaru, at least in the early game. See, all this is based on the fact that (two types or more of) populations can be added to provinces and then affected by recruitment, so their Aquiles talon would be the fact that you can't mobilize as many samurai as ashigaru.
You wont be able, let's say recruit 12K samurai's in a year and start seeding the terror on your enemies, since this unbalance on the population classes would lead to a revolt, unrest and less income from your provinces (no one is there controlling the peasants). This will cap the quantity of samurai on the battlefields with some true logic and not some arbitrary head count number.
In the end if you perceive that the immediate threat if gone, or that the troops at hand are not needed anymore then you disband them and they numbers go back to a town. Specially good if you are short of labor on the fields or nobles to run and control said fields.
As you progress over the sengoku era and more "tech advances" are made, you can research something like higher mobilization, or blurring the line between ashigaru and samurai (like it happened), so samurai units would require less land owner population and more peasant population (common folks with weapon skills). Keeping this trend (if one choose to) by the late game most armies would be composed of "samurai" units, but this samurai untis will not require so much land owner population, having a lot of the ashigaru filling in the ranks like the lower kind of samurais, so we can see a transition from the levy feudal peasant armies to more professional full time armies as it happen in the real Japan.

- A levy, or temporal units system: To represent some seasonal troops, like peasants units better, make them real cheap and fast to gather (even requiring 0 turns), but make then disband automatically at the end of x amount of turns, or at the arriving of x season.

- Better troop transport representation on the sea: Troops transported in navies should require transports, for this several propositions have been made. I propose any one of the two contained in the following spoiler:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The more simple way to go is to assign every ship a certain slot capacity, so i. e. a normal bune could carry 1 single unit, while a heavy bune could carry 3. In the end to transport a full stack you will need a whole navy, no more lonely koyaba transporting 10K soldiers. This solution is not very realistic in most cases, but can be a simple, yet interesting solution. On the other hand is a more fancy but complicated solution. You move an army to a port, and then select embark, buying/renting transports. Now a single ship would represent the fleet of the embarked army. This ship/fleet could be added to any navy stack (even a full one) and then escorted to its destination. In case of being intercepted the navy will fight, if the escorting navy looses, then the transport ship/fleet will try to flee for the nearest shore (having relative low movement points). Now, in the case this embarked army is intercepted without escorts or is intercepted after fleeing a battle, then it could either get auto destroyed or a battle with some random transports could occur. Ths transports would be lightly armored and armed, varying in size but all of them mostly being slow and cumbersome.

Agent

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

- Agent mechanics: This is more a matter of personal tastes, and how the fact that ninja building gives you money is really nonsensical... but here it comes anyway a analysis I made some time now:
Regarding the economic/ninja buildings, thats kind of weird, I think that because of the nature of the ninjas they should be accessible from researching "tech" only. I mean, a governor would in reality make a crime syndicate building and then say, hey criminals and other garbage, I made you a nice place to hang around, now go there, drink, pay us money and train ninjas ok???!! That's non sense, especially if doing that means that you are using the last spot of land EVER in the city, so you won't be able to build anything else.

I think that it should go as this:
1- You first "research the ninja", the time of this research actually represent the time the Daimyō takes to evaluate if he will allow or not the hiring/using of ninjas on behalf of his clan (Is not like you have to invent the jujitsu and then train them!). This should be a really quick research or perhaps a dilemma choice.

2- After you let the research concludes, meaning that the Daimyō has finally allowed the hiring of ninjas, you are able to hire them in some provinces based on the preexistence of the jujitsu academies and the distance to them. Or may be the public order (the lower the better), or some other variable. Or you can recruit them in all of the provinces after you "researched" them, but to prevent the hiring of ninjas in every where a rule should be used that only allows their recruitment in the first one, two or three cities they where hired, or a proportional number of the total provinces. I mean, lets say you have 5 provinces, when you finish the research, you would have the option of recruit a ninja in every single province, but when you recruit a ninja in any of those provinces then you can only keep recruit them from that one from now on. But if you have 10 provinces then it would allow you to hire them in the first two provinces instead of one, and so on.

3- When you finally hire the services of a ninja (or crime organization for another kind of agents) then the city where you hired it gets a special attribute or building, the crime syndicate or any other name that suits this porpoise. It does not matter if is a attribute like the ancillaries, or if is a more classic building, the main thing is that it should not cost you, it should not take one of the already scarce slots of the city and you shouldn't be able to directly control it's growth.

4- Then, the more you use the ninjas the more they go up like normal, but using them and hiring new ones also adds to the development of the crime syndicate of the city they come from. The increase of this "trait" or building on a city should not only means better ninjas, but also should have some other secondary effects like lowering the public order, or why not decreasing or increasing some of the income of the city. The only way to get rid of this should be trough "demolishing" the building or trait, effectively ending the illegal stuff on your cities, but then you loose the ability to hire ninjas from there, but this should cost money to do. Other less historical option is to make a Metsuke do that when you order him to enter a castle. In either of both cases the demolition should have a "chance" of not ending well, so the negative effects of the criminal dudes gets increased a few turns in which duration the probability of failing in trying to get rid of it again should increase.

In the end I will like to point out that some ideas are not my original creations, but more a recollection of opinions I have seen trough forums. Also I propose every one of them as options chosen from the gameplay options menu. I don't like forcing things on other persons.

Modding
This has made the TW series popular in the past. A more friendly and supportive attitude towards modding could help even further. Also, if by any chance CA or Sega feel threated by modders unlocking DLC or anything else then which better way to stop this than regulating it! Make some mod tools that allow people to mod the game, but at the same time protects the code and content you want to protect. That would be a bipartite solution! Modders would feel supported, and you will be secure.

Format of delivery and other stuff
The game should have hard copies, not be only steam. So people that like steam would happily buy it that way, people that want a hard copy of it would get that too.
Also, include a LAN battle and campaign option. Are you really that much afraid about piracy?!

DLC policy
- Please make them more juicy, you could charge higher if they really add new content to the game... But I know it's not your call, which bring me to the question, can't The Creative Assembly fly solo? Without the restrictions of it's current Publisher?? I think that sales would be the same if we take the name SEGA out of the equation....

Resume


I make this for the people that have no time to read all the painful wall of text I put on the spoiler. However, to better grasp the meaning of every point/suggestion I would recommend to read at least some of the points on it.

AI:
- BAI behaving according to leading unit experience.
- A little bit less backstabber CAI.


Battle:

Battle map:
- Make the garrisonable buildings come back.
- Make the towers and gates garrisonable for the first time. No more auto turrets ala team fortress and supermarket doors.
- Unique maps for every province's castle or customizable maps.
- Show building on-progress in the battle map. Nothing too fancy, just some half built walls and some construction equipment should suffice to create a even higher quality atmosphere.
- Mixed battles, real shore assaults over coastal towns and cities.

Battle units:
- Not everyone being a parkour-ninja master anymore, never again, pretty please?
- Reflect the unit equipment on the battle map. This way there will be a even higher unit variety, and it will not be just delicious eyecandy!
- Units being able to surrender (both enemy and yours).
- Been able to capture and use enemy equipment on the battle map, like ships.

Battle mechanics:
- The higher ground bonus for ranged units. I'm not a physics PHD, but I think that having the higher ground should give the ranged units a little bit more range, like it use to be.
- Units attacked from behind should turn and engage intermediately.
- Being able to betray an ally or been betrayed on the battlefield by an ally.
- Capturing some enemy units that rout and all of those that surrender (if the faction and era context is appropriated) and then ask for a ransom, or even to join you on the battle field.
- More deployable defenses on battle maps.


Campaign

Campaign Map:
- A bigger, global map. This is more a rant/petition than actually a suggestion, I know that games should have a limited scope, but you almost made it with Empire!!!
- Allow renaming objects like towns, units and even armies.

Campaign mechanics:
- Optional 2, 4, 6 or 12 turns per year natively supported in the game. I think this is a pretty elemental one and honestly I'm surprised you haven't implemented something along this lines yet.
- Having truly civil wars and delegation of power.

Cities and towns
- Bring back the individual tax levels for every city.
- Allow the moving of the capital.
- A better application of population mechanics. More close to Rome Total War, but having different kinds of population and well, just read the point below.
- A combination between the old and the new building system.
- Cities and building requiring labor, in order to really bring the population numbers to the strategic equation.
- Don't restrict the number of buildings every province could have.
- Every town/special building in the province can be garrisoned, like they used to be in Empire and Napoleon.
- Every town/special building in the province can be captured individually.
- Give me back the chance to look at MY cities. And if you don't want to make individual maps for every province, then give me the chance to customize my cities from here. (see the unique maps for every province's castle or customizable maps point)

Army mechanics
- Simultaneous movement of all the armies at the end of the turn. In this way intercepting and ambushing get a whole new meaning and we will loose some of the advantages over the AI, making the game more fun and challenging.
- Change the max size of armies and its caps. Having the max size of a army depending of the general stats and some logistical technology tree.
- Supply system for armies, this could give a whole new immersion level to the strategic map!
- Re-filling ranks in enemy provinces, as long the army is connected to it's supply route.
- Rōnin and mercenaries in other games should be recruited with the old mercenary system, and their availability should be directly proportional to the number of factions defeated, like it happen on real life.
- The recruitment of units should affect not only the population numbers but the balance of the types of populations. Implementing the different population mechanics will means that every kind of unit could need different kinds and numbers of population, affecting differently the population balance of the city they are recruited.
- The difference between the different units (professional or not) could be given by military training buildings on the province/city they are recruited, affecting not only theirs stats, but their train cost and time, their upkeep and their look on the battlefield.
- A levy, or temporal units system, working in conjunction with the point above.
- Better troop transport representation on the sea. This has been discussed several other times. It was OK right to Medieval 2, when sea battles where abstract too. Now that you have bring this awesome battles to the series, this issue needs to be tackle with a little bit more serious approach.

Agents
- A bit different agent mechanics, read the point in this because is too large to resume, also I made this point based on a criminal agent like the shinobi, other more official agents like emissaries should be recruited in regular buildings like they use to.

Moding
- Make some mod tools! For real! I understand that you may don't release them for the current game, but have them ready and release them as soon you release the next game. That would increase/revive the sales of the former one. And in this way you will be able to draw a clear line in what things are legal or not to mod, while making a lot of fans happy at the same time!

Format of delivery and other stuff
- The game should have a version that don't need steam or anything like that, just a old serial and good to go. Hell you can ship it with no steam multiplayer support and price it even higher! I'll buy it over the steam one any day of the week!
- Include a LAN battle and campaign option. Are you really that much afraid about piracy?!

DLC policy
- Please make them more juicy, you could charge higher if they really add new content to the game...

Those where my two sacks of Kokku about the TW to this date. Thanks again for reading to my crazy deliriums.

[Pharoah]

ALL PLAYABLE FACTIONS WITHOUT ANY DLC please

[AnthoniusII]

Mods, feel free to sticky this or move to a more appropriate forum

Hi guys,

As you know we've always listened to our community. Whether it be from the inclusion of naval battles, or in expanding the multiplayer functionality of our games - we've always taken community feedback seriously at the highest level.

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?

Please don't use this thread to complain about bugs - but feel free to be as specific as you like about features you're interested in.

Be imaginative, be honest and you never know, they might end up in an expansion or in the next major incarnation of Total War!

Craig

My friend if the next game will be from 3000BC to 1500AD please take care the Horses models. Horses are an essential feature in battles and can ruin an exelent work in animations or in riders (just like in SII) or give a boost in pleasure for battlemap battles. [MY humble request]
Also if CA's next game will be from 1st century BC to 12th century AC please add ship artilery (ballistas,catapults ,multi arrow ballistas etc).
The company has done a great work with ships with oars in ETW and SII so fully factional artilery would be a great feature.
Please add the "dismount" feature to the next game as it was one of the best features in the TW series.
If the next game will be from 300BC to 14th century AD please re introduse the tunel feature that existed in RTW.
In short the "treasure" of features you are looking for is already in CA's hands made by CA it's self.
Tunels
Cities that their upgrade will be not directly conected with their walls.
Agressive AI that will use ships in distand lands to invade.
Realistic naval battles
Realistic cities and castles apearence
Dismount feature ...
are some of your work that if combined they will create the ultimate battle simulator and strategy game.
The secret is that some of your companions should play previus TW games and deside as players what are the best of the features.
To make the ultimate game you don't have to re invate the weel.
You already did that. The TW game future is in your hands realisticaly.
EDIT: Please return to "open" maps as in RTW/M2TW and do not use narrow paths.
Give enough space in "mountain" areas to have mountain battles as in these games.
You have done a great job with the enviroment in the last games now give your customers all kind
of battles to enjoy them.

[Evan MF]

Dear Craig,

This is from a hardcore Multiplayer player's perspective who has played all the games since Shogun and began Multiplayer in Rome.

My wishes are based upon improvements rather than completely new features:

I think that battles in future need to have more scale. Being able to win a game seems to be more about micro-management tactics of forces than an overall strategy. In future (hopefully in Rome 2 Total War) I believe we should do away with small unit sizes and focus on balancing the game for large-scale epic battles. This'll give units more durability and thus give more time to execute an overall strategy. The speed of battles at the moment seems too fast, almost "arcadey" (especially in multiplayer) - the speed at which melee is over with and rate of units flee does not makes for much of an epic scale battle, but rather a hurried scramble and a rushed fight.

I am not saying that the Shogun 2 is not fun: its fun, but it doesn't feel like a proper battle-simulator at the moment; rather more like an "arcadey" fast tracked battle game perhaps akin to that of Starcraft II.

Here are a couple things that I believe need to be changed in order to make the game feel more like a battle for the player:

1. Rigidity of units: Mainly applies to infantry: Units need to retain more rigidity once they have engaged. In the current state, units seems to dissipate into a melee mess when they engage which makes it hard for users to visualise what's going on in the thick of the fight and in general where units are. For a player its a lot harder to feel involved in the battle if they cannot easily see what's going on.
The solution thus is to make units retain more shape when engaged so that they are more identifiable to the player.

2. Feeling of IMPACT: In recent total wars, notably Empire and Napoleon and to an extent in Shogun2, when units charge there really lacks a feeling of impact. Units almost "seep" into each other when they clash and the player doesn't really feel that impact on screen. In Rome and Medieval however you really saw units (especially cavalry) absolutely bury themselves when they charged. Cavalry charges in Shogun 2 do have more visual "impact" that we saw in Empire and Napoleon but it still remains lacking in infantry unit.
The solution would be to improve the animations seen on first impact between two charging units. Instead of the motion capture animations we should simply see the first row of each unit get absolutely descimated (depending on who has better charge skill etc...), the men on the front row don't have time to have an elabourate sword fight - they need to be diving in there and flailing wildly with their weapon. Get this feeling of impact right and many players will feel the adrenaline themselves.

Look at the first couple of seconds of these video clips for the type of impact that I'm talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPO6p2ijgFg#t=0m38s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwjuU48q6kE#t=5m03s

3. Melee Animations: In recent Total Wars motion capture has taken the main role of depicting the individual fighting between units. Although an impressive innovation, on its own it is lacking. As it is, two soldiers take a while to "line up" in order to commence a melee duel. After all that time that the motion capture prepares to opponents another soldier could have easily stabbed either of those two in a simple movement. The time lag that exists before two men match up also makes the elabourate duel seem pointless and causes loss of impact and spontaneity.
What really needs to be done is a combination of short animations (slashes and stabbs) that would supplement a majority of the fighting between the men and then in and around that the odd motion capture animation. This would make the fighting more spontaneous, have more impact and feel realistic.

4. Morale: This is quite isolated to Shogun 2 itself: the current morale system makes morale much to volatile. There is no longevity in battles once melee combat has ensued because units run and waver so fast. Mass route happens too often in this game and often feels out of control of the player to tame.
The solution really is to go back to a system more akin to that of Rome Total War which in my opinion got balanced correctly - units lasted
when they engaged even when fatigued but if constructed correctly a mass-route was still possible.

5. Scale and Formation: Small unit sizes should be done away with. Battle formation should become a more important aspect of battles - this is the "strategy" aspect I was refering to earlier - battles in history were large and in order for part of the army to be properly supported a suitable formation was necessary. In Total War its very easy for players to micro-manage units to anywhere on the field in a matter of seconds: their formations are meaningless as they can shape shift their armies in seconds.
In future larger units combined with perhaps slower movement speeds would make formation a much more central part of gameplay: players will win just as much because of their micro-management skills as their ability to form a long-standing strategy that they can successfully execute (formation being central to this).

Keep up the great work though. The multiplayer innovation in Shogun 2 is spectacular keep it up I look forward to more development of it in future Total Wars!

Evan MF