Feature requests - what's missing from Total War?

[von stoker]

Each faction has a religious sub-faction which is not fully controllable by the player. Say, for every 3 provinces owned, 1 is a religious province.
In order to use this province to create units and expand buildings you must keep the religious leader happy (in a similar way to medieval 2 papal system). If you dont keep the religious leader happy you can have various complications like refusal to let the player create units in religious provinces, to religious units currently in the players army deserting, to civil war between church and state.
Also the player would have to pay tithes to the church each turn. The happier the religious leader is the less the tithes would cost.
As the player becomes more powerful (in terms of provinces conquered), so too does the church become more powerful and more demanding. So the player has to balance their expansion with catering to the church.

I think a system similar to this would help prevent steamrollering in later gameplay as the player cant just build and conquer once they become very powerful, but must pay money or perform inconvenient missions to keep the church happy, or pay the (probably dire) consequences.

Also i would like more randomness in each campaign played. ie each faction starts the game with different levels of aggressiveness, diplomacy aptitude, trading aptitude etc. and each time you start a new campaign, the computer randomly assigns various traits to each faction. this way you wont know for sure what your up against each time you start a new campaign.

keep up the good work guys. great games.

[Goudvinger]

The Roman Empire

[Jingo Eugene]

Supply lines,

Simply, the larger the army, the less far it can go without claiming supplies. Similar to trade routes, (both oversea and over land), they can be raided, and start at each city that you claim.

Oh, and Napoleon/Empire towns please. I missed that in S2.

[Zack-Stefy]

Mod tools!
and..something like M&B where you can control your "hero"
Just imagine , you control your army like in medieval 2/rome, and then jump into a soldier skin and kill enemies... And your soldier can get "character traits".Total War tried this with "Spartan Total Warrior"
Guys,do you want something like this?

[Riik]

I want to see hotseat come back (unless it didn't go away, and I'm missing something). I'm a shy person. In fact, I'm very shy. And for those reasons, I hate online multiplayer (unless it's a role play game with a large enough amount of space to do my own thing and make friends at a slow and acceptable pace... but... back on topic...) but multiplayer campaigns on TW are fun. I played a 2 player hotseat on MII with a friend when he came over to my uni accomodation, and it was great fun. And I'd love to be able to play S2 with my brother when I'm at home. But what I hated about MII hotseat was if you were attacked when it wasn't your turn, the battle autoresolves. That made me sad when one of my armies got killed because the odds were against it (despite the fact that it suited my own tactics well enough to give me the advantage in an actual battle). I'd love hotseat when you can complete any battle on the campaign map yourself, except when it involves fighting against another human (or other living being ) player. And maybe there should be something for when both players are attacking as allies. After all, if everyone's in the same house, they can co-ordinate the battle together, so both players' armies should be allowed to enter the battle under one general. Overfilling units should be left as reinforcements. Or, another option would be for the AI to control one of the faction armies if the players so choose.

[Hazbones]

I would like to see the pre-mentioned features and:

>Better reinforcement system allowing you to control your additional forces or choose not to (leave to AI).
>More than 20 units on a battle map for a single player
>Less emphasis on Multi player features. Never liked MP.
>Mod Tools or at least guidance to help in modding
>Moddable campaign and battle maps

My ideas...
>Intead of having established regions to conquer, have a "region of control" around your army stacks, agents or buildings like forts and watch towers or govt structures. The ROC allows the player to do certain things depending upon what the ROC is radiating from.
IE: Army stack ROC lets you build military structures or resource camps, siege, suppress population, recruit, etc.
IE: An Agent ROC allows you to build guilds, establish trade posts, incite the pop in the area, spy, etc.
IE: A Building ROC allows the player to build structures within the ROC not simply building in pre-determined slots on the map

*These would make replayability tremendous as no two campaigns would ever be the same (if you leave out the scripting)

Once a certain amount of area is "controlled" by your faction within a region's borders, you are considered the owner of the region. This would allow multi players to "own" parts of the same region and you can fight over possession of pieces of a region. Now there would be a real struggle to hold on to a river crossing, a specific resource, a mountain pass, or a trade route. Entire wars were fought over these things not just to own an area within established borders.

*This I think would solve the endless sieging syndrome many TW titles have. It makes you and the AI WANT to leave the towns to build defenses and capabilities out in the province and not within the town all the time since if the town is lost, you won't lose all the work you put into building the region.

For instance, the Germanians wanted to live "with" Roman civilization, not conquer the whole Empire. Some Native Americans wanted to assimilate into european culture, not wipe them out. Some people within a nation want to "carve out" a new area within a country to call their own, not defeat the nation they wanted to break away from.

Other ideas...
>Supply lines- can be a supply depot building like in NTW that emits a "Region of Supply" (ROS). Simply, if you are in the circle you get supplied, if not you don't. This makes supply depots historically correct as you needed a chain of them as an army moved on campaign and not 1 for the whole region. An enemy can destroy a depot and strangle your army who may be deep within enemy territory. This would bring the role and purpose of the cavalry raider back to TW games and stop "steamrolling" through territories without protecting your rear. You can build things within the ROS radius to improve supply or exploit resources IE: trade posts, trappers, trade guilds, roads, markets, etc.

>Communication Lines- can be structures like telegraph stations, railroad stations, rider posts, fire beacons, etc. with the same ROC system to "chain" them together. Maybe link the Fog of war to these structures. Everything within the Comm ROC is visible and everything not is hidden just like the old watch towers of MTW. You can build certain things within the Comm ROC radius to improve communications (upgrade structures).

>New Recruitment System- create status or classes of people that are all recruited for a particular purpose but all start out at the basic "peasant" or "recruit" level. Make it to where you have to train and equip this group of men/women into whatever purpose it was raised to serve. No more recruitment of "elite" units. Now you must DO something to be called "elite".

>Some structures allow you to "equip" units. Moving your recruits into the ROC of these building after a determined amount of turns will give your recruits the best level of equipment that bldg level has to offer (or let the player pick which equipment to give them).
>Some structures allow you to "train" units. Moving your recruits into the ROC of these bldgs will improve stats each turn up to the level the structure will allow.
>Some structures allow you to improve units through tech research. Put a recruited unit into the ROC of these bldgs allow you to increase stats of weapons or armor, gain "followers" which improve your leaders IE: retainers do in Shogun, or unlock other classes of recruits for you to use. IE: Place a military academy in your region then move a unit of recruits to the ROC of the academy. After a certain number of turns, you produce a General unit who "graduates" from the academy. You still have to equip and General as usual. Same could be done for a Hospital. Build one then move a recruit unit into its ROC. After a number of turns you "graduate" a doctor who you can now attach to your army as an agent for added bonuses.

*The types of agents and units is unlimited we could have in game

I could go on but this post is getting too long.

[Lord Baal]

I could go on but this post is getting too long.

Please make it so! Didn't you saw all the crazy stuff I putted back a few hours ago? Just uses spoilers bro.
Also I like your ideas! If not for Total War for any other game!

[igotballsofsteel]

Something that is missing that was included in old tw game ,when u conquer and wipe a faction u unlock them after for your next campaign ,i hate having to pay for something that was free in your old game ,get some units pack or add new faction i will gladly pay and support ,but this kind of unlocking faction dlc when u purchase it ... it leave a bad taste in your mouth .

[CtrlAltDe1337]

Thanks for making this thread, its nice to see CA involved in the community.

Things I'd like to see:


1) A more in-depth vassalage system. Shogun 2 made some big improvements, but I'd like to have more interaction, maybe being able to order them around, request them to attack some place, exchange troops, etc. Some of this should affect your diplomatic standing (if you bully them around or be nice).

You can expand this idea for a Medieval or Rome era game (would also work with Shogun's era maybe) by splitting up factions into the king (leader) and vassal sub-factions (nobles). For example, France in M2TW might have the Kingdom of France which controls Paris, then his individual dukes and counts control the rest of the country. You could make options allowing you to take over a vassal and assimilate them, or alternatively split off some territory and create a new vassal sub-faction. Politics and family relations should play a big role in this, as #2 is about.

Also, keep Shogun's system of bringing back dead factions as vassals, since that works really well and it is nice to create buffer states.




2) More in-depth family tree and/or politics system (depending on the era). For something like Medieval you'd have the focus on the family tree, while Empire's era is more about politics. But both apply. I found the family tree in M2TW to be rather stale; there was little interaction within my family or the family trees of other factions. I'd like to be able to see other faction's family trees and have more options for marrying into it and such. Instead of getting a random princess out of nowhere, why not be able to marry eligible daughters of other kingdoms? Also, you could have negotiations with individual faction members to try to bring them over to your side, make them less aggressive towards your faction, etc. You could promise them lordship over a certain province if they join up with you to take down their old kingdom.



3) The ability to rule multiple factions at once (personal union), or have your faction ruled by an AI king from another faction. For example, I am England and marry into Scotland's family tree, and my king becomes the rightful heir to the throne. Then, depending on my relations with them, Scotland may support the claim or put up another claimant and start a war. If I win, I rule over Scotland and England and have access to the separate faction's tech and buildings in their respective areas.

The same could be true for the AI; they could try to take your throne, then order your around. You could follow the orders or try to rebel and become independent. There are lots of possibilities here. Basically, add more depth to all the current game mechanics and add some new ones in.


4) Give us better mod tools; I wouldn't be playing M2TW still if not for the mods. I love Shogun 2 but there is so much modders could do to improve the game. Honestly DLC isn't a substitute. The current philosophy of no mod tools to keep people buying the DLC and the latest games may produce more sales in the short run, but people will figure out pretty quick that CA doesn't care about its gamers anymore and is becoming like Activision or EA. Just look at Valve, they produce quality games, and are loved for it. Their customers tell their friends about this great game company that does X Y and Z for its gamers and can't wait for their next product. I know, because I'm one of them. I feel like CA wants to do this, but isn't living up to the standard. Maybe Sega pressure? I dunno.

[bangell99]

Mod tools/moddability. Look at Rome/Medieval II; you guys provide a decent game and the modders will turn it into all sorts of amazing things for you.

[Hazbones]

Please make it so! Didn't you saw all the crazy stuff I putted back a few hours ago? Just uses spoilers bro.
Also I like your ideas! If not for Total War for any other game!

I am used to writting things for business executives to read and I learned that they only really "retain" the first and last paragraph of what you write then come back later when they are "less busy" and read the rest if what they read initially was interesting. I not, they only get the two paragraphs. LOL

I think I will let them digest the first ideas I posted and if Lusted or anyone else at CA wants to hear the rest of my ideas they can ask or wait for me to post them later.

Yeah, I will start using spoilers from now on. I almost owned page 6 of this thread.

[Rigby]

Hi , thanks first of all CA to make this thread and trying to listen to the community and i really hope some of these ideas we will see in an upcoming total war game .

Now to the points what i would like to see .

- I think many people already mentioned it and it should be a priority is a Map editor or modding tool for the community
- The graphics already good enough BUT my main complain is that once you zoom out you can hardly recognize the different units . I would rather see that CA would make maybe the units bigger or do something about the sprites . Maybe make the units simpler in appearance but more distinguished.

Now what is needed besides that for single player and multi player

Single player :

- Would like to see to have customized castles or defense structures and cities, especially how the walls are and so on. The player would need to have certain resources to build certain structures . You would need to aquire new blueprints through research or stealing or discovering new cities or castles to have knowledge to built new defense structures.

-I would like to see that it is possible to destroy any part of walls from castles and not only preset parts of walls . This would be similar like in the game Stronghold.

-I would like to see that i can split my unit in smaller units. This could be achieved that say for example a unit of yari ashigaru is 200 men strong , you would be paying when you recruit the unit for a full unit of 200 men . BUT each men in this unit is actually a single men . This actually would mean that every men in a unit is actually a single soldier and now and can fight any other opponent and also then there could be like 2 soldiers against 1 . Hope people can follow me what i mean with that.


Now for multi player

- have a fog of war in multi player , this is important because it forces the player to scout out you opponent.

- Deployment zones of your units should be further away , reason being is to have more room for strategic maneuver. This would lead to bigger MP maps

- Maybe CA should take a look at Starcraft2 and their battlenet service to get some ideas for ladder and how to make MP more attractive. I think a lot of people here really like to get competitive and like the challenge of a human opponent .


Now on another side note i would like to see CA holding some competitions , be it like modding competitions or holding tournaments with prizes or having like drawing or picture competitions . This would help to get closer with the community.


Oh and last but the most important thing what is needed is for a future total war game is an open beta witch would last for like 3-6 months (especially for multi player) This would help CA to find bugs and faults in the game . Make it that you have to download a program to send information to CA what kind of system you running so that CA can get more info what most gamers they game playing on . It would also help to create a good hype for the game .

[Lord Baal]

Oh and last but the most important thing what is needed is for a future total war game is an open beta witch would last for like 3-6 months (especially for multi player) This would help CA to find bugs and faults in the game . Make it that you have to download a program to send information to CA what kind of system you running so that CA can get more info what most gamers they game playing on . It would also help to create a good hype for the game .

Brilliant I must say, I'll rep you latter bro!

[Michel ney.v2]

BLOOD AND GORE ill make the game so much more realistic and awesome, think about it whats more crushing than seeing ur whole army dead and slaughtered across the feild, thats what defeat looks like MAKE IT POSSIBLE PLEASE! -Shane

[Jingo Eugene]

BLOOD AND GORE ill make the game so much more realistic and awesome, think about it whats more crushing than seeing ur whole army dead and slaughtered across the feild, thats what defeat looks like MAKE IT POSSIBLE PLEASE! -Shane

To quote Ca time and time again...

No blood.

[Lord Baal]

But what if they made this feature like it is on counter strike or other games. The parent (how are the ones responsible for actually buying the game for their teeneagers, so they should not have the rights to complain about violent video games, EVER) should be able to lock out the content with a simple key. Mean while mature people could enjoy/terrorize with the carnage! That would a bipartite solution.

[Dodanodo]

thank you for listing to us Craig, it's really appreciated.

- I support the plea for modsupport. if you (CA) are the gods of total war, then the modders are the demigods. don't let your children down CA, let them mod!
- please please please, whatever the next game is, keep the map zoomed in. a scale similair to the Italy and Egypt campaigns in Napoleon is perfect for any game, even if it is all of Europe. it allows you to add in allot of minor factions and areas that played important roles, but couldn't be added because the scale is to big. also it makes it more realistic. lots of provinces and cities. one cant conquer France by just taking Paris.
- make things like missions and random events more interresting and more usefull. also, try to addapt the missions to the players style, or use them to stimulate the player into making the experience more epic.
- add coastal cities, and represent them correctly on the battle- and campaignmap. ALLOT of important cities through out the ages have been port cities. cities like Carthage, Alexandria and Constantinople to name jsut a few. you could even attage in-game advantages and disadvantages to them like a bonus in sea trade and naval recruitment.
- the same goes for cities with rivers. please make Battlemap cities with rivers running through them. this also makes city seiges more fun and immersive. a few examples: Rome, Paris, London, Alexandria, Baghdad, Berlin, Damascus, Kiev, Moscow, Prague, Vienna etc. all cities that have been in previous installments of the total war franchise and non had rivers in them.

I can go on but most of what I would like is either allready mentioned or quite simply undoable at this time. thank you.

[Vasa]

Territory exchange. Seriously, how did you guys forget to include that feature under diplomatic options?

[JackDionne]

All future works should have an Avatar Campaign.

Bring replays back with states and Retainers used against you at the end of the replay.

Names of people your playing in classic battles for replays.

Continue to use the same format for purchasing units as in Shogun II, it’s perfect.

[Turtules]

Being able to create your own faction...and modding tools.