The solution for the one year vs four season debate

[tomppb]

I am definitely in the camp of people who prefer 4 turns per year for the following reasons:


1-seasonal variety, pre modern warfare was very dependent on the seasons ie the harvest, the harsh effects of winter, hot summers, lush springs etc. You lose so much without seasons

2-longer time to develop my characters and bond with them

3- more realistic strategy and maneuvering, one year turns will just lead to my army rushes up and crashes into the enemy, no time to maneuver, armies didnt dance around for 5-6 years before engaging in a battle

4- realistic movement rates, on year turns an army could technically march from one end of the med to the other but that would be a nightmare in gameplay term

HOWEVER I get the problem of a 1200 turn campaign game

The solution: Make scenarios of interesting times in the rise of rome...the punic wars, the wars with parthia, the civil war etc. Each scenario could run about 75 to 150 years ensuring a game that is short enough not to get too boring. Different scenarios could have different victory conditions for the different factions. Of course you could have the grand campaign from 270 BC to 14 AD for those who want it, but by also making shorter scenarios you could appeal to gamers who want a shorter more tense experience while not sacrificing all the benefits of the seasons.

[HigoChumbo]

They have always done that (the peninsular campaign in Empire, the British campaign in medieval 1, etc)

Its a nice change of pace, but don't you ever think of taking my beloved grand campaign away. The sense of scale and the faction variety matters too.

[Mortarion]

Im not a fan of 1 turn per year, beacause of reason 2. I want time to develop my characters! not have them die of. >:/

[tomppb]

Heaven's no! I think having the full campaign from 270 BC to 14 AD is critical to have! But since CA is sooo worried about this causing the game not to sell I say in the initial release have lots of different start times and situations....this also lends itself to the game being more character driven. For example you could have a scenario just be about the life of caesar and the victory conditions would apply to what he needs to achieve not rome. The possiblilities are endless. But if they do one year one turn I think the game will be awful unfortunately...i dont think you will feel any attachment to characters who come and go in 40 turns or less

[Kinjo]

Sorry to say but it's a game and it will have gamey solutions to fill any realism gaps that are a result of game design. As for seasons I wouldn't be surprised to see each year be a different season, its the only way you can have seasons and stretch the campaign over a 300 year period. As for character age personally I would like to see the M2TW solution where a character ages 1 year every 2 game years so it will give you a little more time to develop your characters and faction leaders. If characters age 1 year every turn they will pretty much die of old age just traversing the campaign map which would be a seriously bad thing imo.

[CDR Hurricane]

And now for the solution they will probably implement regarding seasons: 1 year per turn, and one season per year: ie. spring 200 BC, summer 199, fall 198, winter 197, spring 196, summer 195, fall 194, winter 193, spring 192, etc.

Since unit marching distances are unrealistic with one year turns, they might as well make generals live unrealistically long while they are at it. Short lived generals has always annoyed me. They could also just completely remove the date from the game, since technological progression will be independent of the date, it's no more relevant than a turn counter of any sort.

[Ivan The Terrible]

I would rather they readopt the classic MTW style that CK2 also uses in their grand campaign... which is quite simply, offering alternative starting points in the game. Much like the original medieval offered an early, late, and high campaign start time with different play styles and factions strategies associated with the starts. This would call for the elimination of the 1 turn gimmick and reinstate the 4 seasons realism that all of us crave.

With regards to the 1 turn stuff, frankly speaking, I cannot imagine any sort of justification or feature that will make me comfortable with that going forward. It reeks of a means to shortcut the game in order to offer a quicker sense of gratification for players who cannot be arsed to wait a few turn to build a higher tier unit or barracks. Or to put it in blunter terms, appease the people who've never completed a campaign and only play it for the cheesy "woah I've got thousands of units on the screen... look at that armored elephant mom" aspect that CA seems to be gravitating towards with the reduction of traits, and other previously core features of gamplay that made total war games great.

[Abot_]

I say let the player decide which to do- a sort of long vs. short campaign option like the original, but now instead of holding more or less factions the game progression simply gets faster but less in-depth.

[♠ Thomas Cochrane ♠]

I'd love the TPY slider, providing CA does in fact create the 4 seasons like in FOTS.....WHICH WAS AWESOME.

[Abot_]

Or regions, rather.

[AngryTitusPullo]

The solution is to go back to old Medieval style. 3 start dates with 4 turns per year. Those who don't have a life and glued to their pc can play the early campaign that spans 1000's of turns.

[KillaJules]

I am definitely in the camp of people who prefer 4 turns per year for the following reasons:


1-seasonal variety, pre modern warfare was very dependent on the seasons ie the harvest, the harsh effects of winter, hot summers, lush springs etc. You lose so much without seasons

All you lose is eye candy. And the fact that you can't replenish in winter which is significant but won't make a huge difference if winter is just 1 turn.

2-longer time to develop my characters and bond with them

Valid point but 40-50 turns is enough to get some idea of character. Legions last for the entire game, you can bond to these.

3- more realistic strategy and maneuvering, one year turns will just lead to my army rushes up and crashes into the enemy, no time to maneuver, armies didnt dance around for 5-6 years before engaging in a battle


4- realistic movement rates, on year turns an army could technically march from one end of the med to the other but that would be a nightmare in gameplay term

Maneuvering has NEVER been "realistic" and it is frankly impossible to change this. IRL it takes less than a day to sail around Japan, but movement rates from Shogun 2 and FOTS did not reflect this. Turns were much shorter in FOTS but armeis and ships didn't move further per turn.

HOWEVER I get the problem of a 1200 turn campaign game

The solution: Make scenarios of interesting times in the rise of rome...the punic wars, the wars with parthia, the civil war etc. Each scenario could run about 75 to 150 years ensuring a game that is short enough not to get too boring. Different scenarios could have different victory conditions for the different factions. Of course you could have the grand campaign from 270 BC to 14 AD for those who want it, but by also making shorter scenarios you could appeal to gamers who want a shorter more tense experience while not sacrificing all the benefits of the seasons.

This is reasonable but people seem biased and want absolutely everything. But that isn't going to happen.

I think having the full campaign from 270 BC to 14 AD is critical to have

but don't you ever think of taking my beloved grand campaign away

You can't have your cake and eat it to. If there are 2 turns per year, than the campaign would take at least 340 turns to reach the Marian Reforms and 400 turns to reach the Roman civil wars. Since the game includes the Imperial era, the only way to reach the end of the tech tree would be to play for 600 turns. Rome 2 with 2 turns per year would require the player to play for twice as long as in Shogun 2 just to be able to experience the whole campaign. The change of progress is too big.

The solution is to go back to old Medieval style. 3 start dates with 4 turns per year. Those who don't have a life and glued to their pc can play the early campaign that spans 1000's of turns.

Possible with the increase in the size of the dev team, but I wouldn't count on it. I don't think turns per year is important enough to warrant this, however I'm sure that there will be many DLC campaigns with many turns per year.

[KillaJules]

double post.

[nameless]

THe length has to be around 250-300 turns. Any more is too much and for those who say no this game isn't just for you it's for everybody else as well so don't keep thinking just about yourself.

The only way to make it work with the length would be to split the campaign into Republic and Imperial but that won't work because the whole point of the Roman campaign would be to decide if you want to maintain it or turn it into an empire.

[AngryTitusPullo]

Possible with the increase in the size of the dev team, but I wouldn't count on it. I don't think turns per year is important enough to warrant this, however I'm sure that there will be many DLC campaigns with many turns per year.

No unless you mean small scale DLC for specific period, for example Caesar in Gaul. Then yes CA will do a longer turn per year campaign, possibly up to 24 turns per year but for the main campaign there is in no way marketing wise CA will later release an extended turns per years DLC as it will certainly breaks down the main game.

[Breoghan]

An easy solution to implement seasons in 1 1TPY is to link the seasons with the unit movement: every unit had a movement bar wich represents the movement points, with the first part of this bar representing winter, and the battle will be fougth in a winter scenario, the second part of the movement bar representing spring, and so on...

Starvation: Every unit will suffer starvation if finish the turn in enemy region, so the end of the turn will be always winter...

[tomppb]

Historical gaming is not about repeating history, it is about immersion. The player has to feel that the result could have happened. Thats why we don't have tanks on the tech tree...caesar rolling into rome on his M1 Abrahams doesn't feel right and would spoil the fun. So time scale is important to the immersion factor. If it takes ten years to go from Rome to Jerusalem it spoils this immersion...the player feels cheated on some deep level. If you give armies movement ranges they could actually go in a year the distortion would be horrible! My army moved from around your army on the border and went straight to your capital...oh but I cant attack this turn because of penalties so I will wait. On his turn the AI moves his army back from the border but has to use "strategic" movement to get there and thus cant attack either. On your next turn you attack his army...whats the point of maneuver armies should just sit in their capital since that is where they will end up because they have no way of stopping an invading army. Its a huge mess.