Total War games as Real Time Strategies

[Jurand of Cracow]

In this forum, there’re occasional calls to combine the Europa Universalis style (complex campaign management, real-time, “statistical” battles) with the Total War style (simpler campaign, turn-based, complex tactical battles). Actually, in the recent years, the TW moved towards EU with the introduction of technology tree or more complex diplomacy.

To my mind this is welcome and CA could move further. Especially introducing the real time movement of the armies on the campaign map would make the game much more interesting and could give much more “historical immersion”. It would also alleviate the problem of “sniping groups of armies” as is present now in the R2TW or the ATW (see long description here).

Of course, this should be combined with other mechanisms. For instance, more Fog of War should be present. The player (and the AI) should be much less aware of the forces he faces, ie: 1. number of units yes, but the composition of the army very, very rarely, 2. the exact position of the armies very rarely, only the fact that “there’re forces in the province” should be there. However, in own territory the player would have more info, and close to the settlements or any “intelligence” infrastructure – like watchtowers in M2TW – even more.

I wonder what is now being thought about the introduction of the “real time” in to the TW games. Maybe this topic has been discussed by the CA, or maybe there’re analyses how to do it among the moders?

Cheers
JoC

[Hoplite of Ilis]

The most interesting thing would be EU adding real time battles. Then you'd see CA up and running like never before. CA can't even make the battle - their key feature - look/feel vivid and solid anymore. Their chopping down things for the sake of quantity over quality. But as for EU vs CA in terms of campaign management, CA can't even dream what EU does.

[Pathfinder]

Real-time battles (I assume you mean Lords of the Realm 3 style) would be just awful. Imagine suddenly being in charge of an AI-vs-AI battle, half-way through - units all over the place, your strategy basically decided for you, and whatever advantage you might have had squandered.

Have you played Shogun/Medieval 1? Your other points are addressed perfectly by it, with infinitely better movement and FoW mechanics than any Paradox games to boot. You can't normally see what you're up against and have no idea where the campaign AI will move.

This is apparently a very unpopular opinion but Paradox games are utterly atrocious mechanically. Movement is abstract and torturous, a dice roll on whether you will retreat or catch enemies. And armies will then cross half the width of Europe in time to join a battle. There is no good reason their main games are real-time.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Real-time battles (I assume you mean Lords of the Realm 3 style) would be just awful. Imagine suddenly being in charge of an AI-vs-AI battle, half-way through - units all over the place, your strategy basically decided for you, and whatever advantage you might have had squandered.

I don't understand this sentence. By RTS I mean: as a player after you're done with planning (building, recruiting, setting directions for the armies etc.) you set the time ticking and your plans are being implemented: your armies move as you've commanded. When they meet an enemy on their way - they fight (unless you order them to avoid it or to flee, or the AI flees etc.). Clean RTS.At present in the Total War the armies just "teleport" from one place to another (within the movement points allowance) in one moment. They don't walk to that place, they teleport. It's because the unit of time is a season (or year in the older games, or something different in the mods). In the EU the unit of time is one day and RTS means: the situation is calculated every one game-day. This should be also the case in the TW, to my mind.
Concerning your opinion: why should you be in charge of AI-vs-AI? If there'd situation that you joint AI-AI battle, it would look the same as it is now in the TW games: AI in charge of his armies, you of yours. Where's the problem?

Have you played Shogun/Medieval 1? Your other points are addressed perfectly by it, with infinitely better movement and FoW mechanics than any Paradox games to boot. You can't normally see what you're up against and have no idea where the campaign AI will move.

I agree. But the next M2TW games botched this up. I think it was made because most of the players wanted to have a full-knowledge, saddly. The more historically-oriented feeling would be opposite, but, alas, we're a minority.

This is apparently a very unpopular opinion but Paradox games are utterly atrocious mechanically. Movement is abstract and torturous, a dice roll on whether you will retreat or catch enemies. And armies will then cross half the width of Europe in time to join a battle. There is no good reason their main games are real-time.

I fully subscribe to this opinion. The movement of the forces and the battles are absolutely the weakest parts of EU/CK. There's no reason for EU to be an RTS, right. And - as @Hoplite of Ilis voiced - the most needed improvement of the EU would be the real-time battles. However, this would require also moving from an area game (the unit of territory is a big area: a province) to a terrain game (the unit of territory is a small space (hex or square), and provinces are build out of such spaces - as in the Total War). I think Paradox should implement something like DarthVader developed in the Ultimate General: reasonable tactical-to-operational scale battles. This would target also your complaints, I think (if some AI-movement improvements and perhaps diplomacy is done).

[Pathfinder]

I don't understand this sentence. By RTS I mean: as a player after you're done with planning (building, recruiting, setting directions for the armies etc.) you set the time ticking and your plans are being implemented: your armies move as you've commanded. When they meet an enemy on their way - they fight (unless you order them to avoid it or to flee, or the AI flees etc.). Clean RTS.At present in the Total War the armies just "teleport" from one place to another (within the movement points allowance) in one moment. They don't walk to that place, they teleport. It's because the unit of time is a season (or year in the older games, or something different in the mods). In the EU the unit of time is one day and RTS means: the situation is calculated every one game-day. This should be also the case in the TW, to my mind.
Concerning your opinion: why should you be in charge of AI-vs-AI? If there'd situation that you joint AI-AI battle, it would look the same as it is now in the TW games: AI in charge of his armies, you of yours. Where's the problem?

I think Paradox should implement something like DarthVader developed in the Ultimate General: reasonable tactical-to-operational scale battles

I assumed you meant that battles would take place over a period of campaign map time, like EU. In Lords of the Realm III armies all move around on the campaign map in real-time, together. When they meet the battle takes place on a 'pocket' map like TW. The campaign map continues to move of course, and you can pop in and out of battles and the AI takes over for you when you're absent.

Even just a windowed 'block-vs-block' battle system like Gettysburg would mean multiple battles on at the same time, plus campaign map viewing and decisions - more than a player can handle.

If the game pauses for the player to fight battles, while the AI auto-resolves its own I suppose it's not a problem of battles. But even a real-time campaign map would be bad - how are you supposed to keep track of enemy movements across the whole map? You can't fight multi-front wars in Paradox games without pausing constantly just to look around your borders, or to keep an eye on your forces.

I agree we need to get rid of factions taking 'turns'. Everyone decides their movement in the same turn, then they play out, similar to Shogun/Med 1. I know this is how Paradox France wargames do it. It's still turn based but everyone is on an equal footing - you don't just sit around like a lame duck when it's not your turn. That's not 'RTS' though, if that's all you're suggesting.

[Jurand of Cracow]

Even just a windowed 'block-vs-block' battle system like Gettysburg would mean multiple battles on at the same time, plus campaign map viewing and decisions - more than a player can handle.

If the game pauses for the player to fight battles, while the AI auto-resolves its own I suppose it's not a problem of battles. But even a real-time campaign map would be bad - how are you supposed to keep track of enemy movements across the whole map? You can't fight multi-front wars in Paradox games without pausing constantly just to look around your borders, or to keep an eye on your forces.

I think this is a problem of the scale. In the ancient-medieval times (and even pike-and-shot period), the actual battles were so fast/short that "pausing for battle" wouldn't create problems (both for the engine and for the feel of historical immersion). The battles would last a couple of hours up to one day - so everything could "freeze" for the time of a battle. If you'd consider longer (a couple of days) battles or sieges, then the battles were actually "frozen" - the troops would just stay and do nothing, only skirmishers or scouts would be active. This can be simulated like sieges are now: you do other things until some active actions would take place in that battle.

Your remark on Gettysburg is solved in the same way: there're not so many troops and armies at that time that would make the system I'm describing here unplayable. But for the 19th century - yes, this would be unplayable.

I agree we need to get rid of factions taking 'turns'. Everyone decides their movement in the same turn, then they play out, similar to Shogun/Med 1. I know this is how Paradox France wargames do it. It's still turn based but everyone is on an equal footing - you don't just sit around like a lame duck when it's not your turn. That's not 'RTS' though, if that's all you're suggesting.

Well, I do agree for your conclusion, actually. I'm probably not in favour of a "true" RTS, as I now understood it (it would be 1 second RL = 1 second of the game). Actually, I'm im favour of:
- shorter turns (one-day)
- each faction (player, AI) taking decisions / planning simulaneously,
- turns passing not with the stroke of a button, but as you "let the time going", the turns pass,
- campaign time freezes for the time of a battle (this is another "time universe")
I think it's indeed "Europa Universalis plus TW battles".

[Evan MF]

I've long been articulating the same idea as OP. I think the Total War campaign formula is stale and in need of something to revamp it and bring some energy to it. Likewise, the Paradox titles such as EU4 are highly enjoyable grand strategy titles in almost every department but combat. Both genres are crying out for a developer to come along and fuse the concepts.

I've thought a lot about how you could merge real time battles with a deep, real time campaign game. I think a good solution would be a slowly progressing clock which allowed players to administer their provinces, survey landscapes and plan army movements and logistics. Armies could move slowly along the map and decisions could hinge on scouting/intelligence, educated guessing on where within a fog of war an enemy army is and judgement on suitability of terrain to fight a pitched battle.

For battles themselves, I'd recommend stopping the campaign clock and zooming down into the battle site and playing the battle out much like a normal Total War battle is played, but perhaps with a less free-form deployment phase (campaign map manoeuvring and marching-order should partially govern this) and larger scale armies (less focus on unit micro, more on local unit compositions and the general battalion movements. 'Winning' a battle would involve persuading the enemy army to retreat in some way and could be achieved through multiple player-made goals, opposed to the game deciding what entails 'winning' a battle. For example, getting into the enemy army's supply lines could trigger a retreat, or perhaps capturing large numbers of prisoners or high-value targets such as generals could trigger a surrender/retreat, or of course, the outright killing of a majority of the enemy army could trigger an uncontrolled-route, resulting in the end of the engagement. Each of these these scenarios would arise naturally from the context of the pre-battle campaign situation and real-time decisions during the battle, the players/AI weighing up the most expedient means by which to end an engagement.

Other than the army manoeuvring and battle gameplay, there ought to be plenty of time to administer one's empire, enact policies, invest in technology and engage in diplomacy, much like a Paradox grand strategy. The timer could be sped up in the interim if not much is happening. Several camera windows could also enable players to monitor their armies across the map whilst administering their provinces.

Overall, there are tonnes of possibilities and with the right vision it would be entirely do-able to create such a game with the current state of the art technology. I don't see CA and Paradox ever getting together in this capacity, so I think this is an effort for a new developer to embark on. Lets hope some developer has the guts to pick something like this up, get crowd funding if need be - I'd pay up and give a shot at creating our dream game.

[Anna_Gein]

I prefer turn mechanics. I like the campaign this way.

My preference is for CA to keep the turns mechanics but make a complete assessment of mechanics within it. In general I want far more movement point so you do not waste 10/15 years in-game to travel across Italy.

[Evan MF]

I prefer turn mechanics. I like the campaign this way.

My preference is for CA to keep the turns mechanics but make a complete assessment of mechanics within it. In general I want far more movement point so you do not waste 10/15 years in-game to travel across Italy.

The problem with turns is that it results in abrupt and often context-lacking battles. Real time movements, with armies tracking/mirroring each other, seeking grounds to engage, gives battles a narrative context and also could enable developers to make a more player-goal oriented win condition, where the player's objectives can be more nuanced than just 'route the enemy' every time. Depending on the context of the battle on the campaign map, a player may aim to get into an enemy's supply lines, say, rather than attempt to just kill as many of the enemy as possible. Likewise, the AI could be fed this information and made to act more sensibly: e.g. if AI army is last line of defence between the player and their capitol it may opt for a defensive pose, whereas if it is an invading force with superior numbers, it may seek to surround and destroy the player's army, etc.

[Daruwind]

Except in real life you as general/king/emperor would have a lot of sub generals and commanders. While AI is able to play multiple concurent battles, player is not. So any kind of real time means simplification. Of course we can command just one army and let AI handle all other "mine" armies but then there is almost no point to have grand scheme game. It will be just game about leading one army in battle after battle....Besides that in real life there is usually a lot time between war, batles (especially in older ages - not always just look at how many conflicts or more likely animosities were happening for multiple generations even...) so people can do all the economic stuff, planning, building, empire management.....real time game are simply throwing things at player with low time to think about it. I like turn, I like to plan properly my next momevent. I don´t need useless time stress for no advantage.

[Evan MF]

Except in real life you as general/king/emperor would have a lot of sub generals and commanders. While AI is able to play multiple concurent battles, player is not. So any kind of real time means simplification. Of course we can command just one army and let AI handle all other "mine" armies but then there is almost no point to have grand scheme game. It will be just game about leading one army in battle after battle....Besides that in real life there is usually a lot time between war, batles (especially in older ages - not always just look at how many conflicts or more likely animosities were happening for multiple generations even...) so people can do all the economic stuff, planning, building, empire management.....real time game are simply throwing things at player with low time to think about it. I like turn, I like to plan properly my next momevent. I don´t need useless time stress for no advantage.

Have you ever played a Paradox title, e.g. Europa Universalis? There's plenty of time to make decisions and what is being proposed here actually would give more generous time for players to think about army manoeuvres than Paradox games.

[Daruwind]

Have you ever played a Paradox title, e.g. Europa Universalis? There's plenty of time to make decisions and what is being proposed here actually would give more generous time for players to think about army manoeuvres than Paradox games.

Stellaris 1+2, Crusader´s Kings II, EU4. I´m spending half my time in pauses. Sorry, that is my playstyle. I usually tripple checking multiple things, playing on higher difficulties and simply hate that 5% of my planning were off due to time or whatever.

Slower tactical or strategical movementis something what TWs might get better and improve on but it wont happen just because all armies and agents are moving all the time. Just imagine current problem with escaping armies or not completely destroyed ones. Do you think that would be solve just because real time? Nope.

[Yerevan]

I think I agree with Daruwind here. I guess this unique blend of turn based campaign and RT battles is actually what made the success of the TW formula.

I also believe that what makes strategic choices so limited in TW campaign has nothing to do with turn based mechanism over real time. But that it comes more from streamlining in the campaign map's design (politics/recruitment/logistics, etc... I also really miss the time when the battle map was the actual location on the campaign map).

It reminds me of this game who took 100% the RTS approach, the Hegemony titles : like with paradox's games it gave me this feeling that the real time nature of the campaign is indeed what serves the battles so badly. I don't think it's a coincidence if those games are both unable to provide on a tactical level.
Just one thing among others that comes to my mind : what would you do if you have some very important things to do on the over side of the campaign's map while being in the midst of a very decisive battle.

[Evan MF]

It reminds me of this game who took 100% the RTS approach, the Hegemony titles : like with paradox's games it gave me this feeling that the real time nature of the campaign is indeed what serves the battles so badly. I don't think it's a coincidence if those games are both unable to provide on a tactical level.
Just one thing among others that comes to my mind : what would you do if you have some very important things to do on the over side of the campaign's map while being in the midst of a very decisive battle.

I was never of the mind to have real time battles running at the same time as campaigns. My idea is for the campaign to be real time up until the point of an engagement, wherein the campaign is paused and the player is catapulted into a real time battle, just as currently. Then once the engagement is over the real time campaign resumes.

I believe this solution would allow for a much more interesting build-up to battles; instead of stacks popping out of the fog of war and attacking your armies when you hit the 'end turn' button, there would be a whole pre-battle phase characterized by manoevring armies onto more favourable terrain, assessing relative army strengths, considering supply lines and the overall strategic objective of the military campaign you've embarked on. As it stands, Total War turns do not have the time-granularity to allow for such an experience and so we miss out on a whole aspect of historical military strategy.

[Jurand of Cracow]

I think most of the thinking here boils down to the plan:
- keeping the turns, but making them shorter (eg. one-day)
- turns passing not with the stroke of a button, but as you "let the time going" even if it's turn-by-turn (day-by-day for each faction) - some may have the impression the armies move simultaneously, but actually its one-after-anoter day-by-day,
- time freezes for the time of a battle (this is another "time plane" as Fernand Braudel would call it)
Combined with more of fog-of-war (so that neither the player nor the AI could precisely assess the strengths, current location and the time of arrival somewhere) this should indeed provide for much more operational movement play (for now it's just strategical movement and tactical battles).

[Daruwind]

Lenght of turn. Why it should be one day? There is no actual reason. Size of map, time period, logistic and such things dictate the overall turn length. For example in majority of winters armies did nothing. So why on earth I would to click like 90x times end turn?

What we are missing is step between campaign armies movement and actual battles. We have stances, different options for battle like weather/ambushes/lightning strikes even reinforcement but all these are quite simplified things. Actually i don´t think real time will make any difference but rather get system up to the best possible state. I can imagine some intermidiete state where armies reflect their movement, try to hold crucial points around like bridges, road crosses, passes, with multiple smaller forces holding rear guard, baggage train, camp or flanking points around so not whole armies are engaged each time. Well getting bigger armies to these 40 units would be awesome. In such situation we would have quite control over reinforcement or blocking it.....Okay, this idea is probably way to complex to implement but that is in my view what we are missing for example. If it is real time or turn base doesn´t matter as long as the implementation is correct. (and yeah ,im for turn base)

Actual fog of war could be nice. So scouting has any meaning. Not for artillery range but for reinforcement (holding good access points/road to the battle) or preventing ambushes for example..

[herne_the _hunter]

I'd point out the Mount and Blade and X series games (particuly X3, X3-TC and X3-AP) as other examples of realtime campaigns with realtime battles.

[Ngazi]

Armies get sniped because they move really far relative to the fog of war which in turn is because scouting is horribly done in TW. You will have the same "problem" if you changed the campaign to real time. By the way, real time just means there is no end turn button, even FPS happens in turns, usually 30 turns per second. It would only be useful to change from turn based to real time if there was an excess of micromanagement in the campaign which is just unnecessary when the battles are more important.

[Emperor of The Great Unknown]

I think both EU and Total War have a mismatch of mechanics. In my opinion a tile based system (such as in STW, MTW, and EU) works best with turn based strategy. And a continuous map (such as Total War post MTW and M&B) works best for a simulated Real Time. I think fundamentally the two systems need to switch. Tile system works better for turn based games because there is less room for exploitation, and it allows for general long term planning, and assessment of the board.

Note there are two versions of Turn Based Strategy Games

Simultaneous Turn Resolution (think of the board game Diplomacy)

Pros:
-No first move advantage
-Faster pace, especially for multiplayer

Cons:
-Requires complex rules to resolve on the board actions.

Round Robin Turn System (Total War)

Pros:
-Simple to operate

Cons:
-First move advantage
-Unbearably slow for multiplayer games

I think it is obvious for total war to have any future in campaign Multiplayer the current turn system needs to go (Try finishing a hotseat campaign in M2TW). I also think if total war is not going to revert back to a tile based system, then the only logical choice is for a Simulated Real Time System.

Non-Tiled Simulated Real Time System (Mount and Blade/Stellaris)

Pros:
-Smoother on the board movement
-Less vulnerable to board action exploits
-No first move advantage
-Quicker pace of multiplayer games
-Competent AI (less long term planning needed, more 'board space/time' to react to player actions)

Cons:
-More Micromanagement
-Possibly more CPU intensive*
-Unsuitable for long time frames

I won't go into too much detail here on the mechanics and how to format total war to fit this system, but I feel it would really provide the needed framework to bring back the freedom** that the campaigns once had along with maintaining challenge and accommodating for the multiplayer.



*Although for Turn Based you must take into account the time spend at the End Turn phase
**I will say that recent total wars have relied too much on restricting player action to add difficulty to the campaign. (Paradox games suffer from this too!)

[Shogun]

I think Total war as RTS is truly bad move, mate. It will kill game play easy. Right now CA is trying to utilize vast universe of Warhammer and they will do it until game will kill itself which very hard cuz Warhammer and TW has extra large communities.
Best way IMHO is to maybe battle on two fornts and move next parallel game Medieval 3 with more mod able system ( lets say historically very accurate map and factions placed by CA and u could add units from mod creator attached to game or easier mod map, faction symbols basically easier way to mod the game).

On other hand they could maybe hybrid between TW and Civ games and tactical level combat stays same. So example, u get more agents and u get settler create city and combat is done as TW does it. There were game about chinese history they actually made this concept it is not bad. Maybe this could some future way that CA could try it. Which would envolve new map much bigger map of world and units could be packed to lets say 1815. thru upgrades.