Valerius Tiberius ' Rome Total War 2

[Valerius Tiberius]

Hail everyone! (and hopefully people from CA)

I have some new ideas for RTW2 and hope that you share these.

First of all i wish to say that this is a "work in progress" and that i shall add ideas, change things and such, for example after ETW comes out, or when i see a good idea or understand that a previous idea was bad

Anyways, here it goes:

The Army system

First of all, the whole "army system" needs to be changed.
Instead of 20 slots in an army, it's completely different.
You have one tab (like on the campaign map you have tabs for army, agents, fleets) with

1) Staff
2) Legio
3) Auxilia
4) Non-fighting people (or something like that)

The First being the General and the members of his staff, such as the legates, tribunes, camp prefect, the primus pilus, .....)
Each having a name, age, maybe amount of money, family,.. (it is up to CA to choose how wide this would go)
The second being the Legion troops, more about the system later.
The third being the Auxilia troops, acting the same as the Legion troops, or these 2 tabs are merged. This includes the siege engines such as Onagers and balisstae.
The fouth being all the people travelling with the Legion.
Including:
- Mulones (stable boys, around 1.200 per legion)
- Calones (slaves in personal service)
- speculatores (pathfinders, scouts and such, mostly hired at the location where the legion campaigned)
- interpretes (interpreters, if these are not hired the player may not be able to negotiate with the enemy, because he does not understand them)
- and further: presenters, land surveyors, engineers, architects, weapon smids, hoof smids, catapult staff (can be with auxilia) , doctors,.....

this fourth tab can be shortened to keep it more simple
every category of men has a unit card (eg: doctor, smid, ....)

Now, the way the Legio system works:

(this is entirely explained with the example of a 1st century AD Legio)

As i said, you no longer have 20 slots, or whatever.
You also DO NOT have UNIT CARDS.
At first, you just have your first cohort, made up of 800 men, and then 9 ordinary cohorts, each 480 men.
Now, because you don't have unit cards anymore, you have just a block with an "I" or a small line (up to CA to decide)
Now, when you double click on "Cohors II" you get a new "panel" instead of the Legio panel, where you could command the cohorts, tell them where to go and such.
Now you have the "Cohors II" panel.
Consisting of six "blocks" or six little lines (up to CA to decide) , with the six centuries of Cohors II.
Now you can command these centuries separate, and tell them where to go and such
Now, you probably start to get the picture
When you double click "Century III" you get a new panel, this time the century panel. Here you can command the seperate Contubernia, of 8 men each and 10 per century.
Now, it can stop here (CA decides) , but i would go further.
If you double click "Contubernium V" (5) you get the unit cards of the 8 men in there.
They each have a different face (the difference can be small, up to CA ) and it says their name, rank, traits maybe, amount of money maybe, family and that stuff
So each soldier gets a different character!
Also, this way you can choose, or the comp can choose, who gets to be centurio of the century when the the centurio has fallen, or who get promoted to whatever rank

Ofcourse each century and stuff will have it's officers, signifers and such
which could be accessed in some sort of way like:
a little "box" in the upper left corner of a century, the "staff" and then you get the staff tab of cohors X , century X
with the centurio, sigifer and such

Now, the auxilia system is the exact same thing
ofcourse, the two tabs can be merged, so that you have an "army" tab, consisting of a "Legio" card, and a "Auxilia" card, and when you double click one of them....... you get the picture
also, double click can be replaced by ctrl click or whatever (up to CA to decide )


well then, so far my "army system"
i'll update it later and also add things about other aspects of the game
ofcourse, the naval troops can work the same way
more of this later, i'm out of time for now!
(God, wished this was a CA preview of RTW2 )


Also, plz let me know if you agree with this and think these are good ideas!

Valerius Tiberius

ps: Moderators plz don't merge this with another RTW2 topic, because this is really about how I see it and what people think of my view
tnx

[Hesus de bodemloze]

i have seen a thread like this before, some one asking the same question should ca make a r2tw game ore not. lets first stick to Empire total war when this game is finisht you could ask ca if thy want to make a new rome game.

setup look great tought. but i see it different.

[Valerius Tiberius]

i'm not talking about RTW2 yes or no, i'm talking about how a RTW2 should be in my view

also Hesus, good you tell me how you see it then, i'm intrested


Valerius Tiberius

[pirates_say_arrgg]

I would just be happy with better AI........

[Xavier Dragnesi]

It's a good plan, but for CA, I think it would take years upon years to implement, due to the unit card system that they have gotten used to, and the way the armies work with the unit slots. Plus, I think the current version would be take quite a while for most players of Total War games to get used to. With R2TW, the only major changes I ask for are: more detailed map with more cities, a faction or two more with edits of existing factions, naval battles, a unit slot larger than 20, say maybe 25 or 30, improved AI, and perhaps an "set in concrete" method of knowing when your reinforcements will come, and when they won't.

[Hesus de bodemloze]

i actually would would make some minor changes, new more detaild units, bether diplomatic functions, us the take prisoners function on the battle map so when you capture routing enemies and the battle ends you get a message kill them, sel them as slaves, ..., more acurate traits and so on.

if you are going to use a tab system in the battles there are going to be to many units this will cause lag and frustration and the battle will be verry obscure.

[Roman_Wolf]

i really like your idea. have thought of a similar thing myself. maybe they can aslo add this:

soldier loyality to their officers. so say a some soldiers are very loyal to their centurion and he betrays the general they go with the centurion. So the general should always make the troops love him and send them on limitless battles without ever resting.

maybe also troops could also age and get old. maybe they could even get married in conquered cities (increase their happiness and loyalty and decrease culture penalty a few years later) (just like the alexander movie).

maybe also among the cohorts their could be veterans so the soldiers that have lived through lot of battles would increase moral of others.

and during a siege u get the abilty to surender the city in return ur army will be spared and other new diplomacy stuff.

and thats about it.
@Valerius Tiberius sorry if i meddled in ur thread but i thought it would be good to share my ideas.

ur ideas are nice
and guys feel free to comment

[King_StuvartiniusIII]

@VT: Sounds a bit confusing, what if you want to change unit really quickly? you have to go all the way from the legio tab thingy (if I'm understanding your idea correctly). I thing that interpreters and non-military people in the army is a great idea though!

@RW: I like the idea of marrying men in cities to increase order, but I'm not sure on the aging idea, you would have to retrain every few turns!

Finally, one of my ideas: Supply routes - When an army is far away from the home land (i.e. there is an enemy province inbetween the army and the closest vassal/owned city i.e. you own Sparta and an army is the Attica provence and Corinth is owned by an enemy) your numbers begin to drop as troops starve/die of thirst.

[Valerius Tiberius]

soldier loyality ....

very good idea!
and influence too! so that a soldier may have very few influence, but centurions more and more influence what rank they have, this combined with the loyalty thing could become something very nice

maybe also troops could also age and get old

i already stated that in my post however CA must decide if this is so, but it would be cool if really every guy has a name, age and background

veterans...

this is obvious because every unit would have his own experience

siege ...

good ideas i have to think a lil bit more about sieges and how i would like to see them

@VT: Sounds a bit confusing, what if you want to change unit really quickly? you have to go all the way from the legio tab thingy

how do you mean change? like bet ween cohorts or what?
could you give me an example of what you mean?

Supply routes

definately!! however i am not so familiar with the way supply routes worked and such :hm: have read a bit about them in De Bello Gallico, book I and little bit of II
but a developed supply rout system is a must

Valerius Tiberius

[King_StuvartiniusIII]

how do you mean change? like bet ween cohorts or what?
could you give me an example of what you mean?

Like switch units i.e. from archers to exploding pigs (another thing we need in RTW2, incindary pigs were good, but imagine their hardcore big brothers!)

definately!! however i am not so familiar with the way supply routes worked and such :hm: have read a bit about them in De Bello Gallico, book I and little bit of II
but a developed supply rout system is a must

Valerius Tiberius

Glad you like my idea

[Valerius Tiberius]

well archers would be part of the "Auxilia" Tab, and let's pressume exploding pigs are too ^^
so like you would have cohort I, cohort II, in the interface of the "Legio" tab, you have "archers/sagitarii" , "cavalry" and such, now pressume you have one too named specials (for pigs and such, not in the game that is ) you double click special, click pig unit (like you would pick the 2nd century of the fifth cohort or something)

hmm, i'm maybe gonna add some feature to be able to switch faster....

but i think you'd be surpirised how fast you can pick units with this
once you're used to it

now i'd love to try this out and see if you can do this without losing too much time......

CA, can you design this and test this for me?

Valerius Tiberius

[King_StuvartiniusIII]

Hmmm.... I guess it would be easy once you get used to it.... OK, I'll agree that it's a good idea!

[mikil100]

They should DEFINITLY make a much more advanced AI, In my opinion, ESPECIALLY in late Roman erras politics was everything. Generals rebelling, roman civil wars.. hoplites with their spears over their shoulders... they aren't pikemen -_-. Better barbarian units.

it would be REALLY cool to see late game massive rebellions... Think of it this way: You're the Roman Imperator and own almost all of the world, and a rebellion happens in corinth, soon all the other citys around it start rebelling around it, aroused by their countrymens freedom, all the cities rebell to the orginal city... now don't list them under rebels. What it should do is if the original city that rebelled is... Corinth, and Corinth defects Macedonia- even if macedon was listed as a "dead" faction... it would be cool.. nations could be arisen again and create a very challenging game

[Valerius Tiberius]

ofcouse the question is, what do you want for campaign? :hm:

there are 2 different types to my meaning:

1) you start as a faction with everyone has (historical) start positions and stuff, but from now on you can/must change history
(this one is used in every TW game)

2) you get a campaign where you start, and then get missions to tell you what to do (like the FRRE mods) this way you are historical, but you have far less freadom!


so the question is, which campaign do you want? :hm:

Valerius Tiberius

[King_StuvartiniusIII]

I vote number 2, but optional missions so they don't limit you too much

[pokejunkie11]

the only thing that I would like to see in R2TW is improved graphics, real naval battles, a dutch faction () a bigger map and, especially, make modding easier, especially concerning custom buildings/cities and a higher amount of maximum entries in descr_model_battle

[Hesus de bodemloze]

supply routes in de bello gallico where taking every thing you can finde of the lands of the tribes that you are invading and making demants on tribes that you conquered ore asking your allies to send food supply s over, caesar askt the haeduers and helvetiers to send him grain for his legions many times. the only problem was thy still where gauls and did not always send it ore start making excuses.

[Valerius Tiberius]

he asked the helvetii? :hm:
i'm half way the book sorry

i'll work this out later... have few time + have to make 2 more campaigns for augustus

[Hesus de bodemloze]

already read 2 books of de bello gallico.

[Valerius Tiberius]

me too
i'm at III ^^

anyhow, back on topic