Future rome/classical age game, wants beside improved AI?

[ray243]

I was wondering other than a improved AI in the future total war games, what kind of wants do you want to have?

Issues and problems besides improved AI? Issues that is hard coded and cannot be easily modded in?

For once, I would want the ability to have larger and bigger units. Units that contain 500 men for example, allowing people to form legions on a 1-1 scale.

Other than that, bigger unit limit, meaning instead of a 20 unit limit, I can form armies of 40-60 units if I am rich enough to do so.

Also, allowing me to cross terrains that is near impossible to cross, such as climbing through the Alps for example.

Different government system for different faction can help as well.

So, what kind of new changes, hard-coded changes do you want for the future total war games?

[Xavier Dragnesi]

All of your suggestions sound good. However, I wouldn't really allow crossing through the Alps just plainly there. If it were me, I'd make it so that you'd have to have some general with a special trait or something to manage a feat like that. Only extraordinary generals like Hannibal marched armies over impassible terrain.

Sea battles definitely, but not just between ships and the marines on the ships. They should also make it so that if an army is aboard the fleet, and the fleet is attacked, the army can also get on board and engage in hand to hand combat.

[ray243]

Like Athens and their fame for having a good navy?

[Juicemisbruk]

Actual historians, who know their stuff and see trough everything, so it wont be big pointless historical inaccuries... also that all factions are balanced, and not that important, but add every nation and huge tribe in the game, like in empire...

[Illyrians]

features that will make the campaign better like having 3x more settlements and adding some villages possibly? Adding Government types and the user can select what type of gov't they want and they choose the politicians and such, etc. Also better alliances will make the campaign very good.

[Scutarii]

Way bigger faction limit, for one. Another would be a government system akin to EB's. Expanded faction rosters (seriously, Iberia got ignored in RTW). I guess the only other urgent one is pathfinding, especially in cities... Its god-awful.

[JrvUnleashed]

Well, I wish they would ease up on the friggn public order crap. I swear, in my current campaign I have 2 cities with all the best entertainment, aqueducts, and a friggn full stack of peasants and they're in red. I can't even concentrate on conquering because I have to frantically make public baths and recruit peasants in like 16 cities every turn. Not to mention when my men conquer a city they have to wait like 4 turns for the unrest to go down so they can conquer some more, and even then you have to leave like half your army in the city before moving on. The result is having a friggn 50,000 denarii army upkeep with like 28 settlements. If my trade wasn't 40,000 I'd by screwed. I previously had like 400,000 denarii and now I have 170,000 due to all the friggn recruiting and building I have to do in cities.

Please, ease up on the public order crap and let me focus on what I bought the game for: conquering and killing.

[morteduzionism]

-provide a gods-be-damned comprehensive guide that includes/explains ALL features of the (bleep)ing game! After all this time I just learned another "new" aspect of the game...specifically include how 'hidden' factors influence gameplay/family members/etc

-improved balance: generally do away with "elite" units that for all intent and purposes become immortal because the other units are so horrible. short of scripting a factions behavior this might make it able for smaller factions to put up more of a fight.

-improve the interface so that things like unit morale, stamina, etc are more easily discerned

-standard armies for factions. some kind of way force the AI to field diverse armies instead of 18 units of Illyrian spearmen, etc.

-do away with the assassin model. the "spy" looks more like an assassin while the assassin looks...crazy.

-do away with some traits. specifically negative traits (Administratively Inept, etc) associated with being a governor

-do away with the 50K penalty or at least raise it some

-incorporate 4TPY

-improve the Senate

-DO NOT include crap like flaming pigs, dogs etc...

-pathfinding (this seems like it's always a problem in games)

-more diplomacy! there should at least be an option to 'declare war' on another faction

I don't want to suggest anything that would require me to get a new rig to run the game...

Well, I wish they would ease up on the friggn public order crap. I swear, in my current campaign I have 2 cities with all the best entertainment, aqueducts, and a friggn full stack of peasants and they're in red. I can't even concentrate on conquering because I have to frantically make public baths and recruit peasants in like 16 cities every turn. Not to mention when my men conquer a city they have to wait like 4 turns for the unrest to go down so they can conquer some more, and even then you have to leave like half your army in the city before moving on. The result is having a friggn 50,000 denarii army upkeep with like 28 settlements. If my trade wasn't 40,000 I'd by screwed. I previously had like 400,000 denarii and now I have 170,000 due to all the friggn recruiting and building I have to do in cities.

Please, ease up on the public order crap and let me focus on what I bought the game for: conquering and killing.

That's probably because you're blitzing the map and/or not properly preparing for your campaigns.

Do you bring garrisons with you when go out on conquest?

Did you check the cities to see if they have spies in them?

Did you check the public order before you took the city? Sometimes they're low before you take it.

It'd probably be cheaper to pacify a city before you moved on to the next one:

1.) Bring a full stack garrison with you (including spy, diplomat and assassin)
--- Use the spy/assassin to make sure the city doesn't have any spies in it*
2.) Take city and insert garrison (leave one unit back to leave room for general/governor)
3.) Build fort and insert army and the left over unit from the city garrison
--- You should be able to leave taxes on low (at least)
4.) Build sewers, etc and other structures that improve public order
--- Routinely remove portions of the city garrison to see exactly what is the least amount needed to keep the city at the desired public order level (you decide that)
5.) When you have enough buildings to provide the supplement to your public order, you can safely remove units and can recruit new garrison units - move onto the next city
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
*There're a couple of factors that lower public order. You specifically said "unrest" IIRC, that's caused mainly by spies in your city. It could also be culture penalties and distance penalties...but I think those show up as different icons than simple "unrest."

Once you've taken the city you can't see foreign spies in the city you have to hope they get kicked out. That's why it's a good idea to use your spy/assassin to check ahead of time.

[Juli]

It would be cool to have a remake of Rome, but in Empire Total War engine. The ideal sequel, in my most humble oppinion, would have the following features:

- Vastly improved AI, with as few bugs and pathfinding problems as possible, able to have a basic understanding of diplomacy, naval invasions and terrain advantages
- Have four camapigns, each with its own set of factions: The RTW campaign, the BI campaign, the Alexander campaign, and perhaps a Medic Wars campaign or something like that. In custom battles, it would be cool to make any faction versus any other, even if they are of different campaigns
- The Alexander expansion was very unpolished, and seemed to be very WIP. And CA did not release any patches, which is a shame. It would be cool to have the Alexander stuff, but more polished, complete and balanced
- Improve the chances of assasination attempts being succesful
- Historical realism and variety of units
- As few hardcoded limits as possible.
- Exageratedly moddable
- Have all the useful features from Empire Total War engine (naval battles, more regions, etc)

That would be an ideal game

[Juli]

It would be cool to have a remake of Rome, but in Empire Total War engine. The ideal sequel, in my most humble oppinion, would have the following features:

- Vastly improved AI, with as few bugs and pathfinding problems as possible, able to have a basic understanding of diplomacy, naval invasions and terrain advantages
- Have four camapigns, each with its own set of factions: The RTW campaign, the BI campaign, the Alexander campaign, and perhaps a Medic Wars campaign or something like that. In custom battles, it would be cool to make any faction versus any other, even if they are of different campaigns
- The Alexander expansion was very unpolished, and seemed to be very WIP. And CA did not release any patches, which is a shame. It would be cool to have the Alexander stuff, but more polished, complete and balanced
- Improve the chances of assasination attempts being succesful
- Historical realism and variety of units
- As few hardcoded limits as possible.
- Using the cool features from Empire Total War
- Exageratedly moddable
- Have all the useful features from Empire Total War engine (naval battles, more regions, etc)

That would be an ideal game

[Sextus Molestus]

Well, first off I must say that I like your first two ideas, OP. The crossing impassible terrain would make natural barriers pointless, in my opinion, and you'd have to be more specific about the government types for me to fully agree, though I would like to see each faction be as in-depth as the Roman ones (though not as historically inaccurate!)

First off, I must say that I'd love to see a must bigger map. One that rivals or goes beyond some of the big mod ones. All the way to India, perhaps, and farther south into Africa, as well as northeast into Russia and whatnot. Just bigger. Keep me interested. Of course there would be more factions to boot, and hopefully they'd include hordes.

The OPTION for city by city tier limit, rather than faction by faction. Like, some settlements won't be able to go past large town (some even past town), where others can make it to huge city regardless of what faction you're playing as. I know this is already semi-possible by just not building the next government building up, but problems arise with public order.

Sort of on the topic of impassible terrain, have armies periodically lose soldiers whilst traversing different terrain. If crossing the Sahara, for instance, armies would lose a small percentage of troops due to exhaustion, starvation, what have you. Oh, and this just came to me. Perhaps there could be the option to cross over mountains and rivers and stuff, with these paths being set and shown on the campaign map, but you'd receive a warning message prior to doing so and you would lose a considerable amount of troops (and the general would gain traits, some bad like Reckless or, if the random amount of troops lost turns out to be a small amount, a good trait that improves command). Sorry if that was difficult to comprehend, but yeah.

Oh, and sea battles. Duh.

[Junius]

The ability for co-current land and sea battles, like ships artillery bombarding an enemy army while your land army attacks them. I would also like to see ships been able to bombard coastal city walls.

[ray243]

Allowing us to improve the discipline of the army and allowing us to design our walls should be needed as well. Which means, if we wanted to do so, we can build the walls of Constantinople, or allowing us to build an entire wall in defending our borders.


We need to have a chance to build the great wall of China if we wanted to do so.

Allowing us to train more units at once should be useful too.

Supply lines is crucial as well, experienced players should have a chance to turn on a supply line feature in the game.

Other than that, the ability to expand the map from Europe to the whole of Eurasia.

Also, it sub-unit detachment can help as well, there might be times where we can choose to detach sub-units from the main fighting force, and hide them somewhere else.

Moreover, CA also needs to take in account of Horse archer units, due to the fact that Horse archers don't operate in a large unit, instead, they operate in a squad-like unit.

Another thing to note is, in many ancient armies, sometimes, people do have a combined arms unit or formation. Meaning archers, crossbowmen and infantry are all grouped into a single unit.

Like the first few ranks carries heavy shields, and behind them is archers shooting from the gaps in the shield formation.

Baggage train formation, or mobile fort should be in the game as well. Like how the Chinese defeated the 'Xiong Nu' or the 'Asian huns' by using their wagons as a mobile fortress.

[aznflea]

id be satisfied with logisitics being incorporated.

[Pro patria populoque]

What would be an idea would be to do with bridges. In the ancient world bridging vast rivers e.g nile or danube would be a major engineering undertaking. I think bridging these should be more of an ordeal and would need to be guarded by the faction. Or suffer attacks from enemy factions who could then destroy a bridge and trap armies the wrong side of rivers.

Any thoughts?

[SonOfAlexander]

Naval battles are the biggest want of mine, which brings me onto the new game, Empire: Total War (out on feb 9th).



L'Orient, here I come!

Oh, and the ability to promote good captains without having to wait for a 'man of the hour'.

[aznflea]

how about this? making armies much more significant by upping their recruitment cost and inserting a negative public order when a whole army is wiped out. we need a better routing system where they arent so easily killed. this reduces fatality and helps conserve armies. also need to nerf archers somewhat and make phalanx much stronger on the front but but harder to maneovre.

rebels should be more significant and less frequent. bribing is just downright . its bull how you cant make them join you or disband. also, maybe giving generals a trait which makes them an a55hole or a kind person. then making your soldiers more likely to turn over to the enemy when you start losing the battle to simulate deserters. make this only work in certain situations like civil wars.

we also need more lifelike family members. like EB

[ray243]

Another important thing to note is the shield.

For example, if the shield is held by the left arm, that means your right flank is weaker.

Also, one really need to give the cavalry speed. To have an effective charge, the Cavalry needs to gain momentum.

CA needs to reflect the actual speed of a charge, instead of adding it as a bonus.

Also, if we are moving on to include the Huns or Mongols, we need to have Armor-piercing arrows for certain factions.

Moreover, for horse mounted archers, when you split them into loose formation, they get split off into several smaller groups, but still counts as a single unit.


Example. I have 200 men in one horse archer unit. When I choose to adopt the loose formation, the unit will divide themselves into small groups, 5-10 men in each groups.

Meaning I can have 20 sub-groups in one unit, and the AI knows know to micro-manage the sub-groups.

Let your units surrender to them enemy instead of routing all the time.

When the moral of the unit drops, they can either choose to flee or surrender, and be taken as POW.


Other than that, make it possible for us to retreat with our army more or less intact.

Also, routing units and killing routed units is too easy.

I managed to kill off 200-400 men with 2 cavalrymen. Not 2 units, 2 men!

I mean we all know routing units is supposed to be tired and etc. However, when you see 2 men chasing you, at the least 10-20 of you can kill them off while you retreat.


Other than that, make it possible for you to spilt your entire army up and cover a rocky terrain.Say as the defender, if you manage to split your army on rocks and etc, you can tear the enemy formation apart, and force them to a one-one battle, where you have a greater chance as a smaller army.


Also, custom formation is a must, for modders. We need custom formation if people wanted to play the game in a different era, and if CA fail to give us enough custom formation.


For example, it is impossible to give the Roman cohorts a wedge formation if the modding team wanted to do so.

[SiamWarrior]

More money at the start of the game, the overall money gains and losses seems a bit unrealistic.

Always going into the red after the first few turns, this is improved a lot on Rome Total Realism Mod though.

[Selifator]

Uhm, I don't know what you are doing in the first few turns, but usually my finances increase drastically in the first few turns.