My List of Suggestions/Gripes with ETW
Hi,
Long-time lurker, first-time poster here. Just thought I'd share my thoughts and possible ideas about this game, which I've enjoyed playing very much for the past two weeks. This list is probably going to end up retardedly long, as I intend to put every little thing that comes to my mind on it. Many of my complaints might seem trivial, but in my opinion, attention to detail is what makes a good game a great game. As I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, if I ever were in charge of developing a video game, I'd certainly try to pay as much attention to details such as these as possible.
Many ideas I clearly got from reading around on this board. I'm in no way trying to claim them as my own, and all credit goes to the original posters.
-Campaign map needs to be optimized and feel more responsive. Every mouse click seems to be followed by anywhere between half a second to a full 5 seconds of lag, especially when selecting navies from mid-game onwards. This includes navigating the various browsers and info-boxes as well.
-This game takes place in the time of musical greats such as Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven. The dry and forgetful campaign map music is a great let-down--I'd love to be able to manage my empire to a serene violin concerto or a lively prelude and fugue. Battle music on the other hand is a bit better; not exactly memorable, but it gets the job done.
-Sound effects lack the "oomph" that I was looking for. Muskets sound weak; melee sounds are close to non-existent; no human voices whatsoever during combat (I think?). Would add much to the immersion if sound effects included little things like officers barking orders in the heat of battle, pained shouts of men locked in melee fighting for their lives, maybe even add the moans and cries of pain of the wounded and fallen.
-Marching sounds are also lacking; all I've heard so far is just a non-stop drum roll. That might actually be historically accurate, I don't know, but I'd much prefer if it had some variation and sounded like it actually helped the men march in order. No marching music either; I don't know if men during that time actually marched to marching music, but if they did, it should definitely be added. A bugle call here or there wouldn't hurt either; maybe a call to sound an attack and another one to sound a retreat etc. All this I think would add to the immersion of battle.
-During battle, AI does not march in a line typical of that era of warfare; they march more like a mob than an army.
-Not enough smoke on the battlefield; something more like the smoke mod would be great.
-Forming a square formation with only 160 men looks ridiculous. Maybe make the square formation toggle button available only when 2+ or even 3+ units of infantry are selected and have all units combine to form a single square; this would enable the user to mix different kinds of units in a square as well.
-line infantry don't exactly fire at the same time. Would be nice if they fired synchronously and units actually took turns firing their volleys.
-more realistic morale: I think an inexperienced unit of line infantry would probably start to waver at just maybe 50% casualties. Sometimes I see units of infantry firing at each other until there's only 10/20 guys left on each side; hard to imagine that a whole line of infantry would be willing to stand their ground down to the last man. This of course should be affected by experience; it already is, but I'd like to see it make more of a difference. The difference between say Napoleon's Old Guard and regular French infantry wasn't just better equipment and skill but probably was more because the Old Guard could be depended upon when needed and not route during the most intense parts of battle. More conspicuous differences in morale I think would make battles more interesting.
-There was also an idea somewhere on here that a poster brought up and that was to make elite units out of experienced units, and make experience actually affect a unit visually, especially when it turns "elite", like more awesome hats and uniforms. I think that's a great idea.
-allow the user to assign a number (Ctrl + #) not just to groups of units but also to individual units.
-make pressing the space bar (showing troop destinations) also work when the battle is paused.
-give the general the rally special ability and make it more or less guarantee a successful rally in units in a small radius around the general so it's actually useful.
-I have to admit I'm not very good at sea battles but maybe chainshot could be made more effective? Maybe the people good at sea battles would disagree with me, and that's fine. Also, it doesn't seem like the mast-HP directly affects ship's movement speeds enough. I know that if a ship loses one of its masts it obviously loses maneuvrability, but what if it loses 25% of its mast-HP? Visually the ship still looks intact, but is it slower? If it actually is, it should be more noticeable in my opinion. I think it would be great if there were more "levels" to the mast-HP, maybe have it cover the whole top half of the ship-HP circle. If 25% of it is gone, maybe show holes and rips in the ship's sails; at 50% a smaller mast collapses; at 75% a bigger mast collapses; and finally at 100% the ship is completely disabled. All this would be accompanied by the appropriate decrease in speed of course.
-Surrendered ships (not from being boarded) should also be considered captured at the end of battle.
-Ship's sails are being hoisted and lowered way too fast and way too often; make it more realistic.
-Ships turn too easily, especially when going against the wind.
-Have a button that cancels the reload-for-broadside command without firing. I've had to make do with clicking fire-at-will twice, but it's kinda annoying.
-Make broad sides more useful, in addition to its morale effects. Maybe if 80% of a particular broadside hits a ship, it would trigger an added effect like the enemy ship could suffer a reloading panalty (maybe reload half as fast for the next 5~10 seconds), which makes sense as a devestating broadside is sure to cause temporary chaos and disarray in the opposing ship.
-Make admirals transferrable between ships.
-Recruiting a general always results in a general's bodyguard unit, so there should be no need to select a unit before you can recruit a general. Disbanding a general should make the bodyguard unit disappear. This also means I don't think a general's bodyguard unit should be recruitable.
-Make more variations in the unit roster. As many have said, Britain gets an disproportionate amount of unique units, why not the other factions? There should be better and weaker variations of line infantry and cavalry for all factions; I'd enjoy making the strategic decision of deciding which to recruit (they would cost different amounts of $ of course)
-Everything Reiksmarshal mentioned in his "Letter to CA" thread. I especially agree with his points on the weak campaign AI and diplomacy.
-Make cannons much more expensive and powerful. Right now I feel like I can build as many of them as I want (if I wanted to of course; cannons don't seem as useful as they should be right now). Would add more to a battle if I actually valued my cannons because of their use and their expense. Cannons should also be capturable as someone said, though shouldn't be usable in the same battle.
-Make native units less powerful, and not march in such neat formations. Their unit sizes could also be decreased.
-On the campaign map, make the game remember which menus/windows were open and which sorting options were selected when another menu pops up. For example, I'm looking at the agent list, I select a rake and send him to sabotage a building, the sabotage menu pops up and takes the agent-list's place, but when that's gone, my previous agent-list is also gone; would be nice if the agent-list restored itself in this case.
-Make monarch's skills increase/decrease accordingly. Afterall, we're playing the game as the monarch (kinda), if we manage our empire well, the monarch's traits should get better, and vice versa. Maybe having it correlate with prestige increase/decrease would be sufficient.
-Make a "locate" button (the magnifying glass) beside each building in the building browser, so I can locate the building without needing to select it first. Better yet, incorporate the gold hammer icon into the browser itself and add the whole building upgrade menu directly into the building browser, so I can just select a building and the usual building upgrade panel would appear in the bottom half of the browser.
-Make infrastructure improvements also generate a spinning gold hammer icon. Maybe lower their cost too, not sure about this.
-Make a way to navigate through only towns with spinning gold hammers, instead of needing to scan the map or navigate through every single town including unupgradeable ones.
-Make religion play a bigger role. I hardly ever build churches because I can manage without using them at all.
-Expand the list of crops a specific plantation can harvest. I don't see why a certain plantation can only have two choices of crops.
-Make the the theatre/grand opera house/whatever-is-the-alternative-to-the-royal-observatory more useful. Make the naval hospital more useful.
-I find it hard to believe that in six months a fleet of ships can only travel halfway down the East coast of North America. Maybe that's accurate, but I don't think it is and think ship's movement ranges should be increased.
-Make a unit's line of sight significantly smaller, especially that of ships; the current huge LOS is unrealistic. Would add more tension when invading enemy territory or sailing into enemy waters etc. Maybe you think your invasion fleet is not threatened by any nearby enemy fleet, when they are actually just beyond your LOS and very much within striking distance. This would work well with my previous point: ships would have larger movement ranges, but see less far.
-Limit the number of advanced educational buildings for every nation so the tech tree isn't completed two-thirds or even only halfway through the century.
-Trade theatres are still bugging out for me as Great Britain sometimes.
-Different transition zones between theatres seem kinda illogical right now. Any theatre in the world can be picked when a ship sails into a transition zone, so why bother sailing to the right zone. I know the length of time of the crossings are affected, but it doesn't make as much sense as needing to sail into the right zone to go to the specific correct theatre.
-Make outcomes of missions by various agents have a bigger impact on agent skill.
-I feel that the game auto-picking the next tech to research after the current one is done is unnecessary. Sometimes I even make a mistake and forget to change a certain research to the one I want because I didn't catch the auto-pick.
-When recruiting from generals/admirals, make the newly-produced units move to the general/admiral the moment they are trained, not the turn after (like a queued movement).
-Let the AI know when to back-off/retreat from battle when against overwhelming odds.
-Units that suffer casualties in battle don't seem to recover some men anymore (not sure about this, do they?).
-Make pirates less of a nation and more like the rebels from past games. They can never be completely destroyed. Pirate home-bases should stay though, a place where pirates can recruit and repair ships. Pirate fleets can also get too large. Most pirates should consist of single ships just harrassing your trade routes all over the map, though medium sized navies anchored in ports are fine.
-Make the sizes of the happiness/unhappiness bars in a town more accurate/proportional. If total happiness is adding up to a zero, I expect to see the happiness bar lined up with the unhappiness bar, but this isn't happening.
-Make firing behind walls etc less gimped, and make occupying buildings more useful, so much so that they can become points of interest during a battle. There are battles where opposing armies dedicated large amounts of manpower just to capture buildings on the battlefield. Maybe have a captured building provided some kind of bonus to nearby troops (increase morale perhaps? maybe even gradual recovery of wounded men...).
-Make the reloading animations of cannon crews actually look good. All I see is a guy pushing a stick back and forth in the gun for 20 seconds. Same thing applies to line infantry to a certain extent.
-Allow the user to see both the current income on a raided trade route and its potential income when mousing over them. This means that when a trade route is being raided, mousing over the route would show both the current reduced income followed by the full potential income maybe in parentheses for all raided nations. Having a visual cue on the campaign map that correponds to the amount of money a trade route is making would also be welcome. The most-used routes generating the most money could have larger ships and more ships moving back and forth on the map.
-Improve the traits/ancillaries menu. It's a pain to have to mouse over every trait or ancillary, and wait sometimes for the alternating text, just to see its effects. Many trait descriptions don't even explicitly state its effects; every trait in my opinion should have some sort of number/statistic assigned to it in an easy-to-read fashion.
-Statuses of units (like "encouraged", "under fire", "firing at will", "in melee" etc) when mousing over them in battle is hard to read cause it's all text. Adding some sort of visual cue/icon to them would improve readability (similar to the small icons that appear in the upper-left corner of a unit card).
-Make more variations in individual men of a unit so it's not clone wars all over again.
-Add an option to toggle bullet/cannon tracers on and off.
-Have the AI make counter-offers in diplomacy like in previous games. Knowing what the AI wants would allow for easier negotiating.
-Disabling the "floating flags" option seems to be bugged for me. I have it set on "never", but the flags are always visible at the start of a new battle. It only works if I set it to something other than "never" and set it back to "never" again.
-Have the flag carrier of a unit play a bigger role. Visually, if that unit is ordered to attack, maybe have the flag waver point the flag forward (not sure about this), or if the unit routs maybe have the waver drop the flag on the ground altogether and run for his life. From a game mechanic point of view, perhaps when a flag carrier is killed that unit could suffer a teeny weeny little morale hit?
-Nations shouldn't be defeated just from loss of its capital.
-Light infantry shouldn't be able to deploy stakes during battle, and horses should be able to walk through stakes unharmed.
-Make sabotaging more damaging to buildings, so in addition to just taking the building out of use for a turn, the opponent also has to pay significant repair costs.
Wow, I can't believe how long this list is. As it stands now it looks more like a rant than anything, but I assure you, it's not intended to be one. I've enjoyed the game immensely; this list is simply a list of things that I, as an anal perfectionist, would love to see in the game.
Feel free to critique them however you like, even though I doubt many of you would bother reading through it all.
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