House rules for campaign and battles.

[Droidlife]

Hey everybody and greets from Sweden!

I searched for threads topiced "house rules" but I couldn't find any. If there are threads on this I apologize for starting a new one, but here it goes.

When playing Total war games, especially the modded versions, I always start making up house rules. I do this both on the campaign level and on the battle level, which is what I want to discuss here. Using house rules for battles brings a much richer and rewarding gaming experience in my opinion. It makes battles harder, and it just generally tend to immerse you into the gaming experience to a much higher degree than if you just blast through the action from an all-seeing birds eye perspective, the way the game is normally played.

When I control my forces on the battlefield I NEVER use a high vantage point. I hoover very low over each unit and use their field of view to make strategic decisions. I utilize the much slept on "Intelligent zoom" function, which much resembles a mono-binocular in the way it presents what you see through it. In my imagination, only the generals bodyguard and scouts on horseback, like regiments of cavalry carry these, and I restrict it's use for those situations when I am in control of that particular unit.

When navigating the battlefield I almost always jump between units instead of panning the camera around normally. I try to restrict my overview of the action to this style of playing as much as possible. In decision making on both the general level and troop level I try to "role play" and do not make decisions from "meta information" that belongs to me as the all seeing eye of the gamer. A regiment of militia with flint lock rifles for example, with poor training and only rudimentary understanding of tactics do not make "smart" snap decisions in the midst of battle. They hold their positions as ordered and try to stay alive to the best of their ability. When I play the game in this way I frequently send my cavalry and my general unit around the field if there are major maneuvers to be executed. I also imagine that the more elite units have been delegated the role of "marking out" where an advancing line is supposed to stop for example, or I send cavalry out with the same task.

I'm no military historian so I don't know exactly how generals controlled their armies during the Empire era, but I use common sense and try to keep things as realistic as possible. With this style of playing the game can become very intense as you hoover above the infantry line, artillery blasting all around and muskets firing through the haze of gunpowder smoke. It is very rewarding to take control of a regiment of cavalry, put the spurs to the steeds and hastily ride up the hill to confer with the general and then ride out again to organize the weakening left flank into a new position.

Try it out if you haven't already, and post your thoughts and tips for a more realistic and RPG-esque gaming experience. I must depart. The young British general Patrick West is leading his men through a France countryside in flames, his sights set on the frog-allied Spaniards popping up behind the Pyrenees. :

[dash1]

I use house rules for the campaign mostly what i do is this
i take the victory conditions and divide the regions to capture over the 100 year period (that means you can only capture and hold a region every 4 years)
you can conquer more regions in between but you have to give them away(preferably to allies or protectorates) this way you realy have to plan your moves
the second rule is only retrain units if you own the place
i'm using the aum mod and play on N/N and had the most intense battles so far and because you expand slowly the cai builds up a much more diverse stack of units and is that much
harder to keep in check also diplomacy works alot beter this way

[Haakon]

When I control my forces on the battlefield I NEVER use a high vantage point.

Are you refering to terrian here, or camera control? Because if you place your forces on top of a hill, you get a full overview of the battlefield, and not doing that would be a tactical blunder.

[kesa82]

I have thought about doing exactly as you describe.
Of course, 18th century commanders had no wireless communications, no observation balloons, or recon planes, or satellites. you could only see what you could see , and of course consequently you could only control what you could see.
Further , with no wireless a commanders communications with sub-units most often necessarily had to be carried out via messenger.
Orders conveyed verbally were notoriously unreliable. The messenger often got even simple orders wrong in translation from memory.
So most commanders transmitted orders via copious written notes. This had problems too. Many people, and generals are no exception, write poorly, or illegibly, or in an eccentric script that has the same effect as illegibility.
Also, try writing a concise, unambiguous, explicit, though albeit brief and simple note, while cannons are going off and 15 people are trying to talk to you at once.
There again there was a problem peculiar to those days in the messengers themselves, who tended to be junior officers , hungry for glory, detailed commonly for this task. The problem was the cult of honor which tended to value the personal over the institutional.
That is, a messenger sent to deliver orders to a unit might in transit see an oppertunity for personal glory and distinction and promptly decide enstead to lead a charge of Grenadiers and " forget" to deliver the message !
Yes, it happened.
The common soldier of the 18th century may or may not have been a humble peasant conditioned into a most pliant automaton, but their aristocratic officers were still very much the crudely romantic chivalric idiots. They still stubbornly considered themselves in every sense to BE aristocrats , i.e. FREE AGENTS.
( however, did that make them backward, or unsophisticated ? I think not. While it was not entirely unknown, I have no doubt that it was a great deal harder in those days of the cult of honor to carry out the kind of "orders are orders " atrocities so commonplace now. To us they may seem rustic and backward, but to them we might seem obscenely barbaric ? )
As things stand, how battles are typically fought in this game is anything but historically accurate even in broad approximation.


And what you propose would be wonderfully emersive. Most of the time graphics cards and all the work of developers and modders goes for nought in my case. I do not see the pretty uniforms or even hear the crack of musketry because I'm floating far above it like some Olympian God.
Indeed, I can't recall a single occassion on which I spent an extended period of time at ground level emersed in a major battle.
It seems I only risk it when we are talking about the interception of small raiding parties where only 5 or 6 units may be involved.
Why not ?
No guts !
First, the AI WILL behave just as if it does have the God-view of the battle. The AI's command unit can be MILES away, absorbed in chasing down routers, but if a gap opens in your lines you better believe that unit of AI infantry will promptly exploit it.
I get quite emotionally attached to my units.
My units ( my hypothetical sub-commanders that is ) , however, exercise ZERO initiative, or even common sense.
For example, even though my skirmishers ARE SET to skirmish mode they will stand right there while a unit of line infantry marches right up to them.
Enstead of remounting and ridding away, dragoons will enstead continue to trade unequal volleys with two regiments of line infantry in order to screen a position that is no longer relevant., and get chopped to pieces. ( though these things DID happen by the way. )
I have nightmares about - and it would happen -- that my precious Highland infantry get wiped out to a man because the neighboring unit stood stock-still and did not march 50 yards to close an apparent-to-anyone gap of 20 paces.
( though that did happen too in real life. )

What you are doing sounds like such fun though !
Perhaps someday I will find the heart to restrain my mother hen instincts and loosen the apron strings and have some fun !

[Droidlife]

I have thought about doing exactly as you describe.

Interesting thoughts. No doubt many battles fell into total confusion once the bulk of the armies where committed. Regarding my style of playing the game you must not forget the pause button. I never play without using paus because hectic, fast paced action is not what I want from these types of games. Instead I use pause frequently, dubble click on the unit cards to jump between the regiments and try to make "realistic" decisons that are not entirely driven buy my own goals. I pause and elevate my view slightly sometimes when I need to draw out a line of infantry for example, but I try not to scout out the area ahead, to keep the suspence. I might turn the camera around for example, so that I can have an overview of "known terrain" when I need to manage my army.

Other than that, I stick to what you can allmost call an FPS perspective. It is immersive to ride out with scouts to see what the enemy is doing, or use the "Intelligent zoom" binoculars from the generals positon. Try it out. The paus button is your ally.

Edit: Allso; if my style of playing, and especially the "rpg" elements that I try to incorporate (thinking like the regiment I'm controlling would think in a given situation) might lead to some situations where you itch to use "meta information" to get the job done. But if you restrain yourself from that, the payoff is great because you put something new into the game, and the game rewards you back. Battles starts to have greater meaning. The traits your generals get is more interesting, etc.

[Droidlife]

Are you refering to terrian here, or camera control? Because if you place your forces on top of a hill, you get a full overview of the battlefield, and not doing that would be a tactical blunder.

I mean I stay close to units at all times. If a unit takes an elevated position on the battlefield, ofc I can see more as I hover above them.

[gord96]

my main house rule for campaigns is after a battle i don't replenish my units for at least 1 turn unless they are in a region that I have controlled for more then 1 turn. so that means if I capture a region I cannot replenish until the following turn. Adds a little bit of difficulty and makes it a bit more realistic I find.

[Chipp]

I never blitz and destroy factions completely. I always try to keep as many factions as possible in the game for interest.

[Lumina]

House Rule: Fight the Greatest Odds you can, go to war with the super powers, and ultra super powers, watch your stack fleets engage 2-3 stacks of ships in span of a year with no time to make it to port to repair. Watch your Captial Region get invaded by 3-4 AI armies at once, and enter epic battles with nearly 10,000 coldiers combined on all sides. Greater the odders the greater the glory of victory.

[mikil100]

Well, I make up house rules later in game- but in my current Prussian campaign I am at war with everyone around me except Hannover (my only allies). So, after a take out a decent bit of Austria and Poland and have more secure borders, then I will stop expansion, institute house rules, and help all the AI factions. My eventual goal is to create a huge World War in the 1760's or so, should be fun. I'm thinking me and one AI vrs all of Europe.

[Inhuman One]

In battles I am a bit more cinematic and am all over the place. I do add roleplay elements in other ways though.

Often I try to shape my tactics to fit the general's traits. If they are bloody, they will hunt down all routers. If they prefer cavalry or infantry this affects the number of such units in the army and how often they are used.

Sometimes I let a general I start the game with cling to tradition and old fasioned units. Like a swedish general favoring hackapels and pikemen.

Or a general in India that has grown to greatly respect its people might favor native Indian units over company troops. Sepoys and Ghurka's are most of the army then, I did change ghoorka's to be recruitable through entire India.

And on the campaign map I take my leader's traits into consideration, and also relations with other countries.

Brittain and the United Provinces can never be at war as long as Willem III is the ruling king of Brittain, he actually ruled both, so I always honour this alliance, at least for as long as Willem III is king.

When playing as Spain, I pretty much only defend my territory and train few new troops as long as Carlos II is on the throne.

[kesa82]

In battles I am a bit more cinematic and am all over the place. I do add roleplay elements in other ways though.

Often I try to shape my tactics to fit the general's traits. If they are bloody, they will hunt down all routers. If they prefer cavalry or infantry this affects the number of such units in the army and how often they are used.

Sometimes I let a general I start the game with cling to tradition and old fasioned units. Like a swedish general favoring hackapels and pikemen.

Or a general in India that has grown to greatly respect its people might favor native Indian units over company troops. Sepoys and Ghurka's are most of the army then, I did change ghoorka's to be recruitable through entire India.

And on the campaign map I take my leader's traits into consideration, and also relations with other countries.

Brittain and the United Provinces can never be at war as long as Willem III is the ruling king of Brittain, he actually ruled both, so I always honour this alliance, at least for as long as Willem III is king.

Maurice De Saxe felt that pikes still had a role to play on the battlefield. Though we seem to be in the distinct minority, I feel the same way myself. I use a MOD that allows me to recruit Pikemen indefinitely . In my current campaign it is now 1780 and my mercenary Swiss pikemen are still in the line of my 1st army corps.
I role-play it, and pretend that my Austrian Emperor, and Prince Eugen of Savoy, favor pikes, insuring their place long-term in my Austrian army.
-- I have noticed though that though I position my pikemen on the flanks, and have been known to order them to march double-time, cavalry avoid them consistently like the plague, and I can count on one hand the number of cavalry troopers killed by my pikemen. No, my pikemen always wind up marching into infantry fire to break the line, and here a 12-foot pike phalanx is still superior to 3 feet of bayonet.

-- I role-play colonial warfare too. If fighting in North America, Indians invariably wind up on the payrole. their numbers were never that great though, so the bulk of the army is always necessarily whites.
If fighting in North Africa my colonial army will consist of at least 1-3rd Arabs / bedouines and Negroes.
If fighting in India, I try to make half my infantry line Sepoys.

-- yes, why would relations between England and the Netherlands be anything but friendly while the Prince of Orange sits on the throne of England?

-- speaking of generals traits, I miss the occassionally mentally-disturbed General. They were always my favorite generals. At least, I never see that trait anymore. Of course we no longer have the pre-battle speeches. Crazy generals often delivered some rather entertaining speeches.
In ETW I have to content myself with generals with the " rumors of cowardice " trait. I guess my heart goes out to flawed people, even if they are fake people.

[Astaroth]

Moved to Gameplay and Strategy Discussion.

[NJGOAT]

I don't generally role play or have house rules for battles (though what the OP described sounds like a fun challenge). I do try to develop a general strategy at the beginning of a campaign that includes historical flavors such as what alliances I will always honor and influences my objectives.

For example, as Britain, I always try to support the UP, Hannover and Portugal for their historic ties to Britain. As Austria I try to push to maintain the Habsburg family hegemony and maintain control over their territories.

I find that overall this version of TW lacks a lot of the immersive role playing elements that the others had. When your family members were your governors/generals you really came to rely on them and gained attachments to them. Trying to make succesful generals/governors out of the young kids in the family added an interesting element that is lacking this time around. How many times in MTW and RTW did your aged benevolent ruler or favorite general die and you found yourself actually lamenting the loss and the set back that it was to your faction.

While I understand the ruler not being present as a unit in the game it would have been nice to have an interactive family tree to show the relationships between the various houses. Alliances could be secured through a marriage and succession wars could happen through players actions, not just as scripted events. You could also have it work differently for the different governments. An absolute monarchy could have free will over the family and designation of heirs. Constitutional monarchies could marry freely, but their choices for heirs were limited to those approved by Parliament. Republics would have a royal family that could be restored through outside action (like taking the capital in a war) or through a revolution.

Overall I find needing to create more role playing elements on my own to fill in the gaps versus the previous games that provided that side show on their own.

[happycynic]

I generally have only one hard house rule, which is regarding saving/re-loading. If I get lazy and autoroll a battle and lose, I allow myself to redo the turn and take personal command of the army. If I lose a battle while in command, I don't allow any re-loading. Beyond this, I generally do like to rollplay and will often avoid eliminating major powers or expanding to the point where most major factions are eliminated. For instance, when playing western powers like France or Britain, I will often conquer nearly all of North America and India, but will have little to no expansion in Europe. Late in the game if I have to take European territory to humble an enemy I will usually gift it or let it rebel into an independent state.

[MortenJessen]

Hi there.
I mainly sticks to very few rules:
1) I retrain my units, never ever merge.
2) I always helps my allies.
3) I only starts wars when a victory-region is at stake, otherwise the A.I. will do the declarations of war.
Y.S.
M. Jessen

[british_general]

I always rampage around a faction like a lunatic before using 5 turns plannning on my next victim. after that, I will rampage again. I won't take on more than 1 country at once.