A serious discussion on grassy flatlands (with A POLL!!!!!!!!)

[Desufer]

Why must tournaments be held on completely flat ground? Is terrain inherently unfair? Why?

[Codeman90]

I can see it now..... an army deploys itself for battle. In order to take the city they must defeat the army in the local area.

Enemy army: OMFG THIS ISNT FAIR THERE ARE HILLS BLOCKING MAH RIFLES AND LIGHT DRAGOONS! I DEMAND WE FIGHT ON A FEATURELESS PLAIN!
*Enemy army leaves*

other army shrugs its shoulders and takes the city uncontested.

In a less bizzare way of saying it. I think flat plains are boring as hell. Terrain makes the game a LOT better.

[SMIDSY]

I must admit, I like heavy terrain. Perfect for light infantry.

[blonkers1234]

flat terrain=worst map ever created
map that gives no advantages in deployment zones but have an area to give an advantage if you take it first are the way to go.

[daniu]

I must admit, I like heavy terrain. Perfect for light infantry.

Forests, yes, hills, not so much since they tend to limit range.
Taking advantage of them takes skill, which is why I think maps with terrain ought to be preferred by experienced players for the additional challenge.
(I think the same way about artillery if you excuse this OT remark )

map that gives no advantages in deployment zones but have an area to give an advantage if you take it first are the way to go.

Gotta love Homestead.
It's so funny when after deployment, people just stay put and let you take the advantageous position where you can shoot them from the hills

[blonkers1234]

Gotta love Homestead.
It's so funny when after deployment, people just stay put and let you take the advantageous position where you can shoot them from the hills

Yes it is good, gotta love some camper stew in the morning.

[blank]

I can see it now..... an army deploys itself for battle. In order to take the city they must defeat the army in the local area.

Enemy army: OMFG THIS ISNT FAIR THERE ARE HILLS BLOCKING MAH RIFLES AND LIGHT DRAGOONS! I DEMAND WE FIGHT ON A FEATURELESS PLAIN!
*Enemy army leaves*

other army shrugs its shoulders and takes the city uncontested.

So if you lose an MP match the "enemy" will come and raid your home city, yes?

[Codeman90]

So if you lose an MP match the "enemy" will come and raid your home city, yes?

Nah, I enjoy Empire: Total War because of the historical context. I like studying and learning about warfare. In all its incarnations and throughout history, sure this doesn't really translate to online play, but the myth that all 1th century armies stood in neat straight lines and took turn shooting at eachother is a bit ridiculous.

This seems to be confirmed however in this game by the large number of people who play maps on a featureless plain.

[TheAussieDigger]

i reckon flatlands maps should be banned!
theyre arent good for peoples playing ability or mindset!
i was at points so addicted to flatlands maps i was scared of hills!
i have needed to go through flatlands rehab to get through this gaming mental illness

imo, there should be a flatlands rehab centre where people can go if they catch on to this terrible fad where people who have ednured through or escaped this illness can tutor the victims out of it!

whos with me?

[Hekko]

i reckon flatlands maps should be banned!
theyre arent good for peoples playing ability or mindset!
i was at points so addicted to flatlands maps i was scared of hills!
i have needed to go through flatlands rehab to get through this gaming mental illness

imo, there should be a flatlands rehab centre where people can go if they catch on to this terrible fad where people who have ednured through or escaped this illness can tutor the victims out of it!

whos with me?

Not really, flatlands removes any terrain incitement for camping, and camping is concidered bad by most people afaik.

By the looks of it now you're so addicted to hills your scared of fighting on flat ground. And this in turn would mean all that you've gone from one end of the mental illness scale to the other extreme, so from being map-obese you have gone to map-anorexia. What you need is a more balanced diet of maps which includes all the vital terrain types like flatness, hills, forrests etc. Beware, however, that you don't make it to balanced, because then you risk catching map-orthorexia.

More seriously, both flatmaps and maps with terrain (even imbalanced terrain) all have their places. Personally I find maps with terrain alot more fun than flatmaps, even though I have a beef with every single one of them. On the other hand grassy flatlands has it's place as a tournament map where terrain won't effect the outcome by making some units more powerfull etc. As well as giving everyone the same terrainadvantage.

[Stoke]

A flat map is a boring map. If u are a good general u know how to take the hill, easy as that.

[Lucullus]

80% of all hosted games are played on grassy flat, in rtw, m2tw and now in etw. for a good reason. people like to challenge eachother with just the tactics and army setup as variables which lay in their hands. in tournaments this is even more important. try to host a tourney and give someone terrain advantage. I promise you it will utterly fail as long as you dont include terrain lovers only. it can work though when you play match + rematch on the same (non flat terrain) map with switched starting positions but the tiebreaker games has to be played on flat.

why complaining? just go ahead and host a tournament with different terrain. all up to you.

[Desufer]

80% of all hosted games are played on grassy flat, in rtw, m2tw and now in etw. for a good reason. people like to challenge eachother with just the tactics and army setup as variables which lay in their hands. in tournaments this is even more important. try to host a tourney and give someone terrain advantage. I promise you it will utterly fail as long as you dont include terrain lovers only. it can work though when you play match + rematch on the same (non flat terrain) map with switched starting positions but the tiebreaker games has to be played on flat.

80%? That's a little high. What I've seen from grassy flatlands is it limits your tactics to using the same rifle, line inf., heavy cav, dragoon armies in order to stay competitive. I will grant you that med/med on grassy flatlands is actually alot more varied than large/large, but your whimsical reasoning about tactics and variables is multiplied greatly when there are hills and trees around to strategically take and hide behind, giving units like grenadiers a greatly increased viability. The strategic thinking in terrain games is much higher since you have to think about how to effectively hold a position using bottlenecks and woods, finding a superior place to put your arty, etc.

try to host a tourney and give someone terrain advantage.

Have you even tried the new maps? Are you not aware that no team starts out with an advantage and the terrain is so varied that your army can't possibly fit entirely on one hill or unfair spot without the opponent having access to a hill or forest of their own?

Also, you still haven't answered the original question of why grassy flatlands is better than terrain. Why EXACTLY is flatlands better than any sort of terrain?

[ELITEOFKINGWARMAN8]

80% of all hosted games are played on grassy flat, in rtw, m2tw and now in etw. for a good reason. people like to challenge eachother with just the tactics and army setup as variables which lay in their hands. in tournaments this is even more important. try to host a tourney and give someone terrain advantage. I promise you it will utterly fail as long as you dont include terrain lovers only. it can work though when you play match + rematch on the same (non flat terrain) map with switched starting positions but the tiebreaker games has to be played on flat.

why complaining? just go ahead and host a tournament with different terrain. all up to you.

It's boring. Luc, you will bascially use the same tactics over and over since it is the same map you playing on over and over.

Like I always say, if you truly are a good MP player on TW, then you have no need to complain about other terrain maps and you be able to win on ANY map. I know some MP players today who are good enough to win on ANY map, not just flatland. Just because you good on flatland doesn't mean the world, Luc.

[daniu]

It's boring. Luc, you will bascially use the same tactics over and over since it is the same map you playing on over and over.

Like I always say, if you truly are a good MP player on TW, then you have no need to complain about other terrain maps and you be able to win on ANY map. I know some MP players today who are good enough to win on ANY map, not just flatland. Just because you good on flatland doesn't mean the world, Luc.

Now, now... you may have missed this post of his:

Personally I play all kind of maps and terrain for a change as playing the same map over and over again is boring. So I agree with you about diversity and enjoyment and so do most of my mates. For tourneys however they cause much more problems than flat maps as observed more than once in the last years playing TW MP.

[blonkers1234]

It's boring. Luc, you will bascially use the same tactics over and over since it is the same map you playing on over and over.

Like I always say, if you truly are a good MP player on TW, then you have no need to complain about other terrain maps and you be able to win on ANY map. I know some MP players today who are good enough to win on ANY map, not just flatland. Just because you good on flatland doesn't mean the world, Luc.

Would have to agree on the point about terrain, a good player should be able to fair well on any sort of map, now if they had a randomly generate button..............

[Marshal Ney]

80% of all hosted games are played on grassy flat, in rtw, m2tw and now in etw. for a good reason. people like to challenge eachother with just the tactics and army setup as variables which lay in their hands. in tournaments this is even more important. try to host a tourney and give someone terrain advantage. I promise you it will utterly fail as long as you dont include terrain lovers only. it can work though when you play match + rematch on the same (non flat terrain) map with switched starting positions but the tiebreaker games has to be played on flat.

why complaining? just go ahead and host a tournament with different terrain. all up to you.

Exactly correct.

[Danweck]

My one complaint with hilly terrain is the fact that the AI acts as though it is not even there (not AI as in the opposition, but AI in regards to fire at will orders.) I love maps with hills and trees, particularly homestead, but which something could be done to that a pack of rifles sitting around on overwatch will not fire a full volley into the pile of dirt that the enemy is on the other side of. With no line of sight whatsoever, in situations where in reality they would have no knowledge of an enemy being on the other side of the hill (at least no visual sign), the squad will enthusiastically fire volley after volley into the ground trying to get at what they cannot see.

I love terrain, what I don't love is the complete inability of troops to choose not to fire when there is a 0% chance of hitting. The micro-management is requires in these scenarios really detracts from the overall experiance. Just the slightest bit of competent autonomy on the part of troops would go a long way in fixing this.

[daniu]

I love terrain, what I don't love is the complete inability of troops to choose not to fire when there is a 0% chance of hitting. The micro-management is requires in these scenarios really detracts from the overall experiance.

I must say I disagree.
The thing is that with good micro, you are able to compensate for some of your tactical weaknesses, the other way around works as well. The more you can do wrong with micro, the more good micro makes a difference; I think that in ETW, tactics are more important than good micro as is, so reducing its impact even more would not be good for the game IMHO.
Also, if you think about it, more indepence for the units would encourage camping. The way it is now, you can surprise attack the enemy by triggering fire into a hill and then use the reload time to close in. This is a somewhat advanced move but would not work if the unit waited with firing until your line is on top of the hill.

[Danweck]

I think that in ETW, tactics are more important than good micro as is, so reducing its impact even more would not be good for the game IMHO.

I am not sure how making a game that is tactics oriented more about tactics would detract from the game. The more that the game can be streamlined to avoid macro, the more capable people will be of executing large and somewhat complex maneuvers elegantly and in a limited amount of time. Ones performance should not be crippled because the mouse cannot keep up with the mind.
Micro is bad .

The way it is now, you can surprise attack the enemy by triggering fire into a hill and then use the reload time to close in. This is a somewhat advanced move but would not work if the unit waited with firing until your line is on top of the hill.

This tactic, which i feel dirty for having employed myself in competitive settings, is an abuse of the AI within the fire at will command in my mind. It is triggering a unit to fire upon something on the other side of the hill, that they would have to have x-ray vision to even percieve. The request for a mild degree of autonomy is not so that you can simply let units run about making their own orders and running the battle themselves, simply that your squad of professional soldiers will have judgment enough not to plow their rounds into the dirt.

This distaste for how the terrain is managed I suppose stems from my desire to see a more historically accurate representation of battles, rather than the abuse of the fact that the AI is limited, and other "playing the game" style factors. (tricking people into shooting dirt, overshooting with rifles, the fact that limbered artillery is almost immune to small arms, the bizarre movements employed by units when there is so much as a small rock in their movement path, and most of all the abomination that is the light dragoon, which fires with the same precision and range firing a carbine from horseback at a full gallop as a skilled light infantryman with a full length musket standing still and aiming.) Limiting attempts to fire at those units that are in range and can be seen (having a generous definition of visible to account for cover) would go a very long way in helping reflect a little more historical accuracy.